We asked a few of our clients what books they took with them on vacation. Here are the top five recommendations we received. Some are recent, while others are a few years old. Still, either way, all are valuable texts from respected academics and thought leaders who frame the issues of our generation elegantly.
- Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take, by Paul Polman and Andrew Winston. The ex-Unilever CEO, who increased his shareholders’ returns by 300% while ensuring the company ranked #1 in the world for sustainability for eleven years running, has, for the first time, revealed how to do it. Teaming up with Andrew Winston, one of the world’s most authoritative voices on corporate sustainability, Paul Polman shows business leaders how to take on humanity’s greatest and most urgent challenges—climate change and inequality—and build a thriving business as a result.
- The Sustainability Scorecard: How to Implement and Profit from Unexpected Solutions, by Urvashi Bhatnagar and Paul Anastas. Using a rigorous, straightforward scorecard as a guide, this book shows business leaders and innovators how to create breakthrough sustainable products and processes that are good for the planet, human health, and profits. Based on Paul Anastas’s foundational Twelve Principles of Green Chemistry, this book is the first scientifically rooted, data-driven methodology for creating inherently sustainable and profitable products and processes. By redesigning with sustainability as a key design element, firms open themselves to unexpected solutions, leapfrog innovations, and sources of value that simply don’t occur when sustainability is leveraged purely as a risk-avoidance and compliance measure.
- Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit, by Alex Edmans. What is a responsible business? Common wisdom is that it’s one that sacrifices profit for social outcomes. But while it’s crucial for companies to serve society, they also have a duty to generate profit for investors - savers, retirees, and pension funds. Based on the highest-quality evidence and real-life examples spanning industries and countries, Alex Edmans shows that it’s not an either-or choice—companies can create both profit and social value. The most successful companies don’t target profit directly but are driven by purpose – the desire to serve a societal need and contribute to human betterment. The book explains how to embed purpose into practice so that it’s more than just a mission statement and discusses the critical role of working collaboratively with a company’s investors, employees, and customers. Rigorous research also uncovers surprising results on how executive pay, shareholder activism, and share buybacks can be used for the common good.
- DEI Deconstructed: Your No-Nonsense Guide to Doing the Work and Doing It Right, by Lily Zheng. The definitive comprehensive and foundational text for critically analyzing and applying actionable DE&I techniques and strategies, written by one of LinkedIn’s most popular experts on DE&I. By utilizing an outcome-oriented understanding of DE&I, along with a comprehensive foundation of actionable techniques, this no-nonsense guide will lay out the path for anyone with any background to becoming a more effective DE&I practitioner, ally, and leader. This is the book that you will have a sentence, data point, or paragraph tagged on nearly every page.
- The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World, by Charles C. Mann. In forty years, Earth’s population will reach ten billion. Can our world support that? What kind of world will it be? Charles Mann says those answering these questions generally fall into two deeply divided groups: Wizards and Prophets. The Wizards follow Norman Borlaug’s research that proposes humans must produce modern high-yield crops to save our species. The Prophets, on the other hand, follow William Vogt’s philosophy that in using more than our planet has to give, our prosperity will lead us to ruin. With our civilization on the line, the author’s insightful analysis is a conversation about how our children will fare on an increasingly crowded Earth.
And if we were allowed one wildcard choice, the team at Petra would pick Terra Incognita: 100 Maps to Survive the Next 100 Years, by Ian Goldin and Robert Muggah. Albert Einstein once said, “You can’t use old maps to explore a new world.” And now, when the world is changing faster than ever before, our old maps are no longer fit for purpose. This is where Terra Incognita can help. Based on decades of research and combining mesmerizing, state-of-the-art satellite maps with enlightening and passionately argued analysis, the authors chart humanity’s impact on the planet and the ways in which we can make a real impact to save it and thrive as a species. Learn about: fires in the Arctic; the impact of sea level rise on cities around the world; the truth about immigration—and why fears in the West are a myth; the counter-intuitive future of population rise; the miracles of health and education that are waiting around the corner, and the reality about inequality, and how we end it. This book traces the paths of peoples, cities, wars, climates, and technologies, all on a global scale.
What have you read this summer? We’d love to add some new titles to our growing library. Share your favorite books with Charlie Chipchase and Hugh Simpson. There’s still another month left of summer. Happy reading!
