To me the heart of business is problem solving. Businesses generate profit by solving a problem for someone in an economically efficient way. As a business owner, your only job is to solve the problems that serve the solutions your customers need.

Business people are smart, they get things done, they run for president and they run countries. They know how to turn ideas into powerful, scalable machines that generate vast profit. Through programmes like Live the Dream and the work that brings together the Enspiral network, I’m constantly inspired by people driving amazing businesses and projects with world changing intent. Lately it seems the businesses that do this get labelled social enterprises.

Why is that?

From what I can see, they are just people doing business, focused on solving a problem that creates more social, environmental and economic value than destruction, more good than harm — if that is a social enterprise, then what do we call a business that isn’t a social enterprise?

What do we call business that succeeds economically at the expense of people or the environment? Is it an anti-social enterprise? What is an anti-social enterprise? How much room do we have on this planet for anti-social enterprises?

I believe initiatives like the future fund will shift resources to inspire and enable more people to help shift “social enterprise” from the margins and see it for what it really is, just good business. So, lets do this, lets make this happen, lets help Inspiring Stories to launch New Zealand’s next wave of business leaders who generate more value than they extract and make another global example of how this country continues to lead the world.