Will Richardson built Green Elements in the early 2000s surrounded by like-minded peers in the B Corp network, including James Gibb and Darren Chadwick. He argues that echo chambers can be incredibly useful for early-stage companies pushing boundaries, providing validation when broader society hasn't caught up yet.
Chapters
Hey, thanks so much for listening. I would love to be able to help you more on what it is that you are listening to and why you're listening to, to me. If you could click on the link in the show notes, that would be awesome because it will help me define what it is that we should be talking about on this podcast. Where echo chambers work. Is when you are starting something new and you are really trying to push boundaries and do something that other companies aren't doing, like what we did at Green Elements and helping organizations become more environmental in a world where people just looked at you as rather weird or rather strange. And if you surround yourself by people or with people that are much more, you know, not tolerant to what you do, but understand what you do, as I did within the B Corp network. And, um, a bit, that was obviously a bit later on, um, in the early 2000s, but I did during, um, the 2000s with people like James Gibb and Darren Chadwick and Others, it almost becomes more normal, you doing environmental stuff, and therefore you are in a place where you think that the rest of the population are actually thinking what you are doing. And so I really saw that being in an echo chamber is incredibly useful and brilliant in a situation like that. Because you are almost being endorsed and people say, oh yeah, that's really good. Well done for doing what you're doing. Or yeah, this is brilliant that those companies are doing that. And there are certain companies that also are within your echo chamber and saying what you're doing is the right thing to be doing as well. So Echo chambers can be really good and really positive. Another time we'll try and address the bad echo chambers, which I think we all probably know about, to be fair.
Grab free access to Will's Substack while it lasts. Every week we pull together the top sustainability stories from dozens of trusted sources. Then he breaks down the big issues facing business right now in plain, practical terms. Link in the description.