Seed Money: Some Notes
 on Non-business Business

"The more exposure I gained to the 'official' world of business, the more I began to doubt that I was in business at all. I seemed to be doing something entirely different....I believe that most people in new businesses, and some not-so-new businesses, have the same problem." Paul Hawken, from Growing a Business







In the introduction to his findings after receiving thousands of business cards after a thousand talks, Paul Hawken describes in Blessed Unrest that he came to a moment where he realized that we are currently witnessing, sometimes without really seeing it clearly, the largest social movement in known history. To put our fingers on this movement is virtually impossible because it is doesn't necessarily spread in the same way as, say, big C Capitalism does, with a broad set of tacit assumptions, maneuvers, models to follow, and certain life sequences that are associated. "This movement, however, doesn't fit the standard model. It is dispersed, inchoate, and fiercely independent. It has no manifesto or doctrine, no overriding authority to check-in with. It is taking shape in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, companies, deserts, fisheries, slums–and yes, even fancy New York hotels." Hawken and so many others involved in this emerging field, which could be called sustainability as well any other word, have provided examples, case studies, data, hope and realistic assessments for many years; followers who don't necessarily know they are followers continue to forge new modes of the Natural Economy, as Hawken described it in another book. For many the movement might stand out as something futuristic and glaringly one-sided as a progressive movement; others, I think just as accurately, could claim it as a restoration, or a getting back to, something follows normal or common sense. In a word, then, features of the new economy could and likely should appeal to some degree or another to all who would like to either enter into the field or to consume from new modes of doing business that are actually old modes.  Restoration in landcare usually takes a process of observation to engage in and finally achieve a series of goals.  When looking at a parcel of land, the restorationist can first see that some radical disturbance has overcome the plot – more than likely it has become fragmented, has sprouted by non native species, and that between the two of these things it has become something not only unsightly but it has lost positive function either for its own self or for the surrounding area. A goal to restore, if we assess it truly and accurately, holds values that are both progressive and backward looking. It might be progressive because the process has to do with taking a stand against the status quo and deciding that is worthwhile to interdict, transform, and move the process forward for the sake of something that is other than mere human use. It is backward looking because the restorationist tends to consider what the plot might have been before the disturbance. There are in fact natural ways of land; left alone, certain plant and water features will co-evolve to create what should be or should have been. Restoration is fully human in its capacity because it does not shun one thing over another for the sake of politics or profits, two disturbances, if you will. Business, likewise, could use restoration. On one hand, the business restoration could certainly use examples like Hawken who, as he says in Growing a Business, found a need in his own life that was not being met in the business community, in his case a natural foods retail outlet. It then takes the perseverance to create this business despite the odds and to fight for something 'other.'  The reason that the movement that Hawken stakes out is so nearly impossible to define is that this 'other' will likely vary from person to person, business to business. It expresses human nature more accurately in this way. It observes a need for not only innovation but restoration; where innovation and restoration meet is, to some degree, sustainability. "This movement toward new enterprise must reflect a certain amount of alienation of the work force from the conditions of their jobs." Although these particular words were written all the way back upon publication of Growing A Business in the late 80's, the same information was just verified in Jack Appelman's very contemporary data that he used to promote the concept of re-engaging the workforce through stronger writing skills in company-wide communications. He mentioned that only one-third of workers feel that that are fully engaged in their work. Seed Money might take the form of various restoration specialist – those who seek to tap into what we have come to see and understand as a much more varying level of human intelligence and emotion in accordance with whatever we do.  Seed Money could become its own enterprise – the application of restoration practices to the world of business, the last, and by far the greatest, frontier for shaping a new century of thought, action, purpose and lifestyle.