“New Enterprise” – companies in search of meaning

For a few years now, more and more people have been focusing on “New Work”. What the future of work will look like, what motivation people have to choose a job and how much they enjoy doing it has become a central point in the debate, to say the least. What we have seen at work in recent years is now increasingly being extended to companies. On the one hand, because they are confronted with the New Work movement, but also because we are moving further and further away from a generally valid end in itself for companies.

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Ask ten entrepreneurs what the purpose of a company is and you will most likely get ten different answers. Of course, a company has to maintain an economically viable cycle in order to stay alive – in other words, it has to earn money. Beyond that, however, it quickly becomes diffuse and diverse. I believe there are good reasons for this:

Society, and with it people and companies, are climbing the Maslow pyramid

I believe that our western, progressive societies ultimately go through the stages of Maslow’s pyramid themselves. We master one stage after another until it’s all about self-actualization.

In recent decades, we as societies around the world have overcome many of these hierarchical levels according to Maslow. No one in our societies in this country has to suffer serious hunger and life has never been as safe as it is today. We can also satisfy our social and individual needs in an unprecedented breadth and diversity.

This does not apply equally to each individual member of society, but to society as a whole. Nevertheless, many people perceive themselves as poor, for example. In today’s context, they often are. This is because the demands and ambitions continue to grow along with the achievements. That is what counts and is today’s reality. However, to assess where we are in the development process, it is enormously helpful to go back 50, 100 and 150 years and compare the realities of life then and now. You will quickly realize that there are literally worlds apart. A rural family 150 years ago lived largely on potatoes (and almost nothing else).

I think we can justifiably claim that we have mastered the lower levels of the “hierarchy of needs pyramid” as a society. What we are moving towards is self-actualization. New Work, I believe, must be seen in this context.

Money is becoming less and less important

I have also noticed that money is becoming less and less important. If you think that money is more important today than ever before, then you are misjudging what a scarce commodity money used to be. It is probably contrary to every economic doctrine, but it is helpful to view money as a “good”. What has happened to this “good” in recent years is quickly explained: there is more of it and the price you have to pay for owning money has plummeted (the price of owning money is even negative). And by the way, I repeat myself, it will remain irreversibly low as long as there is still so much money. At the moment, more money is being printed all the time. What loses scarcity becomes less important in relation to other goods (and virtual goods such as time can also be included here).

Make money?

More and more companies no longer see their purpose as making money for their investors. Of course, investors should continue to profit from their investments. But not everything should be subordinated to this one aspect.

 

Next-generation companies pursue the overarching task of providing a service to the community. The actual business becomes an instrument to fulfill this task. Their existence thus takes on an overarching meaning. They are “new enterprise” companies.

 

If you want to change the world, start a company

One of the most direct and best ways to improve the world right now is to approach that improvement from a business perspective. Whereas a few years ago “improving the world” was seen as something naïve and ridiculous, big ambitions for the benefit of the community and development are now socially acceptable. I say that in the future, they will be the basis on which entrepreneurs will build any activity.

When we founded Accounto and Parashift, our first thought was also to improve the work of people in the accounting sector. It simply can’t be that accounting is still a lot of monotonous, repetitive work for people. Instead of going there now and trying to sell accounting as something great, we started where we thought it made sense across the board: People will only be freed from this waste of life time when ongoing bookkeeping is completely eliminated. We see earning money as a consequence of this. The more radically and quickly we can fuel this paradigm shift, the more money we can make with the venture. Ultimately, however, fulfilling the overarching mission is more important than making money (if you are reading this as one of my investors, don’t worry, we’ll still make a ton of money…).

I believe this approach is universally valid and can be used for almost anything. The first question for entrepreneurs must therefore always be: What can I do with my company to make people in society better off?

We need a “New Enterprise” movement

In order to further accelerate this development, we need the discourse of entrepreneurs. This is already happening to some extent, for example at this year’s WEF. But what we need is a “miner” of the “New Enterprise”. So far, no one is in sight – but it may yet happen.

The questions are the same for all entrepreneurs: What exactly are we doing here? What remains of what we do here? What bridge can I build in history? And that brings us to the heart of the search for meaning.