Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire Quotes

“The only way we will solve the problems that we face is if we can find a way to balance the power of the market with the power of inclusive institutions, and purpose-driven businesses committed to the health of the society could play an important role in making this happen.”
― Rebecca Henderson, Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

“As long as investors care only about maximizing their own returns, and focus only on the short term and on what can be easily measured, firms will be reluctant to take the risks inherent in seeking to exploit shared value and to embrace high road labor practices.”
― Rebecca Henderson, Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

“We will not reimagine capitalism unless we rediscover the values on which capitalism has always been based, and have the courage and the skill to integrate them into the day-to-day fabric of business. To pretend that this is not the case is to critically misrepresent the truth of our current situation. We are destroying the world and the social fabric in the service of a quick buck, and we need to move beyond the simple maximization of shareholder value before we bring the whole system crashing down around our heads.”
― Rebecca Henderson, Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

“If we are to reimagine capitalism, we need the private sector to be part of the effort to rebuild our institutions and to fix government.”
― Rebecca Henderson, Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

“Nowhere in the world are firms legally required to maximize investor returns.”
― Rebecca Henderson, Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

“Business as usual is not a viable option.”
― Rebecca Henderson, Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

“Fossil fuel energy looks cheap—but only because we’re not counting the costs we are imposing on our neighbors and on the future.”
― Rebecca Henderson, Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

“Money is like love; it kills slowly and painfully the one who withholds it, and enlivens the other who turns it on his fellow human. —KAHLIL GIBRAN, “YESTERDAY & TODAY, XII,” FROM KAHLIL GIBRAN’S LITTLE BOOK OF LIFE”
― Rebecca Henderson, Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

“Douglas McGregor, a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. In The Human Side of Enterprise, published in 1960, McGregor laid out two theories of human motivation, foreshadowing much of modern motivational theory. The first, “Theory X,” framed people as fundamentally selfish and lazy, willing only to work for themselves and for extrinsic rewards such as money, status, and power. The second, “Theory Y,” hypothesized that people are motivated as much or more by intrinsic rewards—by the pleasures of mastery and autonomy, by the opportunity to build relationships with others, and by the desire for meaning and purpose. Theory Y anticipated much modern research in postulating that people are as much “groupish” as they are selfish, that they are hard wired to enjoy being part of a group and even—under certain circumstances—to act cooperatively and even altruistically. The book was sometimes interpreted as an argument in favor of Theory Y, but McGregor himself insisted that his point was not that Theory Y was correct, but that both theories are useful models, and that to rely on Theory X alone is a dangerous oversimplification that leaves many powerful sources of motivation off the table. One”
― Rebecca Henderson, Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

“Switching from beef to “white meat” such as pork or chicken could cut health costs by $1 trillion a year, significantly lower GHG emissions, and greatly reduce the pressure to find new agricultural land.13 Plant-based food is now a $4.5 billion business14 and could be an $85 billion industry by 2030.15 Wheat farmers in the Netherlands, Germany, and the United Kingdom reap more than four times the harvest from the same area of land as farmers in Russia, Spain, and Romania.16 Yields in much of Africa are even lower. Quadrupling food production is probably an unrealistic goal, but a number of pilot projects suggest that doubling yields—even in the face of climate stress—is eminently possible.17 About a third of all the food that is produced globally is lost—to pests or spoilage in the supply chain or as consumer waste. Preventing just a quarter of this loss could feed nearly a billion people a year, save nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars, and significantly reduce global GHG emissions.18”
― Rebecca Henderson, Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

“of new jobs and cut the world’s energy demands by as much as 50 percent.12”
― Rebecca Henderson, Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

“Most importantly, there’s a great business case for saving the world. Meeting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals is a $12 trillion opportunity.8 Renewable energy is now a more than $1.5 trillion business9 and in 2017 generated 26.5 percent of global electricity and accounted for 70 percent of all new power generation capacity.10 Numbers like this make renewables a job creation machine. More than three million Americans now have jobs in the clean energy sector, more than three times the number employed in the fossil fuel industry.11 Increasing the efficiency with which energy is used could create thousands of new firms and millions”
― Rebecca Henderson, Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

“climate change is an immediate threat, to support interracial and gay marriage and the rights of women—and much less likely than their parents to support populist leaders.6 We did not blow ourselves up during the Cold War. We have eradicated smallpox; flown to the moon; and invented the internet, AI, and the cell phone. We have built hearts in petri dishes and reduced the average price of photovoltaic modules a hundred-fold.”
― Rebecca Henderson, Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

“My father was born in 1935. In his lifetime the world’s population more than tripled—from roughly 2.3 billion to about 7.7 billion. But over the same period, world GDP increased fifteen-fold, and GPD per capita has increased from approximately $3,000 to nearly $15,000.5 That’s enough money to permit every man, woman, and child on the planet to meet the core requirements for human happiness: to have enough to eat, decent shelter, and physical security. We are more peaceful and inclusive than our ancestors would have believed possible. In 1800 slavery was legal almost everywhere, and women did not have the right to vote. Now forced labor is only legal in three countries, and women can vote everywhere there is voting. Almost no one lived in a democracy in 1800. Now more than half of humanity does so; nearly every child receives some form of primary education; and 86 percent of the world’s population can read and write. The young are much more likely to believe”
― Rebecca Henderson, Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

“In 2018 more than $19 trillion—20 percent of all total financial assets under management—was invested using ESG-based information.4”
― Rebecca Henderson, Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

“The technical term for this kind of activity is “self-regulation,” and it can be immensely powerful.”
― Rebecca Henderson, Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

“reimagined capitalism—a reformed economic and political system—has five key pieces, none sufficient on its own, but each building on the other and each a vital part of a reinforcing whole. We can begin to see what this looks like in practice through the story of the transformation of a single firm.”
― Rebecca Henderson, Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

“I learned that it is not death that is the tragedy. It is failing to live that is the tragedy. Everybody”
― Rebecca Henderson, Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

“Every coal-fired plant on the planet is actively destroying value, in the sense that the costs these plants are imposing on society are greater than their total revenues, let alone their profits.”
― Rebecca Henderson, Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire