Thanks for the reply!

I see cross-overs between organisational leadership and environmental limits: for example Unilever’s recent strategy revamp http://www.unilever.com/aboutus/?WT.GNAV=About_us which places sustainability firmly at the centre of organisational strategy, raising big questions about business growth and the expectations which shareholders and investors can reasonably have of a business which depends on primary agricultural and fisheries for its raw materials.

Saying things like this http://www.icis.com/blogs/chemicals-and-the-economy/2010/12/unilever-focuses-on-long-term.html about growth and investors is daring for a business leader, and wouldn’t have come about if the leaders had been blinkered about environmental limits or in denial about them.

I notice they are changing the way they keep investors up-to-date, to help cement a shift to longer-term thinking: http://www.unilever.com/mediacentre/pressreleases/2010/UnilevermovestoQuarterlyTradingStatementsinApril2011.aspx

I’m not sure whether you’d see this as ‘structure’, but it’s certainly a shift in organisational procedures.

I’ll check out the Walker Smith post.

Penny

In response to Penny’s comment, I was thinking more about organisations and structure when I responded to Adam initially. But I think I’d say that leadership – as you effectively say in the post – is about purpose and about values, and that the challenge of limits (and of being part of biodiversity rather than trying to stand outside of it) is about telling new, deeper stories about purpose. Many of the leaders in your list distinguished themselves by telling new and lasting stories about identity.

You may also be interested in a post my colleague Walker Smith wrote recently on leaders and futures, which talks about the role of a future orientation in conveying purpose: http://blog.thefuturescompany.com/2010/11/18/leaders-and-futures/

Andrew

Thanks for great thought provoking post, as always.

Penny

I don’t think the US is a good general model for discussion about the future of transport. As you know it had a good public transport infrastructure which was torn up while the Federal Government paid for the interstate freeways to be built. And the US has built at a density which makes auto-dependency inevitable in large areas – at least until energy costs become too expensive. (Australia has similar problems).

As for the subsidy: I had a recent estimate from a European transport analyst that if motorists paid the full cost of their travel, they’d be paying 50% more per mile (that’s a big public subsidy). I have a recent post about this at the next wave .

And the solution to your problem at the station is – medium-term – a carshare vehicle with your mobile providing information, confirmation, permission, and probably payment. The ‘auto-pods’ would probably work well in that environment.

I do think that one set of subsidies is pushing the boulder up the hill, and the other down the hill.

I just used the new Gautrain (subsidy cost=billions) to get from Jhb airport to Sandton, but when I got to the station I was f*cked without a car, despite all well-meaning ride-on solutions, yadayade. Infotech may solve minor timing issues but it doesn’t and can’t solve the bigger user-pain problem, and without that solution there has to be some kind of individual transport pod in any/every future. That’s the reality.

This is the sort of view which we see from auto enthusiasts continually. The trouble with viewing it as a ‘cost-benefit’ view is that apart from the mobility benefits, drivers get a huge subsidy from non-drivers in terms both of subsidising infrastructure and also not paying for externalities (noise, emissions, and other forms of pollution). Since there’s a social gradient to personal mobility, the effect is quite regressive.

Obviously the cost structure of car ownership also influences consumer choices: it’s not only for convenience and the financial returns involved that the motor companies value the present model where there’s a high fixed cost for car ownership (and annual fixed costs on top of that).

I think this perspective would be more credible if we could see what choices consumers made without large subsidy and financial lock-in. We might find they were more tolerant of buffers and transfers. (And information technology will increasingly help with the latter.)

Andrew

interesting reflection on the thoughts of a clear market visionary. I am always struggling myself to judge if visioning is foresight or not. Clearly visionary leaders form the future through their entrepreneurial drive and as in the case with Lawrence Burns their influence on an industry. But is it foresight if they create the future markets themselves?

There are ample examples where companies have created markets without identifying, interpreting and using emerging trends, but through creating the trends themselves for example Apple with the PC. There was clearly no demand for personal computers but it was created when made available.

From my point of view I would judge Apple to score high on both entrepreneurial drive and visionary leadership but was there foresight involved?

René

Please note that this model was a first draft in order to start a co-creation process putting the model together. We issued another version ending up in a FIFA model and a Hosting country model. Take a look at http://www.businessmodelhub.com

Cheers Patrick van der Pijl