G Adventures founder Bruce Poon Tip is challenging the traditional leadership model with a new book that explores how businesses can thrive beyond the influence of a single leader.

Titled ‘Communityship: Lessons from the Universe and the Business of Everyone’, the book examines a leadership approach built on trust, shared responsibility, belonging and collective purpose. Published by HarperCollins in Canada and the U.S. on Nov. 24, 2026, it also features a foreword by the late Dr. Jane Goodall. The book is now available for pre-sale.

Part memoir and part business book, Communityship traces Poon Tip’s journey from 22-year-old entrepreneur to founder of an established adventure travel company. He reflects on the failures, lessons and people that shaped the business, including the challenges of moving away from a founder-centric leadership model.

“Communityship is about understanding that none of us succeeds alone,” says Bruce Poon Tip. “For 36 years, I thought my job was to build G Adventures. I eventually realised my job was to build something that could outlive me. That meant letting go of control, trusting other people and creating a community that felt responsible for the future of the business. The next 100 years of G Adventures cannot belong to one person. They have to belong to all of us.”

The book also explores how companies can balance purpose and profit, drawing on G Adventures’ community tourism initiatives, the creation of Planeterra and the company’s Trees for Days initiative. Poon Tip discusses G Adventures’ decision to develop its own approach to measuring impact rather than relying solely on established accreditation systems such as B Corp.

The COVID-19 pandemic is another focus, with Poon Tip revisiting the period when G Adventures went from a thriving global travel company to having no revenue almost overnight. He describes the crisis as an opportunity to reconsider how the business operated and what it needed to become.

Other themes include the role of intuition and unexpected opportunities in business, lessons learned from failure and the limits of traditional charitable approaches to creating lasting change in the communities where G Adventures operates. Poon Tip’s approach calls for replacing control with trust, hierarchy with shared responsibility and individual success with collective purpose.

Source: Travelweek
Lead image caption: Bruce Poon Tip, G Adventures founder