The reason this blog
is called A Doctor for Good is due in part to the gentle yet persistent
suggestions of my lovely wife. I was hesitant about this title because without the context it can easily comes across as arrogant on my part. The word Good, in A Doctor for Good carries a double entendre throughout this entire endeavor. I am a doctor, and
with this medium will attempt to catalogue a vision for a healthier society. The project described in the first post is part of that vision. However, the roots of my passion for change run deeper than solving health
challenges alone.
Below is a White Paper I first wrote as a medical student around 2006 based on an idea that I first had as an undergraduate. The white paper is an attempt to lay out a vision for a new kind of enterprise. This type of venture was a unique type of undertaking in my mind when I first had the thought in college. I later came to find out this kind of entrepreneurial arrangement was gaining wide attraction, and had been around for some time. The idea, now commonly referred to as social entrepreneurship or social business, has been implemented in the real world with notable success by the Grameen Bank and Dr. Muhammad Yunus.
The reason the project is
called Good Incorporated is thanks to a good friend of mine, Joel Wright. On a laid back Friday afternoon in his dormitory room on Hendrix College campus a group of
friends were hanging out. I described to them this rough idea formalized in the white paper below. After hearing my thesis Joel said, that
sounds like good…incorporated. The
name stuck. That has been the title of this project for about a decade.
It is important to me
to include this idea up front. I see the project described in the first post is
a building block in a larger economic and social pyramid. Every time I think about the title of this
blog, I think about Good as noun with potential for a concrete reality in
terms of the concepts and abstractions below.
White Paper
Good Incorporated
The Goal, and why the world needs us to do this
Enabling our generation to sustain its standard of living and
ensuring others have the opportunities to do the same.
We live in an age of
vast and ever growing wealth. The recent global economic slowdown merely
represented a shrinking of overall economic growth, rather than an absence of
it. Never in our history have we been so interconnected with the peoples and
cultures that live such vast distances from us. Efficiencies in population and
material transport have allowed entrepreneurs access to global labor and
consumer markets. This shrinking of borders has been exploited in ways that
take the global standard of living to unbelievable new heights. This has been detailed
nicely in works such as The World is
Flat and Hot, Flat,
and Crowded by Thomas Freidman. The advent and propagation of information technology is
further contributing to the narrowing of economic and social gaps.
Unfortunately, a large number of global citizens have been “left-out” of this
interconnected, rich world. This means that they have not had a similar
opportunity to partake in the creation of individual or community prosperity to
the same degree.
Traditional
multi-national companies have not championed that neglected population because
those markets, and those consumers, are not as profitable. Their business
models and corporate charters are structured in such a way to create dis-incentive towards engagement with economically disadvantaged communities. Good Incorporated
believes that the opportunity to participate in a globalized world should be
offered to any individual regardless of their station at birth. We seek to do
this because we believe that by sharing in the exchanges of culture, history, language,
know-how, and ideas, we are in a better position to mutually enrich each other. Globalization and its
contiguous economic opportunities doesn't have to be a rich man’s only party.
Empowering others to take part in their local and global economies can have
beneficial effects on the sustainability and promulgation of overall global
prosperity. However, it will require us to muster a change in perspective. Today the traditional
business world is working from a specific and one-sided paradigm. What we are seeking to do
through Good Incorporated is fundamentally change the paradigm. It is the
underlying belief that profit, economic sustainability, and the social good are
not mutually exclusive pursuits. It is that belief which distinguishes this
endeavor from the traditional conceptualization of business while at the same time distancing itself from the work currently categorized as charity/foreign aid/humanitarian.
Will this even work?
Yes, it will work. We know
it will work is because the model of economies of scale has already been proven feasible as a
traditional business structure. [In this context feasible = profitable]. An example
business model to look at is Wal-Mart. Laying aside valid critiques of some of
Wal-Mart’s policies towards its employees, the second
largest grossing company in the U.S.A. was Wal-Mart in 2012. Understand that, and then consider the population that is the Wal-Mart client base? The answer: the middle socio-economic
classes of American society. Wal-Mart took something: in this case
household consumer goods and sold it at a price (and overall profit margin) low enough where American consumers
could buy. The model works at a 3% profit margin because of economies of the scale.
Those left out to globalization are the poor/middle classes around the world.
Imagine a product or service that can be provided at X cost. Imagine a
prime client base consisting of those currently left out from globalization.
Since traditional enterprise currently are not catering to or heavily pursuing that market, there
is ample opportunity for a huge market share. Based on the possible market, and the economy of
scale, X would have the potential decrease to a fraction of its original cost. What we are
talking about is on the scale of pennies a day. But, like Wal-Mart, if you sell enough units that it only costs you 1/2 a penny and you collect 1 penny, doing
that millions of times a day you are still a viable economic entity.
Why Profit?
Profit is important
because it underpins structural economic validity and sustainability. It
is not the only operating goal, but it is a necessary part of operations. The way we currently
structure aide to those left out of globalization looks more like a band-aid.
Donated foreign aid money only goes so far as the amount pledged and the length
of time it is promised. It functions, or has functioned, more as a superficial patch to the problem. Redistribution
of wealth through foreign aid has been around for a long time, but is it
sustainable?
Counter that image with
the concept of capitalism. It is the argument of this white paper that capitalism
as it is currently operationalized globally does not work for the majority of
the world’s people. Bear in mind when writing about a global scale, that
includes the U.S. population. Why are they left
out? Why is capitalism not producing gains for a larger portion of the population?
The answer to this goes back to the current world views regarding capital production and charity or social welfare, and suggests a need to a paradigm shift.
The current globalized form of
capitalism could have left out many of world’s poor for 1 of several reasons: 1) It
could be that capitalism is inherently an unjust system and wherever it is implemented
will always proffer inequality. Or, 2) as Good Incorporated believes;
capitalism leaves out many because the pursuit of profit is not currently mindful of social well-being. Additionally, socially beneficial pursuits such as those
advocated by civic organizations or communities of faith are reliant on donated
money, which as alluded to above, comes and goes with a whim and brings its own shackles. A Good Incorporated
endeavor is pursuit of the good cause
coupled with profit, however minuscule, as a necessary requirement for the
continuation of the project. Profit is viewed a means to provide
feedback to the organization about the efficacy of execution of its core mission
without wasting energies away from the core project in order to address fund raising or other inefficient efforts.
People who deeply care
about others and want to make social change their life's work in this world don’t become CEOs
and go into traditional business; they tend towards careers like social work. Pursuit
of the social the well-being of your fellow man has not been a quality traditionally
associated with a capitalist. It could be argued that a new word is needed for
this coupled concept. We seek a new type of entrepreneurship. We seek to take our profits and
feed them back into communities. Similarly, the aim is to use profit not as a means of
extracting wealth-but rather creating value for people and communities. What if
a global corporation acted like a mom and pop store? What if
altruistic/socially minded people were at the helm of dynamic Fortune 500 companies?
