Net Positive

The authors begin with the pressures bearing down on the planet: climate and resource strain, pandemics, and the steady loss of biodiversity. Cooperation needed to meet these threats is also weakening, as global leadership falters, free trade and globalization come under attack, and populist movements stoke intolerance and upheaval. Rethinking how economies and businesses operate has never been more pressing.

Yet many businesses, from multinational corporations to very small firms, are already tackling these problems through long-term models built around purpose. They are also gaining ground, using emerging tools, data-driven transparency, and far cheaper clean technology. The debate has shifted. Companies now ask not whether sustainability is worth pursuing, but why anyone would hold back from it.

Former Unilever chief executive Paul Polman and sustainability writer Andrew Winston set out a framework for net positive companies, organizations that give back more to the world than they consume or extract. Rather than dwelling on resistance, they argue that purpose and profit are tied together and that coordinated action can produce change at the scale required. Drawing on Unilever's experience and other pioneering global organizations, the book lays out principles and practices for companies that want to endure and prosper.

Written for executives, managers, and professionals who want commercial success but accept that it depends on serving the wider world, the book presents building a net positive company as the central task facing leaders.