1 Initial impressions and experiences
There are many different views about the ‘meaning’, ‘categories’ or ‘types’ of enterprise, innovation and sustainability. You will learn about these key terms, and some working definitions, as you study this course.
In Activity 1, you will examine your existing ideas about sustainability, innovation and entrepreneurship and compare your views with those of existing organisations.
The terms sustainable and sustainably are used in a variety of ways. Sustainable means being able to be used without being destroyed. Sustainability means reducing harm on the environment and ultimately reversing the damage already caused. It also means renewing resources at a rate equal to, or greater than, the degree at which they are consumed. This means living within the resources of the planet without damaging the environment now or in the future. To do this there needs to be an economic system that provides for quality of life while renewing the environment and its resources. It is important to take the long-term view of how our actions effect future generations and make sure we don’t deplete resources or cause pollution at rates faster than the earth is able to renew them.
The original definition of sustainable development is usually considered to be: ‘Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (Bruntland, 1987).
As you work through this activity be sure to keep a personal record of any issues or questions that come to mind as you complete the opening tasks. Then, as you progress through the course, you can refer back to your notes to see how your ideas have changed (or perhaps, remained the same!).
Activity 1 Sustainability, innovation and entrepreneurship
Timing: Allow about 30 minutes
Select and watch two of the videos below. Then answer the questions that follow (Note: if you watch the Josh Littlejohn or Rachel Arthur videos you should watch the first five minutes only).
Will Dobson – Meon Spirit Company (watch the whole video)
Download this video clip.Video player: b327_openlearn_vid008-640x360.mp4
Transcript
WILL DOBSON:
I'm Will Dobson, and I run the Meon Spirit Company, which trades as Hill Farm Juice. We make a premium range of apple juices on the farm. And I'm the owner and sole director of the company. This has its advantages, in that it's a committee of one, which makes decision-making very fast. The limitation of that is, I don't have anybody day to day that I can bounce ideas off, which is a huge disadvantage.
In addition, I'm also the managing director of Hill Farm Orchards, which is the growing side of the business. There are limitations, in that I'm spreading myself relatively thinly across quite a few enterprises. But it allows the businesses to react to their environment very quickly.
One area that I know I need to look at within the business is looking at having a more diverse team to be able to spread the load across. So, from a sustainability point of view, actually the business is at risk just purely from what happens if I disappear. One of the things that is the director's duties to look at is to make sure that there is sustainability within its leadership team, so that the business will continue to survive in any event.
One of the nice innovations that we have is, with the growing side, we're able to experiment with different varieties. This season, we have produced, in very limited numbers, a variety called Tickled Pink. It's a red-fleshed apple, which is quite unusual, in that the juice that it produces is red as well and holds its colour.
When I took over Hill Farm Juice, all of the clear juices were bottled into green bottles with gold caps, and the cloudy juices were in clear bottles with silver caps. Very shortly after I took over the business, to be quite honest, I got a bit bored in the middle of a boxing run, looked at the green bottles going through, and just – mind started wondering.
So I put a couple of clear bottles through the line. And what came out looked like a bottle of white wine. And it just – it looked far better than as a green bottle.
It showed off the product. You could see the colour. The whole thing just looked fresher. From a production point of view, that actually gives another challenge, in that our filtration for clear juices had to be so much better, because in a clear bottle we couldn't hide anything.
For us, sustainability is as much down to environmental credentials as to making sure that we're not spending too much on our distribution – actually making the product in such a way that it's economic to send to the end user. To produce, that we are not overutilising resources by being in glass bottles rather than plastic. Glass is recyclable, the world over. Plastic does have environmental concerns. Yes, it's lighter to transport, but it's also very easy to throw away. And, from a sustainability point of view, it's something that's quite important to us.
I'm a sailor at heart. And I do travel, and you do see plastic all over the place. And I think glass is the way forwards.
One of our biggest constraints, at the moment, is route to market, is distribution. We have a product that the margins are relatively low, transport is increasingly expensive, and probably our biggest challenge to expansion, and certainly including the sustainability side of things, is, how do distribute while maintaining sensible margins?
