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  4. Driving global food system transformation with Kees Kruythoff

Driving global food system transformation with Kees Kruythoff

Kees Kruythoff is a globally experienced business person and entrepreneur who has lived and worked in Europe, South Africa, China, Brazil, and the U.S. He’s committed to building solutions to create a more sustainable and equitable world, but his real passion is finding solutions to drive transformation of the global food system.

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5 min read

From Unilever to Summa Equity

For 27 years Kees worked for Unilever, leading the implementation of the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan, but having left Unilever in 2019, Kees is now Thematic Chair for Sustainable Food for Summa Equity.

“While the biggest challenge for the world right now is around climate change and inequality, there’s one system which desperately needs our attention and the moment you see it you can’t unsee it, and that’s our food and agriculture system. How we eat is destroying the planet.”

Kees Kruythoff

Our food system is destroying the planet

Over the last 50 years the global population has doubled and agriculture capacity has tripled, which is an incredible achievement, but the unintended consequence of this is absolutely horrific. In Brazil for example, says Kees, 90% of deforestation in the Amazon is linked to rearing animals for food.

So, is the solution to our broken food system to go plant based? What other solutions really are there? And what do these solutions actually require of the food industry? And of us as a consumer?

The broken food system is a wicked problem, says Kees, and like any wicked problem, it has multi dimensional parts, which have to be resolved. In fact, there are six real problems in the broken food system:

  1. 800 million people go to bed hungry

  2. Two and a half billion people are food insecure

  3. The true cost of the system is much higher than we think

  4. 20% of the total health costs in the world are directly related to food

  5. 1/3 of all food is wasted

  6. 34% of the total greenhouse gasses in the world are directly or indirectly being associated with the current food system

So where can we start to make change? By switching from an animal based food system to a plant based food system, says Kees. Because it’s a lower emission form of protein.

What we can learn from Paul Polman

Unilever has a $50 billion revenue, $150 billion plus market cap with more than 170,000 people in 180 countries. Yet since 2009, Unilever has been working to achieve a sustainable living plan. So what can we learn from Paul Polman and this global corporation?

Courageous leadership starts with a clear North Star

It all starts with courageous leadership, says Kees, and courageous leadership starts with having a very clear North Star. Back in 2009 at Unilever, they said they wanted to double Unilever and at the same time halve their environmental footprint, while increasing their social impact. And they did that by putting purpose at the core of their business model. Because, says Kees, purpose and performance are one and the same thing. And they held themselves accountable by being 100% transparent.

The evolution in the food industry

With this desperate need to transform the global food system, what change has Kees seen in the food industry as a whole lately?

“If you look at the bigger companies, the Danone’s, or the Nestle’s, or Unilever’s of the world, everybody has very, very clear targets that have been set. Which is good. But the reality is that business is responsible for achieving these targets and progress is far, far too slow.”

Kees Kruythoff

One of the biggest enemies to transformation, says Kees, is the legacy systems that are still in place. Humans really do want to do their best, and to bring about tangible change, but too often it can seem like a hard thing to do, particularly when the legacy systems are so strong. For example, changing consumer habits.

In a global food system, the consumer is the boss, says Kees, to get them to change their food consumption, you need to create a value proposition that is irresistible. It needs to taste good, be nutritionally valuable, and cost effective. If you don’t achieve these three things, you can’t hope to change consumer habits, and you can’t hope to shift the system. And we saw this during the pandemic.

In 2020, there was an enormous upturn towards alternative sources of protein away from meat, but since then, the desire for plant based protein alternatives has cooled off, because, says Kees, the taste wasn’t good enough, the nutritious values weren’t good enough – there was too much salt in it – and ultimately, the pricing wasn’t competitive.

Food is our medicine

We have multiple global crises ongoing right now, and a lot of them are linked to food, says Kees. Climate change is linked to food, our biodiversity issues are linked to food, as are our health problems. If we’re just a little more conscious about what we’re eating, and where our food comes from, and what kind of ingredients go into it, we could live a longer and more happy life, we can improve the planet, and we can improve biodiversity.

“Food is one of the biggest problems that we have. But it’s also the medicine we put in our mouth every day. So there’s a huge upside just by making small changes, and we all can do it.”

Kees Kruythoff

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  4. Using conscious leadership to move from I to we with Stefan Beiten

Using conscious leadership to move from I to we with Stefan Beiten

If you want your organization to move from I to We, you need conscious leadership, says Stefan Beiten, entrepreneur, lawyer, film producer and public speaker. You need to utilize the collective wisdom and collective intelligence of those around you, if you hope to solve the problems we face in the modern world.

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5 min read

But what does conscious leadership actually mean?

The way to think about it, says Stefan, is to consider your iPhone. Over the last 15 years the team at Apple have constantly upgraded their hardware and apps, evolving and developing their product with every iteration to meet the changing needs of their users. If they didn’t, if they stuck with the initial operating system 1.0, the world would be in a very different place right now. But that’s what we’re doing as humans.

“We’re constantly upgrading the world we live in, constantly making it more complex, and therefore the challenges we face are getting harder.”

Stefan Beiten

But we’re not upgrading our ability to find new solutions. For that, says Stefan, we need to upgrade our consciousness, our human operating system. Too many of us still use our 17th century operating system, which is to simply use our cognitive intelligence, and ignore everything else.

Become the awareness behind your thoughts

Peter Drucker’s simple wisdom of ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’ helped shape Stefan’s life philosophy of ‘become the awareness behind my thoughts and feelings’.

What it means to be truly alive

What makes you truly alive. The concept of aliveness. That is what I mean by saying “be the awareness behind the feelings”, and especially my interpretations of reality, which are usually an end permutation not effect.

Stefan’s foray into conscious leadership began when he realized he was successful, but he wasn’t fulfilled. That there was a difference between the two. And to be fulfilled he needed to reinvent himself, a feat which took him almost five years, rebuilding himself from scratch.

We have the power to control it

One of the core teachings of yoga, says Stefan, is that life happens in the space between – when we have an impulse, an emotion, which turns into a feeling, this is an interpretation of the emotion. And as humans we have the power to fill that space, we don’t have to simply experience what happens to us, we have the power to control it. Because these impulses don’t come from nowhere. But we need to have awareness to recognise this space and to act.

How to create a conscious organization

We’re hardwired with a fear based, reactive mind, says Stefan, and to make a conscious organization we have to develop a completely different mindset and create a new space where we can have different conversations than go beyond interacting with content, to interacting together through context.

Doing this changes the conversation to conversation that can’t ordinarily happen in the normal transaction space, because in order to have the type of conversations a conscious organization has to have, you need to have a space of absolute trust, of listening with the heart, and of being able and willing to share vulnerably.

To instill this in an organization, says Stefan, is the task of the Argonauts, a global community for courageous innovators, executives, and entrepreneurs, who are inspired to find their own meaning as changemakers.

“It’s the idea of assembling heroes, single heroes that are at the peak of their success and we bring them into this third resonant space to create a We group of heroes.”

