Powered by Purpose: CoGo

• Product: A consumer-facing app connecting users with businesses that embody their values
  
• Purpose: Creating stronger, more transparent connections between
  consumers and businesses.
  
• What can we learn? Connect with your customers
  CoGo show that it is only through collaborating with your customers that you can build the best solutions. When businesses are open to adapting, innovating and taking on feedback, their potential for success increases tenfold.

What's CoGo's story?

CoGo is a Tech for Good company founded by Ben Gleisner in New Zealand. They're the world's first ethical recommendation engine and real-time carbon footprint tracker. Users sign up to the CoGo app, select the things they care about and are connected to recommended businesses that align with their values. Every time they swipe their card, customers can send messages to the relevant business owner sharing what matters to them, a technology that has enabled hundreds of businesses to listen and learn what their customers' value and to make appropriate changes to their organisation, in line with consumer needs.

CoGo provides consumers with valuable autonomy, enabling them to ‘put their money where their heart is’. Oftentimes, individuals can feel powerless to influence positive change, particularly when big corporations continue to deflect responsibility for the negative impact their practices have on the world socially, environmentally, and economically. However, through amplifying individual voices, and creating ethical ecosystems that empower businesses to become more purposeful, CoGo shows promise of change.

What can we learn?

The app prompts self-reflection among users too, inviting them to question things like “am I supporting businesses that pay their employees' good wages?", "what is my impact on the climate?" or “do I know where this product actually came from?”. In a market economy where money is one of the most powerful tools people have to vote for change, a conscious questioning of the systems that govern us is a productive way of inspiring positive behaviour change towards consumer spending. When consumers vote with their wallets and hold businesses accountable, they become an unstoppable force, and when the two come together with a shared goal, their power increases tenfold.

A united coalition of businesses and consumers committed to positive change has the potential to build a global economy with purpose at its core.