An ordinary day in the vineyards provided Paul Dolan with a startling revelation that changed the course of his life and his whole conception of the role of business. The simple act of tasting organic grapes, seeing that things can be done differently, drove him to pilot an industry wide revolution.

This fateful day lead Paul to drastically change his conceptualization of the responsibilities of business. Paul firmly believes that it’s time for one of the most powerful forces on Earth, business, to become a positive force for change. Business is a powerful tool that creates tremendous wealth and technological progress. However, the new challenge is to preserve this progress and wealth for the generations to come.

The fundamental premise of business has long been that the genius of pure self-interest combined with the motivation of competition will produce wealth for the many, which benefits society as a whole. Those benefits to society, however, are secondary. The primary goal is producing returns for shareholders.

Now we see that this belief is flawed. Natural resources are not unlimited and human beings are not expendable. Profits don’t justify strip-mining the wilderness or locking people to sewing machines in sweatshops. The true cost of a gallon of gas is not the price you pay at the pump. The true cost has to be measure in broader terms, to include what it cost the earth when oil is extracted and the cost when some of its byproducts return to the atmosphere, affecting humanity as a whole through global warming.

The corporation remains a great vehicle for generating wealth and spreading it around the around. The mentality of business has remained static, but the world around it is shifting rapidly. Nonrenewable resources are running out. Economic imbalances are becoming social, political, and even military threats to world order. Nothing takes place in isolation, especially not in a world with a twenty-four-hour news cycle. There are more stakeholders in a business than its owners, and the interests of the various stakeholders can diverge sharply.

There is a growing sense that individuals can, indeed, work together across cultures and companies, across countries and communities, to preserve this precious Earth for ourselves and all future generations.

This is more than a vision of world that ‘should be’. As president of Fetzer Vineyards and now the Mendocino Wine Company, Paul developed a corporate culture that proved that business could be successful financially while paying attention to sustainable issues. He developed an approach to business called the ‘triple bottom line’ or E3 which comprises the areas of economics, environment, and social equity. Paul’s idea is not only theoretical, but practical: his bottom line is to deliver business success to last for ourselves and all future generations.

Ultimately, great leaders will need to realize this dream of a world that works for everyone. We will need leaders in every aspect of society: politics, education and most importantly business. Individuals who are willing to ask of themselves what others are not willing to ask. Are you one of those?