“NGOs have been trying to address this for a quite a number of years now and have done the best they could with the resources they had,” she said. “Really, no nonprofit organization that is addressing lighting in the developing world has been able to scale. They are able to do little projects here and there with maybe one village or a few hundred homes, and then they run out of money. We really felt like that if we wanted to address this need on a global scale, at a level at which we could actually make an impact, we need a business model to be sustainable, to not rely on donation dollars and to be scalable.”
Investment capital allowed the company to launch very quickly and to build a factory in China to produce lanterns in large volume, which allowed an economy of scale that then makes the product less expensive. The company opened sales offices in India and Tanzania within a few months of its launch in 2008. In less than three years of operation, d.light has served three million customers.
Selling the lanterns rather than giving them away also changes the dynamic with the customer in a positive way, Cheng-Tozun added. “When you have an NGO that is providing free services or even very heavily subsidized services, then the customers become passive recipients,” she said. “Our customers are empowered. We need to give them exactly the kind of products that they need and want and are willing to pay for. If we don’t make the products they want, they are going to vote with their dollars. We provide warranties on our products. We have customer service lines. We have centers set up so that if they have a problem with our products, they can come in and get it fixed or exchange it. We feel like that is a much healthier dynamic than if we were an NGO.”
D.light does work with NGOs to distribute lanterns for disaster relief and in areas where the people are simply too poor to buy them. Yet the majority of the company’s sales are through open-market channels.
I have included the story of d.light not to denigrate in any way the great work that NGOs are doing throughout the world, but only to illustrate that capitalism can also work wonders, particularly when companies and NGOs combine their efforts.
Governments, however, are in many cases lagging behind corporations and nonprofits in forging partnerships. Many governments still believe that the way to solve problems is simply to pass more laws. They have not learned that the most effective strategy is to work together with business and NGOs to develop programs that benefit all three parties.
That is starting to change. I cochair along with Benjamin Mkapa, former president of Tanzania, a nonprofit group called the Investment Climate Facility for Africa. It is a partnership with business and government to improve the investment climate in Africa and foster business growth. It is working. I have witnessed the results of the effort firsthand.
You can now register a business in Rwanda in one day. Instead of registering four or five businesses a day, as was the case, Rwanda is now registering seventy. It’s a one-stop shop, and you can also register your business online.
We have also worked to improve commercial courts of law in Africa so that businesses can have a fast, efficient venue for resolving disputes. We have helped governments convert their courts from paper to digital technology, increasing accuracy and speed and greatly reducing backlogs.
A land transfer in Burkina Faso once required something like seventeen signatures. It now requires only seven.
These are examples of accomplishments that can be duplicated around the world with partnerships, with Connected Capitalism.
Critics will point to disasters such as the British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 as an example of how capitalism is rapacious and puts profits above the planet and all else. BP, after all, was big on sustainability. It spent billions to promote low-carbon alternatives to oil such as biofuels and wind power.
Yet the benefits of those efforts and a company’s credibility can be wiped out instantly with a major mistake such as the Gulf oil spill. Connected Capitalism is not a front that forgives all other corporate sins. The compact demands that all participants—government, NGOs, and business—act responsibly or the partnership will collapse. Acting responsibly is also something that corporations must do to ensure their own long-term survival and the survival of the capitalist system that allows them to flourish.
BP and its stockholders paid dearly for the oil spill, both financially and in the damage to the brand. The mistake played directly into the hands of those who oppose capitalism and are looking for any excuse to attack it. Companies have to be seen as adding value to society. Otherwise, you have populist politicians who stand up and do what Hugo Chávez did in Venezuela. The reason there is a Chávez is that the business leaders in Venezuela were essentially robber barons. They did not have enough connection to the people to prompt them to stand up to Chávez when he began nationalizing industry and destroying the capitalist system, all the while giving citizens the false promise of nirvana. Cuba was the same, and there are many other examples. Frankly, it would have been difficult to find many people to stand up in support of BP after the Gulf oil spill. In fact, some prominent people, including former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich, called for the U.S. to take over BP’s operations in the Gulf in the form of a temporary receivership.
When I retired as Chairman of Coca-Cola in 2009, the world seemed to be giving up on capitalism. Banks and other major industries were collapsing and some were effectively nationalized. “We are all socialists now,” Newsweek declared in February 2009.
In a lifetime of traveling the world, I have seen socialism and communism at work, and they don’t work. I have seen the gray landscape in East Germany before the Wall fell, and shelves so barren I had difficulty finding anything to buy. In Russia I have seen the system that could not even produce paper cups for soda machines and the mind-set of well-meaning and hardworking citizens who yearned for a better life for themselves and their children but were so beaten down by the system that their talents and energy were largely wasted. I have also seen socialism’s toll on my beloved Africa.