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Josh Littlejohn – Food for thought (watch the first five minutes only)
Transcript
[APPLAUSE]
JOSH LITTLEJOHN:
When I was a young guy. when I was about 13, 14, my form of a teenage rebellion was sort of lashing out at my dad and my family's wealth. My dad came from a working class background, but he was an entrepreneur. is an entrepreneur, and he set up a successful restaurant business.
So, me and my brother grew up in sort of, relative privilege. And my kind of teenage rebellion was sort of, almost throwing that back in his face and kind of saying, why is it fair that we have these flash cars and this big house when there's people sort of, starving in the world, and that kind of attitude. which was, in hindsight, was quite harsh on my dad because I think, the only reason he wanted to be a success, was to provide for his family. But that was sort of me as a teenager.
So, I went to uni and I studied politics and economics, with a view to try and change the world in some way upon leaving. So, I left university and I found that no one really wanted to give me a job. I struggled in the sort of grad scheme interview processes and things.
So, I sort of felt pushed down an entrepreneurial path to set up my own business. So, I decided to set up an event business. So, the first event that I ever did was an event called The Festival Fashion Show, where I created a fashion show during the Edinburgh Festival. To put this in context, I was 21 years old and I was single. So I thought, this is a great way to sort of, hang around with 10 beautiful models.
So, I would literally sort of, the date was set during the festival. So, prior to it, I would literally, if I saw a really attractive girl in the street, I would go up to her and say, hi, I'm the organiser of The Festival Fashion Show. Have you ever, you know, considered modelling? And so I got 10 models together. I was thinking, this is fantastic.
And I remember, prior to the event, we organised, like a press shoot. And we got this fancy car dealership called Kenny Dunn's to sponsor the event. So, I got Kenny to bring down an Aston Martin and I had all the models there. And we got about five or six newspaper, sort of paparazzi, shooting it. And I can sort of, look back in that time and sort of pinpoint the exact moment when I really realised that entrepreneurship was for me. And it was pretty much this moment.
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
You know, it's a bit of a joke, but The Festival Fashion Show, you know, it was just something in my head. And that was the first time I experienced that something in my head became real. And that was a thrill and I think I've become slightly addicted to that thrill. And ever since that moment, I've just kept pushing the boundaries slightly further, and kept knocking on the doors a little bit harder and taking no for an answer less and less.
And there's a direct linear link between organising that little fashion show in Edinburgh and creating this big event, where we've brought Bill Clinton to Scotland, called the Scottish Business Awards. So from the fashion show I started organising other events and they got bigger and bigger. And I came up with this event called The Scottish Business Awards.
And a lot of people sort of asked me, Josh, how did you get involved in The Scottish Business Awards? And, if I'm honest, I have to sort of say to them, well, I created an event and I called it The Scottish Business Awards. And I think because it was called The Scottish Business Awards, everyone sort of assumed, it'd been around for a long time and was very prestigious, which I didn't correct.
And it sort of, became quite prestigious, it's ran for three years now. And it was the biggest business event, by far, in the UK the last two years and one of the biggest business events ever in Scotland.
The first year we organised the awards, we decided to raise money for charity. So, we put together a charity auction. So, I was trying to get some really big prizes for it and the notion kind of came to my head to think, maybe I could sort of, ask if we could get a meeting with Bill Clinton that we could auction off in the charity auction.
So, how did I go about this, I went on the Clinton Foundation web site and clicked the contact page. And it was one of those pages where there's not even an email address or a phone number, it's just a contact box. So I sort of typed in that, I'm organising this big event. We had 800 business leaders confirmed to come. What would be the chances of getting a meeting with Bill Clinton to auction off? Send.
The chances of something coming back from that are borderline zero. So, to my amazement, someone did email me back and asked a few questions. And they said, OK, what we could give you is not a meeting with Bill Clinton, but spend the day with Bill Clinton prize in New York. But the conditions are that you have to raise a minimum of 60,000 pounds and you have to donate half of it to the Clinton Foundation.
So I thought, well, there's nothing to lose. I don't know if that's realistic or achievable or what. But we had the prize, so we auctioned it off on the night. So it got to the kind of star prize and the auctioneer got it going.
