Deepak Chopra says Rinaldo Brutoco knows what he’s talking about when it comes to creating a vision for sustainable and responsible business.

Carmel Wroth | Jan/Feb 2009 issue

In 1971, Rinaldo Brutoco was an idealistic law school graduate who wanted to devote his career to fighting for the public good. But after he won his first case, he decided there had to be a better way to combat the excesses of big business. “I realized I can never litigate these people into submission. I have to work from the inside,” he says. So Brutoco became an entrepreneur, running a successful cable TV business.
In 1987, he founded a think tank, the World Business Academy, so he could develop and articulate a new paradigm for business, one based on taking responsibility for the overall well-being of society. The Academy, located in Ojai, California, brings together business executives and academics to meet, research and publish their ideas. Several major business schools have ties with the Academy, including Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, in a suburb of Chicago, Illinois, which is developing a socially responsible business curriculum in conjunction with the Academy.
The Academy encourages managers to see beyond short-term profits and look for sustainability in all areas of their businesses, from relationships with employees to interactions with suppliers. Brutoco says this approach isn’t just ethically sound, it’s good for business. “Current events show that we desperately need business to take responsibility for the whole of society,” he says. “In the past, business was encouraged to see itself as swashbuckling or raiding rather than contributing to and building an economically just society. When greed dominates, you get exactly the kind of crisis we now have.”
Still, Brutoco sees business as the solution to the problems it helped create. “The competencies of business, properly motivated and directed, can solve every problem in the world better than any other institution,” he says. The key is for business people to add values, not just value. “What would it look like if you brought your compassion as well as your intellect to work? What would you do if you cared about how everyone in society fares?”
“As a founder and president of the World Business Academy, Rinaldo Brutoco has provided a platform for harnessing the creativity and compassion of some of the best minds in the world to create a vision for the future of socially and ecologically responsible business. As we now enter a global economic crisis, Rinaldo’s ideas on the creation of true wealth that will benefit society will become even more invaluable.” -Deepak Chopra, physician and author of bestselling books on spirituality and mind-body medicine.

“As a founder and president of the World Business Academy, Rinaldo Brutoco has provided a platform for harnessing the creativity and compassion of some of the best minds in the world to create a vision for the future of socially and ecologically responsible business. As we now enter a global economic crisis, Rinaldo’s ideas on the creation of true wealth that will benefit society will become even more invaluable.”
— Deepak Chopra, physician and author of bestselling books on spirituality and mind-body medicine.