Estudio sobre felicidad

An introduction to happiness
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Is it your business?

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The Futures Company’s Knowledge Venturing (KV) team has produced this booklet. KV is the time and thinking space we give to what the big issues of the day, like happiness, mean to our clients. We created this booklet to help you focus on the information about happiness that matters most,and help you consider whether using a happiness framework could benefit your organisation or brand. While happiness clearly matters to people - and is the topic of the day - should it matter to brands and organisations? Within the limited scope of things they do and deliver, is happiness the right thing to focus on? Please come talk to us about happiness. We can help you identify the benefits andthink more about whether or not happiness is your business.

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Contents

Happiness: Why now? The benefits of happiness What is happiness? Where does happiness come from? What next? Opportunities and challenges How we can help

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Happiness: Why Now?
We take it for granted that everyone is always seeking happiness, so why have so many people suddenly started talkingmore directly about happiness, and what does this mean for your organisation?
A number of important social, economic and political trends, as well as scientific developments, have pushed happiness to the fore. These are now playing out in the attitudes of consumers, the focus of scientists, and the corridors of political power. In terms of consumer trends, people are increasingly disenchanted withthe story of

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wealth and consumerism for its own sake. While they still want to consume, they are looking for a deeper sense of meaning and purpose. The global recession has raised questions for many about what is most important in life.

Globally only 36% of people agree “I would be happier if I owned more material possessions” In the UK, 52% . of people agree “Since the recession Ihave learned how many things I can do without and still be happy”1

Coinciding with this social and economic moment, the human sciences have become increasingly able to measure happiness accurately. They are better at determining what really makes people happy.

1 - The Futures Company Global MONITOR Survey 2010 (all countries, base = 27,083) and The Futures Company Feeling the Pinch Survey,March 2011 (Wave 5, base = 1,014)

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Governments worldwide are also turning to happiness as a better measure of social progress than GDP. We see this in the OECD’s statistical push for better measures of wellbeing and the state-funded wellbeing initiatives in the UK and France. Meanwhile in Latin America, caution toward market-led models have led leaders in Ecuador and Bolivia to incorporatebroader goals like “the good life” into their new constitutions. Brazil is considering laws to make the pursuit of happiness an inalienable right. Amid concerns about the fast pace of development, China and Thailand are also developing happiness measures to counterbalance the pressures of economic growth.

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In the UK, 43% of people agree that “People’s happiness should be higher on thegovernment agenda than economic growth” while only 23% disagree2

“[A] nation’s total production of goods or services is at best a means to other ends, and often a dubious means at that. In contrast, happiness, or satisfaction with life, can lay claim to be not merely an end in itself, but the end most people consider more important than any other”3
Derek Bok, former President of Harvard University2 - The Futures Company Feeling the Pinch Survey, March 2011 (Wave 5, base = 1,014) 3 - Derek Bok (2010) The Politics of Happiness: What Government Can Learn from New Research on Well-Being (Princeton University Press)

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Businesses have also started to focus explicitly on happiness and how a better understanding of this complex but universal emotion can help improve relationships with...