When Michael Porter and Mark Kramer, founders of The Shared Value Initiative, present their latest thinking on corporate responsibility, the CSR/sustainable development community — and leaders in society and well beyond — listen.
So their Fortune article today, headlined in the digital version, “Inside the next — and best — movement in the business world,” is bound to resonate in many influential circles.
To summarize their message, these excerpts:
“A quiet corporate revolution is underway. Companies are beginning to change the world for the better. The drive for profit, often criticized for coming at society’s expense, is driving and enabling solutions to many of the world’s most challenging problems.
” … What’s emerging today is something more fundamental — something we call shared value. Large companies are addressing big social problems as a core part of their strategy. They are disproving the flawed and simplistic notion that business and society are implacable opponents in a zero-sum game. Instead, they are demonstrating the radical idea that companies that tackle social problems through a profitable business model offer new hope for innovative and scalable solutions.”
Added note: When Porter and Kramer note that the current corporate revolution is quiet , they also compact another important aspect of the “quiet revolution”: It is not widely known among the general public.
That’s largely because in the popular, general media, “news” is too often only negative. But things are changing. The Huffington Post recently confronted the “if-it-bleeds-it-leads” media emphasis with the establishment of its “What’s Working” platform. Too, a specialty digital media segment on corporate responsibility/sustainable development is now evolving and taking root. And general business media — Fortune , for example, — are “getting the message” and beginning to deliver it more frequently. Certainly ,Fortune is. It’s September 1st issue will feature it’s new (Companies) “Change the World List“.
Business in Society was established two years ago to deliver more of such news and on a more regular basis; it will continue to do so. An example: recent reporting on the United Nations forthcoming launch of the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals. More reporting on this central shared value global program — and many others — is scheduled here.