 My job in the world is generally kind of synthesis, really seeing what's happening, the world bringing mega trends together, seeing what companies are starting to do and saying, okay, here's where we're headed. It's not to me, futurism. It's really like presentism. It's like looking at what's already happening and saying, this is the stuff that's obviously, you know, already accelerating, and where do we need to go? Andrew Winston is my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas brought to you by 1.5 Media and Innovators Magazine. Andrew is a globally recognized expert on mega trends and how to build companies that thrive by serving the world, named to the Thinkers 50 radar class of 2020 as a thinker to watch. His views on strategy have been sought after by the world's leading companies, including 3M, DuPont, J&J, Kimberly Clark, Marriott, PepsiCo and Unilever. Andrew is the author of The Best Seller's Green to Gold and The Big Pivot. Andrew's latest book, Net Positive, which we're here to talk about today. I've got a copy right here holding up. The only thing that's missing is Paul's and Andrew's signature in it. How courageous companies thrive by giving more than they take. It was co-author with Paul Pullman, who used to be the CEO of Unilever. It is a finalist for the Financial Times and Mackenzie Business Book of the Year Award. Net Positive has been called an electrifying strategy for business success and unlike any other book, you've read by Merrick Chairman Ken Fraser, a wonderful rallying call by Sir Richard Branson and Pure Heresy by Ariana Huffington. Andrew is also a respected and dynamic speaker in reaching audiences of thousands at executive meetings around the planet. He received degrees in economics, business and environmental management from Princeton, Columbia and Yale. And if I'm not wrong, you even served as director at Yale. Is that right? There was a kind of research project for my first book. That was, I guess I was called the director. I don't know, that was probably a highfalutin word for researching the first book, Green to Gold with my co-author, Professor Dan Esty, who was still at Yale. Yeah, that's amazing. It's so good to have you, welcome to the show. Thanks, I'm really glad to be here again, it's good. Yeah, we did your other books. We kind of did them both at the same time. We did Big Pivot and Green to Gold or Gold to Green and Green to Gold and I spoke to you then and we just had a great, it was a great resonance and it was a nice talk. Our path has crossed over the years many times and we actually talked, you actually had a pre-copy on your shelf last time when we talked about it. So I knew it was coming, we tickled it a little bit. Now it's here. So I just, well, not just, but a few weeks ago I was in Glasgow at COP26. I saw Paul, I saw his wife. Matter of fact, it was at the Ikea Foundation type of cocktail thing at the New York Times Climate Hub and he was all over and talking about it as well, doing amazing things. So I am interested to hear directly from the source how have you weathered this crazy time is, are you saying, man, I'm so glad this is out how have you been and give us an update since the last time we met, what's going on? Well, it's been great. I mean, look, the times we're in are pretty weird. As we're recording this, we're kind of locking down again and things are getting canceled and schools are kind of pulling back, colleges are pulling back. I mean, we're still in this pandemic. I think some say this next month or two could be the worst we've had. So it seems like we're trying to get used to this as a way of life now, but that's hard. You know, when we started writing the book a couple of years ago, we, before the pandemic started, we wanted to get it out as fast as possible. And then the work took longer than we thought it took. I mean, the time we needed to really kind of dig in and really lay out what it means to be a business that's really serving the world and creating more good. And we thought, oh, it's gonna be out late. And then by the time the pandemic was rolling along and we knew we were gonna come out probably fall of this year, it kind of worked out well from the book. I think we're coming out in a time in the last couple of months where companies are as focused on their role in society as they've ever been. And there's a lot of talk about becoming a regenerative enterprise or now a net positive enterprise. You know, all these words are kind of swirling around. And the books done really well. I think we're probably sold about 50,000 copies which for a business book is a lot in a couple of months. And I'll probably almost definitely surpass my previous books, which sold well. But we had a bunch of distribution problems like so many other supply chains. We were out there in mid-October doing media. Paul was on the TV every day. I was doing podcasts and TV and radio and then the books didn't get there. They didn't get to stores. They didn't, you know, people were pre-ordering on Amazon and never got it. There were just all sorts of weird distribution problems. So we're kind of relaunching. I mean, that's maybe an overblown phrase for it but we're gonna kind of come out again in a few weeks and say, okay, it's more available now. Because it's really painful to have any product you make and not people want to buy it and then they can't actually get their hands on it or they don't run into it, they don't see it. So it's been really word of mouth and done very well but I think we can do much more. You definitely can do much more but you have done very well considering all the hassles. I just want to break down a couple of things that you just mentioned and I want to kind of go deeper into what that means. And I've noticed that because I do a lot of podcasts with book authors and most of them are all, I live in Hamburg, Germany, most of them are from the UK books or are from America and a few from Australia. All of them, not only because of the pandemic but because of the Brexit and the new EU regulations that went into effect in January, Europe has a strict tax now to distribute or bring books or any kind of goods from other countries into the EU that aren't there that have to have extra taxes. None of these systems were updated especially during the pandemic to say, hey, the EU just switched this law and now we've got to charge this tax. And so what happens is people are still ordering, they're still processing, the books never arrive because the system doesn't say, hey, we've got to charge this customer at the end. Now in the delivery process, an extra fee for whatever they've purchased of a product. And not only is that not happening, the systems aren't in place, but the notification, hey, your books here at the post office or at the customs area, you need to come by pay this tax or this fee to bring this outside product into the European Union in order to get it. So we're just in a pandemic, we're in this crazy time already and but it's not a natural catastrophe, it's not, you know, and the systems are already failing us. And so I want to kind of just first say, I mean, that ties to what you write about where we need to go and what your thoughts and feelings are about that, not necessarily in a negative way, but just the realities of it. Yeah, I mean, look, well, just as a quick comment on this, I guess we're partly lucky as authors because people can buy the ebook and the audio book and those are sold well. I think for business books, they generally do, but I think particularly for this one, it's done really well. But as you said, I mean, the industry is just kind of really antiquated and it's really hard to get data. We don't really know how many audio books are sold, we won't know for potentially months, which is really strange, you know, for any industry to sell something digitally and not be able to convey that data. But we have a sense, but the supply chain stuff we ran into, it's just a tiny microcosm of what's going on. And I think we've learned over the last couple of years that we built supply chains in the world and built kind of manufacturing for efficiency, right? That's kind of the direct result of making shareholder maximization your only goal, right? You do things like you make something in one place because the larger the scale, the lower the cost. And then you ship it in and out. And what happens is if that one place is under water or there's a drought