Day 01 SWT 2016: Journalism, Sustainability, and Makers Movement

We started off the Strategy World Tour São Paulo with a very pleasant breakfast at Hotel Unique where we met some of the people we would be sharing amazing experience within the next 3 days. The environment was great; weather also helped, leaving an open sky for great city’ views from the hotel’ roof-top. I could feel the excitement in the air. People were smiling at each other; bodies were unsettled; conversations varied from personal interest, culture curiosity, academic challenges, government positions, and industry efficiency. After half an hour, we could finally sit down.

We began with a round of introductions. At that moment, I realized diversity was one of the key components that would enrich the immersion. Carlos Teixeira together with Ashley Lukasik gave a quick introduction about the Strategy World Tour and the focused in the context of adaptive growth.

Foto: André Nogueira oct/2016

Discussing the purpose of our trip at the beginning was extremely important to frame the lens for our experience. I felt for the first time something that was going to be a continuous state of mind throughout my entire experience: the feeling of “I am glad to be here”. Despite the excitement, I felt that the topic was not yet understood; I could see the question mark in everybody’s eyes when we just started to look at each other. Little did we know what was about to come. Just a little bit more coffee, and we were ready to go.

Foto: André Nogueira oct/2016

Our first meeting was with Bruno Torturra, the founder of Midia Ninja (Independent Narrative of Journalism and Actions). The conversation happened at his house, and he was very welcoming by preparing great snacks and juices. His perception about the symptomatic emerging challenges of politics lead the conversation to the current platforms of communication and social interactions.

For him, the contemporary media’ channels are defining a lot of our social behavior, relying on superficial structures that are based on reinforcement. Bruno understands that we have changed the way we speak collectively: we are not sharing a common narrative, we hold tight to our individuality, and personal interests are driving the collective actions. Bruno stretched the discussion to wider audiences, emphasizing the global context of the challenges, citing the 2016 United States President elections as a recent example.

The cyberspaces in which society is interacting has proven its lack of democracy. Not only is the information programmed instead of journalized, but also one’s “freedom” of expression is completely related to the set of possibilities and tools offered by the owner of the cyberspace. Under such conditions, Bruno criticizes our failure with the responsibility as citizens. For him, the citizen aspect of a person is the public representation of her/his identity. Therefore, we are experiencing a collective crisis of identity.

Foto: André Nogueira oct/2016

As a journalist, Torturra also brings the perspective that societies development has always been related to its narratives and communications systems. Nowadays, journalism is collapsing in the age of information. He understands that people want to express themselves more than understand the political narrative behind facts. Moreover, the major challenge for him is that we don’t have proper tools to organize the complex topics or conversations we are dealing with, especially when our perception of the world is constantly changing.

The remaining question is: How can we politicize cyberspace? Is there a way to create a safe, productive, and democratic environment to promote political actions? Our virtual information and interactions should not be manipulated by algorithms we don’t even understand, algorithms that mostly restricts our interactions based on rewards processes. Torturra understands that we need to move from a two-dimension place of interaction to an avatar profile, where we can interact and express ourselves without limitation or conditions pre-determined by the owner of the space.

Foto: André Nogueira oct/2016

We left his house very excited about what we just had experienced, but even more for what was yet to come. As the first stop of our tour in São Paulo, Bruno set the level of discussion very high. After almost two hours of intense exchange of knowledge, we had a quick stop for lunch at Almanaras’ restaurant, and moved on to the next: Natura Cosmetics.

After one hour of bus ride outside of the city of São Paulo, we reached the headquarters of Natura. The place is gorgeous; everybody was overwhelmed by its combination of natural and artificial beauty. The extremely impressive architecture from Roberto Loeb is a great example of simplicity and sophistication, combined with respect and integration of the environment. The buildings themselves disrupt the common expectation of what the tradition industrial environment is, and the site scene itself was a great start to open our minds to the novel experience that was about to come.

Foto: André Nogueira oct/2016We were welcome with a short video presentation that started with a speech from the company’s founder Antônio Luiz Da Cunha Seabra. His principles were based on the belief that “we are all sons and daughter of the planet and time”, which was very inspiring. Natura has it corporate strategy focused on distribution, sustainability, and open innovation networks.