So, it was 10, 15 grand, 20 grand, got up to 30,000 pounds. And there was a guy at the back of the room called Leo Koot, from an oil company in Aberdeen. He was at 30 grand and he was pissed, pissed as a fart.
[LAUGHTER]
So, at that point, no one else was bidding. You know, the auctioneer would say, we have to get to 60, or the prize is not happening. Who's going to give me 35? And no one else was bidding. So I was like, oh, shit. But Leo Koot, obviously, had a few glasses of wine. The people around his table were sort of holding his hand up. So he sort of bid up on himself to 35, to 40, up, up to 60.
So, it meant I could go back to the Clinton Foundation, I said 60 grand, there's your 30. Thanks very much. A few months later, we're thinking, right, who can we get to speak? We got Bob Geldof to speak the first year. And we thought, who could we get to speak? So I thought, I'll get back in touch with that woman at the Clinton Foundation.
So, I got in touch and said, look, what would it take to bring Bill Clinton to Scotland to speak at this event? And she said, well, basically, a massive donation to the Clinton Foundation. So, we bounced around a few numbers. And it came to the number of 210,000 pound donation to the Clinton Foundation.
So, I sort of thought, right, we can sell so many tables for such a price, did a bit of math. And I thought, we could just about cover that if we sell enough tables. So, sort of, full of beans, I've said yeah, let's go for it, 210 grand.
She said, well, it's not quite as simple as that. We can't just give you Bill Clinton's name to advertise, on the vague hope that you'll pay us the money. We don't really know who you are. So, if you want to do it, you have to pay us 50 grand in two weeks; another 50 grand in a month; and the rest prior to the event.
So, at the time, I had pretty much zero money in the bank. So, I kind of thought, oh, fuck it. Go for it. So, I signed the contract, sent it away. So, I had two weeks to raise 50 grand. So, basically, I phoned up anyone I knew with money. So, the first phone call was to my dad.
[LAUGHTER]
So I said, do you know that hard time I gave you about having money? Sorry about that. Can I have some of it, please? So, what basically what I did, I phoned, run anyone that was at the awards the previous year and said, look, here's the deal, we've got Bill Clinton confirmed. But we have to raise 50 grand in two weeks. Will you take a table? And, if so, will you pay me for it now? And enough people said yes. And we cleared the deposits. And it all happened.
So, the year after, I thought, how can we follow that? And I thought maybe we could look at getting Richard Branson. It'd be difficult because, obviously, he lives in Necker. But, you know, where there's a will, there's a way. And just a month ago it happened.
So, a sort of powerful realisation kind of dawned on me through this process that the world is completely malleable. You can create things and do things and people will sort of buy into it. And you can kind of make changes. And that was a really powerful realisation.
So, a few years ago I came across a guy called Professor Muhammad Yunus when I was reading his books, about an idea that he described as a social business. So, he basically talked in his book about how, in Bangladesh, he's created over 50 companies. And some of them have gone on to become very large, billion dollar companies. But he's never owned a single share in one of them.
Each company he's created has been to address a social problem. So, I was reading his books, I thought, wow, what an inspiring idea. And I got this bug for sort of entrepreneurship, but it was slightly hollow just trying to set about to make money. So, it really chimed with me, the idea that you could be an entrepreneur and create a business. But you could do it for a purpose. That chimed with me ever since but when I was a teenager trying to make a difference.
So, I invited Yunus to speak at an event we were doing. It was very difficult to establish much meaningful communication with him. So, I ended up flying to Bangladesh and I met him personally. And we spent a week there. me and my girlfriend Alice. where we toured around his different social businesses. So that was me there.
And that experience just completely inspired and changed the track of our lives completely. So, we sold the events business. the main profitable event that we did, which was a ski and snowboard exhibition, for 40,000 pounds. And we ploughed all the money, plus any other money that we could get together, into opening a social business, which was a sandwich shop in Edinburgh called Social Bite. And we've got a little video just to tell you what Social Bite is all about.
We are a sandwich shop. We compete with Pret A Manger, The Get Express, Subway, and we are winning.
ALICE THOMPSON:
But we are a sandwich shop with a difference. We are a social business. This means we give a 100 per cent of every single penny of the profits that we make are invested in different charities that we are passionate about.
