Who is Farhan Lalji?

I read a great article on Evan Williams, creator of blogger and twitter in Fast Company over the weekend. Immediately, the word authentic came into my head and I can’t get it out of my head. I started thinking about companies and things I like and found overall there was a sense of authenticity among them all. But authenticity isn’t enough, there needs to be a genuine market for what someone is trying to do.

Authenticity is the difficult one to nail, how do you know if someone is authentic or not. Personally, I think it boils down to motives and passion. If someone is passionate about what they’re doing and has clear good motives they are likely to be doing something with authenticity. I’m sure there has been other academic research into keeping it real, but here’s my contribution.

I decided to put together a 2×2 matrix, showing authenticity and value. I believe people and organisations can fit in to one of the four boxes depending whether or not they offer a valued good or service and whether or not they act with integrity and genuinely i.e. authenticity. So a company can be successful, but if their not authentic I believe their success won’t be sustainable.

I’m not going to say where I think certain companies and individuals fit in this 2×2, but feel free to play along at home.