If capitalism fails, it will be because, we, the capitalists, have let the people down. It will happen only if we allow our companies to become disconnected from the societies they serve.
In the future, corporations will increasingly be judged not only by customers but by investors, not just on the quality of our products or their profits, but also on our values and how we holistically add value to the world. That is going to be a significant measuring stick as to whether or not people invest in a company. This will not necessarily be motivated by a desire by investors to solve world social problems. Instead, it will prompted by a growing belief among investors that in order to survive long term as profitable concerns, corporations will have to start thinking and acting in a socially-responsible way. Investors are realizing that if companies alienate the societies in which they operate, if they destroy the environment, sap precious natural resources, and ignore major social problems, they will alienate their customers and ultimately fail. A broad range of investors are going to say, “For the longevity of your business, I want to be sure you are sustainable as a business and you are operating in a sustainable manner.” Only in that way will we be able to attract consumers and remain viable companies over time. And just as society expects big corporations to do more, so will the big companies expect more from their suppliers, prompting a chain reaction.
The answer is neither socialism nor the reckless capitalism that led to the world financial collapse in 2008 and the BP oil spill in 2010. The answer is Connected Capitalism.
Eighteenth-century philosopher Adam Smith once said, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard for their own interest.”
In the complex economy of the future, business interest and society’s interests will become more closely aligned. Capitalism will have to be connected or it will not survive.
In conclusion, I would like to say that writing this book has been a positive catharsis. It
has made me realize how truly lucky I am, born to the most caring, supportive parents, who created the opportunity to explore the world both physically and intellectually. Here I am sixty-eight years later with a wonderful nuclear family, Pamela, Cara, and her husband Zak, and our real joy, our grandson, Rory. I have visited 145 countries, met and supped with men and women of history, and, just as important, spent time with people of many cultures at every level of economic status. It is a life I could live all over again, even with the odd bad moments and the regrets. I have truly lived on the Coke side of life—happy, optimistic, and to the degree that it is in any way possible, innocent. My final career is well underway as I try to give back just a little to those less fortunate, who have been so kind to me.
AFTERWORD
This memoir, penned by my husband, is also about a life shared. You, the reader, might be as surprised as I was that my husband asked me to write this foreword.
During the past many months, as he wrote this book, he wracked my brains for the perfect person to introduce him, but he decided that this honor must rest on my shoulders.
I assume that part of his reasoning was that obviously I know him best. This must be true, our having been married for forty-one years and before that “living in sin” for two years in what was then referred to as Zambia, the small country where we met. We were considered very avant-garde at the time but it was the Swinging Sixties and so we were just ahead of the trend and have proved to naysayers that our relationship is a lasting one.
Even when I first met Neville, I knew he was the one I wanted to marry and as we got to know each other in those first weeks and months, I discovered his amazing work ethic, perseverance, and of course, ambition.
Over the years, I have watched him grow, but he made me grow also and rise to the occasion as well, and I believe that I was the soft cushion he could return to after a stressful day.
We realized early on that our personalities really complemented each other’s. Neville is a definite Gemini. He is gregarious, fun-loving, and adventurous but on the opposite side of the coin he can be serious, compassionate, as well as stubborn. I believe that by being a quiet and steady companion I have been the anchor in our relationship.
This book has been enormous fun, as I have really relived our life all over again and found it fascinating to look back through the mist of memory and re-remember so many things. I must admit that I also shed a tear or two over the “lows,” but they were few and far between, I can assure you, and we faced them together.
The lows were his constant traveling and focus on the job at hand, and I sometimes felt second best, but this helped me develop a very strong bond with our daughter, Cara, as she was my constant companion when Neville was absent. There were also wonderful highs: the traveling to countries and places that I would never have seen otherwise, basking in the glow of the position Neville finally reached, and the great financial rewards that have helped smooth the bad times and given us a golden life.
Reading this book has made me see my husband in another light: first as a young man making his way slowly up the ladder to bigger and better positions. Neville was always a very focused man, driven not necessarily to become CEO of the Coca-Cola Company, but to succeed at whatever task faced him at the time.
He was always excited with the job in hand and his motto was that he should tackle that to the best of his ability while looking for ways to improve the business and, of course, make his mark. He always said that if you fulfill your duties to the best of your ability the next step will come to you.
The journey with Coca-Cola took our family around the world. Whenever Neville was offered a new position, we would always discuss it in depth, and if it was in another country, we would get out the atlas and pore over the map, especially before we moved to the Philippines as I did not at the time know where they were. Coca-Cola always took great care of its expat personnel when they were transferred, and this was a huge help when facing life in a strange country, often with a new language to contend with.
