Stuart L. Hart
Global capitalism stands at a crossroads, facing environmental and economic meltdown and a widening gap between rich and poor. We are clearly on an unsustainable path.
Over the next decade or so, I believe that these global challenges will constitute the biggest business opportunity in the history of commerce and that business is uniquely equipped to lead us toward a more “sustainable” world. Properly focused, the profit motive can accelerate (not inhibit) the transformation toward global sustainability.
The time is now for the birth of a new, more inclusive form of capitalism - one that uplifts the entire human family of 6.6 billion while at the same time replenishing and restoring nature. Making such societal contributions and creating shareholder value will take real imagination and a fresh approach to business strategy.
Creating the business strategies required to address these exciting and uplifting challenges is the focus of my life’s work.
Cornell Global Forum Founder and Co-Organizer, Stuart L. Hart is the Samuel C. Johnson Chair of Sustainable Global Enterprise and Professor of Management at Cornell University’s Johnson School of Management. Before joining Cornell in 2003, he was the Hans Zulliger Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Enterprise and Professor of Strategic Management at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, where he founded the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise and the Base of the Pyramid Learning Laboratory. Previously, he taught corporate strategy at the University of Michigan Business School and was the founding director of the Corporate Environmental Management Program (CEMP).
Professor Hart is one of the world’s top authorities on the implications of sustainable development and environmentalism for business strategy. He has published over 50 papers and authored or edited five books. His article “Beyond Greening: Strategies for a Sustainable World” (PDF) won the McKinsey Award for Best Article in the Harvard Business Review for 1997 and helped launch the movement for corporate sustainability. With C.K. Prahalad, Hart also wrote the pathbreaking 2002 article “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid,” (PDF) which provided the first articulation of how business could profitably serve the needs of the four billion poor in the developing world. His new book, Capitalism at the Crossroads, was published by Wharton School Publishing in 2005. The second edition of the book with a new Foreword by Hon. Al Gore was published in 2007.
Updated: March 10, 2009