Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take
This may be the business book we’ve been waiting for…and that many of us have been groping toward for the last decade or two.
A growing number of businesses have been embracing sustainability, and a growing subset have been proudly embracing net zero—and that’s a Good Thing. It’s just not good enough. Paul Polman and Andrew Winston have thrown down the gauntlet and raised the bar (if you’ll permit me the mixed metaphor), and are asking “what about net positive?”
What if, as William McDonough, Bill Reed, and others have put it, we focused on doing more good, not less bad?
What if, as Polman and Winston put it, we realized that “Milton Friedman is dead,” and that the half-century grip of his “profit is purpose” catechism should be dead and buried too.
What if, as I’ve put it, we could outgrow the extractive game of “life as the servant of business” and embrace “business in service of life”—in service of the living world that generates and sustains all that we value?
#netpositive #climatecrisis #businessinserviceoflife#belongingtothelivingworld
(Originally posted to LinkedIn, 10 Oct 2021)