ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

All the folks who participated in Corporation 20/20 over the years are first on my list for deepest thanks. This is your book as much as mine, and I wish I’d been able to fit more of you into the narrative. You’re all here in spirit. It wouldn’t have been written without you.

I also owe special thanks to the people of the Tellus Institute, especially John Stutz, who generously funded some of the very earliest of this thinking, which appeared as a paper I wrote for the Toda Institute. For Allen White, my longtime partner in corporate design and the director of Corporation 20/20, no thanks are enough. I simply would not be doing this work if not for him. Nor would I be doing it without Paul Raskin and Rich Rosen, who, with John Stutz, influenced my thinking with their research and vision of a Great Transition to a new social order. I’m also grateful to Paul for the lessons he’s imparted about systems thinking. I am thankful to be the colleague of all these men.

All the people I interview in this book are owed an enormous debt of gratitude for their time and wisdom. Leslie Christian and John Katovich are particularly dear friends and partners in the area of enterprise design, as well as in my life. Many thanks to Orion Kriegman for sharing his story and journeying with me. I am especially and very personally grateful to “Helen and Michael Haroldson,” for so graciously opening their home to me and sharing their story. My hope is that they are able to resolve their situation into stability and ease.

I am indebted to those who generously agreed to read versions of this book and offer feedback, including Karen Kahn, Carrie Rich, Robert Ellman, Kristen Moussalli, Jill Swenson, Neva Goodwin, David Korten, Valerie Kelly, Ben Linder, and Alex Lamb. Alex also suggested the title for the book: hats off (I owe you a bottle of champagne). Many, many thanks to Robert Ellman for help in finding the Haroldsons and allowing that journey to come to a close. Ben Linder gave a particularly close reading and helped reshape a number of key design points, including the definition of Ethical Networks.

I am exceedingly thankful for Gar Alperovitz’s longtime work and thought leadership in promoting the importance of ownership; I consider him one of the key advocates and theorists of this field. I’m grateful to Fritjof Capra, from whom I learned a good deal about systems thinking. It was from Mike Thomas that I first heard the phrase “social architecture.” Heerad Sabeti has done more than I can say to deepen and broaden my thinking, and the thinking of all of us, on issues and language of social enterprise design and the benefit corporation. He is a true pioneer. Other thought leaders in ownership design to whom I am grateful are Mary Ann Beyster, Susan MacCormac, Kent Greenfield, and Todd Johnson.

My work with the Ford Foundation, while separate from this book, informed my research in valuable ways. I am grateful to Wayne Fawbush and Frank DeGiovanni for their leadership of the Wealth Creation in Rural Communities—Building Sustainable Livelihoods Initiative, and to Shanna Ratner of Yellow Wood Associates for encouraging me to pursue research into ownership in rural areas.

Agent Scott Edelstein was enormously helpful in getting this book off the ground, in many many ways. Johanna Vondeling gave me brilliant early guidance in shaping this book as a work of nonfiction narrative; it is her book, in more ways than anyone can know. Steve Piersanti and the other staff of Berrett-Koehler are, as always, a delight to work with. The production team of editor Elissa Rabellino, designer Laura Lind, and coordinators Linda Jupiter and Dianne Platner gave this book a final editorial and graphic polish and elegance for which I am enormously thankful. I am proud to be a stakeholder in Berrett-Koehler, the most generative publisher I know.

Finally, and most important, I am grateful to my wife, Shelley Alpern, for her insight, support, and patience as I gave over my life (and my weekends) to this book for several years. She listened to more conversations about ownership design than any human being should ever have to endure (and did so with graciousness, if not entirely without complaint). It is Shelley more than anyone else who, in many, many ways, made this book possible.