October 20, 2015

Managing Idealists and Capitalists

Marya Besharov has been teaching the Ben & Jerry’s story for seven years. She focuses her classes on the salary ratio, a policy the company maintained from the early 1980s until 1994 that required the highest-paid full-time employee earn no more than seven times as much as the lowest-paid (full-time) employee. The policy divided the…

August 22, 2015

Hitting the Big Times (sort of)

Last Friday’s New York Times story on the relationship between Unilever and Ben & Jerry’s isn’t really hard news. It’s the Mister Softee version. What the story leaves out is what Unilever does not want you to know. To save money, Unilever executives ordered the recipes for Cherry Garcia and other popular flavors changed shortly…

June 24, 2015

Taiwanese edition is now out!

Please tell all your friends in Taipei!

May 4, 2015

Talk to DC Entrepreneur’s Organization

Brad told the Ben & Jerry’s story to the Washington, DC chapter of the Entrepreneur’s Organization on April 23.  Thanks to Karen Morse of DC Ben & Jerry’s for the ice cream and the leaders of EO DC for their invitation —  Anna and Austin Birch of Adventure Links, Jen Sterling of Red Thinking LLC,…

April 9, 2015

Hey, DC! Earth Day Ice Cream Social At George’s!

Brad will tell the story of the three-part mission of Ben & Jerry’s, and how it fits into the new movement for mission-driven business, at George Washington University’s Marvin Center on Earth Day, April 22, at 5:30 pm.  Ice Cream Social is the first book to tell the complete story of this iconic company, and…

March 16, 2015

Skype on Steroids

Thanks to Shelly Mitchell and the students of “Business, Government & Society,” a course at the Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics at the University of New Hampshire, for inviting Brad to attend via videoconference last week. If you would like to have a giant disembodied head talk to YOUR class, contact us here. …

March 5, 2015

Goin’ To Tucson

The Tucson Festival of Books is gi-normous, and this year it’s pondering socially conscious ice cream.  This annual event will draw more than 100,000 people to the University of Arizona campus on Saturday and Sunday, March 14 and 15. Everyone who goes loves to read and share what they’re reading. If that describes you, and…

February 5, 2015

How to Sell Ice Cream In Winter

Ben & Jerry’s is interesting because it zigs when most other companies zag. You might think that an ice cream business based in Vermont would just forget about selling in the winter. But they never have, and on February 28, 2015, they’ll zig at their thirteenth annual Winterfest. The festival, at the factory in Waterbury,…