Zen Cafes – sustainable business development – for next-generation professionals

What we offer – 1.0 The Seven Pillars of Sustainability

A sustainable future for your business - based on Seven Pillars of Sustainability

1. Cut costs – through efficient use of resources

2. Create long-term business relationships with customers and associates
3. Add revenue streams to your enterprise
4. Engage in Buyer-Centric Marketing
5. Make best use of assets and resources: technical, physical, financial and
human resources
6. Leverage your brand; make best use of intellectual property: knowledge,
expertise and know-how
7. Enter new markets and new market sectors, based on: Fair Trade, CSR,
multi-cultural understanding, dispute settlement and continuous
improvement – kai-zen.

Sustainable business development – in practice

1. We add revenue streams to your business

2. We provide the Form of Words for you to engage with clients and
associates
3. We provide web-based interface, web sites, email capture, data capture,
online enrolment and fee collection
4. We provide online promotion and partnerships and alliances for those
entering new markets and new market sectors
5. We provide marketing collateral: CD, DVD, business cards, brochures,
and offline identity
6. We can set you up with your own Event Calendar and fee collection
7. We can help you, your staff and members of your organisation, learn,
improve and continuously adapt

The next step

Meet Zen Central – for a look at your branding, design, communication needs.

Meet Marcus – see web site.

We can look after your long-term needs on the basis of Co-operative Strategic
Agreement (COSA).

Our areas of special interest

• Do you have an eco-product or service that you want to market?

• Do you offer a holistic service?

• Are you a freelancer or independent professional?

• Do you want to train for a sustainable future, based on Whole Person

Development and work-life balance?

• Are you a business start-up – or expanding into new areas?

• Do you have a venue that you want to promote as a destination for

workshops, seminars, networking events or conferences?

Zen Cafes – promoting sustainable futures - in conjunction with Study Direct and The Sustainable
Futures Foundation
Zen Cafes – sustainable business development – for next-generation professionals

Co-ventures
As a start-up or an established business diversifying into
new areas we can work on a Co-venture basis in the
following specialisations:

• Hotels

• Business Centres

• Holiday companies

• Accommodation providers: property owners, business space owners and

landlords

• Schools and education providers

• Café and restaurant - hospitality service providers

• Schools in Performing Arts, creativity, hospitality services, Creative Arts

We also work, by invitation, with independent consultants

engaged in: Business Fitness, Communications, Leadership,
Whole Person Development, organisational “de-tox”, multi-
culture and new markets.

Train for a sustainable future

We offer training for independent professionals, freelancers and

collectives of professionals who want to start their own
collective or LLP partnership, living and working in the city and
country of their choice.

We welcome applications from enterprises and their managers who want to learn
how to “Read the marketplace” – and work with the benefit of Career Support,
Learning Support and Enterprise Support.

2.0 The Art of Business as a Natural Science

The three primary principles that scientists consider sufficient to account for all
phenomena in the universe are: self-organisation, interdependence and diversity.

Self-organisation means that everything in the universe has the power to sustain
its own unique identity.
Just as the universe itself creates its own order and its own identity out of
homogeneous, random disorder, so each entity in nature makes real – actualises
– an inherent unique potential that defines it as utterly distinctive.
By itself, the power to self-organize – to define and sustain the unique self –
implies the potential to grow without limit. Indeed that potential exists
everywhere at every moment.

Preventing any single entity in nature from using its self-organising power to grow
without limit is the principle of interdependence. In theory it is possible for any
one entity in nature to use all the energy that exists simply to embody its unique
self in all the matter that exists.
However, nature has not permitted any one phenomenon to fill the entire
universe. Instead of only one galaxy, there are billions. Instead of only one type

Zen Cafes – promoting sustainable futures - in conjunction with Study Direct and The Sustainable
Futures Foundation
Zen Cafes – sustainable business development – for next-generation professionals

of atom, there exist many. This limitation on growth arises from the principle of
interdependence. Deeply rooted in the fabric of modern relativistic and quantum
physics, this principle holds that everything in the universe interrelates with
everything else. Because all things are related, the single self-organising entity
inevitably bumps up against, and is challenged by, other self-organising entities.
This perpetual challenge limits the ability of any single system in the universe to
use energy to embody itself into more and more matter.

