Success through Serving a Greater Good
A New Model for Socially Responsible Business.
We’re entering an exciting new era in business, one that’s grounded in ethics and higher consciousness, and many feel that it’s long overdue. Making a profit and treating people well are no longer seen as mutually exclusive, but mutually beneficial aspects of a successful business.
This pendulum swing couldn’t have come at a better time, with corporate America’s reputation sinking ever lower over the past decade, in large partly driven by the Global Financial Crisis.
Events such as the fall of Enron, the BP oil spill, and countless other corporate gaffes driven by greed, cronyism and corruption, have greatly diminished our trust in corporations and free enterprise.
More recently, we’ve seen tech companies like Airbnb and Uber struggle between aspirational goals to disrupt outdated systems and connect new communities, with a brash approach to flouting rules and regulations designed to protect the communities they operate within… Not unlike many of the banks in the pre-2008 banking system.
These companies need to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors and focus on ethical business models,
or run the risk of going out of business. New schools of thought, including conscious capitalism, point out that the free enterprise system has much potential to improve our world; it is perhaps the most dynamic existing infrastructure and example of human cooperation on a massive scale. People are more connected now than ever before through vast networked systems. The question now is: how can we now hack these systems to steer corporations toward an evolved and enlightened way of doing business where everyone wins?
At AngelHack, we spend every waking moment thinking about how to disrupt existing systems so that they can better improve and serve humanity. We’re inspired by conscious capitalism, and related emerging movements such as B Corporations, which define their success around accountability of fair treatment of employees, transparency, social impact and environmental stewardship. We’re inspired by the more than 1,304 B Corporations in 121 industries and 41 countries, including Ben & Jerry’s, Patagonia and Change.org that are leading the charge on hacking business for social good.
Ethical business is smart business.
New generations of employees and consumers are demanding that the products they buy and the companies they support serve a greater purpose. In a recent Edelman survey, 87% of U.S. respondents agreed that “business needs to place at least equal weight on society’s interests as it does on its own interests.” Additionally, a report published by the Case Foundation identified that 56% of Millennials would take a pay cut to work somewhere that is positively changing the world.
Inspired by these passionate consumers, the principles of conscious capitalism, the B Corporation movement, and based on our experience working with hundreds of large and small companies and more than 50,000 developers in 65 countries worldwide, we’re proud at AngelHack that we are one of the pioneers in accelerating social good corporations. We’ve started from the root of inception with our concept of The Whole Developer.
The Whole Developer embodies the belief that good people at good companies prevail and give rise to good products. Holistic hackers, meaning those who built skills and experience in the art of communication, emotional intelligence, team-building and mindfulness (beyond engineering or design prowess, which are also important) ultimately create better products. Holistic businesses, that are based on the intention of creating a winning partnership for all involved, are far more likely to create product or service that truly resonates with their target market. The holistic hacker builds a holistic product, which evolves into a holistic business that can both make a profit and serve the greater good simultaneously. This is the virtuous life cycle of the Whole Developer.
While Whole Developer is our definition, the concept itself is not new. A holistic approach to business is deeply rooted in breakthroughs in art, science and spirituality. The confirmation of the existence of the Higgs-boson particle in physics confirmed that a cohesive “fabric”, or Higgs field, connects us all. In effect, the statements of the mystics of old that “We are all One”, can no longer be seen as wishful thinking. At a proven, measurable level, we are all connected. By definition, when one of us suffers, on some level, we all suffer.
A more holistic approach to business folds this “oneness” awareness within its vision and mission statement.
This type of business owner is conscious of the fact that to hurt or diminish another is to hurt their own business and ultimately diminish the collective. Businesses practicing conscious capitalism know that they are only as successful as their partners, vendors and customers, and they continually strive for even better win-win-win solutions.
Some of the most well-regarded business leaders take a holistic approach to business. In the words of Oprah during a recent speech at the QuickBooks Connect Conference; which also featured a hackathon powered by AngelHack, “…use your work to be your highest expression of yourself to serve the planet…” In the words of Richard Branson: “If companies become a force for good, the people working for them will be that much more motivated and their brands will shine that much brighter amongst others.” Both of these individuals have a combined estimated net worth of more than $8 billion; living proof that a Whole Developer approach to business translates to financial success.
We’re constantly testing and refining the Whole Developer concept at AngelHack, through our global series of hackathons held in 96 cities worldwide, our HACKcelerator program designed to nurture and cultivate new businesses from around the globe, and through integrating social good into hackathons with our partners including QuickBooks, Capital One, the World Bank, UN Women Singapore, and UN Global Headquarters.
During our HACKcelerator, we provide hackers with training in communications, team-building, marketing and mindfulness to ensure that they can create more viable products. At the Capital One Small Biz Dev Hackathon, developers were challenged to create products that could serve small businesses and nonprofits in achieving their goals. And the hackers not only received prize money, but also coworking space, continued mentorship and training through our HACKcelerator program to ensure sustainable growth.
Another hackathon that required a Whole Developer approach was the Kerala Road Safety Hackathon, a partnership initiative between the World Bank, IFC and AXA, in association with the Kerala Road Safety Authority (KRSA) and Department of Information Technology. Hackers at the event were challenged to not only use the datasets provided by KRSA to create solutions to improve road safety, but to also think holistically about how their products would affect and improve the daily lives of their users by increasing safety.
We’ve also seen encouraging results from this approach working with global partners at the UN. At UNited We Hack with UN Women Singapore, hackers were challenged to develop solutions to improve women’s financial and economic empowerment. With nearly 50% male developers in the room, developing holistic understanding and empathy was a key part of creating a viable product. At the Open Source Hackathon 2015 at United Nations Global Headquarters, hackers were challenged to learn and develop solutions to support the UN’s new global development goals — focused on ending extreme poverty, inequality & injustice, and fixing climate change. This approach required the developers to go beyond their technical skills and apply critical thinking and empathy to develop unique solutions.
Beyond these events, and as we head into 2016, AngelHack will continue to focus on applying the Whole Developer ethos to everything we do, including with our Code for a Cause initiative, which focuses on leveraging technology to support social good through all of our endeavors. We look forward to continue to share our discoveries and developments with the community —
