Author's Note

DEAR READER,

If you have this book in your hands, you've decided to be part of the solution. Thank you.

There are so many titles this book could have had: Atomic Courage, A Smarter Future, Creating Solutions, Catalysts for Change, Informed Leadership.

In Silent Spring, Rachel Carson warned us what would happen if we didn't address our toxic systems. The World Bank recently did the same in a report called “Detox Development: Repurposing Environmentally Harmful Subsidies.” The data shared in Seeding Innovation, The Path to Profit and Purpose in the Twenty-first Century proves Carson's words true, with the help of entrepreneurs, innovators, thought leaders, the World Bank, and other asset managers. It also highlights the important role that women and whistleblowers play when it comes to change. As our clean air, clean water, clean soil, and biodiversity are depleted, we find ourselves in deep need of a diverse array of talents and innovative skill sets. As the European Central Bank shares, nature and our economies depend on it.

In April 2023, I was meeting with a friend who shared his concern about the world his kids are inheriting. I said, “Someone needs to write a business leadership book on best practices that protect our kids' futures and the planet, that inspires people to participate in the solutions.”

Two days later, an email appeared in my inbox from a senior editor at Wiley Publishing: “Hello Robyn. My name is Brian. I'm Sr. Editor at Wiley publishing. I'd love to connect as I'm eager to know if you might have some interest in writing a book on how businesses can better implement sustainability practices, eliminate waste, etc. I'd love to connect and to discuss in more detail if you might have some interest.”

If that isn't the universe responding, I don't know what is.

The day I received his email, my youngest child had just turned 18. I was about to have an “empty nest.” I'd spent two decades raising four children, while working in the food and finance industries, founding everything from nonprofits to financial service firms, all aimed at making clean and safe food affordable and accessible to anyone who wants it. To me, food security is a national security issue. I'd worked on these issues since my kids were little. I'd taken them to meetings with investors, members of Congress, to events at the State Capitol, and into product testing kitchens. I wanted them to understand that love is an action and that action is an antidote to despair.

In meetings, I watched as food and finance executives struggled with integrating meaningful, long-term change, whether that was around equity, diversity and inclusion efforts, environmental stewardship, conservation, or impact. I heard from countless investors and entrepreneurs, and I could still sense the fear and uncertainty in the capital markets. The industry hadn't fully mobilized.

There is clearly a hunger for change, solutions, and the courage needed to create them. I feel the demand for it every time I give a keynote. People are in search of inspiration and purpose and so hungry to be fueled by passion and courage.

I am fascinated by courage. It's something I developed early in my career, as the only woman on a team that managed $20 billion in assets, in an industry that is 98% white and male. We were a team of seven, and the guys asked me to cover the food industry. So I learned the operating models, the financials, which leadership teams were trustworthy, and which teams made me want to wash my hands after a meeting. I sat in on tech meetings to learn more. I wanted to not only understand what made a resilient business model, but also what made a resilient leader. I listened and learned.

When my youngest child suffered a life-threatening allergic reaction, I was called to display a courage I didn't know I had. I challenged the multinational food and chemical companies over their double standards, spoke out on price-gouging by the pharmaceutical companies, and found myself in situations where courage wasn't even a choice because staying silent was far riskier than any concern of speaking out. But courage also didn't come naturally. I had to learn how to be brave, how to find my voice, build a team, inspire a movement, again and again, and I found that a lot of people were asking for that: show me how I can be braver in my life.

What makes us brave? What holds us back? And what is it about fear and failure that keeps us playing small when we know something bigger like innovation and change need to happen?

I used to think that courage is the opposite of fear. I was wrong.

In fear, there is a sense of scarcity, that we may fail, that we may be abandoned and rejected. And so we convince ourselves that if we stay small, we can avoid the pain, discomfort, fear, and possibility of rejection.

Only it doesn't quite work that way. Because, when you abandon your potential and dreams, you essentially reject yourself, the truth of who you are, your hopes, dreams, and capabilities in order to play small. And that is the ultimate rejection. A rejection of your purest potential. You risk drowning under the weight of “what ifs” and what could have been.

But rarely can you just flip a switch and turn on courage. It usually isn't that easy. Courage is like a muscle, and the more you use it, the stronger it gets. It's also contagious and will inspire others to be courageous too.

I am not going to go into a long list of everything that ails us right now on this planet that we share. There are daily headlines about it. If our debt levels are any indicator, it's clear that we are living beyond our means. We've got some huge environmental issues confronting us, but that also means that there is enormous opportunity to get involved and create solutions.

It is a brave thing to stand up in business (and life) and say, “You know what? This is intolerable. Enough. There has to be something better.” And to go about figuring out what that is and how to make it happen. Innovation and change won't happen without courage. Courage is at its core.

So how do you find the courage to take an idea and turn it into something? A product, a company, a movement, a campaign? What is required to move something from an idea that hits you in the shower to something that you put on a spreadsheet and then build a team and a company around? Because it is so clear that the world, all that we are facing, needs inspired, almost atomic, innovation and courage.

In Seeding Innovation, you will learn not only the mechanics of building out a business, but also how to embrace an attitude of curiosity over judgment and wonder over blame. You will learn how to take action steps, and with deep humility and honesty, explore and challenge the beliefs, patterns, relationships, and behaviors that are holding you back. You will encounter naysayers and nonbelievers. Many people, maybe even those closest to you, will want you to stay where you are, to play small, because you are more predictable there. And you will have a choice: to stay or to move forward toward your calling.

A calling is exactly that, a call, with a chance to answer it or decline it.

Answering that calling to innovate and to drive change in a world that values conformity and sameness is one of the bravest things you can do. It sets in motion a series of events that you may not yet see, challenges for which you don't yet have answers, and possibilities that are unfathomable. But if you feel that calling inside of you, to do something more, create something new, build something better, get really quiet and figure out how to answer it. Because the day we abandon our dreams, decline that call, is the day that we give up on ourselves.

So fear? Fear of rejection? Fear of failure? Fear is going to ride shotgun to innovation most of the way. Instead of running from it, you will learn how to embrace it, as the familiar friend that it is, and learn how to work with it and move through it. I will ask you to take inventory of your fears, so that you understand them, and as you do that, to also consider and weigh the deep fear of regret.

I will ask you to consider who you surround yourself with on this Journey (and it's a journey with a capital “J”), to investigate how homogenous that group currently is, and if that homogeneity creates a blind spot. We will take inventory on that too.

And there will be plenty of times that you will be tested. A lot of the work of an entrepreneur has nothing to do with the company you are building or the product you are creating. It has everything to do with what's going on in your head, what is happening between your ears. Resiliency is a critical resource, and self-awareness is an asset.

We will address how you talk to yourself. We will get to work on changing that internal dialogue, the criticism and even self-loathing, and identify the media and noise that is fueling the negativity that you've carried around for too long. Because those hidden fears—the voice in your head and its incessant chatter—can self-sabotage and shackle you to past behavior. The negativity, feeding yourself those thoughts, won't serve you as you move forward. It's like trying to not eat junk food while keeping a bunch of junk in your head. It doesn't work. We've got to clean out the junk. So we are going to get really brave and take inventory of that too.

I will...