or there's a storm, it takes out your whole supply chain. And I think we've seen versions of that for years in extreme weather. And then the pandemic in terms of changing where we were demanding things, right? All toilet paper, all of a sudden was going home instead of to home and businesses and restaurants, et cetera. And it just screwed everything up. And we're still kind of meandering through that. A couple of months ago, I flew over in my first in-person event, I was at the Sustainable Brands event in San Diego and then had to go to San Francisco and I flew right over the Port of LA. And I took this picture looking down because it was a totally clear day of, I counted about 50 ships just sitting offshore. And I was like, okay, this is what it looks like in practice, they're just sitting there. There's not enough, there haven't been enough truck drivers or haven't been enough dock workers. It's tied to really everything we're talking about. The whole issue of inequality, people aren't getting the wages they really want. So they're, you know, they don't wanna stay in crappy jobs, so there's not enough of them. I mean, it's just, it's all connected. And I think I hope that this kind of raises awareness about how connected everything is and how connected we all are because that's the only way we're gonna get to solutions is kind of be in this together. I'm glad you brought that up and it's so eloquent. And I think a lot of us are starting to see these connections. And that's also why there's a lot of, not only the microscope's been shown on some of the problems and what we could do to fix them, but there's also a lot more people saying, hey, to change, to fix it, I need to change and to kind of look at new models, look at new ways of looking at the world and thinking about things. One of the terms that you kind of mentioned also is this resilience. How do we have some resilience in the system? And really, I look at it as a bigger picture of how our infrastructures are kind of lagging behind. So we're not keeping up to speed with our exponentially growing world. And it's not just about efficiencies, but the infrastructure's just not there locally or globally to handle minor ripples or minor things in the system. And it's resiliency is something that you talk about. And then we're gonna talk about really beyond resiliency where we need to go as well. But I wanna hear your takes on that and how that as well ties into this. I mean, look, resilience comes, and from my last book, I read a bunch of really great books on resilience. There's Anti-Fragile by Nicholas Talib, Nicholas Nassim Talib, who wrote the Black Swan and all that. Anti-Fragile is really great kind of about the extremes that we face and you can't predict everything. And there's a couple of books about resilience. And it's really not that hard to lay out kind of key principles of what makes a natural system resilient. A lot of it's about diversity, right? That's part of what makes nature resilient is you don't rely on any one system. And it's circular and things are feeding into each other. And resilience means having kind of a broad set of strengths and a broad set of foundations. And that's true in your personal life, right? You need some physical health, you need some support emotionally and societally from friends and family. I mean, you need like all these things to kind of be really resilient and be able to handle the ups and downs. And again, we built a system. And the reason, I mean, let's be honest, the reason we haven't invested enough in like actual physical infrastructure in the US in particular, but I think really everywhere is still part of that same shareholder maximization thing is part of a larger kind of neoliberal economic model, right? For 50 plus years that government's always the problem. We should shrink it as much as possible, lower taxes as much as possible. And basically not invest in everything will be privatized. Everything will be handled by the private sector. That just doesn't pan out. You know, I work in the private sector, I'm a fan of it but there's stuff that just has to happen and scale infrastructure is really one of the main ones. When you get kind of libertarians and you know, neoliberals in a room, they'll admit we need defense, that's about it. But and sometimes you'll get them behind infrastructure but look how hard it was. I mean, the Biden administration passed infrastructure for the first time and every president's been talking about it for years just to keep roads and bridges from falling down, right? And that's like the most basic level versus investing in a modern infrastructure much more public transport, much better grids, smarter grids so we can move energy around. We can have cars plug in all the things we need to build a modern, healthy, more sustainable society. It takes investment, right? And think how much better it is. I mean, if you've gone into like say an airport that has been recently renovated or you get to a train station or a bridge you've driven over many times and it's new, it actually feels good. Like it's the weirdest thing but there's this sense of like, I feel the sense of like community like LaGuardia was really one of the ugliest, worst airports in the world in New York and they've redone over half of it now and they're building the rest, it's great. And you walk in and you feel like, oh, this is a community that wants to invest in itself. I feel cared for. I feel like we've all done this together. It sounds crazy, but I really believe in building great infrastructure and like schools that are the best in the world, the nicest for kids. They should be in a great place, not a place that's falling down. But we have this philosophy that's been dominant that I don't know any government dollars a waste of dollar and we have to really break that down. Of course we should be efficient with our shared dollars but you can't make efficiency the only goal, right? Over the outcomes you want which is a better life for everybody a more thriving community. So I like Paul, I do a lot with the Sustainable Development Goals and Sustainable Development Goal Advocate and Sustainable Development Development what is development? It's basically a residential commercial public development but with a key factor, not efficiency but sustainable development, one that continues over time. And a lot of people don't really catch that connection. So in business, and you mentioned it and this is why I'm bringing it up is these efficiencies that we're, how do we maximize shareholder profit? How are we efficient? How do we squeeze every last drop out of what we do? But you're not talking about efficiencies you're talking about infrastructure updates and renewals that's not just a shiny new greenwashing or a new coat of paint, there's also renewable energy there's also efficiency of how we handle trash and how we handle waste and how we handle energy in a whole different way and it feels more like this co-op community even in an airport where you're just a passing through kind of back and forth that just is an amazing feeling. And the same thing, I mean, kind of the whole message or story of the work I've been doing for 20 years and in this book is that this is a better path for business, right? Over the long-term, there might be some short-term sacrifices, I really call them investments and it's the same thing we're talking about with infrastructure, we're acting like it's efficiency versus a nice new infrastructure but a newer infrastructure will almost definitely be more efficient over time, right? You put the money in up front and it doesn't like if a bridge doesn't fall down that saves a lot of money and lives and pain. And the problem is it's always been true in business and government. People don't get rewarded for avoiding risk for the bridge that didn't fall, right? Or the FDA that caught some substance that would have killed people and in a drug or in a food it's really hard to reward that in our system, right? And you kind of react to problems and it's hard, look, it's hard to do. It's not like we don't try but it's hard to reward smart risk avoidance. But I feel like you have to start by working backwards, right? And that's kind of the one of the key messages of net positive is that outside in is this incredibly important input into how you think about your business and about organizations meaning there's thresholds in the world. There's only