We cannot consider digital disruptions as a paradigm shift in themselves. To be effective, a new paradigm touches upon our way of thinking about our relationship to ourselves and others. However, at the present time, new forms of collaboration are only emerging and still vulnerable. The big question is how they will modify our way of entrepreneurship.
The expression “new paradigm” generally describes a transition of Zeitgeist or a shift towards another “spirit of the times”; a cultural upheaval profoundly modifying our activities, practices, and policies.
Yet we sometimes hear the expression describing epiphenomena, such as accompanying the launch of new products, the arrival of a new manager, the appearance of a new political formation, etc.
Although impacting at the scale of their deployment, do these events nonetheless precipitate the world to redefine itself as the Copernican revolution, the industrial revolutions, etc., did?
We could also cite the irruption of new technologies as one of these major episodes. For 20 years, these have progressively invested every aspect of our lives and undeniably transform them.
I wanted to explore under what conditions the techno-economic evolutions caused by digital technology could constitute a paradigm shift.
By asking this question, the ambition is less to raise a controversy than to engage the entrepreneur who will read me on a question of foresight that will undoubtedly interest them more. Indeed, for the latter, understanding and anticipating social and cultural phenomena should constitute a decisive advantage, in the same way as technological changes.
This last idea, although self-evident, is today often amputated of its first part: The understanding and capacity to exploit technological evolutions is today, it seems to me, the conception of the predominant entrepreneur in digital ecosystems, media, or in technological branches of higher education. Synonymous with productivity gains and cost reduction, isn’t technology the lever of value creation par excellence?
Beyond this technological opportunism, entrepreneurial capacity also extends into the aptitude to propel new economic models. The uberisation of products and services proceeds from the movement driven by the integration of new technologies. And, although there is also a question about the response to be provided to human needs, these are scrutinized through the prism of available technological tools. The talent of the entrepreneur thus consists mainly in knowing how to pertinently adapt technology to the problems, desires, and wishes of groups and individuals.
With digital, the practices of the entrepreneur evolve. Is there nonetheless a paradigm shift – a cultural upheaval from which the human being transforms their link to others and to nature?
The collaborative economy (airbnb, laruchequiditoui, blablacar, etc.) proposes solutions maximizing the use of resources. We also see the emergence of concepts like the functional economy, characterizing solutions based on the use of products rather than their consumption. Michelin, Xerox, Dow Chemical, Airbus, etc. have evolved certain offers in this direction.
Entrepreneurs act, often out of opportunism, by limiting the impact on the environment and by innovating in the way they meet market needs. Is there nonetheless a change in logic? The observer will not see a change in our relationship to others: The organization of this type of company remains vertical, capital is generally concentrated, etc. Also, although consumption trends show an interest in ethical products (fair trade, organic agriculture, etc.), these markets remain marginal at the scale of the world population.
Although the deployment of new technologies, often eco-efficient, and the appearance of new, more socially responsible offers provoke the enthusiastic praise of the most optimistic, we continue, at the system scale, to draw from limited resources and are heading for disaster if we continue to operate against the laws of nature.
In this context, our capacity to live together will be tested by environmental disruptions. Irena, spearhead of the digital ecosystem in Macedonia, remarked that contributing to sustainability is not only acting to limit ecological upheavals but it is also acting to adapt to them and avoid a fragmentation of civilization. Finding new ways to organize ourselves to evolve together and do what we authentically wish is as important as renewing the way we respond to our needs.
So how must our mental and technical equipment, our know-how and our soft skills be recomposed? What practices would be those of the entrepreneur of the emerging paradigm? How would they “operate” their social and environmental sphere? What would be their motivations, their KPIs?
Rather than describing the functioning of a new macroeconomic system, a new utopia, let’s focus on how we could bring our current system to a viable and desirable transition towards new models, from “smarter” to “wiser”.
This possibility would only be possible on condition of changing the way we humans envision our relationship to ourselves and others.
This “Lean Transition” approach, step by step, is an invitation to innovate in emergence. Thus, more and more communities, organizations, groups of people are forming “labs” within which deep questionings have their place, reflections on the authentic nature of what we want to be and do together.
These labs proceed as much by planning according to the forecasting method, relying on their resources and experience of the past, as that of backcasting, informing planning decisions from the perspective of an attractive vision of the future as a collectively pursued goal.
Rather than opposing “business for profit” and “business for purpose”, the entrepreneur of the emerging paradigm thus poses a continuum, and engages their actions in coherence with an existentialist and exploratory principle of “become what you are”. Reinvention is authorized, encouraged, step by step.
Working in emergence with partners (associates and stakeholders) is a powerful experience of discovery. The most powerful because it allows for error and gives value to the path. We experiment. Is it nonetheless evolving in the absence of rules? Culture, values, operating modes are gradually formed, supported by new practices of dialogue.
This culture makes us evolve from “individual leadership” to “participatory leadership”. It will be useful to the new economy, by allowing the digital transition to be more human. And a strong sign of this paradigm shift would be the collaboration of entrepreneurs to support and accelerate the diffusion of the commons, to consider our resources as shared, towards a culture of interdependence characterized by the implementation of support ecosystems.
Benoît Guyot is a consultant-teacher in sustainable development strategy. He is also a facilitator.
Originally from Lille, after his business school studies in Lyon, Benoît started his career in 2007 as an intrapreneur in an agri-food company in Marseille. Taking a taste for entrepreneurship, Benoît then was a business developer for several clean technology companies in Sweden.
Confronted with the brakes and obstacles to the integration of technologies for the environment, he trained in “sustainable innovation” by following the MSLS program (Master in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability) at the Blekinge Institute of Technology (Sweden).
Now, he is involved in collaborative innovation projects with large groups, SMEs, and start-ups and intervenes as a teacher in several higher education institutions on the themes of innovation, entrepreneurship, and sustainable development.
