Net Positive

Net Positive Plot Summary

Introduction

The concept of "net positive" represents a radical reimagining of business purpose and practice in the 21st century. Moving beyond traditional notions of corporate social responsibility or sustainability, net positive businesses actively create more value for society and the environment than they extract. This transformative approach challenges the fundamental assumption that business success must come at the expense of other stakeholders or future generations. Instead, it demonstrates how companies can simultaneously generate profits while solving social and environmental challenges at scale. The journey toward becoming net positive requires businesses to expand their boundaries of responsibility, embrace radical transparency, forge transformative partnerships, and address uncomfortable issues that many companies prefer to avoid. Through detailed case studies, practical frameworks, and compelling evidence, a roadmap emerges for how organizations can build purpose-driven cultures that generate prosperity for all stakeholders. This approach not only responds to growing societal expectations but creates tangible business advantages through enhanced innovation, stronger stakeholder relationships, improved risk management, and the ability to attract and retain top talent in an increasingly purpose-driven workforce.

Chapter 1: The Net Positive Business Model: Beyond Sustainability to Regeneration

The net positive business model represents a fundamental evolution beyond traditional sustainability approaches. While conventional corporate sustainability focuses on reducing harm or achieving neutrality ("do no harm"), net positive companies actively create regenerative outcomes that leave the world better than they found it. This shift requires expanding the boundaries of corporate responsibility beyond direct operations to encompass the entire value chain and even broader societal systems. At its core, the net positive model challenges the shareholder primacy doctrine that has dominated business thinking for decades. Instead of viewing profit as the primary objective, net positive companies see financial returns as the result of creating value for all stakeholders. This perspective aligns with growing evidence that purpose-driven companies outperform their peers financially over the long term. Studies consistently show that businesses focusing on environmental, social, and governance factors deliver superior returns, with sustainable investment portfolios outperforming traditional benchmarks by significant margins. The business case for becoming net positive extends beyond financial performance to encompass multiple forms of value creation. Companies embracing this model build stronger relationships with customers who increasingly demand ethical products and services. They attract and retain top talent, particularly among younger generations who seek meaningful work aligned with their values. Moreover, net positive companies demonstrate greater resilience during crises, as evidenced during the COVID-19 pandemic when purpose-driven organizations were better positioned to adapt and support their stakeholders. The journey toward net positive requires companies to take responsibility for their entire impact footprint. This means addressing not just direct emissions and resource use but also impacts that occur upstream in supply chains and downstream through product use and disposal. For consumer goods companies, this might mean addressing deforestation in palm oil production or reducing water usage during product consumption. For technology firms, it involves considering the societal impacts of algorithms and platforms. The key insight is that outsourcing operations does not mean outsourcing responsibility for the impacts those operations create. Net positive companies employ systematic approaches to identify, measure, and manage their full impact footprint. They conduct comprehensive materiality assessments to determine which environmental and social issues are most relevant to their business and stakeholders. They use life cycle assessments to understand the environmental impacts of products from cradle to grave. These analyses often reveal surprising insights—for instance, that the majority of a company's carbon footprint may lie outside its direct control, in supplier operations or consumer use of products. The most advanced net positive businesses move beyond addressing negative impacts to creating regenerative solutions that actively improve environmental and social systems. This might involve developing circular business models that eliminate waste, implementing regenerative agricultural practices that rebuild soil health, or creating products and services that enable customers to live more sustainable lives. By reimagining business models through a regenerative lens, companies unlock new sources of value while contributing to a more sustainable and equitable world.

