Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take

by Andrew S. Winston

If being green is about doing less damage, and sustainability about reaching zero, net positive is about making things better.

Opportunities for women still lag badly as well; at the current pace of change, it will take 257 years to close the gender pay gap.

In short, businesses cannot thrive in societies that fail.

Net positive pays off for investors. Doing right by stakeholders is good for shareholders. After years of guesswork, solid data now shows that companies focusing on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance get equal or higher returns in the market. In 2020, 81 percent of sustainable indexes outperformed their benchmarks, and over a four-year period, portfolios weighted toward higher ESG scores “outperformed their benchmarks by between 81 and 243 basis points.”48 And yet, investors still ask nervously whether ESG will outperform. That’s an odd question—no asset class in history has had to prove that it always does better.