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From Conscious to Conscience

It’s 9:15 on a Thursday night and I’m leaning against the bar in a hip and underlit restaurant that sits between London’s sleek and shiny financial district and its up-and-coming “Silicon Roundabout,” a gritty traffic interchange speckled with both start-ups and Google offices. As candles flicker, the room buzzes with animated conversations, plates and silverware clatter, and cocktail shakers make their steady “ch-ch-ch-ch.” I take in the scene, one that’s replicated in conurbations of human talent, capital flow, and privilege around the world, from Singapore to Paris to Dubai to New York. It occurs to me that I could at this moment be anywhere, as I try to count the number of languages I hear, as I catalog the different accents of English that surround me.

And that’s when I hear it. A line that sums up ten years of observation, thinking, and, dare I admit it, hope. A sentence that articulates why I felt compelled to write this book.

They’re sitting to my left, a few barstools away. It’s obviously a date. She’s poised and attentive in her special-night-out black dress, hair in a perfect knot. He’s almost breathless with enthusiasm in his attractively rumpled been-in-meetings-all-day business clothes. He’s telling her all about his new company. Big grin, big gestures. Leaning in. He’s got the confidence of a classic Young Turk, one of those good-looking, well-presenting, high-potential guys in their late twenties. In equal parts irritating and admirable, he’s the kind of guy I know the venture capitalists love, because he seems by his demeanor alone that he could be the next Sergei or Larry or Steve. He oozes charisma. And although his date has surely seen this kind of chutzpah before, she’s listening closely. As am I. As he says these words.

“We’ve just closed another nine million in financing. And you know why that makes me so proud? Because we’re not just doing well. We’re doing good.”

Roll your eyes if you will. (Though if you’re reading this book I’m pretty sure you’d agree with our Young Turk. Let’s call him YT.) But this impress-the-date comment is heartfelt. And YT keeps going, beaming with pride as he explains the complexities and challenges of his business, which, from what I can hear, provides some kind of infrastructure technology that will make everyday energy utilities more sustainable and carbon efficient. If what he’s sketching out during this romantic interlude (it wasn’t only the young woman who was captivated at this point) actually succeeds, he will indeed be doing well and doing good. It’s hard to be cynical when his earnestness for doing the right thing, while getting millions of dollars invested in doing it, is real.

But here’s the better reason to eavesdrop. Not because he’s unusual or provocative. Quite the opposite. The mind-set and attitude of our “change the world” YT is surprisingly unexceptional. He’s typical of his generation. Understanding the emergent mind-set he represents will open doors to new opportunities for creating value and positive change. Who doesn’t want to do that?

To cite an obvious and blunt example, consider the mass of young people who created a revolution—and may yet do it again—with mobile phones and Facebook accounts in Tahrir Square. Consider the hordes of church youth groups who’ve flocked halfway across the U.S. to rebuild towns devastated by tornadoes and hurricanes. Monitor the comments on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, on every topic from war to marriage equality to gender to the environment. Empowerment and connectedness are fueling a reordering of assumptions and priorities. When something as profound as a generational mind-set is transforming on a mass scale, it’s wise to take note. Revolutions sweep through societal norms, business models, and consumer expectations as well as governments. Just ask anyone in the music industry.

Back to our guy at the bar. Though he might look the same, in fact he’s rather unlike the generation (mine, generation X) that preceded him.

Something Different in the Air

Just for fun, let’s time travel. Let’s visit YT’s predecessor in his heyday.

The scene: hip-and-underlit designer martini and pizza bar, but in a different city. Let’s say San Francisco, circa 1998. The din is the same: cocktail shaker “ch-ch-ch-ch,” the cacophony of conversation, bullish confidence in the air.

But the words are different. Very different. “Dotcom.” “Valuation.” “IPO.” “Exit strategy.”

Our late ’90s YT is a different animal. I worked with him, and with her. Lots of them, actually.

The primary motivation then? Simple. Get rich, as quickly as possible. Work the system at any cost and get out of it with a high-speed vesting schedule while laughing your way to the real estate agents. At the time, I was working with a typical San Francisco start-up, and I had suggested taking “dotcom” out of the company’s name. I remember during one conversation about it, a bullish colleague said to me, “It doesn’t matter what our business model really is in the end. Let’s just keep dotcom in the name so we keep our valuation high.”

