I will never forget seeing my father cry. We were on the campus of Stanford University, meeting with the renowned economist W. Brian Arthur to learn more about his theory of increasing returns. I didn’t expect it to be an emotional conversation. But when my father, Ernesto, started to describe our family business, illycaffè; our industry, coffee; and his desire to see more of its returns distributed to the developing-world farmers who supplied its beans, his voice cracked and tears filled his eyes. He described his deep frustration over vast disparities in the living conditions enjoyed by the world’s consumers of coffee and those endured by its producers. He explained that our goal was to spearhead a change.
A version of this article appeared in the September–October 2022 issue of Harvard Business Review.