Warren Valdmanis - Accountable: How we Can Save Capitalism

Accountable is striking in its clarity and insights born from the authors experience as investors on the front lines of capitalisms excesses and potential. The case studies of some of the best-known companies and investors dont pull punches while offering tangible examples of the changes in culture and rules of the game required for a new type of capitalism.

Daniella Ballou-Aares, CEO and cofounder of the Leadership Now Project

If we dont contend with climate change, inequality, and the generational challenges tearing at our democracy, we will destroy our economy. Accountable offers a different vision. Unwilling to settle for easy answers or superficial changes, OLeary and Valdmanis push us all to ask more of our economic system.

Senator Michael F. Bennet

If we want to save free-market enterprise economics and all the benefits it brings, we have to reform capitalism and the way corporations behave. This was a big part of the modern compassionate Conservative agenda I championedand what this book is all about. The authors do a great job in explaining that this is not a wealth-bashing, negative agenda but a positive and exciting one. Businesses linking better with their communities. Impact investing to solve social problems. Companies stepping up and recognizing their wider responsibilities beyond simply maximizing profits. Business doing good is good businessand this book puts that beyond doubt.

David Cameron, former prime minister of the United Kingdom

Solving our biggest social and environmental problems means reshaping the role that businesses play in our society. This informative book addresses the challenges we face in achieving this crucial transformation.

Sir Ronald Cohen, chair of the Global Steering Group for Impact Investment (GSG)

In todays reality, business represents a picture of dysfunctionality, of excesses benefitting the few, of gross injustice. Tomorrows business leaders have an obligation to create a different reality reflecting our better hopes and inspirations. Accountable takes you on that journey. Its a wonderful trip.

Peter Georgescu, chairman emeritus of Young & Rubicam

For decades, the dominant view has been that the purpose of companies is to make money for their shareholders. No more. Combining compelling examples and analytical insights, OLeary and Valdmanis explain why the world is changing, and provide a road map for how shareholders and citizens can and must transform the corporate landscape to save capitalism from itself.

Oliver Hart, Harvard University, 2016 Nobel laureate in economics

Accountable takes a fresh look at a fundamental question of capitalismwhose interests should corporations serve. Its call for collective action by consumers, workers, and investors to reorient corporate behavior may foretell the next decade.

Jonathan Levin, dean of Stanford Graduate School of Business

Accountable reminds us that todays short-termism is as dangerous for corporations as it is for the world and uses a combination of great stories and thoughtful analysis to suggest that we must find a way to change the purpose of our corporations if we are to build a society that works for all of us. I enjoyed it enormously.

Rebecca M. Henderson, John and Natty McArthur University Professor at Harvard University

Even most capitalists know that capitalism, as practiced in the United States in recent decades, has a lot to answer for. OLeary and Valdmanis have given us thoughtful, well-researched, and compelling ways to rethink how to assure that prosperity and fairness are linked.

Deval Patrick, former governor of Massachusetts

Accountable presents a fresh, balanced, highly readable, and deeply informed case for how the pursuit of sustained financial success and the exercise of social responsibility to employees, consumers, and society not only canbut mustgo hand in hand if we are to have the world we seek in the future. Especially at a time when peoples trust in all institutions, including business, are at long-term lows, we must renew the purpose of business itself to recognize that it has a responsibilityand opportunityto use its resourcesmoney, people, and energyfor the long-term benefit of society as well as the company. As Accountable shows us, this will build increased loyalty and retention of employees and customers, keys to sustainable financial progress.

John Pepper, former chairman and CEO of P&G

The issues posed could not be more topical or provocative. The coronavirus pandemic has catapulted capitalism into the future, where we need new and better answers to the crucial questions What matters most in our society? How should we organize work to support those priorities? Whats a fair way to pay people for their contributions? Accountable offers a fresh and compelling perspective on these questions.

David Roux, founder of Silver Lake

Thought-provoking and insightful, Accountable offers a pragmatic and original road map to transform capitalism into a system thats more inclusive, sustainable, and just. More than ever before, this is the book our economy needs.

Dr. Rajiv J. Shah, president of the Rockefeller Foundation

For many years, the authors have been at the forefront of thinking on how markets and business can better serve society. Accountable captures not only the history that underpins modern-day corporate purpose, but its present and future. The central messagethat capitalism can and must be part of the solution to societys greatest challengeshas never been more important.

Martin Whittaker, CEO of JUST Capital

In memory of our fathers

They went profoundly into the science of business, and indicated that the purpose of manufacturing a plow or a brick was so that it might be sold. To them, the Romantic Hero was no longer the knight, the wandering poet, the cowpuncher, the aviator, nor the brave young district attorney, but the great sales-manager who devoted himself and all his young samurai to the cosmic purpose of Sellingnot of selling anything in particular, for or to anybody in particular, but pure Selling.

Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt (1922)

I got to figure, the tenant said. We all got to figure. Theres some way to stop this. Its not like lightning or earthquakes. Weve got a bad thing made by men, and by God thats something we can change.

John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

If all else fails, Peter Thiel has an escape route.

The billionaire cofounder of PayPal has hedged himself against the collapse of society. His answer? New Zealand. Thiel purchased a five-hundred-acre sheep farm in South Island, a comfortable seven thousand miles away from his home in California. There hes protected from crisis, pandemic, and a population increasingly on the brinkof what? Thats the worry.

Hes not alone. Drawn to the countrys six-to-one sheep-to-human ratio and neutral stance on just about everything, Thiel and his Silicon Valley cohort have contributed to a tenfold increase in applications for New Zealands Investor Plus visaswhich require a three-year investment of over $6 millionfrom 2010 to 2018.

For those hoping to stay closer to home, $4.5 million will buy a Survival Condo Penthouse unit in a converted missile silo in Kansas. The unit boasts nine-foot-thick walls and military-grade security. Residents can schedule airport pickup on the Pit-Bull VX armored truck. At the silo, they can stroll in the dog park, work up a sweat on the climbing wall, or watch the end of times from the comfort of their own movie theater. One customer wrote, I feel better knowing that I have a luxury survival bunker for my family if anything happens.