Harvard Business School seems to be rebranding itself. I never heard the school’s original mission statement, “To train future leaders to make a decent profit decently” in all the time at school or since I graduated until now. I first heard it spoken and then repeated at the Global Summit (recall it’s subject was “The future of capitalism”) and have heard it since as well. A professor in the Social Enterprise Initiative referred to this on Thursday as “the kinder, gentler HBS.” It’s catching on with staff and alums, wouldn’t it be nice if the new brand took hold in the larger world too?

What better timing for a Harvard Business School colloquia on “The Future of Capitalism” than just after the market dropped 900 points. Two mind-shifting moments for me: first when Mahindra, Vice-chair of the giant Indian car maker, advised us that with our paltry 300 million citizens we must realize that we are really a small country. The second was when Larry Summers pointed out in his riveting speech that this financial crisis is the 7th we’ve had in 30 years, that the warning bell for capitalism has been sounding for a while. What I liked best was the upbeat mood, that HBS grads can really turn things around by pursuing returns from social contributions, which will reduce the inequity that is the heart of the problem and garner better financial performance too, Summers citing his own experience at Harvard. All in all, an amazing experience!

Last week, I moderated a roundtable on branding for 10 non-profit attendees at the HBS Club of NY’s Social Enterprise Summit. Given the focus on the conference, I expected the financial crisis to be the topic they would most want to talk about, and it was, though they talked about long term issues rather than what you might expect, the immediate issues of survival. I guess that’s the difference between non-profits and for-profits, non-profit leaders are in it for the long-term.  

Non-profits see the crisis as a system problem and look at long-term metrics vs business’ focus on how to get through the next 90 days. Corporate managers look at measures of effectiveness almost exclusively through the lens of financial value, while non-profits (and as it turns out countries in Europe as well) measure well-being and happiness as well. Think about the ripple effect of how that simple change in key measures from GDP to Well-Being would alter behavior among businesses and government. Brand too could change, perhaps even more radically, from focusing on a brand’s contributions to well-being rather than benefits that add to perceptions of wealth.

What we who work in social responsibility have been on watch for is CSR being swept aside as mere survival becomes the storyline. Yet what I’m afraid of now is different: that CSR is for many a volunteer activity and not the main responsibility and therefore requires a lot of internal motivation, something that’s hard to come by when water cooler talk revolves around the latest depressing statistic - or even worse, whose job is in peril. It’s times like these that the bright tomorrow becomes just a bit too distance to spend a lot of time on.

Last week, I saw a presentation from Carat, the advertising/media agency, where they outlined the most common reactions to debt to a recession. They are (in no particular order):

• Out of control • Alone • Fear of the Unknown • Overwhelmed • Shame/embarrassment

Since there has been a lot of talk about the power of avoidance strategies over growth approaches in a downturn, I thought this is great food for thought. All of these fears are so primal, and almost any product can be positioned to address one or the other.

InBev just got the go-ahead to buy Anheuser-Busch, the stalwart corporate citizen of my birth place, St. Louis, as well as other US cities. How long InBev had been planning the move might be timed to the hiring of its first official CSR Director, whose qualifications included a stint setting up a CSR program for Saab, which was then owned by the ultimate symbol of American industry (if not Americana itself), General Motors. Co-incidence or advance planning? Just seemed odd that a company headquartered in Europe, far and away the leader in CSR over the US, would tap US talent for the job. Another example of CSR as competitive strategy?

About a year ago, I canvassed my branding and CSR colleagues to find out the best blogs for reading about how the two are being integrated. Not only had no one heard of such a blog, few could even name a branding blog. In fact, aside from Brand Channel and some other attempts that failed, the lack of branding blogs is astonishing  for an industry that is all about communicating, especially since hardly a day goes by when someone doesn’t send me some bit of writing or opinion on the subject that I would love to share.

So welcome to a place for all of us, to share our latest ideas and insights, courtesy of my employer, Holding Associates, Inc.