A good business model should be oriented first towards solving problems and improving the world. Earning streams will follow naturally. It’s generally better when the first step the entrepreneur embraces, is an honest effort to identify a new and unique way to make a significant difference in the lives of people. This is often how the huge companies began. General Electric started with Edison’s incandescent light bulb: aiming to provide affordable and sustainable lighting for all. Google proposed an easy and efficient online search engine for all. Microsoft dreamt about providing a computer for each household. This original compass should not disappear along the way. It should remain the drive or the soul of the corporation. This is not contradictory to performance or the pursuit of profit.

For any business leader, integrity should be a core value. I personally didn’t wait to be CEO or CFO before adopting it as a life principle. Not that I’m already perfect, but it’s instead a continuous effort you make to improve yourself, a mirror in which you examine your decisions, the small ordinary and least significant ones, as well as the strategic ones which may involve the future of a multi-billion company or an entire country.

If the society as a whole decides to address the morality issue seriously, something can happen. Appropriate and enforced laws and regulations will set the legal boundaries of business activities and economic interactions, but a comprehensive and continuous ethics education will increase the uprightness of leaders and decision makers. Therefore we will obviously tend towards a better world, where love, excellence, wealth and integrity will reign. Are we ready to take our responsibilities?