Raj Sisodia: How Conscious Capitalism Brings Love into Business

Let's come back again to the chronology, if you don't mind.

I think in the early 2000s, you set out to study companies.

loved by everyone they touch, customers, employees, suppliers, investors, communities, you call them firms of endearment.

And what you found turned conventional wisdom on its head, actually.

These companies were not trading profit for purpose.

They were outperforming the S&P 500 by 14 to 1 over 15 years, which is a pretty amazing number.

And this actually resonates deeply with me in a conversation I had with John Elkington, that you may know, who is the godfather of the triple bottom line, people, profit, and planet.

And I had a wonderful discussion with John as well a few months back.

In a way, I think your research gives that framework the most powerful empirical proof.

So can you take us back to that research? What surprised you most when the data came in? And why do you believe love is not a soft concept, but actually the most precise strategic force that you found?

Yeah, so that book was a turning point in my life.

I was frustrated, unhappy, unfulfilled, unpurposed.

I didn't have a sense of purpose.

I almost had a sense of shame about being a marketing professor.

And I was, after doing 10 years of academic research, documenting all the ways in which marketing is inefficient, ineffective, unethical, right, with lots of data and surveys and all those things, academic work, and a book called Does Marketing Need Reform that we published in 2004.

Then I finally turned my attention to the other side of that, and I said, is there a better way? How do we improve this? Okay, we've said it's not working.

So I think we have a duty.

My mentor said, Raj, people want to know the solution, not just the

problem.

So let's think about the solution.

So I said, okay, is there a better way? And I think that's a very important question for any domain.

If you ask, is there a better way? The answer is always yes.

In any domain, it doesn't matter how good it is today.

It can always be better.

There's no limit to human ingenuity and our capacity to improve things.

Let's come back again to the chronology, if you don't mind.

I think in the early 2000s, you set out to study companies.

loved by everyone they touch, customers, employees, suppliers, investors, communities, you call them firms of endearment.

And what you found turned conventional wisdom on its head, actually.

These companies were not trading profit for purpose.

They were outperforming the S&P 500 by 14 to 1 over 15 years, which is a pretty amazing number.

And this actually resonates deeply with me in a conversation I had with John Elkington, that you may know, who is the godfather of the triple bottom line, people, profit, and planet.

And I had a wonderful discussion with John as well a few months back.

In a way, I think your research gives that framework the most powerful empirical proof.

So can you take us back to that research? What surprised you most when the data came in? And why do you believe love is not a soft concept, but actually the most precise strategic force that you found?

Yeah, so that book was a turning point in my life.

I was frustrated, unhappy, unfulfilled, unpurposed.

I didn't have a sense of purpose.

I almost had a sense of shame about being a marketing professor.

And I was, after doing 10 years of academic research, documenting all the ways in which marketing is inefficient, ineffective, unethical, right, with lots of data and surveys and all those things, academic work, and a book called Does Marketing Need Reform that we published in 2004.

Then I finally turned my attention to the other side of that, and I said, is there a better way? How do we improve this? Okay, we've said it's not working.

So I think we have a duty.

My mentor said, Raj, people want to know the solution, not just the

problem.

So let's think about the solution.

So I said, okay, is there a better way? And I think that's a very important question for any domain.

If you ask, is there a better way? The answer is always yes.

In any domain, it doesn't matter how good it is today.

It can always be better.

There's no limit to human ingenuity and our capacity to improve things.