The New Inequality

My Learning About the “New Inequality” Mercedes Gutierrez Alvarez, IKEA Group Originally posted to LinkedIn

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to meet Bill Drayton, founder of Ashoka. The best way to start a week.

I am a passionate believer and activist with the vision of everyone as a changemaker (on my way of exploring what that means for the IKEA Group).

My main learning was about “the new inequality.” There are millions of researches and posts about the negative consequences of the 4th industrial revolution that we are now living. But it is the first time that I see the strong connection with inequality and how we could contribute to tackle it by empowering everyone as a changemaker. We have to prepare everyone, especially our kids, to be part of the change.

“In today’s world, many people have these skills and are contributing and flourishing. But many others do not. As the world of change continues to accelerate, those who are in this new game help one another learn to be ever more skilled players. But those left out fall further and further behind. They can’t play the new game, and the demand for what they can provide, repetitive work, is disappearing fast.

This is the new inequality.”

“My plea to the world is this – please, everyone give yourself permission to be a changemaker. This is the new game.

It needs you. And you need to bring your kids, your friends, your co-workers, and whatever organisations about which you care through this transition. This is the most important thing at both the personal and organisational level. So please, give yourself permission. Be a changemaker.”

– Bill Drayton

Ashoka: Everyone a Changemaker www.ashoka.org

THE NEW INEQUALITY Society is at a profound, indeed historic turning point. Turning points like this are one time, life-defining opportunities. Missing such a turning point is a big mistake.

Ashoka’s nearly 4,000 leading social entrepreneur Fellows enable us to see these historical trends.

Over three-quarters of the Fellows have changed the patterns in their field (e.g., the environment, human rights, village resiliency) within five years of launch. Over half have changed national policy within the same five years.

Here are two questions that will help you see the underlying forces at work: • Why are income differences getting worse everywhere — regardless of the nature of the economy or ideology?

• Why is “us versus them” politics spreading across the globe?

Each country thinks local factors are to blame — but these facts are universal.

Here are two other universal facts: • The rate of change and the extent and degree of interconnection have been accelerating exponentially since 1700.

• The demand for repetition work has been falling exponentially since 1700.

In the past, value came from efficiency in repetition (think assembly lines and law firms). People learned a skill and repeated it for life in a workplace with many walls. Now, value comes from contributing to and adapting to change. In an everything-changing world, one must be a changemaker.

However, being a changemaker requires sophisticated skills that are almost the opposite of those required in the disappearing world of repetition. And an everything-changing and therefore an “everyone a changemaker” world must be organized in fluid, open, integrated teams of teams everywhere.

Those who do not have these skills face the grim fact that demand is going away. That’s why income inequality is getting worse everywhere. And that’s why “us versus them” politics is quickly spreading across the world. When society tells so many people: “Go away; we don’t need you; it’s your fault; your kids don’t have a future here,” we are hurting them in the deepest way possible.

The world, in other words, is being divided by what is increasingly being recognized as “the new inequality” — between those who can contribute in the new reality of a world defined by change — and those who cannot. A world so divided, a world so profoundly hurtful to so many, is deeply dysfunctional and, worse, unethical. We all need to work together to build an everyone a giver, everyone powerful, everyone a changemaker world.

That’s Ashoka’s purpose.