The Business of Building a Better World

4

A Decade That Transformed the Role of Business in Society—A Snapshot

MARK R. KRAMER

IN 2011, WHEN MICHAEL PORTER and I published the “Creating Shared Value: How to Reinvent Capitalism—and Unleash a Wave of Innovation and Growth” in the Harvard Business Review, we suggested that too much attention was focused on the conflict between business and society rather than on synergy and interdependence. The COVID pandemic we are currently living through has powerfully demonstrated that the private sector cannot survive without a healthy society and that societies encounter massive hardship when companies cannot succeed. Indeed, without all three sectors ...