One of the excellent presentations at Acton University today was Andreas Widmer’s class on “Business as a Moral Enterprise.” For those who missed it, Joe Gorra of the Evangelical Philosophical Society recently interviewed Widmer, a Research Fellow in Entrepreneurship at the Acton Institute, on that same topic:
Gorra: Entrepreneurship is in your bones. You are the co-founder of the SEVEN Fund, which is doing some remarkable work “to dramatically increase the rate of innovation and diffusion of enterprise-based solutions to poverty.” To start off, I want to have you address what might be aptly described as one of your life themes: business as a moral enterprise. Why is it a moral enterprise and not merely a profit-maximizing machine?
Widmer: There is a misconception in our society that business is amoral, or that the pursuit of profit is mutually exclusive to conducting business with virtue. A Moral Enterprise is one that approaches business in the spirit of co-creation: as we pursue entrepreneurship, we mirror God’s image as the creator, and pursue his invitation to participate in his creative power.
