How Generative Edge creates innovation and strategic focus

The Generative Edge, in contrast to the competitive edge, gives executives increased power to shape their organizations’ future, even in the most turbulent of times.

One of our clients, Feros Care, a large aged care facility based in New South Wales and Queensland, did just that.

In the realm of Generative Edge, instead of focusing on beating the competition, the Feros Care CEO and Board concentrated on making competition irrelevant by paying no heed to the conventional industry boundaries.  They have created an innovation program that encourages and celebrates innovation whilst encouraging staff to bring their awareness into creation through a series of well defined steps. They have developed robust procedures to continually monitor the strategic environment that they work in, and have refocused their Board and senior staff so they are formally tapping into strategic issues and discussing strategy rather than operations.

This is remarkably rare in organizations.

What would it take for your organization to function from innovation and strategic focus?

….Steven and Chutisa Bowman

Generative Edge vs Competitive Edge

We have observed that leaders who thrive and meet the challenges of today’s hyper-changing environment do not follow conventional business models that are based on competitive advantage. Instead they function from the Generative Edge. With this Generative Edge, leaders operate beyond competing to actively seize new growth and opportunities. On the contrary, leaders who use competitive based business models seem to function on the premise that industry boundaries are defined with limited amounts of clients and resources. Those who lead based on competitive advantage accept as true that other businesses in their chosen industry are their competitors and they have to beat those competitors to succeed.

In contrast, Generative Edge organizations have the point of view that there is no short supply of clients and there is no limit to opportunity.  Generative Edge organizations are aware that an industry’s structural conditions are neither inevitable nor finite. They are able to perceive and find distinctive market positions and sustainable advantages in a variety of ways. They recognize opportunities and seize them. The Generative Edge is a space where new ideas and innovation are constantly created from a heightened Strategic Awareness of the Board, senior executives and the organization generally.

Generative Edge organizations stand for a more conscious approach that goes beyond maximizing profits or shareholder value. They consciously create value for all of their interdependent stakeholders—customers, employees, investors, suppliers, community, and the environment. Paradoxically, this conscious approach also creates the most long-term value for investors. In accordance with the Generative Edge doctrine, a company no longer puts profits first, but works to a “triple bottom line”, considering the effects of what it does on society and the environment as well.  The mould for Generative Edge doctrine was cast in the 1980s and 90s by Generative Edge companies such as the Body Shop and the Co-operative Bank.

What would need to change in your business to move from competitive edge to Generative Edge?

…..Steven and Chutisa Bowman

How can prosperity and abundance coexist with the environmental movement of scarcity and lack?

Question: “What is the compatibility of Prosperity Consciousness with the Environmental movement, where thinking is about limited resources, not wasting anything. How could they happily co exist.“

I love your question, thank you for asking it with such amazing clarity. I totally agree that there is a misidentification and perceived incompatibility between prosperity consciousness and the environmental movement.

The current environmental crisis has caused people around the world to be in a state of fear and worry, which in itself is a form of negative affirmation. The environmental crisis is a product of a whole bed of unexamined, unconscious practices, beliefs and ways of life that are based on the scarcity paradigm. The environmental crisis in truth is a crisis of conscious awareness.

The environmental movement, by and large, has focused on the fear factor, the sense of loss, rather than the wonder and the question “what else is possible?”
To truly save the environment and heal our world all of us must develop awareness to perceive how we’ve made things worse, even with good intentions.

This means that the environmental movement needs to bring this conscious awareness aspect into their discussions about the environmental crisis.  No fundamental restoration can be accomplished if they leave unexplored the lack of conscious awareness role in all this. This requires enormous courage because the current global system is supporting something else, and promoting it from a base of scarcity. The conventional structures and systems around the world – including governments, education, trades, economies, and even religion – are all rooted in that outdated belief in scarcity. Unfortunately, they have fully bought into the lie of scarcity that there’s not enough to go around, and we’ve got to get more than we need to protect ourselves from being one of the people who gets left out because someone, somewhere, is always going to be left out.

To truly save the planet, people have to become aware that all of us must choose to move out of the scarcity paradigm and into prosperity consciousness. We must stop just merely focusing on fixes. The fix-it mentality in itself can be the cause of further problems. There is now plenty of research to show that environmental advocates who resort to relentless shaming, blaming, and imposing their own standards only increase the aversion and resistance of the people at large.
According to Buckminster Fuller, to regenerate the planet people have to be willing to acknowledge that humanity has been living in a ‘you-or-me’ paradigm of separation, where either you make it at my expense or I make it at your expense, because there’s not enough for both of us. We have to recognize that our thoughts, feelings, emotions, traumas and dramas, and judgments that are based on scarcity are the toxic wastes that are killing the planet. The earth can do miraculous recovery. The earth can take all the toxic waste and go; “I don’t think so, lets’ undo it.” Except it can’t because we are handicapping it with our judgments and our fixed points of view we are holding in place.

In our view Prosperity Consciousness is the essential element for unlocking people and the energies that can be available on the planet as a result of more awareness and generosity of spirit being available. With prosperity consciousness we will be able to let go of our self-centered thinking and egocentric behavior and free ourselves from the clutches of this scarcity paradigm. We can express our generosity of spirit in ways that benefit the universe, the earth and everyone concerned.

Something I’ve noticed in my work as a facilitator is that when I say the word “Prosperity Consciousness,” many people seem to hear instead the words “wealth and money.” That’s a profound misunderstanding. Prosperity consciousness is not merely about money. Prosperity Consciousness is the generative energy of life on the planet earth, and it exists in everything. It is the state of being in communion with all things. When we are being Prosperity Consciousness we have the ability to be present in our life without any judgment at all of anything that goes on and be willing to receive in totality the abundant exuberance of life. Since there are a whole lot of changes happening on the earth, it is imperative that we learn to access this energy, this awareness we have. We need to be prepared for being the energy that can change everything and everyone around us, so that chaos and mayhem are not the standard by which people function in the future.

The essence of prosperity consciousness puts us in touch with the deep, profound truths that we are all interconnected and that our awareness and the way we live and relate to all other life are the sources of power and potency. When each one of us chooses to embody Prosperity Consciousness we make a difference that would impact all of humanity.

True change will occur when the environmental movement merges the view of life as abundant, wonderous and full of opportunity, with the necessity of moving from scarcity (lack, fear, competition) to prosperity (question, possibility and change). What would it take for this to happen? What needs to change for the environmental movement to show others how to be more prosperous?