Seva-Dharma: Redefining Co-Creation for Greater Social Impact
Summary
Throughout my career as a consultant and educator, I’ve witnessed the transformative power of co-creation. However, I realized that traditional business mindsets often limit this potential, especially in fostering genuine social impact. Inspired by my travels and conversations with diverse individuals during a sabbatical, I embraced the concept of Seva-Dharma from ancient wisdom. By adopting Seva-Dharma, I propose that businesses can better bridge the gap between corporate pursuits and societal needs, fostering innovations that are more meaningful and impactful.
Introduction: A New Mindset for Co-Creation
In this article, I propose a new mindset for co-creation. The term “co-creation” was first introduced in 2000 by University of Michigan professors CK Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy in their Harvard Business Review article “Co-Opting Customer Competence.” They defined it as the “joint creation of value by the company and the customer; allowing the customer to co-construct the service experience to suit their context.” In the context of this article co-creating value is key.
Experience in Co-Creation Consulting
The teams at SonicRim have been serving global businesses dedicated to growth through innovation for the past three decades. Our approach to innovation through co-creation has involved serving three client objectives:
- Conducting international generative research that helps our clients make purposeful decisions for co-creating value.
- Helping the organization adopt co-creation mindsets, methods, and tools in its innovation practices.
- Mentoring junior and middle-level team members and helping them learn the co-creation process through immersion in insight gathering, synthesis and pattern-finding activities.
It typically takes several years, sometimes over ten years, of engagements across multiple projects to get our clients to shift focus from building products to co-creating value, to treat research as a way to develop a learning culture rather than to just find answers to their questions. The process of changing/ cultivating minds and organizational culture takes time.
Client Appreciation and Long-Term Relationships
Over the past 25 years, several clients have expressed their appreciation for our focus on enabling a meaningful and lasting learning experience for them. For example, a client with whom we have worked for close to 12 years wrote,
“Nothing compares to the great travel memories I have with you… it’s defined such a big part of me.”
Philosophy Behind learning experience design
I have been a teacher of design and research methods throughout my entire career. At the heart of my teaching philosophy is the belief that “education is not a transaction. It is a collaborative learning experience where a teacher and student both study, challenge, and evolve their understanding of the world. We do so by experimenting with ideas and materials through hands-on experiences and dialogue. The mutuality of learning is key. I have learned that I can enable a meaningful and lasting learning experience for my students and clients if I am myself open to learning from them. Additionally, it is important to recognize that the environment (time, place and emotional state) has a significant influence on motivation for learning as well as on learning outcomes. The pandemic was a perfect environment in which many of us learned to care for each other.
The Impact of the Pandemic on Business and Innovation
The most important lesson I learned during the pandemic is that I need to step out of my comfort zone to become conscious of the changes taking place around me. Those of us who have been helping our clients drive change through disruptive innovations sometimes feel trapped in familiar environments. Focusing on clients’ business objectives can force us to serve a risk-averse business culture. Confirmation bias is not conducive to nurturing curiosity and creativity. I realized that as a consultant, my worldview was getting constrained by the beliefs my clients were comfortable with. I needed to experience the unfamiliar and learn to accommodate fresh perspectives emerging in the post-pandemic world.
Renewing Perspective Through Real-World Engagement
In September 2022, I decided to break out of these constraints, pause my business, and travel to renew my understanding of the real world and free my mind of client bias. Over the last 20 months, I have traveled extensively and engaged in dialogues with people in various walks of life — designers concerned with social impact, social workers, activists in various movements for social justice, teachers, students, artists, baristas, bartenders, and more. The community dialogues I participated in during the past two years gave me the opportunity to understand the perspectives of everyday people working in non-tech sectors. We discussed their journeys, curiosities, struggles, and imaginations.
Key Insights from Community Dialogues
Here are a few insights I’ve gained from these community dialogues:
There exists a growing disparity between the perspectives of industry insiders and the realities experienced by everyday individuals on the streets. It proves challenging for those entrenched in the industry to grasp the genuine needs, struggles, and aspirations of people until they step out of the ivory towers of corporate offices and engage directly with communities in the real world. The pandemic has brought about significant shifts in the mindsets of everyday people, surpassing the comprehension of even the most curious, empathetic, or creative designers, engineers, and business leaders. Their understanding of people, communities, and society lags behind. True and impactful design for real-world application necessitates immersing oneself in and collaborating directly with people as co-creators.
Designers, engineers, and business executives must adopt a new mindset focused on co-creating value that resonates with evolving societal mindsets.
For such a paradigm shift to occur, company culture must undergo transformation.
To catalyze a shift in company culture, established business practices must pivot from prioritizing investor interests to prioritizing the needs of humanity.
Introducing Seva-Dharma: A New Mindset for Co-Creation in the Post Pandemic Future
This is where I would like to introduce a new mindset for co-creation in the Post-Pandemic Future. I call this new mindset Seva-Dharma. The word Seva (also sometimes spelled as Sewa) means selfless service performed without any expectation of reward. A person who performs Seva does so with a sense of giving, compassion, and kindness. The word Dharma is used in Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism. While there are many interpretations of this concept, at its heart, Dharma means “rules for following a righteous path.” Combining the two terms into Seva-Dharma, we get “the rules for following a righteous path through selfless service performed with a sense of giving, compassion, and kindness.” I would like to clarify that in advocating for selflessness, I am not suggesting abandoning the profit motive. On the contrary, I am asserting that by being selfless, we can cultivate empathy, and empathy can guide us in how to co-create value in society.
