How can companies avoid becoming corrupted?
This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology programme at Newspeak House, open to faculty, fellows, and fellowship candidates only.
Session by Faculty member Theodore Keloglou
Eric Ries published Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad—and How Great Companies Stay Great in 2026. This book is about:
Why successful organizations can drift away from their original values?
How short-term incentives shape corporate behavior?
How can we build companies that remain resilient, mission-driven, and focused on long-term value?
Specific points from the book:
Financial gravity: pressure from investors, markets, customers, or other powerful actors gradually change how a company behaves
“Golden goose”: successful companies can destroy the principles that originally made them successful. FedMart, Sears, Polaroid, Cadbury, Toys “R” Us.
Purpose, Coherence, Integrity are the three core elements of the book's blueprint: (a) build something worth protecting, (b) align the business around the mission, (c) create structures capable of protecting it.
Human flourishing: a company’s mission should ultimately contribute to human well-being rather than simply maximize financial extraction.
Mission drive: design the company in such a way that accomplishing its mission is how it makes money. Devoted Health is keeping members healthier improves both patient outcomes and the company’s economics.
Mission guardians: people or institutions are given explicit authority to defend the mission when financial or strategic pressure appears.
Constitutional governance: protecting values through corporate structure rather than relying on a good founder or CEO remaining in charge forever.
Public Benefit Corporations: legal structure that allows a company to encode a specific public-benefit mission into its charter (counter to fiduciary duty).
Mission-locked constellations: networks of companies, foundations, trusts, cooperatives, and other institutions can reinforce one another. Mondragón.
Spiritual holding companies: separate economic ownership from control over the mission. Patagonia, Bosch, Novo Nordisk, Hershey, IKEA.
Patagonia Purpose Trust protects the company’s mission while the Holdfast Collective receives profits to support environmental work.
Mission transmission: pushing values outward through suppliers, customers, partners, and communities.
Tony’s Chocolonely: its commitment to reducing exploitation in cocoa supply chains became a constraint on how it operated which turned out to be its competitive advantage.
Standards as a form of power: Volvo giving away the patent for the three-point seat belt
Recording: the whole session will be recorded.