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Davis: Klingons are more likely than socially conscious capitalists

Conscious capitalism advocate Craig Davis says the media and marketing industry needs to focus less on profit and more on making positive changes to society.

Davis, speaking at the Mumbrella360 conference, said the purpose of capitalism had become lost and it was not just about making money.

“We’re operating in a capitalist system all the time and probably don’t really appreciate it,” said Davis.” What it’s done in the last two hundred years is extraordinary. It has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. It has raised literacy around the world like nothing else. It’s brought prosperity to millions, billions of people.”

“People are now focused on making money. Making money almost at all costs. So it breeds short-termism, it breeds self-interest and it breeds greed. But that’s not the true and noble and heroic spirit of capitalism at its best.” Davis said a lot of people believe conscious capitalists didn’t exist and told the story of how a cab driver he recently travelled with had summarised the problem to him nicely.

“Here’s this guy, the kind of anthropologist of our time, a taxi driver, who believes that Klingons are more likely than capitalists who are conscious. And I think that’s a problem for all of us,” said Davis.

Davis told the forum, moderated by Mi9 CEO Mark Britt, that capitalism needed to be reinterpreted through a broader lens.

“Capitalism is the greatest operating system of creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship that the world has ever known. So why are we selling it short? Why are we interpreting it through this very narrow lens? It doesn’t do justice to human nature or the creative spirit of humanity. I think that’s a huge, huge problem. So what if we what if we started to think about business differently? What if we started to let go of our assumptions?”

Mark Britt said he was tired of the industry playing it safe and that it needed to find a new passion driven purpose.

“Until we start thinking differently about what we do, until we start fundamentally rethinking the way we structure our businesses and our companies, it’s really not going to change,” said Britt.

Davis said the industry was at a point where it was ready to overcome the focus on purely making profit.

“The consciousness in the world is rising. People understand that actions have effects and that business-as-usual is pretty much running, or run, out of puff. It just doesn’t work like it used to work anymore,” said Davis.

Damon Meredith 

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