Problem

Organizations of all kinds and sizes face complex, new, and interrelated challenges. These include globalization, financial crisis, shifting workforce demographics, natural resource pollution and depletion, explosion of the digital economy and new business models, and climate change.

Central to these problems is a growing realization that a "take make waste" economy is no longer viable. Our industrial products have been honed to minimize time and effort and maximize near term, financial returns. Our extraction, manufacturing, and waste disposal processes are highly efficient, but take a tremendous toll on people and on our planet. We have developed a technical economy that relies on the premise of infinite growth but exists increasingly in conflict with limits of our natural resources and the inherent 'laws of nature'.

Given the global challenges and the growing realization that business as usual is not a tenable model, many companies have launched sustainability efforts. Many have realized quick wins in lighting retrofits and recycling programs. Yet, more and more, these pioneering efforts are bogged down by the daunting recognition that the problem is much larger and more complex. Many managers are beginning to see that they need a more system-based solution.

All together, these global, industry, and organizational forces impel people to explore radically new approaches. They create an opening for new thinking. It reflects an 'end of the rope' perspective and the invitation to truly reinvent business and our world in a very broad based, holistic way.