Photo: Noah Buscher | Unsplash
This article in "Yes! Magazine" asks the question, “Can enterprises be designed for something besides providing maximum gain to their owners and investors? Can we even imagine enterprises designed to keep the planet thriving?” It goes on to showcase examples, such as B Corporations, for-profit businesses that also have committed to balancing a larger social or environmental purpose with their profit motive, and employee-owned benefit corporations. The founder of Dansko shoes, Mandy Cabot, went in this direction -- not just once but twice. First, instead of selling the company, she turned the enterprise into a B Corporation and sold the company to its employees through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan. Then, seeking to make an impact investment, she bought a rainforest in Belize. It also is a B Corporation, which manages a farm and the new Silk Grass Wildlife Preserve. At Silk Grass, investment, profit, trust ownership, regenerative agriculture, and local governance are all working together as a system to create flourishing, ongoing, living wealth. “Cabot is investing capital to feed the wealth of the rainforest… Investment is occurring. A business is making a profit. But capital and corporation are in service to life, not the other way around,” said the article. So, apparently, we can envision a new version of business that is designed to keep the planet thriving.
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