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Thursday, November 06, 2008

Maximizing Social Capital

Building on the train of thoughts from my previous post on Financial Markets and Social Capital, and now that the world has a new US president that has been talking about hope and change, I would like to go back and explore further the value of focusing on Social Capital:
- it grows when you give, rather than when you take, 
- it does not decrease when you use it right,
- it is way more satisfying to build social capital than building capital. This is one of the reason why the Bill Gates and the Warren Buffett of the world get into it after they are done building their huge fortune. Because you get tired of accumulating wealth, but you never get tired of giving and helping (and unfortunately there is no immediate end to the need for it). And then they have come to realize that the world really needs it.

If capitalism as we know it got us where we are today, how about a capitalism where the focus is on maximizing social capital for those involved (entrepreneur, employees, customers, partners, investors, etc...)?

Posted by MarcD at 9:37 AM

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Michael Lewkowitz's avatar - Go to profile

Michael Lewkowitz 17p · 856 weeks ago

I don't know that the goal should be to maximize social capital but it definitely should be intentionally nurtured in the process of venturing toward the organization's purpose. I think that is something that comes mostly from the values mindset of the people involved and can be aided by the communiction technologies we have today.
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Michael Cayley's avatar - Go to profile

Michael Cayley · 856 weeks ago

I think that social capital is at the heart of the sustainable capitalism that Al Gore and David Blood are talking about in this Wall Street Journal editorial: http://sec.online.wsj.com/article/SB1225843671147...

Marc, I am looking forward to your comments on www.socialcapitalvalueadd.com
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mdangear's avatar - Go to profile

mdangear 37p · 856 weeks ago

Michael, thank you for the link to the Al Gore article. I am glad to see that he is pushing for sustainable capitalism, at least we agree on the assessment that the issue is that the focus has been too much on maximizing profit while ignoring the bigger picture. However I am a little disappointed, as many of the commenters seem to be, by the suggestions he offers, because it seems to be pushing the same agenda that in "unconvenient truth" rather than trying to take a fresh look at what could be done. The example of carbon reduction is nice, but I believe that we need to think bigger than this.
I like the quote from Kennedy:
"the Gross National Product measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile."
It seems closer to looking at "Social Capital" as a way out of the many crisis we are in.

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