Since the 2008 economic meltdown, things haven't really looked up for global economy in general. Adding to the woes has been a constant rise in the public sentiment against policy makers that people believe, has been the cause for this meltdown. However, experts believe that we’re making another mistake to correct the ones we’ve already made, and isolation is not the answer to solving the economic downturn at all. Instead, what we really need is to keep our faith in capitalism and shift towards global inclusiveness in order for things to work better in the future. And businesses have an important role to play. Here’s how.

Reinventing leadership

At the peak of the economic slowdown, there was a massive erosion of trust people had in business and banking. The elite 1-percent found themselves pitted against the rest 99-percent population who saw them as corrupt and unwilling to share the gains from business with the very people who made it work. All of it points to the need for a complete overhaul of the corporate culture.

In order to achieve that, not only do the corporate leaders need to set example of ethical behavior by rationalizing compensation packages, they also need to show that they care about the employees and the public in general. Experts believe that such efforts need to come with all sincerity from the top echelons, and not look like a show-off in order to be truly effective.

Reinvigorating job creation

Another aspect that needs to be addressed by businesses is that of sustained job creation in this time of need where close to 200 million women and young professionals find themselves without a job. This is largely dependent on ethical corporate behavior to begin with, but also requires the corporate sector to engage itself in value creation for the society. The private sector needs to invest itself in ensuring that the masses receive the right kind of education that enables them to participate in creating value through business.

Encouraging innovation

Technology, when applied properly, can create huge opportunities for broader inclusion of people by creating more business value and thereby more jobs. Although, some experts still argue the role that technology can play in inclusive growth of the society, evidence from the real world has often trumped their arguments to the case. For example, mobile carrier based and retail store based banking experiments aimed at serving the people who have largely remained untouched by banking services so far in developing countries like India, parts of Africa and South America are an excellent example of inclusive growth of society through technology based solutions.

In conclusion

Growth and inclusiveness are complementary to each other for sustained progress of the society. In the earlier part of the 20th century, socialism tried to achieve that by force by putting every citizen at the same pedestal. However, that experiment failed because it overlooked a crucial part of the basic human nature - the need for growth - both personal and professional. Capitalism possesses the remedy to address those shortcomings, however, it needs to factor-in the element of inclusiveness by choice in order to be highly effective and fix what’s broken with the capitalist global economy of today.