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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...)?