Business
Looking for positive and inspiring business stories? From green operations to employee rights, from innovative corporate structures to diversity and inclusion, the Business section at The Optimist Daily has got the latest innovative solutions from the corporate sector.
When A Pencil Makes You Reevaluate Life, Extraordinary Things Happen
Above: Adam Braun, founder of Pencils of Promise. This story was originally published on Truth Atlas This story could have been an artsy movie from the 1970s, where a smart and young American goes to India seeking a spiritual reawakening, and transforms his view of the material world. Thankfully, Read More...
Take control of your life
Create your own reality. That mission has supplied a steady stream of self-help gurus and books—from Napoleon Hill, who wrote Think and Grow Rich in 1937, to more recent initiatives like the documentaries The Secret and What the Bleep!?. The experts in these movies eagerly embrace quantum physics Read More...
The world's biggest dragonfly
In the world of wind turbines, size does matter. The rule is: The bigger the turbine, the more power it generates. However, colossal windmills are most suitable for remote and open areas—at sea, for instance—where there are powerful winds and no view to obstruct. Italian architect Renzo Piano Read More...
Banking on plastic
You’ve heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch—that blob of plastic bits floating in the ocean current—but you probably didn’t think of it as a valuable asset, one that could be mined just like any natural resource. A lot of that plastic washes up on beaches around the world, and a new Read More...
The power of a wave
Located just outside of Los Angeles, the Morro Bay power plant had been in use since the 1950s. It created jobs and a community in an otherwise barren environment, but was recently shut down due to the growing number of environmental standards. One of these standards, the California Renewables Read More...
Citrus firefighters
Why does milk put out the fire induced by a hot pepper? Because the pepper is a base and too much of it makes your mouth tingle, milk is an acid and when introduced to the system, neutralizes the fiery base. This process of food acids neutralizing spicy bases is what stuck in Swedish product Read More...
Corporate optimism
Is there room for idealists inside Fortune 500 companies? Christine Bader’s book The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil (available in bookstores) chronicles the time she spent with BP, and what it was like to be a Corporate Idealist in one of the world’s largest Read More...
Changing chocolate
The New American Chocolate Movement is changing the way we think about and taste chocolate. Their focus is “bean-to-bar” chocolate, meaning choosing cocoa beans that will make the best-tasting chocolate, while using artisanal and traditional techniques to make it. Dandelion Chocolate from San Read More...
Customer, king and keeper
The management at the British company Standing on Giants knows how to prevent customer service frustration: Build your company’s core around your clients. “There are always people who are passionate about your product, whether you’re selling telephones, insurance or cosmetics,” says Vincent Read More...
The un-manager
We've been exploring the idea of shaking up management systems for the upcoming issue of The Intelligent Optimist. Whether that's using cooperatives as an alternative to business as usual, or something fundamentally different in the way we govern ourselves, there's an ongoing discussion worth Read More...