We support three different charities. We support Shelter Scotland, the Microloan Foundation in Malawi, and an eye-care hospital in Bangladesh. Having only been open for a year and a half, we have so far funded a 100 eye-care operations in Bangladesh, funded 120 loans for women in Malawi to start their own business, and we have also made a significant contribution to Shelter Scotland
JOSH LITTLEJOHN:
With the help of the money we raised at The Scottish Business Awards last year, we have so far managed to open up four shops: two in Edinburgh, two in Glasgow, and a central production kitchen out in Livingston.
At the moment, we are employing 26 people. What's really unique is that 12 of those people used to be homeless.
IAN BROWN:
I was homeless for 14 years, then I [INAUDIBLE] I mean, when you're out, a [INAUDIBLE] never give you. And whether it rains nor whatever, you couldn't depend on it. The biggest thing in my life, it's I've got a job.
SONNY MURRAY:
When I first started, I was a bit apprehensive because I had to take methadone. I had to go [INAUDIBLE] The owners basically said to me, we work for Social Bite. It'll help with your problems. It'll give me a bank account and things like that, trying to get my passport.
JOHN BROWN:
When I first became homeless, I was 16. I met a girl and made [INAUDIBLE] with her. I had a child, got married, and then fell out with her, and ended back on the street again.
JOE HART:
I never had anywhere to stay, unless it was on a friend's couch or under a bridge.
PETER HART:
I used to sell the Big Issue on the [INAUDIBLE]. And that's how I met Jack, Josh, and Alice, obviously. Before then, I was homeless for six months, seven months. Then I met my mum and dad for the first time, moved in with them.
COLIN CHILDS:
Well, I was homeless. I was selling the Big Issue in Edinburgh. I knew a couple of the guys that were working for Social Bite. Joe said to me, would you like to come and distribute leaflets for the shop. I started on the dishes. Then he moved us up to the Central Kitchen here. It's stable now. It's got a flat through here, through Josh and Alice. That's brilliant.
JOE HART:
Every homeless person got a bad name, for some reason. Anyone can come here. It takes two wrong moves. You lose your job, can't pay your mortgage, you end up on the street. So it's an everyday situation that people don't realise.
JOHN BROWN:
I've had the keys for the shop. And I thought I would never be able to pay my debt. They'd close the shop up.
BILLY PAUL MCCONDOCHIE:
I do see a future here, a career. Because this is a start of something big. They're already on their third shop. And the fourth one's coming within weeks. So I want to do something big here.
JOE HART:
It's not just people like us that need it, but people come for other countries [INAUDIBLE] They know they can come in here and get a cup of tea, a sandwich, and they know there's money going out to the other countries, not just staying here. And that's [INAUDIBLE].
SONNY MURRAY:
I was needing a full-time kind of a job, especially with my girlfriend about to give birth. And ever since I've started at Social Bite, my life's totally changed for the better.
JOSH LITTLEJOHN:
The ultimate ambition for Social Bite is to try and replicate what we've achieved here, to create a large chain of sandwich shops to rival Pret A Manger or Subway, but do it completely for the social mission that we've established here.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[APPLAUSE AND CHEERING]
Thank you. Thank you. The great thing about a social enterprise is that once you get the model right, we're not quite there yet, but if we can get the model right and get it sustainable and financially profitable, then all you have to do is replicate that and you can multiply the social impact very quickly.
In the traditional sort of charity model, I might go to Gurge and say, Gurge, I've got a great idea to help the homeless. Can I have 10,000 pounds to do it? And he might be a generous guy, write me a check, and give it. And then I'll go and spend it and do good work.
Then I have to go back to him and say, and he said, what happened to the 10 grand I gave you? Said, I spent it. That's what nonprofits do. Whereas, with a social business, you can frame it in a way where it's replicable, it's self-propelling.
So, I want to finish with a quote from Steve Jobs, the late Steve Jobs, which, I think, kind of sums up the message I want to try and get across, which is, ‘When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is. And your life is just to live your life and try not to bash into the walls too much. But that is a very limited life.
