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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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14789 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From the Inside Flap
ForewordForeword

For those of us unwilling to stick our heads in the sand like an ostrich, Stuart L. Hart's new book gives voice to an inescapable reality: that the corporate sector can be the catalyst for a truly sustainable force of global development for all on the planet.

As the chairman and CEO of a consumer products company with global operations, I see every day the value that business can bring. I see that its products can improve the health and safety of people around the world. I see that its jobs enable parents to support their children, and allow children to achieve dreams not even imagined by their parents.

I also recognize that business has provided fuel for the growing antiglobalization outcry. But despite what some see as the inevitable stain of "progress," I know there are many business leaders who share my belief that you cannot purely pursue greater profitability every quarter and have that be an acceptable mission statement. Or that improving the lives of workers in one country while degrading the environment in another is an unacceptable demonstration of civic responsibility. Short-term quarterly profits cannot trump long-term sustainability.

As the author makes clear in Capitalism at the Crossroads, there is no inherent conflict between making the world a better place and achieving economic prosperity for all. Maintaining a principled commitment to global sustainability is not a soft approach to business—it is, in fact, the only pragmatic approach for long-term growth.

Capitalism at the Crossroads presents a scenario in which business can generate growth and satisfy social and environmental stakeholders. By focusing on the four billion people currently at the "base of the pyramid," Hart contends that companies can reap incredible growth while sowing tremendous improvement in people's lives and at the same time preserving the other species that live on this planet.

Business driving sustainability is not a new concept to me. The seed was planted and then cultivated throughout a lifetime of conversations with my father, Samuel C. Johnson. He shared stories about my grandfather, who traveled to Brazil in the 1930s in search of a sustainable source of wax for our products. He described his own 1975 decision to voluntarily and unilaterally ban CFCs from our products despite fervent opposition from colleagues and competitors alike.

My father's pioneering social and environmental efforts led to his selection as an original member of the President's Council on Sustainable Development and as a founding member of the World Business Council on Sustainable Development. He led our family company, SC Johnson, to new heights of corporate environmental and social achievement.

Perhaps most important, my father ensured that the dialogue on sustainability would continue. In 2000, he endowed the Samuel C. Johnson Chair in Sustainable Global Enterprise, and it is this Chair that Hart now so ably and deservedly occupies. He also endowed the new Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise of the Johnson School at Cornell University. By doing so, he was fulfilling a vital obligation that Hart sets forth for business in this book: being optimistic about the future and the opportunities inherent in the global challenges we face.

I share that optimism. That is why in 2001 our company unilaterally developed the Greenlist environmental classification system to institutionalize the selection of environmentally preferred raw materials and packaging components, far exceeding government regulation and driving our business with better products. It is why in 2003 we launched programs to attack the menace of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa and the misery of asthma among Hispanic children in Miami. It is why in 2004 we joined with Conservation International's Carbon Conservation Program to help save one of the world's most critically threatened hotspots of biodiversity. Yet we still are in the early stages of truly addressing "base of the pyramid" products.

Optimism underlies all the arguments in Capitalism at the Crossroads, and the author presents us with a call to optimistic action. He asks us to involve the full range of stakeholders in crafting solutions to the issues of sustainability. He demands that we embrace a new business paradigm built not on incremental change, but on creative destruction and reinvention. He challenges us to base our policies and businesses on the unassailable truth that shareholder value can be created while solving social and environmental problems.

Some might say linking "global business" and "sustainable development" is an oxymoron, but they would be sorely mistaken. All of us are tied together: the radical environmentalist and the corporate CEO, the Sudanese refugee and the British socialite, the U.S. factory worker and the Argentine farmer. We all share a stake in the future of our global environment and economy. That is the undeniable truth of Capitalism at the Crossroads: We are all fundamentally linked, dependent on the same finite resources and driven by the same hopes for ourselves and our children.

I steadfastly believe there is honor and value in business. In Capitalism at the Crossroads, Stuart Hart demands that we embrace that truth. I'm convinced this may well be the best opportunity global businesses have to ensure their long-term sustainability. And I am tremendously optimistic about the future.

Dr. H. Fisk Johnson
Chairman and CEO S.C.
Johnson & Son, Inc.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

From the Back Cover
"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

 

About the Author
STUART L. HART is one of the world's top authorities on the implications of sustainable development and environmentalism for business strategy. He is currently the S.C. Johnson Chair of Sustainable Global Enterprise and Professor of Management at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management. He also serves as senior research fellow at both the Davidson Institute (University of Michigan) and Tilburg University in the Netherlands.

Previously, he taught strategic management and founded both the Center for Sustainable Enterprise (CSE) at the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School, and the Corporate Environmental Management Program (CEMP) at the University of Michigan. His consulting clients range from DuPont and Hewlett-Packard to Procter & Gamble and Shell.

Hart wrote the seminal article "Beyond Greening: Strategies for a Sustainable World," which won the McKinsey Award for Best Article in Harvard Business Review in 1997, and helped launch the movement for corporate sustainability. With C.K. Prahalad, he also wrote the pathbreaking 2002 article "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid," which first articulated how business could profitably serve the needs of the four billion poor in the developing world.

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Customer Reviews

Great Source of New Paradigms for a Polluted World
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?