Capitalists may not be the best to advocate for capitalism. While we are great operators and supporters, are we the best at fighting the good fight? Let’s face it – Capitalism is under attack at all levels. So who best to fight for a market based perspective? According to Robert Wenzel, it’s not the actual functional capitalists. While we may be very good at bringing innovations to markets and serving the needs of customers (working …
Crisis management is certainly a hot topic right now. Every day I am invited to crisis management webinars (which tend to be sales pitches with some aspects of crisis management). What worries me is that many of these webinars are a series of “best practices” based on prescriptive (what you should do) advice that is not grounded in any theory or research. Agencies that make blanket recommendations like this should not be in your network …
Seriously. Right now. Stop giving back. Whoa! You are probably wondering if I have finally lost it. Isn’t that the epitome of greed? Aren’t we supposed to give back to those less fortunate than us? Aren’t we supposed to redistribute back into the system? (sorry, it is political nonsense season) Here is my question to you: What did you TAKE that you now have to give BACK? What did you do to make you bear …
We hear a lot of rhetoric against wealth and the 1%ers who possess wealth. An Impact Capitalist question is: how did we go conceptually from the existence of the 1% of wealth holding individuals to be evidence that capitalism is evil and should be dismantled immediately? Is it the correlation between wealth generation/holding and the capitalist system? And is it the correlation (thus causation) between capitalism and people who do not have wealth? Have we …
Does a business owner need to understand business to manage and grow that business? I mean more than just their business, but business principles and foundations in general. Can you make a successful business and not really know business? I ask students this question every semester. Students are trained to answer “Of course not – education is critical to success” and “how can we build/run a business through ignorance” and such. How can anyone succeed …
Welcome to Davos week – where business and government leaders, activists and media created celebrities spray us with guilt ridden appeals to make a positive impact in the world. Well, any reader here at Impact Capitalist already knows that capitalism has the ability to deliver. However, the system’s ability for good and evil depends on how people and businesses act within these systems. What is problematic is not capitalism, but mindsets and behaviors of human …
20/20. It is a concept usually associated with vision. While it is not technically perfect vision, it is associated with clarity in vision. 20/20 hindsight does refer to perfect clarity and vision of the past based on knowledge of outcomes. Everything is clear in hindsight (supposedly – interpretation of facts often differ – greatly). Monday morning quarterbacks (link out for this) are always right. In research, there is a concept of HARKing, or hypothesizing after …
I am not only an impact capitalist – I am also an occasional university professor. I teach courses in business management and strategic communication. And every year I run into a number of students who hold a very different idea of education, hard work, and earning of grades/diplomas than I do. This blog is partially inspired by students who feel that any work turned in is outstanding (as if putting letters/numbers on a document is …
It is the start of the new school year. New hopes and new opportunities to learn. But what are we expected to learn – and what should we learn from university studies? This is a question I have been pondering for a while now. My struggle centers around the concept of “higher learning”. What is higher learning? What separates higher learning from other forms of learning? After all, business owners will tell you that they …
Welcome to 2020. A new year. A new decade. And 20% through the century. For some of us, Y2K just came and went. Speaking of coming and going, it may seem as we at Impact Capitalist have come and gone. Nothing can be further from the truth. We have been busy on a variety of projects that have taken much of our time (See Mark Aubry’s posts in Praxis for details). None the less, it …