I started The Body Shop in 1976 simply to create a livelihood for myself and my two daughters, while my husband, Gordon, was trekking across the Americas. I had no training or experience and my only business acumen was Gordon's advice to take sales of £300 a week. Nobody talks of entrepreneurship as survival, but that's exactly what it is and what nurtures creative thinking.

Over the past decades...while many businesses have pursued what I call 'business as usual', I have been part of a different, smaller business movement, one that tried to put idealism back on the agenda.

The trouble with the new world we have watched being created over the past decade is that it sees no further than money. People have always been obsessed with money, of course - greed is as old as history. But when the institutions that govern all our lives forget there was ever anything else, then it gets dangerous.

There are only two ways of making money: the hard way and the very hard way!

The business of business should not be about money. It should be about responsibility. It should be about public good, not private greed

A Sense Of Outrage Is Essential For The Entrepreneurial Spirit. I Think Discontentment Drives You To Want To Do Something About It. And My Outrage Came Very Early On.

Why should how I act in my workplace be any different from how I interact with my family at home? It's making sure the company runs on feminine principles where the major ethic is care.