Stefan Beiten

The Argonauts provide a space of psychological safety, a meaning-making layer in an organization next to the administrative layer, the money making layer, the production layer. This is a space that used to be filled by the churches or other similar institutions, but now, says Stefan, many of us are turning to work, to for-profit organizations as the space to provide that meaning making.

Finding your Argonauts

Over the past four years, over 200 leaders from over 200 companies globally have gone through Stefan’s program. Everything from a startup to a scale up to a highly established company which has been around over 115 years, have all gone through the program, and the fascinating thing, says Stefan, is what connects them all, is that every single person who went through the program, changed the conversation in their company. They changed the way they collaborate with one another, the speed of innovation, their ability to handle complexities, and most importantly, they broke up their silo problem.

And it all starts with finding your 7%. These are the people in your organization who are in tune with the world, who understand and are aware of their responsibility, who have empathy, understanding and want to go on the journey with you.

“This is the biggest task most HR departments have, finding the rock stars of your conscious culture. So we developed a psychological assessment that allows us to precisely find that special group of future leaders.”

Stefan Beiten

These 7% then undergo a series of steps, learning to become champions of the trust circle in your company. After a year, says Stefan, they become intrapreneurs and champions and moderators or their own circles. They go through the collective journey first, and then they become internal practitioners, widening the usage of and the introduction of their trust circle journey in the organization.

Within 12 to 18 months, you have a whole inner community that connects and becomes a collective and collaborative superpower. Then these groups become interdependent, interacting with one another cross departmentally – the dream of modern management.

It all starts with trust and purpose

Without trust and purpose, says Stefan, you cannot have a successful organization. You need the human element, and that starts with trust. And in order to build trust and be able to align individual purpose with the mission of the company, that’s where the next level of leadership comes in, the non-transactional leadership, the transformational conscious leadership.

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  4. How to become your best self with Adam Grant

How to become your best self with Adam Grant

In this episode of Summa & Friends, Adam discusses boundary setting, why we need a network of disagreeable givers, why we need to ask for advice rather than feedback, and why his ultimate passion is self improvement.

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8 min read

An organizational psychologist and a best selling author

Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist at Wharton and best selling author. He is also recognised as one of the world’s 10 most influential management thinkers with interests spanning areas such as the science of motivation and generosity, original thinking and rethinking and so much more. But beneath all that, what is his passion, his drive, that thing he’s most willing to suffer for?

Self improvement, says Adam. Everything he studies is about how to bring out the best in ourselves and those around us, so naturally, that includes him too.

“It’s why I ended up becoming a springboard diver even though I was afraid of heights. It’s why I ended up becoming a professor and started giving TED Talks even though I had a fear of public speaking.”

Adam Grant

The importance of setting boundaries

In every industry, in every culture around the world, says Adam, there are three styles of interaction that show up time and again: people are either givers, takers, or matchers. What does that mean?

If you’re a giver, says Adam, you’re constantly asking, what can I do for you? If you’re a taker, you want to know what others can do for you; but for most people who don’t want to be taken advantage of or take advantage of others, we choose to be matchers, whereby we’ll do something for others if they do something for us.

There are three questions you need to ask yourself

One thing Adam noticed with givers in particular, is they struggled with setting boundaries. Adam says when it comes to boundaries, there are three questions you need to ask yourself: Who are you helping? How are you helping? And when are you helping?

Learn to identify who is a taker, a matcher or a giver

The who question is to protect yourself. You have to learn to identify whether the person who’s asking for help is a taker, a matcher, or a giver, because if somebody has a history or a reputation of selfish behavior, you don’t want to reward that by continuing to help them and draining yourself in the process.

“I had to learn a long time ago to stop giving career advice to strangers. First of all, if I don’t know you, you should not take my career advice. Secondly, and maybe more importantly, I felt really uncomfortable giving people direction about where their life ought to go. I’m like, I don’t even know what I want to do with my life. That’s why I study other people’s jobs.”

Adam Grant

We can all become original

You’d have thought, says Adam, that personality would be a key driver behind someone being original or not, that you have to be a big risk taker, an early adopter, or single minded in your conviction to be a successful entrepreneur or inventor, but the research tells a different story.

Successful entrepreneurs and inventors, says Adam, are actually more likely to be risk averse than their peers, constantly trying to avoid failure and come up with backup plans and de risk whatever options they’re pursuing. They’re often late to the party, frequently procrastinating instead of rushing ahead with their first idea, because they’re waiting for their best idea.

“This is encouraging for all of us who have ever felt like, I’m not a daredevil, I’m not somebody who has had a eureka moment of how I want to move the world. If you just give yourself a little bit of time and allow yourself a little patience to generate more ideas, you’re in a better position to not only come up with an original thought, but then be prepared to take action on it.”

Adam Grant

How to create a culture of radical transparency

If you want to create a culture of radical candor in your organization, says Adam, take a leaf out of Bridgewater Associates’ book. They evaluate you on whether you’re constructively challenging the people above you, i.e. in order to get high performance marks, you have to criticize your boss’s boss occasionally.

“We found in a series of studies that a lot of leaders say my door is open, tell me whatever, [but] people don’t know whether you mean it. Are you going to take it seriously, are you going to bite their heads off, or are you going to be too busy or too distracted to pay attention?”

If you want to actually create a culture of radical candor, you need to go the extra step and criticize yourself outloud. That way you’re not just claiming you’re open to feedback, you’re proving you can take it and action it in a way that benefits not just you, but the whole company.

Build a network of disagreeable loyalists

“I’d always assumed that if you’re a giver, you’re also an agreeable person, that you’re going to be nice and warm and friendly and polite. And I found that those qualities didn’t overlap at all, that there are plenty of givers who are disagreeable. They want to be helpful, but they are critical and skeptical and challenging.”

What struck Adam most about this discovery, is that often disagreeable loyalists are the ones who will challenge you the most, and who will bring original ideas to the table, because their idea of helping is to actually rock the boat. One of the best things you can do in your organization is reward the people who disagree with you, who challenge you, says Adam. Because it signals to the rest of the organization that this is desirable, valued behavior.

“Steve Jobs understood the value of a challenge network, he surrounded himself with disagreeable givers who saw a better way to advance the mission, even though it conflicted with Jobs’ vision, and, hey, if you could challenge Steve Jobs, you could probably challenge anyone.”

Adam Grant

How to elevate yourself and others

“One of the most important things I’ve learned is that a lot of people, as they start to improve at any skill or task, start to get a little complacent. And they feel like I’m a lot better than I was last year. And I’m getting lots of affirmation. And they basically stop looking for ways and reasons to grow. And that leaves them to stagnate or to plateau.”

As Adam began to conquer his fear of public speaking it went from people giving him suggestions for improvement, to people thanking him for the talk, which didn’t do anything to help him improve and become a better speaker. He then discovered that instead of asking people for feedback and getting nothing in return, when he switched tact and started asking people for advice, asking what is the one thing he could do better next time, it turned out people were more willing to give feedback, plus, they also gave more constructive suggestions.

