What's the Big Idea

World could see its 1st trillionaire within a decade, Oxfam predicts (Global News)
“The ultra-wealthy have seen their fortunes turbo-charged while the poorest on earth have even
less to their name. The five wealthiest men on the planet have seen their fortunes more than double since the onset of the pandemic in 2020. In fact, Oxfam predicts that, within the next decade, the world will see its first trillionaire.” - Bruno Dyck

“With our current system, some research says that 95% of the financial gains of globalization go to the richest 5%. That's unconscionable, we should not be able to sleep after we hear that; we should be wanting to change those things.”
“What if the economy was all about making sure that everyone has enough? Instead of how do we
get ahead and how do we make more? What if that was the basis for the economy?”

MICHAEL: Welcome to What's the Big Idea? I'm your host, Michael Bennaroch, President and Vice
Chancellor of the University of Manitoba. This episode is not a typical transaction. It’s not business
as usual. Get ready to explore big ideas that reimagine the very purpose of business.
My guest is Bruno Dyck, the Norman Frohlich Professor in Business Sustainability at the Asper
School of Business. Bruno is an award-winning teacher and co-author of groundbreaking textbooks
that challenge us to rethink why and how we do business.
His ideas are so bold and inspiring that they’ve sparked the creation of the new Chiu Centre for
Business Serving Community. Bruno will be its inaugural director and as he puts it, this Centre will
change the world. If you’re questioning the old mantra that greed is good, and you think profit can
come with purpose, stay tuned. Bruno’s big ideas are truly transformational.

MICHAEL: Great to have you here, Bruno.

BRUNO DYCK: Good to be here.

MICHAEL: I've always been a big fan of your work. And when I was Dean of the Asper School, I
appreciated the perspective you always brought. And I think you challenged students, and you
challenged other faculty members to think a little bit bigger. And so, it's great to have you here today
as a guest. First, let's start with the idea you’ve spread around the world, through your research and
your textbooks, which is called Social and Ecological Thought management or SET management.
And the idea reimagines the purpose of business. Tell us a little bit more about this idea and how it
might work.

BRUNO DYCK: This is an idea that encapsulates some of those things where we're challenging the
field a little bit, in a good way, I think, and in a way that's important going forward. So SET
management, S-E-T management, Social and Ecological Thought management says, what if the
purpose of business was to create goods and services that are truly good and that truly serve
society? And what if people on planet were more important than maximizing profit? So, that's a bit
of a jarring statement to make in some business schools, where it's all about maximizing profits.
What if we just say we need to make enough money, and the rest should be doing good for social
well-being and ecological well-being. And to understand SET a little bit and how we talk about it in
our research and in the textbook, you need to compare it to FBL, Financial Bottom-Line
management, and Triple Bottom-Line, TBL management.

And FBL management used to be the dominant paradigm, starting in the 1900s, and there it was all
about making money. The business of business is business. And government and non-government
agencies and organizations will take care of social welfare and ecological well-being. We just have
to obey the law. And by the 1990s, it was pretty clear that that was not sustainable, ecologically
sustainable or socially sustainable, really, and that's where the Triple Bottom-Line idea kicked in
and said, hey we can do social and ecological things that are better, we can mitigate the bad things
we're doing, the negative externalities we're creating, and we can still make money. In fact, we can
make more money, is what some of the research is suggesting. So, if we have less packaging for our
product, we have a smaller ecological footprint, and we're also saving money on packaging. If we
provide healthy cafeteria, if we provide daycares, our employees will stay longer, we'll have lower
turnover costs, they'll be more motivated, they'll be more productive. So, it's going to make even
more money.