Relevance of Seva-Dharma in Business
You may ask why an atheist like me would draw upon concepts from religion to advocate a new mindset for co-creation and how it is relevant in the context of the business of design and innovation. I consider some of the rituals and rules for virtuous living defined in religious texts helpful for following a career path with humility, curiosity, and responsibility. I believe that a community of innovators and business leaders who embrace Seva-Dharma will design with mindfulness, both intellectually and emotionally.
Benefits of Embracing Seva-Dharma in the Workplace
I suggest that adopting Seva-Dharma will enable individuals to discover purpose and prosperity in their work. It will assist them in overcoming the prevailing sense of guilt, insecurity, and burnout. Several key aspects of contemporary workplace conditions necessitate the integration of Seva-Dharma:
Employee Skepticism: Employees are increasingly skeptical of their employers’ dedication to a broader societal good, recognizing that profit maximization for investors is often the primary objective.
Lean versus Mindful Processes: Many companies prioritize lean processes, emphasizing rapid product delivery in the age of generative AI. Even financially robust tech firms are scaling back or dismantling teams dedicated to extensive front-end research or ambitious projects, adhering to a pervasive “Move Fast and Break Things” mentality.
Resistance to Return to Work: Despite offering enticing perks such as free meals, nap pods, or concierge services, some companies struggle to motivate employees to return to the office.
Personal Well-being Over Corporate Advancement: Employees are shifting their priorities away from viewing work as the centerpiece of their identity or a means of self-fulfillment.
Job Insecurity: Even those who have not been impacted by recent layoffs harbor fears of future job loss. They remain skeptical of their employers’ commitment to their welfare, particularly when layoffs coincide with increased profits and cash reserves, fostering decreased loyalty and heightened cynicism.
Erosion of Curiosity and Creativity: The nurturing of curiosity, compassion, and creativity faces increasing challenges within workplace cultures that prioritize expediency, arrogance, and distrust.
Seva Dharma: An Antidote to Mindless Consumerism
Embracing Seva Dharma will yield another significant benefit for society. A community of designers, engineers, and business owners driven by Seva Dharma will be less inclined towards mindless consumerism aimed at satisfying artificially induced desires. Instead, the curiosity and creativity of these creative communities will be channeled towards identifying and addressing real problems that require attention. In this context, I recall an interaction with a client from several years ago.
During a capabilities presentation to a client at that time, they inquired, “What is your methodology for creating needs?” My response was, “We don’t create needs; we identify unmet needs and devise ways to address them.” To my astonishment, the client promptly replied, “We understand that. In our line of business, we have resolved all existing needs. Now, we need to fabricate additional needs to address and expand our business.” This revelation left me dumbfounded. Here was a company that believed they could expand their business by promoting nonexistent needs. Naturally, the company did not choose us as their partner in this endeavor.
Another instance highlighting the dangers of mindless consumerism lies in the harm perpetuated by the food industry. A stroll through the aisles of grocery stores unveils a staggering array of junk food devoid of any nutritional value. One can witness individuals filling their shopping carts with two-liter bottles of soda. The documentary film “Food, Inc.,” directed by Robert Kenner, exposes how the American food industry is aware of the harm its products inflict on health. It also sheds light on the unethical treatment of farmworkers and farm animals.
I recognize that a business must make profits and grow. The real question to address is: How might businesses cultivate a culture of generating revenues by serving needs rather than feeding greed? By committing to Seva Dharma, organizations can focus on genuine problem-solving and ethical practices, leading to a more sustainable and just society.
Innovators Driving Social Impact Through Purpose-Driven Ventures
There are several examples of innovators working on projects of social impact. For example, designer Poonam Bir Kasturi, who recently passed away, established Daily Dump, a design-led company that helps imagine alternative scenarios for solid waste management with mindfulness. The company’s objective is to reduce waste, improve material recovery, enable better livelihoods, and achieve this through the voluntary collective action of urban citizens. What I find most inspiring is their commitment to constantly re-imagine our relationship with the earth, with each other, and with our urban spaces. Poonam believed that Daily Dump is in the business of changing mindsets — mindsets about “waste,” about marginal livelihoods, about whose responsibility it is to take care of “waste,” and about how we can harm less.
Another example is “The Holding Co.”, a lab ushering in a modern care system through design, solutions, and partnerships to ensure the future of care supports us all. In her LinkedIn profile, Patrice Martin, The Co-Founder and CEO writes, “In collaboration with Pivotal Ventures, our team at The Holding Co. partners with innovators — for-profit, nonprofit, and government, alike — to build systemic solutions to care and make family’s lives more functional and joyful. Think: new technology to age in place, new services to ease household labor, more affordable and higher quality childcare, and more.
I have personally known both Poonam and Patrice and can confidently say that their business model and vision are driven by their innate Seva-Dharma.
The Future of Co-Creation
Can global corporations, deeply rooted in market-driven culture, continue to nurture curiosity and creativity and create real value for everyday people? I believe it’s time to ask hard questions and explore unexplored paths. Embracing Seva-Dharma might be one way to usher in an era of co-creating for social impact.