Chapter 2: Purpose-Driven Leadership: Aligning Business with Societal Needs

Purpose provides the essential foundation for net positive business. It answers the fundamental question of why a company exists beyond making money. A compelling purpose connects the organization to larger societal needs and aspirations, creating meaning for employees and other stakeholders. For net positive companies, purpose isn't a marketing slogan or side project—it's the central organizing principle that guides strategy, operations, and culture. Authentic purpose emerges from the intersection of what the world needs, what the company is uniquely positioned to provide, and what generates sustainable economic value. Companies like Patagonia demonstrate this alignment with their purpose of using business to protect nature, which drives everything from product design to advocacy. Similarly, Unilever's purpose of making sustainable living commonplace shapes its brand portfolio and innovation priorities. These purposes are specific enough to guide decision-making but broad enough to inspire diverse stakeholders. Finding organizational purpose often involves looking both backward and forward. Many companies discover their purpose by reconnecting with their founding story and original mission. When Unilever began its journey toward becoming net positive, it reconnected with its founding purpose established by William Lever in the 1880s: making cleanliness commonplace to reduce disease. This historical mission provided a powerful foundation for the company's Sustainable Living Plan. Other organizations develop purpose by looking outward at emerging societal needs and challenges. The Sustainable Development Goals provide a useful framework for identifying areas where business can contribute to solving global challenges. Purpose becomes transformative when it permeates every aspect of the organization. This requires embedding purpose in core business processes like strategic planning, capital allocation, innovation, and performance management. It also means aligning incentives and metrics with purpose-driven outcomes. Companies that successfully integrate purpose throughout their operations find that it drives innovation, attracts talent, builds customer loyalty, and ultimately delivers superior financial performance. Research consistently shows that purpose-driven companies outperform their peers on measures of growth, profitability, and shareholder returns. For purpose to drive net positive impact, it must extend beyond the company to engage the entire ecosystem. This means helping suppliers, partners, and customers advance their own purpose journeys. It also involves collaborating with competitors, civil society organizations, and governments to address systemic challenges that no single entity can solve alone. By catalyzing collective action around shared purpose, companies can achieve impact at scale that far exceeds what they could accomplish independently. The journey toward purpose-driven leadership requires personal transformation as well. Leaders of net positive companies cultivate their own sense of purpose and bring their full humanity to their roles. They demonstrate authenticity, vulnerability, and moral courage in championing purpose even when faced with short-term pressures. By modeling purpose-driven leadership, they inspire others throughout the organization to connect their individual purpose with the company's mission, creating a powerful multiplier effect that accelerates positive impact.

Chapter 3: Radical Transparency: Building Trust Through Accountability

Radical transparency forms the cornerstone of the net positive approach, going far beyond traditional corporate disclosure to create authentic relationships with stakeholders. This level of openness involves sharing not just successes but also challenges, dilemmas, and failures—providing an unvarnished view of the company's journey toward positive impact. By embracing vulnerability and inviting scrutiny, net positive companies build the trust necessary for transformative collaboration. The foundation of radical transparency is comprehensive measurement and disclosure of impacts across the full value chain. This includes not only direct environmental footprints like carbon emissions and water use but also social impacts such as human rights conditions in supply chains and community well-being. Leading companies are increasingly adopting standardized frameworks like the Global Reporting Initiative and Sustainability Accounting Standards Board metrics, while also developing innovative approaches to measure previously unquantified impacts. They're expanding the scope of disclosure to include Scope 3 emissions, living wage gaps, and biodiversity impacts—areas traditionally considered too complex or sensitive to report. What distinguishes truly radical transparency is the willingness to share information that might reflect unfavorably on the company. This includes acknowledging where goals haven't been met, where harmful impacts persist, or where progress has stalled. When Unilever invited Oxfam to assess labor conditions in its supply chain and published the findings—including identified problems—it demonstrated this level of openness. Similarly, companies that disclose the percentage of their products that don't yet meet sustainability standards or the number of human rights violations found in their supply chains exhibit the courage required for authentic transparency. Radical transparency extends to product-level information that empowers consumers to make informed choices. Companies are increasingly disclosing detailed information about product ingredients, sourcing practices, manufacturing conditions, and environmental footprints. Some are using digital technologies like QR codes or blockchain to provide unprecedented supply chain traceability, allowing customers to verify claims about ethical sourcing or environmental performance. This granular transparency helps build consumer trust while creating market incentives for continuous improvement. The most advanced form of transparency involves opening up not just about current performance but about future plans, dilemmas, and trade-offs. This includes sharing strategic sustainability roadmaps, discussing the challenges of addressing competing priorities, and acknowledging where perfect solutions don't yet exist. By inviting stakeholders into these complex conversations, companies gain valuable insights while demonstrating authentic commitment to improvement. This approach transforms transparency from a one-way reporting exercise into a dynamic dialogue that drives innovation and accountability. The benefits of radical transparency extend beyond reputation to tangible business value. Companies that openly share their sustainability journeys attract like-minded partners, from suppliers eager to collaborate on solutions to investors seeking authentic ESG leadership. They also gain early intelligence about emerging issues and stakeholder expectations, enabling more proactive management of risks and opportunities. Perhaps most importantly, transparency creates internal accountability that accelerates progress—when performance is visible to all, the organization naturally mobilizes to improve.