In fact, the interactions of unique identities transform a propensity for extensive

growth into a universal capacity to generate new things – new entities that did
not exist before these interactions. Nature combines a cyclical dynamic – the
imperative to relate – with a linear dynamic – the imperative to self-organise – in
a recursive process that generates endless newness. For example, within galaxies
the interaction among hydrogen and helium atoms generates stars: among
sexually reproducing organisms on Earth, the interaction of partners generates
new offspring: and among humans the interaction that occurs in conversation
generates new thinking.
Newness continually arises from the constant interaction of unique entities. This
remarkable production of new entities occurs because everything is related to
everything else, and relationships among self-organising entities generate
diversity, the third principle underlying the unfolding universe.
According to the diversity principle, Nature’s process never produces the same
output the same way twice. Nature never repeats itself because, being a
recursive process, it continually acts upon the output of its own operation. In
other words, nature self-organises unique output in a cyclical process that
continually re absorbs its own output as feedback. Compound interest is an
example of a recursive process. So, too, is learning, acquiring a new skill,
learning a language and learning to play a game.
In nature, no matter how many billions of recurrences there are of one
phenomenon – galaxies, carbon atoms, stars, humans, snowflakes, whatever –
no two are the same. Moreover the species of phenomena themselves seem to
diversify without limit. Indeed, diversification produces constant change – the
central discovery modern science has made about the nature of the universe.

Nature’s capacity for constant change, constant diversification, ensures the

survival of the universe and bio-systems on Earth. As systems engineers have
long understood, a dynamic open system that clings to one state or condition is
destined to collapse. If a surfer riding in the curl of a giant wave clings to one
position, he or she will fall.
The surfer maintains an upright position, that is – survives – by constantly
changing every muscle in harmony with the ever-changing contour of the wave.
Similarly the universe changes continuously through the perpetual flux of a
constant budget of matter and energy.
The Norwegian philosopher - Arnes Naess - used the phrase Rich Ends from
Simple Means to describe nature‘s seemingly endless ability to generate newness
from the same bundle of matter and energy.

Businesses that emulate the principles of natural systems as Toyota have done
can achieve the rich ends from simple means such as variety at mass production
costs –referred to by Naess.

Unfortunately, many businesses today are held back from realising their potential
because the thinking that guides their action is not derived from the principles
that shape natural systems. Instead, their thinking derives from principles that
are grounded in a mechanistic worldview that has prevailed since the 1700s. The
culmination of the work of Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Newton and others see,
on this worldview the universe as a machine – a giant clockwork as Newton

Zen Cafes – promoting sustainable futures - in conjunction with Study Direct and The Sustainable
Futures Foundation
Zen Cafes – sustainable business development – for next-generation professionals

described it. The order a machine manifests is imposed on its parts by an external
design. Business leaders holding such a notion regard their companies as
machines and employees as cogs in the machine gears. Guided by unconscious
conformity to this mechanistic view they cannot believe that satisfactory results
will emerge simply by following principles implicit in all natural living systems. –
Indeed, most managers today believe that the best way for an organisation to
reach its goals is to have each of its parts concentrate on achieving local
quantifiable targets that by design or plan are supposed to add up to the desired
company-wide results. Reinforcing that belief is the conviction that what occurs in
the organisation happens because of external forces and influences that can be
expressed quantitatively. The whole is seen as equal to the sum of its parts, and
the parts themselves regarded as independent, not intrinsically related.

In contrast to such thinking modern science now offers a fresh worldview that can
liberate and transform the way we think about and conduct economic activities. If
we view a business organisation as an evolving self-organising system, not as a
mechanical collection of parts, we would jettison the misguided notion that order
derives exclusively from human intervention. Instead we would realise that
pattern and order - Harmony – emerge spontaneously when an organisation
conforms to nature s principles and is managed in accord with those principles.
Indeed the order evidence by living systems is not externally imposed. Rather,
this order emerges from within, from a process that embodies self-organising
pattern in material substance. A living organism can be describes, then, as an
embodied pattern. In other words, its design is not separate from its material
substance, which itself evolved from relatively homogenised cosmic dust at the
time of the big bang into the diverse manifestations we now perceive in the
universe.
Were design separate from and external to matter, one would expect to find
identical fingerprints, retinal patterns, and mating calls among different
organisms. The fact that individual living organisms are unique suggests that a
pattern embodies itself distinctively in the substance of every particular organism.
Looking at a business as an embodied pattern – as modern scientists now view a
life system – would imply that the natural way to manage would be to discover
and nurture appropriate relationships and wait for results to emerge
spontaneously, like a skilled gardener who knows that properly caring for the soil
is enough, the rest is up to nature.

To emulate Nature’s systems then managers must enable a business to organise

its work according to the universal principles of self-organisation,
interdependence and diversity.

Toyota serves as a useful prototype of what it properly means to organise

business activities according to the principles that underlie all natural systems.

The real source of the difference in performance between Toyota and other motor
manufacturers, in the 50s to the present day, is not just the methods of Toyota
but the different thinking implicit in the methods themselves.

For those who want to know more

What Sustainable Business means in practice

2.1 What Sustainable Business means in practice

A key similarity between natural systems in the universe and living business
systems are that the results do not come about through being preordained but
emerge from myriad interactions among the parts of the system. In other words

Zen Cafes – promoting sustainable futures - in conjunction with Study Direct and The Sustainable
Futures Foundation
Zen Cafes – sustainable business development – for next-generation professionals

the results are in the details – in the parts of the system and in the relationships
that connect those parts. In a natural living system, the results emerge from the
ceaseless goings on in each minute cell of the system and from the billions of
relationships and interactions among those cells. So it should be in the living
business.
Results are not to be seen as out there to be achieved by having managers in
response to outside information and targets, move parts of the business around
as though objects on a game board. Instead, results should be best seen as
emerging from the relationship among every person’s work and the needs of
internal and external customers. The information that guides such a system – a
natural system – must emanate from within. Information from outside cannot be
used to push the parts around.

When leaders understand that a business best flourishes when it accords to the
principles that guide natural systems, they will recognise that having the capacity
to adapt to change, or even anticipate change and adapt in advance is superior
strategy to imposing quantitative results on workers in an effort to drive bottom
line results.
An organic living system consisting, as it does, of infinitely related self identifying
entities is a recursive system that fundamentally defies such external control.

The next step

In practical terms, you can choose to

• Do a course with us

• Use our services

• Use Master Class courses internally to train your managers or prospective

recruits

• Come and study with us for an independent career

• Work with us as a Co-venture

We can help you anticipate change and adapt accordingly through simply learning
how to Read the Marketplace.

Crucially our Master Class training covers - Freedom from Command and Control

Step one

1. The principle of self-organisation – promoting autonomy –

Step two

2. Diversity – Nurturing Creativity – unleashing creativity as a powerful

business advantage

Step three

3. Interdependence – Project management and leadership for all – Leading

without Power and the Ecology of Personal Power

Zen Cafes – promoting sustainable futures - in conjunction with Study Direct and The Sustainable
Futures Foundation
Zen Cafes – sustainable business development – for next-generation professionals

The above three steps only come about through appropriate support mechanisms
for staff, learners and clients being in place.

Read more

This process of providing support can be read about on

www.TheSupportEconomy.com.

It‘s your future – you decide

The prosperity of your enterprise depends on its capacity to provide support.

This ability to sustain – Sustain-Ability is the key to your organisation’s own
sustainability.

Welcome to Sustainable Futures.

City Guides 3.0 City Guides

• We welcome PR professionals with an interest in Social Enterprise, Fair

Trade, Right Livelihood and sustainability sectors.
• As a PR practitioner you can use Cafe Society Membership Services to
be a lifestyle guide to investors. By working with us (and our Social
Venture Fund) you have access to investment opportunities for next
generation investors to safeguard their assets and put wealth to
realising maximum rewards, not just for themselves, but their families,
dependents and enterprises.
• As a PR professional or City Guide you can use our fund-raising
services to work with the charities of your choice.

Corporate services

By using Friends of Resurgence corporate services you can look after the long-
term needs of corporate clients who want to engage in sustainable business and
Social Enterprise. Whether this is a start up or multi-national they will have a
message to communicate. As an approved PR specialist City Guide you can help
next-generation leaders.

Our points of reference – the people who inspire us:

• Alliance for a New Humanity

• Deepak Chopra
• International Business Leaders’ Forum.org
• Forum for the Future
• New Economics Foundation
• Schumacher
• The Natural Step
• Social Venture Network Europe

A few organisations – those whose values we share, include:

• The Soros Foundation

• Resurgence
• Ashoka
• Restaurants Against Hunger

Zen Cafes – promoting sustainable futures - in conjunction with Study Direct and The Sustainable
Futures Foundation
Zen Cafes – sustainable business development – for next-generation professionals

• Voice for the Voiceless

• Study Direct
• Every Child
• Zen Cafes @The Hub
• The Spirit of Life Centre

Come and visit us

Those who have experience in PR or those who want an independent media

career or a career in education are invited to the Offshore Campus for a working
workshop retreat

We show you and your students how to:

• Read the marketplace

• Realise work-life balance
• Meet the needs of professionals, students and enterprises on a
membership subscription basis
• Make alliances with professionals, designers, IT professionals and
translators working to help clients into new markets, new market sectors
• Show Business customers how to cut business costs and future-proof their
enterprise

The cost of the workshop is matched by access to resources, consulting, contacts

and expertise to set up your own e-publishing service for you and your clients.

