An Endogenous Future
Human creativity & true passion for design alongside visionary, fluid, and consistent leadership, an idea that is born in a garage has the potential to scale into a global corporation with a net worth of 3 trillion dollars, which is a number that alone manages to be greater than the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of many countries. Companies today have more economic power, cultural influence, and human capital than entire nations. So what would corporations' actual role towards the environment, society, politics, and economy in today's metamodern era?
Metamodernism¹ is the coming of age of a new collective consciousness, cultural behaviour, and philosophical line of thinking that replaces the movement and mindset we knew as Post Modernism², a term coined by Jean-François Lyotard in 1980, representing the efficiency-first approach to industry and capitalism where the computer age transformed knowledge into information and created an unprecedented scenario of human, political and organisational evolution through different elements and systems: Values deconstruction, intertextuality, anti-scientific, plurality (less is boring), scepticism, apathy, work burnout, stress epidemy, and logical thinking. In contrast to the old brother Post Modernism, Metamodernism brings forth a new set of rules that better suits society within our digital and liquid reality. As pointed out by Zygmunt Bauman, a contemporary philosopher that studied Post-Modernism and how human relationships unfold in this complex social arrangement:
We are living an interconnected transition that creates an unprecedented new environment for activities and individual life, the transition from the solidity of Modernism to the liquidity of Post-Modernism. That is, to a condition where social organisations (structures that limit individual choices, institutions that assure the repetition of routines, and acceptable human behaviour) can't maintain their form for much time because they decompose and dissolve faster than it takes to mould them.³
We can identify this transformation as a byproduct of a system of hyper-productivity that produced a surplus of many different choices for individuals in terms of consumption and entertainment. This system proved to not be sustainable in many aspects: environmentally, ethically, economically, and health-wise (mainly mental). In more contextual depths, the fragile foundations of this system were unveiled when the COVID-19 epidemic achieved a global scale and affected supply chains worldwide, shaking economies, promoting isolation, and forcing society and companies to review life and approach to business in many different aspects while also turning technology and the digital world into the new Olympus of our reality. As a result of a broken framework, and amidst the eruption of economic recessions, mental health epidemics ⁴ and mass migration from analogue to digital, henceforth society and the free market will be venturing their way towards a future where survival and growth will happen only as a result of sustainable approaches that expands the term beyond its original reference for the environment.
To think sustainably won't regard only ESG approaches that embrace the responsibility of carbon footprint and environmental impact, but also, and mostly, holistic solutions that shine a spotlight on endogenous trust⁵ within systems and organisations, a term first coined by Eric Tung, representing a disruptive view to blockchain technology that also perfectly suits how corporations should behave in order to thrive today and in the future. In simple terms and adapted to the context, endogenous trust represents the concept that everyone within a system will behave fairly and ethically without the necessary control and management we are used to in the post-modern era. That is to say that any type of unethical approach to business and corporate culture development will not only slow growth but also potentially undermine the success of projects permanently.
In a user-centred world where all consumers are essentially users, the information consumption rate defines the rhythm of every single aspect of our lives, reflecting in a market where innovation becomes a commodity and new technological solutions arise in every split second, creating a marketing context where companies that don't understand the actual value of endogenous trust and the fair work principles⁶ will be swallowed alive by recession and the sea of true innovators that can grasp the idea that the old ways of doing things are entirely ineffective. Growth in this new scenario doesn't happen at a gradual pace because that is not the speed the market and consumers behave anymore; this means that synergy between ideas and executioners has to be deeply built for projects to stand out from the competition, triggering hypergrowth as a consequence of holistic execution in a context where growth is distributed equally among collaborators. Hypergrowth shall be only a result of bold and inclusive leadership that understands the true value of diversity and conflict of ideas in a critical but not personal way—nurturing fresh creativity and a mental heaven context for healthy ideas to arise and intensively productive brainstorms to happen.
Corporations are made by people, for people. We build them using the most valuable personal asset we all share as humans, time. To grow, they demand a massive influx of other natural assets extracted from nature through processes that leave a prominent carbon footprint in the atmosphere, consuming an unsustainable amount of non-renewable energy sources mainly based on hydrocarbons. Understanding the simple concept of sustainability will be the only way for corporations to survive, not only because they will have the obligation of giving back that which they consume to exist being the leading resource, the energy of their collaborators, but also because they will impact society and culture in ways that are yet impossible to grasp.
Hypergrowth Manifesto
It is time for decision-makers to shake off old habits and cultures learned from previous leaders and start autonomously developing their moral compass regarding how they treat the collaborators and partners that help them build the future they envision.
Hypergrowth will only result from new perspectives concerning work, ethics and mutual respect that resonate from top to bottom in fresh corporate cultures bold enough to go against the tide and challenge any outdated status quo.
To find what is human inside ourselves shall be the only way not to be replaced by AI, neural networks, and language models that will soon start automating not only unexpected processes but also c-suite decision-making factually based on data.
Embracing creativity and design as the beating heart of revolutionary cultures shall be the only way to create new solutions that don't yet exist and will thrive in a market filled with synthetic and empty products and services.
To rescue the value of storytelling and fictionalize brands through emotions rather than factual description will not only be the necessary step to conquer the heart of new consumers but also the ideal way to inspire collaborators into the hype for building a future that doesn't yet exist.
It is time for new heroes to surge and old heroes to retire, to recognize the better version of ourselves capable of taking more risks and assuming more responsibilities because we can trust in the on-demand support of our teams and leaders.
It is time to declare quiet quitting dead.
Because it is time to create better than machines.
References
¹Using the term metamodernism employed by Vermeulen & van den Akker in Notes on metamodernism, Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, Volume 2, 2010
³ Bauman, Z. (2007). Liquid Times living in an age of uncertainty. Zahar. 7.
⁴https://www.scielo.br/j/rbp/a/WGD9CnJ95C777tcjnkHq4Px/?lang=en