The one-sentence summary
Businesses can be a force for good if they change their working practices.
WHAT THE BOOK SAYS
- This is a manifesto for capitalism which says that companies should start becoming the solution to the world’s problems
- If you want to change the world, do it through business. If you want to help your business, help to change the world
- Be sceptical about fashionable prescriptions of Corporate Social Responsibility and instead use company skills and resources in imaginative ways to help alleviate social problems – Corporate Social Leadership
- It outlines current thinking on CSR and argues that campaigners for social justice and environmental protection should see business as their ally
- Many consumer brands are cultural forces that can make a huge difference if they use social strategies to achieve commercial aims
WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT
- It is a refreshing antidote to politically correct opinion and reads very well
- There are ideas on how globalisation makes the poor richer, why corporations are good for human rights, and how brands can work for social change
- It is full of powerful facts: Infant mortality in developing countries is down from 18% in 1950 to 6% in 1995; illiteracy is down from 70% to 30%
- A UK literacy campaign Valued Youth gets 14 year olds who are about to be expelled from school to teach younger children literacy skills, with a very high success rate for all involved
- The Reach for the Sky careers advice initiative by Sky TV had a massive impact on the quality of career choices made by UK teenagers – and increased viewing at the same time
- Coca-Cola has the best distribution network in Africa – and it’s refrigerated. So they joined forces with the United Nations to distribute AIDS-related drugs
WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH
- The opinions border on the political and so may not suit everyone
- Some of the ideas are hard to apply to specific marketing campaigns
- The suggestion that capitalists and anti-capitalists should unite to save the world could be viewed as naïve