Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business

Imagine a business that is born out of a dream about how the world could be and should be. The founders are on fire to create something of relevance, resonance, and permanence—a business that will far outlive them, that delivers real value of multiple kinds to everyone it touches.

Such businesses—suffused with higher purpose, leavened with authentic caring, influential and inspirational, egalitarian and committed to excellence, trustworthy and transparent, admired and emulated, loved and respected—are not imaginary entities in some fictional utopia. They exist in the real world, by the dozens today but soon to be by the hund

The whole idea of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is based on the fallacy that the underlying structure of business is either tainted or at best ethically neutral. This is simply not the case.

“Business as usual” will not work anymore. We need a new paradigm for business, a new philosophy to lead and work by.

Purposeful companies ask questions such as these: Why does our business exist? Why does it need to exist? What core values animate the enterprise and unite all of our stakeholders?

Collectively, ordinary business exchanges are the greatest creator of value in the entire world. This value creation is the most important aspect of business social responsibility.

Imagine a business that exists in a virtuous cycle of multifaceted value creation, generating social, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, cultural, physical, and ecological wealth and well-being for everyone it touches, while also delivering superior financial results year after year, decade after decade.

On this journey of constantly rising and evolving consciousness, the scope of our concerns keeps growing wider but also somehow simpler. We are gradually becoming more caring, holistic, and long term in our thinking. Many of us now see and feel the essential interdependence of all people and of all other living things.

We now enjoy an unprecedented level of information egalitarianism; ordinary people today have access to virtually limitless information on any subject, anytime, anyplace, instantly at almost zero cost.3 The richest billionaire in the world did not have such access twenty years ago.