Image created by chatGPT Continuing on from Profits Above Charity if we can now agree that not being able to make a profit limits the amount of impact we can make, let’s explore the opposite: Profit as a flywheel for positive impact. What if, instead of seeing positive impact and profits as enemies, we turn them into a flywheel? Imagin...

Image created by chatGPT Some time ago, we passed peak BrewDog. Today we have the number that shows how far passed. A whopping 97%. This is the story of how BrewDog turned £2 Billion Into £33 Million, and left over 200,000 believers with nothing The News Yesterday afternoon, BrewDog's UK and Irish assets were sold to Tilray, a US canna...

Following on from "Impact by Default" I wanted to reflect on how we structure our business. Wanting to do good and choosing a foundation to do it are two different things. One is admirable. The other will severely limit your ability to make any real impact at scale. You can't issue shares in a foundation. You can't give investors equit...

I work with various agentic and generative AI tools as part of my daily workflow. For research, structuring ideas, thinking things through, and automating the unglamorous bits. When it comes to writing, I use AI as a thinking partner, not a ghostwriter. It helps me untangle my thoughts, sharpen a structure, or stress-test an argument. ...

Following on from Intention Not Reinvention it's time to talk about how making impact is the default setting for all companies. Every company makes impact. Positive and negative. The question isn't whether you're making impact, you already are. The question is: What impact are you making, and are you making it on purpose? Most small bu...

To my designer friends: We’ve seen the increase of AI as the next search engine, the next wave looks like AI Agents doing the searching (on behalf of humans, for now, other agents later?) I keep thinking about what happens when an AI agent sits between a product (or website) and the person needing/buying/using it. What happens when the...

"Intention not Reinvention" is something I've been saying for a few years now. It's taken me a while to get around to writing about it. Here are my rough thoughts. I'd love to hear your comments or questions. There's plenty more to come. Most companies think doing good means reinventing everything. It doesn't. We already know how to bu...

Music + Dancing is a combination that has been around since, basically forever, and everywhere that humans have been. Below are some puzzle pieces I'm seeing, although the picture is not yet as clear as this piece of art made with Dall-E: I don't make any secret about my love of music and dancing, and I don't need any scientific eviden...

Six years ago (2017), I invested in more than just a winter jacket; I invested in a belief. This belief was embodied in a Patagonia jacket that I got at a €100 discount. Though the price was still high, I viewed it as a commitment to sustainability and making responsible choices. Image: Stock image of my trusty Patagonia Tres jacket I ...

A few days ago entrepreneur Jason Fried tweeted something which still has my attention after ignoring it for a whole weekend. His company 37Signals, who brought Basecamp and more recently HEY.com to the world, pride themselves on being somewhat contrarian. I'm again reminded of just how well they do that. If you've never heard of 37Sig...

Space shuttle launches were a big deal in the 1980s. For many youngsters like me, being a NASA astronaut was the ultimate dream. The space exhibitions at the Science Museum in London captivated me. Watching the 1986 space shuttle Challenger launch on television and witnessing its tragic explosion was an indelible moment. In 2002, Elon ...

"Microsoft will be carbon negative by 2030" If you missed this headline back in January 2020, you're completely forgiven. Despite the incredible level of ambition in this strategy, it didn't really make the news. Here's a quick recap for you: The three pillars to the announcement were clear: 1) Become Carbon Negative by 2030 2) Remove ...

A little over two weeks ago, I was a guest at the Tech.eu summit in Brussels. Beer, chocolate, fries with mayo, and ancient buildings, check check, check and check - but there was more to my visit. 📸 Photo by me - Featuring Robin's kids getting to welcome DHH and their dad to the stage. It had been a while since I attended any startup/...

Scoring for Sustainability: How FC Dordrecht Hosted a Climate-Neutral Football Match As a non-lover of football and living in a city where hooliganism fills the local football headlines, this one is a stretch for me, but it's definitely a topic worth sharing. On Friday May 19th, Dutch football club FC Dordrecht hosted the first climate...

