Michael Porter

It’s now a year since Michael Porter famously threw down his gauntlet by announcing from on high that all value needed to be Shared Value. That, as I wrote last year, we are moving into the Third Age of corporate-social relations. From old-style “philanthropy” – typically disbursed after corporate titans had made their pile -- to “corporate social responsibility”; from fairtrade to subtler alignments of brand and charitable effort; to something approaching the end of CSR and its sublimation into a revolutionary reshaping of mainstream business strategy.

There’s been a lot of talk about the “new CSR” – corporate social responsibility as something other than philanthropic giveaways with an eye on looking good. Which may be an unfair way to characterize corporate engagement in social good over the years – from Rowntree to Hershey to Tata – but the split between gross generosity after the fact (Carnegie will always be the best/worst example) and marginal generosity during, has been almost universal.