Six months later, of course, the dotcom bubble burst. That’s when I finally won the argument. But we all lost the company. So many start-up dreams blazed like fireworks, and like fireworks they simply dissolved into thin air.

That was then. There’s something different in the air now.

Let’s cut to the present again. This time, to a very different scene.

I’m in Soweto, the Johannesburg township that gave rise and voice to some of the greatest emancipators in a generation: Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela. I’ve traveled here with some of my colleagues to learn firsthand how life is for young people in this inspiring but challenging nation. After the obligatory ride past Tutu’s and Mandela’s now-enshrined homes, and after kicking a football around in the baking sunshine with some of the local young people to break the ice, my colleagues and I are visiting what Mangaliso, the young man in front of me, calls his “concept store,” smack in the heart of the township.

What is a “concept store”? It’s a retail environment that doesn’t specialize in one kind of product but instead sells a lifestyle by selecting and presenting a range of different types of products that all have a theme (a concept, if you will) in common.

Prior to my field trip to Soweto, I’d only visited one other concept store: Colette, on rue Saint-Honoré in Paris. At Colette, the concept on display is edgy, fashionable irony. You can browse through racks of triple-digit-price tag Day-Glo tee shirts, limited edition Coca-Cola bottles (matte white!), and small-batch perfumes (smells like hot asphalt!) that you wouldn’t find anywhere else. All of which express a certain uniquely Parisian je ne sais quoi of style and savoir faire. You could, I suppose, accuse such an environment of being elitist. Except that unlike at, say, Chanel, even a fourth grader with milk money could afford something in Colette. Perhaps a Rubik’s Cube key ring or a funky plastic bracelet. She just needs to know where to go and what’s cool to buy. Price isn’t the point. That’s a concept store. It’s about being in the know.

So what is a “concept store” doing in an economically deprived albeit famous township in Johannesburg? And what on earth is it selling?

Mangaliso starts to explain. He’s addicted to international lifestyle magazines, and he surfs the web on his iPhone searching for new ideas from around the world. He’s never been outside South Africa, and rarely has he even left the township, at least not physically. But he is well aware of Colette in Paris, of the influence that the store exerts on the world as a trendsetter, and he wants to do the same with his neighbors. And so, with his friends, he has opened his own concept store in what can only be described as a large shed on a dusty road under the simmering African sky, and the concept that his store sells can be summed up, like so many of the best ideas, on a tee shirt.

From a rack, he pulls one—extra large, to fit me I assume—emblazoned with a comic book-style illustration of a knot and two hands creating the shape of a heart. There’s an African word above the illustration. “This,” he proclaims, “is what we’re all about. Ubuntu.”

The Ubuntu Mind-Set

Ubuntu is a Zulu term that roughly translates as “human kindness through togetherness.” Wikipedia does it more justice than I can here. Suffice it to say, ubuntu describes the worldview that each of us is manifest through all of us. I am me because of you. We need each other in order to be ourselves. We have a metaphysical obligation to overcome tribal or prejudicial difference by joining together into one humanity that expresses only kindness. This is the key to our strength and our survival.

Mangaliso explains all of this to me in the matter-of-fact way you might describe, say, how to download an app to your tablet. As he walks me through his merchandise, from apparel to silk-screened artworks, he tells me how the store has become a social hub for the young people in the township. He tells me how, together, he and his neighbors throw impromptu parties, how they inspire young people in the township and beyond to create products of their own that express ubuntu, because now there’s a place to sell them. It’s more than a store. It’s a social catalyst. And in time, I suspect, an economic catalyst in his community too.

Ubuntu. This is a big concept. Indeed, concepts don’t really get much bigger, or frankly, more relevant, and not only in South Africa. Here’s our young shopkeeper with his eagle eye on the global marketplace of ideas, selling it on tee shirts, homemade magazines, skateboards, hats, parties. An internationally resonant philosophy that’s productized, designed locally, made locally, sold locally. This could be the birth of a great brand.

My colleagues and I try to buy out the whole store, but we realize that it might impact his mission, so we leave about half of his stock behind, a decision that now, as I type this, I regret. What he’s doing seems profound, while simultaneously it’s very hip. It’s social media made into matter. And his mission is emblematic of his generation, a cohort of around-the-world under-thirties that marketers refer to as millennials, a group that have grown up with Internet connectivity and have only ever known a world to which they are digitally and wholly connected. A group that feels they have not only the power but the responsibility to make a difference.