so much stable climate only so much water, air and there's kind of physical thresholds and then minimum kind of moral thresholds. Like you want, you hope that everyone can have a level of sufficiency in the world all eight billion of us that have a chance to thrive. And it's in between that, you know minimum human threshold and maximum stuff threshold which is what, you know the economist Kate Raworth calls donut economics, you know in that shape of a donut that we need to operate in and that takes investment but boy is that rewarding, right? To be in a place where nobody suffers unnecessarily everyone has a chance and we're living within our means but that takes investment, right? It's a balancing act. Yeah, it also ties to and you tickle upon this as well the Stockholm Resilience Center Dr. Professor Dr. Johann Rockstrom and the planetary boundaries. How do we live within the safe operating spaces of our planetary boundaries? There's nine boundaries but it's basically this donut economics is this circular economies that there's a balance or a safe operating space for us to work. There's one more thing that kind of ties to this infrastructure that is really interesting because we see it in a lot of ways but I don't think it snaps in a lot of us. For instance, today, Kindergartner preschool and first graders according to the global population today that would need to be going into school we would need to build 63,000 new classrooms every single day or every single week, sorry in order to keep up with that population growth for those entering kindergarten preschool and first grade. Around the world, we're building less than 100 a month and so that infrastructure is far behind and now I'm only talking about that those youth who are entering into those orders I'm not talking about healthcare you were talking about highways and bridges and airports but how about our healthcare? How about all these other things that are just not keeping up to speed because we're pinching pennies to invest in military or somewhere else? It's what the, I mean, they weren't the only ones to do this but the Democrats in the US about the Build Back Better plan here they talked about it as social infrastructure. I think it's a great phrase, right? Social infrastructure includes healthcare that you don't go bankrupt if you get sick and childcare pre-K so people can go to work. Like these are things that support the economy and support wellbeing. And it's just really hard to get consensus in some countries in particular the US more than others to support that kind of spending. There's this sense of whether people deserve it or not, right? Whether they're getting a free ride and it's, you know, I think it's all about what every system you design has errors, right? And you have to decide which errors you want, you know classically like our justice system is innocent till proven guilty in the US which means we lean towards innocence meaning you let some people off who were guilty rather than lock up people who aren't. That's kind of the goals or the trade-offs you have. And I think there's just differences of opinion about which errors you want. I think there's one philosophy that wants nobody to get anything they don't quote deserve, right? Don't give anything to anyone and pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And that's one philosophy. And I'd rather have a system where there is some percentage some small percentage taking advantage but no kids go hungry. Nobody goes bankrupt because they got sick. Like that's my, I'd rather have the error be some people get away with something which by the way is not a massive amount to live on food stamps or basic healthcare. Like these aren't like huge thriving amounts of money. They're just the very basics. Hold on one second. I totally agree. Running out of power. Okay, yeah. There's a couple other things that are real great. And I want to touch on you that you're not setting the bar low here. So I was just at COP26 and Glasgow and it was a complete failure. So the countries and the nations, they and the negotiators they didn't keep us at 1.5. They didn't reach the Paris agreement. Not, there were some things achieved but I believe we left at 2.3 degrees and then clear up upwards of 2.5 degrees of warming. And the big buzz and you talked about buzzwords or things that are kind of hot buzzwords is net zero. Net zero. Let's go carbon neutral, let's go net zero, things like this. And in my opinion, private sector, corporations stepped up to the plate even by the third day of the first week of the COP. The nations were failing us in doing whatever they do but we're hearing numbers, 130 trillion US dollars. Mark Carney and other groups and also then by the second week, 140 trillion, 150 trillion all from private corporations, organizations, commitments now hopefully we can get them all to deliver. And then this net zero and you have a unique way of describing this is kind of what net zero means that it's a flat lining of death. I'd like you to describe that. But why do we always got to wait until the bar set and say, okay, here's the standard, we got to meet this and set the bar low. And this is saying, let's set the bar high. Let's leave things better than we found it. So I want you to tell us a little bit more about those two things. Yeah, look, it's purposely aggressive. I think it's reflective. I mean, look, I've always tried to, I think put the flag out there, put the bar high but it's really reflecting a practical reality. I started writing about science-based goals, 10 years ago is in my book that came out eight years ago and I was early on that I got a lot of pushback from people saying, why would a company set a goal based on science? And that's becoming rapidly the norm now. And I made the case at the time with clients they would go present if I could get them to present options to the C-suite and say, okay, we want to set a goal and like the science-based like let's cut emissions in half or let's get to 2050 zero was presented as this stretch target. And I've been making the case for a decade that's the minimum, right? That's, this is what science says is the minimum to avoid the worst catastrophes. A stretch goal is actually to go beyond that to something like net positive. And until I started working with Paul and we could kind of put this down on paper. I didn't have the full language. I hadn't really thought through like a whole book about it. So, you know, and we were on Christiana Figueres's podcast, you know, the former head of the climate team at the UN and she was commenting that we were out there when most companies and countries aren't even sure they can get to net zero. And we're already saying that positive and kind of already pushing the boundary. I think it's just practical, right? We waited too long. I think COP, the COP meeting result would have been perfectly adequate for something you want to improve and get better at and would have been great 10, 20 years ago. It's just inadequate to the science. And this isn't like a green piece opinion or this isn't just, you know, progressive. It's just the fact of the science. And so we really believe that companies that are going beyond, I mean, net zero just says we want to get to zero carbon but it's not even necessarily the same as decarbonizing. We have to get to like actual zero carbon in the economy. So you can't by 2050 be planting trees over here and emitting like you just really have to take carbon out of the equation and that's much harder. And I guess, you know, my belief is that because there's always laggards and it's always hard to get some countries and some companies, the leaders have to go beyond. They have to make up for that gap in a way. And we believe that those companies will outperform and those countries will outperform and they already are. I mean, the companies that are taking on a longer term view, trying to go down this path to real resilience, to real regenerative, to real net positive, they've been outperforming in recent years. They're doing better. They're attracting more talent, right? All of it. During COVID, during economic downturn, they're proving that it's a better model. I mean, look, you can't guarantee, it's always been ridiculous to say, oh, sustainable investments have to prove they always outperform. That's been the weirdest thing to me because there's no investment thesis in the world that has to prove that. Cause if