America's Reputation Is Every Company's Responsibility

13 September 2011:

The U.S. can use some serious help with its reputation around the world right now. Where should it look for that help? How about corporate America?

Ten years after 9/11, we look back on a tough decade. The attack on our mainland gave way to a series of self-inflicted wounds that have deeply damaged our standing around the world. The wars and failed state-building that followed, the financial meltdown that triggered global economic crisis, the flat job market that demonstrates that we’re a long way from figuring it all out, and the vacuum of political leadership in Washington all leave the world wondering if the U.S. has begun a decline from which it won’t recover.

In this void, corporate America can and should provide much of the energy and imagination needed to improve the nation’s image abroad. Look at the world’s greatest corporate brands and you see that most of them are U.S. multinationals that already provide tremendous leadership through their corporate social responsibility programs. They are using the engines of business, backed by their own expertise in their industries, to harness new thinking to help meet global challenges. Some of their largest and most memorable campaigns include GE’s Ecomagination, IBM’s Smarter Planet, and Cisco’s Human Element. These companies know it matters how they behave as global corporate citizens. Their employees feel it, and Wall Street recognizes it. With campaigns like theirs we get more than sloganeering. We get effective multi-year commitments to making a real difference.

Here are three examples of U.S. businesses leading in corporate responsibility in ways appropriate to their size and means.:

Google.org/”>Google.org: Without building a CSR campaign, much less giving it a fancy name, Google’s organization just gets busy under its “.org” status to engineer information solutions to societal problems. Its projects include:

—Google Dengue and Flu Trends, to estimate disease activity and spread patterns by tracking symptom-related queries,
—Google Earth Engine, for analysis of raw satellite imagery data to extract information that can be used to protect the world’s forests, and
—Google Crisis Response, to make critical information accessible before and during natural disaster and humanitarian crises.

The moral of the story: Just get to it. Figure out what you’re good at, and apply it to helping solve one of the world’s problems in a way suited to your company.