Recommended Reading - Conscious Capitalism and Social Entrepreneurship

back to Resources Directory

Traditional entrepreneurship measures success using a solely profit-based bottom line. In contrast, social entrepreneurs use a triple bottom line that assesses the impact on people, planet, and profits. Social entrepreneurs foster transformational change through innovative and systemic approaches that will benefit disadvantaged communities as well as society at large.

Richard Barrett's book Liberating the Corporate Soul: Building a Visionary Organization breaks new ground in helping business leaders take responsibility for the whole. He shows how to make intangibles such as the values which drive behaviors measurable and thus changeable within an organization.

How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas by David Bornstein has been published in over twenty countries. Some consider it the Bible for social entrepreneurship. It profiles men and women from around the world who have found innovative solutions to a wide variety of social and economic problems.

Change or Die: The Three Keys to Change at Work and in Life by Alan Deutschman, senior writer at Fast Company, examines why behavior is to hard to change even when one's life is at stake. He points to three critical keys—relate, repeat, and reframe—to help us make important positive changes in our lives and understand what will be needed for lasting societal change.

Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall's book Spiritual Capital: Wealth We Can Live By opens a fascinating discussion about the necessary ingredients to sustainable capitalism, which they define as wealth that enriches the deeper aspects of our lives. They contrast material, social, and spiritual capitalism and the types of necessary intelligence associated with each one. Danah Zohar brings her perspective as a physicist and management educator, and her husband Ian Marshall shares his as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist.

This groundbreaking book Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization by Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fischer-Wright offers a brilliant framework for the evolution of organizations from barely functioning to thriving in a way fulfills the triple bottom line. This is a must-read for any business leader or member of a collective group effort.