One more snapshot from the present:

I’m visiting Delhi, where I’m getting to know some more of these millennials, but in a different context. This time, I’ve been invited to spend an afternoon with some young people who live in a fifth-floor walk-up apartment in a bustling neighborhood of Delhi. As we pull up outside the apartment building, an emaciated cow saunters by. Dogs lie asleep in the shade of market stalls piled high with mangoes. People whizz past on bicycles, rickshaws, motorbikes, belching trucks, and packed minibuses. Life in Delhi is a nonstop churn of energy. It’s not a carefree place, but it’s full of surprising paradoxes, and it’s vibrant with humanity. But nothing I’ve read or have been told has prepared me for the humanity of the conversation I’m about to have.

We’re meeting two friends, Raghuvesh and Amit. Raghuvesh lives here with his family, and he ushers me into a spotlessly clean front room lit with a single fluorescent bulb. There’s just enough space for two small wooden chairs, a bench, and a table that can hold, barely, four cups of tea. My eyes dart around the worn walls, looking for anything familiar, anything that’s something like my own living room. This home could not be more different from my own.

But the smiles we exchange are universal, and our conversation begins. I’m particularly interested in how these two guys—my lanky host is twenty years old, his friend is seventeen—feel about technology and their own futures. After some typical sentiments (“I can’t be without my cellphone…” “I’m very busy with my studies because I want to be successful…”) the discussion shifts to entrepreneurship—which to me is surprising. India’s deeply entrenched caste system is emblematic of a hierarchical society. In the very recent past, a young man like Raghuvesh would expect to start at the bottom of an established or family business and work his way up, at least as far as his caste would allow him to go.

But Raghuvesh has a different notion of his own future. He speaks softly, but with the assurance of his own conviction. “I will be my own boss. I want to start a company, so I can create opportunities for Amit, and for my other friends.”

“For your friends?” I ask.

Raghuvesh glances at his cellphone, then looks up again and smiles at me. “I would do anything for my friends, because I love them. Whatever happens to them happens to me. What’s good for them is good for me, and good for my family. It would be good to be in charge of our own future, and to make it happen together.”

Now, to a non-Indian, perhaps Raghuvesh sounds amazingly emotionally evolved, especially for his gender. How many American twenty-year-old guys are so comfortable using the word “love” when talking about their friends? So it bears noting that India, like China and other emerging-market societies, tends to prioritize the community over the individual. And in India, the spiritual and the everyday are more interwoven than in any other culture I’ve encountered; indeed it is often said that Hinduism itself (one of a dozen faith traditions that suffuse the subcontinent) is more a way of life and a worldview than a religion per se. But this doesn’t account for Raghuvesh’s next statement. “I want to make a difference, and I believe that I can. We need to take responsibility for our future. My generation will make things happen together.”

There is a fusion of forces electrifying the mind-set I am encountering in this humble apartment. I’ve encountered it before, in other humble rooms in burgeoning cities across the developing world. This combination of community responsibility, global Internet connectivity, and the aspiration to entrepreneurship is no longer the sole province of the privileged American West Coast university graduate.

It’s so obvious that it almost blends into the background of contemporary life. But when you open your ears, this refrain of “I want to make a difference, because I can” is everywhere. From an exclusive London boîte to a dusty Soweto shed to a sitting room in Delhi.

Something has changed. A new imperative dominates conversations and decisions. It seems that around the world, there’s been some soul-searching. The planet has gradually but steadily been developing a conscience.

Life Begins at Forty

Sociologists have identified an intriguing pattern in broad cultural change, and it is this: most inventions or big ideas take approximately forty years to move from the margins to the mainstream. In other words, the maturation and spread of a mind-set or innovation, from its inception to its broad-scale societal adoption, takes about the same amount of time as we human beings do to reach our adult prime of life. Life, at least for a radical new idea, does indeed begin at forty. What’s especially interesting about this span of time is that the accelerating pace of technological evolution has not shortened the cycle. What took about forty years in the 1800s still takes about forty years today.

For example, the now nearly extinct electric filament lightbulb was invented in 1880 (one of the original applications of the new technology was a string of lights on a Christmas tree; it seemed wise to replace those dangerous candles). By the 1920s, large public spaces like ships were being wired and lit with tungsten bulbs. The first desktop computer was launched in 1965. By 2005, it was impossible to imagine contemporary life without one. The mobile phone was first demonstrated in 1973; today, it has surpassed the personal computer as the primary device for connecting to one another and the world. And the Internet itself? Its gestation began as a U.S. government research project in the early 1960s, but a version of the infrastructure so many of us cannot live without, in a form that would be vaguely recognizable to us today, was named “the Internet” in 1974. Forty years later its reach is still spreading by triple-digit percentages, and there’s no area of modern life—from commerce to education to entertainment—that it hasn’t touched and transformed.

