How to Change Behavior, You Have to Change Who Has Power

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Zibrazuni: Who owns something gives them power over the decision making processes of how that company behaves. Ownership and governance are the lynch pins of how you actually then pull on who is holding what kind of power a, you know, modern operative moment. Age old principles of co operative economics now come into yand so rather than us saying, the sky is falling, what are we going to do? We can actually learn from this wisdom base in order to inform how we might help e these technabled companies.

Why isn't Twitter doing more to get bots off their platform? Why isn’t Uber taking better care of its drivers?

What if...they can't?

Venture-capital backed companies like Twitter and Uber are held accountable to maximizing returns to investors. If and when they become public companies, they become accountable to maximizing returns to shareholders. They’ve promised Wall Street outsized returns — which means Twitter can't lose bots if it would significantly lower their user count and in turn lower advertising revenue, and Uber can’t treat their drivers like employees if it competes with profits.

But what's the alternative? What might it look like to design an ownership and governance model that incentivizes a technology company to serve all of its stakeholders over the long term – and primarily, the stakeholders who create value?

This week on Your Undivided Attention, we're talking with two experts on creating the conditions for humane business, and in turn, for humane technology: Mara Zepeda and Kate “Sassy” Sassoon of Zebras Unite Co-Op. Zebras Unite is a member-owned co-operative that’s creating the capital, culture, and community to power a more just and inclusive economy. The Zebras Unite Coop serves a community of over 6,000 members, in about 30 chapters, over 6 continents. Mara is their Managing Director, and Kate is their Director of Cooperative Membership.

Two corrections:

The episode says that the failure rate of startups is 99%. The actual rate is closer to 90%.
The episode says that in 2017, Twitter reported 350 million users on its platform. The actual number reported was 319 million users.

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Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_