Connecting the Dots: Aligning Industry 4.0 with Sustainable Development Goals

I am glad that business leaders from all domains including Finance, Technology and Consumer Goods are starting to wake up and align their financial and shareholder goals with stakeholder goals and shifting capitalism from shareholder capitalism toward multi-stakeholder capitalism. I think this transition needs to be made with incredible speed and action and that every person in business, entrepreneurship, finance and technology and quite frankly every person needs to have these goals at the forefront of their decisions.

Because not only is our economy at risk. Everything is at risk from our planet, our people, our democracy and our purpose. Because if that’s not aligned, then we end up with a collapse of civilization. And what we had seen in the 2010s was just that. Moral decay in capitalism and in the values that are supposed to bring people together.

Instead we had technology companies making products that make us more divided and confused. We had banks and investment funds that didn’t give a damn about climate and cared more about quarterly returns, than in sustainable capitalism.

Multi stakeholder capitalism is the understanding that each person has incredible power over our collective destiny. After all, each of us is a worker, a consumer, an investor, a citizen, an employee and a fellow human of this planet. And we are all really tied to each other whether we like it or not.

I believe going forward in the 2020s we have to keep business ethics at the forefront. Because if we lose our values in any domain from finance and investments to technology just because of profit, short-term gain and ego then we lose everything from our economy, climate, democracy, planet and soul.

I believe the information and technology revolution can be used for good in this sense and by giving employees and consumers more optionality and choices in the marketplace for choosing prospective employers and consumer choices. This places much more pressure on investment management, technology and consumer goods companies to adapt in a more responsible fashion.

I think that the only way this is going to work, is if Startups, Entrepreneurs, Multinational Conglomerates, Business Executives, Hedge Fund, Private Equity Tycoons get on the same page as well as consumers, employees, millennials and younger generations such as Gen Z.

Capital can no longer be at the forefront of all decision making in our economy. We have to place people first because everything is becoming far too unsustainable. People “hustling” to what end? To “win” what? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. We cannot play these sad and sorry 0 sum games anymore, because this is not a world I want to live in, and I believe it is a world that my peers do not want to live in even if they don’t speak up, and it certainly is not a world that younger people do not want to live in.

There needs to be more hope for the future. And hope is slowly coming in, but there needs to be heavy pressure on all sides to align Industry 4.0 to the Sustainable Development Goals so that we can all win and not all lose.