Built for a Better World: How Seventh Generation Pioneered a Movement That Changed the Purpose of Business - Paperback

by Jeffrey Hollender (Author), Geoff Davis (Author)

A Fast Company Press book

He built a $700 million sustainable business from a $0 mail order catalog. Then his own board fired him. Then Unilever bought the company and proved he was right all along.

Jeffrey Hollender is the cofounder of Seventh Generation, one of the most influential sustainable businesses in American history. For four decades, he proved that a purpose-driven company could be radically transparent, employee-owned, mission-led and wildly profitable at the same time. Built for a Better World is his unfiltered inside account of exactly how he did it, what broke along the way, and what the sustainable business and ethical leadership movement still gets dangerously wrong.

This is not a polished success story. It is something far more valuable. It is an honest, firsthand account of what it actually takes to build a values-driven company inside a profit-driven system without losing your mission to market pressure, board politics, or the relentless pull of short-term thinking.

Hollender does not write from a distance. He writes from inside every failure, every governance crisis, every hard-won breakthrough, and every moment where purpose and profit collided head-on.

For founders, entrepreneurs, business leaders, MBA students, sustainability professionals, and anyone building an organization around corporate responsibility and conscious capitalism, this book delivers what no business school case study can: the unfiltered truth.

What you will take away from this book:

• A proven framework for building a purpose-driven business that scales without compromising its values
• The inside story of how Seventh Generation became a landmark case study in sustainable business, social entrepreneurship, and regenerative business strategy
• Hard-earned lessons on radical transparency, ethical leadership, employee ownership, and B Corp governance that most business books are afraid to tell
• A direct challenge to every assumption the corporate world makes about the relationship between profit and purpose
• A roadmap for the next generation of ESG leaders, impact investors, and conscious capitalists who refuse to choose between doing well and doing good

Jeffrey Hollender has spent five decades at the intersection of sustainable business strategy, social justice, and corporate responsibility. His story is not just one company's journey. It is a blueprint for a better model of business entirely.

If you believe business can be a force for good and you are ready to build one, this is the book you have been waiting for. Get your copy of Built for a Better World today, and start building what the world actually needs.