It’s only a matter of time before corporate social responsibility (CSR) regularly appears in Baldrige applications as a key success factor that differentiates a company from its competitors. It’s the direction a host of companies are taking not because they are suddenly altruistic, but because it makes good business sense.

In The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits (Pearson Education, 2006), C.K. Prahalad presents case studies of a dozen companies that have been profitable serving the “bottom of the pyramid,” the four billion people who live on less than $2 a day. In Capitalism at the Crossroads: Aligning Business, Earth, and Humanity (Pearson Education, 2007), Stuart L. Hart writes, “Recognizing global sustainability as a catalyst for new business development will prove increasingly important to corporate survival in the twenty-first century—the proverbial crossroads to the future.”

To show how mainstream such thinking has become, consider Procter & Gamble. Its new CEO has been busily promoting the company’s “purpose-inspired growth” strategy. Rosabeth Moss Kanter describes CEO Bob McDonald’s road show in “Inside Procter & Gamble’s New Values-Based Strategy” (Harvard Business Publishing, September 14, 2009). “McDonald calls P&G’s purpose the most consistent factor in a 171-year history of growth,” she writes, describing how the company developed a razor-and-blade innovation to reach lower income shavers in India and basic products for poor markets in Brazil. “The business in Brazil became a profitable global growth model,” Kanter states, “and not just for emerging countries. Tide Basic was recently introduced in the U.S.”

The Brazil story reveals another benefit of “purpose-inspired growth”: Employees are more satisfied and engaged because they are helping the world. According to Kanter, the Brazilian team “felt they were doing good for the world, not just making money for the company. Their strong sense of purpose propelled unprecedented collaboration across functions and with customers, for whom the excitement was captivating.”

That certainly sounds like “purpose-inspired growth” is differentiating P&G from its competitors.

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