My point is not that companies and shareholders will no longer make money. It’s that they will only make money if they behave in the way that their community wants them to behave. And therefore, that the power to steer the direction of a corporation no longer resides with its shareholders, but with the community it interacts with.

There’s that old story about how Henry Ford wanted to cut prices on his cars so that more people could afford them, but his shareholders got an injunction to prevent him from doing that because it wasn’t profit-maximizing.

I don’t think that could happen today. Why? Because the companies don’t own anything. They have no physical capital. Their intellectual property is impossible to control. And a ton of their value is being created by outside collaborators. If the company isn’t responsive to its communities, the community disappears. Or more accurately, the community kicks out the company.

Traditionally, companies got their value from owning and renting capital, and they didn’t have to care all that much about what people thought of them. But increasingly, they get their value from something completely different. Some have called it the brand. Wikinomics calls it a community. But they are really the same thing: getting people to engage with you, even though they don’t have to.

True, Apple and Walmart got greener because it was a good business decision. But why was it a good business decision? It raised costs. It probably didn’t bring in a lot of new revenue. But the customers wanted it. They demanded it.

If your value comes from getting people to engage with you, even though they don’t have to, you have to provide people with what they want. And both employees and customers seem to want assurances that your organization is providing social value.

Social value therefore becomes the main source of value for a company. It’s what convinces people to engage, and keeps the community and brand strong, allowing the company to be the place where value creation takes place. Since a company’s community determines social value, it is them who steer the company, not its shareholders. This is fundamentally different from capitalism, where value and power come from owning capital.

A couple of points – micro-lending has two forms: non-interest bearing (i.e.charity) such as Kiva vs. interest-bearing platforms such as MyC4 that follow a tried and true business model. Both models create end-value for the debtor but the process is by no means always altruistic.

Moreover, you’re in part referring to what is more commonly known as social entrepreneurship – see Bill Drayton and the work at Ashoka – wherein the end result is measured on impact rather than dollars and cents. But while Apple’s decision to drop PFRs and PVCs may be greener, does that example actually point to a shift in power and control – or does it simply point to good business sense and stategy akin to Wal-mart’s decision to go green a few years ago and where the proceeds and profit from those strategies are still deposited with shareholders? I’m enjoying a 50% return on my Apple shares since February so… I might beg to disagree!