By Simon Caulkin, originally published in Financial Times on January 24, 2016.
One of the paradoxes of business is that the most profitable companies are not those that are most profit-focused.
In a survey titled “The Business Case for Purpose”, a team from Harvard Business Review Analytics and professional services firm EY’s Beacon institute declares “a new leading edge: those companies able to harness the power of purpose to drive performance and profitability enjoy a distinct competitive advantage”. This is a reprise of the findings of Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, who in 1994’s Built to Last found that between 1926 and 1990 a group of “visionary” companies – those guided by a purpose beyond making money – returned six times more to shareholders than explicitly profit-driven rivals.