Life can be much broader when you discover one simple fact. And that is the everything around you that you call life was made up by people who are no smarter than you. And you can change it. You can influence it. You can build your own things that other people can use.
Shake off this erroneous notion that life is just there, and you're just going to live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, and make your mark upon it. Once you learn that, you will never be the same again.’ That's true. Thanks.
[APPLAUSE]
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Rachel Arthur – Sustainability in fashion (watch the first five minutes only)
Transcript
[APPLAUSE AND CHEERING]
RACHEL ARTHUR:
Often the perception of the fashion industry is that it's a frivolous entity based on silly ideals about what we should wear and how we should look. I see certain people's eyes glaze over when I tell them this is the world in which I inhabit, the industry I spend my days writing about as a journalist and advising on as a consultant. It's seen as fluffy and fake, silly and superficial, vain and vacuous.
And yet truthfully, it's a $3 trillion global market. It accounts for 2 per cent of the world's GDP and employs close to 60 million people. While we may not think that fashion changes the world, it almost certainly impacts each and every one of our lives in some way, shape, or form, and it's set to do so even more up ahead.
My specialist area is technology, which gives me licence today to prove to you, I hope, that this is really one of the most innovative businesses out there. But more than that, it needs to be for the future sustainability of our planet. To do so, I wanted to start with something a little bit fun, and talk to you about the future of fashion through the lens of the expectation that film has set.
There's a scene in Back to the Future Part II where Marty McFly arrives in the future and dons a pair of self-lacing shoes. It's one of the most iconic moments in film history as far as technology goes, and particularly where fashion is concerned.
Now jump to today, nearly 30 years later. And of course, that's not standard footwear attire at all, despite the imagination that it would be. Then again, so too did the filmmakers believe that we would all be riding around on hover boards, wear instantly drying jackets as McFly also has on here, and have access to that little thing called time travel. Hollywood has long made promises that we've chased after ever since.
Let me give you another example where fashion is concerned. In 1995, Cher Horowitz of Clueless introduced us to her virtual wardrobe. It was an icon of desirability for every teenage girl at that point in time, of which I was massively a part. In her oversized desktop computer, she scrolled through all sorts of different looks that she could wear to school on any given day until she got her match.
It was a catalogue of all of the things she owned, but more than that, a symbol of the future for an intelligent, connected wardrobe, and importantly, for fashion and technology coming together. Of course, we still don't all own one of those either. So what about the invisibility cloak? Long a fantasy of folklore and fairy tale, it's also been a massive part of modern day literature and film, including the likes of Harry Potter.
Now while we don't own one of those either, all of these depictions I've given you in films so far do present some really quite incredible, not to mention feasible ideas for the future of our garments. If Hollywood has got it right, we will all be wearing clothes in the future that can do things like change shape, that can communicate with one another and the world around them, and that are so scientifically advanced that they can enable our bodies to do more and more wonderful things merely through the textiles themselves.
So why aren't we there yet? How have we got to 2016 where we are so technically advanced in everything else that we do, and yet we are still wearing the same garments as the generations before us and next to us?
The truth of the matter is fashion and technology are not the most intimate of bedfellows. One is cold and hard, the other warm and soft. And yet in spite of that, you might actually be quite surprised at the way in which they're already part and parcel of our lives.
Innovation in fashion is, in fact, all around us. You may have just not noticed it. All of you in this room are wearing wearable technology. I am wearing wearable technology. When I say that, I don't mean smart watches or fitness trackers, or all of those things that we've come to think of it as. I mean your tights, your shirts, even your bras.
The truth is, textiles are technology. They've transformed our world from trading in ancient times all the way through the Industrial Revolution and beyond. When we think about hosiery, for instance, we forget the fact that nylon stockings were built around innovations in polymers by DuPont just after the Second World War. Equally, we take for granted that Lycra was invented in the 1950s.
And did you know that Marks & Spencer was the first British retailer to open a research laboratory dedicated to pioneering new fabrics? That led to all sorts in the way of easy-care synthetics through to machine-washable wools. Innovation and Marks & Spencer, not two words that I thought I would be working together in a sentence on the TED stage.
Equally the idea of shirts that are crease-resistant or gym clothes that wick away moisture, very thankfully, are also things that we now just completely come to expect. We're used to this amazing amount of innovation from largely the big sportswear and outdoor brands.
