Engaging Employees in Growth and Innovation

Bob Stiller founded Green Mountain Coffee Roasters in Waterbury, Vermont, in 1981, serving as CEO and president until 2007 and chairman until 2012.

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Nasdaq named the company’s stock its top performer of the decade in 2009 even as the firm won first place on Business Ethics magazine’s 100 Best Corporate Citizens lists in 2006 and 2007. Green Mountain Coffee also became the world’s largest supplier of fair trade coffee, a story Stiller tells in his new book, Better & Better: Creating a Culture of Purpose, Engagement, and Transformative Human Engagement (McGraw Hill, 2025). Stiller is a strong proponent of Appreciative Inquiry, an approach to problem-solving that essentially identifies what’s working and maximizes it. It engages people at all levels of an organization in a four-step process to discover strengths, imagine a better future, and then design and execute plans for achieving. MIT Sloan Management Review spoke with Stiller to learn more about how the approach helped drive the company’s growth. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

What spurred your interest in using Appreciative Inquiry broadly?