Sustainability is the Future of Work
Let's talk about brand intelligence, climate breakdown, and grand mushrooms. Brand Intelligence is design-driven knowledge that informs branding to produce critical business assets. Brand intelligence is not just about branding and design based on critical thinking; the collection and use of data, or UI/UX; it is a complete understanding that everything is connected.
The great German naturalist, Alexander von Humboldt, said “everything is interaction and reciprocal.”
In 1799, von Humboldt proposed that the world was "one great living organism where everything was connected." Zak Jason, in WIRED, clarified von Humboldt's concept of ecosystems and was among the first naturalists to note humanity's destructive impact on Earth.
We all know by now that human-generated emissions cause our rapidly heating planet. Heatwaves are getting hotter. Fires explode. Floods are frequent and intense. Droughts impact agriculture and deplete water sources, supply chains are disrupted, and the acidification of our oceans is disastrous.
McKinsey says, "Extreme weather can close facilities, delay production, disrupt supply and distribution chains, raise operation and capital costs, and reduce demand. Extreme weather can also keep employees from getting to work, disrupt communication systems, and threaten the availability of power and water supplies."
Perilous weather events increasingly impact everybody. If, like von Humboldt says, “we are all connected,” we must figure out how to live on a hotter planet and deal with crises together.
WIRED's Jason also writes about Dr. Toby Kiers, 45, an evolutionary biologist at the Free University of Amsterdam. She is on a novel mission to probe a universe of underground fungi that can be vital, in her view, in the era of climate change.
Some species of fungi can store exceptional levels of carbon underground, keeping it out of the air and preventing it from heating the Earth's atmosphere. Others help plants survive brutal droughts or fight off pests. And others are good at feeding nutrients to crops. She calls them "levers" because they address the hazards of a warming climate.
My prescient colleague, Lisa Weatherspoon-Morgan, describes it this way, “We are all the Grand Mushrooms.” We are all connected but with a more critical reality, like von Humboldt's symbiotic network that can sustain us all.
How can you increase your climate intelligence and further empower the value of your brand? For starters, do no harm, reduce emissions, and lower your company's carbon footprint.
Share the data with your customers and tell them your brand is responsibly working toward keeping our planet habitable.
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