Supercorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Opportunity, Profits, Growth, and Social Good

Supercorp is based on a 3-year study involving more than 350 interviews in 20 countries to identify the leadership practices and operating methods of major companies seeking profitable growth through innovation that benefits society. For example, when the tsunami and earthquake struck India in 2006, IBM did not just write a check. It used its core competence-expertise in technology-and its skilled people to accomplish what government and relief agencies could not: an information system and supply chain that tracked and managed the flow of relief supplies. Its efforts were crucial in avoiding the all-too-familiar problem in disaster relief-chaos and mobs of desperate people. IBM's actions, as well as many others reported on by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, capture the emerging zeitgeist of business: the vanguard company simultaneously pursuing-and creating synergy between-opportunity, growth, profit, humanistic values and social good. Vanguard companies have a sense of mission enabling them to deliver what their customers want in a way that is significantly better than the competition. As a formula for the future it brings together the necessity of financial success shareholders demand and the social conscience demanded from the new generation moving up the corporate ranks.