In this week’s issue of Time, Bill Gates has written a piece arguing for the mainstreaming of creative capitalism. Since his introduction of the idea at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year (see the YouTube video here) Gates has been strengthening his case for creative capitalism, which is an effort to focus the attention of businesses on problems facing the billions of humans suffering from poverty and helping to alleviate them. Gates’ Time article draws two methods of getting companies to sign on to a creative capitalist agenda:
- That “the poorest two-thirds of the world’s population has some $5 trillion in purchasing power.” Companies can benefit financially from serving this population, and have done so. Examples of these are Safaricom, a cell phone company in Kenya that charges by the second so that it’s an affordable service; and Grameen Bank, Muhammad Yunus’ microlending institution.
- Where there is no tangible or foreseeable financial benefit, governments and nonprofits need to create a financial benefit through intangible incentives. It can be as simple as governments and nonprofits can recognize these companies’ efforts through publicizing their good deeds, or as complex as offering creative motivations such as the FDA’s fast-tracking a pharmaceutical company’s drug at the same time they’re introducing a new treatment for a neglected disease such as malaria.
Creative capitalism has been generating quite a bit of buzz since its introduction. It’s even generated a blog that featured debate on the topic by some of the leading thinkers in economics, which will be published in book form by Simon & Schuster in late 2008.