You may be surprised to learn that 61 percent of the world’s population is still not using the Internet. In effect, the net is still quite young. That’s because the World Wide Web—our access to and interface with the Internet—was invented in 1990. Ordinary people didn’t start getting online until the mid-90s. We’re only about two decades into the web’s adoption cycle. In other words, we still have much to learn about what it means to be ubiquitously and wholly connected to one another.

And yet, nearly 2.5 billion people around the world are online. And 6 billion people have a mobile device that connects them to others, and increasingly to the web. By any statistic, we are all more connected than ever before. And with connection comes knowledge and awareness. Knowledge and awareness that are set to increase exponentially as the next billion consumers come online.

Given this forty-year adoption curve, we might do well to ask ourselves: What was happening on the margins about forty years ago? What nascent trends and beliefs and technologies were born then and are now primed for global adoption, ready for their mainstream close-up?

Well, it’s not a coincidence that the concept of, as well as the infrastructure for, cyberspace developed concurrently with the civil rights, women’s liberation, gay pride, and environmental movements. It’s not a coincidence that the movement for equal rights and the mobile phone emerged within just a few years of each other. The late ’60s and early ’70s were a fertile time for thinking about human liberation. A progressive and then-radical philosophy, fueled by a newly permissive and experimental environment on college campuses and by a sense of revolution against the established order and its unpopular politics (Vietnam anyone?), formed the beginning of a long-term movement.

The original cyber-thinkers were also unabashed hippies. That’s because those with science and technology prowess, like avant-garde thinkers, tend to concentrate near top-tier universities. Northern California is home to numerous universities with strong engineering departments, and back in the late ’60s and early ’70s, as part of the back-to-the-land, do-it-yourself ethos, the locally created Whole Earth Catalog emerged as the go-to bible for everything from farming tools and beer-brewing supplies to components for building your own computer. This homemade computer movement spawned the personal computer industry—which, of course, began in the sunny and fertile microclimate now known as Silicon Valley. Meanwhile, Steve Jobs’s own explorations of consciousness and LSD are to many as iconic as (and inseparable from) the groundbreaking company he founded. Empowerment and technology go hand in hand.

So it would seem that seeds of change planted forty years ago during the civil rights movement, nurtured through recessions and energy crises and globalization, have subsequently been fertilized by the rapid connection of billions to the Internet through personal computers and affordable mobile devices. The implications of ubiquitous connectivity are broad, but one of the most profound and widespread is the emergence of a “goodness imperative.” It’s more than an accelerating spread of global consciousness. It’s a new global culture. Conscience Culture.

Jiminy Cricket, Buddha, Darwin, and You

Before we go further, a warning: Conscience Culture is the kind of topic your mother told you never to bring up in polite company—because it’s impossible to talk about it without diving into subjects that can be rather polarizing, like religion, politics, and money—things I was taught to never discuss with strangers and dinner guests. But that’s exactly what I’m going to do with you. As breezily as I can, so that no one gets upset and leaves the table.

In the animated film Pinocchio, Walt Disney famously depicted conscience as a charming and chirpy cricket. Very clever move. Conscience can feel heavy. Jiminy Cricket is probably the cutest and most unthreatening mascot for our inner sense of right and wrong that anyone has yet devised. That’s Jiminy’s definition of conscience, our inner sense of right and wrong. Double-click on conscience, and richer definitions emerge.

So let’s put our first potentially polarizing bugbear briefly on the table—religion—because it’s impossible to talk about right and wrong and not address it. All of the major world religions (and I’m referring to those faith traditions to which huge populations around the world adhere) in their own way put forth the idea that conscience is linked to divinity. For the believer, conscience connects one to a universal moral imperative dictated by a higher power, deity, or group of deities. From Buddhism to Hinduism to Islam to Judaism to Christianity, there is an established and fixed distinction between “good” and “evil.” Yet it bears noting, especially for the skeptic or the atheist, that even within a religious context, conscience is designated as a human tool. Every major religion posits that each of us has our own conscience and that we should use it to ensure “right action” when making everyday decisions and choices.