Chapter 4: Transformative Partnerships: Creating Systemic Change Through Collaboration

The complex challenges facing humanity cannot be solved by any single organization acting alone. Net positive companies recognize the limitations of individual action and actively seek partnerships that multiply impact through collective effort. These collaborations transcend traditional transactional relationships to create shared value and systemic change. Unlike conventional partnerships focused on narrow business interests, transformative collaborations align diverse stakeholders around common goals that benefit the broader system. The most effective partnerships bring together organizations across sectors, combining the innovation and efficiency of business with the reach and legitimacy of government and the mission focus of civil society. These cross-sector collaborations leverage complementary capabilities and resources to tackle complex challenges like climate change, poverty, and public health. For example, partnerships between consumer goods companies, recycling businesses, and local governments have created effective waste management systems in regions lacking infrastructure. Similarly, collaborations between agricultural companies, conservation organizations, and smallholder farmers have developed sustainable sourcing models that protect ecosystems while improving livelihoods. Precompetitive collaboration among industry peers represents another powerful partnership model. By working together on shared challenges like sustainable sourcing standards, human rights due diligence, or circular economy infrastructure, companies can create solutions that benefit the entire industry while maintaining healthy competition in other areas. The Sustainable Apparel Coalition exemplifies this approach, bringing together clothing and footwear brands, retailers, manufacturers, and NGOs to develop the Higg Index—a standardized measurement tool for environmental and social impacts across the industry. Such collaborations create efficiencies, accelerate innovation, and establish level playing fields that enable all participants to advance sustainability without competitive disadvantage. Transformative partnerships are characterized by deep engagement and mutual value creation rather than superficial alignment or philanthropic sponsorship. Partners share knowledge, capabilities, and resources while maintaining accountability for specific contributions to shared goals. They establish clear governance structures and metrics to track progress, ensuring that the collaboration delivers tangible impact. Most importantly, they build relationships based on trust and transparency, creating safe spaces to address challenges and conflicts that inevitably arise in complex multi-stakeholder efforts. Digital technologies are enabling new partnership models that achieve unprecedented scale and impact. Platform approaches bring together thousands of participants across global value chains, using data and connectivity to coordinate action on shared challenges. For instance, digital platforms now connect multinational companies with smallholder farmers, providing agricultural training, weather information, and market access while ensuring sustainable practices. Similar platforms enable collaboration on human rights monitoring, deforestation prevention, and circular economy solutions across complex global supply networks. The most ambitious partnerships aim for systemic transformation rather than incremental improvement. They address root causes of sustainability challenges by changing the rules, incentives, and power dynamics that shape market behavior. This might involve developing new industry standards, advocating for policy reforms, or creating innovative financing mechanisms that redirect capital toward sustainable outcomes. By focusing on these systemic leverage points, transformative partnerships can achieve lasting change that continues to generate positive impacts long after the initial collaboration.

Chapter 5: Tackling Uncomfortable Issues: From Human Rights to Political Influence

