From the Brief Case assignment, I get a sense of conflict. I’m entirely in support of businesses striving towards sustainability – I don’t think I’d be taking this class if that wasn’t my general opinion. However, for much of my life, I’ve generally seen smaller businesses as better in all regards. I’ve preferred local and small businesses to conglomerates in part because of the culture they espouse (start-up culture especially is something I’m into) but also because of the competition and opportunity they bring to the larger community. One of the few disagreements I’ve had with my dad, for example, has been over what the goal of some tech start-ups should be: I argued that there should be an incentive to become the next tech giant, while my dad championed the idea that his goal would to be bought by a Facebook type giant.
So, what troubles me is that after studying these cases, I’m changing my opinion. Bigger might actually be better for instigating great change in the way businesses operate and getting us into that “third wave” of corporate America (and the world). With Bite, I couldn’t help but think that if Colgate had bought them out, I’d have ditched the toothpaste long ago. There’s an influence and scalability that comes with size, and as much as I struggle with admitting it, that influence might be one of the best ways to get to the place we need to be at sustainability-wise. I’m excited to see if this hypothesis holds true as we begin work actually analyzing the way larger, publicly held companies are operating withing the LP framework and how they can improve and influence the way their industry(ies) handle themselves. And because we are dealing with larger, already-established companies, it’s not so much entrepreneurship that’s going to be the solution here (read: Bite and others like it are likely not going to change the world), but they might inspire the innovation required by larger companies.
Tied to this but certainly different is that so many of these more boutique-brand products come at a price premium: anything from biofuel to Bite is going to be more expensive than its competitor. We see this all the time. The problem is that it makes “being green” or sustainability something only few can have access to. Low income families aren’t going to shell out $20 more on something that isn’t absolutely necessary when other needs come first. Oddly enough, this is exactly opposite what I know to be true about my mom’s childhood, for example. My Granny sewed my mom’s Halloween costumes from her old dresses and cleaned the sink with baking soda because it was less expensive than the alternatives of buying a costume at the mall or the cleaning chemicals at the store, but it ALSO happened to be more sustainable. Now…the trend seems to be heading in another direction, which is incredibly problematic when so many can’t afford the price premium. My hope would be that the scalability of products from larger businesses would help with this issue.
So, in short, I’ve learned I need to rethink how I see “big business” and look for the positives, such as influence and scalability. While smaller companies can (and do) do a great job on the sustainability front, for change in the way our society conducts business to occur, we need innovations in areas with far more reach in today’s markets.