10 Years to Change Capitalism
I’m the Founder and CEO of The Trampery, a London-based workspace business. During 2020 I’m going to try and write a short article here on Medium each month. I’ll be focusing on the changing role of business in society; the urgent need to rethink how we train and support entrepreneurs; and highlight some of the ventures that are doing things differently.
I believe we can change capitalism in the next 10 years. It’s easy to assume capitalism is a static system, but in fact, it’s evolved constantly from its origins in the 17th century. Now we need to put it through its biggest shift yet. Over the coming months, I’ll be discussing how I think we can achieve this.
Currently, businesses aren’t held to account for the wider consequences of their activities. So long as a company stays within the law, it’s free to do whatever makes the greatest profit for its shareholders. Today we can see the results of this arrangement around the world: environmental degradation, exploitative working practices and extreme social inequality.
More and more people are concluding capitalism can’t continue like this. In August 2019 the USA’s top 200 CEOs issued a statement that “maximising shareholder value” should no longer be the goal of business. A month later the Financial Times declared that “capitalism needs a reset”. The question is, what do we want the next version of capitalism to look like?
I believe the answer lies in a new generation of “social entrepreneurs”. Over the past 20 years, this movement has quietly been developing approaches to business that deliver social and environmental benefits as well as profit. Up to now, this has been seen as a niche, separate from the mainstream of business practice. We are now at a point where this balanced approach must be established as the norm, and all businesses should be expected to work this way.
My own involvement in the UK’s social enterprise movement began in 1997, when I met Michael Young and played a small role helping him set up the School for Social Entrepreneurs. I founded The Trampery as a social enterprise ten years ago in 2009. Since then the company has opened 12 workspaces in London and helped more than 1,000 businesses get started and grow. Looking to the decade ahead, The Trampery is committed to doing everything possible to help shift capitalism in a more balanced direction.
Many of the businesses working at The Trampery are already demonstrating how the new approach can work. LemonAid is a fast-growing soft drink manufacturer that buys its ingredients from farming communities in the developing world, then reinvests a share of profits back into those communities. Petit Pli is a fashion business that’s reducing the waste generated from children’s clothing with a patented pleating technology that enables garments to expand as a child grows. Change.org is a for-profit software company which has brought millions of people around the world into democratic activism via its petitioning platform. Companies like these are the future of capitalism.
If you’re interested in learning more, or supporting The Trampery’s work, do get in touch. And if you’re interested in the subject, please tune in next month.
#tramperyevo