“If you ask for feedback, feedback is backward looking. It leaves people to look at what you did wrong, and then they have to figure out are they comfortable criticizing you? Advice is forward looking, you’re not judging what I just did, you’re telling me what I could do better tomorrow. And this idea of asking people for specific advice about how to improve might be the most practical thing I’ve learned about how to improve at improving.”

Adam Grant

The world needs more compassion

A lot of people will say the world needs more empathy, says Adam, but what we actually need is more compassion. Empathy is feeling other people’s feelings, but it can be a double edged sword. Empathy can lead you to help the people whose feelings you have an easy time relating to, but not the people who don’t belong to your culture.

It’s therefore more sustainable, says Adam, to have compassion rather than empathy. Instead of feeling other people’s feelings, all you have to do is notice and care about their feelings. And that makes you more likely to respond and try to alleviate whatever distress they’re experiencing. We don’t need to stop being empathetic, says Adam, that’s not realistic or effective. But being more compassionate is more important and more sustainable than empathy.

And never stop learning, advises Adam. Don’t choose a job or career based on status or financial gain. Ask yourself instead, which job is going to stretch your skills the most, which organization is going to give you dedicated mentoring, and the company is invested in your long term career growth?

“I also think an organization where more senior people are available, not just to talk to you in a mentoring sense, but actually to watch you do some of your work and coach you, that’s a leading indicator that you’re going to grow and in the long run, people who grow the most end up contributing the most.”

Adam grant

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  4. Put people before purpose and humanize leadership with Gianpiero Petriglieri

Put people before purpose and humanize leadership with Gianpiero Petriglieri

“My passion is this idea of humanizing leadership, of making space for all that is messy and contradicting and complicated in people and in the systems they inhabit.”

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7 min read

If you’ve spent your time trying to create a great place to work, where you’re surrounded with people that you love, who share your values, who share your purpose, where you feel safe to bring your whole self to work, where you can practice radical honesty and self leadership, but it’s a constant struggle, says Gianpiero Petriglieri, Professor of Organizational Behavior at INSEAD, and one of the 50 most influential management thinkers in the world, you’re succeeding.

“My passion is this idea of humanizing leadership, of making space for all that is messy and contradicting and complicated in people and in the systems they inhabit.”

Because real leadership, humanized leadership, says Gianpiero, is caring about people and bringing them to life in a way that isn’t just efficient, but is sustainable. How can we help each other? How do we hold each other up? How do we support and challenge each other as we build the kinds of organizations that we want to build, not just to invest in, but to live in.

People before purpose

Too many leaders put purpose before their people, says Gianpiero, but good leadership is a balancing act between loving people and loving a purpose.

You don’t want to have to drag people toward your vision and focus so much on the purpose, on the idea, on the principle that once you get to where you’re trying to get to, everything is going to be okay. It’s much better and much more functional to actually do it the other way around.

Because if your purpose isn’t clear, or it’s still emerging, you need to make sure that people feel they have the space, both the space of mind but also the physical space, to think, to have hope that you’re going to get to where you want to go.

“I think of leadership as a story that moves you or others, or moves from idea to reality. And the story needs to move in all three ways. If it doesn’t move you you lose motivation, if it doesn’t move others you lose followers, you lose results.”

The need to be able to shift pace

Executives, says Gianpiero, tend to take inspiration from endurance athletes and their capacity to sustain focus and suffer through fatigue and pain and push through in order to get to their results. But what these execs don’t realize is that professional athletes take rest and recovery very seriously, whereas in business, leaders don’t really rest and recover, we instead tend to push ourselves harder and harder without stopping.

“In athletics, the more successful and the closer you get to the top, the more support you acquire: mental coach, nutritionist, managers, athletic coach, technical coach etc and the job of all those people is to make sure you push yourself at the limit of your performance for just the right moment in the right time, but also that you do work that is more focused on recovery.”

Leaders need to learn how to slow down and recover in between sprints, says Gianpiero, rather than go faster and faster until we lose form and at the individual level we burn out, and at the organizational level we plateau.

“Do you understand when is it time to take a step back, or slow down, and when it’s time to push through and accelerate and try to go to the edge of your comfort zone and expand it?”

What makes a leader in our times

Leadership is all about storytelling, says Gianpiero. Everyone can tell a good story, but great stories are not just told, they’re built. What does that mean? You can’t give a story to others if you don’t embody it yourself, he says. In order to lead and tell inspirational stories you have to be able to articulate them by embodying them.

You also have to realize that work is so much more than just something we go to for eight hours a day; for many of us it’s part of our life’s mission. We’re all moved by trying to do something meaningful, to leave something behind, or to touch others when we’re no longer there. And where we used to find meaning in organized religion or military campaigns, says Gianpiero, today we get that sense of purpose through our work.

“Once you start seeing work not just as a way to make money or to stay safe, but as a way to actually do something that will last, work is no longer a technical or an instrumental enterprise. It’s existential, it’s a human aesthetic enterprise.”

How to become a better leader

If you’ve ever struggled trying to juggle confident leading with being human and having uncertainties and vulnerabilities, then you’re doing a good job, says Gianpiero. You could keep quiet and standstill and hope no one notices you don’t have the answers, or keep acting like you do have all the answers without ever actually finding them.

“If you just act without asking, you’re a fundamentalist, you don’t have ideas, you just keep hammering. And if you just ask without ever acting, then you’re a philosopher, which is also not great. But as a leader, you need the courage to act, which makes you move forward, and you need the courage to ask, and that keeps you safe.”

We all have friends, says Gianpiero, but what kind of friends are they? Are they the kind of friends who reinforce what you already know, or are they the type who will push you and enhance your learning? Friends of learning, he adds, usually help you close the gap between who you are and who you could be.

If you’re a senior executive, finding people who will push you to be better gets harder the higher up the organization you are. People assume you already have the answers, the resources to find the answers, but this is an outdated form of leadership, where followers believe leaders should have the answers and are there to make them feel safe and secure. When in truth, a good leader should point in a certain direction and then ask followers to fill the gaps and work out how to get there.

“The best they can do is to say, look, I’m not gonna ask you to do anything, I’m not asking myself, I’m gonna struggle with the same questions you’re struggling with. And I’m gonna try to build the same railway you’re trying to build, then we’ll get there together.”

Don’t let anyone call you a future leader

There is no such thing as a future leader, says Gianpiero. Leaders don’t wait to lead, they make choices and live with the consequences of those choices.

“Don’t let anyone ever call you a future leader. I hate when people go, ‘you are the future leaders of this firm, or of this planet’, which usually means, okay, for now just fall in line and do as I tell you, and then maybe one day you’ll get the keys to the car.”

Leadership is always articulated in the present tense, as in leaders for the future. Leadership is not something that you can put in the refrigerator, and then take out in 15 years, says Gianpiero, be a future leader, and lead from the start.

