Business Models for Tomorrow’s Companies

Gunter Pauli has published over 40 books, including his most famous - The Blue Economy. He is an economist, serial entrepreneur and founder of ZERI (Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives). Gunter was the first person to register 'Zero Emissions' as a trademark and recently won the 2021 Goi Peace Award for his contribution to society. Gunter continues to contribute by sharing different business models that aim to leave the world in a better place. His vision for the future of business is inspiring and challenges us to go one step further than current ‘sustainable’ models and practices.

In this episode, we chat with Gunter Pauli about the concepts contained in his pivotal 'The Blue Economy' book, which he originally published in 2010, that set out new business models that can work with nature to achieve better outcomes for the planet, for people and for companies' bottom lines.

Today we refer to The Blue Economy as the sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, however, when Gunter wrote his book he was referring to an economy beyond what we call the Green Economy.

Gunter asks the question, how is it possible that the things that are good for us and the planet are expensive, whereas the things that are bad for us and the planet are cheap - as an economist, he points out that this is a broken system.

Here are a few things we discussed in this great chat;

• The difference between the “Green Economy” and the “Blue Economy”
• Listen to Gunter's story of how he started his own “green” business, which lead him to question what a sustainable business should really look like and the economy that needs to be created to ensure that something that is good for us, and the planet, isn’t the most expensive in the market.
• The need to change from competition on price, which leads to cutting corners, to competition on value which is a defining part of the Blue Economy.
• Concepts and business models within his two new books - Coffee Solutions and Plastic Solutions
• Why we need to focus more on physics rather than chemistry
• Industry Symbiosis rebrand to the Circular Economy (the principles of which have been around for a while).
• Creating something out of nothing
• The need to relearn what we are being taught at school and university especially, for those studying business, sciences and engineering.
• Where short term thinking gets us, you might be surprised to learn that our hand sanitisers have plastic in them, causing billions of micro plastics to pollute our water when we then wash our hands.
• The importance of multiple revenue streams, burn rate and return on investment when developing your business. Gunter suggests to forget using a spreadsheet, or Google or Wikipedia. If we’re using sources that are out there already then we aren’t able to think outside the box and take risks. He also recommends not building a business plan until you have your first sale.
• Listen to Gunter chat through multiple business models and their simple ingenuity to create value for both people and the planet.

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