Acceleration was my word of 2020. The pandemic has accelerated acceptance that business cannot exist for the sole purpose of profit, nor separate business objectives from surrounding social issues. Action must be the word of 2021. #BuildBackBetter: we have the chance, let’s take it. Collaboration between business, nonprofit, government and academia is increasingly needed to provide [...]
Hosted by Fresh Business Thinking and supported by BT, Profit with Purpose CEO Isabel Kelly delivered the webinar live on 14th September 2020, and the talk is available to watch now: Isabel talked about how SMEs and entrepreneurs can embed purpose into their business in proportion to their focus on profitability, and structuring it so [...]
INTERVIEW - The Water Report March 2020 Business is well placed to drive social change, and doing so would bring corporate as well as societal benefits. Isabel Kelly offers practical advice to water companies who want to do more. Is there genuinely growing support for the idea that financial profit isn’t the only thing a [...]
It’s a story I’ve heard from many people throughout my working life; “when I started my career, I wanted a job that would make the world a better place, but I couldn’t afford to work for a charity – so I went into the private sector . . .” The implication is that they ‘compromised’ [...]
Published by Manage Magazine, 22 August 2019 I feel like the business world is finally catching up with me in believing it has a purpose beyond the maximisation of profit. Of course I have not been alone in thinking this for the past 20 years. Many businesses – particularly those that are family or privately [...]
Have you come across the concept of jugaad? Most commonly associated with Indian entrepreneurs, the Hindi word roughly translates as ‘the gutsy art of overcoming harsh constraints by improvising an effective solution using limited resources.’ Everywhere in the world where challenging social or economic circumstances prevail, entrepreneurs make creative use of whatever assets are easily or freely available [...]
“Purpose is not a mere tagline or marketing campaign; it is a company’s fundamental reason for being – what it does every day to create value for its stakeholders” – Larry Fink, BlackRock CEO As a business leader, you can’t have failed to notice that purpose is the zeitgeist – being discussed across the business [...]
July 2018 Isabel is delighted to have joined a group of impressive 'gurus' assembled by Entrepreneurial Giving, a new organisation founded by Maurice Ostro OBE, to support the work they are doing to help entrepreneurs build genuine mission-driven businesses from the outset.
By James Reed, Chairman of the REED Group Published on June 15, 2018 Shocking events provoke powerful emotions. I saw this at first hand last year in the immediate aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire. The whole country was deeply affected by the deaths of 72 people in such awful circumstances on June 14, 2017. Raw [...]
[By Isabel Kelly, published online September 10, 2016, Journal of Human Rights Practice, Oxford Journals, OUP] Is the Time Right for Human Rights NGOs to Collaborate with Businesses that Want to Stop Dabbling with ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ and Start Making Social Impact? Link to full text Based on the author’s 12 years of working in a [...]