James Perry
speaker
571 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 27 Jul
James Perry’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Well, I studied economics at university and I was taught that the social purpose of business was to maximize its profits for shareholders because profits are a proxy for social progress and that's how we generate prosperity in society.
And I was a little troubled by some of the things I was taught, which we maybe talk about.
But I was just really... So which university was it?
It was indeed.
It was kind of the height of neoliberal economics being taught in universities.
And I was a bit troubled by some of what I was thinking about and some of the consequences that that might...
that might arise.
But I was just really keen to understand business.
So I went on the milk ground, applied to lots of different companies and got offered a job at Cadbury's.
So ended up moving to Bourneville in what it was in 1994.
Yeah, indeed.
So the back story of Cadbury was that John Cadbury, who founded it in the early 1800s, was a Quaker.
And he was part of the temperance movement.
And they were concerned by what was going on in the gin shops of the time.
And they wanted to create some competition for the gin shops.
So they invented this, initially it was a drink called chocolate, in order to have a sort of temperate response to the excesses of the gin shops.
So it was a business that was a product that was started for a social reason and with a social heart.
And those Quaker values shaped the most extraordinary business over 150 years and it's a great British business.
It was coffee shops, literally chocolate shops, like coffee shops initially.
Exactly.
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