The 20th-century view of shareholder primacy is flawed. By focusing first on creating wins for all stakeholders—customers, employees, suppliers, and society—companies build a sustainable, beloved enterprise that paradoxically delivers superior returns to shareholders in the long run.

Patagonia deliberately restrains revenue growth, viewing it not as the primary goal but as a means to an end. The company's true objective is growth in environmental and social impact, for which financial growth is simply a funding mechanism. This redefines success away from purely financial metrics.

To secure funding, founders with a social mission must demonstrate how responsible, purpose-driven practices lead to better financial results, growth, and competitiveness, making a clear business case to investors.

Canva operates on a simple plan: 1) build one of the world's most valuable companies, and 2) do the most good possible. This purpose-driven approach, including the founders' pledge to give away their wealth, grounds company decisions and culture beyond typical CSR.

Canva's core mission is a "two-step plan": 1) build a valuable company and 2) do good. Crucially, this isn't a sequential plan for after an exit. They believe step one fuels step two (and vice versa), integrating purpose directly into the business model from day one.

For a mission-driven organization like The Atlantic, owned by a philanthropist, the financial goal is sustainability, not profit extraction. The strategy is to achieve profitability and then immediately reinvest the surplus back into the mission by hiring more journalists and expanding influence.

The current model of capitalism prioritizes profit above all. A more sustainable and just version would reorder the priorities: first, advance a greater cause; second, protect the people and places you operate in; and third, generate profit as the means to continue the first two indefinitely.

"Stakeholder capitalism" often fails because it frames progress as a zero-sum compromise and an appendage to a broken system. A better model is "mission primacy," which redesigns the organization's core purpose to be the creation of specific value, from which all other benefits flow.

In an era where purpose is often marketed as a profit driver, Richard Dickson presents a pragmatic view. For Gap, purpose (like sustainability) is a core value and responsibility, but the ability to execute on that purpose at scale is directly enabled by the financial health of the company.