I’ve been spending a lot of time lately researching and being inspired by the idea of “double bottom line” businesses.
“The Bottom Line” is a basic tenet of capitalism. Profit. You have to make a profit, and that is the most important part, and actually the only part that matters since you don’t have a business without it. Lately it seems this alone hasn’t been serving us (humanity) as well as it could, or did. Things are catching up. Environmental, societal, and not setting us up for an optimistic future.
A “Double Bottom Line” is when there is a second thing baked into the business, that is just as important as profit. It’s part of the business itself and serves some sort of greater good.
Sometimes I think of this as “Altruistic Capitalism” which I know is combining two completely opposite ideas. Sometimes you have to shake things up and do new things. New ideas, new directions, because the status quo is not delivering for us. Do today what you did yesterday, get today what you got yesterday is not good enough. Time to change it up.
I’m getting excited about this thinking because its a change that can happen right now, by any entrepreneur. We don’t need government or policy. We can do this ourselves. This is power we have control of.
I have a few examples of some Double Bottom Line businesses:
DroneSeed is a company that is using drones to re-plant forests with massive scale that is well beyond what a human tree planter can do. This type of innovation was not possible even 10 years ago, but will be an essential component to helping our planet in the coming decades. They’re a for-profit company, with this huge Earth benefiting mission built into it.
Seamore’s restaurtant is a 6 location chain of restaurants in New York City that has adopted sustainable fish for its menu. The “catch of the day” is not air freighted salmon, but species’ of fish that until now were not eaten by many humans. They’ll use monkfish or skate which are fished in waters close to NYC and turn it into delicious fish tacos. That mission is baked into their business. They grew from 1 location to 6 in only a few years. People will change their behaviors when given the option.
Adidas futurecraft.loop shoe. This is a product, but part of an amazing push towards sustainability by Adidas. This new shoe they are releasing is designed from a high tech polymer and no shoe glue which means the entire shoe can be recycled into its base components and turned into a new shoe, not “down cycled” by turning it into insulation or some other filler. It’s amazing and we need more of these types of innovations instead of creating more trash and consuming resources.
A successful Double Bottom Line business is stronger for having this second bottom line. It’s a competitive advantage and differentiator. It also allows the creation of new business ideas. Stuff never done before. It allows the market to back it, because people want to support businesses that make a difference.
Effective double bottom lines should not be drains on the company, or something that is nice to do (say charitable giving) when the money is there, but cut back on when times are tough. A double bottom line is concrete and as integral to the business as profit.
My interests lately have been to work with people developing these Double Bottom Line Businesses. I realized, back in my rave days, for a while we thought we were going to change the world. That was what was driving me, besides making a living. We thought we were onto something, creating community and unity, that could spread outside the walls of our venue. My mission then was never completed, so now I’m looking for new ways to support the next generation of impact entrepreneurs who are creating new businesses with these Double Bottom Lines built in.
If that sounds like you, we should talk.
