What if the world’s corporate leaders were fuelled by love?

SUCCESS in the business world has been viewed through the narrow lens of maximising profits and enhancing shareholder value. The world today is defined by a marketing economy that has dominated the market-driven economy. This is a perilous path, driving unsustainable consumption and materialism, at the expense of our planet and wellbeing of life.

As historian Adam Tooze puts it, we live in an era of polycrises, defined by the World Economic Forum as where “disparate crises interact such that the overall impact far exceeds the sum of each part”. Indeed, crises are interconnected, and we must be one collective force in the wake of such adversities. In the face of the challenges confronting human society and nature, businesses need to correct the trajectory this marketing economy has taken.

Businesses are being taken to task for their responsibility in this crisis. Some have begun the move from old-school profit-driven to purpose-led. A new form of purpose-led profit-making business is needed to restore the role of business to its purest form – that is, to serve the wellbeing of life.