As for our bras, let me tell you one incredible story. In 1965, the industrial division of underwear manufacturer Playtex managed to convince NASA to let it enter a design into a closed competition for the Apollo spacesuit. Now they had previously been pushed out at an earlier stage of the race for being, indeed, too frivolous a fashion company rather than an engineering one, therefore perceived not to have the technical skill.
And yet they went on to win it in just six short weeks of this part of the competition, praised for their high-level couture sewing skills and the expertise of their seamstresses. They had to make something that was flexible and strong enough, which of course, they had the know-how from making bras.
What resulted was a suit that was, of course, able to withstand the enormous demands of lunar exploration. It was a crucial part of the resulting astronaut success. So let me tell you this. A company that makes bras sent man to the moon.
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
The exciting thing is there is a lot more of this on the way. There's a tonne of innovation being put into that vision of the future. Those self-lacing shoes from Nike, for instance, they are really coming. The company has been through a reported 11 years of research and development to get to a prototype that went to the actor Michael J. Fox, of course, the man who played Marty McFly in those films, just last year.
And now this version looks like a normal shoe. Looks like the sort we wear from this brand all the time. And yet, it has that self-lacing technology embedded within it. And this will be on our retail shelves this year. So there you go. 2016, and finally that self-lacing technology we were promised in 1989 is really truly coming.
And the idea of things that change shape is being played around with too. This is a fashion show from a designer called Hussein Chalayan several years ago at Paris Fashion Week. And what happened was several looks came out onto the catwalk and started to adapt in form right before the audience's eyes. So as you can see here, a long-tiered design shortened into a mini before the bust area also changed shape.
Now all of that was possible thanks to microchips and animatronics, not the sort of thing that we're all going to wear every single day. But scientists are genuinely exploring this now. Can they make it possible in the textiles as well?
And they're doing it through complicated fibre science on a molecular level. It's not the sort of thing that's going to be in our wardrobes tomorrow, but it is being experimented with, and it's not a complete pipe dream, which is so completely astonishing. And the same thing goes for items that change colour and those that change texture. The sort of thing that all of us, I'm sure, would be very, very excited about.
And then there's that computer-aided system for getting dressed in the morning from Clueless. Now while there have been iterations of this on the market for many, many years, it's been too hard to commercialise, largely because, let's face it, we're all too lazy to manually capture and enter everything we own in our wardrobes already, which was what would be needed to kickstart it.
But now businesses like Avery Dennison and EVRYTHNG are automating that for us. They're putting chips in our clothing from the beginning of their life cycles. Not in a creepy way. Not in a way that identifies or tracks us. But in a way that connects our clothing to the grid to enable it to communicate with the world.
So what does that mean? Well, a personal stylist in the palm of our hands. An app, for instance. Somebody that's able to recommend to us exactly what we should wear in the morning, based on knowing what we've got up ahead, whether it's a normal day at work, an interview, a date night, you name it.
But even more exciting, and this is the bit I love, imagine if it could recommend, as you can see here, that you need to buy that red jumpsuit, because it matches something else that you've got in your wardrobe. Or it could tell you about things to go out and get, knowing your preferences and your interests and your lifestyle, because you've given it that sort of information up ahead.
That's the sort of thing that I am so excited about. It's like that Clueless wardrobe, that teenage dream come true, but on a much, much more heightened level. After all, how many of us have stood in front of our wardrobes and said, time and time again, I have nothing to wear?
[LAUGHTER]
Just imagine what it took for me to figure out what on Earth to wear to come today and give a TED Talk. And connected clothing is already getting more advanced, or certainly more useful now. This is a project from Levis and Google's Project Jacquard team. And it's a smart jacket. When I say smart, I don't mean a suit jacket, or indeed, formal attire at all. I mean smart in a technical sense.
So what it has is a textile interface on the left cuff of the sleeve that you can tap, swipe, and hold to do all sorts of different tasks like change music track, get access to voice-delivered navigation instructions, and more. And I should say, this is designed specifically with an urban cyclist in mind. And of course, if you are a cyclist, it's the sort of functionality that's really very useful.