it always outperformed, all the money would go to it. I mean, it would be the only way you'd invest. But for now it's been outperforming and I think it will in the long run. And I think, you know, we've approved that, they outperformed their peers for the 10 years Paul was there. So I look, I think it's just a, to me, this sustainability thing's always been, I got into this 20 years ago for really practical reasons. Like we're using the world too fast. It's not gonna be stable. It's not gonna be literally sustainable. We're not gonna be able to keep doing this. So practically speaking, we have to change paths. And that's, you know, that's what I keep trying to do with books and consulting and speaking is kind of push companies and executives to think more ambitious in a more ambitious way about where we're headed. What I really like about the book is the story and the way you bring in Unilever, you bring in Paul, he wasn't always with Unilever. He was with another organization before and he came to Unilever and then did this really kind of far out way of thinking and also was one of the first to kind of be asked to be part of the sustainable development goals and kind of join in this whole movement and do a push. And during this time, there are several examples that between Nestle and Unilever where there's kind of some things and the reality is for the big part, Unilever is a soap company, but they have food products. And I kind of wanna know how did that marriage to the book come about? And why is Paul such a good example to go forward with this? And what were some aha moments for you as well as you're going through this process? Yeah, I knew Unilever pretty well. They were the company I talked about the most in my previous book, The Big Pivot. I was on their advisory board in the US for years. I didn't know Paul that well. I had met him a couple of times. I mean, he's met millions of people, it seems like. I mean, he's a truly global connected individual and he's a real genuine person. So he approached me a little over two and a half years ago about, hey, I keep getting asked to write a book. Harvard University Press is really pushing and that's who I've been working with and writing for for a number of years. So it kind of was a good marriage, but he wanted someone who can write. English is the first language, I guess is part of it, honestly, but also he's not a writer. He's a communicator for sure and he's run giant companies, but he doesn't sit down and write that much, but also someone who knew the space and could bring content and perspective. So I think it's been a good pairing. So my job in the world is generally kind of synthesis, really seeing what's happening, the world bringing megatrends together, seeing what companies are starting to do and saying, okay, here's where we're headed. It's not to me, futurism. It's really like presentism. It's like looking at what's already happening and saying, this is the stuff that's obviously, already accelerating and where we need to go, that outside in threshold perspective. And working with Paul has been an aha kind of personally. He is a genuine human being. He really does want success for everyone. He's a very personal leader. I learned a lot and we have some stories in the book about him writing handwritten notes, doing, looking at 300 executive development plans and commenting on each of them. He's, as like when you meet CEOs, this is typical. He works so hard and so many hours and I can't keep up with that. I'm more of a life balance, read a book at night, hang out with, I just, I don't have that kind of energy, I think. But there were aha's about, for me about this sustainability thing that I've been working on for years that were really kind of nuances to how do you pursue this and build this kind of company? And one is that you can say the long, the medium to long run is that we improve in all dimensions and we move towards net positive, which is improve the wellbeing of everybody we touch. But that there are choices. It doesn't necessarily mean trade-offs, but that you can't do everything at once. And he has that practical reality of being CEO. And we talk in the book about this that you might have one factory that says, this year we just got to be, we got to cut some costs and we got to cut energy use and helps build our sustainability goals, but we're really focused on this. Another brand might focus on doing some kind of, purpose-based initiative and really connecting to the community and investing in that as part of their marketing. That you're gonna have different kind of goals that move things along, different stakeholders that are pleased and affected in different ways. And that you have to make some choices. This is strategic, like any business thing. And that was like a really subtle nuance to this. It's so easy from the outside to just say be better to companies, but to really dig in and say, how do you do that? What are the choices you make? What's the framework? And I think, we provided, I hope, like a framework of purpose starting with yourself and your business and giving people in the company the leeway to make smarter decisions and that mix of things they need to accomplish over time because he really pushed back on that short-term pressure. The reason you can't make a choice, like, oh, I'm gonna do efficiency for this six months and then work on purpose. The reason you can't do that is because you have to hit your quarterly numbers for the market and you need to free up people. So I think it was really critical. The critical thing he did was he stopped talking to investors every quarter and he freed up his managers basically to make broader choices, to be smarter, to have more ownership, further down the chain. He talks about bringing complexity up in the business instead of pushing it down and making people make hard decisions. Like bring the really hard global and shared challenges up to the top people and let the people in the middle and below make smarter decisions for their customers, for their people and just concentrate on making the business better. I think it's that mix of skills that's really hard to capture, but I think we did, I think we did. So there's a couple other books and acquaintances. John Elkington, Green Swans, and Paul have connected before as well. And I don't know about you as well, but also Paul Hawking and his new book Regeneration and there's been some mixed support there as well. But there's this thing that emerges in the book. It's kind of this regenerative capitalism or this regenerative economic principles is kind of going, leaving the world better than you found it as an organization, as a business, as a corporation that and you have an eloquent way of saying that, what do you bring into the world? And so I don't even want to take it out of your mouth. I'd like you to say it and tell us a little bit more about those connections because those are some of the buzzwords that we're hearing beyond net zero and resilience. I think those things are fabulous. They've been around forever. Regeneration is not a buzzword, it's been around forever. Leonardo da Vinci wrote about it. But I think that's the direction more of where we need to go for the future. And that's what you so eloquently, you and Paul both kind of bring together in the book. And I'd like to hear more about that. Yeah, so as I said, net positive is about ambition. It's effectively equivalent to regenerative enterprise. And we talk about it in the book. I talked about regenerative in my last book, eight years ago. And it's, as you said, these terms and circular, right? Circular has been around really forever, but there's been academics talking about it for 40, 50 years. And just again, as it became clear in the world that we were starting to bump up against limits, circular kind of naturally comes out of it. And then as you watch nature more, you realize it's circular and regenerative. It's improving. I think, but we chose net positive in a very deliberate way. My first book is called green to gold. It's completely unsubtle. It's green equals gold, right? It's telling business people, because at that point and still for many businesses, they need to hear this green thing is an anti-business, right? It doesn't just cost more. And so we said, oh, you can make money from this. That was kind of the core message. You can cut costs and risk and you can innovate and create brand value and all