00:12The entire model of capitalism
00:15and the economic model that you and I
00:19and, in fact, continue to do business in,
00:21was built around what probably Milton Friedman
00:25put more succinctly.
00:26And Adam Smith, of course,
the father of modern economics
00:29actually said many, many years ago,
00:33which is, "If you continue to operate
00:35in your own self-interest
00:37you will do the best good for society."
00:39Now, capitalism has done a lot of good things
00:44and I've talked about a lot of good
things that have happened,
00:47but equally, it has not been able to meet up
00:50with some of the challenges that we've seen
00:54The model that at least I was brought up in
00:56and a lot of us doing
business were brought up in
00:58was one which talked about
01:00what I call the three G's of growth:
01:03growth that is consistent,
01:06growth that is competitive,
01:07better than the other person;
01:08and growth that is profitable,
01:10so you continue to make
01:12more and more shareholder value.
01:14And I'm afraid this is not going to be good enough
01:17and we have to move from this 3G model
01:20to a model of what I call
01:24the G of growth that is responsible.
01:28And it is this that has to become
01:31a very important part
01:35Of not just creating economic value
01:38but creating social value.
01:40And companies that will thrive are those
01:43that will actually embrace the fourth G.
01:47And the model of 4G is quite simple:
01:50Companies cannot afford
to be just innocent bystanders
01:53in what's happening around in society.
01:56They have to begin to play their role
01:59in terms of serving the communities
02:01which actually sustain them.
02:03And we have to move to a model
02:05of an and/and model which is
02:07how do we make money and do good?
02:13that we have a great business
02:14but we also have a great environment around us?
02:18is all about doing well and doing good.
02:21But the question is easier said than done.
02:24But how do we actually get that done?
02:27that the answer to that is going to be leadership.
02:30It is going to be to redefine
02:32the new business models
02:35that the only license to operate
02:37is to combine these things.
02:39And for that you need businesses
02:41that can actually define their role
02:46in terms of a much larger purpose
02:47than the products and brands that they sell.
02:50And companies that actually define a true north,
02:53things that are nonnegotiable
02:55whether times are good, bad, ugly --
02:59There are things that you stand for.
03:01Values and purpose are going to be the two
03:08that are going to create
03:09the companies of tomorrow.
03:12And I'm going to now shift
03:13to talking a little bit about my own experiences.
03:17I joined Unilever in 1976
03:20as a management trainee in India.
03:23And on my first day of work
03:25I walked in and my boss tells me,
03:28"Do you know why you're here?"
03:30I said, "I'm here to sell a lot of soap."
03:33And he said,
"No, you're here to change lives."
03:36You're here to change lives.
03:38You know, I thought it was rather facetious.
03:40We are a company that sells soap and soup.
03:43What are we doing about changing lives?
03:46And it's then I realized
03:52like selling a bar of soap
03:56than pharmaceutical companies.
03:57I don't know how many of you know
03:59that five million children don't reach the age of five
04:02because of simple infections that can be prevented
04:05by an act of washing their hands with soap.
04:10hand-washing program
04:12We are running a program on hygiene and health
04:14that now touches half a billion people.
04:16It's not about selling soap,
04:18there is a larger purpose out there.
04:20And brands indeed can be
04:22at the forefront of social change.
04:24And the reason for that is,
04:26when two billion people use your brands
04:28that's the amplifier.
04:30Small actions can make a big difference.
04:33Take another example,
04:35I was walking around in
one of our villages in India.
04:38Now those of you who have done this
04:40will realize that this is no walk in the park.
04:45And we had this lady
04:47who was one of our small distributors --
04:52beautiful, very, very modest, her home --
04:55and she was out there,
04:59her husband in the back, her mother-in-law behind
05:01and her sister-in-law behind her.
05:04The social order was changing
05:07is part of our Project Shakti
05:09that is actually teaching women
05:12how to do small business
05:14and how to carry the message
05:15of nutrition and hygiene.
05:17We have 60,000 such women
05:22It's not about selling soap,
05:24it's about making sure
05:25that in the process of doing so
05:27you can change people's lives.
05:30Small actions, big difference.
05:35are not only working to give us
some fantastic detergents,
05:38but they're working to make sure we use less water.
05:41A product that we've just launched recently,
05:43One Rinse product that allows you to save water
05:47every time you wash your clothes.
05:49And if we can convert all our users to using this,
05:52that's 500 billion liters of water.
05:54By the way, that's equivalent to one month of water
05:56for a whole huge continent.
06:00So just think about it.
06:01There are small actions that
can make a big difference.
06:05And I can go on and on.
06:06Our food chain, our brilliant products --
06:09and I'm sorry I'm giving you
a word from the sponsors --
06:11Knorr, Hellman's and all those wonderful products.
06:15We are committed to making sure that
06:17all our agricultural raw materials
06:19are sourced from sustainable sources,
06:21100-percent sustainable sources.
06:25to say we are going to buy all of our palm oil
06:27from sustainable sources.
06:29I don't know how many of you know that palm oil,
06:33and not buying it from sustainable sources,
06:36can create deforestation that is responsible
06:38for 20 percent of the greenhouse gasses in the world.
06:41We were the first to embrace that,
06:43and it's all because we market soap and soup.
06:48And the point I'm making here
06:50is that companies like yours, companies like mine
06:53have to define a purpose
06:56which embraces responsibility
06:58and understands that we have to play our part
07:00in the communities in which we operate.
07:03We introduced something called
07:05The Unilever Sustainable Living Plan, which said,
07:08"Our purpose is to make
sustainable living commonplace,
07:11and we are gong to change the lives
07:13of one billion people over 2020."
07:15Now the question here is,
07:17where do we go from here?
07:19And the answer to that is very simple:
07:21We're not going to change the world alone.
07:23There are plenty of you and plenty of us
07:25who understand this.
07:28we need partnerships, we need coalitions
07:31and importantly, we need that leadership
07:33that will allow us to take this from here
07:36and to be the change
07:37that we want to see around us.
07:39Thank you very much.