The Six New Rules of Business: Creating Real Value in a Changing World

Judy participated in the Bellagio residency program in 2013. During this residency, she worked on The Six New Rules of Business: Creating Real Value in a Changing World (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2021). Judy Samuelson is Vice President at the Aspen Institute and Founder and Executive Director of the Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program.

A few words with Judy

“There was an incredible work ethic while I was at the Bellagio Center – I spent 4 to 5 days exploring and then buckled down to an amazing routine of exercise, reflection, writing, and socializing. When I arrived this book was just an idea – I was afraid to think I could write a book.

“My advice to future Bellagio residents is don’t spend your time there researching. Just write. It’s all in your head, and this is precious time.”

A Quote from The Six New Rules of Business

Inaction is not a choice. It’s time to pick up the pace of change. We all, in fact, have a role to play, as investors, as consumers, as employees, as citizens. As the journalist and social activist Dorothy Day was known to say, ‘No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.’

Synopsis

The rules of business are changing. Dynamic forces are conspiring to clarify the new rules of real value creation – and to put the old rules to rest.

Judy Samuelson lays out how hard-to-measure intangibles like reputation, trust, and loyalty are imposing new ways to assess risk and opportunity in investment and asset management. She argues that “maximizing shareholder value” has never been the sole objective of effective businesses while observing that shareholder theory, and the practices that keep it in place, continue to lose power in both business and the public square. In our globalized era, she demonstrates how expectations of corporations are set far beyond the company gates, and why employees are the best allies of business and of this new accountability mechanism – more so than consumers or investors.

Samuelson’s new rules offer a powerful guide to how businesses are changing today – and what is needed to succeed in tomorrow’s economic and social landscape.

Explore More

To find out more about Judy’s work, visit her website, follow her on Twitter, or read her column in Quartz. You can also read about the Business and Society Program at the Aspen Institute.