The Future of the Responsible Company: What We’ve Learned from Patagonia’s First 50 Years (by Yvon Chouinard & Vincent Stanley)

Simple but powerful advice on how and why to rethink your business structure in a time when traditional capitalism is no longer working for people or the planet.

Vincent Stanley, Patagonia’s director of philosophy, along with Yvon Chouinard, founder and former owner of Patagonia, draw on 50 years of experience at Patagonia to challenge all business owners and leaders to rethink their businesses in a time of cultural and climate chaos.

Patagonia has been recognized as much for its ground-breaking environmental, social practices as for the quality of its clothes. In 2022, the Chouinard family gave their company away, converting ownership to a simple structure of trusts and nonprofits, so that all the profits from the company can be used to protect our home planet and work to reverse climate chaos. Stanley and Chouinard recount how the company and its culture gained confidence, especially through missteps, to make its work progressively more responsible, and to ultimately challenge other companies, as big as Wal-Mart and as small as the corner store, to do the same.

The authors describe the current impact of manufacturing, commerce, and traditional capitalism on the planet’s natural systems and human communities, and how that impact is forcing business to change its ways. The Future of the Responsible Company shows companies how to reduce the harm they cause, improve the quality of their business, and provide the kind of meaningful work everyone seeks. It concludes with specific, practical steps every business can undertake, as well as advice on what to do and in what order.

The book shows companies how to thread their way through economic sea change and slow the drift toward ecological bankruptcy: Reduce your environmental footprint (and its skyrocketing cost), make legitimate products that last, reclaim deep knowledge of your business and its supply chain to make the most of opportunities in the years to come, and earn the trust you’ll need by treating your workers, customers, and communities with respect. It also describes the threats of traditional capitalism and why the owners of Patagonia made the decisions they did to ensure that the company will still exist and have impact in 100 years. An explanation of Patagonia’s new business organization, The Patagonia Purpose Trust and The Holdfast Collective, rounds out this business book.