The Conscience Economy
Steven Overman
A generation of people around the world, from Boston to Bangkok, from New York to New Delhi, are making everyday choices in ways that defy traditional logic. They are judging where and how their clothes were made, not just how they fit. They are thinking global but buying local. They are spending their money and their time, forming loyalties, casting votes and even enjoying entertainment based increasingly upon their desire to make a positive impact on others and the world around them. This new generation believes they can and must make the world better, and they expect business and government to get with the program.
The implications of the Conscience Economy are not “soft.” Ignore it, and your consumer or voter base will rebel, using a host of free tools and cheap connectivity to spread their rejection to peers around the world in real time. Leverage it, and Conscience Culture is a wellspring of financial upside. The Conscience Economy is the must-read guide to this unprecedented shift in human motivation and behavior. Author Steven Overman provides context, inspiration and some basic tools to help readers reframe how they evolve and grow whatever it is they lead—whether it’s a community, a business, a product, or a marketing campaign. From the boardroom to the startup loft, from the State Department to the pulsing marketplaces of the developing world, The Conscience Economy will help international leaders, influencers, investors and decision-makers to manage, innovate and thrive in a new world where “doing good” matters as much as “doing well.”
Steven Overman has built his career as a pioneer at the intersection of media communication and technology innovation for over two decades. He works on the front line of business and culture transformation, helping teams expand new ideas into massive international phenomena that generate billions of dollars of economic value, but even more importantly, new ideas that positively change the lives of people everywhere.
Overman recently joined Kodak as Chief Marketing Officer, where he will lead the renewal of one of the world’s biggest brands. As a strategy and innovation consultant for startups as well as Fortune 100 companies, and during his tenure as Vice President of Global Brand and Marketing Creation for Nokia Corporation, Overman has directly engaged with a broad range of leaders from the C-suite to the product and software design studio. He has collaborated with the world’s leading creative studios and advertising agencies, imagined and evangelized concepts for sustainable hospitality and sustainability infrastructure for international brands and co-created award-winning youth marketing in countries and cultures around the world.
As one of the earliest members of the group that created and spread the message of the Digital Revolution at Wired magazine, Overman collaborated on the invention of the ad banner for the world’s first commercial website Hotwired (an early offshoot of Wired). He helped create the Academy Award-winning movie Philadelphia, which transformed the global conversation about HIV/AIDS. He led the international launch of the world’s first smartphone, the blockbuster Nokia N95, and went on to lead the creation of innovative marketing for a whole new category of affordable mobile technology that connected a billion new consumers to the Internet, from India to Indonesia to Sub-Saharan Africa.
Overman is a frequent public speaker at industry events such as NorthZone Ventures CEO Summit, Cannes Lions, EuroBest Festival of Creativity, Yahoo Mobile Senior Leaders Summit, and Nokia World. He has also spoken at the Conference Board, SIME Technology Conferences, PSFK and other international thought leadership events. He has been quoted in Wired, Marketing Week, Fast Company, and Business 2.0.
