Why it takes more than one good Apple
on
May 6, 2007
Why it takes more than one good Apple
"One bad Apple can spoil the bunch". With Apple being good, is one good Apple enough?
Leadership is inspiring. Apple and Sir Jobs are to be congratulated. Changing momentum is difficult within the current economic, governmental, and cultural conflicts defining our generation.
Apple has responded to Greenpeace in this environmental memo and also responded with a memo and provided new options in response to our campaign against DRM. This happened in the context of work we do with the Free Software Foundation in the Defective by Design campaign and the petition to Jobs. We've made progress, and Jobs has shown leadership and sensitivity to a growing, educated, global community which demands more than a simple bottom line to define success.
To make these changes sustainable, government must work with business to change. Currently, there is not enough incentive for companies to take the risk needed for change. The SEC has many laws about profit in a public company, and the current administration's FCC and EPA are not meeting their responsibilities in fostering environments of change. The changes the world needs will likely need to be more fundamental, sustainable, and rapid than one good company can hope to do.
(This is why I proposed the legal framework for an SRC or Socially
Responsible Corporation in this blog post.)
What's great is that the eye is on the prize: a world with shared health, stable economies, healthy environments, and free (as in Freedom) information.
Gregory Heller May 6, 2007
The NYT Sunday Business section ran an interesting article on Socially Responsible businesses and the conflict between the fiduciary responsibility of a company to make profits (often short term profits) for its investors and the responsibilities that corporations should feel (and some do) to the environment, people and the planet.
It is definitely an interesting frontier in business (and non profits). Hopefully we will see some reform over at the SEC that allows companies to place value in more than just profits. Alternately, maybe businesses like Apple and GE can demonstrate that big companies can turn profits without trashing our planet.