The problem with that is there's always been a business case associated with the triple bottom line.
So, we're only doing those things that will actually enhance profits, which isn't a bad thing. It's good
to do those things, but it's not enough. So even today, or 2018 is the latest data I have, if you look at
the 1200 largest corporations, and these are the ones that are leaders in the Triple Bottom-Line
perspective, they all have a VPO of sustainability. Those 1200 corporations are creating five trillion3
dollars of negative ecological externalities a year, which is greater than all of their profits put
together. That's not sustainable. We need something different than that. So, among practitioners
and among academics and certainly among students, there's a recognition that we need a different
paradigm, a different approach. Sometimes I call it a different language. FBL and TBL and SET are
different languages to talk about management. So, this is a different language to talk about
management, and it says, what if all we need to do is make enough money, we didn't have to
maximize profits, what would it look like then? And that's a question that's not asked. When I tell
that to my finance people, they say, how much is enough, Bruno? (Laughter).

MICHAEL: How much money is enough?

BRUNO DYCK: We don't ask it, do we? How much is enough? And if we would ask that question, that
would solve a lot of the world's problems, I think.

MICHAEL: So, these are really two big ideas, and I think you've done a great job of researching them,
you've written about them, you've put them in your textbooks.

BRUNO DYCK: So, we have a textbook that teaches the three approaches to management, and the U
of M library has just published a new version of this textbook and it's an open educational resource,
so it's free to the students and it presents all three approaches to management, all three languages
of management, in each chapter. So, students are now reading it, and they're compelled to think,
who am I? What kind of a manager do I want to become? What do I stand for? And students' critical
thinking has actually improved within one course. So that's pretty exciting stuff.

MICHAEL: So, does that happen by challenging their preconceived notions of what a business
student should be striving for?

BRUNO DYCK: Yes, that's an important part of it. It happens by getting them to think outside the box.
So, there's two components to critical thinking. One is linear, logical, rational thinking. And the
university is good at that. It's the thinking outside the box stuff that we're not particularly good at.
And particularly in business schools, to be honest. So, in business schools, students tend to
become more materialistic and more individualistic, as they go through their program of studies
because all our theories are based on self-interest and wealth maximization, and business
professors, as a cohort, are more materialistic, more individualistic, than others across campus,
except for economists they're the same way.
(Laughter)

So, this is now getting them to think outside that box. It's giving them permission to think outside
that box because, naturally we are not homo economicus, right? We do care about others. We do
have compassion. We care about the environment. And especially nowadays, this is the Greta
Thunberg generation. They're hungry for this stuff. They can't get enough of it.

“We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of4
eternal economic growth. How dare you?”

MICHAEL: So, are there examples of cases where businesses have chosen kind of a more
sociological, ecological approach? Do you have case studies of this?

BRUNO DYCK: That's a great question. Yes, is the short answer. So, this last year we had some
students and I worked together to make a documentary and it highlights three of those firms that
are SET firms and one of them is called Build, which is a company that purposefully hires people
who are on the margins or who are facing barriers to entry, maybe they've had a criminal record, or
whatever, they can't get a job.

So, they hire those people, they train them in construction and the trades. At first, they did a lot of
work in poorer communities, in Winnipeg neighborhoods, where they put in water saving devices.
So, it saves money for the homeowners, and it saves water for society. They put in insulation in the
basement, again, saving money in terms of the fuel costs, the gas costs, and also greenhouse gas
emissions. And they're not there to maximize money, they’re there to serve society. Another
company we have there is Long Way Homestead which is a sheep farm, a fibre farm outside the city
here, and they talk about growing soil, not just growing sheep. So, they're doing everything in an
organic way. Manitoba's first wool mill and they create wool out of other sheep farmers’ sheep
instead of having to send them away or waste it. But one of my favorite examples is Tallgrass Prairie
Bread Company and that has been around, for well over 30 years, now. And when they started, they
had a business plan and they went to the bank and said, we’ve got a good business plan here. We're
going to sell a loaf of bread for a buck twenty-five. And everybody else at that time was selling it for
fifty cents. And the bank said, I don't think that's a very good business plan.

But what they weren't paying attention is to why it was going to cost that much. There was a lot of
farm suicides at that time. And the founders of the bakery talked to farmers and said, how much
money do you guys need, especially small family farms, at that time? And well, this is how much
money we need. OK, we're going to pay you that much money, and we're going to hire newcomers to
Canada. We're going to pay them a living wage instead of minimum wage. So, we’re minimizing
negative social externalities. And the owner said to the bankers, you know what, if Winnipeggers
see this, if this becomes transparent, they will pay a dollar twenty-five. And they have. And it's
exciting. It's a very cool organization.

