The Vision Pioneers Blog

by Miriam Garvi

The other day my landlord company sent me and every other tenant the annual 10-page survey on customer satisfaction. I sighed as I opened the thick envelope, thinking about how readily companies will make use of the customer’s time and how seldom this seems to lead to any improvements.

Well, besides your typical customer satisfaction survey, this company wanted to know our housing wish list…

«How do you want to live?» This question should really be rephrased into «What are you willing to pay for?» to reflect its true meaning. A display of quasi-concern that is used like a thermometer in order to determine which future course of action is chargeable on the customer’s account.

When business is reduced to sterile transactions, then ‘customer care’ has little to do with taking pride in providing a product or service that is good, useful, purposeful for the client. Instead it takes on the meaning of effectuating what will directly impact bottom line.

So many qualities are lost in a visionless, penny-counting world. Is this a price we are willing to pay?

by Miriam Garvi

In our society, it seems as if the real winners are never those who take the first step. Most money is made by those deft enough to know exactly the right moment to move in and beat others at their own game. Business is for the survival of the fittest - those who have the stamina for playing the ‘gorilla game’.

But who defines winning? And who defines the prize? Chalking up a new sales record is an achievement, but then what? As shown by many a public company these days, it is no longer enough to be profitable - you need to keep exceeding expectations that are fueled by past successes. Expected growth is the curse of success.

It takes courage and conviction not to be drawn into this spiral. But if we are to see other qualities than short-term achievement we need visions that go beyond heeding to the loud demands and expectations of markets and institutions.

by Miriam Garvi

The other day I read about another initiative in alleviating world poverty. It seems that every new initiative these days involves the diffusion of some kind of golden recipe - as in ‘alleviating poverty through technology’ or technology saves the world. This time, the recipe was microfranchising: “The idea is to replicate sound business models and, consequently, to provide microentrepreneurs in developing countries with training and the necessary assistance for success.”

I could write about how such initiatives reek of a neo-colonialistic attitude where the Westerner knows how money is made and so our models of thinking are imposed on other populations without regard nor appreciation for their cultural settings. But today I will draw the parallel to what is happening in other areas of business life. In my study of venture capital, it became clear that a streamlining way-of-thinking is dominating business thinking today. By streamlining I mean these kinds of ready-made formulas, of ‘best practice’, of ‘business recipes for success’, of ’success factors’ - whatever we choose to call them - which are imposed on new ideas, snuffing the flame. As I wrote in the final pages of my dissertation, “it would be a loss indeed if venture capital [or micro finance for that matter or any other service aimed at promoting new initiatives] would mean the death of visions and ideas that can change our conception of the system. Without them, there would be little new to refine and we might never come to enjoy what we have yet to discover.”

It is time we start thinking about the implications of snuffing out the visionary flame with pre-made, easy-to-replicate business models that are designed with one thing in mind: namely how to streamline a business concept so as to maximize its perceived value on a financial market.