Will Companies Lead the Charge on the Double Bottom Line?

According to Fast Company's March 2007 article on the “Fast 50 Profit-Driven Solutions for What Ails the Planet," it is business who will drive social change through the “double bottom line” movement (see my postings on the topic earilier this week on 2/28/07 and 2/26/07) “…and more specifically a certain strain of imaginative, entrepreneurial business, that has found the upside in addressing global malfunction.”

Fast Company argues that “a suite of new global forces is emerging that will remake the operating environment for global capitalism…and inject a “greed is good” mentality into our approach to grand social problems.” First and foremost because, “…if we don’t do something soon, we’re screwed. A quick (and necessarily depressing) look at the numbers suggests that supplies of our most basic commodities – potable water, fossil fuels, arable land, clean air – as well as critical industrial commodities such as aluminum, steel, and even silicon, are all under stress.”

After chronicling six totally frightening “new global forces” driving the operating environment of the future, they highlight 50 innovative, for-profit businesses that promote solutions to social problems.

“Well ahead of slower-moving governments, companies of every size and in every part of the world are now waking up to humanity’s impending and interlocking crises, and the vastly lucrative rewards that solving them might bring. If humanity has a future, it will rest significantly on these companies and entrepreneurs ability to create and globally distribute civilization-saving innovations.”

And as to motives, Fast Company goes there too: “…Are they doing this because they want to save the world, or because they can turn a profit? Yes. And not a moment too soon.”

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Carla E. Dearing