Professor Schrynemakers English 101: Value-led entrepreneurship: Books and Websites for Inspiration

... "Why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty from customers and employees alike? Even among the successful, why are so few able to repeat their success over and over? People like Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, and the Wright Brothers might have little in common, but they all started with why. It was their natural ability to start with why that enabled them to inspire those around them and to achieve remarkable things. In studying the leaders who've had the greatest influence in the world, Simon Sinek discovered that they all think, act, and communicate in the exact same way -- and it's the complete opposite of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be lead, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY. Any organization can explain what it does; some can explain how they do it; but very few can clearly articulate why. WHY is not money or profit--those are always results. WHY does your organization exist? WHY does it do the things it does? WHY do customers really buy from one company or another? WHY are people loyal to some leaders, but not others? Starting with WHY works in big business and small business, in the nonprofit world and in politics. Those who start with WHY never manipulate, they inspire.

The instant #1 NEW YORK TIMES Bestseller "A must read for anyone hoping to live a creative life... I dare you not to be inspired to be brave, to be free, and to be curious." --PopSugar From the worldwide bestselling author of Eat Pray Love and City of Girls: the path to the vibrant, fulfilling life you've dreamed of.   Readers of all ages and walks of life have drawn inspiration and empowerment from Elizabeth Gilbert's books for years. Now this beloved author digs deep into her own generative process to share her wisdom and unique perspective about creativity. With profound empathy and radiant generosity, she offers potent insights into the mysterious nature of inspiration. She asks us to embrace our curiosity and let go of needless suffering. She shows us how to tackle what we most love, and how to face down what we most fear. She discusses the attitudes, approaches, and habits we need in order to live our most creative lives. Balancing between soulful spirituality and cheerful pragmatism, Gilbert encourages us to uncover the "strange jewels" that are hidden within each of us. Whether we are looking to write a book, make art, find new ways to address challenges in our work,  embark on a dream long deferred, or simply infuse our everyday lives with more mindfulness and passion, Big Magic cracks open a world of wonder and joy.

The Blue Sweater is the inspiring story of a woman who left a career in international banking to spend her life on a quest to understand global poverty and find powerful new ways of tackling it. It all started back home in Virginia, with the blue sweater, a gift that quickly became her prized possession-until the day she outgrew it and gave it away to Goodwill. Eleven years later in Africa, she spotted a young boy wearing that very sweater, with her name still on the tag inside. That the sweater had made its trek all the way to Rwanda was ample evidence, she thought, of how we are all connected, how our actions-and inaction-touch people every day across the globe, people we may never know or meet. From her first stumbling efforts as a young idealist venturing forth in Africa to the creation of the trailblazing organization she runs today, Novogratz tells gripping stories with unforgettable characters-women dancing in a Nairobi slum, unwed mothers starting a bakery, courageous survivors of the Rwandan genocide, entrepreneurs building services for the poor against impossible odds. She shows, in ways both hilarious and heartbreaking, how traditional charity often fails, but how a new form of philanthropic investing called "patient capital" can help make people self-sufficient and can change millions of lives. More than just an autobiography or a how-to guide to addressing poverty, The Blue Sweater is a call to action that challenges us to grant dignity to the poor and to rethink our engagement with the world.

The fascinating story of an entrepreneur who, with little more than an idea and lots of determination, built a financial empire of over 600 cosmetic stores in 38 countries. Roddick, owner and chairman of the board for The Body Shop, has a strong business sense combined with a solid commitment to social justice. Besides selling natural cosmetics made from plants collected from all over the world, the stores and their staffs are dedicated to environmental and social activism. Roddick's company has worked to protect the rain forests of South America, helped orphans in Romania, and employed poverty-stricken youth in India. This story will appeal to YAs because of its unconventional view of business; they will appreciate the energy and philosophy this good-humored and perceptive woman. The illustrations are almost surrealistic and the photos and drawings are artistically placed throughout. --Deanna Kuhn, Thomas Jefferson Sci-Tech, Fairfax County,

Female entrepreneurs are a growing force to be reckoned with. Each year, more and more women take the initiative and start their own business ventures-at twice the rate of men. Women continue to reshape the business world with innovative models, both large and small. So why is there a lack of clear-cut, expert advice aimed at this dynamic female audience? In The Boss of You, Emira Mears and Lauren Bacon, founders of Raised Eyebrow Web Studios Inc. and co-editors of the well-known webzine Soapboxgirls, set out to answer this question. As intelligent entrepreneurs and straightforward writers, Emira and Lauren offer insight into beginning--and sustaining--small businesses from the female perspective. Peppered with stories from women who have been there, from cautionary tales to success stories, The Boss of You provides readers with real advice and career options that will allow them to live their values and achieve their own version of work-life balance. Whether you are an established professional or an entrepreneurial newbie, The Boss of You is the definitive guidebook for starting, maintaining, and enjoying your own business.

