Man and Nature
Lessons learned from the nature
Everything you see exists together
in a delicate balance.As a king you
need to understand that balance
and respect all the creature from
the crawling ant to the leaping
antelope....
That’s my
world!
Do you like such a sunny
morning ?
Do you like
fresh air?
What a day!
(what is he going
to do?)
7
Ha,ha,ha
…
What’s your opinion towards
wild animals?
Do you like animals?
Can you imagine,What’s the
life of the wild creatures in
Africa like?
Now , let’s try to find
something real from
the movie.
Requirement:
1) Try to take some notes down
while you are watching.
2)Try to say something about the
characteristics about each kind of
animal.
3)Try to name some of them.
Next, We will listen to a
passage. After hearing this
passage, we will move to
group work. At this stage,
each group will choose your
own spokesman or
spokeswoman.
Group Work:
(Let’s discuss these following questions)
1)What if no forest existing in
the world?
2)What if no animals living on
earth?
3)What can a country learn
from the rain forest?
4) What can a company
learn from the rain forest?
5)What can you learn from
the rain forest?
The rain Forest

The environment and the emerging
information economy are two issues
most vital to the future of my business,
and perhaps the world. To me , these
topics seem intimately linked. Perhaps
this is partly because I work for
Mitsubish Electric, an electrics
company ,and I see our impacts on the
environment. But my most important
lessons about the link among business,
the environment, and the economy did
not come from my company, I learned
them in the forest.
• On my trip to Asia, I visited the Malaysian rain forest.
What I learn Changed my life as a corporate executive.
• I learned that saving the rain forest---- in fact, saving the
environment--- is more than an environmental necessity.
It is a business opportunity. In our case, it is an
opportunity to pursue business opportunity that use
creativity and technology to substitute for trees, for
resources of any kind.
• I learned something else in the rain forest, too,
something more profound. I learned how we might
operate our company not just to save the rain forest ,but
to be more like the rain forest
To be agile and creative, we must structure
our company so that we are a learning
organization. Not top-down, but bottom –
up. Not centralized, but decentralized. Not
limited by rules, but motivated by
objectives. Not structures like a machine--which cannot learn---- but a living system,
which can.
When I visited the rain forest, I realize
that it was a model of the perfect learning
organization, a place that excels by learning
to adapt to what it does not have. A rain
forest has almost no resources. The soil is
thin. There are few nutrients. It consumes
almost nothing. Wastes are food. Design is
capital. So my model for Mitsubishi Electric
is an organization that is like a rain forest in
those respects.
Rain forest have no productive
assets,yet they are incredible productive.
They are home to millions of types of
plants and animals --- more than twothirds of all biodiversity in the world.
Those plants and animals are so perfectly
mixed that the system is more efficient
and more creative , than any business in
the world.
If we ran our companies like the rain forest, imagine
how creative, how productive, how ecologically benign
we could be. We can begin by operating less like a
machine and more like a living system. At Mitsubish
Electric, we have begun to adopt an environmental
management system founded on principles of industrial
ecology. For us, this means two things:First, we must
have our eyes wide open and see the environmental cost
and benefits of our business. Second, based on what we
see, we must take action:
See cost---and reduce them,
See benefits----and increase them
See needs ------ and fill them
When I visited the rainforest, I realized that, as business
people, we have looking things at the rain forest all wrong.
What is valuable about the rain forest is not the trees, which
we can take out. What is valuable is the design, the
relationships, from which comes the real value of the forest.
When we take trees from the forest, we can ruin its design. But
when we take lessons from the forest, we further its purpose.
We can develop the human ecosystem into as intricate and
creative a system as we find in the rain forest. We can do more
with less, grow without shrinking.
While the rain forest has many design
principles, let’s discuss three:
Differentiate, Be yourself, be unique. In
the rain forest, conformity leads to
extinction. If two organisms have the
same niche, only one survives. The other
adapts or dies.
The same thing happens in today’s
economy. If two business have the same
niche, making exactly the same product,
only one survives. The other adapts or
dies. Most companies today are trying to
be the one survives ----by cutting costs,
radically downsizing, desperately
seeking the lowest cost.
It’s smarter to differentiate. Create
unique products, different from any
others. Fill unique niches. Don’t kill our
competitors or be killed by them---sidestep them instead. Only then is time
to reduce costs and grow more efficient.
Cooperate. Today,many people think
competitiveness is the key to business success,
but such thinking is out of date. Today, as we
grow different, we learn that none of us is
whole.We need each other to fill our gaps. For
example, at my company, we no longer look to
grow bigger simply by acquiring more and more
companies as subsidiaries. Instead, we are
engaging in cooperative joint ventures with many
others. Each company retains its independence,
its specialty ,and its core competence. Together
we benefit from our diversity.
Be a good fit. We used to say only the fittest
survives.; Only one can be the winner. But the
rain forest has many winners.
The same can be true in our economy. In this
new, diverse, rain-forest economy, it is not a
question of who is most fit. It is a question of
where we best fit. If we fit---if we solve a social
problem, fulfill a social need--- we will survive
and excel. If we only create problems. We will
not.
I am often asked whether the
needs of the corporation and the
needs of the environment are in
conflict. I do not believe they are. In
the long run, they cannot be.
Conventional wisdom is that the
highest mission of a corporation is to
maximize profits and return to
shareholders. That is a myth. It has
never been true. Profits is just money--a medium of exchange. You always
trade it for something else. So profits
are not an end; they are a means to an
end.
My philosophy is this: we
don’t run our business to earn
profits. We earn profits to run
our business. Our business has
meaning and purpose--- a
reason to be here.
People talk today about business
needing to be socially responsible, as if
this is something new we need to do, on
top of everything else we do. But social
responsibility is not something that one
should do as an extra benefit of the
business. The whole essence of the
business should be social responsibility.
It must live for a purpose. Otherwise,
why should it live at all?
What I learned from the
rain forest is easy to understand.
We can use less and have more.
It is the only way, for the
interests of business and the
interests of the environment are
not incompatible.
Group Work:
(Let’s discuss these following questions)
1)What if no forest existing in
the world?
2)What if no animals living on
earth?
3)What can a country
learn from the rain forest?
4) What can a company
learn from the rain forest?
5)What can you learn from
the rain forest?