While all of this sounds like a bad strategy at first, it actually follows the guidelines set by Nobelprize economist Milton Friedman perfectly. Before 1970, most big corporations followed a principle called stakeholder capitalism, whereby groups such as customers, employees, suppliers, and (local) communities were all stakeholders that companies had to take into account. Philips is an excellent example of a company that took this approach to heart, and in so doing, it essentially made Eindhoven into the city it is today. What Friedman proposed was simple: focus on maximizing shareholder value and nothing else. It is this mentality that sparked the growth and creation of companies such as Uber, Airbnb, Facebook, Google, and Amazon. Some are calling for a return to the system of stakeholder capitalism. It is even a focal point of the World Economic Forum 2020 meeting in Davos (World Economic Forum, 2020). While Friedman’s ideas were controversial when they were first proposed and are being questioned again now in 2020, he might have been right about one thing. Friedman was a mathematician and as he rightly points out, you can only max out one variable (Denning, 2020). Some of the best companies in the world are built on focus. In 2010 current CEO Tim Cook said that Apple might be one of the most focused companies in the world (Frommer, 2010). Denning (2020) promotes the idea that companies should focus on creating customers first and keep an eye on all other aspects of the principles of stakeholder capitalism. 42
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