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Capitalism at the Crossroads: Aligning Business, Earth, and Humanity (2nd Edition) |  | Author: Stuart L. Hart
Creator: Al Gore
Publisher: Wharton School Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $19.99
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Rating:  24 reviews
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2
Pages: 304
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 0136134394
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.408
EAN: 9780136134398
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Product Description
"Capitalism at the Crossroads is built on strong theoretical underpinnings and illustrated with many practical examples. The author offers a pioneering roadmap to responsible macroeconomics and corporate growth."
-Clayton Christensen, Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School and author of The Innovator's Dilemma
"I hope this book will be able to influence the thought processes of corporations and motivate them to adapt to forthcoming business realities for the sake of their own long-term existence. Besides business leaders, this is a thought-provoking book for the readers who are looking for solutions to capitalism’s problems."
-Muhammad Yunus, Founder and Managing Director, Grameen Bank, Bangladesh and 2007 Nobel Peace Prize recipient
"Capitalism at the Crossroads is a practical manifesto for business in the twenty-first century. Professor Stuart L. Hart provides a succinct framework for managers to harmonize concerns for the planet with wealth creation and unambiguously demonstrates the connection between the two. This book represents a turning point in the debate about the emerging role and responsibility of business in society."
-C.K. Prahalad, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, co-author of Competing for the Future and author of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
"Stuart Hart was there at the beginning. Years ago when the term ‘sustainability’ had not yet reached the business schools, Stuart Hart stood as a beacon glowing in the umbrage. It is clear commerce is the engine of change, design the first signal of human intention, and global capitalism is at the crossroads. Stuart Hart is there again; this time lighting up the intersection."
-William McDonough, University of Virginia, co-author of Cradle to Cradle
"Professor Hart is on the leading edge of making sustainability an understandable and useful framework for building business value. This book brings together much of his insights developed over the past decade. Through case studies and practical advice, he argues powerfully that unlimited opportunities for profitable business growth will flow to those companies that bring innovative technology and solutions to bear on some of the world’s most intractable social and environmental problems."
-Chad Holliday, Chairman and CEO, DuPont
"Capitalism at the Crossroads clearly reveals the essence of what sustainability means to today’s business world. Hart’s analysis that businesses must increasingly adopt a business framework based on building sustainable value speaks to the entire sustainability movement’s relevance. Sustainability is more than today’s competitive edge; it is tomorrow’s model for success."
-Don Pether, President and CEO, Dofasco Inc.
"Stuart Hart has written a book full of big insights painted with bold strokes. He may make you mad. He will certainly make you think."
-Jonathan Lash, President, The World Resources Institute
"A must-read for every CEO—and every MBA."
-John Elkington, Chairman, SustainAbility
"This book provides us with a vast array of innovative and practical ideas to accelerate the transformation to global sustainability and the role businesses and corporations will have to play therein. Stuart Hart manages to contribute in an essential way to the growing intellectual capital that addresses this topic. But, beyond that, the book will also prove to be a pioneer in the literature on corporate strategy by adding this new dimension to the current thinking."
-Jan Oosterveld, Professor, IESE Business School, Barcelona, Spain Member, Group Management Committee (Ret.), Royal Philips Electronics
"Capitalism at the Crossroads captures a disturbing and descriptive picture of the global condition. Dr. Hart constructs a compelling new corporate business model that simultaneously merges the metric of profitability along with societal value and environmental integrity. He challenges the corporate sector to take the lead and to invoke this change so that the benefits of capitalism can be shared with the entire human community worldwide."
-Mac Bridger, CEO of Tandus Group
"Stuart L. Hart makes a very important contribution to the understanding of how enterprise can help save the world’s environment. Crucial reading."
-Hernando de Soto, President of The Institute for Liberty and Democracy and author of The Mystery of Capital
"Stuart Hart’s insights into the business sense of sustainability come through compellingly in Capitalism at the Crossroads. Any businessperson interested in the long view will find resonance with his wise reasoning."
-Ray Anderson, Founder and Chairman, Interface, Inc.
"This stimulating book documents the central role that business will play in humanity’s efforts to develop a sustainable global economy. Professor Hart presents an attractive vision of opportunity for those corporations that develop the new technologies, new business models, and new mental frames that are essential to a sustainable future."
-Jeffrey Lehman, Former President of Cornell University
"The people of the world are in desperate need of new ideas if global industrial development is ever to result in something other than the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, with nature (and potentially all of us) suffering the collateral damage. Few have contributed more to meeting this need over the past decade than Stuart Hart by helping to illuminate the potential role for business and new thinking in business strategy in the journey ahead. Capitalism at the Crossroads challenges, provokes, and no doubt will stimulate many debates—which is exactly what is needed."
