--- id: "pisquared:interview/rangan-subi" type: "Pi-Squared interview" title: "Anita McGahan in conversation with Subi Rangan" url: "https://pisquared.theburnescenter.org/interviews/rangan-subi" date: "2024-06-28" people: ["Anita McGahan","Subi Rangan"] summary: "Professor Subramanian Rangan is Professor of Strategy and Management and the Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Court Endowed Chair in Societal Progress at INSEAD in..." recording: "https://vimeo.com/1007830139" source: "Pi-Squared (pisquared.theburnescenter.org), The Burnes Center for Social Change" licence: "none stated" --- # Anita McGahan in conversation with Subi Rangan Subi Rangan, The Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Court Endowed Chair in Societal Progress at INSEAD · 28 June 2024 ## About the guest Professor Subramanian Rangan is Professor of Strategy and Management and the Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Court Endowed Chair in Societal Progress at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. He received an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and a Ph.D. in political economy from Harvard University. His research explores the evolution of capitalism and in particular how enterprises and all economic actors may better integrate performance and progress. He is developing a curriculum that aims to deepen not only the competence but also the character of business students and executives. In 2013 he initiated the Society for Progress, a fellowship of eminent philosophers, social scientists, and business leaders (www.societyforprogress.org). Their first work was published in a volume entitled Performance & Progress (Oxford University Press, 2015). Their second book is Capitalism Beyond Mutuality? (Oxford University Press, 2018). In 2023 they completed a third volume entitled, Wedge: Are Core Assumptions in Business Theory Cleaving Apart Performance and Progress? ## Reflections from the interview Subi’s understanding of the relationships between capitalism, progress, profits and social impact has developed over the course of his entire career. The depth of his understanding is so significant that he is able to come at the issues from many different angles.  What unifies his perspective is compassion for the executive seeking impact; the stakeholders who are affected by social initiatives; the resource-limited governments that must deal with the consequences and possibilities that arise with corporate engagement; and the local entrepreneurs that strive to compete with international rivals.   At the heart of it all, Subi wants to understand what constitutes success on the terms defined by each person involved in trying to accomplish something important.  He wants to use that insight to achieve alignment and to accelerate the uptake of high-potential possibilities.  In talking with him, you can sense that he is a trusted partner to those with whom he engages. Subi is also a master teacher at about a million levels.   Anita spoke with him right after he finished teaching a class to executives who want to act in the public interest.  He tells several stories that reflect the level of both ambition and frustration of his students in tackling important problems at scale. And yet Subi ends with optimism that accomplishment at this level is possible – primarily because so many people are committed to making change happen in our lifetimes, especially in the private sector.   He offers a framework involving profits, people and planet that we can use to identify initiatives that are worth pursuing.  He encourages us to do something – pretty much anything! – that aligns these three things.   What he emphasizes is the importance of overcoming paradoxes by integrating opposing values that are engaged in initiatives such as those we are talking about:  profits and equity, for example.  He talks about making an affirmative choice in each moment to show up as our whole selves to do our best in achieving this integration – knowing that we will make mistakes and that our impact will be flawed.  What matters is acting on an intention to make things in the world better.  We need not to expect perfection.  We just need to make the world fairer, more supportive of well-being, and more sustainable – while accepting that we can’t achieve full fairness, well-being and sustainability.   Starting requires accepting imperfection. Talking with Subi feels to Anita like talking with a wise scholar with a depth of knowledge about business and about social impact that is unparalleled anywhere in the world.  You get the sense in talking with Subi that he is focused on cultivating human engagement itself that is sustainable in the sense that it is motivated by our best selves. Once we put our best selves forward, problems become tractable.   Somewhere in the middle of the conversation, Subi said as an aside that he felt that human sentience would eventually be overtaken technologically, which we did not have time to discuss at all.    Anita is still wondering what he is thinking about on that score. ## Related resources - [Professor Subramanian Rangan’s Homepage at INSEAD](https://www.insead.edu/faculty-research/faculty/subramanian-rangan) - [Performance and Progress (2015 Book of Essays)](https://books.google.com/books/about/Performance_and_Progress.html?id=9E1zCgAAQBAJ) - [The Society for Progress - Subramanian Rangan](http://societyforprogress.org/fellow/rangan-subramanian.html) - [Capitalism Beyond Mutuality? (2021 Book)](https://academic.oup.com/book/5223) - [Subramanian Rangan on Globalization (Video Interview)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gp7jfPqnxI) ## Recording Video: https://vimeo.com/1007830139 Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3KwekdBXs7m4jrl6fv1yLO ## Category [Aspiration](https://pisquared.theburnescenter.org/category/aspiration) * * * Original page: https://pisquared.theburnescenter.org/interviews/rangan-subi · Licence: none stated