Talent, Transformation, and the Triple Bottom Line: How Companies Can Leverage Human Resources to Achieve Sustainable Growth

PREFACE

OUR FIRST BOOK, The Triple Bottom Line: How Today’s Best-Run Companies Are Achieving Economic, Social, and Environmental Success—and How You Can Too (Jossey-Bass, 2006), introduced thousands of readers from the business world and elsewhere to the concept of sustainability. In its opening pages, we suggested the following simple definition: a sustainable corporation is one that creates profit for its shareholders while protecting the environment and improving the lives of those with whom it interacts.

We illustrated this idea with the image of the Sweet Spot—overlapping circles whose intersection shows where an organization’s business interests and the needs of society meet. We argued that in order to thrive in the twenty-first century, ...