The Future of the Responsible Company

“We need more Patagonias in the world — successful companies where purpose comes before profits — and The Future of the Responsible Company shows us how.” – Robert Strand, Executive Director, Center for Responsible Business, UC Berkeley

Vincent Stanley, Patagonia's Director of Philosophy, with Yvon Chouinard, founder and former owner, draw on 50 years' experience to challenge all business owners and leaders to rethink their structure and practices in a time of cultural and climate chaos. 

In an unprecedented action in 2022, the Chouinard family converted their ownership to a simple structure of trusts and non-profits, so that all the profits from the company will be used to combat climate chaos.

In this exceptionally frank account, Stanley, with Chouinard, recount how the company and its culture gained the confidence, by step and misstep, to make its work progressively more responsible and take this bold move. They also describe the threats of traditional capitalism and how other companies, as big as Wal-Mart and as small as the corner bakery, can thread their way through economic sea change and slow the drift toward ecological bankruptcy.

“One thing is clear: The future, if it could, would invest in, work for and buy from Patagonia.” – John Elkington, author of The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism