"(T)o say that the individual is culturally constituted has become a truism. . . . We assume, almost without question, that a self belongs to a specific cultural world much as it speaks a native language." James Clifford

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Managing Externalities in Business: Heliogen’s Breakthrough in Combatting Climate Change

A company’s values and norms can resonate to some extent with their societal counterparts by the company providing goods and services of value to customers resulting in a reduction of their suffering or increase in their happiness. Providing a net-value (the value to the customer less the price) to people can resonate with societal values and norms that esteem happiness and frown on suffering from want. Indeed, a utilitarian ethic can apply to the provision of as much value as possible in the form of goods and services that reduce the suffering or increase the happiness of as many people as possible. Legitimate wealth can “result from having provided a significant amount of value to a significant number of people.”[1] Even fortunes, according to this ethic, are justified by the provision of “a very unusual form of value to a very unusual number of people.”[2] Utilitarianism is popularly known from the expression, the greatest good to the greatest number (i.e., of people). Of course, an ethic justifies what should be, whereas the extent to which a company’s values and norms approach those of society is a descriptive matter. Describing the degree of fit is not to say that a company’s values and norms should (i.e., normatively) have that degree of fit, or even more. Ethical reasoning would be needed to supply the normative contention; such reasoning involves argumentation that the extant societal values and norms should be held generally speaking and specifically by companies. The fact that the values and norms of many German companies in the NAZI era resonated with societal values and norms is not to say that the managements should have sought to fit organizational values and norms with NAZI values and norms. The field of business & society, which is oriented to the degree of fit that exists descriptively between a company (or the business sector) and a society (or internationally-held values and norms), is thus distinct from business ethics, which is oriented to providing ethical justification for what managers and companies should do. With regard to the former field, companies can orient themselves even closer to societal values and norms than by providing value to customers and even taking other stakeholder interests into account by being primarily oriented to taking on a serious societal or global problem. In terms of business ethics, such an orientation can be said to be one that a company should have because an unusual number of people (even beyond customers and other stakeholders) could receive an unusual amount of value. Climate-change is such a problem, and Heliogen’s breakthrough exemplifies such an extraordinary mission.

Generally speaking, a mission that is primarily geared to solving a serious societal (or global) problem goes beyond providing value to customers and even taking into account the interests of other stakeholders. In such a mission, a society or even the species itself is the main recipient of the extraordinary value even though customers receive value too. Whereas the traditional business model is geared to profiting by selling value to customers, a company’s mission that is dominated by providing extraordinary value to a society or to humanity worldwide views profiting from sales to customers as a means. An opportunity cost thus exists in such a mission due to the profit forgone from customers due to the orientation being foremost to the macro problem.

Even though spending capital to solve a macro problem is not the same as paying externalized costs of the problem, an opportunity cost can arise if the net present value of the profits in the long-term is less than the R&D spending up-front. Even if the mission fits within the traditional business model (i.e., the net present value is more rather than less), the risk taken on because the substantial R&D outlays are not met with immediate profits can be said to be an opportunity cost in pursuing an intractable societal or global problem by coming up with a breakthrough. The opportunity cost can be viewed as paying such that future externalized costs of the problem will not occur. Of course, if a company solves the entire problem, rather than merely reducing that which has been making and would otherwise make the problem worse, most or all of the current externalized costs may disappear and thus not need to be paid. Such a company has in effect taken upon itself the relevant externalities (i.e., covering those costs otherwise left to society).

By externality, I mean a cost that under the traditional business model is borne by society (or humanity) rather than by a company or the business sector. For example, as of 2020, companies had not had to pay even a fraction of the costs of climate change even though the business sector had contributed to the problem by polluting. The default stance under the traditional profit model is typically defensive; a less common proactive stance is to reduce the company’s contribution of the problem, such as airlines did in using more efficient engines. An even less common stance is to be primarily oriented to reducing the contributions from other sources and even to solving the macro problem itself. As argued above, just the risk taken on can put this stance beyond the traditional business model. Such a stance, in being oriented beyond customers and even other stakeholders to focus on a societal problem, fits under another paradigm. This is not to say that it is based on corporate social responsibility, for a company does not have a responsibility to orient itself to reducing or solving a societal problem except as may happen as a result of providing value to customers. Indeed, a company’s founding investors and management may want to tackle a societal problem, rather than feeling obligated. In the case of climate change, the likely downside for the species already known in 2019 could be enough of a motivation even if the founding investors and management do not feel responsible for the problem.

Even though a responsibility may not pertain, the organizational values and norms of a company oriented to minimizing or solving a societal problem stand a good chance of approaching their societal counterparts—closer than from merely satisfying customers and even other stakeholders. That is to say, beyond stakeholder management, externalities management can be said to be oriented to societal (or macro) level problems. Such management had been rare, at least by 2020, because few companies had been principally oriented to societal or global problems without simply relegating them to a corporate social responsibility program as if out of a sense of responsibility. Whereas the literature on stakeholder management and CSR had been around for decades by 2020, not much was written on externalities management that subordinates profit-seeking to reducing or solving a societal problem. 
 