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  4. How Norway plans to transition to a low carbon economy with Martin Skancke

How Norway plans to transition to a low carbon economy with Martin Skancke

Martin Skancke is chairman of the Norwegian government’s commission on transition to a low carbon economy, he is also chairman of PR (Principles for Responsible Investment) and board member in several companies. Previously, he led an expert group on climate risk in the government’s pension fund global and also the Norwegian climate risk committee. As well as served as Director General at the office of the Norwegian Prime Minister.

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8 min read

Developing a passion to resolve the climate crisis

There was no one single moment of epiphany, says Martin, it was a more gradual realisation following the global financial crisis in 2008.

“I came into the climate issue in particular sustainability issues, with a sort of Asset Management Risk hat on and then as you start digging into those issues, you see that there are lots of much more broader societal issues, ethical issues.”

Martin was asked a few years ago to advise the Norwegian Ministry of Finance on how they could better incorporate climate into the mandate as a risk factor for the fund, and how they should think about climate as a risk factor for the fund. So he did, and they changed the mandate, according to his recommendations. But then they were afraid the fund would become politically entangled in all kinds of difficult political issues, and it would carry a lot of reputational risk.

But, as the fund grew, their position became untenable for two reasons. Firstly, there were a lot of expectations about what it meant to be a responsible owner. And secondly, the fund became so large it wasn’t possible for them to just rely on other investors to discipline management in the companies they’d invested in.

And this, says Martin, is the area where there’s been the greatest change in the fund over the last few years, raising lots of issues around what economists call principal agent problems and the relationship between the owners of companies and the manager of companies.

Principal agent problems

As an owner of a company, you have a very long time horizon, says Martin, for example, the sovereign wealth fund was essentially set up as a permanent fund and should in theory exist permanently, whereas the companies you invest in usually would have a much shorter time horizon. And so one of the issues with, for instance, climate, is how do you incentivise management to take account of a risk factor that is beyond the horizon of most corporate planning cycles?

And this, says Martin, poses an interesting question: can the managers of listed equities learn from the managers of private equity in terms of addressing corporate governance issues?

Norway’s transition to a low carbon economy

Martin is due to publish a report in November on Norway’s transition to a low carbon economy. While the mandate was broad, covering multiple topics including the links between climate issues and nature issues, Martin says in summary, the report covers three key points about how we must change in terms of our thinking about climate policy:

  1. Time horizon: We need to think with a much longer time horizon in our climate policy. For too long we’ve been very focused on short term strategies for short term reductions in emissions. And now we need to think about promoting solutions that actually fit in a low carbon society by 2050.

  2. The breadth of emissions: We need to realise that when we talk about deep cuts in emissions, the ambition here is cutting our emissions by 90 to 95% by 2050. So it’s not a question of marginal changes, but a total transformation that will affect most sectors of the economy.

  3. Systematic thinking: Until now, climate policy has been developed in an ad hoc fashion. And a lot of the expectations we have about climate policy are actually self fulfilling. So, says Martin, if we expect climate policy in the future will be much tighter, we will make investments today that reflect that, and will actually help us meet the climate objectives. And vice versa. If people don’t believe that climate policy will be successful, they will make investments accordingly. And it will reduce the chance of actually achieving success and climate policy.

Martin gives examples where in recent years Norway hasn’t been thinking long term, or systematically. For example, they’ve encouraged the use of biofuels for road transport, which in the short term is good to bring down emissions, but isn’t sustainable for the long term because biofuels create a lot of extra pressure on land use globally.

Then there’s the encouragement of individuals to purchase electric cars, which again, in the short term decarbonise the transport system and results in lower emissions, but these cars have a large footprint in terms of the resources needed to build them. So, rather than incentivising everyone to own a huge electric car, says Martin, we need to start on the other end and think about how we can design our societies, our cities, so that we reduce the need for mobility.

“We started at the opposite end, we started by incentivising everyone to buy their own electric car. And I think we’ll find that policy will be difficult to reverse. But if we had thought more systematically about a solution that has a natural place in 2050, we would have maybe thought about it differently.”

The global institutional failure

While the ‘polluter pays’ principle is effective in some aspects, says Martin, it doesn’t require politicians to have a view on a specific policy, rather it encourages a reliance on innovation to reduce emissions. Meaning a lot of the decisions that need to be made are being made by non market actors, rather than local governments; and local governments have a huge part to play in the transition to a low carbon economy.

“In Norway, municipalities have responsibilities for decisions on land use. They have responsibility for decisions on transport and transport systems, waste management, and lots of other issues that are central to the transition to a low carbon economy.”

That is just one example, says Martin, there are many stakeholders involved in the transition to a low emission society, and this is a problem.

“This is actually an issue of institutional failure, that we don’t have any institutions that are set up to deal with these types of complex issues at the local level, and at the national level, and at the global level.”

The risk side of transitioning late

The risk is so much higher now, says Martin, because Norway is constantly postponing the transition to a low carbon economy. Both the physical risk is accumulating and is getting higher, but also the transition risk is increasing too, because when the transition begins, the faster it has to go. And that fast transition, says Martin, is much more challenging from a risk perspective. There will be dislocations in markets, sudden changes in expectations that can change valuations, and an increased risk of financial instability.

Starting the transition earlier, says Martin, and making change gradually, would have been the best approach. But we’re past the point now where we can reach the climate objectives by doing things slowly and deliberately. We’re actually now in a place where we need to move fast, but a faster transition brings with it increased physical risks that we aren’t prepared to deal with.

The world needs more climate policy action

While the financial sector is taking the need for policy action very seriously, we need more credibility around the trajectory of climate policy over the coming years, says Martin. Because when we have a shortfall in policy, politicians compensate by setting higher ambitions rather than delivering on the ambitions that already existed, which creates a trust deficit.

“We don’t need higher ambitions, we need more action on delivering. We’ve done some of the easiest stuff, but we will not solve this problem only by those types of policies. We need to do more difficult stuff. And that necessitates leadership. And we have a leadership deficit in this area.”

So, how can people get involved? These issues are really complex, says Martin, it takes a lot of skills to try to solve them. You need to have passion, you need a commitment, and you need to have the interest. But you also need hard skills, and you need to understand natural systems, technology, and economics, and you need to learn all of these tools to get a good toolbox you can use to address these problems.

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  4. How to leverage holistic systems thinking in Private Equity investing with Tanya Carmichael

How to leverage holistic systems thinking in Private Equity investing with Tanya Carmichael

Tanya Carmichael is an experienced private equity investor and leader who came from the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan in Canada, but today serves as a thought partner and advisor to investment leaders who want to amplify their impact in private equity investing.

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6 min read

“I view this as the challenges and solutions coming down to the people. And that seems to be for some reason, a harder nut to crack. And so I really was inspired to see how I could impact the system.”

