Tachi Kiuchi, Bill Shireman

What We Learned in the Rainforest: Business Lessons from Nature

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

What We Learned in the Rainforest presents a surprising new business principle: by applying strategies and practices gleaned from nature-by emulating what it once sought to conquer-business can adapt rapidly to changing market conditions and attain greater and more sustainable profits.

With clear, direct language and dozens of real-world examples, Kiuchi and Shireman show how a company can become a complex living system that doesn't merely balance competing interests but truly integrates them. Examples from leading companies include:

How Coca-Cola CEO Doug Daft uses diversity to drive sales
How Intel founder Gordon Moore creates profit by design
How Bill Coors builds businesses on the theory that "all waste is lost profit"
How Shell profits as an industrial ecosystem
What Weyerhaeuser and activists learned from each other
How Dow earns 300% returns, and Dupont builds market share with eco-effectiveness, and more

This book shows that the old model of business-the machine model that pitted business against nature-is growing obsolete. In the emerging economy, businesses excel when they emulate what they once sought to conquer. They maximize performance as they become like nature, like a complex living system. By moving beyond the industrial machine model, and applying the dynamic principles of the rainforest instead, business can learn how to create more profit than ever, and to do so more sustainably.

Written by two would-be "arch enemies"-a hard-nosed CEO of a major corporation and a dedicated environmentalist-this book doesn't just balance competing interests, it integrates them into a truly revolutionary new paradigm. Kiuchi and Shireman present numerous real-world examples from leading companies-business strategies and management practices that maximize business performance by all measures: economic, social, and environmental. They illustrate the powerful business model provided by nature for driving innovation, increasing profit, spurring growth, and ensuring sustainability.

Produktdetails

• Future 500 Book
• Verlag: Berrett-Koehler Publishers / McGraw-Hill Professional
• Seitenzahl: 280
• Erscheinungstermin: Januar 2002
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 242mm x 163mm x 25mm
• Gewicht: 580g
• ISBN-13: 9781576751275
• ISBN-10: 1576751279
• Artikelnr.: 10420185

Autorenporträt

Tachi Kiuchi is one of Japan's best known and most iconoclastic corporate executives. As chairman and CEO of Mitsubishi Electric America, he built the company's brand in the U.S. and managed the company's transition from the old to the new economy. Today he continues to press for profitable and sustainable business practices at Mitsubishi and other major Japanese corporations. Bill Shireman is one of America's leading environmental advocates. He wrote California's bottle bill recycling law and has brokered deals between some of the world's largest corporations-Coca-Cola, Coors, Nike, Mitsubishi, and Weyerhaeuser-and most impassioned activists-Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network, and the Sierra Club. Today he is CEO of Global Futures, serves as President of the Future 500, and leads a Corporate Accountability Practice (CAP) in partnership with Manning Selvage & Lee.

Inhaltsangabe

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction How Can Business Profit from Nature?

PART I
Principles in Nature That Maximize Performance in Business
One Feedback
Two Information
Three Profit
Four Design
Five Innovation
Six Diversity
Seven Succession

PART II
How to Use the Principles: Strategy, Tactics, and Tools
Eight Management
Nine New Tools and New Values
Conclusion A Journey into the Business Rainforest
Appendix I The Future
Appendix II Future 500 Tool Kit
Bibliography
Index
About the Authors

Rezensionen

What We Learned in the Rainforest is a monumental piece of work. All the knowledge we need to create sustainable, profitable businesses is right there in the forest, if only we can learn from it. Kiuchi and Shireman show us how.
William K. Coors, Chairman of the Board, Adolph Coors Company

A fascinating book bridging the chasm between business and nature by two people who have been there and done it. Immensely read- able a must for anyone who cares about profit or a livable world.
Dee Hock, Founder and CEO Emeritus, VISA, Author of Birth of the Chaordic Age

Business has much to learn from the natural world, and there are no better teachers than Tachi Kiuchi and Bill Shireman. Their book guides companies through the sustainability jungle, helping them see both the forest and the trees. Their message is clear and concise: To prosper in the 21st century, businesses of all sizes and sectors must heed not just the laws of governments and the marketplace but also the laws of nature.
Joel Makower, Co-founder, Clean Edge, Inc., Editor, The Green Business Letter

Tachi Kiuchi and Bill Shireman offer a wonderfully fresh perspective on sustainable development. They explain potentially mind-twisting phenomena in a very entertaining, story-telling style that draws on, of course, what they learned in the rainforest but also sheds light on some things they couldn t possibly have learned there . . . such as what some very innovative companies are doing in Colorado, Minnesota, and The Hague. An important contribution to a rapidly moving field.
Matthew Arnold, CEO, World Resources Institute