It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. In Adam Smith’s world, unrelenting pursuit of self-interest dominated the business landscape. Tapscott and Williams argue in Wikinomicsthat, until now, “There was always someone or some company in charge, controlling things at the ‘top’ of the food chain.”
Fast forward to 1995, when the Netscape IPO launched the Internet. Jump again to the present when the Internet is driving a virtual tsunami of connected thought; and burgeoning computing power, bandwidth and information technology are flattening the world, eradicating walls, driving information costs toward zero, and ushering in a “radical makeover” of the business landscape. Pursuing pure self-interest, hierarchies and bosses are being marginalized by collaboration, community and doing good with profit. Philanthropreneurs like Ward and Lincoln Fowler, partners in Alterra Coffee Roasters, and Roy Heffernan, Chief Operating Optimist of Life is good, Inc., are growing profitable companies that place a high priority on doing good with at least some of their profit.
