A More Powerful Path
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
But unlike the chaos-theory butterfly, business is not an uncalculating force of nature. It can behave with intention. Indeed, we have left the era in which business leaders were expected to treat their companies as mute, dumb giants, merely swinging pickaxes in a profit quarry. We are waking to the idea that if business inevitably shapes the future, it has a responsibility to choose what that future will be. Business changes the world–at every moment, in myriad ways, for good and ill. Decisions in boardrooms or on factory floors set in motion both staggering progress and far-reaching disasters: Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) tweaks its software and rearranges the virtual desktops of millions of people, shaping how they work every day. BP (NYSE:BP) apparently shrugs off maintenance, and oil pours from a corroded pipeline into Prudhoe Bay. Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) shifts its gaze, just slightly, and drives organic produce to folks whose income once limited them to preservative-laden processed food.
But unlike the chaos-theory butterfly, business is not an uncalculating force of nature. It can behave with intention. Indeed, we have left the era in which business leaders were expected to treat their companies as mute, dumb giants, merely swinging pickaxes in a profit quarry. We are waking to the idea that if business inevitably shapes the future, it has a responsibility to choose what that future will be.
For guidance in this new realm, business is looking to social entrepreneurs. Not because they excel at that do-gooder thing, but because they have sophisticated, tested theories of change. They know their markets. They understand systems and levers of action as few others do. And, as many clever companies are learning, they can be great partners in endeavors that are good for the world and good for the bottom line.
Our fourth annual Social Capitalist Awards honor these leaders, who combine savvy business models with solutions to pressing social needs in ways that challenge our assumptions about making a profit and making a difference. The 43 honorees meet our partner Monitor Group’s stringent standards for social impact, entrepreneurship, innovation, sustainability, and growth.
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This blended-approach partnership comes in many flavors, some reflected in the profiles that accompany our list of winners:
Scout new markets. The so-called “base of the pyramid” approach targets the poor as credible customers. Procter & Gamble’s (NYSE:PG) PuR water-purification product is one high-profile example in the developing world. But the strategy has power domestically as well, as evidenced by Merrill Lynch’s (NYSE:MER) deal with Housing Partnership Network to access the low-income housing market.
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