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.
The myth of shareholder value
Back when I was a law-school student in the early 1980s, my professors taught me that shareholders “own” corporations and that the purpose of corporations is to “maximize shareholder value.” I was just out of college at the time and not very familiar with the business world, so this made Read More...
Flamenco, paella and cooperatives
The Spanish have been hit hard by the economic crisis. Our newspapers and news networks remind us of the unemployment numbers and austerity measures on a daily basis. A dismal housing market, a huge budget deficit; the situation seems hopeless. But it’s not the whole story. People in Spain Read More...
Letter from the Editor
Your attention, please We used to joke during our editorial meetings that each story always ended with God. That’s not because of any specific religious affiliation. We realized that if we want to contribute to solving problems—and that’s the core of our mission—we need to go to deeper Read More...
Transformational media
For many years The Intelligent Optimist’s reporting was unusual in a world dominated by media only interested in whatever goes wrong. The voice of our magazine was soft, almost a gentle whisper. But the tide is changing. We see more and more seeds of promise and possibility sprouting. Read More...
Democracy – Join the Party
An invitation to renew and revitalize politics. If the political playing field were a billiards table, politicians would engage in nothing but obstructing their opponent’s ability to play. In billiards, there is a style of play focused entirely on positioning the balls so as to make it nearly Read More...
Indian Innovation
An Indian economics professor seeks innovations where few expect to find them: among small farmers in remote regions of India. Tanadi squats in the shade_of the large tamarind tree. With lowered eyes, he looks at the dusty surface of the village square. Tanadi, a farmer, had not wanted to sit on Read More...
The Employee Always Knows Best
In 2006, after a less than illustrious career in the restaurant business, 31-year-old Ben Zempel got a job with wholesaler Costco. That wouldn’t be remarkable in itself, but Zempel has Down syndrome. Since he got the job, he’s happier than ever, according to his mom, Jane. “To say Ben loves Read More...
Economics for a blue planet
Gunter Pauli, author of The Blue Economy, on why blue is the new green. By Jurriaan Kamp and Marco Visscher Armed with an MBA from the French business school INSEAD, Gunter Pauli was in his mid-30s when he took the reins at Ecover, the Belgian cleaning products manufacturer that ran into Read More...
Damned lies and statistics
Amy Domini | July/August 2011 issue As a kid on Cape Cod, I’d get really frustrated with a ground-dwelling bird that lived all around us. The Virginia quail (or bobwhite) had the most annoying call. At dawn it would start in, tentatively, “Bob? Bob White?” This would repeat until you Read More...
Three cheers for the fourth-sector economy
The highest priority of corporations should be the common good - just as it used to be. Terry Mollner | December 2007 issue Last year, Google’s directors took a step that did not get much attention but could take our social/political/economic world to the next level of maturity. They decided Read More...