The Purpose Upgrade: Change Your Business to Save the World. Change the World to Save Your Business

Unlock greater profits. Empower happier and more engaged staff. Foster loyalty and connection with customers. Save your business... and the world. How? It all starts with a Purpose Upgrade.

History shows that hard times can lead to the greatest opportunities for renewal. The Purpose Upgrade will support readers in leading enterprises that thrive by solving our most important problems.

It shows how businesses can create more compelling benefits for customers, build meaningful livelihoods for colleagues, and unlock superior returns for investors by ’repurposing’ and revitalising the activities they engage in.

Meet the social entrepreneur who repurposed the previously ’boring’ trade in office supplies to fund micro-finance initiatives that reach millions of the people most exposed to poverty, so that ’even a bad day at the office saves lives’.

Learn how the leaders of a coal-mining business repurposed their enterprise first as an industrial chemicals company and then more spectacularly as a sustainable living business, generating unprecedented shareholder returns by aligning their objectives with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. They are now changing the lives of smallholder farmers, re-directing the food system to a more sustainable model, and harnessing the power of the world’s biggest brands to provide more nutritious food on a healthier planet.

And, most importantly, discover a unique methodology that you can use to make a Purpose Upgrade an always-available event at any level of your own enterprise.

There has never been a more urgent need to change our businesses to save the world or a more opportune time to change the world to save our businesses.

Paul Skinner is the founder of the Agency of the Future, a collaborative consultancy that helps clients and partners create Collaborative Advantage to drive organizational success, create economic value and improve peoples’ lives.

He is also the founder of Pimp My Cause, which uses cause-related challenges to enhance the capabilities of individual marketers and marketing teams and supports over 2,000 charities and social enterprises with access to pro bono marketing in the process.

Paul has advised clients as diverse as PwC and the United Nations, Sony and Save the Children.

In 2014 he was awarded an honorary visiting fellowship at Edge Hill University business school, has twice won Consultant of the Year awards from the Chartered Institute of Marketing and is an advisory board member at London’s Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising.