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It’s Time for Tech Companies to Adopt a ‘Do No Harm’ Approach
Founders and investors need a new code of ethics
Co-authored with Carrie Barron, MD, and Nicco Mele
Transformational change cannot occur suddenly — and sudden changes rarely turn out to be transformational. It’s clear that common practices at many of our largest tech platforms must change, but hoping for a shouting-at-the-barricades revolution is unrealistic and possibly unhelpful. While we — representing doctors, health tech professionals, and elements of the policymaking community — recognize and share public dissatisfaction with the behavior of many leading operators, boards, and corporations in the tech sector, we don’t believe that the necessary cultural shifts are best advanced through expressions of indignation or outrage. Real reform warrants a combination of emotional discipline, strong modeling, and the adoption of concrete and coherent principles.
For the first time in decades, investors and consumers seem unwilling to tolerate the notion that the ends justify the means, or that only money matters. The world is waking up to the fact that when winners take all — using raw power, subterfuge, and hypnotic prestige — everyone loses. The consequences plainly and, in most cases, negatively affect public well-being and even health. And they actually depress shareholder value — particularly at places like Facebook and Uber.
For the first time in decades, investors and consumers seem unwilling to tolerate the notion that the ends justify the means, or that only money matters.
It’s encouraging to see writers and thinkers like Joseph Stieglitz allude to the prospects of a more “progressive capitalism,” arguing that the term isn’t an oxymoron but indeed an orientation designed to channel the power of the market to better serve society. We agree. The fundamental shifts in corporate behavior that the nation and the world urgently deserve are not the stuff of fantasy. They are real and are, in some instances, already underway.
The 2017 investor insurrection at Uber might someday be regarded as the spark of this change. That year, critics of the increasingly…
