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 [...]
[By Annu Mehta] Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is one of the new provisions introduced in The Companies Act 2013 in India - and is a potential game-changer for the business landscape. With effect from April 1, 2014, every company which either has a net worth of INR 500 crore (US$75m) or a turnover of INR [...]
[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 [...]
[By Isabel Kelly] You may not be as rich as a Rockefeller, but you and your company have a wealth of resources to apply to the world’s greatest social issues. Marc Benioff, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Sir Tom Hunter, Pierre Omidyar and of course David Rockefeller, are all part of The [...]
British business needs investment and vision. But most of all it needs purpose By Will Hutton, The Observer, 15 May 2016 'Successful companies are defined by their capacity to deliver and pursue clearly defined visionary corporate purposes – to be the best, to do business that is sustainable, to serve humanity, to stretch every muscle to [...]