Ben Jerry's Double Dip: How to Run a Values Led Business and Make Money Too: Lead with Your Values and Make Money Too [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Joel Makower author of Beyond the Bottom Line: Putting Social Responsibility to Work for Your Business and the World Ben and Jerry have dished up a healthy scoop of wisdom about the power of business to make change -- and make money. Double-Dip clearly and passionately shows that values-driven business is a powerful idea and not merely a flavor of the month.

Business Times A very different kind of business book, Ben & Jerry's Double-Dip shows how a company can win the respect of its community, loyalty of its customers, and healthy profits, too, by addressing social concerns as well as the bottom line.

Tom Chappell President and co-founder of Tom's of Maine Ben & Jerry have achieved what we all wish were possible in business -- one set of values, for home and at work. Hurray for them!

Anita Roddick founder of The Body Shop I love Ben & Jerry because they are an inspiration to any business that recognizes a worldwide responsibility. They understand that decisions affect not just economics but people, too.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter author of World Class: Thriving Locally in the Global Economy Double-Dip serves up a charming and wise insider account of how the ice cream kings built a premium brand and a role model, values-driven company. Leaders in businesses of all sizes will find abundant inspiration and dozens of practical suggestions for creating wealth and well-being.

Ben & Jerry's Homemade, Inc., has done more than win the tastebuds of America -- it has earned the admiration of Wall Street and established a model for business owners and employees eager to earn profits without compromising their principles. In Ben & Jerry's Double-Dip, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield offer the ultimate insider's guide to creating a values-led business that makes money while benefiting the entire community. Using examples from their own company as well as a host of others, these renowned innovators reveal:

• How your commitment to worthy social causes will result in unprecedented customer and employee loyalty -- and increased profit
• Practical advice on everything -- from hiring employees to choosing suppliers
• Nuts-and-bolts information on values-led finance, retailing, and human resources

Ben & Jerry's Double-Dip is essential reading for anyone who owns, works for, invests in, or shops at a socially responsible business.

Commercial success need not come at the cost of human value. Just ask Ben and Jerry, whose first ice cream shop in an abandoned Vermont gas station grew into a $160 million business. In this book they explain what they call "value-led business".

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, cofounders of Ben & Jerry's Homemade, Inc., opened their first ice cream shop in Burlington, Vermont, in 1978. Cohen is chairperson and Greenfield is vice-chairperson of the board of Ben & Jerry's Homemade, Inc. They live in Vermont.

From Chapter 1

Our Points (and We Do Have Them) Are...

In the chapters that follow we'll tell stories and share tips based on what we've learned from building Ben & Jerry's into what it is today. But before we get into specifics, we'll lay out the foundation here: the five main points we hope you'll take away from reading the book.

1. Business is the most powerful force in society. Therefore business has a responsibility for the welfare of society as a whole.

In 1988, we were surprised and delighted to be named U.S. Small Business Persons of the Year. When President Reagan presented us with the award he repeated the much-quoted phrase "The business of America is business."

Maybe that used to be the case. But now that business has become the most powerful influence in society, we believe business has to accept responsibility for the welfare of that society and the people in it. Or, as we'd say, "The business of business is America."

If we go back in time and look at societal structures around the world, we see that religion was originally the most powerful entity. Then power shifted, and nation-states became the institutions of greatest power. Today the most powerful force is business. This is a very new phenomenon, occurring only within our own lifetime. You can see this reality echoed in major cities around the world: the oldest big, ornate building is a religious institution. The second-oldest big, ornate building is a governmental institution. And today, the biggest, most ornate buildings being built are commercial.

In order to maximize its social responsibility, a company needs to put its social mission right up front. Values are either a forethought or an afterthought. There's no middle ground. In order to get values in the right place -- in order to maintain the balance between your social mission and your financial mission -- they have to start out in first place.

Understanding what it means to be a values-driven company has been an ongoing process at Ben & Jerry's. When the two of us started scooping ice cream in an abandoned gas station, we hadn't given much thought to business, let alone its role in society. We envisioned ourselves having a homemade-ice cream parlor that we'd run for two or three years until we moved on to something else. Calling our business Ben & Jerry's, giving away ice cream, holding free movie festivals, doing things that were community related were just honest, true expressions of ourselves.

