Alex Edmans | How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose & Profit | Talks at Google

Alex Edmans discusses his new book "Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit". He critically examines the case for purposeful business, using rigorous evidence and real-life examples to show what works – and, importantly, what doesn’t. Edmans discusses practical ways for businesses of all sizes to put purpose into practice, and how investors and citizens can play their part.

Purpose is one of the corporate buzzwords of 2020, with the politicians, the public, and even investors themselves calling on businesses to serve wider society. But it seems unrealistic to think about purpose in a pandemic when companies are strapped for cash, and companies also have a responsibility to their shareholders. Is there a trade-off between purpose and profit, or is it possible for companies to achieve both?

Alex Edmans is Professor of Finance at London Business School. He has a PhD from MIT as a Fulbright Scholar, and was previously a tenured professor at Wharton and an investment banker at Morgan Stanley. A frequent public speaker, Alex has appeared on Bloomberg, BBC, CNBC, CNN, ITV, Sky News and Sky Sports, and written for the Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, and Wall Street Journal. At Wharton, he won 14 teaching awards in 6 years; at LBS, he won the Excellence in Teaching award for best professor across all programmes. He has been named to Poets and Quants Best 40 Professors Under 40 and Thinkers50 Radar. Edman’s most recent book Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit headed the list of the Financial Times Business Books of the Month for March 2020 and was named to the FT’s Summer Reads of 2020.

Moderated by Jonathan Jimenez & Ronan Harris.

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