The global environment - ecologically and economically - is in peril. Climate policy, energy efficiency, renewable resources, and green jobs are great challenges. Yet, the opportunities they present are even more powerful. As we approach the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, business leaders need not look further than the Earth itself as a model for true sustainability. In his book, released today, Earth, Inc.: Using Nature's Rules to Build Sustainable Profits (Harvard Business Press, 2010), Gregory Unruh champions Mother Nature as the premiere sustainable enterprise - one from which businesses can both learn and profit.

"Business leaders across all industries struggle to understand what environmental sustainability means for their companies while deciphering how to make their enterprises more responsible and profitable," said Unruh, professor of global business and director of the Lincoln Center for Ethics in Global Management at Thunderbird School of Global Management. "The Earth's biosphere is a manufacturing system that has operated and innovated continuously for more than 3.5 billion years. Earth, Inc. deciphers the biosphere's success, translates it, and provides an actionable framework for managers to embed those principles into business DNA."

Doing Business with the Earth, Incorporated

To move toward that state of "embedded sustainability," businesses must follow Unruh's system of five nature-derived principles called the "Biosphere Rules." By adapting and embedding these fundamental rules, managers will create both environmentally-friendly and financially-profitable enterprises. Over time, sustainability will disappear as a management concern because it is integrated into the company's operations.

In Earth Inc., Unruh explores the Biosphere Rules in terms of business need and benefit, closely examining cases of companies that are already profitably implementing them, including H&M Clothing, Herman Miller, General Motors, Texas Instruments, 3M, UPS, Kodak, Hewlett Packard, Clorox, Patagonia, and Wal-Mart. He provides further testament that the expansion of green business growth beyond single product lines requires the integral involvement of an entire business ecosystem.

About the Author

Gregory Unruh, Ph.D., professor of global business and director of the Lincoln Center for Ethics in Global Management at Thunderbird School of Global Management, is a leading expert on sustainable business strategy and advocate of ethics and corporate social responsibility. Follow him on Twitter @gregoryunruh.

Earth, Inc.: Using Nature's Rules to Build Sustainable Profits by Gregory Unruh; Harvard Business Press; April 19, 2010; Hardcover: $24.95; 224 pages; ISBN-10: 1422127176; ISBN-13: 978-1422127179.

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