MICHAEL: And they make the best cinnamon buns.

BRUNO DYCK: And they make the best cinnamon buns. I also like their sourdough spelt bread. It’s
worth the trip.

MICHAEL: So, you've now built off of this idea of Social and Ecological Thought management, SET, to
a new concept you're calling Flourishing Systems Approach. So, what's Flourishing Systems
Approach and how does it fit in with SET management?

BRUNO DYCK: So Flourishing Systems Approach is something we developed at the Asper School,
and we had people from different disciplines, accounting and finance and marketing and
entrepreneurship. And we said, here's a new course we're offering. It's a required course. It's called5
Sustainable Business. What do students need to learn? What's the heart of what needs to be taught
there? And we start off, the first third of the course is about flourishing. We want to have a
flourishing society. Well, what does that mean? Well, we want ecological flourishing, and we want
social flourishing.

And we talk about the water cycle, and we talk about the carbon cycle, we talk about biodiversity,
we talk about nitrogen eutrophication, due to fugitive nitrogen, and we do it all in cycles. Once the
students start to understand that they understand why it's important not to do greenhouse gas
emissions. Then we talk about social systems, and we talk about three key social systems. We talk
about economics, how does the economy work, and we say, what if the economy was all about
making sure that everyone has enough? Instead of how do we get ahead and how do we make
more? What if that was the basis for the economy? And that's how it was for hundreds of thousands
of years of humankind. What if the political system was about making sure everyone has voice?
What that look like? And again, when we were hunter-gatherers, that's how the system worked.
There was a very egalitarian power structure, apparently.

And then social systems, what about making sure everybody has friends? Right now, we have a
loneliness epidemic. I think, even before COVID, it was 62% of U of M students felt extremely lonely,
in the past year. These are 22-year-olds, surrounded by 22-year-olds, having all the opportunities
they can to connect to them, and they're feeling lonely. Well, why is that? Well, the dominant
paradigm says how can we negotiate with people and use people and get ahead and see people as
a commodity rather than how can we have compassion and care for and look after one another.
MICHAEL: That, I would imagine, for many businesses takes them away from some of their focus,
but I was thinking about the recent Idea Award winner, Steve Young, on these. And one of the things
he said was that our problem, in the world today, is that we approach situations as transactional.

BRUNO DYCK: Uh huh, exactly.

MICHAEL: And he said as a result of that, we forget about the people, and we forget about the
relationships. And he took his business and turned it around and said, and he learned from football,
to say it’s not transactional. I mean, there's a transaction in there, but there's so much more to that.
And that's led to his business success. He believed and he preached that to the students.

BRUNO DYCK: And I'm sure they were very receptive. In our hearts, we know that's true. There's one
study that was interesting. Students going to Harvard and they were given a list of 20 values and
compassion was one of those values. Compassion was near the top of the list. That's what they
valued as persons. And then he said, here's a list of 20 values. What do you expect to learn at
Harvard? Compassion was at the bottom. So, how do we do business? Well, if we park our
compassion at the door, we're parking something that's pretty important to us. How can we re-
introduce compassion? So, that's the SET approach, that's also the Flourishing Systems approach,
which then has implications how we do the functions. So, as marketing, are we selling a
commodity, or are we selling relationships? When you buy a loaf of bread at Tallgrass Prairie, you
see a map where those farmers supply that, you see the farmers bringing their wheat, you see the
mill. So, you're getting to participate in a community when you buy that loaf of bread. And even6
though it costs two dollars extra, you're happy because there's more than two dollars of
externalities built into that loaf of bread, that you are happy to share with others.

MICHAEL: And now, we have an opportunity with the Chiu Centre for Business Serving Community,
of which you're the inaugural director. So, how's the Centre fit into this? What is the Centre going to
do and how do you feel it will be kind of a venue for you to be able to promote these ideas?

