Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take

These massive dual challenges—and other profound shifts, such as pandemics, resource pressures, and shrinking biodiversity—threaten our very existence. Other megatrends, such as the push for a clean economy and the unprecedented focus on diversity and inclusion, offer exciting new opportunities to heal the world, and prosper by doing so. Government cannot do this alone. Business must step up.

In this seminal book, former Unilever CEO Paul Polman and sustainable business guru Andrew Winston explode fifty years of corporate dogma. They reveal, for the first time, key lessons from Unilever and other pioneering companies around the world about how you can profit by fixing the world's problems instead of creating them. To thrive today and tomorrow, they argue, companies must become "net positive"—giving more to the world than they take. A net positive company:

• Improves the lives of everyone it touches, from customers and suppliers to employees and communities, greatly increasing long-term shareholder returns in the process.
• Takes ownership of all the social and environmental impacts its business model creates. This in turn provides opportunities for innovation, savings, and building a more humane, connected, and purpose-driven culture.
• Partners with competitors, civil society, and governments to drive transformative change that no single group or enterprise could deliver alone.

This is no utopian fantasy. Courageous leaders are already making it real—and the stakes couldn't be higher. With bold vision and compelling stories, Net Positive sets out the principles and practices that will deliver the scale of change and transformation the world so desperately needs.

Join the movement now at netpositive.world

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Paul Polman works to accelerate action by business to achieve the UN Global Goals, which he helped develop. He was the CEO of Unilever from 2009 to 2019, the first from outside the company in its century-plus history, and has been described by the Financial Times as "a standout CEO of the past decade." He created a new framework for decision-making in the organization to focus the business on multiple stakeholders and long-term value creation, committing the company to doubling its sales while keeping its footprint flat, to touching one billion people, and to greatly improving the lives of suppliers around the world. Peers and experts have ranked Unilever as the most sustainable company—above long-standing, privately run leaders like Patagonia and IKEA—for eight years. Today, Polman is cofounder and Chair of IMAGINE, a for-benefit organization and foundation that mobilizes businesses around the UN Global Goals.

Andrew Winston is one of the world's most widely read writers and leading thinkers on sustainable business. His books on sustainability strategy, including Green to Gold and The Big Pivot, have sold more than 150,000 copies in seven languages. Winston has also written cover stories for Harvard Business Review and published hundreds of articles in HBR, MIT Sloan Management Review, and other top publications. He was recently selected for the Thinkers50 Radar 2020, a list of "30 thinkers to watch out for in the coming year." His views on strategy have been sought after by many of the world's leading companies, including 3M, DuPont, HP, Ingersoll Rand, Johnson & Johnson, Kimberly-Clark, Marriott, PepsiCo, PwC, and Unilever.

This giveaway is being brought to you by Harvard Business Review Press, and ends the evening of Sunday, October 3rd. We have 20 copies available.