What We Learned in the Rainforest: Business Lessons from Nature

by Tachi Kiuchi, William K. Shireman

What We Learned in the Rainforest presents a surprising new business 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

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 economic, social, and environmental. They illustrate the powerful business model provided by nature for driving innovation, increasing profit, spurring growth, and ensuring sustainability.

250 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Nurete · Rating 2 out of 5]

So many books that purport to be about business and sustainability just don't go far enough, don't have the vision that is truly needed to make our lives sustainable and our earth inhabitable. A case in point is What we Learned in the Rainforest: Business Lessons from Nature by Shireman and Kiuchi.

Basically, they are saying that information is the key to our future because it's the only resource that does not run out.

Here's a quote: How does information make it possible to enhance both the economy and the environment? How can we design products and processes that use less energy and fewer materials and produce fewer toxins? There is only one way - by being smarter."

So, we should use information to build better cars or to build cars better (I think that's another quote from the book). But, no, that's not really thinking smarter, is it? Our entire way of life is built around an unsustainable model. To be smarter, we don't need to just build better cars; we need to stop driving. We need to transform the model, not merely make it more efficient. I was disappointed in this book.

[Molly · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is an ok book. it didn't tell me much I didn't know, but I'm pleased that some business execs bothered to learn and write it. I am curious if the reason that the Seattle Public Library doesn't have a copy is because it's rather scathing about Microsoft's business model.