 So Dr. James Canton with me in Milveille, California. I'm Gard Lee and now we're both futureists. I'm based in Switzerland and we collaborate on some projects together. Today a short interview and we're going to talk about sustainability, so-called sustainability, whatever that is. Do you want to take a... Sure. So sustainability is, it's kind of like the word globalization. It means a lot of different things to different people. Sustainability I think has to do with everything from, you know, the sustainability of social accountability that the business practices or organization practices are in keeping with law and right ethics, but also being attentive to the environment and being not a polluter but a conserver, but also one that is paying attention to all the dynamics of your supply chain, to your people, to what kind of waste or products you make that either contribute to a carbon footprint or they reduce the carbon footprint. I think this is a big part of what sustainability is today. And what, of course, our practice is, is to try to help companies and governments understand the sustainable planet and how that's important certainly to over 98% of the public, whether you're in Europe or the United States. Yeah, I think then, you know, I'm trying to define this with my, you know, I have clients like the WWF, the Worldwide Law Foundation and Unilever and others, and you have some of the same, I think, as well. But some of the key questions here are, you know, we've had the system to where profit and growth was it. I mean, basically the only thing that really mattered was profit and growth for your company, for yourself, for countries, and that is shifting because it's quite clear that we've reached a glass ceiling to you cannot grow 10% a year as a company when your company already has 50,000 employees. That is quite hard to do. So we're growing from a higher place, you know, unlike, say, Brazil or India, you know, where they can still grow in this way. The problem is that we're shifting away from this profit and growth to some sort of more like a value circle than a value chain, right? So we're going around in circles trying to find other ways to grow like this rather than to go like that. And that really changes the paradigm. I think ultimately it probably means the demise of the stock market as a symbol of growth because that is only trained towards a one-way growth rather than lateral way. So that is a major challenge for financial markets. You know, this idea of the invisible hand, you know, the idea that whatever makes money will ultimately happen because it's good for everyone, that has completely failed us, for example, with climate change. There's clearly lots of money in doing this, but nobody has actually done it for other reasons. So let me push back on that, right? Suggest another model. One of the things that we as futures do is we don't necessarily, we try not to be opinionated, but we try to look at different various scenarios of which some may work, some may not. It's the way that we can look at multiple futures without having to stake our bet on just one, right? So that one scenario is, as you indicate, another scenario may be that, you know, with clean tech, cleaning up the planet is a good business. It may be that with green, whether it's cap and trade or it's clean technologies where everybody will invest a little bit, there could be entirely new economic models that we haven't invented yet that both are sustainable and highly profitable. For instance, I would like to have personal carbon credits and I'd like to trade them with you and exchange them and make a market in them. In fact, I would like to acquire investors in my clean tech deal and have them also put up carbon credits. So I think that there are some exciting new models that might make us being able to maybe not have a high level of growth that you have in the past but be able to create entirely new distributed economic models that individuals and entrepreneurs can help solve some of these problems and make a few bucks or make a few euros at the same time. I totally agree. I think that my next book from Ego to Eco talks about this, how we're shifting into a world that basically says that we have to create functional ecosystems and much of that driven by technology which distributes the benefit of the ecosystem to all involved partners. For example, the oil economy is what I call an ecosystem. It benefits us as drivers maybe but it doesn't benefit us as a society or it's stopped, it has in the past but no longer. So now this renewable energy economy is an ecosystem like a biosphere. And this is a whole different cup of tea in terms of how you measure success. So that means it's a lateral way of saying that you get some, it's distributed. And this is much like the internet which is a distributed, decentralized peer-to-peer system. Our economy will also go in that direction. That is a major challenge for the market logic. I see all that as a natural evolution of economics. Every company is going to need to be accountable for the environment, accountable to society, accountable to the consumer. Clearly though, and I think any futures worth is solved, would say we as a global society have not yet made the commitment to change to be sustainable. And that's a real problem. I have a forecast that says it's more likely that corporations, even more so than governments, because governments are always, every government wants to be elected again. Of course, if you're a dictatorship, you don't have to worry about that. North Korea, they can be both the greatest polluter or the greatest conserver. That would be an ironic shift. A very successful model. But if you're not Russia or you're not North Korea or you're not an autocracy where the king rolls and that's it, then I think you have to be based on taking sustainability as a business model, as a competitive model, as a competitive advantage very seriously, and we can help you, because you can do it both. I think that this is a paradigm challenge. So if sustainability and becoming what's called the natural capitalism that Jeremy Rifkin talks about, sustainable capitalism, that is an entire different mindset and that is becoming the mindset of the consumer. There's been lots of research on