Michael Porter: Business must recognize its interconnected role in society

This is a timely and very mature view on the changing role of business in society. Michael Porter, still the world’s leading authority on traditional business strategy, leaps out and asks some fascinating questions of private industry as a whole: does it realize the difference between its narrow self-interest and the broader society to which it is indelibly interconnected?

I particularly like how he distinguishes between multiple levels of not understanding social interconnection and responsibility. One end of the spectrum, you have the Madoffs and “banksters” of the world, pathologically removing value from society and giving absolutely nothing back. Toward the grey zone, you have businesses who may profit while destroying the social and economic fabric of the places around them, throwing on some charitable giving as a band-aid.

This talk is an important signal to private industry. Clearly, the lack of connection between business and society is so great that you not only have the occasional death threat on banking executives for taking bonuses straight from the US federal treasury, you have well-paid, world-famous consultants actually asking the question, “So why do we even have business, anyway?” Seriously, Michael Porter isn’t exactly a Trotskyite radical.

This isn’t connectivity for the sake of feeling good, it is a methodology that will lead you to provide value to your customers and withstand the forces of competition. Superconnection is the future.