Last Friday I heard amazing speakers at the Leadership for a Better World conference. I think it’s safe to say the majority of people would agree that business needs to change, but from there opinions diverge. How should business change? Who should lead the change? How should the change be implemented? And most importantly, what are the final results? What is the vision we’re working toward?
Change for change’s sake isn’t enough; there must be an end goal. I’ll use this conference as a springboard to explore possible answers to these questions and others. I expect my views to evolve over the next two years and I hope my posts are provoking enough that they will inspire you to question some of your views of business.
One of the themes that emerged was how business could change, and two methods were proposed. Using Honest Tea as an example, it was suggested that as more businesses with triple bottom lines succeed, they will provide an alternate business model that competes with the existing model and the market will decide the winner. The other suggestion was to change the existing model from within companies, and Rosabeth Moss Kanter gave many examples from her new book, Super Corp, of just how blue chip companies can make ethical choices.
While the market may one day decide triple bottom line companies are the clear winner, to smoothly transition to such an economy, we still need the existing model and my hope is that businesses that fall into the latter category follow the lead of the Super Corp companies because business can and should serve a greater purpose than profit.
Kristina Brzezinski, Global MBA 2011
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