Let’s play a game of name-that-quote. I’ll reproduce a quote below, and you guess who said it. Ready? No cheating...

Business does good by doing business

Did anyone guess Milton Friedman? Heck, how about Adam Smith? Maybe Martin Feldstein? Wrong. Here’s another excerpt from the same source:

...the leading global companies of 2020 will be those that provide goods and services and reach new customers in ways that address the world’s major challenges – including poverty, climate change, resource depletion, globalization, and demographic shifts.

Did anyone guess Joel Makower? How about John Elkington? Or Stuart Hart? Maybe WRI’s Jonathan Lash, known for his forward-thinking pronouncements about the role of business?

If you did, you wouldn’t be guilty of bad reasoning. But you would again be wrong. These quotes can be attributed to a group of eight multinational corporate execs convened by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development as its “Tomorrow’s Leaders” group. The eight include some heavy hitters from companies like SwissRe, GrupoNueva, BP, and P&G. They’ve just published From Challenge to Opportunity: The Role of Business in Tomorrow’s Society, a 40-page “manifesto for tomorrow’s global business.”