Pines and Plains Libraries

Growing a successful business is about meeting the needs of customers—and, by extension, the needs of the entire community. Turn your business into a good citizen and you can help ensure its success and contribute to making your community a great place to live and work. Growing Local Value shows how to build a values-driven business that is deeply embedded in local life. Drawing on real-world examples from Greyston Bakery, Wild Planet Toys,

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In this book, Amy Webb reveals the pervasive, invisible ways in which the foundations of AI - the people working on the system, their motivations, the technology itself - is broken. Within our lifetimes, AI will, by design, begin to behave unpredictably, thinking and acting in ways which defy human logic. The big nine corporations may be inadvertently building and enabling vast arrays of intelligent systems that don't share our motivations, desires,...

Muhammad Yunus, who created microcredit, invented social business, and earned a Nobel Peace Prize for his work in alleviating poverty, is one of today's most trenchant social critics. Now he declares it's time to admit that the capitalist engine is broken--that in its current form it inevitably leads to rampant inequality, massive unemployment, and environmental destruction. We need a new economic system that unleashes altruism as a creative force...

"This book is a practical, broad-minded look at the effects of automation on the economy in the next ten to fifteen years and why the private sector needs to lead the charge in shaping a values-based response. The automation of a great deal of work as it is now known is no longer the concern of futurists, but of the current generation of business leaders and policy makers; Andrew Yang's recent run for the Democratic nomination, and his focus on UBI...

Coke's insatiable thirst for resources shapes the company and reshapes the globe in this absorbing history. Coca-Cola's success in building a global empire out of sugary water drew on more than a secret formula and brilliant advertising. The real secret to Coke's success was its strategy, from the beginning, to offload production costs and risks onto suppliers and franchisees. Outsourcing and a trim corporate profile enabled Coke to scale up production...

Collects eighteen essays that provide varying perspectives on issues concerning corporate social responsibility, debating what it is, how corporations have been impacted by environmental concerns, protection of human rights, and facts that influence corporations to be more responsible.

"Rise Up is essential reading for entrepreneurs who want to start their own purpose-driven businesses, as well as senior business executives who aspire to lead their organizations to become more socially conscious." - Foreword ReviewsA new breed of socially conscious companies is changing how consumers shop, where employees work, and the way in which the world does business.Rise Up: How to Build a Socially Conscious Business sets the stage for this...

Patagonia, Inc. is one of the earth's most interesting and inspiring companies. For almost forty years, its reputation for high quality, maverick innovation, and long-term environmental responsibility has put it in a class by itself. And everything flows from Patagonia's founder, Yvon Chouinard, whose creation myth is now an American business legend. Here, Yvon Chouinard relates his and his company's story and the core philosophies that have sustained...

Are tech giants the new robber barons of the digital age? Many governments and ordinary people are increasingly uncomfortable with the monopolistic might a small number of tech companies are amassing, the taxes they are avoiding, the data they are collecting, the privacy they are undermining, and the way they are functioning as extraterritorial powers beholden to no state and to no citizen or consumer. All sides of this super-charged debate are represented...