of these good things. The language matters for reaching people. So I feel like I don't really care what language people use as long as the ambition level is high. Walmart, for example, has adopted regenerative. They wanna be a regenerative enterprise. They're talking about that with their suppliers. Great. Some of the fashion companies Paul's worked with very closely have put out regenerative type goals like saving six times more land than the land they use in their supply chain through cotton and everything. That whatever works for an organization, if that's the language they can use, I just find that there's such a mass market of people that are still like, what's this sustainability thing? Like we in the space have been using these words forever, but there's still a huge number, especially abroad, where I talk to people in a lot of different countries and ESG is now the phrase is one of the big phrases and it's kind of just reaching some of these places and regenerative can sound like too hard in a way. Like, you know, they don't even know what it means. And I get that. Most people say, are you gonna talk to me about agriculture, about farming? Well, that's been the one clear use of it. You kind of get it when you go, okay, a form of agriculture that sequesters carbon that improves the air, improves the balance of carbon in the atmosphere, you kind of get that. It's hard to know what a regenerative human rights policy is in your supply chain and apparel. I know it means things like living wages for everyone, but we just kind of went with positive. Like you wanna leave things better than you found them. You wanna have a positive impact just for simplicity's sake in a way. And if you wanna use different language at different times in different places, you could use regenerative for part of your impacts. You could use just positive for others. That's fine, right? I just think it's the level of ambition. So everyone you mentioned, John Elkington's a friend, a mentor, he's been a genius. You know, I guess my career has been somewhat similar to his, but he's done so much. And Green Swans is a great book. I mean, he's got 20 books, which shocks me. I'm on four and I can't imagine doing 20. Honestly, it's so hard. And of course, Paul Hawkin, right? Paul Hawkin, you know, the ecology of commerce is like the book that really kicked this, really kicked off the business. I mean, once you get past kind of silent spring, just saying business has this impact, he's the one who first put down, hey, business has this deep role in the ecology of the, you know, economies. It's, what, 40, 30 years ago now, right? The book's out 30 years ago, I think this coming year. And it's foundational. And the, you know, the regeneration he's talking about, the drawdown stuff, really critical. And I think there's some really critical books out right now that add to the canon of raising the ambition level. And John's always fun to read because it's just a fun, it's just a fun read about Green Swans instead of Black Swans. These things that cause amazing positive impacts, right? We're seeing those exponential changes in things like renewable energy, right? We need to get those going and invest in them and really kickstart, you know, accelerate them. So these are all really important views and all worth looking at. But, you know, ours is generally kind of how do you build a company around this? And for, I think, NGOs and government leaders, they should read ours also to understand what a company needs to look like and how they can help those companies become more net positive and regenerative. So I didn't bring them up because I think there's a lot of books out there. I think your book definitely stands out. And there's only a few books, honestly, that really move in that right direction that people even know about. The interesting thing about regeneration from Paul Hawkin is he says, people don't understand these terms. It's exactly what you just said. What is sustainability? What does that mean? Is it for me? Is it for cities, countries, corporations? Who's that for? What does it mean? Regeneration and ESG. But what we have seen is the COP26 of the biggest news and information and awareness that any COP in history has ever had. More private and public sponsorships, so to say, and awareness and eyes and media that people are waking up. They're like, oh my goodness, there's something to this. What is this? That's unbelievable. But now there's a, but I still don't understand what they're saying. You're saying there's, that's okay. Here's some models, here's some ways to look at it. You don't need to be a scholar in the 17 different meanings of sustainability or the 11 different meanings of resilience. But this is what it means and how it goes. The other thing is pivotal at this time in July, I think it was July 14th or 12th of this year, the EU ESG taxonomy came out. That's where they say, here's our taxonomy, here's the kind of regulation for sustainable investing. You know, when there's a regulation or a taxonomy that comes out that you're already seven years behind and that's about as low as the bar can get. So that's why we need net positive. That's why we say, hey, let's not try to strive to this standard that has just been set and oh, we've got another requirement that we have to meet, but there's another model that if we set the bar higher, we think more in the future that just is a better operating system for everybody in your organization. And that's kind of what I really get out of this and I wanna hear even more from you of kind of some stories and things that you feel about that. Yeah, so I mean, I sort of said before when we're talking about language that they aren't mutual friend, Hunter Loven's choice of sustainability is basically just getting your nose above the water, like the thing's filling up and you're just saving yourself. Regenerative or net positive is really kind of getting yourself out of the hole and building something positive. I'll just tell you kind of quickly, I guess what's the order of battle in the book that we lay out and it took a lot of work, Paul and I were speaking a lot about the structure of kind of the order you do things, the things that are important to get done first so you can start to build this kind of organization. And we start like inside, like really inside with yourself, like the first, after we lay out the principles in the book of kind of a net positive company, we go through the kind of steps really. And the first thing is like, who are you? And as a leader, as a person reading this, we have a chapter called, how much do you care? Like, do you care that there's a billion or two billion people without access to water, food, these kind of basics? Do you care the climate is in so much trouble? And if you do, okay, what's your purpose? What are you trying to do in the world? And how does that tie to the work you're doing? And then we move into like organizational purpose, right? Which there's a lot of discussion about. And I think we captured a lot of how Unilever evolved from when Paul got there and had some of this purpose and history for sure, but really made it the core of the business. And so how do you bring purpose into the business and into everybody at the company, the executives, the employees? And then we talk about building kind of these sets of goals that are really huge, that are really thinking big and what we call blowing up your boundaries. So you're reacting to those thresholds that are out there and saying, okay, we need zero waste or zero carbon because of the shared problems. But you're still working on kind of yourself, right? But with the outside perspective. And then the transition to the outside world is really building trust and transparency. And that we talk about is really opening up, being humble, being vulnerable as a business, opening up to NGOs and critics. We talk about the difference between critics and cynics. There's the people who just wanna knock you down, but there's some really smart NGOs that are critical, but they can bring real knowledge. And then you kind of finally get to in some sense the heart of the book, which is partnerships. And we talk quite a bit for a couple chapters really about different kinds of partnerships to solve shared problems with your peers, your supply chain and these systemic challenges, like sitting down with civil society and government to solve the really big