Dr. Seuss on social impact: a pressing concern for all businesses

As we stare down the barrel of over population, commodity shortages and climate change we no longer have the luxury of being able to separate 'social' companies from the others. Claire Braithwaite, COO of social business angel group, ClearlySo, re-imagines the world with the help of  Dr. Seuss and The Lorax story.   My son’s favourite movie at the moment is “The Lorax”, an adaptation of the story by Dr Seuss. It’s a fabulous tale of a young man who sets out to make his fortune. He invents the thneed, ‘a thing that everybody [doesn’t really] need’, discovers the most beautiful place on earth, where trees that smell of butterfly milk grow, and sets about chopping down the trees to make his thneed despite being warned against it by the Lorax, the guardian of the forest. In the end the young man ends up destroying this place of beauty in his bid for untold (and unneeded) riches.   

“The Lorax” is a classic parody of corporate greed and tells the tale we are all too familiar with of corporates driving the destruction of the planet in their blinkered pursuit of profits. This ambivalence towards impact is what has turned corporates into the enemy and made profit a dirty word. And we have all been complicit in this ambivalence on some level. From investors to service providers to consumers, we have collectively constructed a world where purpose and impact largely exist outside of the day to day choices we make. We take jobs for the money rather than a deeper sense of purpose or passion for the impact we are making. We buy products because they’re cheap or satisfy our materialistic desires and ignore what negative impacts their creation generated. We put our pensions into funds that invest in companies that are destroying our environment. We fool ourselves it doesn’t really matter.    

The time has arrived for a collective realignment where we all embrace, rather than ignore, purpose and impact. It’s time to acknowledge that all companies make a social impact; sometimes bad, sometimes good and to start to bring intention and awareness to those impacts. To start to act like it matters. With our planet staring down the barrel of over population, commodity shortages and climate change we no longer have the luxury of being able to separate 'social' companies from the others. It's time to embrace and recognise the need for the actions of corporates, arguably the most powerful vehicles of human will on the planet, to evolve. We can’t expect niche self-identified ‘social enterprises’ and charities to solve the problems of the world.     

Impact investing represents one element in this realignment. For far too long the financial sector, the enabler of economic activity, has been ambivalent to what it is enabling. What if all pension funds measured and reported on the social impact of their investments? What if financial advisers could provide you with impact options as well as financial return options when you were selecting funds? What if every investor asked the question, what social impact will I make when I invest my money? What if every company reported on their social impact and performance as well as their financial performance? What if you could put your money to work in poverty alleviation, education, female empowerment, health as well as generating a financial return? How different would the world look then?   

Clearly Social Angels is a business angel group that allows investors to build a portfolio through an impact lens by considering social impact, as well as potential financial returns, when assessing investment deals. Businesses looking to raise capital, from farming co-operatives to high growth tech companies, are pre-screened for social impact as well as financial potential before being presented to the investor network.    

Businesses that have raised capital through the network include Insane Logic and Playmob, both of which create strong positive impacts with their businesses. Rapanui is an example of a clothes company that is entirely accountable for their social impact, considering the sustainability of their supply chain. That awareness of impact can be replicated on a larger scale, with Unilever an example of a company that is making steps towards considering the sustainability of their product lines and operations.   

The time has arrived for a collective realignment where we all embrace, rather than ignore, purpose and impact.

In the Lorax, many years after the ‘entrepreneur’ has destroyed the valley, a young boy comes along to hear the story and understand why there are no trees in the town he lives, Thneedville. The ‘entrepreneur’, now an old man, gives him the last seed of the beautiful trees that used to grow in the Valley and tells him ‘Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.’    

As long as no-one cares a whole awful lot what corporates do then nothing is going to change. It’s time we all, investors, professionals, service providers, consumers, entrepreneurs, business leaders, collectively say that it matters what impact business has on the world. It’s time that business becomes fully accountable. Because in doing so we can start to take responsibility for the world we are building in the midst of our busy-ness. And at the same time we could find a purpose for our own lives too, which is what everyone really does need - not a thneed.

Photo by Jonas Nilsson Lee, Unsplash