Source:Michael Porter: Why business can be good at solving social problems

Mr. Michael Porter mainly talked about why business could solve social problems and how business solved social problems. He gave several interesting ideas.

To start with, business is the best way to tackle the social problems. As is shown in the graph, resources controlled by corporations account for more than 82 percent. The corporations are the most powerful force in the world, and if they want to take more responsibilities, they can do better than anyone else.

Moreover, Mr. Michael Porter gave several strong examples for how business solves the problems. To be specific, a Brazilian company found a way to produce more paper without cutting down any trees.

However, I am not totally agree with his idea that company can make more profits when it is trying to take more social responsibilities. Admittedly, the Brazilian company mentioned above actually is making more money, but I still doubt Mr. Michael Porter’s ideas. In some situations, corporations just cannot do both at the same time. For instance, pollution. If companies do not cope with pollution, they can save much money. If not, they harm the  public interests.

So who should take the responsibility to solve social problems? In my opinion, business is the tool like guns, but government is the hunter. Also take pollution as an example, government can just make the behavior of polluting environment illegal.