Back in March at the GC Leadership Forum, we heard an inspiring keynote about the purposeless company from Will Hutton, chair of the Big Innovation Centre and Principal of Hertford College, Oxford.
Hutton’s proposition is that many companies have – for a variety of reasons – become ownerless, purposeless vehicles driven by short term shareholder requirements that are at odds with a wider concept of the utility of commercial action. We have lost the narrative of capitalism as a tool, not for growth for its own sake or to enrich the few, but for directly improving our lives by making useful things and providing useful services.