The convergence of challenges

Investment firms, says Tanya, have expanded their expression of who they are and why they talk about their top priorities. They point to things like culture and collaboration, sustainability, diversity, and disruption. Some of which are very often labeled as soft skills, despite being the hardest ones and the most difficult ones to achieve.

But what is driving this shift for companies to become more purpose driven, and why is it happening now?

“It’s happening now because many things are happening at the same time and have been for a long time. And they’re not going away. [It’s] a more complex world and investing environment with social, geopolitical, other challenges, economic challenges. And that raises questions, which are exponential when you start peeling back the onion.”

Post the dot com bubble, says Tanya, things seemed to be going in the right direction, but now, fractures have begun to appear that beg the question – whose responsibility is it, and how can you play be both a contributor to challenges and solver of the problems?

The main challenges facing investment leaders

We have a long history of deferring to investment leaders with strong competencies, track records, a pedigree in all sorts of areas, direct experience leading organizations, making investments, attending traditional business schools etc, to define what success looks like, says Tanya. But to find solutions for the new challenges the industry is experiencing, doesn’t necessarily draw upon those more traditional skill sets and experience basis.

We need more EQ-oriented leaders to shine and show their ‘soft skills’; those things that are more in line with connecting with people, with figuring out how to inspire, lead, and engage. These things, says Tanya, are no longer optional. They’re not nice to have, they’re imperative.

“It’s going to be a case of taking a step back, being a bit humble, or being left behind. It is really that stark of a choice… We need more questions and more talking about what hasn’t worked, and less talking about perfection.”

How leaders of a reimagined future will be rewarded

The leaders who show up more willing to talk about what they don’t know, who invite others in, and who make the table bigger, e.g. through diversity, diversity of thought, inclusive leadership, etc, leaders who know they can’t go it alone, will instantly be rewarded, says Tanya, because that is authentic.

“They’ll be rewarded in a few ways all at the same time, if they go down this path. They will not be alone with their worries and their stress of needing to figure out ESG, or DEI, or sustainability, or whatever the challenges they’re facing.”

By addressing issues such as lagging employee engagement, for example, by showing employees that leadership wants to hear what they say, that they’re joint problem solving, that they’re equipping them, empowering them to show up and do their best work to create value, and their investments truly innovate and disrupt, that’s how leaders will reap a reward.

And that’s just within the organization, says Tanya. Attracting and retaining talent is another big challenge private equity businesses face, as is competing to buy, own and manage businesses. Portfolio company CEOs often have a choice about who they want to partner with. And the values of the firm, the authenticity of the leader, what they stand for, the track record of having done this before, all contribute to the brand value creation success of the firm.

“Learning questions are far more important than answers. Saying what you don’t know is like a new superpower. It shows vulnerability. It conveys openness. And so I think that is the new currency.”

How to navigate unchartered territory

At Summa Equity, says Reynir Indahl, they’re pushing their companies to set sustainability targets. But the pushback they’re getting is: we can’t set the targets when we haven’t figured out how to get there. Reynir counters that it doesn’t matter; set the targets and get the organization to figure out how to get there.

“People love being part of the solution and being part of this. A lot of leaders I see are worried about this uncharted territory. It’s important that leaders just admit: ‘I don’t know how to get there and we need to do this together’.”

Encourage your team to take risks, to speak out and ask questions, advises Reynir. Anytime you have a conversation, welcome a challenge to what you’re saying. The danger is if you’re not hearing questions, or if people don’t feel like they can speak up, that they will be not rewarded at best and punished at worst.

“If you’re a leader, don’t be the one speaking first. Make room. Know what you don’t know. And don’t think that having the answer is what people value the most within your firm.”

Global problems need collaborative solutions

The world needs us to work together right now, says Tanya, these are joint problems we’re facing, so we need joint solutions. We need a leadership that is focused on humility, focused on the collective, focused on the connection between investment returns, individual priorities, and purpose, social, environmental challenges, because all of these things are connected to each other.

“The one aspect we need to figure out how to make coexist is competition and collaboration. Investment firms, private equity, are competitive, they need to be competitive, they need to have an edge, they need to compete for talent. But these wicked problems that we’re all facing, cannot be solved by individual organizations.”

A great culture that can deliver these types of extraordinary outcomes don’t just happen, says Tanya, they require intentionality; they require leaders and teams to be on the same page. So leaders, advises Tanya, pay attention to your culture, really invest in it, and understand what steps you need to take in order to make your culture strong, because that will be essential to tackling our collective challenges.

 

Read more about Tanya Carmichael here.

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  4. The importance of the circular economy with Bertrand Camus

The importance of the circular economy with Bertrand Camus

Bertrand Camus joined Summa Equity in September 2022 as a member of the Resource Efficiency team, working to identify investment opportunities, develop strategies, and support portfolio companies, with a particular focus on the circularity, waste, and water sectors.

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7 min read

Having spent 27 years at the French multinational utility company SUEZ, Bertrand Camus joined Summa Equity in September 2022 as a member of the Resource Efficiency team, working to identify investment opportunities, develop strategies, and support portfolio companies, with a particular focus on the circularity, waste, and water sectors.

In this episode, Bertrand, Reynir, and Vesna discusses the opportunities that are coming next for the waste and circular industry are enormous.

The theory of change

Theory of change, says Bertrand, is about changing the system. If we keep on going as we have done for the past few decades, we will never solve the global challenges we’re up against.

“The theory of change is really defining how the system should change to achieve goals of resource efficiency. First of all, [we need to] drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, CO2 in particular; the second thing is to improve access to resources, and the planet is limited.”

We know that there’s going to be a struggle in the future for the scarce resources Earth has, not to mention the detrimental impact we wreck on biodiversity every time we extract these materials from nature. The theory of change allows us to think about how the system should be, the destination, what needs to change, and what the path to get there looks like, says Bertrand.

But to do this, everyone needs to play their part, because we will not be able to change the system and address this wicked problem if we aren’t all pulling in the same direction.

Reduce, reuse, recycle

When we speak about the theory of change in terms of waste management, says Bertrand, it’s about reusing, reducing, and recycling, with the aim of lowering carbon emissions.

We could achieve this by simply dividing our consumption in two or dividing the number of journeys we make in half, etc., but most people aren’t going to want to do that, nor do we want to do that to society, because material usage has brought prosperity into our economies, in particular in northern countries in Europe. By switching to a more circular economy, we can still enjoy this prosperity, while having a much lower impact on the planet, both in terms of CO2 emission and biodiversity.

However, warns Reynir, it doesn’t matter if every single waste management company in the world starts heading in the same direction, if the industrial companies, the government, the consumers don’t also act in a similar fashion – with the same end goals and outcomes in mind – we won’t achieve this reduction in impact.

“The theory of change is not a strategy plan for any one company. But it informs the strategy planning for us as an investor looking at investing to solve global challenges. This theory of change informs where we should invest, and maybe where we shouldn’t. It informs our view of where the world is going and how this challenge is going to be solved.”