For example, in Buddhism, conscience is a means of accessing compassion and empathy for all living things. According to the Catholic Church, conscience is an “act of the mind.” In Islam, it’s a “practice” that leads us to be accountable for how we live our lives. In other words, even within the dictates and moral strictures of religious belief, conscience is an expression of human free will. Indeed, conscience may be the only glue that links erstwhile conflicting theologies with atheism, because it is human.

Conscience is also social, and because of this, it’s competitively advantageous for our species. Charles Darwin believed that human conscience evolved naturally, like every other aspect of our biological selves, as a mode of self-preservation. Conscience ensured the survival of the individual as well as of the family or community. Because the more social the species, the more interdependent each individual within that species is. The actions of one impact the many. And thus, secularists and scientists argue, over the course of eons, conscience evolved to address the competitive interests of our species and therefore its survival.

Conscience Is Connection

When it comes to conscience, whether you take the resolutely secular view, the spiritual view, or some hybrid of the two, one thing is clear. Human beings are not born with a conscience. And if you lived your entire life in solitary confinement, you’d never develop one. Moreover, if you don’t see anyone around you with a conscience, you’d lose whatever conscience you’d developed. Hannah Arendt, the celebrated philosopher and social psychologist, noted a loss of conscience on a mass scale in her observation and analysis of the psychology, both social and personal, of Nazi war criminals. Indeed, the systematic destruction of collective conscience is how some of our darkest human tragedies, mass atrocities and genocide, have come to pass. It’s disturbing but true: conscience is not indestructible. Individual conscience can become sublimated by an onslaught of crushing bureaucracy and enforced adherence to rules that suppress the outward expression of right and wrong. Conscience needs community as much as community needs conscience.

That’s because conscience emerges from connectedness and awareness. Your conscience and mine were formed directly in proportion to how connected we are, and to whom. Over the course of our development, we learn the implications of our actions. These implications are reinforced by parents, by teachers, in the playground, on the team, and at church or mosque or temple. The more they are reinforced, the stronger our conscience becomes.

Thus, my inner sense of right and wrong is shaped by my experience of being connected and experiencing the outcomes and effects of that connection. I am who I am because of you, and because of we. Our very interconnectedness is what keeps our conscience intact. We are one another’s guardrails. The more connected and consequently the more interdependent we are, the more our actions impact others, and the more the reactions of others are reflected back onto us. We get back what we put out there. Whether you call it karma or “what comes around goes around,” it’s never been more true.

We are becoming increasingly aware of just how small our world really is. Look at the transformation of what were once considered externalities: the wide-ranging impacts of smoking, for example. We now know it isn’t just smokers who suffer the consequences of their behavior, but others in their vicinity. We also know that the toxins in cigarettes eventually spread into aquatic ecosystems via discarded cigarette butts. Corporations (and governments) are no longer able to contain information about the impacts of using (or manufacturing) products or implementing policies. And unlike people in any previous era in society, we can now not only learn what’s happening in faraway corners of the earth, we can usually even see and hear it in real time, online. So even if you don’t see the conscience you seek in your next-door neighbors, you might find it expressed far away yet in the palm of your hand on your smartphone.

Here’s an important distinction: it’s not that a new generation are awakening as generous and selfless altruists. In fact, an emergent global conscience is merely a practical prerogative for human continuity in a world facing the consequences of unchecked population growth and limited natural resources. Given the threats we face and the problems that need solving, Darwin would say it’s only natural. We’re forming a global conscience because we have to. And because more people are sharing their own values and beliefs with others, conscience is reinforced further, and it grows. It’s an upward spiral.

But it’s not just about the real-time exchange of values. Conscience is also fortified by increasing knowledge. Your grandparents were less likely to care where their vegetables came from or how they were grown than you might, as long as they had some to put on the dinner table. The implications, both positive and negative, of mass agribusiness simply didn’t matter to them, in no small part because they probably didn’t know about them (or perhaps because mass agribusiness didn’t yet exist, depending upon how old your grandparents are).