Management geared to externalities can be problematic, especially for publically-traded companies, whose managements are bound by fiduciary duty to look primarily at the short-term returns to stockholders. This duty is firmly grounded in property rights. Can such managements afford to put solving societal problems as foremost? Heavy R&D spending upfront with (admittedly healthy) profits only if and after a breakthrough has been invented and implemented by customers is not the typical way of attracting and retaining equity capital. Language in the charters would have to specify the primary purpose of the company as meaning that expedited profiting would be excluded or subordinated to reducing or solving a particular societal problem. A company’s default purpose is admittedly to make a profit, but property-rights give the owners (i.e., the stockholders) the right to set another purpose in place of the default, in which case investors have no reason to be upset when the purpose is pursued even at the expense of quarterly earnings and dividends.

By 2020, climate change had emerged as a major problem facing humanity with dire consequences being predicted to occur in decades rather than centuries. Heliogen, a start-up funded in part by Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, and at least one other billionaire, commenced as such a company oriented to inventing a product that, when sold to industrial customers, would significantly reduce carbon emissions and thus hopefully stave off the worst of the dire consequences. That is, Heliogen put its capital toward discovering a breakthrough that would reduce future externalizable costs even though the company’s high R&D costs would not be met with profits for some time. With a focus on achieving a breakthrough that would be of significant value to the world even beyond stakeholders, the company’s management must have known that profits would be long-term-oriented, rather than relatively short-term profits from incremental values sold to customers.

The secretive clean-energy company announced in November 2019 that artificial intelligence and a field of mirrors could be used together to significantly reduce greenhouse emissions by industry. The invention could generate extreme heat above 1,000 degrees Celsius—a temperature that is about a quarter of that which is on the surface of the Sun. “The breakthrough means that, for the first time, concentrated solar energy can be used to create the extreme heat required to make cement, steel, glass and other industrial processes. In other words, carbon-free sunlight can replace fossil fuels in a heavy carbon-emitting corner of the economy that has been untouched by the clean energy revolution.”[3] These industries were “responsible for more than a fifth of global emissions, according to the EPA.”[4] Accordingly, Soon-Shiong, who sat at the time on the Heliogen board, said, “The potential to humankind is enormous  . . . The potential to business is unfathomable.”[5]  Indeed, the company’s mission was of such scope, rather than merely to finding a better way to make cement and steel, that a breakthrough could result. Externalities management is geared to making an enormous contribution to humanity. Even having an unfathomable potential to other industries can be viewed as lying within the purview of such management, as distinct from stakeholder management. Of course, this is not to say that something of value would or could not be sold to customers for a profit, but the emphasis lying elsewhere makes both Heliogen and externalities management distinct.

Such a mission as does not prioritize the traditional business model can be attractive to investors who have already made their fortunes by prioritizing that model and have gone on to worry about problems facing humanity not currently being adequately addressed by business and government. Heliogen provided a way for Bill Gates and at least one other billionaire to put their wealth to use on a global problem that could even render the species itself extinct. Start-up companies can be vehicles for rich former titans to turn their attention to such serious problems with a feeling not of responsibility, but, rather, of satisfaction from having saved the species. In other words, having been satisfied by playing within the traditional business model, the aspirations of former titans can shift to the societal or global level even if without having given up profiting completely.

In the early twentieth century, Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller retired from business to turn to charities. Among other things, Carnegie sponsored a library in Pittsburgh and Rockefeller founded a university in Chicago. In fact, Rockefeller, through his foundation, gave away roughly half of his fortune.[6] Both men had been ruthless in business; whether their respective giving afterward justified their business conduct (e.g., Carnegie against labor and Rockefeller against competitors) is another question. Rockefeller went so far as to view both his monopoly and charitable giving in Christian terms. In God’s Gold, I untangle whether Rockefeller’s monopolistic tactics (i.e., his business ethic, or lack thereof) can be justified by his religious mission in business and giving. For my purposes here, it suffices to say that neither titan would have viewed his respective company and charitable giving as being oriented to making a breakthrough on a humungous global problem. Indeed, Rockefeller filtered requests for his charitable giving by how efficient the money would be used; he was primarily oriented to using his fortune to solve a hitherto intractable serious problem facing mankind as Bill Gates was. Gate’s orientation was doubtless on keeping climate change from being an existential threat to future generations.

Externalities management is admittedly not a good fit for the vast majority of companies, which are oriented to maximizing profits while minimizing risks, but not every company must be made to fit within the traditional business model. A company can be formed and utilized in a way that puts profit-making through the funnel of externalities management geared to reducing or solving macro problems. Such a raison d’etre is distinct from undertaking a social responsibility program or being motivated by a sense of responsibility because such a company is not likely to be responsible for the problem even if some of its investors, as former titans of industry, were in their “other life.” The priority in such a company is that of reducing the costs of, or solving outright, an intractable societal or global problem, rather than self-blame or blaming others. This priority is why profit-seeking is regarded as secondary.


1. Rod Burylo, The Wealthy Buddhist: Buddhist Ethics, Right Livelihood, and the Value of Money (Nepean, Canada: The Sumeru Press, 2018).
2. Ibid.
3. Matt Egan, “Secretive Energy Startup Backed by Bill Gates Achieves Solar Breakthrough,” CNN Business, November 19, 2019.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.