James Potten, Founder & CEO of Amplified Futures, helps start-ups to scale. He's a passionate advocate of purpose as a core part of businesses reaching their potential, and hosted a conversation on How Purpose Powers Your Startup. The four guests shared their different routes into purpose - through personal and professional experiences - and [...]
As existential threats to business continue to mount, how can companies ensure the health and long-term viability of their company and employees? Hear from Isabel Kelly, non-executive director at the Panoply and CEO of Profit with Purpose, on the importance of nonprofit and for-profit collaboration. Find the podcast here: Apple Podcasts - Spotify - Stitcher Benefits from a Nonprofit [...]
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 [...]
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’ [...]
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 Isabel Kelly] Recently I was asked by the foundation of a large multinational company to share some of my thoughts on running a corporate foundation responsible for generating its own income; which inevitably brings up the issue of balancing the social mission with the money-making. The company has moved its CSR (corporate social responsibility) [...]
[By Annu Mehta, Co-Founder, Alstonia] What is a good workplace? What attracts and retains the right kind of employees? The answers are changing rapidly. Employees these days - especially Employees these days - especially millennials- are looking for a collaborative work environment which enables them to not only learn constantly but also find a [...]