Overview

Beyond Profit is a paradigm-shifting inquiry into what it truly means to build businesses that regenerate rather than extract, not only in ecological or economic terms, but in how they nurture human potential, community resilience, and emotional integrity. This book deconstructs the current business-as-usual paradigm and offers an alternative: a living, breathing model of entrepreneurship grounded in wholeness, care, and conscious design.

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Drawing from environmental psychology, urban planning, systems thinking, lived entrepreneurial practice, and trauma-informed insight, this book challenges readers to reimagine business not as a vehicle for endless profit and financial growth, but as “an entity that solves social issues and creates value in a financially sustainable way”, regenerating life, not depleting it. 

 

Target audience

Social entrepreneurs, regenerative designers, purpose-driven founders, business educators, urban planners, students of sustainability, economic reformists, and anyone disillusioned with both corporate capitalism and the limits of NGO or impact frameworks.

 

Book Outline

The book proposes a new definition of “business” as “an entity that solves social issues and creates value in a financially sustainable way” as a solution to climate change and the poly-crisis that the world is going through. The first part establishes how “for profit” business-as-usual is contributing to the current poly-crisis humanity is facing. It offers examples from urban planning, education, mental health, climate change and more to show the deep implications that focus on profit has on societies as a whole. Starting from the premise that perception determines behavior, this part offers the justification for why it is mandatory to change the definition of “business” in order for systemic changes to be possible and achievable.

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Part two goes further into explaining what the new definition of “business” means and what are the changes needed in order for businesses to become regenerative instead of extractive. It does so by drawing from examples across urban planning, education, mental health, climate change and more to emphasize how one change in narrative can lead to systemic change. To slowly move the reader from theory to practice, the third part explores the origins of the chase for profit and its roots in childhood trauma and relationship with money. It makes a case for the need for compassion and collective healing to make the changes needed possible.

 

The fourth part moves the reader deeper into action. It does so by providing study cases of businesses that embody the new definition proposed in this book, to spread hope that change is not only possible, but it is already happening in different parts of the world. It also provides actionable tools that can allow readers to become agents for change themselves, as well as a picture of how our cities and societies can look like once the narrative about business has completely changed.

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If you feel you have anything to contribute to the content of the book, feel welcome to reach out via tianmeisworld(@)outlook(.)com, with Subject: Beyond Profit Book.

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