SustainAbility
Established in 1987, SustainAbility advises clients on the risks and opportunities associated with corporate responsibility and sustainable development. Working at the interface between market forces and societal expectations, we seek solutions to social and environmental challenges that deliver long term value. We understand business and what society expects of it.
Recently published by Sustainability:
The Social Intrapreneurs: A Field Guide for Corporate Changemakers (2008)
Produced in partnership with The Skoll Foundation, Allianz and IDEO, SustainAbility’s latest publication spotlights this new breed of leaders, drawing on wide-ranging research and interviews within twenty leading global businesses.
I find it touching and heartening that the ills of capitalism will finally be addressed and solved by intrapreneurs working within the Fortune 100. This means that the rest of us can pretty well stand down. No need for a revolution. No need for organizing. No need for regulation. No need for solutions external to the markets. Sustainability? Social justice? The future of the planet? The Fortune 100 have got it handled. All praise to the powers that be.
The Executive Summary of the Report above ends with 10 bland tips for intrapreneurs, or "corporate changemakers," working within the company's firewall. I would add an 11th tip: "Don't make waves." When corporate realities and social benefit collide, I would add as tip 12, "Look at your paycheck and remember what happens to those who get sideways with corporate profits."
It is not as Fortune 100 corporate intrapreneurs but as citizens that we are free spirits and dangerous ones at that. Sure, work within the firewall, get paid to compromise, and seek a little of this and a little of that, but, as a citizen, do not limit your thinking to what is "in line with the company's goals and objectives."
"No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." So said a pre-corporate intrapreneur whose career ended badly. He might have done better if he stuck to his other saying, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are Gods." Replace God with "Employer" and you will make the right decisions instinctively. Sustaining the planet is good; but meanwhile, let's stay employed and out of trouble with she who rules us all in Wealth Bondage, where I served as Corporate Intrapreneur Grade 12, until I got fired for reading the Sermon on the Mount on company time. "Theft of company resources," they called it. I stole the time to read the gospels, and it came back to haunt me.
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