World Book Day: The Book That Asks Business Leaders to Choose a Different Path

Thursday, March 05, 2026

Every World Book Day, we're reminded that the right book at the right time can truly change the way you see the world. This year, we want to share one that we think every business leader should read.

Realising Good Growth: A Practical Guide for Business Leaders by Professor Steve Kempster and Dr Stewart Barnes opens not with a business framework or a growth strategy, but with a question that stops you in your tracks.

Our children - and certainly our children's children - may one day ask: why did you let this happen?

The preface sets out the challenge with striking clarity. The world is heating up. Agricultural production is in decline. Inequality is deepening. And yet we find ourselves caught in what Steve and Stewart describe as the moral paradox of our time: we need economic growth to generate the tax revenues to address these problems, but growth itself is the root cause.

So what do we do?

Their answer is not to stop growing. It's to change the nature of growth entirely.

A fork in the road

The preface frames a choice that every business leader faces, whether they realise it or not. We can continue on the well-worn path of conventional growth - profit-first, consequences later - or we can take the path less travelled, towards a way of doing business where people, planet and profits all flourish together. That is what Steve and Stewart call Good Growth.

This isn't idealism. It's a practical response to a real and urgent challenge, grounded in a decade of working with hundreds of businesses of all shapes and sizes across the West of England and beyond.

Why business leaders - not governments - hold the key

One of the most compelling arguments in the preface is this: 150 of the top 200 largest entities in the world, measured by size, are companies. Governments set the rules, but business is the engine room for change. And if you picture those 150 giants as just the tip of a pyramid made up of more than 300 million businesses worldwide, the potential impact of a shift in business leadership becomes extraordinary.

That's the invitation Realising Good Growth extends to its readers. Not to wait for policy or legislation, but to lead the change from within their own organisations.

A guidebook, not just a good read

What makes this book stand out - particularly for business leaders who don't always have time to read - is that it's wholly practical. Built around the Good Dividends framework and accompanied by a suite of integrated DigiTools including the Plan on a Page, it gives leaders a step-by-step way to audit their business, clarify their purpose and build a plan that works for people, planet and profit together.

It reached number 32 in Amazon's global Small Business Plans bestseller list, which tells its own story about how it's landing with the people it was written for.

Worth reading this World Book Day

We'll leave the final word to Steve and Stewart themselves. The path less travelled, they write, is unclear, and requires much clearing as we proceed. But to travel it, and to discover that it has made all the difference - then the conversation with our grandchildren will be so very different.

That feels like exactly the kind of book worth picking up today.

Want a taste before you buy?

Download the preface of Realising Good Growth for free and see for yourself what the path less travelled looks like. It takes five minutes to read and might just change the way you think about your business.

Download the Preface here 👇