‘Tech entrepreneur’ Derek Handley was interviewed on The Nation on Saturday.
He talked about significant changes in approaches to doing business over the past twenty years, with a focus on doing good for society and the environment rather than just making money.
You’re involved in a project with Richard Branson called the B Team, now it’s aimed at getting companies to tackle social problems, isn’t it, through business. But I’m wondering why should companies focus on doing good in the world as well as doing well financially? Why is that beneficial?
Well, first of all it’s not just social it’s also environmental. I think the overall vision is that business is a stakeholder in the whole of the community and the whole society, and if you just silo making money and not worry about how you make it and how it impacts society and how it impacts the environment, that’s a very last century view on the world.
The view that we have with the B Team is that the way you make money, the way you create wealth, must have positive impacts for society and at the same time, given the challenges we have with the environment, help innovate and solve those issues.
And that in fact will become the new way of competing, the new way of differentiating yourself.
So we think that it’s not like an either/or, it’s like an and/and, and actually that that’s the way that people want to lead and the way that young people want to work.
While capitalism has never solely been about making money regardless of any social or environmental cost it is evolving towards promoting a greater good for society.
There will always be some who see wealth-seeking as all important. There will always be some who like to display their wealth via trinket status symbols like large houses and expensive cars.
But there is more personal satisfaction or prestige for some in demonstrating social and environmental responsibilities.
But is it a problem convincing other people that that’s a good idea?
I think in the last 20 years it’s been building, right. But if you look at the last year we’ve already had an enormous amounts of traction.
So if you look at Apple for example, Steve Jobs never really worried about these things, but Tim Cook has come out very strong, he came out a few months ago asking any investors, any hedge funds who didn’t believe in their environmental policies to sell their stock. That’s really bold leadership.
We have more and more CEOs and global leaders who are doing that in business because they understand you can’t just leave your values at the door, go to work, screw up the planet, not worry about the impacts on society or the workers you have in China, make money and be happy.
So I think the more Tim Cooks that come out of the woodwork, the more this movement will start to pick up.
Peer pressure to be more than selfishly rich can work amongst rich and successful business people.
In saying that, you have described capitalism as a teenager that’s just figuring itself out, so I’m wondering, how do you think that will look when it’s all grown up?How will it look and behave when capitalism’s grown up?
I think it looks like a merger of the things that we currently silo. So we currently silo politics, civil society, non-profits, business and we think of them as discrete things.
And I think the future looks like a hybrid – if you’re going to be an entity in the world you need to do it sustainably, you need to create revenue that will keep you alive, you need to address social issues and make money.
So what’s happening is these sectors are starting to merge and they’re starting to play together. So business will look more and more like different sectors that we traditionally think are not business. And that’s what I think, you know, is currently happening.
It’s not new but there seems to be good growth in doing business better.
Market regulations and state imposed socialism are necessary parts of the modern capitalism-socialism mix but common sense promoting common good on a voluntary basis could become a powerful factor in getting a better balance.
A better society and a healthier environment are good for business.