We provide publishing for diaries, planners, journals and workbooks that you can
sell directly to schools and organisations, students and professionals.

On completion of the Workshop you receive:

1. The form of words to sign up clients to your services

2. A fully designed web site - data capture to run your own network of
Friends of Resurgence
3. Introduction to the Social Venture Network Europe
4. Opportunity to enable investors (private and corporate) to deliver lifelong
learning, to set up education Trusts and Foundations. Your clients get the
benefits of independent Media through City Guides.

Further services you can offer investors include:

• Meditation at work
• Yoga
• Shambhala Training and Shambhala Dance
• Schools service
• Books and e-publishing
• Zen Cafes
• Right Livelihood Holistic Centres
• Online Community

Zen Cafes – promoting sustainable futures - in conjunction with Study Direct and The Sustainable
Futures Foundation
Zen Cafes – sustainable business development – for next-generation professionals

4.0 EcoCities - Sustainable Communities Initiative (SCI)

Do you have an eco-product or service of relevance to

professional and corporate members of EcoCities?
(“EcoCitizens”) Contact us directly for Co-marketing
opportunities to promote your offering to our
membership base. (COSA option)

What you earn

As a Co-venture you can receive up to 50% of membership subscriptions from
students, professional and corporate clients who plug into your own branded
EcoCities customer interface – using the services of Zen Cafés powered by
Sossoon. See: www.zencafes.com

To set up your own membership subscription system - contact Zen Cafés (Co-
venture option).

Train with us
We welcome students, GAP Year students, graduates and independent
professionals who want to train with us or enrol for a semester at The Offshore
Campus, Kalamata, Greece.

The Curriculum for Eco-learning

The Offshore Campus curriculum provides:
• Language learning courses for you to live and work in the city and country
of your choice
• Enterprise Orientation: to start a business career as a business owner,
manager, partner or director, working with Career Support and Enterprise
Support.
The Offshore Campus provides the courses, tuition, support and learning
experience of a Business School and Language School – rolled into one:
• English as a Foreign Language (for those who want to study, travel, work
or do business with the English-speaking world).

Associates
We especially welcome collectives of 2,3, or 4 freelancers or professionals who
want to form their own independent collective, LLP, company or co-operative,
working as Associates with World Business Café on a Co-venture basis.

As an Associate, language, business or TEFL specialist you can attend the Director
of Studies course. On graduation you can apply to run your own Skype
Consultancy or Skype Campus, providing Learning Support to students,
professionals, managers and their organisations on a membership basis.
Your members subscribe to your services directly.

Enterprise Support - for professionals and their enterprises

What we offer – services for property owners and investors

We provide a blueprint for commercial building use (for landlords and tenants)

We provide a blueprint for residential/business use (for owners and tenants)

We provide bespoke consultancy for building alteration and property conversion

( for developers and would-be investors – with focus on Social Enterprise).

Zen Cafes – promoting sustainable futures - in conjunction with Study Direct and The Sustainable
Futures Foundation
Zen Cafes – sustainable business development – for next-generation professionals

We provide a bespoke service for rural landowners, estate managers, farmers and
country house owners. We can advise on barn conversion, self-catering
accommodation and building usage, with especial focus on the combined needs
of: food production, local economy and sustainability.

Working with selected architects, town planners as well as energy and transport
consultants we provide a service for:
• Local authorities
• Entrepreneurs
• Community Groups as well as: investors, investment consortia and
institutional investors

By working with us as an independent property advisor you can provide a

property matching service for your town or city – matching properties with
tenants and matching investment opportunities with investors.

Our ethos
Our focus for EcoCities comprises a combination of
Social Responsibility with the needs of Enterprise. A
sustainable vision means the needs of enterprise
and community can reinforce each other, through
active commitment to the principles of Social
Enterprise. Our advisors comprise: 7-Team
(advisors to Sainsbury, Bank of England, Royal
Bank of Scotland). Theodore Levitt – former editor
of Harvard Business Review and proponent of
Buyer-Centric Marketing. Lean Enterprise Institute (advisors to Toyota and Tesco).
The Greenhouse Project – advisors to The Hub Social Enterprise Workspace.

