“Society”, the NEW big growth opportunity for businesses

In my previous post, I have discussed the rise of the millennials generation as a driver of a current

movement for change; A change towards positive impacts and societal development. They believe that corporates should create economic value for society and shareholders simultaneously. They'd be more likely to purchase from a company that supports a cause they care about and would think more highly of a company that supports a social cause. Millennials are also willing to show their leadership skills.  They fully embrace the movement for redefining capitalism, initiated by leading thinkers and economists all over the world.

Here is first a question, what happens when milllennials become executive leaders of corporates? Will they use their leadership position to influence their corporate business strategy, investments and portfolio? Will they engage their companies towards this change?

I believe they will! Because everything is changing thanks to the Millennials, who promise to fundamentally change the world as we know it now.

Here is a second question, what will happen if they do it from a leadership position in a corporate? The answer is straight-forward; they will fundamentally shift how money flows to social change. Not more than that! They will control the wealth that is created and distributed. This wealth presents an opportunity for this generation to invest billions of dollars into impact investments instead of traditional investment vehicles.

Here is a third question, what does this really mean for businesses? This means that there will be more money made available for social change, and significant amount of money begin flowing to organizations that are working on positive social change? As a consequence, there will be a huge number of totally new opportunities for growth for businesses.

Few years ago, Harvard Professor Michael E. Porter and Mark Kramer launched their Shared Value Initiative, preaching for businesses to start tapping into the opportunities in the society. The more we learn about poverty, healthcare, water, nutrition, about societal issues, the more we see opportunities to create new business models to address these societal issues.

Leading thinkers are pushing towards this change, calling for redefining capitalism for an equal distribution of wealth among people and countries.
Ericsson’s Technology For Good type of engagement is a good example.

In conclusion, I believe that “Society” is the new big growth opportunity for businesses. Corporates must do the needed organizational change because capturing these opportunities will require new thinking about market segmentation, customer segmentation, supply chain management, human resource management, and other management disciplines.

Yangon, Asia's future megacity challenges and solutions

Yangon Shwedagon Pagoda

Yangon is Myanmar’s largest city with a population of 5 million. The city has been Myanmar’s commercial and financial capital since colonial times and was its political capital until 2005, when the government moved the capital to Nay Pyi Taw, a new city built in the center of the country. Yangon is an attractive and living city that is on the brink of explosive growth, and is set to become a megacity in the future, with its population expected to reach 10 million by 2040.

The expected growth will put significant strain on a city already struggling to address its decrepit infrastructure and limited services. The multi-domains problems that the city encounters are huge. Only 42 percent of Yangon’s citizens have access to running water. Less than 10 percent of the city has sewage infrastructure. At least 40 percent of city residents survive day to day in informal dwellings. There is a need to solve problems such as frequent power cuts, gridlocked traffic and a shortage of housing and office space. There is a need to develop transportation infrastructure, sanitary waste disposal sites, electrical grids and different urban infrastructure, while at the same time considering the importance of conservation of heritage buildings and century-old colonial architecture.

Tourism is likely to grow dramatically and Yangon is the gateway for tourists to Myanmar. The Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon is one of the most important tourist attractions in the country and on every tourist’s must-see list.

In short, a gigantic work is expected! Probably Asia’s real test bed for smart city projects. It is a fantastic opportunity for city planners, urbanism experts and ICT professionals to take part in this endeavor and deploy urban sustainable solutions in order to make Yangon a smart megacity. ICT can play a major role in contributing with innovative, sustainable solutions to help solve all the current problems and the ones that are expected to pop-up, due to this dramatic change of the city.

Ericsson, -in the  Ericsson Myanmar study report  on the impact of mobile communications-, stated that the “overall impact generated by the mobile communication ecosystem is estimated to be 1.5-7.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) over the first three years of operations under a medium penetration (2012-2015). There will be approximately 66,000 full time employees (FTEs) and a further 24,000 FTEs are estimated to be generated in the wider economy”. 

I believe that these figures would be much higher for Yangon when introducing innovative ICT services addressing all business and industrial domains.

The government has formed a committee of relevant agencies to develop a plan including the Yangon City Development Committee (YCDC) and the national government’s Department of Human Settlements and Housing Development (HSHD).  One of the decisions is to create a new economic hub in Yangon and where the port facilities will be located. A development plan is needed, leveraging from experiences in other Asian cities and embracing new economic models and new technologies. What if ‘Circular Economy’ is a fundamental part of this plan? We already know that ‘Circular Economy’ is already included in future development plans of many cities like port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. See my previous post on Circular Economy in Rotterdam.

Big data analytics, cloud-based services, and M2M-enabled services that intelligently provide real-time inputs will adequately provide smart ICT services. New business models between utility and technology providers can be developed to offer these integrated services.

Yangon is particularly a promising market for ICT service providers. These providers will be asked to create and develop the Yangon city services ecosystem. mHealth enables greater access to healthcare, mEducation will benefit communities. Smart Grid solutions for smart power management, real-time Fleet & Transportation information system will prevent future congestion in the city and the port areas, and so many other services and opportuities.

