While I agree that believing all people are good is heavy on the optimism, you seem to lean pretty far in the other direction. I would argue that innovation is not a cold pursuit of a competitive product that ignores social responsibility and only addresses the bottom line.

Take Ray Anderson of InterfaceFLOR for instance. He chose to innovate and take one of the most wasteful industries on the planet (carpet) and create the greenest product to meet the demands and needs of the market. By making carpet tile out of recycled carpet and his company’s never-ending quest to bring their impact on the earth down to zero by 2020, he’s one of the greatest innovators of our time.

The most innovative products/services are those that can meet (or even better, anticipate) a need in the market, be dedicated to ensuring they are being both socially and environmentally responsible, all while positively impacting their bottom line. That’s truly difficult to do, hence the uber innovation.

And while a lot of companies give money to charities, questions for me that come to mind are do you know exactly what they are doing with it? Could their mission be accomplished in a more sophisticated and efficient way that would multiply the number of people that are impacted?

I believe that is what the article above was getting at. While money can help support a system, innovation and design can make it go a lot further.