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Disruptively Good, Disruptively Abundant
1 Comment · Posted by Scott in Literature and Resources, Thought leaders, Viewpoints
I’ve been enjoying the writing of Umair Haque. He runs Havas Media Lab, founded the advisory firm Bubblegeneration, and is regularly featured on Harvard Business Review blogs. According to his Bubblegen blog, Haque’s focus this year is on “reconceiving capitalism.”
His HBR post yesterday is called “The Case for Being Disruptively Good.” He argues that treating customers, employees, suppliers and others well – caring about people – is increasingly in a company’s self interest in a transparent world.
Jeff Jarvis, author of “What Would Google Do?” has christened this “Hague’s Law”:
“In a hyperconnected world, the costs of evil explode.”
Here are some additional quotes from Haque’s post:
“What’s different, immediately, about a hyperconnected world is that information flows much faster and more freely. So it’s less costly to ascertain who’s really evil — and who’s really good. So the first force is information.”
“Cheap information lays the foundations for more collective action. It’s less costly to punish those who are evil. Equally important, it’s less costly to reward those who are good.Discipline is the second force.”
“With better collective action comes an enhanced incentive for competitors to provide what incumbents can’t; to do good where there’s evil. After all, both punishments and rewards are magnified. The third force is competition: competitive pressure by rivals to do more good, and less bad.”
“With greater competition comes greater probability of high-level innovation — new business models, strategies, and institutions that reinvent the deep economics of an industry, market, or sector. And so, thanks to the fourth force, disruption, the threat of fatality for incumbents grows.”
“With more innovation comes a greater emphasis on rule-making: the fifth force. As new disruptive innovations proliferate, regulators take a more active interest in assessing the social costs and benefits of each, and selecting for the most productive ones. Conversely, visionary organizations make new rules in their own ecosystems that alter the incentives for their buyers and suppliers to do more good, and less evil.”
“What do the forces above mean for the economy? Well, they suggest that businesses who can do more good will survive, thrive, and prosper — and those who do more bad will stumble, falter, and fall.”
“That conclusion may sound revolutionary. It’s about as radical as cup of lukewarm tea. In the short run, focused on the here and now, it can be hard to see that there are selection effects for businesses that can do more good, and less bad. Yet, looking across the slow, steady sweep of history, it’s as clear as day. Yesterday, the global economy was built on debtors’ prisons, usury, expropriation, colonialism, and slavery. Today, it isn’t.”
“The numbers support the case for better. According to a forthcoming analysis from CSR Magazine, ‘being a good guy pays. The best corporate citizens list, which includes Hewlett-Packard, Intel, General Mills, I.B.M. and Kimberly-Clark, had a total return on shareholder value of 2.37 percent over three years. But the 30 worst had a negative 7.38 percent return’. Surprising? Far from. At the Lab, our portfolio of Constructive Capitalists, built on a tighter, tougher set of criteria for “good guys,” has shown even more dramatic outperformance.”
Personally, I might put more emphasis on the positive business value of caring for people, rather than the negative idea of being pushed away from “evil.” However, I love Haque’s conclusion that the economic engine of human growth is pushing business and society toward a more loving world. I also love the fact that he and others are collecting hard data on shareholder returns to prove that case.
Despite many turns in the road, and progress slower than we would all like, I really believe he’s right. What do you think?
Haque’s HBR post is at http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/2010/04/the_case_for_being_disruptivel.html
Scott is @scottdowns3 on Twitter
business · culture · evidence · innovation · love · profit · service · sustainability · value
Tweets that mention Disruptively Good, Disruptively Abundant | Loving Work -- Topsy.com · April 13, 2010 at 11:08 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Scott Downs. Scott Downs said: I loved @umairh post on Disrpuptive Goodness. My comments here http://lovingwork.org/disruptively-good-disruptively-abundant [...]