In the world of sustainable business Paul Polman seems to be the nearest thing to a superstar. Hence his book with Andrew Winston, Net Positive, will get a big audience which is a very good thing. It seeks to give Polman’s view of business which was central to his tenure as Unilever CEO, a net…
Planning For Sustainability
Bill Gates has a really useful book about what we might call planning for sustainability. It is a practical approach on what we can hope to achieve. The book has a lot of critical information conveyed in a relatively easy-to-understand form. I’d certainly recommend it. Before we start it is worth noting that some people…
What’s With The Alexander Stuff?
There is a cottage industry of people writing about business using the lessons of Alexander the Great. I have only one question: What’s with the Alexander Stuff? The Macedonian king was a terrible bloke, and there are plenty of easier, and much more novel, ways to illustrate business situations. Business As War: Not Really Business…
Signaling And Education
Why do people pursue academic courses that in no way set them up with the skills needed for their future careers? One obvious answer might be because they enjoy the topic they study. Education is a good thing in itself. I’m all for that. Yet, that seems to be far from a complete explanation. Maybe…
Solving Problems Upstream
Dan Heath has a book on solving problems upstream. The central idea is that it is better to solve a problem nearer its source than try and solve the problem once it has fully manifested. Heath’s hard-to-disagree with advice is that it is better to stop the horror movie monster being conjured rather than having…
Don’t Expect Perfect, Go For Better
I have written before about B Corp. Today I am looking at the B Corp Handbook. This is a how-to (and why-to) guide to getting registered as a B Corporation. The authors have a number of suggestions that could prove useful. One of the most important should be shown in big lights whenever people discuss…
Putting Finance And Marketing Together
Dave Stewart has written a book packed with details of the financial impact of marketing. He surveys a large number of topics extremely connected to what I write about in this blog. (This probably isn’t too surprising. Dave is chair of MASB, which I am heavily involved in). What then is good advice for putting…
Measuring Performance In Multistakeholder Firms
Jonathan Knowles and Tom Hunsaker have an article in the MIT Sloan Management Review that considers the change in thinking needed when a firm is managed for multiple stakeholders. How then to go about measuring performance in multistakeholder firms? When Money Is All that Matters For the past generation or two firms have often been…
CEOs And Sustainability
Alan Murray (CEO of Fortune Media) has a book on how business is engaging more with social issues. There are a lot of good points in there that help to illustrate business in 2022. So what can he tell us about CEOs and Sustainability? First, The Bad Points Broadly speaking I am on board with…
Not All Papers Must Feature Firm Performance
Today I’m discussing another paper that uses Total Q. I won’t spend too long on that. I have said plenty elsewhere about how bad Total Q is as a measure of firm performance. In this post, I want to somewhat sympathize with the authors of a paper that uses Total Q. I will tell a…