-Peter Senge, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chairperson of the Society for Organizational Learning, and author of The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of The Learning Organization
New Foreword by Al Gore
Brand-New Second Edition, Completely Revised with:
- Up-to-the-minute trends and lessons learned
- New and updated case studies
- The latest corporate responses to climate change, energy, and terrorism
Global capitalism stands at a crossroads-facing terrorism, environmental destruction, and anti-globalization backlash. Today's global companies are at a crossroads, too-searching desperately for new sources of profitable growth. Stuart L. Hart's Capitalism at the Crossroads, Second Edition is about solving both of those problems at the same time.
It's about igniting new growth by creating sustainable products that solve urgent societal problems. It's about using new technology to deliver profitable solutions that reduce poverty and protect the environment. It's about becoming truly indigenous to all your markets, and avoiding the pitfalls of first-generation "greening" and "sustainability" strategies.
Hart has thoroughly revised this seminal book with new case studies, trends, and lessons learned-including the latest experiences of leaders like GE and Wal-Mart. You'll find new insights from the pioneering BoP Protocol initiative, in which multinationals are incubating new businesses in income-poor communities. You'll also discover creative new ways in which corporations are responding to global warming and terrorism. More than ever, this book points the way toward a capitalism that's more inclusive, more welcome, and far more successful-for both companies and communities, worldwide.
- Paths to profitable sustainability: Lessons from GE and Wal-Mart
- Shattering the "trade-off" myth
- New commercial strategies for serving the "base of the pyramid"
- What enterprises have learned about doing business in income-poor regions
- Becoming indigenous-for real, for good
- Codiscovering new opportunities, cocreating new businesses with the poor
- Learning from leaders: 20+ new and updated case studies
- Best practices from DuPont, HP, Unilever, SC Johnson, Tata, P&G, Cemex, and more
About the Author xii
Acknowledgments xiii
Foreword: Al Gore, Former Vice President of the U.S. xxiv
Foreword: Fisk Johnson, Chairman and CEO, S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc. xxvii
Prologue: Capitalism at the Crossroads xxxi
PART ONE: MAPPING THE TERRAIN
Chapter 1: From Obligation to Opportunity 3
Chapter 2: Worlds in Collision 31
Chapter 3: The Sustainable Value Portfolio 59
PART TWO: BEYOND GREENING
Chapter 4: Creative Destruction and Sustainability 87
Chapter 5: The Great Leap Downward 111
Chapter 6: Reaching the Base of the Pyramid 139
PART THREE: BECOMING INDIGENOUS
Chapter 7: Broadening the Corporate Bandwidth 169
Chapter 8: Developing Native Capability 193
Chapter 9: Toward a Sustainable Global Enterprise 223
Epilogue 249
Index 254
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 24
 The World Is Your Oyster June 11, 2005
John G. Hilliard (Toronto Canada)
63 out of 64 found this review helpful
Is the business sector more then just a entity that creates products and jobs? The author of this book believes that the corporate sector can be the catalyst for a force of global development. The author argues that there is no conflict between making the world a better place and make a profit. He does believe that business leaders need to maintain a principled commitment to civic responsibility, for if nothing else then to keep your company out of the spot light of issues that could arise from actions that are less then ethical.
The author presents a book that gives the reader a scenario in which business can generate growth and satisfy social and environmental concerns. Given the 4 billion people that live in the third world, the author believes there is an unbelievably large and hungry market for all that business can bring. Business owners can reap incredible growth while sowing tremendous improvement in people's lives.
It does sound like a win win situation that is believable in its scope. Overall I enjoyed the book. It was well written and informative. The author might be called an optimist to the extreme, but it is the dreamer that makes big change happen. The book is a fast read that is well worth your time.
How to serve four billion at the base of the pyramid April 29, 2005
Charles Ashbacher (Marion, Iowa United States(cashbacher@yahoo.com))
33 out of 34 found this review helpful
Nobel prize winning physicist Richard Feynman coined the phrase, "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom." He used it to describe the many possibilities and advantages of making machines nanometers in size. That phrase can also be used to describe the business opportunities put forward in this book. Hart notes that most business strategies are designed to serve only a small percentage of the people on Earth, those with large disposable incomes. The remainder is poor and largely ignored, and he refers to them as the base of the pyramid (BOP).