BRUNO DYCK: Yeah, we're very excited about the Centre. There's a lot of energy behind it. I brought
along the three bullet points for the vision of the Centre, which I'd like to read if that's okay. Because
it really captures a lot of the vision of the Centre. The first is, “to foster culture change and
capitalism via promoting business models that address social and ecological crises facing
humanity.”

So, from my perspective, that's the key thing we, as a society, as a business school, and we as a
university, need to think about in the next 10 years. How are we going to address these crises facing
us? It's not just climate change. There's lots of other stuff going on there. It's also the fact that, with
our current system, some research says that 95% of the financial gains of globalization go to the
richest 5%. That's unconscionable, that we should not be able to sleep after we hear that; we
should be wanting to change those things. And that's not sustainable, going forward, because
there's a widening gap between rich and poor. And that creates all sorts of social problems, not only
for the poor, but also the rich. Second bullet point is “to become a nationally recognized research
centre focused on improving the understanding and practice of fully harnessing the power of
business models to enhance social impact and foster community, care, and compassion.”
What I like about this one is we're going to do research on this. What are the best practices and who
can we learn from and how can we develop theory and practice related to that? And that's also a
very wholistic question. It's not just us, as business professors; we need to work with sociology, and
we need to work with Indigenous studies, and we need to work with a natural resources institute.
So, how can we do the research that's necessary towards that end?

And then the third bullet sort of anticipates that, “to provide a support system for scholars to work
together to address new and emerging areas of research, related to utilizing business models to
enhance social impact.” So, if that's not inspiring stuff, I don't know what is. That's a huge agenda
that Chiu Centre is part of and promoting, and it's a beautiful thing to be part of that.

MICHAEL: What I like about it is it's not rejecting business. It's not rejecting capitalism. It's saying,
how do we harness this? How do we build upon it? A bit of a different focus, different values. But I
suspect, in the end, lots of value is going to be created. You know, as an economist, we were always
taught to maximize profits, right?
Except then, when I started teaching environmental economics, there was this whole thing about
externalities and suddenly you realize, well wait a minute, you're not really measuring profits right,
because you're not measuring the externalities. And here, there's positive externalities, which
maybe are not financial always, but I suspect, in terms of sustainability and long-term viability, one
could measure this as actually maximizing profits, in a sense.

BRUNO DYCK: That's right. So, in our Sustainable Business course, we have mainstream or regular
profits, and we have Flourishing Systems Approach profits, and we measure them differently. So, in
a regular measure of profits, you're in a little box. You just measure the financial stuff happening
inside the boundaries of the organization. So, if you can open a factory in a place where they don't
have pollution laws or they're not enforced, if you can have low-cost labour overseas, you're
creating externalities out there, but you're not paying for them. You're actually increasing your
costs. There's incentives to increase negative externalities. So, what if we measure those
externalities, those negative externalities, and positive externalities too. Businesses create a lot of
positive externalities. What if we deliberately measure those and use the accounting systems?
Maybe at first, they're going to be parallel accounting systems, but maybe this is the future. I mean,
in Europe, they're talking about Scope 3 emissions and things like that, which are looking at, not
only your greenhouse gas emissions and not only your supplier’s but also your suppliers’ suppliers’
greenhouse gas emissions. So, there is a recognition, there's a movement towards that end and
that's a much more genuine profit. And then we have students using those tools and evaluating
different companies and measuring their regular profits and their Flourishing Systems Approach
profits and it's become the highlight, because you're giving them tools to do that. We're doing
systems thinking and we're providing tools to address these issues. Eco anxiety is a real thing, in
this new generation, and they've heard about the problems and this course really, and then my
research really, tries to empower students and give them levers, give them ways to make the world
a better place. And when I have MBA students or when I talk to business practitioners, they're the
same. They know that there's problems and they're looking for these kinds of answers. So, it's
exciting to be part of that process.

MICHAEL: Tell me a little bit more about the new mandatory course in sustainable business
practices.

