My guest today is Professor Stuart L. Hart,  the Steven Grossman Endowed Chair for Sustainable Business and Co-Director of The Sustainable Innovation MBA at the University of Vermont’s Grossman School of Business, one of the world’s most radical and pioneering MBA programs which embeds sustainability deep into every business discipline.

Stu is one of the world’s top authorities on the implications of environment and poverty for business strategy. His book ‘Capitalism at the Crossroads’ published in 2005 was selected by Cambridge University as one of the top 50 books on sustainability of all-time.

Bloomberg Businessweek have called him “one of the founding fathers of the ‘base of the pyramid’ economic theory.”

Outside of academia, Stu consults widely as the Founder and President of Enterprise for a Sustainable World, and he is also Founding Director of the Emergent Institute in Bangalore, India.

I spoke to Stu online from his home in Vermont. We talk about his journey from idealist to pragmatist, about a childhood conscious of environmental damage on his doorstep and seeing corporations as the enemy, to a career at the frontier of corporate sustainability, travelling the academic road less travelled, always following his True North rather than any sort of plan.

Find out more about Stu at http://stuartlhart.com

Find out more about the Sustainable Innovation MBA at the Grossman School of Business at https://www.uvm.edu/business/simba_sustainable_innovation_mba

Find out more about Enterprise for a Sustainable World at http://e4sw.org