Why we must innovate towards sustainable abundance

We're at a decisive moment. Throughout history, each generation faces unique challenges and opportunities, perceiving their times as unprecedented. This trend continues as today's technological advancements, especially in artificial intelligence (AI) and synthetic biology, present immense benefits and risks.

These technologies are stressing traditional economic and societal systems, while political, geopolitical and environmental changes pose additional threats. The current global context demands innovative, large-scale responses. Business leaders, pivotal in past progress, must help navigate these transitions. A clear, shared vision of the future is crucial but elusive, with many people more aware of what they wish to avoid. Addressing these diverse concerns requires a coherent, collective effort rooted in fundamental human traits.

The concept of 'sustainable abundance' challenges the traditional trade-offs between economic growth and environmental sustainability. It emphasizes the necessity of meeting current needs without compromising future generations' ability to meet theirs, a principle rooted in the 1987 United Nations Brundtland Commission report. This approach requires significant innovation in reducing the environmental impacts of economic activities while making essential resources accessible and affordable for all. Achieving sustainable abundance involves integrating diverse human desires — survival, prosperity and environmental preservation — into a harmonious strategy, demanding leadership and collective commitment to innovate and drive towards a balanced and inclusive future.

Political and geopolitical systems are increasingly strained, reflecting deepening partisanship and polarization even in stable democracies. Simultaneously, resistance to globalization is fostering protectionism, potentially destabilizing economic and financial systems. The rapid advancement of digital technologies introduces unpredictable societal impacts, exacerbating conflicts and inequalities. Despite these challenges, our systems have not failed; rather, they have succeeded by improving global health, literacy and reducing extreme poverty. However, these systems, initially prototypes, now require reinvention to address the profound changes they've caused, as all systems were prototypes, not 'final' versions set in concrete for all time.

This moment in history demands a collective, innovative response to redesign systems for a sustainable future, leveraging the ingenuity and determination that have marked human progress. We can, and must, help design a better future.

Fundamental questions about the roles of business and government, the impacts of globalization and the ethical use of technology are resurfacing with urgency. Business leaders face increasing responsibility in shaping a sustainable and inclusive future with a multistakeholder approach. They must consider:

The focus on maximizing short-term shareholder value stimulated economic growth but led to unbalanced practices and significant externalities. Addressing these requires moving from shareholder to stakeholder capitalism, emphasizing inclusive cross-stakeholder value creation and sustainable abundance.

Globalization, peaking in 2008, transformed economies, creating vast consumer markets and enhancing middle-class growth. Post-2008, challenges like financial crises and rising protectionism stalled its growth. Today, globalization is reshaped by distributed innovation, shared global challenges and complex geopolitics, requiring businesses to adopt agility to a new, dynamic interdependence landscape.

The debate on the optimal role of government in the economy remains complex. Effective government policies have historically spurred industrial success and innovation, as seen in Japan, Germany and China. Today, there's a renewed need for strategic government involvement in coordinating to tackle global issues.

Throughout history, power has been predominantly hierarchical and centralized, achieving stability and execution. However, decentralized, networked forms of power have also driven significant societal changes, exemplified by grassroots movements and digital platforms enhancing distributed economic and social activities. These networked powers, while not replacing hierarchies, now coexist and integrate with them, reshaping economic and societal structures.

Moore's Law has driven significant technological advancements over the past 50 years and, despite nearing physical limits, it continues to spur innovation in areas such as specialized chip designs and new computing forms, revolutionizing fields like biotechnology and nanotechnology, further accelerating global technological progress.

We are in a fluid set of endeavours that are critical for the next waves of human progress. No simple framework can capture or do justice to the dynamic 'living laboratory' already energetically at work to shape a better future. But it is now possible to identify some of the most critical dimensions of our growing collective efforts — and examine how best our organizations can contribute to them. We can look at:

Relaying the foundations of human survival by creating new ways to provide the most basic essentials of food, water and energy.

Relaying the foundations of human progress through reimagining how we learn and grow, how we achieve and sustain health and well-being and how we live together in safe and thriving communities.

Reconnecting with nature by embracing indigenous knowledge, biomimicry and synthetic biology.

Reducing our footprint through the circular economy, new manufacturing and materials science and virtualization (atom to bit based).

Business must reimagine the possible. This means:

For many business leaders, the pursuit of sustainability and abundance has similar potential as the marriage of quality and cost reduction, if pursued with the equivalent comprehensive and collaborative energy.

Businesses must prioritize 'innovation intelligence,' continuously scanning and engaging with the rapidly evolving innovation landscape to shape the future and thrive.

Transformative innovations often start with 'a more beautiful question,' opening up more valuable possibilities beyond mere monetization.

Observing emerging innovations allows businesses to identify and potentially partner with or acquire successful startups, accelerating solutions to sustainability challenges and securing favourable terms.

Innovation increasingly thrives in cross-industry ecosystems, demanding collaboration over competition and driving breakthroughs through shared expertise.

Innovation ecosystems and specialization demand better integration across diverse value-creation processes, necessitating recalibrated time perspectives for robust future strategies.

To conclude, while individual businesses alone cannot define the path to sustainable abundance, each can contribute to shaping this concept and its implementation over the next decade. As large-scale changes unfold, driven by persistent forces, businesses face a choice: lead and shape these changes or follow those who do.

Embracing sustainable abundance is an investment that fosters innovation, aligns short-, medium- and long-term interests and sustains a favourable business environment. This approach contrasts with maintaining the status quo, which could lead to economic and societal decline. By focusing on sustainable abundance, we honour our ancestors' legacy and ensure future generations enjoy greater opportunities, making this journey beneficial in the long term.

A version of this feature was originally published by Deloitte here.