Andrew Wilson, co-author of the best-seller Green to Gold
The excerpt includes the introduction of the book and the core chapter on getting lean. The full book looks at how the green wave is evolving, and how to get smart, get creative, and get (your people) going
More on Green Recovery
How much money – and how many jobs – could your business save if you reduced energy use and waste by 25%? How would your business be impacted if oil reached $300 per barrel? These might seem like odd questions to ask in the midst of a global recession–but they’re not. With the economy in the grip of a brutal recession, many companies are sidelining their green business initiatives. They’re making a big mistake. Companies that shelve their green strategies until the economy improves will miss a huge opportunity to make their businesses stronger and more profitable. In Green Recovery, Andrew Winston shows how no company can afford to wait for the downturn to ease before going green.
Green Recovery argues that environmental challenges and increasing “green” awareness have not dissipated in the wake of the financial crisis. Business leaders must face both problems simultaneously. Fortunately, some of the same strategies that address environmental issues can help companies survive today’s economic conditions and prosper when the good times return.
Going green is essentially about doing more with less. Viewed through this lens, green initiatives transform from costly luxuries to powerful recession-fighting, profit-making tools. Green initiatives ratchet up a company’s resource efficiency, creativity, and employee motivation. They save energy, waste, and money, preserving precious capital — and give precise focus to your innovation efforts and strategic priorities. This book shows how leaders — including Boeing, Disney, DuPont, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, Toyota, and Wal-Mart — are ramping up efficiency, innovation, and employee motivation to save money quickly and preserve capital that can be reinvested for future growth. Green Recovery offers a concise, engaging road map for using green initiatives to:
- Get lean: generate immediate bottom-line savings by reducing energy use and waste
- Get smart: use value-chain data to cut costs, reduce risks, and focus innovation efforts
- Get creative: pose heretical questions such as “How might we operate with no fossil fuels?” that force you to find solutions to tomorrow’s challenges today
- Get engaged: give employees ownership of environmental goals and the tools to act on them
Green Recovery will help you unleash the power of green thinking to survive today’s turmoil–and chart a winning path to the future.
About the Author
Andrew Winston , founder of Winston Eco-Strategies, is the co-author of Green to Gold, the best-selling guide to what works – and what doesn’t – when companies go green. He is a globally recognized expert on green business, and has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Time, BusinessWeek, Forbes, The New York Times, and CNBC. Andrew is dedicated to helping companies both large and small use environmental strategy to grow, create enduring value, and build stronger relationships with employees, customers, and other stakeholders. His clients have included Bank of America, HP, and IKEA.
Andrew bases his work on significant in-company business experience. His earlier career included advising companies on corporate strategy while at Boston Consulting Group and management positions in strategy and marketing at Time Warner and MTV. After these more traditional roles, Andrew pursued his passion to explore the overlap between business and environment. He served as the Director of the Corporate Environmental Strategy Project at Yale’s renowned School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
Today, Andrew speaks to audiences of thousands of people around the world, acting as a practical evangelist for the benefits of going green. For his efforts, he was recently named a “Planet Defender” by Rock the Earth.
Andrew received his BA in Economics from Princeton, an MBA from Columbia, and a Masters of Environmental Management from Yale. He lives in Riverside, CT with his wife Christine and two young sons.
