The Business of Building a Better World

The Business of Building a Better World

by David Cooperrider, Audrey Selian, Jesper Brodin, Halla Tómasdóttir
Released November 2021
Publisher(s): Berrett-Koehler Publishers
ISBN: 9781523093663

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Book description

Twenty-nine leading scholars and executives provide a visionary look at the future of business, propelling past damaging industrial-age values to uncover the key ingredients of humanistic, ecologically sustainable, and intergenerational prosperity.

Through the exploration of robust cases and stories packed with deep insight and vital science, this extraordinary collection explores how we can adapt our notions of value, markets, and models of cooperation and collective action to create a world where economies and businesses excel, all people thrive, and nature flourishes.

In part I, “The Business of Business Is Betterment,” the contributors show how enterprises today are further developing—and even taking a quantum leap beyond—the multistakeholder logic of “shared value creation.” Part II, “Net Positive = Innovation's New Frontier,” is focused on what companies can and are doing to move away from “doing no harm” to playing an active role in solving environmental, social, and economic problems. The final section, “Ultimate Advantage: A Leadership Revolution That Is Changing Everything,” looks at new leadership paradigms—characterized by unexpected qualities like virtue, love, compassion, and connection—that are crucial to creating engaged, empowered, innovative, and out-performing enterprises.

This book is designed to galvanize change and unite a global community of inquiry and action. It establishes the conceptual cornerstones for a new kind of business practice that will lead the way to an equitable, sustainable, and flourishing future.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Contents
  5. Foreword
  6. Preface
  7. 1. Introduction: A Moonshot Moment for Business and the Great Economic Opportunities of Our Time
  8. Part One: The Business of Business Is Betterment
    1. 2. The Trillion-Dollar Shift: Business for Good Is Good Business
    2. 3. Taking Leadership to a New Place: Outside-the-Building Thinking to Improve the World
    3. 4. A Decade That Transformed the Role of Business in Society—A Snapshot
    4. 5. Green Swans: The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism
    5. 6. Contemplating a Moonshot? Ask Yourself These Three Questions: Why This? Why Now? Why Me?
  9. Part Two: Net Positive = Innovation’s New Frontier
    1. 7. Net-Positive Business and the Elephants in the Room
    2. 8. Accountability for All: There Is No Stakeholder Capitalism Without Stakeholder Governance
    3. 9. The Business of Business Is the Future
    4. 10. Stakeholder Capitalism: Three Generations, One Voice
    5. 11. Transforming Business, Transforming Value
    6. 12. The Problem with Removing Humanity from Business Models
  10. Part Three: The Ultimate Advantage: A Leadership Revolution That Is Changing Everything
    1. 13. Business as an Agent of World Benefit: The Role of Virtuousness
    2. 14. Love: The Core Leadership Value and Organizing Principle for Business and Society
    3. 15. The Role of Consciousness in Accelerating Business as an Agent of World Benefit
    4. 16. Innovating to Flourish: Toward a Theory of Organizing for Positive Impact
    5. 17. Toward Reinvention of Your Theory of the Business: Five Principles for Thriving in the Disrupted World
  11. Index
  12. About the Editors
  13. About the Contributors

Product information

  • Title: The Business of Building a Better World
  • Author(s): David Cooperrider, Audrey Selian, Jesper Brodin, Halla Tómasdóttir
  • Release date: November 2021
  • Publisher(s): Berrett-Koehler Publishers
  • ISBN: 9781523093663