Triple Bottom Line. The map to building a wholesome business.
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The most driven entrepreneurs are motivated by a very personal vision. They’ve often experienced the very lack of things they’re setting out to create with their new ventures, whether in their own lives or lives of those close to them.
But they often don’t know how to build businesses that truly reflect their values and vision. Only a handful of people succeed in this, and a framework like Triple Bottom Line might be able to guide us on the journey.
Triple bottom line is a framework that outlines what it means to build a business that truly looks toward the future. It provides real, scientifically-grounded guidance on how to build a wholesome business — one that gives back fairly to those that founded the business, the people that surround it, and the planet that supports them all.
The framework, coined in 1990’s, is one of our first attempts at defining a wholesome business. It was famously ‘recalled’ and reviewed by the author — John Eklington. The original idea, in the form of a deep-reaching manifesto, questioning the very core of capitalism, was quickly adapted and simplified to an economic calculation, something a CEO of a big corporation may sign off and forget about.
But as author of the framework admitted, the framework itself is not enough. Eklington calls for a new wave of innovation and deployment — a whole generation of leaders who will not only question the status quo, but create a new future in its place. Not as a reaction to what’s wrong, but as a call for what’s right. It’s a call for a change that reaches deeper.
Triple Bottom Line was originally intended as a genetic code, a triple helix of change for tomorrow’s capitalism, with a focus was on breakthrough change, disruption, asymmetric growth (with unsustainable sectors actively sidelined), and the scaling of next-generation market solutions.
This is why I believe the world of startups to be such a wonderful opportunity for transforming our future. Each new venture is a blank slate and an opportunity to transform the future of business. To learn from others, but also to dream and invent what is so needed and missing.
There are great resources out there that guide entrepreneurs through addressing…
