Better Research For Better Business

THE COUNCIL OF CANADIAN ACADEMIES 180 Elgin Street, Ottawa, ON Canada K2P 2K3 NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was undertaken with the approval of the Board of Governors of the Council of Canadian Academies. [...] The Council is governed by a 12-member board, a majority of whom are appointed directly or indirectly by the Council's three member Academies - the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, the Canadian Academy of Engineering and the RSC: The Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada. [...] The founding members of the Council are: RSC: The Academies of the Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada is the senior national body of distinguished Canadian scientists, scholars and artists. [...] The Canadian Academy of Engineering comprises many of the country's most accomplished engineers, who have expressed their dedication to the application of science and engineering principles in the interests of the country and its enterprises. [...] Consider Hammurabi's application of the first known written codification of law in ancient Babylon; the establishment of the Pax Romana by the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus; Sir John A. Macdonald's promotion of Canada's first transcontinental railway in the 1880s; and Franklin D. Roosevelt's introduction of central economic planning and economic stimulus programs in the United States in the 1930s.

An excellent read for entrepreneurs, corporate business leaders, board members, and strategists aiming to future-proof their business by integrating sustainability into the very core. This book offers a way forward, helps you understand the Sustainability Revolution, and provides valuable insights into the journeys and strategic choices of sustainability trailblazers such as Patagonia, Interface, Ørsted, Unilever, IKEA, Oatly, and others. Because you are not the first company to discover the potential in doing well by doing good, or as William Gibson said: "The future is already here - it's just not very evenly distributed". Still, many wicked problems urgently need innovative solutions. Solutions that the world of business is particularly well equipped to address through the ingenuity, creativity, collaboration, and resources that it can so often call forth more effectively and efficiently than other human organizations. Here and now, this requires a move beyond business as usual and a transformation into Better Business.

This book gathers original, empirical and conceptual papers that address the complex challenges of conducting responsible research in the business and management professions. It includes contributions related to, and reflecting on, the vision of the Responsible Research in Business and Management (RRBM) network, which proposes that business can help provide a better world if it is informed by responsible research. The responsible research agenda requires new methods of scholarly assessment that include criteria for measuring impact, systemic solutions and practitioner relevance. Theories greatly influence business and management practices, and as the late Sumantra Ghoshal warned, bad management theories are destroying good management practices. The authors of this book believe that good management theories can help to create new and better business practices.

A compelling look at the B Corp movement and why socially and environmentally responsible companies are vital for everyone’s future Businesses have a big role to play in a capitalist society. They can tip the scales toward the benefit of the few, with toxic side effects for all, or they can guide us toward better, more equitable long-term solutions. Christopher Marquis tells the story of the rise of a new corporate form—the B Corporation. Founded by a group of friends who met at Stanford, these companies undergo a rigorous certification process, overseen by the B Lab, and commit to putting social benefits, the rights of workers, community impact, and environmental stewardship on equal footing with financial shareholders. Informed by over a decade of research and animated by interviews with the movement’s founders and leading figures, Marquis’s book explores the rapid growth of companies choosing to certify as B Corps, both in the United States and internationally, and explains why the future of B Corporations is vital for us all.

This book stitches together a complete design journey from beginning to end in a way that you’ve likely never seen before, guiding readers (you) step-by-step in a practical way from the initial spark of an idea all the way to scaling it into a better business. Design a Better Business includes a comprehensive set of tools (over 20 total!) and skills that will help you harness opportunity from uncertainty by building the right team(s) and balancing your point of view against new findings from the outside world. This book also features over 50 case studies and real life examples from large corporations such as ING Bank, Audi, Autodesk, and Toyota Financial Services, to small startups, incubators, and social impact organizations, providing a behind the scenes look at the best practices and pitfalls to avoid. Also included are personal insights from thought leaders such as Steve Blank on innovation, Alex Osterwalder on business models, Nancy Duarte on storytelling, and Rob Fitzpatrick on questioning, among others.

DON'T LET YOUR WRITING HOLD YOU BACK. When you’re fumbling for words and pressed for time, you might be tempted to dismiss good business writing as a luxury. But it’s a skill you must cultivate to succeed: You’ll lose time, money, and influence if your e-mails, proposals, and other important documents fail to win people over. The HBR Guide to Better Business Writing, by writing expert Bryan A. Garner, gives you the tools you need to express your ideas clearly and persuasively so clients, colleagues, stakeholders, and partners will get behind them. This book will help you: • Push past writer’s block • Grab—and keep—readers’ attention • Earn credibility with tough audiences • Trim the fat from your writing • Strike the right tone • Brush up on grammar, punctuation, and usage

If you're like me, you probably have 100+ business books on your shelf collecting dust. Some of them you've read, some of them you had hopes of reading, but life just got in the way. Each of those books probably followed a theme and had one important underlying message to share with you. Hundreds of pages, thousands of words, but only one golden nugget of underlying wisdom. All that reading for just one golden nugget. Imagine if you could have one book that gave you 100 golden nuggets. Less dust. Less clutter. Just one book to always have by your side and reference whenever you need to. Well, that's The Better Business Book. It's your one-stop shop for crystal-clear business advice that you can use to grow your business and live the life you've always wanted. The Better Business Book is better than your average business book. That's how we came up with the title. It consists of 100 people each sharing their most valuable business lesson. A real story from their business experience and the lesson they learned from it. Each time you read it, you will learn something new. Guaranteed. We hope you enjoy reading this book half as much as we enjoyed creating it for you.