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Screw business as usual
In his latest book, Screw business as usual, due for release in December this year Sir Richard Branson asserts that capitalism has "lost its way" and financial profit should no longer be the main driving force behind big business. He says he wants to reflect "a vibrant and marked sea change from the way business always used to be done, when financial profit was the only driving force."
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Coming at a time when free market capitalism, as we got to know it over the last four decades, seems to be decidedly in trouble and written by one of the most famous of self-made men delivered by the system Screw business as usual make for compelling reading.
At a recent launch of the book in London Branson said: “"I truly believe that capitalism was created to help people live better lives, but sadly over the years it has lost its way a bit. The short-term focus on profit has driven most businesses to forget about the important long-term role they have in taking care of people and the planet."
Branson argues in the book that business can only hope to rescue the world from the escalating economic crisis if it consciously sets out to “do good” instead of merely concentrating on the bottom line. And companies that do so will actually become more profitable.
In an interview with The Telegraph he said: “We need a new way of doing business to get out of the present crisis, Absolute greed has come close to bankrupting the world. Thanks to the crisis that certain businesses have dumped on everyone a lot of people are going to suffer on a global scale. All of us must learn. It is all the more important that those business leaders that are left standing try to be a force for good.”
Sir Richard has even come up with a new name for this new entrepreneurial goodness: “Capitalism 24902”, taken from the circumference of planet earth.
The name, he argues, “does what it says on the tin – that every single business person has responsibility for taking care of the people and the planet that make up our global village”,
Screw business as usual is published by Virgin Books, distributed in South Africa by Random House Struik and sells for R215.