The problem with a linear economy

While the focus is on creating a circular economy, and there is a clear shift towards this, things are moving slowly, says Reynir. If you measure how much is being recycled, and how fast the circular economy is developing, it’s surprisingly slow when you look at the numbers. The amount of waste still going to landfills in Europe is shocking.

You just have to look at the inefficiencies all around us, adds Bertrand, to see what opportunities are available – for example, most personal cars are only used 5% of the time, yet the environmental impact that goes into their creation is enormous. Or the construction industry could reduce the quantity of iron and steel and concrete it uses to achieve the same results if architectural design was better done, or if more care and concern went into material and resource usage.

“Circular is not only about recycling, it’s about reducing the user’s material. So trying to eliminate those inefficiencies.”

The EUR 230 billion investment opportunity

There’s a lot of waste happening up and down the whole chain, says Reynir. When you look at what is being recycled today, recycling isn’t actually recycling, because it all depends on what you do with the ‘waste’. So much of what we do, in the name of ‘recycling’, is actually a down cycle, where the new material becomes less valuable than the original material.

What you want to be doing when you recycle, is upcycle, advises Bertrand, i.e. turn something of waste into something more valuable than it was before. But, in order to improve the upcycling, more investment is needed to improve the initial sorting.

“We looked at the total capital needed. To do this, about EUR 50 billion needs to be invested in improved sorting, about EUR 80bn needs to be invested in better recycling and upcycling of material, and about EUR 100 billion is needed to invest in creating valuable products like sustainable aviation fuel.”

Meaning there’s a EUR 230 billion investment opportunity in order to facilitate this change. And the team at Summa have calculated that while the circularity of materials today represents a value pool of EUR 160 billion per year, this could go up to EUR 820 billion by 2040.

“To invest EUR 230 billion to create this revenue can unleash EUR 1-2 trillion of value creation. So, I don’t know what you think, but to me, this is one of the greatest investment opportunities I’ve ever seen.”

If that doesn’t entice you to get involved, think about it this way, suggests Bertrand, there is no way Europe can reach the net zero target without embracing circularity. To achieve it will require close collaboration and a lot of joint action between European companies, policy makers and investors

Regulating the circular economy

The European Commission is setting the tone, says Bertrand, which is very important. It’s absolutely critical to keep up with CO2 taxes and ETS mechanisms, because that’s what makes circularity viable businesses. That and having investors ready to invest.

As mentioned before, we actually currently recycle very little, says Reynir, most of it is downcycled. But with the technologies available today, and if we invested today, between 60 and 70% of end-of-life material could be reused into a new cycle. By 2040 that could go up to 80%, which would result in more than 50% lower emissions compared to where they are today.

“It’s a massive opportunity and the technologies are available today. So if we just figured out how to orchestrate all of this, and move in the same direction, this is possible. And it’s a great investment opportunity as well.”

To find out more please read the paper on linear chain circularity, says Bertrand (link in show notes), because it has implications for all companies, for consumers, for those working in government and policy setters. As long as you can see the bigger picture and what needs to be achieved, no matter what job you have, it’s possible for everyone to lean in and make this happen.

“Looking at it from a business opportunity and investor standpoint, it takes EUR 230 billion of investments to make this happen. That creates over EUR 800 billion in revenues. And that unleashes a value creation opportunity of between EUR 1-2 trillion and all the jobs that go with it. So it’s one of the most fantastic investment opportunities that I’ve seen, where you can really invest to create value and create jobs, and address the resource problem that we have, and the climate change issues, and CO2 emissions that we have.”

Are you interested in learning more about the theory of change & circular economy?

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  4. How to create sustainable portfolios with Carsten Stendevad

How to create sustainable portfolios with Carsten Stendevad

Carsten Stendevad is the co-CIO for sustainability at Bridgewater, the largest hedge fund in the world. Before that he was CEO of ATP, Denmark’s national pension plan, where he chaired the investment committee, overseeing the $130 billion portfolio.

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5 min read

Aligning financial activities with achieving net zero

Delivering strong risk adjusted returns clearly is the central objective for asset owners – when you’re investing someone’s pension, they’re relying on the returns to enjoy a comfortable dotage. But, continues Carsten, asset owners are increasingly expanding their objectives beyond financial returns to also include aligning their capital with sustainable outcomes if this is a goal of theirs.

“The net zero movement is a prime example of institutions saying, in addition to financial goals, can we also align our activities with the transition of the global economy to net zero emissions?“

The challenge, says Carsten, is how to achieve this alignment at scale in a manner that is authentic to your way of investing and in a way that still delivers great returns. Not just in a single portfolio, but across institutional size investment portfolios too.

Bridgewater’s sustainable investing journey

Bridgewater began their sustainable investing journey with a singular goal: Of course, great risk adjusted returns, but they also wanted to find a way to balance that with the additional objective of aligning capital with sustainable outcomes.

And the team realized, in order to achieve that goal, they’d have to modify much of the investment process, from portfolio construction to the security selection.

“It started with a research question saying, would it be possible to develop a portfolio that had similar returns to an unconstrained portfolio, while being substantially more sustainable? The more we looked at the challenge, the more we thought that this is an area where we might be able to make an important contribution.”

Realizing this approach could help their clients, Bridgewater decided to formalize the effort. Today, Bridgewater has a dedicated team of senior investors who leverage the full power of Bridgewater as an analytical platform deployed towards the challenge.

Sustainability – from macro to individual players

“There are a number of sustainability considerations that are very important for the world, but matter little for the financial performance of a typical portfolio. And then there are sustainability related themes that could affect the financial performance of a portfolio”

As a macro investor, Bridgewater’s goal is to deeply understand how the world economy works, and then to translate that understanding into systematic logic that is powering all of Bridgewater’s portfolios. So, one of the first questions the team at Bridgewater asked themselves was, how sustainability interacts with their existing understanding.

“For example, if the world is transitioning towards Net Zero”, says Carsten, “how would that transition actually come about? What would be the cause-effect linkages that would cause the world to transition in that way, and what would that mean in terms of how we invest? For example, what might that mean for the demand and supply of different commodities and have we captured that adequately”.

“We start with the objective of understanding how these dynamics might impact the financial performance of a portfolio. But in our sustainable portfolios we go a step further since the objective in those portfolios is to deliberately direct capital towards sustainable entities. Therefore, we need to understand how the activities of an individual security, say a company, contribute to a sustainable outcome. That’s a different question for which we had to build out a whole new analytical system.”

“So we’ve taken our fundamental and systematic research approach that we have built up over the past four decades, and we’ve applied that to sustainability.”

Do sustainable portfolios deliver the same returns? “The very short answer is we think we can create similar returns. But typically, the sustainable portfolios would be slightly less diversified, because the universe of sustainable companies is smaller than the global universe.”

Reflections on a sustainable future

“What I hope the sustainable future looks like, is really what’s laid out in the Sustainable Development Goals. The Sustainable Development Goals are the most holistic picture of what it means for the world to be sustainable across environmental and social areas.”