challenges. So those are kind of the main steps. We talk about culture as well, that we kind of end with that in a way because it's like the result of all the things you do that you've built this kind of culture. And then we have this chapter that has become the one that most people commented on or that we've gotten a lot of attention for, which is we talk about as the elephants in the room, which is we name all these things that nobody wants to talk about, that we say you can't be positive if you don't address these, in particular things like paying taxes and having companies like Amazon that really haven't paid taxes. Or, and it turns out, Bezos himself, not really paying any taxes. And corruption, of course, CEO pay, we say right out, they just make too much money, compared to their staff. And that's getting so much more attention. I was just reading like this month's Fortune magazine and there's just much more natural discussion of CEOs, the ratio to pay is, because this whole great resignation is there's an article in Fortune that says it's really, we need pay raises. This is from Fortune, right? Saying like the people need to be paid more and that ratio to CEOs has to close because inequality is kind of destabilizing. So we lay out all these things, human rights, real diversity and inclusion and say, you're not positive if you're not, at least at the table on a bunch of these issues. And they're uncomfortable, right? I mean, part of this is being uncomfortable. But so is anything where you make progress. Like it's not comfortable necessarily to run or bike or do the things you do for exercise. You can get a runner's high, but it's not like it's always fun, right? I mean, like it is hard work, but the feeling of improving of, and then day to day, you feel better. I think that's kind of what we're talking about as a business, you work out all these problems, you work on your issues, you find your strengths and your purpose and aggressively lean into it. And I think you just build this, I think much more fun and interesting place to work and to be. I love how you summarize the book there. It is so true that not only Paul, but you as well, Paul's been involved in the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the International Chamber of Commerce, the Global Compact, a global SDG advocate, and on and on of World Business Council for Sustainable Development, all these different international global organizations partnering, coming together with Coke, Pepsi, Unilever, Nestle, whoever in there to learn, to grow that it's not a competition, but how can we all go there together much more sustainably, much more resiliently and help each other for these coming future problems that we're all going to be facing. And I've always loved that about Paul. And I mean, that's how I originally first got to know him as the International Chamber of Commerce. So I think that's such a vital thing. So as you're practicing what you preach, but then let's set the bar higher, which is almost a thought for futurism. You know, what is the future gonna look like where we're going? How are we gonna make sure we get there and we have that thing, how we started our discussion today? How are we gonna have that sustainable supply chain or have the resources delivered? Are they gonna be there? Are they gonna be gone? Is the system gonna break down? And it's definitely for everyone. And it's one that I've been pushing a lot and promoting just for the simple fact, a lot of people are like, yeah, we're going net positive. Mark, can you come over and talk to us about, you know, net zero and net positive? And I'm like saying, if you go net zero or carbon neutral, you're dead, you're flat lining. And let's set the bar higher. Let's capture carbon. Let's go net positive. Let's do things in a positive direction and leave the world better when we found it. So that's exactly what the buck sums up. I don't want to give too many teases or takeaways, but it's very courageous. And I absolutely, yeah, I absolutely love it. What is, you know, with all the trials and tribulations, what's the craziest thing you're kind of learning? You're like, boy, I never would have expected that. I mean, you mentioned the elephant in the room, but is there any other kind of things that have come out? You're like, I didn't see that one coming. Yeah, I mean, like I said, there's some nuance to how you, you know, Paul really brings to how you run a company like this. I just want to say one thing, which is you say it's courageous and it's funny that we've accepted in business as part of this shareholder thing that you should grow, grow, grow. And so we're fine, right? Every business should grow. It should grow its profits. It should grow its impact on the world. But we've apparently accepted that those impacts are whatever they are. They're, you know, we use resources up. We use people up. But if you say, well, grow your positive impact, they're like, hey, wait now, like that's somehow anti-business. It's like, why? If you're a fan of growth, how about we grow the positive impact on all stakeholders, you know, not just shareholders at the expense of others? So I think, you know, trying to speak about it in that way, I think the, I don't know if it's a big aha, but the hardest conversation, the question I get a lot as I do, I've been doing events and podcasts every day for a couple of months and will for a while, there's usually something about growth and consumption because people are a lot smarter about it, especially younger audiences. They're looking at the future and saying, how can we keep using? And it's a really tough conversation. And I think part of the aha for me that I really, I had thought some, but it really developed as we wrote this is, and we talk about it towards the end of the book that the really biggest questions that a net positive company has to start to answer are capitalism and growth and consumption and democracy and science and fact and all these really challenging issues that are scary. And if we don't handle, we've got really big problems. And I think this question of growth and consumption, we talk about it briefly in the book, but I feel like growth is okay, but it matters what kind of growth, right? As we go to eight, nine, 10 billion people, there's gonna need to be a growth of quality of life for people, so there's sufficiency. Now we can leapfrog. So just like with mobile versus phones, landlines, you could leapfrog to renewables in a lot of places in the world and not have to have as much of a footprint, but there's still gonna be more use, more material stuff. So that has to grow for people to be doing better. So what has to shrink? I think we have to have a really hard conversation. I don't know if you've read Hans Rosling's book, Factfulness About. And what the big aha in that book is that there isn't developing countries and developed countries. There is, but that there's really levels of wealth and quality of life within every country. And some countries have more of one level than another, but there's kind of that one, two, three, four. Four is the real base, a few dollars a day. One is Europe, US, the majority of middle and upper class, a billion maybe or so people. I feel like that billion, we have to have a hard conversation. Again, had we started this 30 years ago, we'd probably be okay maybe getting to circular, but now we do have to cut emissions drastically. We have to cut material use. We're not at circular solutions yet. We're not at regenerative agriculture yet. So I think we have to have this hard conversation about allowing growth in the places where people really need it and really questioning what's needed versus wants. And I think the younger members, the young millennials, the Gen Z, in the richer parts of the world, they are having that conversation. They want simplicity. They're buying more secondhand clothes. They don't want as much stuff. They don't want as big a house. They don't want cars as much. So we're starting to have that really hard conversation. And there's a quote that we have in the book from Gandhi and it's so powerful. He just says, the rich must live simply so the poor can simply live. And to me, that's the conversation we have to have. And in business, it's very hard to say, hey, let's degrow. Let's have some degrowth in parts of the world and really assess what's needed by the wealthiest. And I think we've, because of the pandemic, been