Addressing uncomfortable issues represents perhaps the most challenging aspect of becoming net positive, requiring companies to confront problems they have historically avoided or contributed to. These issues include human rights abuses, racial and gender inequality, tax avoidance, executive compensation, and political influence—topics that touch on fundamental questions of power, privilege, and responsibility. By tackling these uncomfortable issues head-on, net positive companies demonstrate authentic commitment to positive impact while building resilience against growing stakeholder expectations. Human rights represent a critical frontier for corporate responsibility. Net positive companies conduct comprehensive human rights due diligence across their value chains, identifying risks of forced labor, child labor, unsafe working conditions, and other abuses. They establish robust remediation processes when violations occur and work to address root causes through supplier capability building, purchasing practices reform, and industry collaboration. Leading companies also recognize the connection between living wages and human rights, committing to ensure that workers throughout their value chains earn enough to support their families' basic needs—a standard that goes well beyond legal minimum wages in many countries. Tax practices have emerged as a critical issue as stakeholders question the fairness of sophisticated avoidance strategies. Net positive companies recognize that taxes fund essential public services and infrastructure that enable business success. They develop responsible tax principles that balance legitimate financial management with fair contribution to public resources. This includes increasing transparency about tax strategies, avoiding artificial arrangements designed primarily to minimize tax, and considering tax impact when making operational decisions. Some companies are going further by advocating for tax system reforms that create more level playing fields while ensuring adequate public revenue. Political influence represents perhaps the most uncomfortable issue for many companies, as it exposes contradictions between public sustainability commitments and private lobbying activities. Net positive companies ensure alignment between their stated values and their political engagement, including direct lobbying, trade association memberships, and political contributions. They establish governance processes to review these activities for consistency with sustainability goals and increase transparency about their political positions. The most advanced companies practice "net positive advocacy," actively supporting policies that advance sustainability even when they may create short-term costs or constraints for the business. Diversity, equity, and inclusion present another set of uncomfortable issues that net positive companies must address. This goes beyond representation metrics to examine systemic barriers that perpetuate inequality within organizations and society. Companies are increasingly analyzing pay equity across gender and racial lines, reviewing promotion practices for bias, and creating more inclusive cultures. They're also examining how their products, services, and marketing may reinforce harmful stereotypes or exclude certain communities. The most advanced companies extend this focus to their value chains, supporting minority-owned businesses and addressing historical inequities in the communities where they operate. Addressing these uncomfortable issues requires courage, as it often means confronting entrenched interests within the organization and acknowledging complicity in systems that cause harm. It also demands humility, as companies must listen to affected stakeholders and acknowledge that they don't have all the answers. By embracing these challenges rather than avoiding them, net positive companies build deeper trust with stakeholders while contributing to more just and sustainable systems. They also position themselves ahead of inevitable regulatory and social pressure, turning potential risks into opportunities for leadership.

Chapter 6: Organizational Culture: Embedding Purpose Throughout Operations

Culture represents the invisible infrastructure that either enables or prevents net positive transformation. While strategy and policies provide direction, culture determines how people actually behave when facing daily decisions and trade-offs. Net positive companies intentionally cultivate cultures that align individual actions with purpose and values throughout the organization. When Unilever CEO Alan Jope says, "If I tried to change direction now, the company would not accept it," it demonstrates how deeply purpose can become embedded in an organization's DNA. Building a purpose-driven culture requires consistency between what a company says and what it does. When values and behaviors align, employees develop trust in leadership and engage more fully with the organization's mission. This alignment must extend from the boardroom to the factory floor, with leaders modeling the behaviors they expect from others. Net positive companies recognize that culture is built from the bottom up through thousands of daily decisions and actions that reflect core values. For employees, connecting personal purpose with organizational mission creates powerful alignment. When individuals discover the intersection between what they're good at, what they enjoy, and what the world needs, they bring their full potential to work. Companies like Unilever have developed structured programs to help employees articulate their personal purpose and connect it to the organization's broader mission, resulting in higher engagement and performance. This connection between individual and organizational purpose creates intrinsic motivation that far exceeds what can be achieved through traditional incentive systems. Organizational infrastructure supports and reinforces culture. Net positive companies integrate purpose into core business processes like R&D, finance, and mergers and acquisitions. Unilever's "Green Funnel" process requires new innovations to pass environmental and social criteria alongside margin requirements. The company's approach to acquisitions focuses on purpose-led businesses whose founders often stay with Unilever because they share values and culture. These structural elements ensure that purpose influences everyday decisions throughout the organization. Purpose comes alive most powerfully through brands. When Unilever redesigned its brand positioning tool to include purpose at the core, it unleashed creativity and growth. Purpose-driven brands like Lifebuoy soap, which focuses on preventing childhood deaths through handwashing education, have grown significantly faster than the rest of the business. Even mature brands like Hellmann's mayonnaise found new energy by connecting to purpose, in this case fighting food waste. These brand purposes create tangible expressions of the company's overall mission that resonate with specific consumer segments. Building a purpose-driven culture takes time—Unilever found it took about eight years for the large majority of employees to fully embrace the company's sustainability mission. But once established, this culture becomes self-reinforcing, with employees holding the organization accountable to its stated values and purpose. The most advanced companies extend their cultural influence beyond organizational boundaries to suppliers, customers, and communities, creating ripple effects that amplify their positive impact. By cultivating cultures where purpose and profit reinforce each other, net positive companies create the foundation for lasting transformation.