But one of the key components of the SDGs, says Carsten, is the notion of not overly focusing on one dimension and of embracing the inner contradictions. For example, in the SDGs, there is an inherent contradiction between poverty alleviation, energy transition, and sometimes health. There are certain things that will be good for one yet will be bad for the other. But that’s just reality,

Carsten’s advice to the younger generation

Early in your career, suggests Carsten, try to acquire certain technical skills, whether that’s as an engineer, lawyer, or investor. Something where you can learn the tools of the trade, so that once you’ve learned it, and you’ve mastered it, you can use those skills to pursue your true passion.

“Start with a strong technical foundation, and then as fast as possible, run towards the things that you’re passionate about.”

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  4. How ESG can help businesses do the right thing with Alison Taylor

How ESG can help businesses do the right thing with Alison Taylor

Alison Taylor is Clinical Professor at NYU Stern School of Business and Executive Director at Ethical Systems.

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7 min read

Alison Taylor is Clinical Professor at NYU Stern School of Business and Executive Director at Ethical Systems. She’s also writing a book for HBR Press on how business can do the right thing in a turbulent world, and in this episode of Summa & Friends, she talks about ESG and how business can do the right thing.

ESG and sustainability are not the same thing

To put it simply, ESG exists because investors and citizens, customers, suppliers and employees all want business to be more responsible about its impact. And yet so much time is actually spent debating ESG rather than discussing what ESG actually needs to evolve.

So, what evidence is there that doing the right thing will actually make or save a company money? Does ESG really matter for financial performance?

Unfortunately, says Alison, there are many thousands of studies exploring this very question, and the evidence is mixed. Which isn’t surprising, given that ESG metrics are still in their infancy.

“And there is no particular reason to think that ESG would correlate with a high financial performance, because it’s an enormous range of issues. And it is up to a company to be strategic about the issues that it wants to focus on.”

However, continues Alison, there’s certainly a relationship between negative impacts a corporation might have on society and financial results, but we shouldn’t kid ourselves that that plays out in a linear way. Take Exxon Mobil, for example, this is a company which was under a lot of pressure on climate change a few years ago, but has just had its highest results ever.

“ESG is an investor’s attempt to quantify sustainability, but it is sustainability that the public and customers and young employees particularly care about. ESG is investors’ attempts to make more money from these approaches. ESG and sustainability are not the same thing.”

Is ESG a moral issue?

Sustainability, says Alison, was coined in the late 1980s, arising from concerns around environmental disasters, exploitation of cheap workers in Asia, and rising evidence of the impacts of climate change, the negative human rights and mental health impacts of social media.

“For all the people arguing that ESG has no ethical component, the range of things companies can do are all quote unquote, good things. The debate is how to select among those, quote unquote, good things.”

The problem is, the ESG field argues that you should select on the basis of quantifiable financial performance, says Alison. You don’t just do the right thing, you only do the right thing, if you can prove it’s going to make more money.

The sustainability field, on the other hand, suggests that you should focus on the impact of business because that is the root cause of concern. And people who argue against that say that it is ridiculous for a business to do something just for good reasons, if it isn’t profitable.

“At the end of the day, the debate comes down to ethical issues and impact issues, and how we as a society are expecting business to behave so that the question is what exactly we do about these issues. But to say they have no ethical component, I think is a little naive and a little simplistic.”

Putting the G in ESG

In Europe, much of the discussion focuses on the E in ESG, says Alison, in the US it is more on the S. Very rarely, however is there much debate and discussions around the G. Which is where problems arise.

“I don’t think anyone actually agrees on what the G of ESG is. Many people treat it as a question of corporate governance. It’s about measuring the quality of mainstream corporate governance, how shareholders are engaging with companies, how well run the company is. It’s very often thought of in those very narrow terms.”

Part of the problem, she continues, is we’re having a very mixed up conversation, because we’re not really clear what we’re actually talking about. And this is made even more complicated because of the rise of employee activism, consumer activism, and shareholder activism over these issues.

So, what should we talk about when we talk about G?

“We need to debate how governance works and how companies think about stakeholder interests in how they make decisions. Even a notion like stakeholder capitalism still envisages the company as a fake corporate person, and other stakeholders as being a threat to the value creation of that corporate person.”

We need to start thinking of corporations as social systems that interact with other political, economic, social and environmental systems, says Alison, and we need to think about risk and return on the role of business in a completely different way that stakeholder capitalism does not fully enable.

How to do governance – best practice advice

ESG metrics are not the same thing as a credible sustainability strategy, argues Alison. You need to be mindful about trying to help companies drive strategic change, as opposed to ticking the box on 30 or 40 ESG metrics.

That’s not to say that corporations shouldn’t be ambitious and try to tackle 30 or 40 ESG issues, says Alison, it’s just most would be much better off if they focused on one to three issues that they might be able to actually achieve strategic transformation on.

“We are failing in general to differentiate between strategic risks, innovation opportunities, and ethical imperatives, and therefore we end up with poorly designed incentives, poorly designed goals, and a lot of companies out there saying that they’re doing wonderful things on issues like net zero, and the world just keeps getting hotter.”

The future for ESG

ESG isn’t a trend or a fad, says Alison, it’s not going to go away. People are very aware that we, as a race, are having a negative impact on the world, and we understand that things are going to get worse if we ignore them.

So the future for ESG, says Alison, will likely include more of a focus around impact, corporate political responsibility, and issues such as responsible tax, as well as doing something meaningful about anti corruption.

“I’m absolutely certain that we will continue to see all these conversations advance. And I base that on what I see in the classroom, every day. I teach MBAs and I teach undergrads and it is very, very clear that they think very differently about their careers and about the role of business.”

The problem of ethics and morals with ESG

“Everybody thinks that their approach to ethics is the quote unquote, right one, but ideologies, religions, upbringing and culture, there are varying perspectives on this. It is genuinely quite hard to know what it is for a business to be ethical.”

Alison is seeing a shift in employees selecting a company to work at based on the moral fabric of the organization. Something that is becoming more apparent with consumers too, where previously it hasn’t mattered what kind of values or ethics or morals a company, now that’s changing, now that’s driving their buying behavior.

“I don’t think we necessarily need more inspirational leaders at the top. I think what we need is more consultation with the collective. We need to listen to the wisdom of the collective. We need fewer big egos showing up at Davos claiming to save the world, and more listening to the rank and file of employees about what’s important.”

Choose a career based on where you can have impact

When choosing your future career, advises Alison, think about what you enjoy and where you can have the most impact. Don’t treat your career as an outlet for all your ambitions and frustrations. Engage with the political process, suggests Alison, engage with wider society. Don’t expect your job to provide all the emotional, spiritual and intellectual fulfillment that you desire.

“Try many different things and figure out what you enjoy and how you can contribute and not feel pressured to go a certain path. And follow that all the way through.”

