The Big Idea: Creating Shared Value. How to reinvent capitalism - and unleash a wave of innovation and growth
The capitalist system is under siege. In recent years business  increasingly has been viewed as a major cause of social, environmental,  and economic problems. Companies are widely perceived to be prospering  at the expense of the broader community. Even worse, the more business has begun to embrace corporate  responsibility, the more it has been blamed for society’s failures. The  legitimacy of business has fallen to levels not seen in recent history.  This diminished trust in business leads political leaders to set  policies that undermine competitiveness and sap economic growth.  Business is caught in a vicious circle. A big part of the problem lies with companies themselves, which  remain trapped in an outdated approach to value creation that has  emerged over the past few decades. They continue to view value creation  narrowly, optimizing short-term financial performance in a bubble while  missing the most important customer needs and ignoring the broader  influences that determine their longer-term success. How else could  companies overlook the well-being of their customers, the depletion of  natural resources vital to their businesses, the viability of key  suppliers, or the economic distress of the communities in which they  produce and sell? How else could companies think that simply shifting  activities to locations with ever lower wages was a sustainable  “solution” to competitive challenges? Government and civil society have  often exacerbated the problem by attempting to address social weaknesses  at the expense of business. The presumed trade-offs between economic  efficiency and social progress have been institutionalized in decades of  policy choices. Companies must take the lead in bringing business and society back  together. The recognition is there among sophisticated business and  thought leaders, and promising elements of a new model are emerging. Yet  we still lack an overall framework for guiding these efforts, and most  companies remain stuck in a “social responsibility” mind-set in which  societal issues are at the periphery, not the core. The solution lies in the principle of shared value, which involves creating economic value in a way that also  creates value for society by addressing its needs and challenges.  Businesses must reconnect company success with social progress. Shared  value is not social responsibility, philanthropy, or even  sustainability, but a new way to achieve economic success. It is not on  the margin of what companies do but at the center. We believe that it  can give rise to the next major transformation of business thinking. A growing number of companies known for their hard-nosed approach to  business—such as GE, Google, IBM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé,  Unilever, and Wal-Mart—have already embarked on important efforts to  create shared value by reconceiving the intersection between society and  corporate performance. Yet our recognition of the transformative power  of shared value is still in its genesis. Realizing it will require  leaders and managers to develop new skills and knowledge—such as a far  deeper appreciation of societal needs, a greater understanding of the  true bases of company productivity, and the ability to collaborate  across profit/nonprofit boundaries. And government must learn how to  regulate in ways that enable shared value rather than work against it. Capitalism is an unparalleled vehicle for meeting human needs,  improving efficiency, creating jobs, and building wealth. But a narrow  conception of capitalism has prevented business from harnessing its full  potential to meet society’s broader challenges. The opportunities have  been there all along but have been overlooked. Businesses acting as  businesses, not as charitable donors, are the most powerful force for  addressing the pressing issues we face. The moment for a new conception  of capitalism is now; society’s needs are large and growing, while  customers, employees, and a new generation of young people are asking  business to step up. The purpose of the corporation must be redefined as creating shared  value, not just profit per se. This will drive the next wave of  innovation and productivity growth in the global economy. It will also  reshape capitalism and its relationship to society. Perhaps most  important of all, learning how to create shared value is our best chance  to legitimize business again. Moving Beyond Trade-Offs Business and society have been pitted against each other for too  long. That is in part because economists have legitimized the idea that  to provide societal benefits, companies must temper their economic  success. In neoclassical thinking, a requirement for social  improvement—such as safety or hiring the disabled—imposes a constraint  on the corporation. Adding a constraint to a firm that is already  maximizing profits, says the theory, will inevitably raise costs and  reduce those profits. A related concept, with the same conclusion, is the notion of  externalities. Externalities arise when firms create social costs that  they do not have to bear, such as pollution. Thus, society must impose  taxes, regulations, and penalties so that firms “internalize” these  externalities—a belief influencing many government policy decisions. This perspective has also shaped the strategies of firms themselves,  which have largely excluded social and environmental considerations from  their economic thinking. Firms have taken the broader context in which  they do business as a given and resisted regulatory standards as  invariably contrary to their interests. Solving social problems has been  ceded to governments and to NGOs. Corporate responsibility programs—a  reaction to external pressure—have emerged largely to improve firms’  reputations and are treated as a necessary expense. Anything more is  seen by many as an irresponsible use of shareholders’ money.  Governments, for their part, have often regulated in a way that makes  shared value more difficult to achieve. Implicitly, each side has  assumed that the other is an obstacle to pursuing its goals and acted  accordingly. The concept of shared value, in contrast, recognizes that societal  needs, not just conventional economic needs, define markets. It also  recognizes that social harms or weaknesses frequently create internal  costs for firms—such as wasted energy or raw materials, costly  accidents, and the need for remedial training to compensate for  inadequacies in education. And addressing societal harms and constraints  does not necessarily raise costs for firms, because they can innovate  through using new technologies, operating methods, and management  approaches—and as a result, increase their productivity and expand their  markets.Baje el PDF del essay completo del Harvard Business Review