Creative Capitalism

Bill Gates has contributed on a best selling book on Creative Capitalism inspired by his new voice in philanthropy: Bills & Melinda Gates Foundation. There has been various reviews of the book out of which I picked two reviews here to discuss this new corporate philosophy.

Harvard Magazine published an article discussing about Gates vision. It writes that
Gates challenged businesses to go beyond giving cash or matching employees’ charitable contributions. Instead, he said, companies should devote 5 percent of their innovative people resources to solving the problems of the world’s poor—who are their future customers.

In my view, there has been corporate social responsibility areas being discussed all the time in press but the real contribution is very low. Therefore, this call is timely. Social entrepreneurship driven by the need of the bottom of the pyramid as coined by C. K. Prahalad, might be a plausible solution.

Time Magazine mentioned that
As C.K. Prahalad shows in his book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, there are markets all over the world that businesses have missed. One study found that the poorest two-thirds of the world’s population has some $5 trillion in purchasing power.

I would comment on this by repeating creative capitalism is the only solution and supporting the cause with the mission: “All lives have equal value”. Gates has mentioned in his blog that one idea is to dedicate a percentage of their top innovators’ time to issues that affect the people who have been left behind. This kind of contribution takes the brainpower that makes life better for the richest and dedicates some of it to improving the lives of everyone else. According to him some pharmaceutical companies, like Merck and GlaxoSmithKline, are already doing this. The Japanese company Sumitomo Chemical shared some of its technology with a Tanzanian textile company, helping it produce millions of bed nets, which are crucial tools in the fight to eradicate malaria. Other companies are doing the same in food, cell phones and banking.

The call for billionaires to join hands with Gates has just begun. Warren Buffett has been already with Gates but others are also joining the bandwagon. Let us hope that this firm belief will bring value to all lives no matter where they are born!

Governments can play a great role on their part as well! Creative capitalism is based on creativity. Therefore, innovation in technology only is not what we are seeking we are seeking an economy based on creativity, the true manifestation of human intellect! The FairTrade concept is spreading fast and if consumers also support such companies supporting the real cause of the society, we will have better world waiting for all lives! Choice is ours!

Gates said that he is there to help create a world where no one has to live on a dollar a day or die from a disease we know how to prevent. Creative capitalism can help make it happen. I hope more people will join the cause.
Will You?

Capabilities to Competence Development

Since the publication of the Core Competence concept by C.K. Prahalad, I had not had a chance to refresh the new knowledge in this field. Recently, McKinsey has publised a report titled: Building organizational capabilities: McKinsey Global Survey results. In this blog, I am going to summarize the essence of this report. The key message is that : ‘Building organizational capabilities, such as leadership development or lean operations, is a top priority for most companies. However, many of them have not yet figured out how to do so effectively. The odds improve at companies where senior leaders are more involved’. I do not want to discuss the factors under discussions here rather my attempt is to see the implementation part of it. The quote above from McKinsey clearly demands the involvement of top leaders. I started to wonder why in all change projects the commitment from top leaders and involvement from them is demanded? This brings the discussion to the execution of strategy rather than the creation and planning of the same. Most of the consulting firms are specialist in planning and creation part and the real pain for executives is execution itself. Brilliant strategies fail and companies fail just due to poor component of execution mechanism and follow up. Consultants exit after getting their hours paid and the nightmare starts inside for the execution.

Nevertheless, I am optimistic that more empirical evidence and participation of consultants in execution side will garner the importance of this paper. Otherwise, we will be asking the same question–why it did not work again?