Businesses solve problems. Businesses make the world better. There are too many problems for any one person to solve.

Start a business to solve a problem, Don't just start a business because you like something.

I’ve been arguing that the capitalist system as we know it is harmful without a new sector — the social business sector — that is dedicated to solving the problems we are piling up around us. It is driven by a largely overlooked factor in human behavior: the drive to solve human problems unselfishly for the simple joy and pride that it brings.

Still another trend supports greater emphasis upon the social responsibilities of business firms and greater interest in the interactions between business and public policies. The great problems of contemporary society, such as environmental pollution, waste disposal, unemployment, poverty, urban renewal, and mass transit, are most likely to be solved by combining the organizational discipline of the action-oriented business corporation with the legal and taxing powers of government. Private corporations will more frequently be used to attain public purposes. At the same time, the public has made it clear that it will no longer tolerate the thrusting of private cost upon itself.

The challenge I set before anyone who condemns private-sector business is this: If you are a socially conscious person, why don't you run your business in a way that will help achieve social objectives?

Type I social business: The business objective is to overcome poverty, or one or more problems (such as education, health, technology access, and environment) that threaten people and society — not to maximize profit. The company will attain financial and economic sustainability. Investors get back only their investment amount. No dividend is given beyond the return of the original investment. When the investment amount is paid back, profit stays with the company for expansion and improvement. The company will be environmentally conscious. The workforce gets market wage with better-than-standard working conditions. Do it with joy!!!

We can think about a social business as a selfless business whose purpose is to bring an end to a social problem. In this kind of business, the company makes a profit — but no one takes the profit. Because the company is dedicated entirely to the social cause, the whole idea of making personal profit is removed from this business. The owner can take back over a period of time only the amount invested.

I don’t think business should only deal in commercial things. Business, to me, is nothing more than a collection of people. If people have values, then companies should.

For some, I realize, business is the all-out pursuit of profits, period, full stop, but for us business was no more about making money than being human is about making blood. Yes, the human body needs blood. It needs to manufacture red and white cells and platelets and redistribute them evenly, smoothly, to all the right places, on time, or else. But that day-to-day business of the human body isn’t our mission as human beings. It’s a basic process that enables our higher aims, and life always strives to transcend the basic processes of living — and at some point in the late 1970s, I did, too. I redefined winning, expanded it beyond my original definition of not losing, of merely staying alive. That was no longer enough to sustain me, or my company. We wanted, as all great businesses do, to create, to contribute, and we dared to say so aloud. When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is — you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you’re helping others to live more fully, and if that’s business, all right, call me a businessman. Maybe it will grow on me. THERE

The development, strengthening and multiplication of socially minded businessmen is the central problem of business. Moreover, it is one of the great problems of civilization. Our objective, therefore, should be the multiplication of men who will handle their current business problems in socially constructive ways.

One of the most interesting things about business to me is that I find so many business men who are willing to try experiments. I should like to tell you about two evenings I spent last winter and the contrast between them. I went one evening to a drawing-room meeting where economists and M.Ps. talked of current affairs, of our present difficulties. It all seemed a little vague to me, did not seem really to come to grips with our problem. The next evening it happened that I went to a dinner of twenty business men who were discussing the question of centralization and decentralization. Each one had something to add from his own experience of the relation of branch firms to the central office, and the other problems included in the subject. There I found L hope for the future. There men were not theorizing or dogmatizing; they were thinking of what they had actually done and they were willing to try new ways the next morning, so to speak. Business, because it gives us the opportunity of trying new roads, of blazing new trails, because, in short, it is pioneer work, pioneer work in the organized relations of human beings, seems to me to offer as thrilling an experience as going into a new country and building railroads over new mountains. For whatever problems we solve in business management may help towards the solution of world problems, since the principles of organization and administration which are discovered as best for business can be applied to government or international relations. Indeed, the solution of world problems must eventually be built up from all the little bits of experience wherever people are consciously trying to solve problems of relation. And this attempt is being made more consciously and deliberately in industry than anywhere else.

Thus, the social business might be described as a “non-loss, non-dividend company,” dedicated entirely to achieving a social goal.

Great businesses have a point of view, not just a product or service. You have to believe in something. You need to have a backbone. You need to know what you’re willing to fight for. And then you need to show the world.

The business of business is people, not products or services. Take care of the people, and the people will take care of you.