"[Joel is] a beloved local financial superhero, and this book is a brilliant roadmap to purposeful investing." --Catherine Ludgate, Manager of Community Investment, Vancity By 2050, $50 trillion will change hands in North America in the largest generational wealth transfer ever. It will remake the world and be the biggest money-making opportunity in history. "Business as usual," founded on exploitation and environmental ruin, is over. Climate catastrophe, reactionary politics, and widening inequity have put the world on edge. Meanwhile innovations are shifting the economic ground, and an entire generation is pounding the table for real change. Capitalism is evolving into a force that can restore the planet, transform the global economy, and bring justice to people. Joel Solomon, impact investor and change agent, lays it on the line. The Clean Money Revolution is part memoir of an inspiring thought leader's journey from presidential campaigner to pioneering investor, part insider's guide to the businesses remaking the world, and part manifesto for a new vision of profit, power, and purpose. Meet some of the people behind this massive shift, and discover the role you can play in the $50-trillion movement toward true prosperity. A must-read for investors, wealth advisors, aspiring entrepreneurs, and all who want their values and money to work together to transform the future. The Clean Money Revolution is on. Join it! "Good helpful stuff to do with your filthy lucre." --Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's Tale "Joel Solomon so eloquently lights the path society needs to take in order to ensure future generations can flourish on a sustainable planet earth." --Reverend Yearwood, President of the Hip Hop Caucus AWARDS SILVER | 2018 Axiom Book Awards: Ethics FINALIST | 2017 Axiom Book Awards: Business & Economics

Designing for the Greater Good features interviews with leading designers who do cause-related work for myriad types of organizations. Whether branding an identity for a non-profit, designing invitations for fundraisers, pitching slogans, or creating marketing material, it is critical that the graphic design of cause-related organizations attract attention to their goals, events, and campaigns; Designing for the Greater Good provides practical advice and examples for effective cause-related design projects. Featured is a wealth of eye-catching full-color examples, including the wildly successful Lance Armstrong "Livestrong" campaign, and a valuable Q&A with influential designers from both government-funded and private non-profits.

"The first important book of the 21st century. It may well revolutionize the relationship between business and the environment." --Don Falk, Executive Director, Society for Ecological Restoration   The Ecology of Commerce is the provocative national bestseller that addresses the necessity of merging good business practices with common sense environmental concerns. Nearly two decades after its initial publication, this controversial work by Paul Hawken has been revised and updated, arguing why business success and sustainable environmental practices need not--and, for the sake of our planet, must not--be mutually exclusive any longer. An essential work, Hawken's The Ecology of Commerce belongs on the bookshelf of every concerned citizen--alongside Capitalism at the Crossroads by Stuart Hart and Al Gore's Earth in the Balance and An Inconvenient Truth.

In the tradition of Octavia Butler, radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help to shape the futures we want. Inspired by Octavia Butler's explorations of our human relationship to change, Emergent Strategy is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help designed to shape the futures we want to live. Change is constant. The world is in a continual state of flux. It is a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, this book invites us to feel, map, assess, and learn from the swirling patterns around us in order to better understand and influence them as they happen. This is a resolutely materialist "spirituality" based equally on science and science fiction, a visionary incantation to transform that which ultimately transforms us.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WALL STREET JOURNAL #1 Best-selling Business Book Based on the highly acclaimed NPR podcast, How I Built This with Guy Raz, this book offers priceless insights and inspiration from the world's top entrepreneurs on how to start, launch, and build a successful venture. Great ideas often come from a simple spark: A soccer player on the New Zealand national team notices all the unused wool his country produces and figures out a way to turn them into shoes (Allbirds). A former Buddhist monk decides the very best way to spread his mindfulness teachings is by launching an app (Headspace). A sandwich cart vendor finds a way to reuse leftover pita bread and turns it into a multimillion-dollar business (Stacy's Pita Chips). Award-winning journalist and NPR host Guy Raz has interviewed more than two-hundred highly successful entrepreneurs to uncover amazing true stories like these. In How I Built This, he shares tips for every entrepreneur's journey: from the early days of formulating your idea, to raising money and recruiting employees, to fending off competitors, to finally paying yourself a real salary. This is a must-read for anyone who has ever dreamed of starting their own business or wondered how trailblazing entrepreneurs made their own dreams a reality.