Chapter 7: Systemic Transformation: Reshaping Markets for a Thriving Future

The journey toward net positive business represents just the beginning of a broader transformation needed to create a thriving world. As companies master the principles of responsibility, long-term thinking, stakeholder value creation, and transformative partnership, they develop the capacity to address even larger systemic challenges that transcend individual businesses or industries. This final frontier of net positive leadership involves working to transform the fundamental systems that shape our collective future. Net positive companies increasingly take responsibility for their broadest impacts on society. Beyond their direct operations and value chains, they consider how their existence affects communities, systems, and society itself. This expanded view of responsibility includes the effects of political influence, advertising messages, and contributions to societal well-being. When Microsoft invests $500 million in affordable housing near Seattle, it acknowledges responsibility for its role in driving up local housing costs. This systems-level thinking represents a profound shift from traditional corporate responsibility focused on direct impacts. Challenging consumption patterns represents another frontier for net positive thinking. Our current resource use would require multiple planets to support a decent quality of life for all people. Net positive companies pursue three increasingly ambitious paths: decoupling production from resource use, building circular economies, and developing regenerative solutions that improve natural systems. Some pioneering companies have even questioned whether we need to consume as much as we do—Patagonia's "Don't buy this jacket" campaign and KLM's suggestion that people fly less represent radical departures from traditional business thinking. Rethinking measures of success extends this transformation beyond individual companies to our economic system. GDP fails to measure what truly matters for human well-being—health, security, freedom, and connection. Countries like New Zealand have begun implementing "well-being budgets" that prioritize these factors alongside economic growth. Similarly, companies are exploring alternative ownership structures, from benefit corporations to cooperatives to employee ownership models, that free them from the tyranny of quarterly earnings and enable longer-term, more holistic approaches to value creation. Improving the social contract between business and society becomes increasingly urgent as technology transforms work. With automation potentially displacing hundreds of millions of jobs by 2030, net positive companies focus on creating livelihoods throughout their value chains. They invest in skills development, embrace inclusive hiring practices, and advocate for policies that support workers through transitions. Companies like Greyston Bakery demonstrate the power of "open hiring" that provides opportunities to those typically excluded from the workforce. The most ambitious net positive companies work toward bending the curve on capitalism itself. They recognize that a system focused solely on profit maximization has created unsustainable inequality and environmental degradation. By pricing externalities, reforming financial markets to focus on long-term value creation, and demonstrating that business can thrive while serving society, these companies help create a more sustainable economic model. They advocate for policies that align market incentives with societal well-being, such as carbon pricing, extended producer responsibility, and mandatory human rights due diligence. The challenges ahead are immense, but the momentum toward a net positive world is building. As more companies embrace this approach, they create a virtuous cycle of positive change that accelerates transformation across industries and societies. The future belongs to those with the courage to break boundaries, build trust, form transformative partnerships, and create cultures that put purpose at the center of business.

Summary

The net positive business model represents a profound reimagining of the relationship between business and society. By taking responsibility for their total impact, embracing purpose beyond profit, building trust through transparency, forming transformative partnerships, addressing difficult issues, cultivating purpose-driven cultures, and working toward systemic change, companies can create unprecedented value for all stakeholders while helping solve humanity's greatest challenges. This approach not only responds to growing societal expectations but creates tangible business advantages through enhanced innovation, stronger stakeholder relationships, improved risk management, and the ability to attract and retain top talent. The transformation to net positive requires fundamental shifts in mindset and practice. It demands moving beyond incremental improvements to reimagining business models and systems. It means embracing complexity and uncertainty rather than seeking simplistic solutions. It involves balancing competing priorities and making difficult trade-offs with wisdom and courage. The evidence increasingly shows that companies embracing these principles outperform their peers over the long term. They position themselves to thrive in a future defined by resource constraints, climate disruption, social expectations, and technological transformation. Most importantly, they contribute to creating economic systems that generate prosperity within planetary boundaries and social foundations—systems that truly serve humanity rather than undermining our collective future.

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Paul Polman

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