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

Runaway climate change and rampant inequality are ravaging the world and costing a fortune. Who will help lead us to a better future? Business.

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