Purpose and Profit: An Overview

Purpose and Profit are often thought of as two ends of a spectrum or not even related. After all, business has only one purpose: to make as much profit for its owners as possible according to Milton Friedman, the 20th Century economist to whom many ascribe our current thoughts about the modern corporation’s role.

This blog will demonstrate that Friedman didn’t get it wrong, his pronouncement just didn’t go far enough.

This blog is about demonstrating the various ways in which businesses have proven over and over again that doing something good for society and the environment can in fact also be good for business. Of course, there is tension between these efforts of doing well and doing good; but it is a tension to be managed. To ignore the capability business has to solve difficult complex problems is to waste the single greatest opportunity the world has to solve its toughest problems.