The Joypreneur

How to use business as a force for good with Tessa Wernink

Episode Summary

Today, I talk with Tessa Wernink. She shares how she thought business was rather meaningless until she discovered business can be a force for good, if not even the most effective vehicle for bringing about change in this world. Tesla's journey into social entrepreneurship started when she co-founded Fairphone. We talk about values, purpose, crowding out voices and joypreneurs.

Episode Notes

We talk about:

4:27 How Tessa would choose a job and company to work for
10:30 The idea of using work to explore and solve problems
11:27 Why setting up a business is one of the best ways to create change
12:10 There’s no such as thing as fair
12:40 About business as a force for good, trust and responsibility
17:10 Why Tessa likes entrepreneurship, and the difference to nonprofits in creating value
18:28 Tessa’s values and how they guide her
20:35 Why a NO or a negative approach can be useful for optimists, or why being positive can crowd out voices
22:40 When Tessa realized business can be a force for good
26:40 Why it’s not about the intention of following your purpose but about the process
28:52 Making decisions when it comes to a dilemma
31:39 How to make values in an organisation more explicit and live by them
33:53 Why Tessa left Fairphone, the social enterprise she co-founded
42:29 What Tessa associates with the term “Joypreneur”

Quotes mentioned

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. - T.S Eliot

Resources mentioned

Book by David Whyte: Ecocide, kill the corporation before it kills us
BCorp Certification
Tessa’s What if We Get It Right Podcast with Simon Oschwald: Prototyping as a Way to Embrace Complexity in Business
Greenpeace documentary How to Change The World, trailer on Youtube

About Tessa Wernink

Social entrepreneur, strategic advisor and co-founder of the storytelling platform and podcast series What If We Get It Right, Tessa’s mission is to find ways in which individuals, businesses and organisations can come together, innovate and develop for the good of the community and the environment.

After co-founding and scaling the social enterprise Fairphone in 2013, she now runs purpose and business-model innovation programmes for social businesses using (ecosystem) design thinking and creative facilitation.

A big believer in collective intelligence and alternative narratives, her podcast series aims to bring out the voices of people in business across the globe, whose curiosity has led them to question current systems and whose courage has driven them to develop more ethical and sustainable business practices.

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