8 Must Read Books on Social Intrapreneurship

This isn’t just for millennials anymore. If our Corporate Impact Team and award-winning Microsoft MySkills4Afrika demonstrates one thing, it’s that workers, of all ages, are looking to mobilize the human capital within their company to make the world better.

This is exactly while the MovingWorlds Impact Team Program and Complete Guide to Social Intrapreneurship – as well as industry-wide initiatives like Impact2030 –   are so popular: Working professionals are motivated and eager to make their companies better for the world.

If you’re looking to great change from within, check out these 5 books

#1. Changing Business from the Inside Out by Tim Mohin

With more than 80 percent of the Fortune 500 now publishing “sustainability reports,” a new career path has been forged in corporate responsibility. From strategy to data mining to supply chains and communication, this book is the “operator’s manual” for this new career path.

#2 A Better World, Inc., by Alice Korngold

In A Better World, Inc., Korngold shows companies and their executives how to profit by developing solutions to the world’s most daunting challenges – those that governments cannot and have not addressed. Using case studies of various global companies from Nike to Pfizer to Vodafone and GlaxoSmithKline, A Better World, Inc. delineates best practices for corporations to maximize profits, decrease costs, and build the longer-term value of their companies by ensuring a more sustainable and humane world.

#3 Let My People Go Surfing, by Yvon Chouinard

In this newly revised 10th anniversary edition, Yvon Chouinard–legendary climber, businessman, environmentalist, and founder of Patagonia, Inc.–shares the persistence and courage that have gone into being head of one of the most respected and environmentally responsible companies on earth.

#4: Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil, by Christine Bader

The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil is based on Bader’s experience with BP and then with a United Nations effort to prevent and address human rights abuses linked to business. Using her story as its skeleton, Bader weaves in the stories of other “Corporate Idealists” working inside some of the world’s biggest and best-known companies.

#5: Changing Your Company from the Inside Out: A Guide for Social Intrapreneurs, by Gerald F. Davis and Christopher J. White

Changing Your Company from the Inside Out provides the tools to empower you to jump-start initiatives that matter to you—and that should matter to your company. Drawing on lessons from social movements as well as on the work of successful intrapreneurs, Gerald Davis and Christopher White provide you with a guide for creating positive social change from within your own organization.

#6: The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World, by John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan

By understanding these entrepreneurs’ mindsets and strategies, you gain vital insights into future market opportunities for your own organization. Providing a first-hand, on-the-ground look at a new breed of entrepreneur, this book reveals how apparently unreasonable innovators have built their enterprises, how their work will shape risks and opportunities in the coming years, and what tomorrow’s leaders can learn from them.

#7: Social Intrapreneurism and All That Jazz: How Business Innovators are Helping to Build a More Sustainable World, by Paul Grayson, Melody McLaren, and Heiko Spitzeck

Drawing on the metaphors of ensemble jazz music-making, the authors describe how “woodshedding”, “jamming”, “paying your dues”, being a “sideman”, joining and building a “band” but, above all, “listening” to what is happening in business and the wider world – are all part of the life of a successful social intrapreneurism project.W hether you’re an aspiring social intrapreneur who wants to change the world while keeping your day job, or want to renew the entrepreneurial spirit of your own company, this book is for you.

#8 The Intrapreneur: Confessions of a corporate insurgent by Gib Bulloch

The Intrapreneur is an honest and insightful critique of the “craziness” of today’s business environment – and a call to action for a new breed of social activist working within, about to join or completely disillusioned by today’s business world.

Here’s the full list on the best books to learn about social intrapreneurship:

#1. Changing Business from the Inside Out by Tim Mohin

#2 A Better World, Inc., by Alice Korngold

#3 Let My People Go Surfing, by Yvon Chouinard

#4: Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil, by Christine Bader

#5: Changing Your Company from the Inside Out: A Guide for Social Intrapreneurs, by Gerald F. Davis and Christopher J. White

#6: The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World, by John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan

#7: Social Intrapreneurism and All That Jazz: How Business Innovators are Helping to Build a More Sustainable World, by Paul Grayson, Melody McLaren, and Heiko Spitzeck

#8 The Intrapreneur: Confessions of a corporate insurgent by Gib Bulloch

We hope you enjoy the books, and if we’re missing one of your favorits, let us know in the comments below!