Hanging out with Nike and Google

to discuss how business can help build a better world.

For P-CED, this is where we began in September 1996, with a white paper on an alternative to capitalism, proposing a business model with a primary social goal. It would challenge Milton Friedman's views on the responsibility of business. If the shareholder and directors agreed to a social purpose, it was argued, no law dictated otherwise.

In 1998, founder Terry Hallman was engaging with others on campus at UNC in Chapel Hill North Carolina when students went on the warpath over Nike's use of Asian sweatshops, Terry called out Nike's CEO Phil Knight to show up at UNC with a carefully worded letter. Knight showed up days later, ahead of other scheduled events. The status of UNC in sport, was hard to ignore.

After the success of the Tomsk Regional Initative and introduction of the concept to the UK, we'd find ourselves in Ukraine challenging organised crime over the treatment of disabled children in orphanages. It provoked considerable hostility from some quarters.  An anonymous smear campaign was launched on Google blogger.It would claim that the 'Death Camps for Children' article was a hoax  I asked Google to act on it's misuse of IP, in publishing our draft strategy paper. They ignored me, so I identified the source in my own blog. That prompted Google to intervene on behalf of the defamer and when Terry died, it would gloat over his death. I wrote , relating the correspondence with Google.

In 2009, with our activism and strategy paper having influenced Ukraine's government in announcing the creation of 400+ rehab centres for disabled children,  I learned of a new business model with a similar concept to our own know as a B Corporation. So I made contact hoping to find collaboration and support.  It wasn't manageable, they said.          

From 2011 onward, major news sources including the Daily Mail, Sunday Times and BBC would confirm the truth of what we took a stand for in Ukraine.  

There's an obvious question to ask. Do they put their own brand above common purpose?..