able to question things like flying around a lot. Like we can probably do less of that, right? And that's a big footprint in my life. I had a huge carbon footprint flying all over the world to talk about climate change, ironically, you know? But that's the way you reach people. But now, I think we're discovering this is not the same as in person, but it's not as bad as we thought. And you can have influence. You can reach people. So I think we got to do more of this, right? More of not driving and flying around, asking what we really need, all of that. So these are the hard, the really hard, uh-huh, some questions in this book. Before the pandemic, I was sat on a board of 21 different airlines trying to advise them about sustainability and the future of flight and things. And they never liked what I had to say, absolutely not. And their deadlines and dates, and there have been some, so there is a United Nations organization that's specifically around aviation and the sustainability of aviation and the future. And they had just in 2019 and January met the first deadline towards carbon offsetting, Corsia program and things like that. But their dates were still so far, 2050, 2060, to even kind of change that field. And now we look at it today, there's so much talk and noise about how they're thinking, okay, how do we do different fuels? How can we fly sustainably drone taxis and stuff? So no matter how bad the pandemic is, no matter how bad all this has come to, it's been a wake-up call for many people that we need to shift our business models to something else and be net positive. How can we still fly? But doing it in a way that doesn't harm human health and our planet and things like that. There's one other thing. So you mentioned Kate Roeworth and the donut economics. I had Tim Jackson of the cusp and he wrote A Bairty Without Growth. Prosperity Without Growth and Post Growth were his two books and he was on the podcast as well. The discussion is, is we kind of need to shift to a different economic model. And so I wanna ask you the question, is it circular economy? Is it a planetary boundaries economy? Is it mission economics from Mariana, Matsukata, is it donut economics? Is it cusp economics, ecological economics, steady-state economics? I mean, there's so many and most of us wouldn't know those because we're not involved in that. So I wanna first ask that model, but the second thing is really, and Kate says this in donut economics, the way we're being educated around economics is this white male with a tie who's learning these outdated principles of economics in an outdated system form of education, whatever school you go to. And the same thing is for net positive, you also wanna start a movement of education in how you're not only Harvard, not only Yale, but everywhere, how do we change these models so that the current startups, the current leaders are getting the right education? We get a movement in new curricula that is telling people, hey, be prepared for the future. This is where we need to go. And so those are the two things. How do you make sense of that? And how do we get the movement going to get it into the curricula? Like we said before, I think all the terms are somewhat equal. I think we're all talking about the same thing, which is living within these thresholds, whatever you call it. I will just say that I got an economics degree 30 years ago now, and it's completely outdated. It was still fundamentally econ 101 and 102 about maximizing utils and, you know, companies coming in, new entrance to the point where the marginal profit goes down to zero, all the stuff that ignores all of the monopoly power really. You talk about it, but you're like, oh, you know, new entrance, that hasn't worked out with the tech giants, right? They're just more and more profitable. I just read that the companies in the last couple of years, in the last year as inflation, their profits have actually been going up. They've been basically passing along the inflation directly to consumers. So they have the money to raise wages, by the way. Like that's kind of the conclusion in this fortune article I was reading. So in a way, I'm not sure that, again, the terms matter, we're all kind of saying the same thing. And what was the second half of your question? It was about those terms. It is, I mean, so you're getting ready to start. And I think I've already seen some teasing that net positive. How do we get that into curriculum? How do we get more people aware of the book? And because it's a different type of a model, it's a different, almost a different type of economic model in your organization, if it's done right. Yeah, no, so I think there's been people working on the education question for years, there's a bunch of skills that we need now. Like I think from grade school up, teaching systems thinking, teaching this kind of level of connection, teaching how to work together. And I will say I've seen, as my kids or two teenagers, as they've grown up, they did a lot of group projects and using Google Docs and things in elementary school even. And I was like, and presenting. I was like, oh, there's some really interesting trickle down of the skills you need that have gotten into the lower grades, but there has to be much more about the connectivity of everything. And what the sustainable issues are, what the thresholds are. And then I think at the undergrad and graduate level, especially business schools, it has to get into the core curricular. Right now, there's been this broad agreement for decades that your opening semester of business school is a strategy class, marketing, operations, finance, accounting, but you don't really talk about sustainability until it's an elective. And those electives are really popular. Our friend Rebecca Henderson at Harvard has had this class Reimagining Capitalism that's the most popular at Harvard Business School for years and years. So I think the younger generations are asking for it, but there's only a handful of these integrated sustainability MBAs where that's the purpose or as masters in sustainability, but all curriculum needs to change. Like if you're going through a strategy class and not talking deeply about stakeholders or about carbon or operations and not talking about value chain impacts, I don't think you're ready for the modern world. And so we are working on a movement. We're talking to professors where, and there's organizations like UN Prime, which have assembled hundreds of schools around the world to say we got to get more sustainability into business school education. Paul's been involved with some of these as well for a long time. So we're trying to figure this out. How do you get it into curriculum? How do you get this level of ambition and even down into undergrad? And my books have often been used in classes at great schools, so that's part of it. But just getting it into another sustainable business elective isn't enough, right? It has to be getting this thinking into the core. And that's a very tough thing to do, right? There's a lot of inertia in academia. There's a reason they got to this kind of set of classes. And it's hard to say, where's the hub of deciding what that core is? Like it's kind of a network system conclusion. I mean, I know there's bodies of education, but who really decides that there's, and this is the kind of stuff we're starting to figure out. We're also trying to foment a movement with young people. We've been talking to YPO, the Young Professionals Organization, and getting their advice on how do you excite 20-somethings to make this so that our goal is that people come out of school and say, I want to work for a net positive company. Like that's the language of ambition that they want and that they'll only work for a net positive company. And so how do we get that movement going? So I ask people to come to our website, netpositive.world, sign up for the kind of newsletter and kind of communication as we figure this out and send us feedback, where should we start? We're getting some really great ideas from people. I just found out a guy is starting a net positive like business chapter in Scotland. Like that kind of thing where you try to make it something that is done locally, is done regionally, that's how you start to see a real movement in how we talk about business. And that's the goal. I love that. So since Paul kind of left June Lever, I think it was 2019, wasn't