You can apply permaculture to a garden, your life, or your business.

Adbongo applies permaculture principles to the development of cause driven ventures that adhere to a triple bottom line:  people, planet, profit.  We call this process:  ”Organic Business Development”.

Permaculture Prime directive: The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own and our children’s existence.

Core ethics:

1. An ethical framework

2. An understanding of how nature works

3. A design approach

12 principles:

1. Observe and Interact: Develop values based on observation. Nature is neutral. Careful observation and thoughtful interaction provide design inspiration. Past failures are useful as learning and growth are key points. In the marketing and advertising worlds, this principle is known as market research.

2. Catch and Store Energy: In this rapidly changing market, the energy of innovation is essential for survival. Many large businesses with firmly entrenched, inflexible, bulky business models are crumbling because they cannot keep pace with the rate of change in consumer culture and the internet.

3. Obtain a yield: Make sure that what you design will obtain a yield, or results. If you put beans in the wrong place, the sun might fry them. Everything in a garden should be organized for optimum productivity. The same goes for your business.

4. Apply self-regulation and feedback. Feedback from customers and employees allows a business to refine its processes to prevent future problems and to promote easy work flow. The more people that guide you, the more likely the chances of success.

5. Use & Value Renewable Resources/Services: In the business world, destroying natural ecosystems to conduct business for the sake of profits does not work in the current “cause” climate. Create a system that is sustainable; apply the triple P bottom line approach: people, planet, and profit!

6. Produce no waste: The eventual goal for all of us will be self-contained business organisms. Being wasteful and causing harm to the environment is not sustainable. We must create a circle of life in business as much as in nature.

7. Design from patterns to details. In the business as in the garden, do what is proven to work. Learn what has worked for other businesses in the past. Looking to nature for relationships and structures that are still around for a reason also helps inform business owners.

8. Integrate rather than segregate. In nature, shrubs often flourish in the shadows of trees. Everything (body) has a place. Forming referral relationships with other businesses and sales people in affiliated fields can boost business for all parties.

9. Use small & slow solutions. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Remember the story of the tortoise and the hare. Slow and steady wins the race.

10. Use and value diversity. Do not put all your eggs in one basket. Multiple revenue streams should be considered. Do not plan your retirement on one technology, especially since the technologies advance so quickly.

11. Use the edges & value the marginal. Do not think you are on the right track because it is a well beaten path. In nature you find the most diversity on the edges of the forest. Examples of the edge in our conversation is certainly a triple bottom line, organic business development, and cause driven incubators that help you implement these processes holistically.

12. Creatively use and respond to change. Vision is not seeing things as they are, but as they will be. Remember a core permaculture ethic is: using a design approach. Make sure to incorporate flexibility in your design and value your local artists.

ct>

Permaculture was coined in the 70’s by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in a series of publications.

Get Organic business development and apply for the Adbongo cause business accelerator HERE