The one person in our family who suffered from all our globe-trotting was our darling daughter, Cara. Neville and I had both been uprooted as children, moving from Great Britain to Zambia. We both found travel exciting and stimulating but poor Cara was moved to so many different countries (she has lived on five continents and attended six schools), she found it very disruptive during her early life. Now, however, she is happily married, and she and Zak, her husband, have shared with us our beloved grandson, Rory.
In today’s increasingly global business world, these are challenges many families will face. Neville and I hope that our story will offer some guidance to those facing similar adventures, which are fascinating but not always easy.
While reading Neville’s memoir, I was full of admiration for the way he quietly faced the many crises and confrontations during his career that I knew nothing about. He kept his equilibrium every time.
One thing I always appreciated is that Neville would insist on taking his holiday every year, come what may. This was very important to him and our family, and we always enjoyed being able to get away and relax.
We had never expected that he would become CEO and Chairman of Coca-Cola, and had been looking forward to enjoying the rest of our lives together in a well-earned retirement when the call came that would change both of us and our lives forever. My main worry was over Neville’s health, our relationship, and how this new challenge might change it and his ability to tackle the daunting job of running Coca-Cola. What if he failed? I would be left to pick up the pieces. Reason won the day and now I blush at the thought that I tried to keep him from this pinnacle of success.
Five wonderful years passed and I saw him continue to grow, become even more confident, and relish all the difficult situations thrown at him almost daily as well as thrive at increasing his knowledge of geopolitics.
I also learned to appreciate him in a different way. He was able to include me in so many trips, and it was a pleasure to know that he really wanted me by his side and considered us a team.
When he stepped down as Chairman in 2009 I feared that he would find it difficult to relinquish all the trappings that go with the job, but he took this in his usual stride and was happy to pass the baton on to our dear friend Muhtar Kent and bow out from the stage and spotlight.
Neville always had a plan for retirement: to be intellectually engaged and stimulated and to live to at least eighty with me beside him. Now I look forward to all these promises.
I hope you enjoy reading this memoir as much as I have enjoyed living through it.
—Pamela Isdell
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank all of those in the Coca-Cola family who donated their time and memories for this project, including Jesus Celdran, Tony Eames, Michael O’Neill, Heinz Wiezorek, Jay Raja, Cynthia McCague, John Brownlee, and Tom Mattia.
I am also grateful to those outside the Coke family who helped, including Sam Massell, Jack Welch, Dale Herzog, Carter Roberts, and Carol Mastroianni; Georgia State University’s Robinson College of Business and the World Affairs Council of Atlanta, including H. Fenwick Huss, Wayne Lord, Cedric Suzman, Tamer Cavusgil, Jacobus Boers, Jenifer Shockley, and Gary McKillips; the staff of GlobalAtlanta, including Phil Bolton and Trevor Williams.
The staff at Emory University’s Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library also deserves thanks for its help with researching the papers of the late Robert W. Woodruff.
Thanks also go to my wife, Pamela, for her editing and guidance and to Susan Beasley, Zachary Beasley, Laura Beasley, and Emily Beasley for their editing help. Finally, thanks to Phil Revzin for his early support of and belief in this project and to the very able staff at St. Martin’s Press, including George Witte, Terra Layton, and Laura Chasen.
INDEX
The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest.
For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.
Abola, Ramon
Addis Ababa
Afghanistan
Africa
Ethiopia
legal system in
Nigeria
poverty in
segregation in
socialism in
South Africa, see South Africa
Zambia, see Zambia
Afrikaans
Afrikaners
Afwerki, Isaias
Agra
Aidmatrix
AIDS
Akerson, Dan
Alhak family
Allan, Sandy
Allen, Herbert
Alm, John
American Heart Association
Angola
Aqua-Chem
Aquino, Benigno
Aquino, Corazon
Aquino, Ninoy
artificial sweeteners
Asmara
aspartame
Atlanta, Ga.
civil rights museum in
Coke headquarters in
Isdell in
Isdell’s move to
Atlanta Committee for Progress
Atlanta Journal
Austin, Paul
Australia
Coke bottlers in
Austria
Ayoub, Sam
Bahrain
Ball, Arch
Bangladesh
Barbados
BBC
BCI Holding Corporation
Bear Trek
beer
San Miguel
Beijing Olympics
Belarus
Belcher, John
Belgium
Bell, Charlie
Bell, Gavin
Berisha, Sali Ram
Berlin:
Inside Coca-Cola Page 22
