What We Learned in the Rainforest: Business Lessons from Nature

What We Learned in the Rainforest presents a surprising new business principle: by applying strategies and practices gleaned from nature-by emulating what it once sought to conquer-business can adapt rapidly to changing market conditions and attain greater and more sustainable profits.

With clear, direct language and dozens of real-world examples, Kiuchi and Shireman show how a company can become a complex living system that doesn't merely balance competing interests but truly integrates them. Examples from leading companies include:

How Coca-Cola CEO Doug Daft uses diversity to drive sales
How Intel founder Gordon Moore creates profit by design
How Bill Coors builds businesses on the theory that "all waste is lost profit"
How Shell profits as an industrial ecosystem
What Weyerhaeuser and activists learned from each other
How Dow earns 300% returns, and Dupont builds market share with eco-effectiveness, and more

This book shows that the old model of business-the machine model that pitted business against nature-is growing obsolete. In the emerging economy, businesses excel when they emulate what they once sought to conquer. They maximize performance as they become like nature, like a complex living system. By moving beyond the industrial machine model, and applying the dynamic principles of the rainforest instead, business can learn how to create more profit than ever, and to do so more sustainably.

Written by two would-be "arch enemies"-a hard-nosed CEO of a major corporation and a dedicated environmentalist-this book doesn't just balance competing interests, it integrates them into a truly revolutionary new paradigm. Kiuchi and Shireman present numerous real-world examples from leading companies-business strategies and management practices that maximize business performance by all measures: economic, social, and environmental. They illustrate the powerful business model provided by nature for driving innovation, increasing profit, spurring growth, and ensuring sustainability.

Tachi Kiuchi is one of Japan's best known and most iconoclastic corporate executives. As chairman and CEO of Mitsubishi Electric America, he built the company's brand in the U.S. and managed the company's transition from the old to the new economy. Today he continues to press for profitable and sustainable business practices at Mitsubishi and other major Japanese corporations.
Bill Shireman is one of America's leading environmental advocates. He wrote California's bottle bill recycling law and has brokered deals between some of the world's largest corporations-Coca-Cola, Coors, Nike, Mitsubishi, and Weyerhaeuser-and most impassioned activists-Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network, and the Sierra Club. Today he is CEO of Global Futures, serves as President of the Future 500, and leads a Corporate Accountability Practice (CAP) in partnership with Manning Selvage & Lee.