But what I love about this is the fact that it looks good. And it looks good because of the fact it looks like a jean jacket, and not a piece of technology. And in fact, that's the whole point. The future of this space is about connected clothing where the tech is entirely invisible.
So what about that invisibility cloak then? Can you imagine if we could actually have this, or something like this? Well, scientists think they might have got to a point of making it possible. And they're doing so by making curved surfaces appear flat when they come into contact with electromagnetic waves. So it's about bending light around the human form.
And they're also exploring and taking inspiration from the way that refracted light creates the bold colour of the morpho butterfly, which is why I have this beautiful picture up here. And in fact, where nature comes in really does speak to the future of the space and the sort of innovations in our clothing that we will completely take for granted in the future.
There's all sorts of startups doing an incredible amount of amazing things here, but one of them that I'm tracking is called Bolt Threads. And what they're doing is creating artificial spider silk at scale. They're brewing it in fermentation vats and then spinning it into yarn to make a material that's stronger than Kevlar, but more durable and at least as flexible as Lycra, which is absolutely astounding.
And the amazing thing is, we're going to be able to wear this as well. They've partnered with Patagonia, the outerwear brand. So presumably, this will be coming to our coats and our jackets in the foreseeable future.
And then this one, Modern Meadow, is growing leather in a lab. I'm just going to say that again. They're growing leather in a lab. This is a little tiny strip of it that you can see here.
And it's kind of the same basis as Bolt Threads in they are imitating nature. So biomimicry is what we call it. And they're doing so by recreating the same proteins and fibres found in skin rather than taking it from the animal, taking it from livestock. The result is material that's not only more environmentally friendly, but aesthetically and functionally more advanced than what we find in nature too.
All of this combined is the beginning of a new material revolution, and never before has it been more necessary. The fashion industry is the second largest polluter in the world after oil. It accounts for 10 per cent of all global carbon emissions, uses a quarter of the chemicals produced worldwide each year, and comes just after agriculture in the amount of water it consumes.
Those soft cottons that you love, they're almost as bad as the man-made fibres we now tut over because of their petrochemicals. It takes 20,000 litres of water to create one pair of jeans and a single t-shirt.
And then we've got to get it to the pace that it needs to be. And let's face it. We'll probably all throw them away when we get bored of them. Our greed for new clothing now sees a 100 billion items produced worldwide each year. That's a 60 per cent increase since the year 2000, a 100 billion items. What's worse is that three out of five of those then end up in landfill or incineration within the same 12-month period.
Fashion, no matter what angle you look at it from, is seriously damaging our planet, so we have got to do something to change it. We need to produce less, on the one hand, but we also need to look at alternatives. Because the commercial side of this business is never really going to change the argument around volume.
This is what I really care about. This is when we go from frivolity to sustainability. This is where an innovation steps in so that fashion can really change the world, or certainly its world. This is when I realised how important technology is to the future of this industry.
For one that is fundamentally so intelligent, as I hope I have proven to you today, there is an incredible amount of unintelligent behaviour going on, and I just don't think it's good enough anymore. The fashion industry has to take more responsibility, and it has to start actioning greater change. We need a future of more innovative textiles and sustainable textile production in order to protect the world in which we live.
So I challenge you today to go away and think about what you're wearing. Appreciate the science behind the clothing on your back already. Fantasise and get excited about what that might look like in the future, because that vision is so important to drive this forward.
But more importantly, start demanding better choices from the brands that you buy from so that fashion as an industry has no choice but to reduce the damage that it does. Innovation and sustainability has got to be the thing we take for granted in the future, even if this industry is still perceived as a completely frivolous one. Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
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Now answer the following questions:
1. What (if anything) is ‘innovative’ about each enterprise?
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2. What types of innovation are discussed?
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3. What are the societal challenges experienced by each organisation?
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4. What (if anything) makes you think that the innovations are sustainable? Why?
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5. Watch the videos a second time and revisit your answers to Questions 1 to 4, modifying them if necessary. Have your views about innovation, entrepreneurship and sustainability changed? Make notes on any changes, if any, after watching the videos again.
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Now continue to the next section, which discusses the meaning of innovation.