The Scottish Distillery Making Climate Positive Gin and Vodka with Peas I can't quite get my head around products that are manufactured and at the same time, are climate positive, but if you know me and my British roots, you won't be surprised why this company caught my attention. I'd love to know how they end up with a carbon footprin...

The disappearing computer - and a world where you can take AI everywhere. Science fiction often becomes reality. The universal communicator from Star Trek is practically here, with many additional super powers. Imran Chaudhri just gave us the first glimpse of startup Humane whilst on stage at TED. Check the video, it's so much more tha...

Seepje has hit an incredible milestone, but maybe you've never heard of them.... let me tell you more. Have you ever stopped to think about the environmental impact of your laundry detergent? From the plastic packaging to the chemicals, and micro plastics that go down the drain, it's not the most eco-friendly product in your home. That...

It's hard to imagine that you haven't heard of Oatly. Possibly the worlds most loved, and hated, dairy milk replacement brand. Not to mention their fetish for insane outdoor advertising poster campaigns. Oatly just launched a new site called FckOatly*, and frankly, it's a tiny masterclass in impact marketing. Image source: FckOatly. In...

Two tales, neither good, but a great lesson for us to unpack. Just a few weeks ago Dutch supermarket Albert Heijn launched an experiment around the "True Price" of coffee. The experiment is small - just three stores are offering consumers the choice to pay the current price, or the higher "True Price" when they purchase a coffee to go....

I have my dear friend Marloes to thank for this one 💖 As someone who's always on the lookout for ways to help business become better for the world, I was instantly drawn to this book when she suggested it. If you've ever found yourself pondering the intricacies of "doing good" then look no further than Michael Schur's "How to Be Perfec...

It was at the end of summer 2016 when I first learned that I had forgotten how to breathe. Being my usual self, I quipped back, that I thought I was pretty good at breathing. I mean, I'd been doing it for almost 40 years, and it seemed to be working well. Apparently not. In that brief moment, standing next to a barn, surrounded by fiel...

It's pretty hard to comprehend, but the sixteen largest container cargo ships floating across our oceans are responsible for more environmental pollution than all of the cars on the planet combined. The reason for this is that they are, obviously, enormous, with equally enormous engines that absolutely drink fuel in the form of oil. Th...

If you can understand that infinite growth of GDP on a finite planet is a really terrible metric for countries to be using to measure progress, then you might wonder why almost all of the do. The short answer is that we started sort of by accident, it became popular, and we've never found a better way. In 2018 I was lucky enough to hos...

Today is day fourteen. This is article number fourteen. I'm allowing myself to be just a little proud for still being on target. At this point, not breaking the streak is an addition motivating factor and it feels like a habit is starting to form. For today's article, I wanted to do something different. Making better impact is a team s...

Your website. That's it. Your website tells me everything I need to know. If your company is serious about making better impact, then you have to be serious about telling the world. There is no better place than the front page of your website. There are many ways to do this. Examples range from talking about your vision of the future, ...

Imagine for a moment that your company had no competitors. What would that mean for your business and sales? How much energy could you redirect to making impact? When we focus our energy on making impact first and finance second, something magical happens. We move from being in a zero sum game, to a game of abundance. A zero sum game i...

The statutes of incorporation that were signed and put on record when your company was formed, almost certainly say that the goal of the business is to create as much shareholder value as possible. That's a legal obligation. The shareholders who own a part of the company, almost certainly took their stake as position for collecting som...

“"Execution pays your salary. Innovation pays your pension."” I love this recent quote from Steve Blank who wrote *the* book on modern day entrepreneurship. I'd like to add a third line to the mix: Impact makes you immortal. Innovation is the thing that gives our business a future, but it is not a goal in itself. It's a "how" and the c...

So here it I am, day nine, aka late Sunday evening, and I'm kicking myself. I've got plenty of things to write about, but it makes no sense to post any one of them now. I feel like I've trapped myself into a corner. I started this challenge, to kickstart myself into getting this knowledge out of my head, but actually, that's not my goa...

"We need to destroy the competition." Have you ever stopped to think about how the language of business is incredibly violent? "James from sales has been killing it this quarter, but we are still losing ground to the competition." I mean, right down to thinking about your target customers. Really! As if the people that pay for your pro...