HOW BAGELS CAN EXPLAIN HUMAN BEHAVIOR?

Many people tend to assume that mankind is innately corrupt. If so, how corrupt? In their book "Freakonomics" Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt describe the singular story about Paul Feldman and his bagels.

While studying agricultural economics at Cornell, Paul Feldman wanted to end world hunger. Instead, in 1962, after doctoral work at M.I.T., he ended up taking a job with a research institute in Washington, analyzing the weapons expenditures of the United States Navy. After four years he was in charge of a high-level research team. Loving the arts of economics -the data-gathering, the statistical manipulation, the problem-solving-  he had ''potent research ideas,'' as he recalls them now, which the Environmental Protection Agency failed to appreciate it. He even developed a statistical means of predicting cancer clusters, but because he was an economist and not a doctor, he couldn't make headway with the National Cancer Institute. He was well paid but unfulfilled. ''I'd go to the office Christmas party, and people would introduce me to their wives or husbands as to the guy who brings in the bagels,'' he says. '''Oh! You're the guy who brings in the bagels!' Nobody ever said, 'This is the guy in charge of the public research group.'''

SIX WAYS TO BUILD A SUSTAINABLE AND COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

All companies require capital to carry out business activities and sustain themselves. However, at great companies’ profit is not the sole end; rather, it is a way of ensuring that returns will continue. They believe that corporations have a purpose and meet stakeholders’ needs in many ways: by producing goods and services that improve the lives of users; by providing jobs and enhancing workers’ quality of life; by developing a strong network of suppliers and business partners; and by ensuring financial viability, which provides resources for improvements, innovations, and returns to investors.

"If companies are to serve a purpose beyond their business portfolios, CEOs must expand their investments to include employee empowerment, emotional engagement, values-based leadership, and related societal contributions”, says Dr. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, from Harvard University. Here are six ways, she suggests, to build successful and enduring companies: