With few exceptions entrepreneurs who start successful businesses don't do so to maximize profits. Of course they want to make money, but that is not what drives most of them. They are inspired to do something that they believe needs doing. The heroic story of free-enterprise capitalism is one of entrepreneurs using their dreams and passion as fuel to create extraordinary value for customers, team members, suppliers, society, and investors…This is what we know to be true. Business is good because it creates value, it is ethical because it is based on voluntary exchange, it is noble because it lifts people out of poverty and creates prosperity.
This is from Whole Foods co-CEO John Mackey and Raj Sisodia, a marketing professor at Bentley College in their recently launched book Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business as excerpted by a Wall Street Journal Book review (hat tip Carpe Diem's Professor Mark Perry)
