E-Book Overview
"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 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. The book shows that 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.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. For these readers, this book is a one-of-a-kind bible.
E-Book Content
Advance Praise for Companies on a Mission “True innovation comes from the fringes—from smaller players running rings around incumbents. After focusing for decades on corporate Goliaths, we need to investigate and support entrepreneurial Davids. Russo shows how mission-driven companies think, act, and cluster—and, critically, explains how we can help them jump to the next level.” —John Elkington, co-founder and Executive Chairman of Volans Ventures, co-founder of Environmental Data Services and SustainAbility, and co-author of The Power of Unreasonable People “Mission-driven companies continue to grow in number and are moving from a small niche into the mainstream. The time is right for an analysis of these firms and their approaches to business. In Companies on a Mission, Michael Russo documents both the direct economic benefits of taking a mission-driven approach and the intangible benefits of brand value, product positioning, customer satisfaction, and more. Full of stories about well- and lesser-known companies, this book will give any business reader—from entrepreneurs to managers in big corporations— take-away points to transform their businesses into profitable, missiondriven enterprises.” —Andrew Winston, author of Green Recovery and co-author of Green to Gold “The stories in this lively, well-researched book have much to teach all of us. Michael Russo has done a great service to the field by writing this important work.” —Marjorie Kelly, co-founder of Business Ethics magazine and author of The Divine Right of Capital “What a fresh approach to green marketing! This book contains information on the subject not available anywhere else.” —Jacquelyn Ottman, Eco-innovation expert and author of Green Marketing
“Companies on a Mission brings academic rigor to the age-old notion of ‘doing well by doing good.’ Mission-driven companies succeed, as Mike Russo makes crystal clear in th