What We Learned in the Rainforest: Business Lessons from Nature

Studying the environment to gain insight into organizational behavior can be a fascinating exercise, with advocates from Jane Jacobs to Margaret Wheatley among those who have helped us envision the inherent possibilities. What We Learned in the Rainforest takes a similar but uniquely focused approach, as Mitsubishi Electric CEO Tachi Kiuchi and environmental advocate Bill Shireman tie development and sustainment of the rainforest directly to progressive practices of businesses such as Hewlett-Packard, Coca-Cola, and Nike. Employing an interesting format--each section begins with the authors describing an ongoing parachute descent into the rainforest in order to illustrate a specific principle--Kiuchi and Shireman explain how concepts such as feedback, profit, design, and diversity aid both their natural laboratory and their corporate examples. In the "Succession" chapter, for instance, they relate a rainforest's "four phases of life" to the cycle of innovation, growth, improvement, and creative destruction that is experienced by successful businesses. With the goal of drawing on nature's wisdom rather than drawing down its physical resources, the book advances a vision of sustainability en route to profitability that is as provocative as it is potentially practical. --Howard Rothman