“Corporations embody the human spirit of life (profitability), liberty (free enterprise), and the pursuit of happiness (improving our human experience).” – Vinny Tafuro

It has been two months since I published the Kindle version of Corporate Empathy and the discussion it (and the subsequent print edition) prompts is proving very timely. Continually I am finding new information and pockets of people and organizations that are already working on the idea of making business more productive for all stakeholders. Just a week ago in continuing research I discovered the article “Conscious Capitalism: Can Empathy Change The World?” published by Forbes on September 23, 2012, just a few weeks prior to my publishing. Jeff Klein, a trustee in Conscious Capitalism, Inc. which held it’s 6th Annual CEO Summit, Conscious Capitalism: The Ultimate Competitive Advantage states the following about the movement.

“Rather than seeing business as a tube [money in, money out],” says Klein, “we look at business as an ecosystem of interdependent interrelated stakeholders. For stakeholder management, the business has to produce profits over time, but that doesn’t mean that’s its sole purpose. For the business to be sustainable, flourish, and be resilient, it needs to focus on the whole rather than its parts.”

The biggest challenge I come against when sharing the idea of Corporate Empathy and the future of business that it envisions with others is in helping people to overcome doubts they have that big business would even want to try. Finding movements like Conscious Capitalism and seeing the companies that are already striving to reach a higher level is heartening and also providing great examples that we are in fact entering a new age in business.

The following 3:28 highlight video from the 2011 summit provides an inspirational vision of business.

Conscious Capitalism® is a registered trademark of Conscious Capitalism®, Inc.