Business
Looking for positive and inspiring business stories? From green operations to employee rights, from innovative corporate structures to diversity and inclusion, the Business section at The Optimist Daily has got the latest innovative solutions from the corporate sector.
What a sharing economy startup does to build trust in its community
Trust is always important in business, but in the sharing economy, it’s the beginning, middle and end of the story. “For many people, their boat is their baby, and we know that,” says Adrian Gradinaru, co-founder of New York City-based boat rental marketplace Sailo. Through Sailo, people can Read More...
Nike proves that cleaning up your act is smart business
In a literal sense, sustainability is about being able to maintain performance over a long period. More commonly it refers to how environmentally sound a business is. But more and more, the two are inseparable—and the apparel and footwear industries are taking notice. While they’re Read More...
Social business can combine passion and sustainability
Artists and culture producers are moved by their passion to share and inspire. In a rapidly moving world, flooded with images and messages, artists create and present unique points of views through their creative representations. They are the social commentators, without a prefabricated agenda or a Read More...
The bio-fuel start-up that sells cooking gas by the rucksack
Inside a large ramshackle shed a struck match is held to the end of a metal pipe, and a faint blue flame springs into life. Zenebech Alemayehu smiles, puts her finger tips to her lips, then towards the flame, a symbolic kiss for her new biogas business. A single mother with a nine-year-old son to Read More...
Norwegian fund giant puts premium on ethical investing
Norway's mammoth sovereign wealth fund, which gets its money from Norway's offshore oil and gas sector, takes an activist approach to its investing when it comes to ethical issues. The sell decision came from the fund's ethical council. It said the four companies may be responsible for Read More...
Research Suggests Uber Might Be Making Our Roads Safer
There is a lot that can be said about Uber, the popular car service and mobile app. On one hand, the company has been hailed as the gold standard of sharing-economy startups, providing a much-needed service to cities with transportation systems strained by overuse. On the other, Uber has faced any Read More...
The Uber Controversy Highlights A Key Question: Who Is The Boss In The Sharing Economy?
When is a company not a company? A modern-day Zen koan, maybe, but the evidence is all around us—Airbnb, Elance-oDesk, Handy, HourlyNerd, TaskRabbit, Uber. These businesses seem much more like conglomerations of independent professionals that connect to customers through a common platform, rather Read More...
Transcendental meditation is going corporate. Here's why that's a good thing.
Thanks to the continued research touting its advantages, meditation has hit the mainstream. More and more people are willing to give it a try, often despite a measure of initial skepticism. Nowhere is that more true than in the workplace, where everyone from C-suite executives to entry-level Read More...
How the 'sharing economy' could upend capitalism
The gig economy. The “collaborative” model. Whatever cliché you want to use, Zipcar co-founder Robin Chase suggests that large-scale sharing has just gotten started. “This has the potential to reshape our cities in a dramatically positive way,” she predicts. To Chase, “the sharing Read More...
More and more companies are sponsoring volunteering by their employees
Feeling that we are making progress in meaningful work is core to being higher-performing and happier, according The Progress Principle coauthor Teresa Amabile. Not surprisingly, companies and employees that take that same stance in volunteer work are able to grow faster. One way to optimize that Read More...