2011 Kanter How Great Companies Think Differently
SPOTLIGHT ON THE GOOD COMPANY
Spotlight
Rosabeth Moss Kanter is the
Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and the chair and director of
Harvard University’s Advanced
Leadership Initiative. Her most recent book is SuperCorp: How
Vanguard Companies Create
Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good (Crown, 2009).
How Great
Companies
Think
Differently
Instead of being mere moneygenerating machines, they combine financial and social logic to build enduring success. by Rosabeth Moss Kanter
66 Harvard Business Review November 2011
1377 Nov11 Kanter Layout [S];41.indd 66
10/5/11 12:23 PM
hbr.org
Artwork Sarah Morris, Midtown—HBO/Grace, 1999
Gloss household paint on canvas, 213.4 × 213.4 cm
Spotlight on The Good Company
It’s time that beliefs and theories about business catch up with the way great companies operate and how they see their role in the world today. Traditionally, economists and financiers have argued that the sole purpose of business is to make money—the more the better. That conveniently narrow image, deeply embedded in the American capitalist system, molds the actions of most corporations, constraining them to focus on maximizing short-term profits and delivering returns to shareholders. Their decisions are expressed in financial terms.
I say convenient because this lopsided logic forces companies to blank out the fact that they command enormous resources that influence the world for better or worse and that their strategies shape the lives of the employees, partners, and consumers on whom they depend. Above all, the traditional view of business doesn’t capture the way great companies think their way to success. Those firms believe that business is an intrinsic part of society, and they acknowledge that, like family, government, and religion, it has been one of society’s pillars since the dawn of the industrial era. Great companies work to make money, of course, but in their choices of how to do so, they
Spotlight
Rosabeth Moss Kanter is the
Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and the chair and director of
Harvard University’s Advanced
Leadership Initiative. Her most recent book is SuperCorp: How
Vanguard Companies Create
Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good (Crown, 2009).
How Great
Companies
Think
Differently
Instead of being mere moneygenerating machines, they combine financial and social logic to build enduring success. by Rosabeth Moss Kanter
66 Harvard Business Review November 2011
1377 Nov11 Kanter Layout [S];41.indd 66
10/5/11 12:23 PM
hbr.org
Artwork Sarah Morris, Midtown—HBO/Grace, 1999
Gloss household paint on canvas, 213.4 × 213.4 cm
Spotlight on The Good Company
It’s time that beliefs and theories about business catch up with the way great companies operate and how they see their role in the world today. Traditionally, economists and financiers have argued that the sole purpose of business is to make money—the more the better. That conveniently narrow image, deeply embedded in the American capitalist system, molds the actions of most corporations, constraining them to focus on maximizing short-term profits and delivering returns to shareholders. Their decisions are expressed in financial terms.
I say convenient because this lopsided logic forces companies to blank out the fact that they command enormous resources that influence the world for better or worse and that their strategies shape the lives of the employees, partners, and consumers on whom they depend. Above all, the traditional view of business doesn’t capture the way great companies think their way to success. Those firms believe that business is an intrinsic part of society, and they acknowledge that, like family, government, and religion, it has been one of society’s pillars since the dawn of the industrial era. Great companies work to make money, of course, but in their choices of how to do so, they