Earlier generations had different sensibilities about the ethics of child labor than most of us do today, in part because of economic realities that required most able-bodied human beings (even the very young) to work and in part because of differing notions of childhood itself. But concern for human well-being has long been part of our social nature, and in much of the world, as we’ve learned more about human development, the belief that childhood must be protected as a life phase dedicated to learning and growth has been enshrined in legal restrictions on child labor, and this idea continues to spread. It’s a simple fact: common perception shifts as learning grows. Fast food was originally a miracle that liberated women from the kitchen so they could focus on careers, not a prime culprit in an epidemic of poor nutrition. Philanthropy was for railroad magnates and software billionaires, as was investing in promising business ideas—the rest of us had no place in these rarified domains. The ability to act on behalf of someone on the other side of the world was either the preserve of the very wealthy or the province of those with evangelical zeal. But knowledge advances our values and transforms our actions. Exponential increases in both the volume and accessibility of knowledge, as well as the continuous exchange of values, mean that more people feel compelled to mobilize to make a difference. We can act immediately on our smallest impulse or sense of injustice. The motivation isn’t new; the empowerment is.

Win-Win

Youth groups travel halfway across the country in droves to rebuild towns devastated by superstorms and tornadoes—because it feels good. Young entrepreneurs put sweat equity into ride-sharing start-ups like Lyft or Sidecar that save fuel and change driving behavior by making carpooling into something exciting—because they want to make a difference. Clothing companies like TOMS Shoes attract young consumers by advocating the social and community benefits of their business model—because guilt-free, feel-good fashion is more fun. Menus in aspirational restaurants tout the local source of their vegetables—because we feel better about eating something that’s connected to the earth. Bicycle lanes and a bike sharing program in charming Paris, sure, but in Noo Yawk City? The pedaling phenomenon—which has spread across more than thirty U.S. cities, from Anaheim to Tulsa to Washington, D.C.—has taken off so fast you’d think the United States invented the idea. As with any innovation, the initial executions of these developments may not be flawless, but they signal an intent to make positive social and environmental improvements through the basic infrastructure of daily life.

Alternative energy is no longer hippie talk; it’s on every corporate board’s agenda, because business requires a sustainable environment in which to flourish. And our 1880 tungsten lightbulb is finally at the end of its lifespan, because it turns out that saving energy with compact fluorescents also saves money—an easy win-win.

People everywhere are becoming more intuitively concerned about the implications of their individual actions. More of us than ever before are beginning to grasp the elusive truth that we really are all in this together. It’s ubuntu.

The world is more connected than it’s ever been. Individuals are more aware of the implications of their actions than ever before. Increasing numbers of us believe that even our climate is being directly affected by our actions. We debate whether new forms of harvesting gas like fracking are causing earthquakes. We wonder whether all of this wondrous connectivity has a dark side, the eradication of privacy. We are not the first generation to wonder whether the end is nigh, but we are the first to attempt to scientifically prove that our individual actions and everyday choices might have everything to do with it.

It often feels like technology and science are evolving faster than we can develop social norms and laws for protecting ourselves. Are we ready for nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, robot child care, or virtual doctors? Ready or not, they’re coming, and we’ll talk about them in a later chapter. Meanwhile, social behaviors on a mass scale are evolving faster than most organizations can.

Social enterprises are interesting harbingers of a new win-win model for business. Indeed, it seems as if the social enterprise is about to enter its heyday, such is the buzz around the concept. A social enterprise is a business that has as its primary purpose maximizing positive social impact while achieving financial goals. Contrary to popular belief, most social enterprises are for-profit businesses. The concept was born in the U.K. in the 1990s, and one frequently publicized statistic notes that in the U.K. alone there are in 2014 approximately 68,000 social enterprises that contribute more than £24 billion, or $40 billion, to its national economy.

Interestingly, because the precise legal definition of social enterprise or social venture has not been standardized, it’s currently impossible to count the number of for-profit businesses globally that have, at their core, a social or environmental purpose. In a 2012 Huffington Post article, Ben Thornley, an expert in social entrepreneurship, estimated that the sector could soon generate revenues of $500 billion, or 3.5 percent of total U.S. GDP, based on early results from the online registry the Great Social Enterprise Census. American business leaders are studying the social enterprise model, and the concept continues to get traction worldwide, in no small part because it advocates profitable problem solving.

The Conscience Economy is impacting the commercial world as much as it is the public sector. How businesses operate, how they communicate, and how they market and sell all fall under the microscope. Corporate reputation has never been more important, and communications transparency must be a given. But these are not enough. It’s time to rethink our assumptions and our business models. There’s no sector that won’t be impacted. Just as the shift to digital technology and digitally enabled business models eventually disrupted every category of business, the prerogatives of an emergent Conscience Economy will shake up—and revitalize—business as a whole. Ethical production and sustainable sourcing are the tip of an iceberg of Conscience Economy concerns. As it becomes ever more possible (and mandatory) to collect information from every transaction, new dilemmas arise. Personal data management and consumer privacy are perhaps the most critical future differentiator as more and more aspects of daily life move online and leave a data footprint, from financial transactions to health (an issue we will explore in a later chapter).

