- In today’s CEO Daily: Matt Heimer on Fortune’s 11th annual Change the World list.
- The big story: HSBC has successfully deployed a quantum computer chip to predict bond prices.
- The markets: The U.S. and Europe are down, Asia is up.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. This week, Fortune published our 11th annual Change the World list, a compendium of 50 companies that are using the creative forces of capitalism to tackle big social problems. These companies are doing well by doing good, so to speak: They’ve figured out how to make money selling products and services that have a positive impact on people and the planet. Here are this year’s honorees.
Generally, the companies that make this list fall into two categories—big, established corporations that use their size as a force for good; and startups that have built their whole business models around tackling an urgent issue.
The giants, as you might expect, can get big results fast. This year’s CTW includes Carrier Global, the $22 billion HVAC and refrigeration giant. Carrier committed itself five years ago to making its product line far more energy-efficient: Since then, they estimate they’ve reduced their customers’ CO2 emissions by enough to power 65 million homes for a year.
The startups, meanwhile, are nimble enough to develop and deploy products quickly, then scale up to meet big needs. The rare earth minerals that many energy, tech, and defense companies depend on are, well, rare, as recent U.S.-China trade tensions have taught us; Cyclic Materials, of Toronto, is setting up factories to recycle them. Chronic teacher shortages bedevil many communities; San Francisco-based startup Amira Learning has developed an AI-driven platform that helps instructors develop reading-instruction lesson plans for more kids, more efficiently, and it’s already being used in more than 4,000 school districts.
What Change the World companies of all sizes have in common is leadership that’s committed, from the CEO on down, to nurturing and implementing world-changing ideas. The concept of “business for good” goes in and out of fashion, but enlightened leaders prove again and again that staying true to their ideals helps them attract a deeper talent pool and build customer loyalty.
By the way, top leaders from around the globe will be gathering for the Fortune Global Forum in Riyadh on Oct. 26-27. We’d love to see you there; learn more about that here.—Matt Heimer
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