For women entrepreneurs (and anyone sick of the status quo), this smart, unapologetic collection delivers fifty proven hacks to leapfrog over obstacles and succeed in business. "A must-read for any woman who has a great idea and the nagging thought that doors are closed to her; Molina Niño helps to blow them open."--Publishers Weekly Think the most critical factor for becoming a great entrepreneur is grit, risk-taking, or technical skills? Think again. Despite what every other business book might say, historical data show the real secret ingredients to getting ahead in business are being rich, white, and male. Until now. Leapfrog is the decades-overdue startup bible for the rest of us. It's filled with uncompromising guidance for winning at business, your way. Leapfrog is for entrepreneurs of all stripes who are fed up with status quo advice--the kind that assumes you have rich friends and family and a public relations team. Refreshingly frank and witty, author Nathalie Molina Niño is a serial tech entrepreneur, the founder and CEO of BRAVA Investments, and a proud daughter of Latinx immigrants. While teaching budding entrepreneurs at Barnard College at Columbia University and searching the globe for investment-worthy startups, she has met or advised thousands of entrepreneurs who've gone from zero to scalable business. Here she shares their best secrets in the form of fifty "leapfrogs"--clever loopholes and shortcuts to outsmart, jump over, or straight up annihilate the seemingly intractable hurdles facing entrepreneurs who don't have family money, cultural capital, or connections.

Whether you care about adventure sports, the fate of the natural world, or pure brand maintenance and business success, Patagonia, Inc. is one of the earth's most interesting and inspiring companies. For almost forty years, its reputation for unsurpassed high quality, maverick innovation, and long-term environmental responsibility has put it in a class by itself. And everything flows from Patagonia's founder, Yvon Chouinard. Chouinard's creation myth is now an American business legend. As a child, he moved with his father, a French Canadian blacksmith, and the rest of his family to Southern California in the 1950s with little English and less money. He escaped into mountain climbing as a teenager and by his early twenties was among the best climbers in America, making famous first ascents of a number of notorious faces. When he decided he could make better climbing tools himself for less money and when his fellow climbers agreed and clamored for more, a way of life became a business. Some forty years later, Yvon Chouinard still summits peaks around the world (though he now spends more time surfing). Patagonia still makes exceptionally high-quality things, only it now earns more than $250 million a year from worldwide sales, and Chouinard is able to leverage his concern for the natural settings he's spent a lifetime enjoying. His resolve to minimize Patagonia's impact on the environment has led the company to make its famous fleeces out of recycled soda bottles and to donate at least 1 percent of its revenue each year to environmental causes, among many other things. In Let My People Go Surfing, Yvon Chouinard relates his and his company's story and the core philosophies that have sustained Patagonia, Inc. year in and year out. This is not another story of a successful businessman who manages on the side to do great good and have grand adventures; it's the story of a man who brought doing good and having grand adventures into the heart of his business model--and who enjoyed even more business success as a result. Let My People Go Surfing gives ample evidence as to why there have been few more influential companies in American business in the last forty years than Patagonia, Inc. The long-awaited memoir/manifesto from legendary climber, businessman, and environmentalist Yvon Chouinard, founder and owner of one of the world's most inspiring companies, Patagonia, Inc.

The first book to explore menstruation in the current cultural and political landscape, feminist icon Gloria Steinem said Periods Gone Public, "maybe the beginning of liberation for us all." From eliminating the tampon tax, to enacting new laws ensuring access to affordable, safe products, menstruation is no longer something to whisper about. Jennifer Weiss-Wolf shares her firsthand account in the fight for "period equity" and introduces readers to the leaders, pioneers, and everyday people who are making change happen. Weiss-Wolf--the woman Bustle dubbed one of the nation's "badass menstrual activists"--explores why periods have become a prominent political cause. From societal attitudes of periods throughout history--in the United States and around the world--to grassroots activism and product innovation, Weiss-Wolf challenges readers to face stigma head-on and elevate an agenda that recognizes both the power--and the absolute normalcy--of menstruation. "At its core, a menstrual movement, and Periods Gone Public, is about challenging all of us to face stigma head-on. And about advancing an agenda that recognizes the power, pride, and absolute normalcy of periods. Indeed, President Trump, we do have blood coming out of our wherever. Every month. It is not a secret." After centuries of being shrouded in taboo and superstition, periods have gone mainstream. Seemingly overnight, a new, high-profile movement has emerged--one dedicated to bold activism, creative product innovation, and smart policy advocacy--to address the centrality of menstruation in relation to core issues of gender equality and equity.

For more than sixteen years, Jeffrey Hollender has presided over Seventh Generation, a world leader in manufacturing environmentally friendly, nontoxic household products.What Matters Most illuminates the successful practices of Seventh Generation-and many other pioneering companies around the world-to demonstrate the pragmatic aspects of a corporate strategy that hardwires social and environmental concerns into the company's culture, operating systems, and business relationships. It shows business leaders how to assess their own company's performance, adopt a socially responsible approach to doing business, and embark on a path of long-term growth. "Jeffrey Hollender...has shown that doing the right thing does pay off both in terms of building a brand that generates great customer loyalty and a business that has consistently generated superior growth." -Ben Cohen, Founder, Ben & Jerry's "What Matters Most stands out for its moderate and thoughtful analysis of a controversial issue.... Hollender is a voice of reason in today's important debate on corporate responsibility." -Soundview Speed Reviews