The book invites business leaders to invest in and foster economic opportunity and stability in the world's frontlines.
Dr. Viva Bartkus, professor emerita at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, has imagined for over ten years writing what she’s called the “BOTFL book.” BOTFL is short-hand for the Business on the Frontlines program, and Bartkus is its founder. The program partners Notre Dame MBA students with organizations in the world’s vulnerable places to develop local solutions that create jobs and set the conditions for economic growth.
Now, Bartkus along with co-author Dr. Emily Block, the George M. Cormie Chair of Management in the University of Alberta School of Business, has made it happen. Business on the Edge: How to Turn a Profit and Improve Lives in the World’s Toughest Places, published by Hachette Book Group, is a roadmap for how business can grow and make money while reducing poverty and conflict in some of the world’s most challenging environments.
More than 80 alumni and donors of the program, at least one representing every year of the 16 years since Business on the Frontlines began, gathered to mark the publication at a book launch party in Chicago on August 10.
“It was a celebration of community across nearly a generation and really nice to see all the connections,” said Bartkus.
Business on the Edge has spent four weeks as the No. 1 seller in the category of Growth and Development Economics on Amazon. Bloomberg Businessweek, MIT Sloan Management Review, Stanford Social Innovation Review and other outlets have interviewed Bartkus and Block since the July publication date.
Since 2008, faculty, student and alumni teams have collaborated on more than 90 business and peace-related projects in over 30 countries with multinational corporations, international humanitarian organizations and local NGOs. The course challenges MBA student teams and their partner organizations to harness business to serve societies ravaged by conflict and deep poverty.
“This would have never happened in any other place than the University of Notre Dame,” said Bartkus. “Each of the three parts of the University mission is taken so seriously: teaching, research and service. At the intersection is where new knowledge and good ideas for the world arise.”
The book is aimed at business leaders, inviting them to invest in and foster economic opportunity and stability in the world's frontlines. She contends that business can maximize shareholder profit by operating in frontline environments, and in doing so, can nudge societies toward a more prosperous and stable future.
“Business leaders are increasingly called upon to contribute innovative solutions to the urgent challenges facing humanity."
"Business leaders are increasingly called upon to contribute innovative solutions to the urgent challenges facing humanity,” said Bartkus.
Bartkus said since publication she has received skepticism from readers about how to handle security and safety. They see the opportunity, yet the idea of middlemen with guns is too problematic. In her many conversations she shares the best – and in her view, the only – way for long-term security: to be so deeply embedded in a community that the community perceives your business success as their success. Therefore they protect you as if they are protecting themselves.
Since her retirement from Notre Dame last summer, Bartkus has focused mainly on completing this book and becoming an evangelist for its ideas.
“We really think that if we change these business practices, there will be a whole set of local communities that will live their lives much better.”
She points to multi-year BOTFL partner Newmont Mining, the world’s largest gold mining company.
“Imagine if other mineral extraction companies accessed such opportunities through deep cooperation with local communities. More companies would get access to minerals in places that may have seemed too risky, and then community members will get the opportunity to benefit from the dignity of work. The biggest companies in agriculture, infrastructure or mining could really gain from investing in the frontlines.”
The book release has generated interest from the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, which Bartkus had collaborated with while at Notre Dame. For three years, teams of BOTFL alumni worked alongside special forces soldiers during their deployments in West Africa and Central America, determining the leading indicators of instability and fostering local processes that harnessed business to build stability.
Recently she and Block were invited to lead a course on Business on the Frontlines with the 3rd Special Forces Group in Fort Liberty, North Carolina. Bartkus sees that Business on the Edge and its ideas could contribute to the conversation around our national security and how to foster stability in these places.
“Indeed, the book is at the intersection of three different conversations: First, where next for globalization for international business investment? Second, how do we think about national security, and in particular, how do we compete against China and Russia, and even groups like Hezbollah, who have figured out how to combine business and security in their initiatives? And third, how do we foster sustainable growth and the opportunity for the dignity of work rather than dependency through economic development and foreign aid programs?
“There is an appetite amongst a number of both CEOs and US military commanders to engage in those discussions because they see that we need to do something differently in frontline environments. We have something to say on that, too, because we bring business processes and principles into impoverished, isolated, frequently lawless places where people just want the opportunity to work hard and lift their families out of poverty.”