Our points of reference

Some of the organisations who inspire us and whose values we share, include:
• Macdonough Architects
• Schumacher.org – publishers of Sustainable Cities by Herbert Girardet
• Resurgence
• International Business Leaders’ Forum
• The Soros Foundation
• The Soil Association
• FLOW
• Ashoka
• Forum for the Future

Working with us
We invite local specialists to work with us in any of the following fields:

1. Building use – Commercial and Residential:

Rural and Urban
2. Finance and investment – new ventures, co-
operatives – existing venues
3. Schools Portal: Enterprise Portal
4. Education (Human-scale education and
sustainable education)
5. Health – Natural Health, holistic care and healthcare delivery
6. Creative Living: Music: Creative Workshops: Performing Arts
7. Dance Events – Social Networking
8. Energy and Natural Power

Zen Cafes – promoting sustainable futures - in conjunction with Study Direct and The Sustainable
Futures Foundation
Zen Cafes – sustainable business development – for next-generation professionals

9. Enterprise and Enterprise Training (Social Responsibility, Social

Enterprise, Branding, Communications, ISP services and IT support)
10. Food Production: Human-scale agriculture: Food distribution
11. Youth and elderly: re-training and skills development
12. Architecture and urban planning: Transport, Energy, Resource
Management and Recycling
13. Cycling and fitness: camping, recreation and leisure
14. Publishing and Community Media
15. Not-for-profits: Social Enterprise: Co-operatives
16. Food and drink; retail and distribution
17. Local government: business space: Open Society
18. Environment and conservation: Eco-learning: Citizenship
19. Multi-cultural understanding: dispute settlement; restorative justice:
Community Law and Business Support
20. Media: Film Production and TV Programming
21. Eco-travel: sustainable tourism: eco-tourism: GAP Year opportunities
22. Volunteering: Barter: Time Banks:
23. Meditation and personal development
24. Right Livelihood

An invitation to use Eco Cities for your community

We invite local specialists to work with us in any of
the above fields.

• We invite individual entrepreneurs to apply

for training and Enterprise Orientation to set
up Co-venture opportunities

• We invite students and GAP Year students to

use Creative Workshops to start an independent career

• We offer an independent career path for those who want to set up their
own education consultancy or local think tank to advise and address the
needs of local interests.

5.0 Eco-City Options

Business
• Property Services – Enterprise Services

Working in education
• Schools Portal: Yoga and Natural Health
• Dance: The Dance Project

Enterprise
• Education for entrepreneurs: language learning and EFL
• Leadership and Project Management
• Enterprise Training and Career Support

Events and Networking

• The Dance Project
• Social Networking
• Business Clusters

Healthy lifestyle and Business Fitness

• Meditation at Work

Zen Cafes – promoting sustainable futures - in conjunction with Study Direct and The Sustainable
Futures Foundation
Zen Cafes – sustainable business development – for next-generation professionals

• Creative Workshops
• Food and Drink: catering, retail and distribution

1. Co-ventures can work with us: start-ups, LLPs and co-operatives

2. COSA – work with us if you are an existing specialist
3. Consultancy: use our services on a pay-as-you-go or membership
basis

The next step: contact us directly or select your membership level (below).

To set up your own Membership Enrolment page – select your option:

1. 40% fee retention – for COSA members; per country

2. 50% fee retention – for Co-ventures – per town or city

3. 60% fee retention – for Graduates of The Offshore Campus. Graduates can
work on a Co-venture basis with Career Support and Enterprise Support.

Eco-City Membership benefits

1. Set up your own Business Cluster or Enterprise Network

2. Set up your own consultancy

3. Organise and promote Social and Business Networking Events

4. Set up your own Social Enterprise Cluster

5. Initiate flexible workspace for new and existing businesses in your area

6. Make the move into education (services for schools or organisations)

7. Set up your own Café (subscription service) for invited members and
community participants with Zen Cafés

8. Get involved in Skype Cafes, Skype Tutors, The Shambhala Dance

Project or come and visit us at a residential Creative Workshop at The
Offshore Campus, Kalamata, Greece

Zen Cafes – promoting sustainable futures - in conjunction with Study Direct and The Sustainable
Futures Foundation