The end of the entrepreneur: Why ‘take, make, waste’ culture must end
In the first article of a three-part series, Makersite’s founder and CEO Neil D’Souza outlines how our current production processes are destroying the world – and the hope that sits on the horizon
2 hours, 11 minutes, 53 seconds. That was how long it took Ethiopia’s Tigist Assefa to complete the Berlin Marathon in September 2023. She smashed the women’s marathon world record. Beat it by more than 2 minutes. But it wasn’t Assefa who made the headlines afterwards. It was her shoes.
On her feet were the Adidas Adios Pro Evo 1. They weight just 138 grams. They have a 39-millimetre heel. They cost $500. And they’re only meant to last for one race. A feat of design and engineering? Absolutely. A revolution in running technology? Of course. But at what cost?
Despite their public proclamations to the contrary – their stated commitments to ‘people, product and planet’ – Adidas, Nike (who also have a foot in the single-use shoe game) and their contemporaries seem to value column inches over reducing GHG emissions, instant (but fleeting) acclaim over a sustainable and more efficient future.
Yes, they’ll tell you they’re only producing these shoes in very limited numbers and that it’s the lowest carbon emissions performance running shoe they have ever created. But that’s not the point. In its promotion of such a high-profile single-use product, Adidas are creating a new normal. A continuing acceptance that increased consumption and rapid wastage is fine. Our global climate crisis is driven by over-consumption, an overreliance on oil-derived materials, huge energy usage in production and shipping and a general disregard for our environment. The Adidas Adios Pro Evo 1 represents everything that is bad in microcosm.
But this isn’t an article written to call out Adidas. Their approach is simply emblematic of a bigger problem that we’re facing. A problem that, in our approach to solving it, will define us. We live in a world weighed down by commercialism and individualism. We venerate waste and consumption. We exist in a place and a time where ‘take, make and waste’ has become the norm.
It didn’t have to be this way. Today, most products are made with a singular goal in mind: to sell as much as possible. If our leading companies were not blinded by greed and an unerring focus on the bottom line, they might be able to see that there is another way forward. A future where single-use products aren’t seen as little more than a tool to increase brand power and drive visibility, where sustainability and consideration of the environment aren’t sacrificed at the altar of the dollar. We are a long way from where we need to be.
Our focus on wealth and immediacy is damaging us. A culture and an economy underpinned by the ‘get rich quick’ mantra is no good for anyone. The people at the helm of our biggest organizations are leaving us with a legacy of poor-quality products that add little to no value. Commercialism, consumption and immediate availability come at a price – and are all concepts defined by low costs, oversupply and a lax attitude towards sustainability and the health of our planet.
Our culture of consumption has been orchestrated by a very specific type of business person. A person who started out with good intentions but either found themselves at the head of a hydra they could no longer control, or who simply lost their purpose – their duty to people and planet – as soon as money became the primary goal.
They were no longer the makers and innovators that set out to change entrenched systems. Great ideas, without enough support to hold off commercial imperatives, meant that these people simply became a part of the system themselves. They fell in love with the ‘celebrity’ of the entrepreneur and the financial rewards that come with it. They take actions first and ask questions later. We are left with a scenario where the masses are in awe of the product but don’t consider what goes into creating it. And by the time the curtain falls and the negative cost and supply chain impacts of such rapid consumerism become clearer, it’s already too late. The damage has been done.
These disruptors of old have become something else. Ideals corrupted by wealth and greed. A symptom of our problems rather than a cure for them. Douglas Rushkoff recently wrote about the “unbearable hubris” of Musk, Bezos and the rest, about their “increasingly outlandish and imperial” behaviour towards the world around them. He’s not wrong. These are men – and they’re almost always men – who cast contemptuous glances at anyone without a similar vision, who view rules and regulations as little more than minor impediments on their quest for growth.
Unlike the titans of the past – Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Morgan – it is harder to track the impact of today’s billionaires. Unlike their forebears, they are not capped by the limits of the material world. But that does not mean their operations do not have an impact. As Rushkoff notes, we can still see the consequences of their undertakings in the form of “externalised harm.”
“Digital businesses,’ he writes, “depend on mineral slavery in Africa, dump toxic waste in China, facilitate the undermining of democracy across the globe and spread destabilising disinformation for profit – all from the sociopathic remove afforded by remote administration.” This represents a new frontier. The imperiousness of this new billionaire class is unprecedented, their “disregard for people and places” without comparison.
Today’s entrepreneurial leaders are essentially unlimited in the broadness of their reach – holders of what Rushkoff terms “horizontal power.” They donate from their own organisations, often in the form of their own stock, and make their own decisions about how the money is spent. They exist in an impenetrable bubble whilst the world – remade in their own interests – collapses around them.
But there is still hope. Still time to make a change. Damage has been done, but it is not yet irreversible. We don’t require a complete realignment. It is time, says Rushkoff, to “get on with reclaiming the world from this new generation of robber barons rather than continuing to fund their fantasies.” But how, and when?
I think now is the moment for a new thought process. A future defined by collaboration, not individualism. Working together for the greater good. Not ‘make it faster’ but ‘make it better’. But in order to create the better world that so many of us want, we have to give our innovators the right platform to succeed. We need to create an environment where success isn’t judged on how many extra zeroes there are on the balance sheet, but on how we build for the future we want and how we protect our planet in the process.
I’m done with radical promises. I’m finished with sceptics and non-believers. I’m putting my faith in product engineers being able to lead us to a new, better future where they drive strategic transformation underpinned by a shared, compelling vision, financial support based on more than just commercial imperatives and a dynamic ecosystem that is agile, efficient and geared toward ethical, criteria-driven innovation.
And how do we get there? That’s something we’ll talk about next time.
An edited version of this article also appeared on Forbes.com.