BRUNO DYCK: It's a very exciting course, in that it's now a third-year level course, and all students
need to take it. It's required at the BCom, at the undergrad level, and it introduces students to these
Flourishing Systems Approach and how to apply it, within each of the disciplines, within marketing,
finance, accounting, etc. And by doing that, because it's a third-year course, they already have a
critical mass of knowledge of what marketing is, or what they thought marketing was, or what
marketing is from an FBL or TBL perspective. So, it's easier for them to learn about that SET
perspective or SET to finance or SET accounting. And I hope someday, that course will become
obsolete. And 10 years from now, all courses will be like this, and we don't need this course.

MICHAEL: Right, where you incorporate it across the whole.

BRUNO DYCK: That’s exactly right.

MICHAEL: When did you start teaching business?

BRUNO DYCK: Boy, that's a long time ago. I think 1990.

MICHAEL: So, 1990s, you've been at this for 35 years. And I'm curious if you've seen a change in
students. I suspect, when you first started teaching it, there might have been quite a bit of
resistance.

BRUNO DYCK: There's been a huge change. You're right. My first years, I wasn't really teaching this
stuff because I wasn't aware of it. I didn't know how to teach it. And I would bring it in, piece by
piece. And I remember, now maybe 15 years ago, there would always be one or two students in the
year-end report pushing back pretty hard on this stuff. I remember, the first time I taught this at an
MBA level, it was palpable. It was, you could see, when I said, what if business wasn't all about
maximizing profits and what about doing well? About a third of the students in the class leaned
forward and said, oh this is interesting. I want to hear what this is about. And about a third of them
leaned back and folded their arms and said, who let this guy into a business school?
But now, I can't give them enough. So now, students, this is great Bruno, push those boundaries, get
the finance people to talk about this sort of stuff, get this stuff into other courses. And that's part of
the impetus for the Sustainable Business course, because we go through each of those functions
and say, what would marketing look like? What would accounting? What would finance? What
would entrepreneurship look like, if we took this stuff seriously? And it's an upside-down way of
looking at it. It's a very different paradigm.

MICHAEL: I hope that the Chiu Centre, has that kind of impact and continues to grow. And you could
see then what kind of impact that might have in the province. You could see, as the generation of
students come out, if this gets incorporated and takes hold, it can have a massive impact on how
we do business.

BRUNO DYCK: And it's already, I think, part of the culture of Winnipeg, to be honest. I've had a
number of deans and faculty members come to me and say, there's something about the Winnipeg
business community that's different. There's something about here that we take community
seriously, we take social wellbeing seriously. And I think it's no surprise that it was quite easy to find
50 SET organizations in Winnipeg. I don't know if you could find it that easily in other places. There is
a prairie sensibility about this stuff that is something the university and that students can build on
and push towards.

MICHAEL: So, you've talked about some examples in Winnipeg. Do you think that SET and
Flourishing Systems Approach can be scaled up? Like could Coke and Nike take this on?

BRUNO DYCK: That's a very good question. We just had a paper published on scaling up this stuff
and it was really more about scaling deep. So, the Tallgrass Prairie farmers and soil and different
suppliers and how they hire and stuff. It's not getting bigger in size. Tallgrass Prairie bread company
has had lots of opportunities to grow in size, and they said if we grow in size, and if we now have a
central warehouse, that's going to change some of the transactions we have. I had a PhD student
who just graduated this year, and he was going to look at the Nikes and do this at the large scale.
And I said, good, if you can do that, that's a great idea. By the end, he didn't give up on that, but he
realized that this really has to start from the bottom up. It's very hard from the top down because if
you're a huge corporation, how did you get there? There's a lot of institutionalized norms and
culture and practices that are difficult to undo.

That said, I'm also very conscious of and I tell students, these are three ideal types. Nobody's a pure
FBL company or SET company or a TBL company, but it gives us some places to plug into and to9
understand who we are and who we want to become.

