第二十七讲：卓越的公司与社会

高德思：你刚刚谈到了公司与其所在的社会之间的关系。我想知道在你看来，就社会中的公司而言，一个繁荣的社会和一个卓越的社会有什么区别？

吉姆·柯林斯：尽管我崇敬微软，但是我对比尔·盖茨的尊敬主要不是来自于微软这家公司，而是来自于他在创立微软之后所做的事。从小他父母就教导他，如果你创造了大量财富，挣了很多钱，或取得了什么成功，都不是什么大不了的事儿。如果说你不去关注，不去解决那些公司和政府都无法解决的问题的话，那么那些所谓的成功也没什么大不了的。

彼得·德鲁克说过，公司都是擅长于某一方面，他们在这方面会比其他人都做得好。但这是他们应该做到的。他们很擅长通过盈利机制来捐款。政府也擅长做一些事情，但是同时在其它许多事情上也会失败。因此在社会领域就有很大一块“中间地带”，其中有些大问题需要解决。

Thomas D. Gorman: You talked earlier about the relationship between companies and the societies in which they function in. I'd be interested to get your view on the distinction between a prosperous society and a great society, with respect to the companies in it.

Jim Collins: I have great respect for Bill Gates because not principally of Microsoft, which I do have respect for. But because what he's been doing since. And he was raised by his parents with the idea that if you just create wealth, or you just make a lot of money, or you just make a success, it doesn't really add up to very much. If you haven't actually, also, one way or another, put emphasis on how do we make the whole, solve really big problems that can't be solved by business and likely can't be solved by government.

And Peter Drucker talked about the idea that businesses are good for some things, they do that better than anyone else. But, that's what they should do. They're very good at contributions where you can fund the contribution through the profit mechanism.Government is good at certain things, but has largely failed at many others. So, there's this whole middle area of the social sectors where big problems have to be addressed.

Jim Collins: And a great society is one that isn't just composed of great companies and economic law that has great education systems. It has great art organizations, it has great government agencies, you need to have a great police department, you need to have great military units. You need to have great health care systems. And they may be funded a lot of different ways. But, if we only have great companies that produce substantial wealth and that's all we have, we are prosperous. But we are not a great nation. And that I think is the challenge, to put all of these together.

And in the United States we believe very much in the idea of a social sector that gets cared for and funded by the private sector by individuals doing it. I don't know how that would play out in China, however, the philanthropic urge, I think is strong everywhere in the world.

Thomas D. Gorman: Yes.

Jim Collins: And one of the really interesting questions, which is something my dear friend Tom Tierney who runs a thing called Bridgespan, keeps challenging us to all think about, is what is really the difference between a great philanthropist and a not great philanthropist in terms of real impact on the society? And you're going to have a lot of wealth, I mean, all these very wealthy Chinese who have produced incredibly successful companies, my question for them is, ok, that's a good start, what's next?