Creating Shared Value

Creating Shared Value

Creating Shared Value is a most exciting and hopeful strategy.  After so much corporate greed through the decades, and especially since the great recession of 2008 with its roots in the then at any social cost actions of Wall Street, it is encouraging that a social conscious exists in some boardrooms and the Creating Shared Value strategy may even someday replace the old strategies of how to make a buck. 

I was not to the end of the Porter and Kramer article when my thoughts turned to how Creating Shared Value can become the norm.   

In surveying the required courses for the Tepper MBA, nothing in the required course listings hints that Creating Shared Value is among course topics. The Stanford University MBA required course titled “Strategy Beyond Markets” suggests in the description that Creating Shared Value may be one of the topics.  Exposure to the Creating Shared Value concepts in business schools seems critical in order for the concepts to gain acceptance at the start of business careers (I share the sentiments of the Porter and Kramer article in this regard).  Hopefully MBA school deans will begin to adopt curriculum changes. 

The Shared Value Initiative, https://sharedvalue.org/groups/creating-shared-value-all-business-its-best, is carrying the torch to spread the word of Creating Shared Value (a very exciting website).

The Shared Value Initiative was launched in 2012 by the Clinton Global Initiative Commitment to Action with support from Mark Kramer, Michael Porter, and Justin Bakule (Executive Director).  The website cites 8,000 shared value practitioners, and 450 shared value leaders meet at the annual Shared Value Leadership Summit.  This group is providing Shared Value information through access to research reports, case studies, shared value examples, and the opportunity to network and partner with the 8,000 Shared Value practitioners.  

Though changing the established practices of capitalism will be a challenge, in the meantime we need more CEOs Like Paul Polman of Unilever, who in 2013 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazine/maybe-its-time-for-ceos-to-put-shareholders-second/article14507016/, was noted as one who railed against the “high apostles of shareholder power and democracy”.  Polman was quoted as saying “The very essence of capitalism is under threat as business is now seen as a personal wealth accumulator”, and “We have to bring this world back to sanity and put the greater good ahead of self-interest”.  I could not agree more.