We all have a sphere of influence. And students, they have it as a consumer, as a manager, as a
family member. Which boundaries are we, which direction are we going? And that's, for me, an
exciting thing. Another exciting thing is, when students come to me at the end of the course and
say, Bruno, I'm not FBL, and I'm not TBL, and I'm not SET. I am -- and then they go on to describe
their own values and how they want to instantiate, how they want to manifest, how they want to put
those into practice, as a manager. And as an instructor, that gives me goosebumps to think about
that and it’s a beautiful moment.

MICHAEL: So, going back to, you know, SET management and Flourishing Systems, maybe you can
tell me a little bit more how that will impact how we think about finance and the meaning of money
in new ways.

BRUNO DYCK: I think SET and FSA and the Chiu Centre will be developing a different language,
different concepts, different worldview that will change how people think.
Every local dollar creates 16 cents of positive externalities, and every non-local dollar creates 30
cents in negative externalities. So, when you go to Leon Centre, that’s creating flourishing in the
local community. If you go to Walmart, a lot of that profit is going to be trickling up. So, the Walmart
family has as much wealth as the poorest half of the USA together. There's something wrong in that
picture. So, local multiplier effect.

But talking about money, the other classic example that I'll throw out is Aristotle. Aristotle talked
about natural chrematistics and unnatural chrematistics. Natural chrematistics is the study of
money, how we use money, how we think about money. And he said money is a good thing, if we
use it, in what he calls a natural way, in a good way. And he says, imagine that there's a village
square, you're bringing in your potato farmer, you're bringing your potatoes, you want to have some
sandals, you go to the sandal maker and say, hey, I'll trade you some potatoes for sandals. And the
sandal maker says, sorry, I don't need any potatoes. So, you go, and you sell your potatoes to
somebody else, you take your money, you buy your sandals, and you walk home with your sandals,
and you're a happy potato farmer with sandals. That's natural. The unnatural chrematistics is
saying, I've got a hundred bucks, I'm going to go to the market, I'm going to go buy a hundred dollars
worth of potatoes from this person, and I'm going to sell them for a hundred and fifty bucks to that
person, and I've earned fifty dollars. And you walk away and say, I've earned that money. That's the
using money to make money paradigm. And that's the mainstream now. That's how we think about
things. Financial institutions create profits in the U.S. and in Canada. They're not making any shoes
or growing any potatoes. They're not teaching anybody. They're not healing anybody. But that's how
that system goes. And that insatiable appetite for money that needs to change.

“So you can only equate like money with wisdom or being intellectual for so long, until the bill10
comes due. If you’re so smart, what are you going to do with it? If the answer is just make more
money, then like, we don’t need you, you know what I mean?”

BRUNO DYCK: We had a speaker come through the Asper School, and I don't know how he got
access to this data set, but he got access to a bank data set and all the customers and how much
money they had in the bank. And he went to all the customers who had a million bucks in the bank,
and he said to them, is that enough? And they said, no, three million, that would be enough. And
then he went to all the people at three million bucks in the bank, do you have enough? And they
said, no, 10 million. And he went to 10 million, no, 25 million. We'll never have enough. If we can
figure out how much we have enough, that can change finance, change how we think about money,
change how we think about life, and we'd be much happier people.

MICHAEL: In the current political climate, it seems to be, we're moving to a world where it's
becoming more about me, from a country perspective and from an individual perspective. And one
which seems to feel threatened by concepts like sustainability or equity. How do you think that's
going to fit with the paradigm? Do you feel that there's now going to be another round of kind of
resistance to this approach?

BRUNO DYCK: The optimist in me says no. The optimist in me says we are human beings. We are
naturally inclined towards compassion. That's what we stand for. And maybe the further we're
pushed by political and economic realities, in another direction, at some point that's going to create
a rebellion. Maybe it's more likely to create a resistance and, certainly, that's the case with the
younger generation now. They have walked away a little bit from the mainstream paradigm. They
still want to drive a BMW. There's a tension there, but they understand that there's more to life than
just making as much money as you can and the injustices associated with trying to get ahead for
yourself and making as much as you can and getting ahead, who are you getting ahead from? And
that distancing, there's an understanding there that that's not a healthy way for us to be as people.

