What Best-in-Class Looks Like
Selected from the chapters of the book — organisations that have operationalised one or more principles in a way that is measurable, replicable, and instructive.
In 2022, founder Yvon Chouinard transferred ownership of Patagonia to a Purpose Trust (retaining voting control of the mission) and a Holdfast Collective (receiving all profits for environmental causes). The company's purpose — "we're in business to save our home planet" — became structurally undilutable. Future leadership cannot override it. Investors cannot extract it.
Denmark's most polluting energy company in 2006 completed one of the most documented corporate transformations in business history — divesting all fossil fuel assets and becoming the world's largest offshore wind developer. Its growth strategy was explicitly redesigned around planetary boundaries: every new project is now evaluated for biodiversity impact, and the company has committed to all new projects delivering biodiversity net gain by 2030.
Novo Nordisk has operated a Triple Bottom Line governance model since 2004 — embedding people, planet, and profit into board-level accountability. Its iCARE initiative expanded access to insulin in 50 lower-income countries at cost-level pricing, reaching millions of patients who would otherwise be excluded from treatment. Foundation ownership (the Novo Nordisk Foundation holds majority voting control) structurally ensures long-term stakeholder orientation over short-term investor extraction.
In 1994, Ray Anderson declared Mission Zero: zero negative environmental impact by 2020. Interface achieved it. It then set a harder target — Climate Take Back — designing modular carpet tiles from recycled fishing nets sourced from coastal communities, with a lifecycle that stores more carbon than it emits. The company's Net-Works programme transformed the supply chain into a regenerative ecosystem for fishing villages in the Philippines and Cameroon.
The Mondragon cooperative federation in the Basque Country is the world's largest worker-cooperative — 80,000 worker-owners across manufacturing, retail, finance, and education. Because workers own the enterprise, the Stakeholder Value Balance Matrix operates symmetrically: value created by workers flows back to workers, not outward to external shareholders. During the 2008 crisis, Mondragon transferred workers between failing and thriving cooperatives rather than laying them off — a resilience mechanism impossible under conventional ownership.
When digital photography destroyed the film industry in the early 2000s, Fujifilm and Kodak faced the same disruption. Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012. Fujifilm used its deep proprietary chemistry expertise — antioxidants, collagen compounds, nano-dispersion technology — to pivot into healthcare imaging, cosmetics (Astalift), and advanced functional materials. The pivot was possible because Fujifilm had mapped its core competencies against adjacent markets before the crisis, not after.
LIXIL developed the SATO toilet — a low-cost, waterless sanitation solution for communities without access to sewerage infrastructure — through a Human-Centred Design process involving 400+ household interviews in Bangladesh. The Corporate Theory of Change tracks not just units sold but disease burden avoided, female safety outcomes (women avoid open defecation at night), and community adoption rates. Its methodology is fully aligned with SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation).
Triodos Bank publishes the name, amount, and social or environmental purpose of every loan it makes — the full lending portfolio is visible to anyone. Founded on the principle that money should be used consciously and that transparency builds trust, it finances only organisations that benefit people and planet. Its additionality test is explicit: would these projects receive conventional bank financing? Mostly no. That counterfactual is the measure of its actual impact.