Business Reimagined: Should Firms Have a Purpose Beyond Profit? (Ben & Jerry’s Ben Cohen)

Amol is back from his stint in the Celebrity Traitors castle. He speaks to Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s, about what took the ice cream company from a single store in rural America into a billion-dollar business.

Ben Cohen argues that most corporations have trained people to believe profit and purpose are from separate worlds – while he says that a company’s values should be as important to its mission as making money. Cohen makes the case that consumers are not just shoppers – they are citizens with wallets.

He criticises companies that pay lip-service to that through short-term social media campaigns backing the trendy topic of the day, without embedding those values into their business model. But in an age when many companies are dropping their principles when the politics changes, can business really be a force for good – or does purpose melt away when profits are at stake?

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Episodes of Radical with Amol Rajan are released every Thursday.

Amol Rajan presents the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 and hosts University Challenge on BBC One. Before that, Amol was the BBC’s media editor and the editor of The Independent newspaper.

Radical with Amol Rajan is a Today Podcast. It was made by Tom Smithard and Oscar Pearson. Digital production was by Leona Gasper. Technical production was by Mike Regaard. The editor is Sam Bonham.