Design for Authenticity

Much of the systems surrounding us, of communication, technology and business are not built for the benefit of people. The tools and design of facebook no longer exists to ‘connect’ — to fulfil or benefit its participants. Supermarkets do not pursue a need to feed or supply people, but each instead predominantly seeks to serve an economic and commercial-focused bottom-line. This kind of business seeks a means to drive supposed economic growth, or rather, simply produce revenue, but only in a one-way stream that benefits its own enclosed system, largely, ignoring and exploiting the economic systems and people it is surrounded by.

Business of the future, the new, truly modern business will be that which can move away from if not change such current models entrenched in a post-industrialist, individualistic and isolative outlook. The new business will instead be able to look to inter-personal, invested and involved relationships. Integrated as part of a localised community that understands and can in turn bring sustainable goodness, enrichment and growth to its surroundings: creating and sustaining conscious interconnected relationships, and ‘investment’ that brings fulfilment and enrichment — that goes beyond being just economic.

This potentially ‘grassroots’-style growth, would then not only be able to understand with real insight, its communities, but from this understanding and integration, have the capability to reach the authentic needs of the people — by providing real, authentic, human communities and economies, providing meaningfulness that is not just physical, nutritional, but human.

Crucially too, in ‘becoming’ authentic, new business can begin to allow for the authenticity of the people around it — no longer creating and sustaining false needs, imposing toxic desires for economic growth, but instead meeting the genuine, real needs of the people in its community, nurturing sustainable growth, enrichment and meaning, in the interest of human beings.