Yangon is to become a driver in the Myanmar’s economic growth as commercial capital, most important port and tourist destination, and the place for import and export manufacturing.

I really believe that ICT can play a central role in helping Yangon city to avoid becoming another sprawling, polluted and highly congested Asian megacity, but instead helping the city to grow into a greener, smarter and more livable metropolis.

PS: This post is published simultanously in the Ericsson Networked Society blog

From philanthropy to CSR to shared-value to ???...???

There is an ever growing awareness about social challenges for which governments and NGO's lack sufficient capabilities to fully meet them. At the same time, Companies or Businesses are perceived to be prospering at the expense of the broader communities despite increasing CSR activities.

Harvard Professor Michael E. Porter and Mark Kramer came up, in the 2011 McKinsey award winner HBR article, with the concept of Creating Shared Value. Let's have a close look what this is all about. What is the role of companies in communities and how is it evolving?

Prof. Michael Porter's evolution model

It started with Philanthropy

It's harder and harder to do pro-public business activities because supporting business is viewed as a questionable activity. Business has been trying to address these issues with philanthropy. In fact, the first response to business to these societal issues is philanthropy.

Twenty years ago was the question to corporate/companies of "what percentage of your profit do you give to support society? In India they have even passed a law on this with a strong recommendation that businesses should give 2% of their profit to philanthropy, if they don't, they have to say why.
Philanthropy is good. A place to start but philanthropy is not enough... simply because there is not enough money!

The next step is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
CSR is more than just philanthropy, but it includes philanthropy; compliance, understanding the communities standards, citizenship, being a good corporate citizen, and "sustainability" which means a lot of different things that it's hard to define sometimes. It's clear about environmental sustainability but less clear about a broader sustainability. Many corporates have many CSR activities but they do it to be considered a good corporate citizen only.

The next step is Creating Shared Value (CSV)
The more we learn about poverty, healthcare, water, nutrition, about societal issues, the more we see opportunities to use economics or new business models to address these societal issues. Shared value is about creating new markets, new opportunities for growth, and new ways to improve productivity. With CSV, opportunities for disruptive innovations will proliferate. Capturing  these opportunities will require new thinking about market segmentation, customer segmentation,  supply chain management, human resource management, and other management disciplines. Some companies are already redefining strategic positioning around a shared value mindset.

Aligning strategic positioning with shared value opens up fundamentally new ways of thinking  about the business. Shared value opens up a new and far broader opportunity set for companies. Companies that create shared value will gain competitive advantages and superior performance. Finally, it's important to mention here that Shared Value is not about triple bottom line. 

A new type of leadership is required in the 4th industrial revolution

Thousands of books have been written about leadership and leaders, and many theories have been
developed in the fields of management and psychology. To mention one, Austrian-born American management consultant, educator, and author Peter Drucker stated that “management does things right; leadership does the right things.”


What type of leadership is required to succeed in this new business world, created by the Networked Society, and the ongoing digital transformation of the global economy.? This society will see new market spaces, where cross-industry companies will compete. Because of its openness, its technology based on mobility, cloud and performing networks, because of globalization, free trade and capital movement; the Networked Society will transform and reshape businesses and industries.

So, what leadership and strategy playbook should executives and strategists use?

The competition and the customers have become unpredictable and will be even more so in the future. It will be hard for companies to keep a strong position and defend it for extended periods of time. It means that competitive advantages will no longer be possible to sustain. It also means that companies will have to review their strategies and portfolios, and start building new competitive advantages more often than ‘once a year’.
Leaders in the Networked Society need to constantly start new strategic initiatives. They should care less about market segmentation – because the borders between industries will be blurred – and focus more on the jobs-to-be-done (the Clayton Christensen concept) that are out there for customers.


I think that executives in the Networked Society should have at least the following skills:

- Innovation in their DNA. Have the ability to successfully connect seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas from different fields and areas.
- Ability to listen to the society, understand the issues and opportunities around sustainable development, and develop a strategy around them.
- A more customer-centric and less industry-bound view. Their methods for evaluating new business opportunities and their approach to innovation should be different.
- Ability to spark continuous change by building an agile organization that can support any new competitive advantage or any new strategic change without ‘pains’.
- A non-narcissistic approach, because leaders must be engaged in initiating questioning conversations in their organizations.
- Ability to make fast and right decisions instead of deliberations and/or consensus finding.
- Discovery-driven. Executives produce uncommon business ideas by scrutinizing common phenomena, particularly the behavior of potential customers.
- Executives in the Networked Society don’t delegate creative work, they do it themselves. Not only do they feel responsible for facilitating the innovation process, but also for coming up with strategic innovations.
- A track record for innovations. Innovation will be a core activity in the Networked Society.

So, are you an executive of the Networked Society era?

This blog has been posted on Ericsson Networked Society blog as well