7th YGL Annual Summit 2011– Dalian, China Blog # 6

Quality Growth

Ahead of the YGL Annual Summit around 40 YGLs submitted op-ed articles related to the theme of the Summer Davos, “Mastering Quality Growth”, in which they defined what quality growth means to them. Nine were selected and profiled live in Dalian from an individual, community, organizational, societal, ecosystem and global perspective. Tumi moderated this fast-paced session. 

Saleem Ali kicked off by telling us about the link between ecological security and economic growth. He explained how growth in natural systems is merely an intermediate step towards stability. There are almost no models in nature in which growth continues without controls. One that he mentioned is cellular overgrowth, which we know as cancer. So, why has economics escaped that cap on growth?  Why do we believe that companies can grow without bound? Economics is a subset of the environment.

Stephen Frost shared his thoughts on quality growth and highlighted that most stakeholders are unsatisfied with the pursuit of growth without bounds. It is not improving quality of life and it has not leveraged the diversity of human kind to increase value and maximize quality growth.

Gregor Hackmack reminded us that the term quality growth might be misleading. Quality does not always require growth and, actually, less can mean more quality, for instance, less stress, fewer meetings, etc. The more precise question is: what really improves our quality of life? The weird thing about money is that we are afraid we might lose it, so we hoard it, which engenders greed, among other things. If we can shift from greed and fear and put money into the same category as nondurable goods like apples, in which we’d want to share it before it rots.        

Kevin Lu shared with us his view that real inclusive growth must have a political aspect of encouraging openness and it must have a global element that has a positive impact beyond its border. China’s model, though lacking those two things at present, is an adaptive system, which, in the long run, may give it a better chance of success than other models of growth. Here are the 5 things that distinguish china’s model:

1. A collective way to make decisions
2. Long time horizons
3. Feedback loops (experimenting at local levels)
4. Accountability is inherent in the system of evaluating officials and single enterprises
5. A high ability to coordinate policies.

 Sheila Lirio Marcelo had us imagine ourselves as a 19-year old pregnant woman, which often leads to having fewer opportunities for professional advancement. Her idea of quality growth centered on providing a diversity of options for women to work at home while finding ways to realize their dreams. Women, she reminded us, are an engine of growth: When women do well economically families and entire communities do better.

Stefan Reichenbach’s vision of quality growth is growth that cares. He stated that in our race toward globalization we’ve been separated from the knowledge of what is in our products and what the living conditions are of those who make them. We’d likely make different decision if we had more information about the supply chains of the products we consume.

 April Rinne suggested that we think of growth in the balancing terms of yin and yang. For the past decades we have suffered from a yang overdose which has led us to an unsustainable growth. We see this in metrics that don’t take into effect the qualitative focus on what growth means individually and is separate from sustainability measures. Why not inject sustainability metrics into each point of a company’s performance? Why not have 10-year goals?

Jens Martin Skibsted shared that quality growth cannot happen without re-thinking consumerism and reconfiguring the value creation. Ironically, the longer it takes to make a product, and the more steps injected, the more money is made. But, it also means that more greenhouse gasses are produced. We must shorten the production cycle and, at the same time, find ways to become serious about recycling. There are examples starting to sprout up around the world of rethinking consumerism– one of the most encouraging is the shift to a sharing economy.

 William Saito reminded us that Japan offers a living experiment as it is showing us our future and we can learn from it. Japan has the fastest aging population in the world with a majority of women. Though they attend university for around 4.7 years longer than men they make 64% of what men do and work more part time jobs. Japan has a lack of diversity in its population; so the question is how can they fully use what is already there? How can they empower the women so they can realize their full potential? If women were fully deployed, GDP would increase 15%, which is equal to the GDP of Canada and Israel combined.

 We broke into small groups to consider how we answer the question, “how do you define quality growth?” Stay tuned to the blog to see our responses…