“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
That’s a quote from Apple’s famous “Think Different” advertising campaign, which ran from 1997 to 2002. It embodies the bullish idealism that has long permeated the technology industry. Tech leaders espouse this thinking in pitch decks, on earnings calls, and in the mission statements defining their companies. Look no further than OpenAI’s introductory post from 2015: “Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole”
You could argue that—in addition to making money—“changing the world” is the driving aspiration of every tech leader. Employees want to believe the techno-optimistic gospel. Investors encourage it. And customers signal their approval, at least tacitly, by embracing the myriad apps, products, platforms and digital services that have become increasingly inextricable from their daily lives.
Sometimes the promise is real. Sometimes it’s just clever marketing. In order to tell the difference, we need to be able to define what “changing the world” actually means—and also recognize that sometimes, people who claim to be changing the world aren’t in fact changing it for the better.
In the Social Impact Law course I teach, I start with a simple definition: “Social impact is the net effect that a product, service, or activity has on people, families, and communities—whether those effects are positive or negative.”
This definition, which largely tracks with the one used by Stanford’s Social Entrepreneurship Hub, introduces an exercise that the tech sector often overlooks: considering the full balance sheet of consequences on both sides of the impact ledger, good and bad. Technology companies are exceptionally good at measuring growth, adoption and valuation, using metrics that tell us whether a product is popular or profitable. But they say very little about whether it is actually improving people’s lives. (Or doing the opposite.)
These are not abstract concerns. The decisions tech leaders make about guardrails, partnerships, and permissible uses will shape how these technologies affect societies around the world. Which brings us back to the matter at hand: if tech leaders truly want to change the world for the better, how can they evaluate whether or not they are actually living up to that promise? They can start by asking the following five questions.
1. Who benefits most from this product?
Every technology creates value for someone. But it’s important to consider the main beneficiary of that value. Is it the user who experiences genuine improvement to his life; for whom the technology expands opportunity or improves access to information and services? Or is it the shareholder who enriches their personal wealth thanks to said technology, which may in fact offer only marginal improvements to its users? Leaders who are serious about social impact should be able to navigate this distinction clearly and concretely. If you’re comfortable pitching “world-changing” tech, back it up with precision about exactly how it changes the world, and for whom.
2. Who might be harmed or excluded?
No product exists in a vacuum. At scale, even well-intentioned technology can create new risks or unintended consequences. Algorithms can reinforce bias. Platforms can amplify misinformation. AI systems trained on vast datasets can replicate inequities embedded in those data. Infrastructure projects like data centers can deliver economic benefits to some communities while placing environmental burdens on others. Responsible leadership means identifying these risks early and addressing them directly, warts and all.
3. What happens when this product reaches mass scale?
Technology moves fast. Impact often unfolds slowly. A feature that seems harmless with a few thousand users can look very different when it reaches hundreds of millions. Social media platforms learned this the hard way as their influence over public discourse expanded far beyond what early designers imagined. Those same platforms face lawsuits and regulatory pressure tied to teen mental health, body image, and suicide risk. AI systems now entering the global economy could scale even faster. The leaders building them have a responsibility to think several steps ahead, as consequences unfold in real time.
4. Are we measuring outcomes or just adoption?
Technology companies are extremely good at measuring engagement, downloads, user growth, cost, and revenue. But the metrics that matter most for social impact look different. Are people’s lives actually improving? Are communities becoming stronger, healthier, more informed, or more economically secure because a particular product exists? Adoption and financial metrics tell us that people are using something. Impact tells us whether it is actually helping them. If you’re going to tell the world you’re changing it, you have an obligation to show how.
5. Would we still build this if the incentives changed tomorrow?
This final question is the hardest one. Many technology products succeed because they align perfectly with current incentives: revenue, data collection, rapid user growth, and venture capital expectations. But those incentives do not always align with the long-term goal of doing good. AI offers a particularly pointed version of this tension. The same technology that can accelerate extraordinary scientific discovery could also enable pervasive surveillance or autonomous military systems. Whether those outcomes occur will depend in part on the choices made by the companies building the tools and the humans involved in deploying them (if humans remain involved in such deployment at all).
None of this is just a moral consideration—positive social impact is beneficial to the bottom line. That’s because people tend to like products and services that are associated with doing good. Changing the world and making a healthy return in the process? Win-win.
Nor do I mean to suggest that technology companies are incapable of creating profound positive impact. Quite the opposite. Some of the most powerful improvements in modern life—from medical innovation to global communication to expanded access to knowledge—have come from technological breakthroughs.
But changing the world is not merely a slogan or a corporate talking point. It is a result. And in an era when technology increasingly shapes how we work, communicate, learn, and govern ourselves, leaders who claim the mantle of positive change should be prepared to show their receipts—on both sides of the ledger.