Later, when we decided not to sell the business, we consciously undertook an experiment: to find ways for a corporation to impact society positively. We dedicated ourselves to the creation and demonstration of a new corporate concept, of linked prosperity. The company developed a three-part mission statement that reflected our commitment to this conviction:

PRODUCT MISSION

To make, distribute, and sell the finest quality product.

SOCIAL MISSION

To operate the company in a way that actively recognizes the central role that business plays in society, by initiating innovative ways to improve the quality of life of the local, national, and international communities.

ECONOMIC MISSION

To operate the company on a sound fiscal basis of profitable growth.

Business is the strongest influence in our society. It influences elections through campaign contributions; it influences legislation through lobbying; it influences the media through ownership; and it influences our everyday interactions as consumers and employees.

All of this is done in the narrow self-interest of business, without much concern for the welfare of society as a whole. And that is the major change. The purpose of the first two most powerful forces, religion and government, was to promote the general welfare. But promoting the general welfare has never been a part of business's reason for being.

If the most powerful force in society does not look out for the general welfare, society will be destroyed.

For us there isn't any road map to follow. We've had to make it up as we've gone along. We get a lot of support and good ideas from our friends in like-minded businesses, but each of us has to figure out how to apply the principles we share to his or her individual company. Even now, one of the biggest issues at Ben & Jerry's is that we haven't been able to articulate our objectives specifically enough so that everyone in the company is fully aligned. As a friend of the company's once said, "Everyone's heading west, but 'west' is a pretty broad description." But there's reason for optimism; just this past year, our board developed a much clearer vision of Ben & Jerry's social mission.

We have a progressive, nonpartisan social agenda.

We seek peace by supporting nonviolent ways to resolve conflict.

We will look for ways to create economic opportunities for the disenfranchised.

We are committed to practicing caring capitalism.

We seek to minimize our negative impact on the environment.

We support family farming and sustainable methods of food production.

We're constantly in a process of clarification, of improving what we're doing. But we do agree on one central point: the impact of business is so far-ranging and all-encompassing that we can't shirk responsibility for societal concerns. Incorporating that responsibility into a business can make it a powerful, positive force for social change. 2. A values-led business can be a highly profitable business.

Business people have traditionally said that business can't concern itself with the needs of the broader society, because it won't be able to survive. Our experience proves that's just not true.

So do the experiences of other companies. There are plenty of companies that are thriving today -- Patagonia, Inc. (clothing); Odwalla, Inc. (juice); Tom's of Maine, Inc. (personal care products); the Body Shop International Plc. (body care products); Blue Fish Clothing; Frontier Cooperative Herbs; Working Assets Funding Service (credit cards and long distance phone service); Rhino Entertainment (music); Tommy Boy (music); Whole Foods Market; Just Desserts; Stonyfield Farm Yogurt; Aveda Corporation (personal care products); and many more. Ask their customers why they buy from those companies, and you'll probably hear as much about how much they love the company as you hear about how much they love its products. That's a reversal of the usual situation -- most consumers are buying from companies in spite of their negative feelings about corporations in general.

In our early days in business, the two of us used to be a hot ticket on the Rotary Club circuit in Vermont. They needed a speaker to lull their members to sleep as they digested their rubber chicken. We'd give our talk, they'd fall asleep. Then at the end someone would wake up, raise his hand, and say, "All this stuff you're doing for the community -- you're just doing it because it's good for business, aren't you?" And we'd say, "No. It's altruism."

When we get that question now, we say, "Altruism is the old answer. The new answer is, it is good for business. If you want to be more profitable, why don't you try it too?"

3. People can influence business -- as investors, as employees, as consumers.

Business needs capital, so it needs people to invest in it. It needs labor, so it needs people to work at it. And it needs customers to purchase its products or services. So, people can greatly influence how business conducts itself by choosing which companies to invest in, to work for, and to support with their purchasing power.

Today over $1 trillion -- almost 10 percent of all managed market investments in the United States -- are invested in socially responsible investments. According to Good Money by Dr. Ritchie P. Lowry:

The socially responsible investment movement is growing exponentially in numbers of...