it? When he left in December? He's gone on to a new organization, but he's still connected with all those international organizations that I mentioned. And so they have sections in there that are talking about how do we get it into curriculum? How do we get this book into the curriculum and those movements? Is he actively kind of as well shaping that as doing the teaching, getting that in there? What's his new organization or foundation? Imagine, is that the matter? Yeah, imagine as the group he started. He started with a few, yeah, I started to imagine with a few key folks, couple, you know, Unilever people, Case Croydhoff who ran North America, Jeff Seabright, who's been a longtime sustainability leader and basically was like the third author of the book. He was on every call and he was so integral. And Valerie Keller, who is a leadership purpose driven, kind of took Unilever's new team as they were transitioning from Paul to the new team through a whole process of getting kind of reengaging on their purpose and going deeper. And they started Imagine and they basically do what they call collective courage, basic bringing together big groups. Paul's brought together 25 or so CEOs from apparel, 25 or so from food and ag to work as a sector. And the fashion pact is one of the things that came out of it where they agreed as a sector to set science-based targets, biodiversity work to be regenerative and on and on. And they're also doing increasingly kind of, more corporate consulting with companies to help them go down this path. So it's more of a collective action organization at core, but also doing some consulting. And we're talking to like all the big consulting firms too. I mean, we want everybody, we're kind of open source. We want everybody to adopt this. Like one of the consulting firms bought thousands, 10,000 copies I think for their employees and other 1,000 like we wanted in everybody's thinking. And I don't really care. People will email me, oh, can we use the term? I'm like, it's a book, it's open. I mean, like it's not, we didn't trademark this. Like go, we don't have time. There's enough work to go around, right? We need thousands and thousands of companies and let alone the millions of SMEs. That's another piece of work we're looking at is do we write a version or a short or something that's really focused on SMEs that pulls out the stuff in there that's best for SMEs and kind of lightens up on the things that they can't do very, I mean, the big stuff that they can't do is really supply chain work. Pressuring suppliers is not what a small business is able to do, but so much of the agenda here, especially the innovation agenda, SMEs have so much, I think potential. And that's where a lot of the innovation in sectors comes from anyways. So anyways, there's lots going on. We're trying to make this a bigger movement and that starts with getting, frankly getting the book in as many hands as possible and getting people thinking about what it means for them and their business. I love it. The last and hardest question I have for you today is also my favorite. It's a little bit different than last time, but it kind of kind of is the same. I want you to answer this for you. Yeah. As Andrew Winston, what does a world that works for everyone look like to you? Yeah. It's funny. So I've been hosting a short run podcast myself and we ask everybody, what does the world look like in 20 years? And I haven't turned it on myself that much. I think a world that, you know, an economy or a world that works for everyone is one where everyone everywhere has the chance to thrive, the fair chance to thrive. It's not saying everybody's equal. It's not some equality of income or wealth. There's always going to be gaps. It's, as I said before, nobody goes bankrupt because they get sick, right? There's, it's, we talk about it in the book. There's the John Rawls philosophy, you know, philosophy, the veil of ignorance, you know, that thought exercise, which is how would you design a system if you didn't know who you were going to be in that system? That's the kind of system that I imagine, right? That everybody has a chance. Everybody is treated with the opportunity. It doesn't mean exactly equally. We recognize differences. People come from different backgrounds, but you have enough, right? You start with enough to eat, to have the basics, to have water, clean water, sanitation that you're able to, you know, send your kids to school. The kids don't have to work when they're little. They can go to school. Girls are educated. It's basically the SDGs, right? That's the business plan for a world that works for everyone is we've gotten rid of hunger and deprivation and we've controlled climate change enough so that everybody has a chance. And imagine, you know, people use this. It's a line that seems so tripe, but imagine how many Einstein's might be out there if you weren't losing billions of people a year to not being educated, right? Like what's the potential of humanity? And God knows we need potential and we need ideas. How do we get to this more livable place? I think having eight billion brains working on it is a hell of a lot better than, you know, the billion that can get highly educated. So, you know, that's the vision where it isn't just pull yourself up by your bootstraps. It's so often ludicrous. It's so beyond what some people are able to do. They don't have the bootstraps. They don't have shoes, right? I mean, it's absurd. So I think there's a base level of dignity and respect that we give everyone. And if you do that, you're also gonna respect the planet and its inhabitants so that you also want a stable climate, right? It comes from that same level of dignity. It's not a very dignified world to keep eating up our resources. So I know there's no elevator pitch version of that. It's a pretty complicated thing. And it's part of the reason, by the way, that I think all of us in sustainability always have like a, there's a communication problem versus the freedom, low taxes, like there's all these like quick words of the kind of non or anti-sustainability crowd. And we don't have those eight words because it isn't eight words, you know? It is a longer discussion about what it really looks and feels like to be in that kind of world. Love it. You've set up perfectly. And it ties- I wish I could do it shorter. I don't know if that was perfect. I don't want to do it shorter because I want that depth and substance. I really think you hit the nail on the head. There is no elevator pitch. There is no quick solution to solve humanity's suffering and our global grand challenges. If there was, we'd already have done it, but we need this systemic and very complex approach and address all of those facets to solve it. And I mean, that thought experiment, you know, how would you design it? How would you do that? Thought experiment is very similar to Kim Pullman's book, Imaginal Cell. There's one famous quote in there and it's the golden rule that's always been around. Treat people on the planet how you would like to be treated. When you designed it, when you can have that thought experiment, if you designed it any other way, then you're basically hurting yourself. So why not do it in a way that you would like to have it? You know, and so I think that's beautiful. And the optimistic, I think, point about this, and it's hard at times to keep optimism is that we actually have the resources, right? We have the money. We have almost all the solutions, at least for drastically cutting carbon, and then we'll need a little more innovation. You know, it's obviously not easy to just say we'll give everyone a vaccine, there's distribution. There's all these issues, but we have the money. And what's scary is two or three people on the planet have the money. Like Elon Musk and Bezos and Gates could pay for water for everyone, solar all over the world, I mean, easily, right? And we spent something like $20 trillion in governments around the world to fight the pandemic. So the money's there, right? Like we have the resources. So I feel like we're gonna kind of wake up to that at some point that we can do this. We actually can make a thriving world for all. Andrew, thank you so much for letting us all inside of your ideas. It's been fabulous. Everyone go out and get in that positive. We'll put all the links in the show notes, and I hope we can speak very soon. Thanks so much, Andrew. Take care.