this saying that over 70% of consumers worldwide, this has been done by Adelman, I think, the number one objective to when they buy stuff is they want to know this company does the right thing. And right thing means now a bunch of things, not just sustainability. We're going to see that in five years. I don't think there will be a single company left that does not have this on their flag, that they want to do the right thing and make money. I agree. So I think the challenge as futures with our clients, since we've been telling our clients for a long time, you need to get ready for this change, this change is coming, is now, as the change is here, is to help them evolve, help them leverage green for competitive advantage, help them understand sustainability because there's another dimension to this, which is if you're going to attract talent and clearly I think we would agree that talent is what drives an organization's success. You have to have the right people. Well, to your point, you've got a majority of talent, they will only want to work at a company that's doing the right thing. So whether your talent strategy, your product or service strategy, how you compete, whether you're a good social steward for the environment, I think we can help and should help create that future blueprint, not just the now, but where is that going to help companies think about how to prepare it today for that green future. That's a big part of what we're doing. I like to use the sort of scenarios where I'm basically showing what's happening, especially with European clients, that five years from now, what's the angle going to be if you're going to drive a Porsche five years from now, how would you go about justifying it or what the logic behind that, will it be like the Tesla, will it be electric or will it be shared or shared Porsches could be a scenario that would make it more sustainable, things like that. Not that I would want to share a Porsche but I guess would have to change your minds on that too. But this is why Avi's bought Zipcar now, same thing. So out of those scenarios come the actions. That's right. But if you don't believe that the scenario is real, you won't do anything. I think also there are outside of let's say if you're in the automobile business and we worked on some projects with some of the largest automobile conglomerate in the world, the Volkswagen, I think it's going to be very hard and again our job is to help clients who are stuck in their industry thinking to think outside of the industry so their own industry can be more sustainable. So for instance I have a forecast that if you're driving a Porsche which you know I like BMW, I drive BMW I want my Porsche or my BMW or whatever car you're driving or whatever, it could possibly generate energy that could contribute to the grid and that energy contributed to the grid with a different kind of engine a cloud based car and a transportation system just like the solar on top of my house is upselling back to the grid I think if we rethink this and again this is part of our job is to help rethink traditional paradigms of business and economics to find new economic opportunities not just to make money but also to create sustainable organizations that's an exciting part of I think the future I think in general what the the challenge here is in the opportunity which I think is a huge opportunity is not to be a heavy company being a silo or an empire or what's called a castle building which Apple for example has been very good at but is to create a network that makes sense across the board and this is the shift that we're seeing any companies left in my view that are castles or very few of them because it's very hard to do now to actually be that model so we're moving from this from being the network to being the networked a distributed network and that is of course technology is the number one example so Jeremy Rifkin calls this the the inter-grid for example rather than the internet same thing a lot of his ideas are interesting but not that hard to make in other words why isn't every business's buildings why aren't the buildings have embedded intelligence to be able to trade an auction, the energy that they don't use at times that they're generating energy that they're not using it I think a lot of consumers will just buy stop buying from companies that don't have this for example in Switzerland we can't have smart meters I called our electricity our utility and they don't have, they don't offer smart meters so I think that basically what's happening if everybody had a smart meter you could have savings of 20% across the board of the entire electricity bill in all countries we have it here in California so that should become regardless of privacy issues that's obviously a huge cost saving that you can achieve by controlling your and that becomes basically also government the energy of being pressured by some sort of connected activism like you have on Facebook now to actually make that happen I have solar panels that I've installed on my residence that I don't own the financing company the solar company owns them I get reduction in my energy I'm doing good things back for the environment the rest of it, the energy they generate I'm a distributed hub in a network that then shares that energy savings it helps the grid, it helps me and I get to contribute with many other community members in my neighborhood so that we're able to reduce energy but we need that model for the planet and businesses that understand that this is kind of the early stage of this don't you think? I was born in 1994 now we're here with sustainability in 2013 this is a huge opportunity for all, no matter what business you're in absolutely, so great so it was nice to talk why don't you tell us quickly how people can find you oh yeah, so you can find me at globalfuturist.com or futureguru.com certainly I'm on Twitter futureguru or my website and anytime you need to myself or my colleague Gert tell him how to reach you well my name is Gert G-E-R-D and that's pretty much all you need to know on the web, I'm number 2 right after the gastrointestinal reflux disease that's the first one so anyway futurevistgert.com is my new website going online next week and on Twitter I'm G Leonhard or Futurevist