Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit
Should companies be run to earn a profit, or to serve a purpose? In this ground-breaking book, acclaimed finance professor and TED speaker Alex Edmans shows it’s not an either-or choice. Drawing from the highest-quality evidence and real-life examples spanning industries and countries, Edmans demonstrates that businesses driven by purpose are consistently more successful in the long term.
But a purposeful company must navigate difficult trade-offs and take tough decisions. Edmans provides an actionable roadmap for company leaders to put purpose into practice, and overcome the hurdles that hold many back. He explains how investors can discern which companies are truly purposeful rather than greenwashing, and engage with them to unleash value for both shareholders and society. And he highlights the crucial role that citizens can play as employees, customers and investors, in reshaping business to improve our world.
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Reviews
I do not know whether capitalism is in crisis. But I do know Alex Edmans’ superb book makes the case, compellingly and comprehensively, for a radical rethink of how companies operate and indeed why they exist. It is the definitive account of the analytical case for responsible business, but is at the same time practical and grounded in real business experience. It is a tour de force.
Politicians are calling for large companies to be regulated or split up. In this compelling book Alex Edmans argues that there is indeed a problem with corporate behavior but that the solution may be simpler: change corporate purpose so that companies focus on growing the pie rather than grabbing more of it. Edmans’s arguments are a powerful and persuasive antidote to much of the conventional wisdom about the corporate world.
This is a brilliant and timely book, taking the business case for responsible capitalism to a whole new level. Edmans provides a rigorous, evidence-based approach, exploring numerous angles around how businesses can (and, as he shows, must) combine profit-seeking with purpose as well as the role investors and other stakeholders can play in driving a genuine win-win approach. He tackles counter-arguments head-on and has the courage to expose examples of virtue-signalling that falsely discredit responsible businesses. Citing case studies collated over decades, it’s a great read, too, offering fascinating examples well beyond the usual suspects. Grow the Pie really has the power to convince the sceptics as well as encourage advocates consider new ways to embed the approach further in their businesses.
This is a must-read book for anyone interested in reforming capitalism – particularly in its role of serving wider society. The book is grounded in academic evidence, but the ideas are highly practical, and recognize the need for business to be profitable as well as purposeful. Most companies have inspiring mission statements; Edmans provides a concrete framework for translating them into actual practice. He does not shy away from acknowledging the challenges with running a purpose-driven company – balancing multiple objectives, achieving investor buy-in, and making decisions where the key criteria cannot be quantified. Instead, he tackles them head-on, giving clear guidelines on how to navigate tough decisions, which he illustrates with powerful examples.