If you want to go far, go together

The annual Sustainable Brands Conference has been taking place this month in San Diego, and the focus was on how discussing how the combination of brands, sustainability and design can create inspiration, tools and partnerships to drive business success AND make a positive impact in the world. It’s called Activating Purpose. Increasingly discerning global consumers around the world today are becoming more demanding of the brands they buy — looking for new products, services and business models that deliver whilst also contributing to a healthy environment and society. A growing number of brand leaders who are succeeding in tapping into this new movement have built highly successful companies with environmental and/or social purpose at their core in the last decade - and more are on the way. Building these brands takes a new way of thinking, a new set of tools, and a new community of collaborators. One of the big take-outs from the event was the message that if as entrepreneurs we can push through the discomfort of addressing difficult challenges to find common ground, build trust and collaborate, we can not only build sustainable businesses, but we can also make a huge impact through our innovations, disruption of traditional ways of doing things, and out-of-the-box thinking. At the end of the day, it is all about entrepreneurs challenging the status quo of business and driving sustainability-led innovation to create scalable impact AND profitability. So, how do we Activate Purpose? - through the power of collaboration. As the saying goes, if you want to go far, go together!