There’s plenty of work to do. But what an opportunity!

Global connectedness. Increasing awareness of our interdependence. Personal empowerment. A nagging sense that we have urgent problems to solve in order for humanity to thrive. A forty-year gestation period from the progressive early ’70s to today. These are the dimensions of increasing consciousness that have converged to create the conditions for a mass shift in mainstream mind-set and values. And this shift is impacting your customers, your electorate, your family, your community, and even your own personal choices.

Imagine the possibilities not only for your enterprise, but for your own satisfaction and personal well-being, not to mention that of your employees, partners, and customers, once you harness the power of the Conscience Economy. Humans are essentially social. We need to be a part of something bigger than ourselves in order to truly self-actualize. Now more than ever, no matter your livelihood or lifestyle, like our Young Turk you can do well and do good. The new chapter has only just begun.

Get Ready

The world is moving rapidly from being conscious to acting with conscience. What about your business?

To thrive in the Conscience Economy, every business will need to adapt and transform what it offers, how it produces, how it operates, how it sells, and how it engages others. Transformation is a muscle. It strengthens with use, it atrophies with neglect. Businesses that not only survive but thrive in the Conscience Economy will consider transformation—at both the corporate and individual level—a core competency.

The first step: ensuring that you and your business culture are ready to change. It all starts with a company-wide mind-set of openness. Is your business—as a business—broadly conscious of the social, technological, cultural, and environmental shifts that will impact future success? Does your business currently embody a shared conscience, a collective and intuitive sense of what constitutes doing the right thing, not only for the bottom line but for the wider world? You need to assess where your business stands in terms of its readiness and motivation to change for good.

The process of transforming—whether self, or group, or business, or nation—is a process of conversation. A frank, look-in-the-mirror, permission-to-speak-the-truth multidirectional conversation. I’m not suggesting all talk and no action. But there will be no action without talk. Dialogue creates an environment of openness, which leads to experimentation and learning, which informs further dialogue, which leads to further experimentation and learning and application, and faster than we think, we’ve achieved progress. That sounds like therapy, you’re thinking. Yup. It’s also like Olympic team coaching, feature film directing, and raising a family.

Start the conversation that will prepare your business for success in the Conscience Economy. It’s not hard. You just do it. Start asking questions, ideally from the top, because that’s where the tone is set.

Some questions to consider, as part of formal or informal conscience conversations:

• Is your organizational culture more internally or externally focused?
• Does your organization have a track record of successfully adapting to external forces of change?
• Do you look outside your industry for clues, ideas, and inspiration? Or do you only see relevance in your direct competitive set?
• Is there a sense of urgency to try doing things differently? How does your organization treat risk taking and failure?
• Is your organization aggressively forward looking, firmly rooted in the urgencies of the present, or riding high on its past successes?
• Is the increasing importance of balancing positive environmental and social impact with profit on the company’s radar screen? Do you consign it to a CSR department or embed it in everyone’s daily awareness?

By just asking the questions—with your board, with your colleagues, with your team, with your boss, and even with your partners and customers—you automatically introduce the possibility for transformation and invite participation in the collective process of advancing your business. There are no right answers to the questions above. They are catalysts. They shift your business’s mind-set. By doing so, you begin to nurture your organization’s own nascent conscience.

Once people recognize the possibilities for doing well by doing good, emotional motivations—the personal satisfaction of having meaningful work, the thrill of becoming part of a new and better world—take over, driving passion and momentum throughout the enterprise. And you can channel that momentum into a series of company-wide initiatives that simultaneously engage employees emotionally and optimize business operations to adapt to the emerging business environment. Continual transformation that’s fueled by a sense of higher purpose is more likely to take hold.

Ultimately, the unstoppable rise of the Conscience Economy is a phenomenon of mass enlightened self-interest. More than ever, more of us want to do more good, because it’s good for us. Consciousness has led to conscientiousness. Awareness is morphing into action, because now we are living with the urgency of a set of converging circumstances we can no longer ignore. Everything is on the line. We’ve gotten a big wake-up call.