I imagine a world in which business solves today’s problems.
So that…
  • We use some of the significant wealth and resources in the business world to address issues like poverty and inequality, environmental degradation, and enables conflict resolution to prevent wars.
  • The demonisation of business is replaced with respect because industry has earned the public’s trust back.
Today, business is seen as running in spite of people’s needs and oblivious to the limits of natural resources, with no regard to long-term sustainability.
  • Commercial institutions are regarded as short-sighted, and uncaring entities that flog their widgets regardless of if they are actually needed or useful for more than 2 seconds.
  • Big corporates are synonymous with faceless entities hell bent on creating ‘shareholder value’ and focused on taking what they can get while giving next to nothing in return.
  • Business is demonised in many modern narratives and stereotypes are based on things like Enron, Freddie Mac, Bernie Madoff. Rather than taint the industry, these have brought to light the values that the corporate world are known for.
If business was used as a force for good, in a way that was authentically committed to making a difference, then human needs might be met in new ways, industry operations might restore and enhance our environment and enable the generations to come to enjoy the richness of the natural world.
  • If there was a growing trend of businesses who were committed to their social contract, and had the values of social enterprise at their core, and intended to create as much benefit from their work as possible, they might just win back the trust of the public.
  • If our global economy was oriented toward using business as a force for good, we might have a corporate world full of purpose-driven enterprises that conduct their business in ways that dramatically change how we experience life on earth because they have solved many of the problems we face today.
Can you imagine?