The Challenges of Our Time

Before the United Nations announced its Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, a set of 17 objectives to protect the planet, foster peace, and ensure prosperity for all, experts calculated how much money they'd need to achieve it all by the target date of 2030. Essentially, analysts measured the cost of this economic and social progress, and it has a price tag of $2.5 trillion dollars—per year.¹ Frightening, right?

Suffice to say, there will be a funding gap if you leave it all up to charity and government. The world needs investment from the private sector. To let companies off the hook when they account for most of the global GDP and the largest percentage of job creation is, at the very least, a huge oversight. Early success stories in the WEconomy reveal what can be achieved when you blend the power of capitalism with the heart of altruism. It is critical that we follow these trailblazers. Purpose pays, and if government policy, consumer spending, and new talent set Purpose as their North Star, companies that are doing it right will be rewarded, causing a ripple effect among competitors.

In the past, business was linear: the making and selling of products, a production output that is used and discarded, and a short-term profit. What does the future of the WEconomy look like? Every company will be responsible for the full circle: what they sell and what happens to it afterward. Companies will track their results from resource to the conveyor belt on the assembly line and throughout a product's life cycle, to upcycling and repurposing—so-called cradle-to-cradle production. Short-term thinking will be outdated. Corporate goals won't be quarter-to-quarter, but decade-to-decade, considered in balance with the reality of day-to-day operations. Every product will have a purpose. If it doesn't benefit the world, why should it take up space?

If brands can't finish the sentence: I am making the world better because _____, they can't and won't compete. In a matter of decades, companies that disregard the health of the people and planet will be obsolete.

We hope we've shown you that in the WEconomy, you don't have to be a clone of Gandhi or Mother Teresa to succeed. In fact, we need ordinary people to fuel this movement. When we say ordinary, it is a call to action for every worker, consumer, entrepreneur, and CEO looking to infuse more meaning into their daily lives, at home and at work, and to use those hours to positively impact both local and global communities. The coming together of millions of people who embrace simple positive actions will achieve greater impact than a single extreme altruist.

Ultimately, the fate of this movement falls to you. Massive companies will only change from within because you push them to embed purpose into their very DNA. Using the tips you have gleaned throughout this book, we hope you'll convince your senior team that a purpose-driven business is in the best interest of the bottom line—no matter what position you hold in your organization. The WEconomy will be built on the purpose-driven power of millions of people around the world.

Early success stories in the WEconomy reveal what can be achieved when you blend the power of capitalism with the heart of altruism.

We hope every reader is also looking inward, asking themselves: What is my purpose as an individual? Maybe your passion is rooted in faith, family, or the fact that there is now more plastic in parts of the ocean than there are fish. Maybe you're furious at social injustice or famine or discrimination or a warming planet. Maybe your cause is youth unemployment or girls' education and economic empowerment for women. In the WEconomy, there's nothing stopping you from introducing your personal purpose into your nine-to-five. In fact, it is actively encouraged. It is imperative that everyone adds value. This is an economic system based on the power of the purpose-driven collective, not the self-interested desires of the individual. Everyone has a part to play in changing business, charity, and social enterprise for the greater good.

It's down to the community, the collective, the WE, to take the best of business, with its incredible ability to scale and its power to innovate, and to combine it with the lifeblood of charity and social enterprise: purpose. We need you to encourage charities to develop more effective cross-sector partnerships and enforce long-term funding structures, to adopt the rigor of a business. And we need you to push social enterprise to continue to marry purpose and profit into the very structure of a single organization, to spur innovation using an inherent social mission.

The WEconomy is about finding something greater than yourself and making it work for you, for the planet, and for your business.

In this economic movement there is a role for everyone. To truly change the world the WEconomy needs you. All of you.