The Impact Entrepreneur Breakthrough | A Field Manual for the Regenerative Economy

Coming September 2026

The Impact Entrepreneur Breakthrough

A Field Manual for the Regenerative Economy

Laurie Lane-Zucker · Founder, Impact Entrepreneur, PBC

Berrett-Koehler Publishers · Distributed by Penguin Random House

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The Impact Entrepreneur Breakthrough — 3D book cover showing watercolor artwork

70K+

Global Network

200+

Countries

100+

Conferences

Years in the Field

About the Book

From Extraction to Regeneration

The Impact Entrepreneur Breakthrough book cover

In 2011, Laurie Lane-Zucker gave a name to something emerging across sectors and geographies: the impact entrepreneur. Not a social entrepreneur adding a charitable component to business. Not a sustainability consultant helping corporations greenwash. Someone building enterprises where financial return and systemic regeneration are inseparable — where success requires healing rather than merely tolerating harm.

Fifteen years later, that argument has become a breakthrough — a critical mass of practitioners, tools, and proof points that can no longer be dismissed as marginal or utopian. This field manual draws on decades of leadership to offer the frameworks, vision, and practical tools needed to transform our economy from single-bottom-line thinking to a regenerative model that serves people, planet, and prosperity alike.

Defense as a Service™

Reframing security from militarized protection to regenerative prevention — a paradigm shift in how we think about keeping communities safe.

Prevention Dividend™

Quantifying the economic returns of investing in prevention over reaction — making the financial case for upstream solutions.

Impact Economy Framework

A complete architecture for triple-bottom-line transformation — from enterprise design through ownership, capital, and market structures.

Systemic Intelligence

Moving beyond single-bottom-line thinking to whole-systems design — cultivating the capacity to navigate complexity.

Inside the Book

Five Parts. Sixteen Chapters. One Coherent Vision.

From diagnosis to design, from possibility to protection, this field manual moves through interconnected dimensions of regenerative transformation.

Part I

Foundations

From Crisis to Coherence

The Impact Entrepreneur · From Single-Bottom-Line to Systemic Intelligence

Part II

Possibility

What We Could Build

Enterprises That Heal · Ownership as Justice · Capital as Custodian · Markets That Reflect What Matters

Part III

Protection

The Five Pillars of Real Security

The Misallocation of Defense · Who Really Keeps Us Safe · Militarization to Mutualism · Defense as a Service

Part IV

Integration

Architecture of a Regenerative Economy

The Culture We Keep Alive · Stories That Shape the Possible · The Attention Commons · Identities That Remember the Whole

Part V

Reclamation

A Civilization Worth the Name

Reclaiming the Commons · The Work of Reclamation: A Field Manual for Civilizational Renewal

Advance Praise

What Leaders Are Saying

The most comprehensive and compelling vision I've ever seen for how business can regenerate — not just repair. I thought I understood the landscape, but Lane-Zucker reveals possibilities I hadn't even imagined.

Jeffrey Hollender

Co-founder of Seventh Generation; Adjunct Professor, NYU Stern School of Business

A groundbreaking and motivational manual — it opens new horizons for the vision of the entrepreneur. A brave vision for creating value and justice for all relations: the co-owners, the community, the customer, the environment, society, and the generations to follow.

Tom Chappell

Co-founder of Tom's of Maine and Rambler's Way

This dire moment calls for deep commitment, and this book illuminates not just the best practices of impact entrepreneurship but a wider notion of how we can rebuild culture, markets, and ourselves to enable the future we want.

Jason Jay

Senior Lecturer and Director, MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative

The problem isn't a lack of good intentions — it's the systems themselves. This book names what I've seen after decades in the field: we've been trying to solve systemic problems one venture at a time. A field manual for building movements, not exceptions.

Sarah Holloway

5x Impact Entrepreneur; Faculty and Director, MPA, SIPA, Columbia University

Lane-Zucker's book makes a compelling case that our current economic system is driving both social and ecological collapse — and offers a clear path forward. A vital guide to moving from extraction to regeneration.

Judy Wicks

Local Economy Pioneer; author, Good Morning, Beautiful Business

This important work cuts through the rhetoric of 'doing good' to show where justice in entrepreneurship actually lives: in ownership, governance, and capital. A clear, rigorous field manual for building enterprises designed for equity and regeneration.

Latha Poonamallee

Professor of Management and Innovation, Parsons School of Design, The New School

Extraordinary. A rallying cry for system-shapers, charting a clear, compelling path for anyone ready to help build the regenerative economy this moment demands. Laurie Lane-Zucker guides readers seamlessly from diagnosis to design to implementation, equipping them with incisive tools, visionary frameworks, and the stories of innovators already forging the next economy where justice, mutualism, and planetary healing drive how we live and work.

Marc J. Lane

Author of The Mission-Driven Venture and the American Bar Association's treatise on social enterprise

Laurie Lane-Zucker

Founder & CEO, Impact Entrepreneur, PBC

Years

100+

Conferences

70K+

Network

200+

Countries

About the Author

Thirty-Five Years in the Field

Laurie Lane-Zucker coined the term "impact entrepreneur" in 2011 and founded Impact Entrepreneur, PBC — one of the world's largest networks of systems-minded changemakers, reaching more than 70,000 practitioners across 200+ countries.

He co-created the term "place-based education" in the 1990s with John Elder, served as Executive Director of the Orion Society (which the Boston Globe called "the philosophical voice of the environmental movement"), and was among the first 25 Certified B Corps through his founding of Hotfrog — which completed the first equity transaction on an impact investment exchange.

As an award-winning publisher and editor, Lane-Zucker has collaborated with acclaimed authors including Wendell Berry, Barry Lopez, and Terry Tempest Williams, and organized more than 100 conferences and summits worldwide — from the landmark 1996 Watershed Conference at the Library of Congress to programs with Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture.

His latest innovations — Defense as a Service™ and the Prevention Dividend™ — are described for the first time in this book.

Who This Book Is For

A Field Manual for Every Changemaker

Impact Entrepreneurs Impact Investors Foundation Leaders Educators & Researchers Policy Makers Internal Changemakers ESG & Sustainability Practitioners B Corp Leaders Social Enterprise Builders Students of the Regenerative Economy

Available September 1, 2026

Join the Breakthrough

The impact economy doesn't need more theory — it needs practical tools wielded by people who understand that changing the world begins with changing the words we use to describe what's possible.

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Also available as an audiobook

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Narrated by David Colacci · Produced by Ascent Audio (an RB Media imprint)

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For media and educators

Berrett-Koehler Publishers · Distributed globally by Penguin Random House

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