GigaOM

Long before Google made its claim on the notion of doing business without doing evil, British entrepreneur Anita Roddick built an billion-dollar cosmetics empire on this very maxim, and at least one more: “Businesses have the ability to good,” Roddick said, as often as anyone would hear her out. And she proved her point.

Founded in 1976, Roddick’s then-novel company, The Body Shop, a maker and retailer of plant-derived cosmetics from all over the world, was among the first to decry animal testing and inhuman labor standards in the production of its products, and to describe itself as “socially respsonsible” (a qualification that is all too easily thrown about these days). So much for what doing good “costs” you. The Body Shop was acquired last year by L’Oreal, for $1.14 billion.

Roddick died unexpectedly of a brain hemmorhage yesterday. She was 64.

Three years ago I had the great chance to meet Dame Roddick. By then she had already stepped down from daily management of her company to focus on her social activism. Yet the “Queen of Green” remained thoughtful about business. As she promoted a television series on her new book, a work on globalization activism called Take it Personally, Roddick also offered some valuable take-aways for the business leaders of tomorrow, like you.

She’s worth listenting to. Afterall, many of today’s biggest business success stories borrow from the ethos of social, political or environmental responsiblity that Roddick helped to craft decades ago.

1. Take your business personally: Business has, traditionally, addressed the world with profits in mind, which is to say: impersonally. We can no longer afford this. More than any other generation — [today’s] business people are in a position to lead in making the world a better place. We must take more responsibility, which is to say, take it personally.

2. Be daring. Be first. Be different: Or no one will notice.

3. Be good.: Because you can.

4. Business is not beyond morality. Business is no longer a cold-hearted, objective, pseudo-scientific project to manipulate customers…it can’t be that anymore. The future of the world depends on us doing business with heart. Without ‘heart’ the creativitiy of the human spirit dwindles, too.

5. Business is like activism: It is a way of saying what kind of world you want to live in. Protest is not enough. You need a vision.