Leaving a neighborhood restaurant in South Park, one of us carried leftovers we planned to enjoy the next day. Just outside the restaurant was an elderly woman sitting on the sidewalk, clearly homeless and hungry. We handed her the leftovers. She thanked us warmly. The gesture felt compassionate. It also felt wholly inadequate.
In one of the wealthiest regions in America, why are so many people still struggling to meet their most basic needs? We often debate housing policy, public spending, mental health services, and economic development. All matter. But we too rarely ask another question: What kinds of businesses are we creating in the first place?
Around the world, businesses are organized differently. In Spain’s Basque region, the Mondragon network of worker-owned cooperatives has shown that employee ownership, democratic governance, and long-term investment can build resilient companies while keeping wealth circulating locally.
San Diego has built one of the nation’s most innovative economies. Yet innovation cannot be measured only by the technologies we invent. As we confront inequality, climate change, polluted waterways and growing distrust in our institutions, innovation must also include rethinking how businesses themselves are designed. Enterprises can be powerful engines for creating wealth, but they can also be designed to share that wealth more broadly.
Preparing the next generation of leaders to design enterprises differently is an essential part of addressing inequality. At the University of San Diego’s Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies, students work alongside organizations that are rethinking ownership, governance, capital, and business models. Through partnerships with B Local San Diego and Business for Good San Diego, graduate students will work directly with San Diego organizations this fall, gaining firsthand experience while helping strengthen the region’s innovation ecosystem.
Every enterprise, whether intentionally or not, is designed through four fundamental choices: who owns it, who has a voice in decisions, where its capital comes from, and how it creates and distributes value. Those choices determine whether a company’s purpose survives growth, leadership transitions, changing ownership, and market pressures.
San Diego already has companies demonstrating what this looks like in practice. Rescue Agency, a San Diego-based employee-owned Certified B Corporation, exists to improve public health through behavior-change marketing. Its mission is built into the business itself. Employee ownership ensures the people creating that value also share in the company’s success.
Lotus Sustainables, a Certified B Corporation based in Carlsbad, demonstrates how environmental responsibility can be embedded in everyday business decisions, from product design and sourcing to growth strategy. As the company grows, so does its contribution to reducing reliance on single-use plastic bags.
Not every purpose-driven business carries a certification. Super Cocina, the City Heights restaurant founded by the Sanchez family after immigrating from Xalapa, Mexico, has employed people from the community for decades while investing in the neighborhood. Its commitment to community continued through a generational transition, showing that purpose can endure when it is built into the enterprise itself.
This is by design; a compelling mission or commitment to corporate social responsibility is not enough. Ownership, governance, capital and business models determine whether an organization’s purpose endures as it grows, attracts investment and navigates leadership transitions.
The woman outside that South Park restaurant reminded us that compassion matters. But compassion alone is not enough. If we want a more prosperous and equitable San Diego, we must design enterprises that create opportunity and share prosperity more broadly. The next generation of innovation will be measured not only by the technologies we invent, but by the enterprises we build.
If we prepare today’s students to think intentionally about how enterprises are owned, governed, financed, and operated San Diego can become a national model for building a more prosperous and inclusive economy.
Paula A. Cordeiro is the Dammeyer Distinguished Professor of Global Leadership
at the University of San Diego’s Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies. Abraham Chen
is executive director of B Local San Diego. Emily Renda is board chair of Business for Good San Diego.
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