“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so, we can buy s*** we don’t
need.”

MICHAEL: So, then let's talk about that because in our system the role of consumers is critical. And
so, what role can consumers play here? How will they know how to choose between organizations?
And what are we seeing, in the evolution of how consumers are choosing to consume?

BRUNO DYCK: So, when we talk with my students, they say, government should change the laws.
That would solve everything. Or consumers should buy stuff. Or shouldn’t businesses do things
differently? And they are waiting for those others because it's going to be hard to compete in this
kind of environment. So, we do research on these SET organizations and how they compete against
the mainstream. And there's a couple of keys there. It's transparency, education, understanding.
So, if I go to the Tallgrass Prairie Bakery bread counter and I see the farmers and I see the
newcomers working behind it, I see that this is happening here. This is something I want to be part
of. I have that information.

Now we live in a society where that's hard to do with everything. One vision I had was getting an app
where you can go down the grocery aisle or wherever and look at the barcode and they get a score
on social, ecological well-being. It's still not the same as actually knowing that and having that
transparency. Buying local creates that transparency, that kind of community which can be the
antidote to this other stuff, right? If there's faceless others, we want to get as much as we can, and
our hoarding stuff. If we see the people that it's hurting, that changes the calculus, that changes
who we are. So, getting to know that transparency, education is a huge part of that.

The other thing is, FBL and TBL firms are smart. So, they are looking at what the SET people are
doing, and they are mimicking it, in a way, and that's greenwashing and that's a very real danger. The
key thing for consumers to do, I think, is to educate themselves. And buy local is probably the
easiest way to do that transparency stuff.

MICHAEL: So, we're seeing an example of this play itself out, in Canada. Maybe not around SET, but
in the concept of, we’re angry at the United States. We're angry at the notion of a 51st state. We're
angry at the tariffs because we feel we've been friends and colleagues, for a long time. We've set up
our economies to be integrated. And obviously, that's breaking down right now.
Canadians are going to the store and choosing products which are not made in one country. So, it's
not quite the example of SET, but it is the example of consumers responding to something that
emotionally impacts them and actually impacts them in their well-being, also.

BRUNO DYCK: And that's differentiating financial well-being from social well-being. Even if we can
get cheaper stuff from the States, we're not willing to make that sacrifice if that means we're
empowering them to overtake our community. And it’s an opportunity to think more deeply about
what do we stand for after all? And why do we have inter-provincial barriers? Maybe we should be
doing these things differently. And maybe that'll spill over into things like homelessness and other
social issues too. No, that's not who we want to be. We want to be something different than that. In
a way, COVID did the same thing. Sort of a pause button from normal and a reflection button. So,
where do we come out of that reflection and the more we have examples like Tall Grass Prairie
Bread Company, the more we have SET language and concepts floating around, the more we are
able to gravitate towards that stuff and understand and name those kinds of things.

MICHAEL: Thank you for that. That was a fascinating conversation, a real challenge to society. But
setting up the Centre is very exciting for the University of Manitoba. I'm sure it's exciting for you. And
I think we're going to see students and faculty, and others have real interest in the work. And I know
your work has already had a big impact on the way business schools think. I'm looking forward to
see this continuing to evolve over time. So, thank you so much for coming.

BRUNO DYCK: Thank you. Thank you for having me and for this opportunity. And again, with the
Centre, that's going to supercharge a lot of these things. So that's exciting to have that on campus
and an opportunity to get more and more people involved. It's a beautiful day!

MICHAEL: Perfect. Thank you.

MUSIC FADES IN

MICHAEL: I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of What's the Big Idea? Share it with a friend and stir
up your own discussions about how we shop and do business. Ignore the Disney song—we should
be talking about Bruno!

Join us next time, when Angie Bruce, Vice-President (Indigenous) at the University of Manitoba,
takes over the microphone.

She hosts a panel discussion with remarkable alumni to explore what economic reconciliation
really means and why it matters.

Until then, keep thinking big.