This means that approximately four billion people are not a significant part of the business plans of most multi-national companies (MNCs). The conventional wisdom is that since their disposable income is so low, the products of the MNCs are beyond their economic capability. However, that is in many ways a false assumption, and the case studies cited in this book prove that conclusively. One simple example concerns poor people making telephone calls. On the surface, the idea that someone would spend several days' wages for a telephone call appears absurd. However, if that person must obtain the information and the only alternative is to spend more by making a trip, then that "expensive" phone call is in fact a bargain. Therefore, providing cell phone service to remote villages has proven to be profitable to the provider and beneficial to the villagers.
Hart also takes the leadership of the MNCs to task for their emphasis on the short term rather than the complete long term. By complete long term, he means that corporate leaders should include social and environmental consequences when making decisions. He is also emphatic in explaining how environmentally friendly "green" technology can be profitable. Since so many aspects of an environmentally friendly policy is the elimination of waste, almost all such policies lead to lower expenses and higher profits. He also derides some of the MNC whining and disingenuousness that has occurred when the MNC was faced with complying with an environmental regulation.
With four billion people in the BOP, if their incomes were to increase by even five dollars a week, the world economy would rise by over a trillion dollars, not including multiplier effects. This is where the real potential for economic growth is and I applaud Hart for writing a book containing such convincing arguments for making the attempt. It is time to end the age of exploitation and begin the time of economic opportunity for all. When poverty and a sense of helplessness make people hate you, killing them will not solve the terrorist problem. It will only create a new group that will hate you more and that has learned not to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors. Therefore, the only effective weapon in the fight against the cycle of terrorism is economic opportunity that is in tune with other societies and not in conflict with them. That is the main point of this book and Hart drives it home with a very large hammer.
Sustaining Economic Growth in a World of Depleting Resources and Rampant Terrorism September 17, 2005
Ed Uyeshima (San Francisco, CA USA)
27 out of 27 found this review helpful
Professor Stuart Hart's thoughtful treatise on sustainable and accessible economic growth provides a nice complement to his mentor's similarly themed study, C. K. Prahalad's "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid", which I read myself last month. Both tackle an intriguing premise, though I think Hart is more successful in developing more realistic solutions to the world's economic ills. From Cornell's Johnson School of Management, the author goes beyond standard globalization theories by recognizing the need for companies to move beyond transparency towards "radical transactiveness", i.e., a willingness to engage and learn from people who hold fundamentally different world views.
He adeptly describes how the macroeconomic shift that brings capitalism and environmentalism together mirrors his personal and not uncommon shift from distrusting capitalism to respecting its power to leverage positive social change. The "greening" revolution of the 1980s demonstrated that companies could profit by employing more environmentally benign processes, such as recycling or waste reduction. But greening, we learn, continues to be a myopic approach, and it became apparent in the last decade that reducing the environmental impact of existing business models would prove insufficient to address the imminent environmental and social crises.
Hart was among those who promoted moving "beyond greening" through "creative destruction" of environmentally and economically wasteful processes, replacing them with environmentally (and economically) beneficial processes. The primary business strategy that promises to arise from the ashes of creative destruction is the BOP ("Bottom of the Pyramid") approach of serving the needs of the poor in ways that are culturally appropriate, environmentally sustainable, and profitable. One key to leveraging the BOP market strategy is for multinational corporations to become more indigenous to the culture and people they support locally.
The example of Nike's World Shoe is instructive. The US sports shoe company saw clearly that China's consumers presented an enormous potential market for trainers priced at $10-$15 a pair. The company, however, made a fundamental mistake in choosing to use the same factories, business partners and channels used for its $150 Air Maxx. The result is that the bargain shoe never took off. At the same time, the fact that Nike made the attempt is laudable. With careful scrutiny and ample evidence, the author questions whether many multinationals have the skills to discern the unexpressed needs of consumers in distant, developing economies. Moreover, even if they have recognized the opportunity, these same companies need to transform their business models to be readily available to deliver the right products and services in these markets at an appropriate price.
Hart's penetrating book touches upon its most controversial aspect in applying his reasoning to the problem of terrorism. He considers terrorism a symptom of the more primary underlying problem of unsustainable development culminating of course, with 9/11 when terrorists used violence to attack the symbolic epicenter of capitalism, the World Trade Center. Since violence begets violence, Hart emboldens himself to ask we look to the terrorists' target, not their tactics, to solve the problem. Reforming capitalism to create sustainable global enterprise may hold the key to eradicating the underlying problems of poverty and exploitation that breed terrorism while simultaneously reversing the looming environmental crises. It's a bold premise but one we cannot afford to ignore. This is smart, indispensable reading.
