Margaret Heffernan says she is neither an enemy of business nor a communist – as one colleague suggested after hearing the premise of her latest book, A Bigger Prize , about the dangers of competition.
“I love business. I think the potential for business to solve the problems we face is immense and limitless. So I get really upset when we blow it,” she says, speaking in the garden of her 17th-century listed Somerset manor house, fruits of her successful career as executive, entrepreneur and writer. “It’s like you’ve taken this beautiful, beautiful piece of beef and just fried it to shoe leather.”
Lately, she has channelled her disappointment into her writing. A Bigger Prize was preceded by Wilful Blindness (2011), a fierce critique of the tendency of people and organisations deliberately to ignore threats and scandals such as the fraud at Enron or sexual abuse by Catholic priests. But Ms Heffernan also continues to direct her good-humoured passion for, and optimism about, business into mentoring and teaching.