Venture Meets Mission: Aligning People, Purpose, and Profit to Innovate and Transform Society
Arun Gupta, Gerard George, and Thomas J. Fewer
Stanford Business Books (January 2024)

How mission-driven ventures establish and then nourish the healthiest workplace cultures 

Why did Arun Gupta, Gerard George, and Thomas J. Fewer write this book? “We began with a simple objective: to understand how people can create mission-deriven ventures. We got to work in earnest and started reaching out. We interviewed entrepreneurs, leaders in government, investors, students, and ecosystem partners. We created a small team of undergraduate and MBA students who developed detailed case studies on each of these initiatives. We collected secondary data to cross-check our conclusions and circled back to our interviews. The enthusiasm for this topic was overwhelming. Everyone whom we reached out to gave time generously and freely shared ideas on how a deep and lasting change can be made collectively. We realized that while there was a groundswell of enthusiasm, it was difficult for everyone to see how we can make it come together. We were pushing anmopen door.”

It is no coincidence that companies annually ranked among those most highly admired and best to work for are also annually ranked among those most profitable, with the greatest cap value in their industry segment. However different they may be in most respects, all of them have mission-driven ventures that nourish and strengthen their workplace culture.

These are the strategic objectives on which Gupta, George, and Fewer focus, devoting a separate chapter to each:

o Transform society with the optimism of entrepreneurship and the scale of government
o Rediscover the common ground between and among entrepreneurs, government, and society
o Innovate public-private partnerships
o Enable entrepreneurs and government officials
o Collaborate with federal, state, and/or local government
o Ensure that each individual career has a greater impact
o Align people, purpose, and profit to create the future we want

Gupta, George, and Fewer provide an abundance of information, insights, and counsel that explain HOW to achieve these specific objectives.

I realize that no brief commentary such as mine could possibly do full justice to the quality of the material they provide. However, I hope I have at least indicated why I think so highly of them and their work. The publication of this book could not be more timely. The global business world today is more volatile, more uncertain, more complex, and more ambiguous than at any prior time that I can recall. It is imperative that people, purpose, and profit are — and remain — in proper alignment to innovate and transform individuals as well as teams, departments, companies, countries…indeed our planet.

I congratulate Arun Gupta, Gerard George, and Thomas J. Fewer on a brilliant achievement. Bravo!

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Here are two suggestions to keep in mind while reading Venture Meets Mission: Highlight key passages, and, record your comments, questions, action steps (preferably with deadlines), page references, and lessons you have learned as well as your responses to key points posed within the narrative. Pay special attention to what the authors share in end-of-chapter paragraphs.

These two simple tactics — highlighting and documenting — will facilitate, indeed expedite frequent reviews of key material later.