Trends > 2007 > March > 20 > Both necessary and practical
Both necessary and practical
By admin • Mar 20th, 2007
The focus here has been on two things - education and climate change. What role do you think your business can play in these important areas? We are already heavily involved in education and environmental change. I don’t happen to think that either of them are a matter of altruism. I think if you [...]
The focus here has been on two things - education and climate change. What role do you think your business can play in these important areas? We are already heavily involved in education and environmental change. I don’t happen to think that either of them are a matter of altruism. I think if you are one of our clients in building brands or products or services over the long term, what you are interested in is making sure that your company and all of its products and services are part of society and [this has] nothing to do with altruism. It’s about building brands or products or services over the long term. I think many people see these things as charitable endeavors. They are not; they are very practical endeavors. One of the reasons our business has been successful over the past 10-15 years is that we have had free trade. Economic growth has been stimulated by free trade and the Web has driven a free flow of information or relatively free flow of information - and the lack of barriers to change helps change and is very positive. The poor parts of the world will benefit through economic development and, obviously, education and climate change are intrinsic parts of it. I think there are three things that happened last year that were important in the context of stimulating social change and focusing corporates in this area. The first was the conversation between Bill Gates and Warren Buffet and the switch of stock, I guess, between Microsoft and Hathaway. The second thing was the Clinton-level initiative and the endeavors that Richard Branson talked about donating up to