Doing the right thing on climate change saves money, retains customers, creates new market opportunity and takes you beyond just compliance. It reduces your risk exposure and reduces risk to shareholders - Dr Jonathan Foot, Chief Environmental Officer, EDF Energy
"Let your social and environmental conscience be your guide" can be a successful and durable strategy for a firm. This is the first book to explain how following a vision for the earth and for society can be a powerful route to profits for small and medium sized companies.
Companies on a Mission: Entrepreneurial Strategies for Growing Sustainably, Responsibly and Profitably, explains that mission-driven companies appreciate and leverage traditional strategic principles—with a twist—to win in the marketplace. By clearly and pragmatically laying out this argument, author Michael V. Russo crystallizes for enlightened businesses what Michael Porter made clear for mainstream firms years ago. A mission-driven approach creates significant barriers to imitation by larger, established rivals.
Mission-driven firms build their brands on authenticity. Only you are you. And, authenticity builds customer loyalty. Later in the book, Russo moves beyond the firm level to look at these companies in context. He finds, for instance, that just as specific industries often develop in geographic clusters, mission-driven companies also aggregate. But, they put down roots where other businesses are pursuing complementary goals. Portland and the Bay Area are two such hotbeds. This allows for cooperation, as opposed to breeding stiff competition.
Andrew Winston, author of Green Recovery, said:
"Michael Russo documents both the direct economic benefits of taking a mission-driven approach (toward sustainability) and the intangible benefits of brand value, product positioning, customer satisfaction and more,"
According to University of Oregon Media Relations:
Companies on a Mission uses the stories and experiences of more than 100 companies to support its premise. Some are well established, such as Patagonia, the outdoor clothing empire founded in 1972 by rebel rock-climber Yvon Chouinard; and Kettle Foods, the Salem company that in 2003 installed the largest solar array in the Pacific Northwest. Others are emerging companies introducing inspiration to traditional fields, such as Revolution Foods, founded by Kristen Richmond and Kirsten Tobey, which brings nutritious school lunches to underprivileged school children in California, Denver, and Washington, D.C.; and Freitag, a Swiss company founded by Markus and Daniel Freitag, which sells fashion-forward bags and purses made from recycled truck tarps.
Small and medium-sized businesses can be a force for positive change. Larger, established companies have also found that there is much to learn from these companies.
"Business is the force of change," said Richard Branson, a British industrialist, best known for his Virgin brand of over 360 companies. "Business is essential to solving the climate crisis, because this is what business is best at: innovating, changing, addressing risks, searching for opportunities. There is no more vital task."
Russo explains that the rise to prominence of mission-driven companies like Patagonia, Seventh Generation, Kettle Foods, and Calvert Group is undoubtedly the result of powerful trends in consumer markets, including the rise of conscious consumerism, the transparency movement, and fallout from global competition. Most books that address social and environmental issues are focused on large corporations, crafted as autobiographies by CEOs, or written as moral calls to action without regard for the bottom line. Companies on a Mission both chronicles a movement and provides grounded guidance to entrepreneurs and managers who wish to join the wave.
I probed the author:
Dr. Russo,
Responders to my previous Daily Kos diary regarding your work have stated that it's not likely that corporations will suddenly develop a soul or social consciousness. However, because the economic scales are tipping in favor of conservation and renewable energy, businesses are our likely hope.
Would you please give us your response to the above ideas?
Russo responded:
Really, these are two different issues. As currently structured and legally chartered, publicly held corporations are held to very tight requirements to maximize financial returns to shareholders. In practice, this has led to managers frequently viewing social and environmental initiatives as a costly distraction. I think that this is a mistake, because while the costs of these initiatives can be identified relatively easily, their benefits to the corporation meander past the eyeshades of accountants. But a reputation for social advancement or environmental stewardship can create benefits like a stronger brand that draws enlightened customers to the company's products and a reputation that can be a magnet for talented job-seekers. I suppose that's just good business, but collectively, engagement with enlightened customers and employees can broaden the mission of the company to include a greater contribution to social and environmental enhancement.
"We have an economy that tells us it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time rather than renew, restore, and sustain it," writes environmental activist Paul Hawken. "You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet."