Professor Alex Edmans on How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose And Profit

In this episode, I talk with Professor Alex Edmans from the London Business School. He’s one of the world’s leading academics on company purpose, social value and profits. In fact, he’s just come out with a book on the subject called “Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit”. We covered lots on the podcast including:

1. Is a company’s sole purpose to deliver profits?
2. How markets do not correctly price in social value in the short-term
3. The problem with restrictions on executive pay
4. Could hedge fund activism be helpful?
5. How the management styles of Continental Europe compare to the Anglo-Saxon model
6. Creating the “growing the pie” mindset
7. How to define purpose and use it to run a business
8. Is the financial sector useful?
9. Is there a place for share buybacks?
10. Does ESG work?
11. How companies should deal with COVID
12. Time management tips
13. The pitfalls of managing a team in lockdown.