Green to Gold
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How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage
Daniel C. Esty and Andrew S. Winston
Listen to Andrew Winston's podcast on "The Invisible Hand"
An (800) CEO-READ best-seller and top 25 business book for corporate America
This book explains what every executive should know to manage the environmental challenges facing society and the business world. Based on the authors' rich experience with forward-thinking companies around the world, Green to Gold demonstrates how corporations create value by building environmental thinking into their overall business strategies. Daniel C. Esty and Andrew S. Winston provide clear 'how to' advice for making sense of environmental challenges, and they offer detailed case examples of how companies achieve both environmental and business success—establishing an eco-advantage in the marketplace.
Green to Gold is written for executives at all levels and businesses of all kinds. It guides the business leader through pollution and natural resource management issues and the growing pressure from outside stakeholders to strive for 'sustainability'. While highlighting successful strategies, Esty and Winston also examine why environmental initiatives may fail despite best intentions.
With practical suggestions for incorporating environmental thinking into core business strategy, and with a clear focus on execution—not legalisms, platitudes and abstractions—Esty and Winston present a thoughtful, pragmatic roadmap that shows how companies can use environmental pressures and responsibilities to spark innovation and drive growth.
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While this book would have done a service in simply laying out its analysis of what is happening to make companies go green and why, the authors go far beyond that step and provide an extensive description of strategies for building eco-advantage. . . . For a comprehensive guide on the rapidly emerging norm of environment-inspired management and innovation, this book is a must-read.”—Inside Green Business
"The future of our country and our children's world depends on getting society on a sustainable track with regard to both energy needs and environmental requirements. It is up to corporate leaders to meet this challenge, and Green to Gold blazes a trail for businesses of all kinds to follow."—Michael Morris, CEO, American Electric Power
"Environmental issues and community concerns are increasingly part of the core business model and day-to-day operations of many companies. Green to Gold provides cutting-edge guidance for executives on how to execute this agenda—and gain an 'eco-advantage.'"—Antony Burgmans, Chairman, Unilever
"Every business, big or small, in manufacturing or services, faces environmental risks and opportunities. Esty and Winston show how companies have benefited from taking these challenges as strategic opportunities, but they also detail why corporate environmental initiatives often fall flat. There are important lessons to be learned from both the successes and the failures."—Bertrand Collomb, Chairman, Lafarge
"Environment and sustainability issues have become an important focus in business generally and in the financial world in particular. Green to Gold is rich with both big-picture thinking and practical 'how-to' suggestions that will help bankers, analysts, fund managers, and investors stay on top of the 'green wave.'"—Larry Linden, Advisory Director, Goldman Sachs
"Esty and Winston have produced a compelling blueprint for how companies can address critical environmental problems, from climate change to water, and improve their performance, gain competitive advantage, make more money, and win friends."—William K. Reilly, Founding Partner, Aqua International Partners and former Administrator, US Environmental Protection Agency
"Green to Gold is a must-read for the twenty-first century CEO. Esty and Winston provide convincing examples of how companies out-compete their peers by tackling sustainability head on, engaging stakeholders, developing NGO partnerships, and folding environmental stewardship into their corporate culture."—Tensie Whelan, Executive Director, Rainforest Alliance
"No executive can afford to ignore the green wave sweeping the business world. Esty and Winston show how to make sustainability a core element of strategy—and profit from it."—Chad Holliday, CEO, DuPont
"With analytic rigor, corporate environmental advisors and Yale professors Esty and Winston probe the intersection of business concerns and environmental stewardship. . . . A nuanced picture of the challenge and complexity that adding an environmental dimension creates for businesses.”—Kirkus Reviews
"A forthright but hopeful book about how to win the green revolution."—Biz Ed
“Based on their personal experiences and interviews with global corporate leaders, Esty and Winston chronicle the successes and failures of contemporary organizations to enhance their corporate value through a strategic commitment to global sustainability. . . . Although the book is oriented toward business leaders, anyone with an interest in business and global environmental issues will find it of value.”—Choice
"Green to Gold is a must read for anyone interested in investing in the vast emerging environmental markets."—Mark McGough, President and CEO, Pentadyne Power Corporation
"Green To Gold is a comprehensive catalogue . . . jam-packed with eye-opening corporate programs, defying the usual cant that environmental concerns will only hurt companies."—Toronto Globe and Mail
"Green to Gold provides the definitive thinking on how business leaders can address environmental issues in the new economy, a world where companies win by integrating company strategies with social challenges, rather than treating economic and social as separate and different."—Michael E. Porter, Professor, Harvard Business School
"What executives must know to manage the environmental challenges facing society and business."—Number 1 on CEO-READ's best-selling business books (November 2006)
Publication Date: October 9, 2006
20 b/w illus.