Welcome to the last NewCo Daily of 2015. We’ll be back January 4 to chronicle what NewCos are doing and start delivering a number of new editorial products (including one in January). It’s too early for us to run a comprehensive year-in-review piece (hey, we’ve only been publishing this newsletter since October) but today we’d like to look at the state of the basic unit of measurement for the NewCo: the company.
The NewCo Daily covers the organizations and the people in them trying to make meaningful change. Our founder John Battelle calls them companies on a mission, which is a subtle but important difference from being a company with a mission. Most companies have a mission. But companies on a mission are more likely to be open, driven by purposeful ideas, connected to their cities and communities, and connected to one another.
A report recently published by the JUST Capital Foundation investigates the role of the corporation in American society. It’s an impressive undertaking — more than 43,000 respondents — and we’ll address it in more detail in the coming year. But two data points jump out. One is that, across ideology and incomes, nearly 100% of respondents said measuring “corporate justness” is important. And no matter how JUST sliced the ideological pie, it never saw more than 50% of respondents say they trusted corporations. The desire to make businesses better is universal, and the belief that companies must earn our trust is strong.
Most important is what a company does, but what a company says has a great impact on its behavior. For example, if you’re on a mission, your mission statement has to be more than a series of rote bromides. NewCos like Patagonia (which we profiled recently) say what it believes upfront. Its mission statement: “Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.” It captures both the idealistic and realistic reasons to build a business. Another NewCo, Warby Parker, says it was founded “with a rebellious spirit and a lofty objective: to offer designer eyewear with a revolutionary price, while leading the way for socially-conscious businesses.” A great mission statement says how a company will do well and how it will make good. It describes what it means to be on a mission.
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