Great Source of New Paradigms for a Polluted World May 10, 2005
Professor Donald Mitchell (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 96,000 Helpful Votes Globally)
32 out of 34 found this review helpful
This is an important, but flawed, book.
Capitalism at the Crossroads is that rare book that compellingly describes new paradigms with powerful examples . . . but with which almost every reader will find fault in several ways. At the same time, I doubt if many readers will fail to change their viewpoints and actions at least in some ways as a result of reading and thinking about the material in this book.
The book is comprised of three basic lines of inquiry.
First, environmental problems that threaten us all will not be overcome by continuous improvement of reducing pollution of the sort that is being done now. You have to create entirely new business models that are built around the concept of long-term environmental sustainability.
Second, most of the environmental challenges will come in the parts of the world inhabited by the poorest two-thirds of the population. To deal with their economic needs and environmental challenges, you need to solve the problems from their perspective.
Third, new leadership and management paradigms are needed to change the way that organizations operate themselves that allow for the innovative sparks and direction to come from stakeholder interactions in the most difficult environments.
Most authors would feel like they could retire satisfied if they proposed even one of those ideas and explained the idea well. Professor Hart should take great pleasure in having helped give birth to three such important ideas.
Packaging the three ideas into one brief book, however, turns out to be an overwhelming challenge for Professor Hart. He doesn't quite carry it off. That's where the reader disagreements come from.
Let me give you some examples. Professor Hart places the entire burden for solving these problems on business. Now, I agree that business can do a lot . . . and needs to do more . . . but there are other organizations that can play pioneering roles. The U.S. government has played a positive role in encouraging the development of very important technologies in the past (such as the predecessor to the Internet, funding research into making biotechnology feasible, and creating advanced materials). Individual inventors have produced remarkable breakthroughs in the past (such as Jacques Cousteau and the aqua-lung). Charities have funded research to stop dangerous diseases (The March of Dimes and polio vaccine). And so on.
As raw materials and essential resources become scarcer and more expensive, most businesses will be doing a lot of thinking about how to keep operating. In some parts of India today, it's hard to get electricity for about 9 hours a day. Many Chinese plants run on their own generators. Simple initiative will create many of the solutions. This book suggests that only large multinationals can play a big role because they can afford to develop major new technologies. I would argue that large multinationals are not likely to be the largest source of new technologies . . . cash-strapped entrepreneurs will be instead. That's been the history of technology innovation for a long time.
Without taking issue with everything that Professor Hart has to say that I disagree with, I would simply note that this book will have its best and highest use when read and applied by entrepreneurs in emerging market nations who have access to enough skill and resources to address these issues from the perspective of the local culture and economy. "Small Is Beautiful" solutions can come best by equipping those who know the problems best with knowledge, education and some experimental resources. The developed world can probably be most effective in ensuring that happens by encouraging the development of small-scale entrepreneurship as the Grameen Bank does in part.
If I had some many problems with Professor Hart's arguments, why, then, did I grade the book as a five-star effort? First, I found his call for business model innovation to include environmental concerns to be compelling . . . and better than any other investigation of this opportunity that I have read. Second, his ideas are useful and should be used . . . if not exactly in the ways that he envisions. You've heard the old joke about pioneers, I'm sure. They are the ones who die with a back filled with injuries from their critics. The courage of such pioneers to take us someplace else should be applauded . . . even when they get part of it wrong. Otherwise, why would anyone read Freud anymore?
A Corporate Manifesto for the New Century October 8, 2005
Craig L. Howe (Darien, CT United States)
15 out of 15 found this review helpful
The people of the world need new ideas if industrial development is evolve into something other than the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer. These strategies leave nature - and by implication all of us - suffering and funding the collateral damage
Stuart L. Hart challenges today's corporations with a new manifesto are being challenged to rethink their worldwide strategies. Managers will have to harmonize concerns for the planet with wealth creation. Citing case studies and practical advice, he argues unlimited opportunities for profitable business growth will find those companies that apply innovative technology and solutions to the world's social and environmental problems.
The management professor at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management, argues "one-size-fits-all" "command and control" approaches to production and supply are done. They need to be replaced by locally-responsive, locally-responsible and sustainable solutions based on local knowledge.
Only companies with the right combination of vision, strategy, and structure will succeed in developing more inclusive forms of commerce that lift the entire human family while at the same replenishing and restoring nature.
To address the world's ills, Hart argues effectively in this ambitious book, economic opportunity must be in tune with local economies. The days of being in conflict with them are over.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 24
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