Good Growth

Business has a sustainability problem―and sustainability has a business problem, as many companies are fearful of engaging with social and environmental issues, owing to the costs and risks.

Addressing these dual challenges head on, this book provides a blueprint for putting social and environmental benefits at the center of a company’s growth agenda. Many sustainability books offer 30,000-foot strategic views and broad-brush guidance on the business of “doing well by doing good,” but here is a ground-level guide for profitably integrating social and environmental benefits into individual products and brands. The book introduces the rapidly emerging phenomenon of social impact markets and shows how companies can capitalize on these new pockets of consumer demand through focused strategy, data-informed implementation, and a clear eye on the future, including how digital technologies are creating new ways for brands to expand their social impact and make social mission a central element of competitive strategy.

Weaving together rich case studies and practical tools, this research-backed and real-world-ready guide fills a critical niche: a hands-on strategy playbook for the executives charged with driving brands’ top-line growth, making it essential reading for C-suite leaders, R&D, product, and brand managers, board members, NGOs, as well as MBA and executive education students.

Omar Rodríguez Vilá, PhD, is an award-winning marketing professor at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. His research focuses on modern marketing practices and the relationship between social impact and brand growth. He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and a former global marketing executive at The Coca-Cola Company. Dr. Rodríguez Vilá earned a PhD in Marketing from Emory University and an MBA from Northwestern University. He lives in Atlanta with his daughters Shanti and Lucca.

Sundar Bharadwaj, PhD, is the Coca-Cola Company Chair Professor of Marketing at the Terry College of Business, University of Georgia. He has held tenured or visiting faculty positions at Emory University, the Wharton School, the Indian School of Business, HEC (Paris), Singapore Management University, and BI (Oslo). His research focuses on financial market outcomes and the societal impact of marketing. He has held brand management and sales management positions at several multinational firms.