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  4. Tackling the cognition crisis through digital medicine with Adam Gazzaley

Tackling the cognition crisis through digital medicine with Adam Gazzaley

Adam Gazzaley is a neuroscientist, neurologist, inventor, author, photographer, entrepreneur and investor. He’s also the creator of the world’s first digital medicine to be approved by the FDA to treat children with ADHD.

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8 min read

Adam Gazzaley is a neuroscientist, neurologist, inventor, author, photographer, entrepreneur and investor. He’s also the creator of the world’s first digital medicine to be approved by the FDA to treat children with ADHD.

Why? Because the entire human race is in the midst of a cognition crisis and not enough is being done to tackle the issue and help the billions of people suffering with cognitive issues. How is he doing this? Through therapeutic video games that collects data about you in the moment, with sensor technology, performance metrics, emotional responses, body movements, and brain activity.

This data is then used to guide the environment in which you’re playing, so you experience both challenges and the rewards, bespoke to you, to improve your cognition. Think of it like sparring with the ultimate personal cognition trainer. But why experiential medicine? Because, says Adam, experiences are a powerful way of changing our brain.

What is digital medicine and who is it for?

The basic premise for the idea to tackle cognition, says Adam, e.g. improve our attention, our memory, perception, how we regulate our emotions, how we remember, our imagination, creativity, reasoning, decision making, even empathy and compassion, was rooted in the cold hard truth that as a race, we’re tragically lacking in improving these abilities.

“We’ve relied almost solely on what we think of as medicine as a drug, that there was somehow a pill that you could take and improve how your brain functions… The idea behind this digital medicine is that our brain, just like our body, is responsive to experiences.”

This is the whole basis of physical fitness, for example. People go to the gym and use weights, or run, to push their body, to challenge themselves to improve. Over time, the body responds and adapts, and you can push yourself further and harder. The same is true with cognitive fitness, says Adam. Our brains have this property called neuroplasticity, which means that if it’s challenged, it will improve its function.

“I was inspired by modern day technologies that I thought could deliver experiences in a very targeted way, that was accessible to more people to improve brain function.”

Transfer of benefits

The idea of using a video game is because people are known to engage in gaming, deeply, for a long period of time. There’s nothing magic about a video game, says Adam, it’s just that it is a fun, engaging way of delivering an experience that millions of people around the world engage in daily. And the more the team researched their digital medicine, the more they saw players’ cognition not just improving, but there was an improvement transfer outside of the game itself.

“That led to the long path that eventually took us to a game that has now been proved to improve (and approved by the FDA) to increase attention abilities in children that are suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder, ADHD.”

Which does beg the question – have modern day technologies led to attention deficits? No, says Adam, even without people engaging in all things digital on a daily basis, there would still be spectrums of ADHD.

The cognition crisis

The cognition crisis is a term Adam uses to broaden the discussion beyond what is often referred to as the mental health crisis.

“When I use the term cognition crisis, I am trying to broaden the conversation beyond the clinical, to something that I think is an impairment and a challenge for our entire species, that we have not really leveled up our minds.”

We have not developed tools to improve our ability to regulate emotionally, to improve our perception, or our memory, says Adam. We haven’t been trying to find ways to increase our cognitive functions to a higher level, and for that we’re paying a great price.

“All you have to do is read the Daily News to recognise that we are challenged when it comes to long term thinking, critical thinking, analytical decision making, and empathic concern for others. And as long as we have these problems and have not advanced our minds in this way, we will never effectively address other crises, like climate change, for example.”

Adam’s drive to find a solution is borne out of frustration with the lack of development of technologies or medicines to help patients with memory impairment, or other aspects of cognition, not just dementia, but across all of neurology and psychiatry. We simply don’t have the type of treatments we should have by now.

“You see these amazing breakthroughs in cardiology, oncology, and infectious disease. Those same innovations and breakthroughs that we’ve seen in other fields are not occurring for the fields that are there to help treat our minds.”

Why we need a multi-modal approach

The brain is really complicated, says Adam, and while that seems like a silly thing to say, it’s true, and it can’t simply be fixed with a magic pill. To improve the brain, it’s going to require a multi-modal approach, one where both drugs and experiences will play a role.

“We need to expand the tools that we consider to improve the function of something as complex as the human brain and mind. That includes all new technologies. I see a future where all of these tools work together to solve this crisis that we’re suffering.”

A huge part of the cognition crisis itself, says Adam, is directly related to loving each other. Our empathy and compassion are really impaired right now, yet we should be prioritizing our ability to value love, as seriously as we value dollars. Because, continues Adam, if we aren’t teaching our children to understand empathy and compassion, like they understand geography and math, for example, how can we expect them to develop into people who care about their world?

The enduring nature of experiential medicine

The idea of experiential medicine, says Adam, expands beyond digital medicine. The digital is the delivery of the experience, but the experience itself is the medicine, and experiential medicine has been around thousands of years. Meditation and mindfulness practices in multiple cultures around the world are examples of experiential medicine, they weren’t just developed for enlightenment, they were used to reduce human suffering.

Experiential medicine delivered through digital technologies is a really interesting opportunity, says Adam, that it can induce change is not surprising given neuroplasticity is one of the fundamental tenets of modern day neuroscience. And what he’s seeing is that the effects of it are both meaningful and also sustainable.

“For example, attention deficit disorder, you take a pill like Adderall, you’re a 12 year old, you have some benefits, maybe you’re less impulsive, you sit a little more quietly in class, your teachers are happy. You stop taking it the next day, you’re back to where you were before, these effects are not changing the brain in any way that is sustainable.”

If you engage in an experience as medicine, says Adam, and harness your brain’s ability to induce changes in neurophysiology and network function, these changes will endure.

Adam’s advice to parents

As a dad of a two year old daughter himself, Adam has seen first hand the challenges that every parent faces if their child has any exposure to videos. Yes, in the short term it can provide you with relief and some peace and quiet, but there is a price to pay because it is a high level of stimulation, and it will quickly become sought after as a reward system.

“It’s the same advice for everything. Moderation is key, and learning to create boundaries and control. And it’s hard to do. But if you lose control, not just with your children, but even yourself – if you don’t place boundaries around your technology, if you stay lost in your social media, in your email, you’re going to miss out on a lot of really amazing things in the world.”

That’s not to say we should be denying our children access to technology, that’s not the answer at all. But we all need boundaries, and we especially need to teach our children that they need boundaries when it comes to technology. And we need to help them create the structure for these boundaries, as well as implement them.

Live fearlessly and care more

The world, right now, needs more compassion and empathy, says Adam. Because with those as a foundation, everything else becomes more possible.

“When we don’t have empathic concern for others, whether we call it love or empathy, or caring, we don’t make the type of decisions that the world needs most right now.”

Adam’s advice to young people who are making choices to design their life work?

Don’t just think intellectually about your future, suggests Adam, but also think about how much fun a particular career path is, and how much enjoyment and pleasure it will give you. Because if you don’t align those three things: your skills, something that’s important, and something that actually gives you pleasure and enjoyment, your career is not going to be sustainable.

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