Book Review
In Seeding Innovation: The Path to Profit and Purpose in the 21st Century, veteran entrepreneur, award-winning author, global strategist, speaker, and Rice University Innovation and Entrepreneurship professor, Robyn O’Brien, delivers an insightful and data-driven roadmap to authenticity and smart leadership in the face of accelerating technological, environmental, and social change. In the book, you’ll discover how to build resilience, authenticity, market share, and purpose into your business plan and move beyond box-ticking, virtue signaling, and one-dimensional metrics, in a way that strengthens your business model, enhances your bottom line, attracts investors, fortifies employee retention, and more.
With her characteristic candor and attention to data and deep experience on the frontlines of industry change, Robyn explains how you can transform concepts like paradigm blindness, scarcity, imposter syndrome, rejection, and fear to build durable, lasting, and profitable businesses that integrate social and environmental principles, with courage and integrity to drive long term shareholder and stakeholder value.
You’ll also discover how to:
Develop a purpose-driven product line that holds strong appeal for new generations of consumers and avoids the ruthless practices associated with PR nightmares and externalized costs
Build an iconic company that focuses on integrating meaningful change to inspire customers, investors, and employees and that eschews meaningless press releases and virtue signaling
Overcome imposter syndrome and naysayers using the S.T.O.P. Protocol ™
Develop supportive scaffolding and a resilient mindset in order to leverage courage and gain market share
Build boards (not echo chambers), why equity and governance matters, and how diversity is good for your bottom line
Integrate authentic marketing and storytelling into your brand strategy to drive revenue and capture market share
Avoid the dangers of silos, fundraising traps and toxic capital and build a model with value-aligned, informed investors.
Spot greenwashing, gender washing, and carbon washing, and more importantly, how to avoid them within your own organization and drive change
Address headlines around ESG and DEI metrics in order to meet the needs of asset managers and investors, build successful teams and integrate goals that are central to outperformance and higher returns
Gen Z and the modern consumer are looking for companies with authenticity―they want transparency and purpose from brands that are future-proofing for the planet they’re inheriting. With this changing consumer focus and mindset emerges an urgent need for emotionally intelligent leadership. Along with profitability, 21st-century leaders must focus on environmental stewardship, equity and justice, employee retention, recruiting, collaboration, and emerging other key aspects of modern business.
Author Quotes
In Seeding Innovation, you will learn not only the mechanics of building out a business but also how to embrace an attitude of curiosity over judgment and wonder over blame.
Answering that calling to innovate and drive change in a world that values conformity and sameness is one of the bravest things you can do.
If you feel the calling inside of you, to do something more, create something new, build something better, get really quiet and figure out how to answer it.
About the author
Robyn O’Brien is a bestselling author, speaker, entrepreneur and investor who thrives at the intersection of courage, authenticity, innovation and leadership. She is a partner at Montcalm and was listed on the Forbes Impact 50 List for her work at the intersection of food, finance, and climate. Her critically acclaimed books The Unhealthy Truth, How Our Food is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It (2009) and Seeding Innovation, the Path to Purpose and Profit in the 21st Century (2024) established her as a thought leader and changemaker. She is a market maker who focuses on scaling impact and partnerships for the impact investment firm that provides wealth management services based on intelligent investing, authentic relationships, and integrity with the planet. With 25 years of experience in impact, investing and entrepreneurship, Robyn is also the founder of AllergyKids Foundation, rePlant Capital, and an executive producer of the award-winning documentary, Common Ground.
Why LoA loves it…
The world needs passion-driven change-makers who want to make a difference in the field of planet, profit and purpose, and Robyn O’Brien is one such person. Her latest book, Seeding Innovation: The Path to Profit and Purpose in the 21st Century, combined with her drive to positively impact and change the food and finance industries, is inspirational. If you are on a journey to build a business that can also do good in the world, then Robyn’s book is a must-read and a source of invaluable information and inspiration to help you achieve your goals. — Melanie Hawken, founder & ceo, Lionesses of Africa