The Revolution of Vision in Business
In 2015, Fast Company recognized Warby Parker as the most innovative company in the world. Today, Warby Parker is the number one store for millennials, and currently valued at over one billion dollars.
What’s their secret to success? The company is anything but a sellout of Blumenthal’s “do good” approach. Through a partnership with VisionSpring, for every pair of glasses sold, Warby Parker commits to training a new low-income entrepreneur on how to start his or her own business in his or her own community.
“One of the things that we decided early on was that, we’re building a brand and a brand is not just a logo. It’s not just a visual identity. A brand is a point of view and that point of view needs to be lived. It really comes down to the culture of the company.” -Warby Parker
This idea of living a point of view is a schema that is fundamentally revolutionizing business and consumer practices on a global scale.
Because of the internet, because of mass globalization and its subsequent effects on education and societal norms, our generation approaches all different sorts of markets uniquely. This is the reason why companies like Warby Parker, Charity Water, and TOMS Shoes have experienced exponential success in comparison to the previously dominating companies in their industries: the unification of mass culture. Increased accessibility to information, company practices, social activism, and political campaigns has allowed, in essence, anyone in the world to unite and begin a movement . . . seemingly overnight.
In businesses like Warby Parker, products no longer have a singular definition but, rather, have become physical manifestations for myriad connotations. The roots of materialism have been interwoven with millennial emphasis on individual idealism. www.forbes.com/sites/sarahlandrum/2017/03/17/millennials-driving-brands-to-practice-socially-responsible-marketing/#6173c10e4990.
“Millennials, on average, are more risk-averse and are less likely to spend money unnecessarily than previous generations. But when millennials do decide to part with their money, key patterns are emerging. Millennials prefer to do business with corporations and brands with pro-social messages, sustainable manufacturing methods and ethical business standards.”
I have engaged with countless other students and friends and had conversations about the changes they want to see in the world. Many of these have to do with alleviating poverty, climate change, and promoting world health and how companies that have an impact on issues like these, that create meaningful change, and care about what they do, stand out among the rest of the competition.
Humans are emotional creatures. And while our parents’ generation might call millennials soft and coddled, in reality, this generation is possibly the most emotionally driven generation to ever promote change in our society, the environment, and in the workplace. And businesses are tapping into this emotion by believing in the same things as their consumer. I am living this perspective and I find myself buying new products every other week, products that go the extra mile to align with things I care about.
I have talked to innovators and leaders who have tapped into this different frame of reference as well, and have seen the effect it has had on their businesses. In the words of Priya Bery, CEO and president at SOHO Impact, “…my passion and excitement stemmed from and the taking a business approach in addressing issues such as World Health, was not to make money off of it but to attempt incredible solutions that may not have been realized otherwise because of this different channel of resources and people. And so it was really the first steps of blurring the lines between the public sector, private sector, and the social sector so that accessing all of that can create all kind of good. Supporting the idea that it can be very possible and ethical to be making money and doing good at the same time. And there are some that do it better than others, and some that are more ethical about it. And when you find a business that do it right at their core, then you know it’s real.”
Today, business has the power to bring purpose to people’s lives. It is not the corporate-dominated world of our parents’ and parents’ parents’ generation where we are going to work long, dry hours at companies driven only by profit. It is not a world where capitalism is hated for its skew. It’s becoming clear that harnessing the power, organization, profit, and purpose of companies in order to create meaningful, long-term change in all sectors of society is imperative when it comes to solving the biggest problems we face today. We can no longer be driven by impersonal and indirect business, dominated by short term gains and disregard for what we take out of the environment and society. Michael Porter articulates this idea beautifully in his TED Talk: Why Business Can Be Good at Solving Social Probelms.
And we are seeing change, short-term and long-term, with the help of a generation of mindful millennials, who are itching for change, and desire to see a world that can sustain itself through an economy that is profitable, socially conscious, and effective. Millennials are demanding these changes in the workplace, in education systems, from their government, and from the businesses from whom they purchase goods and services. And the organizations that respond to these demands are taking off; they’re not only profitable, they are stable, transparent, and inspiring to their consumers.