Foto: André Nogueira oct/2016

Since 2000, they have claimed biodiversity as the driving force for innovation. By many programs such as “Forest Up” (instead of forest down), they are trying to explore the perspective the value of the ecosystem alive, especially in Amazon forest. For them, sustainable development can be driven by business, and in order to achieve such ambitious goal, they have developed their own units of analysis by generating 34 internal and 25 external indicators. Such perspective gives them the opportunity to measure their decision within their own system, and with that, they have better understanding of the impact they generate.

Foto: André Nogueira oct/2016

After this introduction, we went on a tour to explore their incredible infrastructure. Aside from the support they offer to their employees — from bank agency to daycare, to a leisure and sport area — they have the entire environment of production, development, management, and administration integrated into a complex system that seems to interact in a very pleasant and efficient way.

Foto: André Nogueira oct/2016

After the tour, we were received by four employees that shared their perspective of the company and the challenges they are facing today. They all agree that their sales system has been questioned in many ways as new forms of interaction are emerging. Their only customer channel has been direct individual connection. They train consultants to deliver product and business value through an individual experience, where consultants understand the customer individuality, and offer the best product to their specific need. This one-on-one engagement has been successful, and Natura has never built a store online or otherwise.

Nowadays, they are exploring new ways of engaging with their current customers and with potential new market’s niche. Technology has been a powerful tool to explore new ways of interaction. Natura is incorporating some existing platforms to leverage their potential, promoting new experiences and new ways of engagement that are complementing their existing business channel. Even though they claim the recognition of the value of design methods and methodology, they rely on the field knowledge only for specific actions, such as workshops and brainstorms, leaving a big opportunity for incorporating its value as business strategy.

Foto: André Nogueira oct/2016

Moreover, their business perspective has changed, and with that, an entire new culture needs to be developed in order to maintain its efficiency and success. One of the major shifts is that Natura started to see its customer as a small part of their processes. Since 2000, they have looked at their business as a way to address complex problems of the society, expanding their responsibility for beyond their target customer. This has also been very challenging, as they lack partners with the same value proposition, and their internal culture is still transitioning towards this understanding.

As the inspiring and pleasant conversation went on, we felt the time pressure. Quick final networking, many thanks and we were good to move on. As always, the transportation from one place to place were moments of reflection and inspiration. Again, I could feel the creative energy from one sit to another. Some people could not even sit as their body was expressing their excitement more than their mind could process and their mouth could express.

After an hour trying to digest what we have had for an intensive day, we were ready to do stuff, and We Fab seemed the perfect place. As a prototyping lab, they were established to communicate and envision high quality and values through experimentation. They understand that their practice is communicating the importance of prototyping by supporting the makers’ movement as a way to generate opportunities.

Foto: André Nogueira oct/2016

We Fab is an organization that is building relationships between companies and makers that are based on trust, with a specific vision. They are shaping new and more efficient ways of achieving profitability with novel processes and products. If companies were once producing knowledge in secret environments, now they are shifting to open and fast development processes. Once you can create almost anything, they question that is yet unanswered is “should you create anything?”

They had planned a very interesting activity for us. After a tour of the space, we were divided in four different groups, that rotated among four different tables. During the forty minutes’ activity, we experienced the dynamics of their daily life as we were exposed to the challenges of the products and systems they are interacting with. Then, we had a general conversation about their internal processes. What was (again) very clear was the lack of design methods and frameworks inherent inside their internal procedure of making things.

Foto: André Nogueira oct/2016

Finally, as we thought the design exploration and culture immersion was over, we had a change to explore dinner through a very unique food experience. The entire meal was designed to promote taste exploration. We were constantly surprised by the food and drinks combinations, diversity of ingredients, and beauty of the dishes at Dom restaurant. Alex Atalla, the owner and chef, is considered one of the best chefs in the world, and he expresses his powerful creativity by exploring elements of the Brazilian culture and combines them with his expertise. At the end, we were pleased by his kindness when he left his working environment to speak with us, sharing his perspective of the value that can be delivered through meal experiences.

Foto: André Nogueira oct/2016

As I am writing this, I am reliving the experience and understanding even better the strategy behind the immersion. The schedule was successfully designed to promote a deep and precise exploration of different contexts, leveraging many of the participant’s capabilities. From understanding the political and historical context, generating insights and discussing about potential concepts, to new organizations that are actually prototyping by making “things”. Looking back, all of this happened in one day, the first day.