Pfizers miljö- och ansvarsblogg

An Enterprise 2020 Company - what is that?

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CSR Sweden arranged a breakfast seminar today where CSR Europe’s Executive President Stefan Crets presented the “Enterprise 2020 Initiative“.

Stefan Crets, CSR Europe

In Stefan Crets’ words, “CSR Europe is not a lobbying organization, and it is not a think tank. It is a platform for a change of society and business practices based on sharing and further development of CSR best practices and knowledge with peers and stakeholders”. And for sure, such a platform is really needed. A focus on sharing practical experiences, rather than just theroretical and sometimes even just semantic issues, is definitely welcome. 

And I have to say, that I really like the initiative taken by CSR Europe on building “Enterprise 2020 Companies”. So what is an Enterprise 2020 Company?

A company must develop its business strategies based on an understanding on how the world will look like in the future. Let’s say 2020. How will trends such as increasing globalisation, demographic change, natural resource scarcity, technology acceleration, global health challenges and social divisions shape business and society? How will the trends influence the capacity of the company and the organisation to create value that contributes to economic, societal and environmental progress?

Global Policy Development

In order to fully understand how these global challenges affect business strategies companies also need to understand how those trends affect Global Policy Developments, e.g. ISO 26000, UN Global Compact, GRI on the international level and on a European level e.g. the Europe 2020 Strategy, New EU Communication on CSR (due October 2011), and a legislative proposal on CSR Reporting (due 2012).

EU Policy Development

Stefan Crets describes an Enterprise 2020 company as a company that has fully integrated CSR into its business strategies, so business contributes to a SMART, SUSTAINABLE, and INCLUSIVE growth. In order to be successful, social innovation is a key. Social innovation means new ideas, business models, and products and services resolving existing sustainable challenges such as demographic change, human rights violations, finacial crise, environmental degradation, and poverty.

These ideas is nicely aligned with the “more-than-medication”-strategy for the pharmaceutical industry that I have elaborated upon previously here at the blog:

- The need to fully integrate the CSR startegies into the business strategies of the company (see e.g. blog post from March 29, 2010 (it is in Swedish, sorry for that!))

- 4 steps to a sustainable use of pharmaceuticals (see e.g. blog post from Feb 8, 2011)

- The need for, and opportunities with, social innovation (see e.g. blog post from April 8, 2011)

Enterprise 2020 Company - well, we are not there yet, but we are moving in the right direction…

Urbanization, Growth, and Sustainable Development

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Stockholm Chamber of Commerce arranged a breakfast seminar today in Sollentuna (in conjunction with the Board Meeting of the local section of the Chamber of Commerce in Sollentuna/Kista) with their managing director Maria Ranka. Maria’s topic of the day was the global trend of urbanization and the importance of growth in cities to drive growth for entire countries.

Maria Ranka

Maria showed several examples on urbanization and the creation of huge cities around the globe. That trend is most likely un-stoppable, and most likely not even something that we would like to stop. There are good reasons to believe that there are positive effects both socially and environmentally with urbanization. Nevertheless, both urbanization and economic growth are very often questioned from the sustainability perspective. Maria’s message is that if we manage the trend of urbanization correctly, there is no doubt that the positive effects are greater than the negative effects. If we look on the ecological footprint per capita it is clear that cities have smaller footprint than the country-side. But we need to secure that long-term investment strategies when it comes to infrastructure, public transportation, building of residencial houses and commercial facilities etc. are developed intelligently!

I really liked the discussion, and it is crucial for the future. The trend of urbanization will not stop and hence we need to understand and manage the trend in order to utilize all the great possibilities we see. I also believe that financial growth is extremely important, and hence also needs to be done in a sustainable way (which actually is the basis for sustainable development…).

After Maria’s discussion we continued with a Board meeting with the Sollentuna/Kista section of the Chamber. I have been part of the Boeard for a few years and have realized that this work is very positive when it comes to secure sustainable development. Enterprises are part of the solution on sustainability, we are not the problem!

Stakeholder dialogue - social media increasingly important

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Jonathan Sundqvist’s article from April 1 at csr-i-praktiken’s webpage is interesting. He says that we are moving away from the “consumption society” and into a “customer society”. By this he means that interactions and dialogue with the customers, and the empowerment of the customers, will become more important in marketing and sales. Within an industry such as the pharmaceutical, where the customer is not always extremely easy to identify and specify, we would rather use the word stakeholder than customer. But aside from that, I strongly agree with Jonathan. Stakeholder engagement, and the increasingly important social media platforms, are crucial in today’s and tomorrow’s society.

This blog is one effort to open up for interactive discussions with all our stakeholders. And we have taken a few additional steps as well into “Web 2.0″. See for instance our work with the “Can you feel my pain-campaign”. Visit us on facebook, twitter, flickr, and twibbon.

In the “stakeholder society”, interactivity is more important than ever!

CSR and Environmental Discussions with SLU-students

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You may know by now that I regularly have the opportunity to have discussions with university students on CSR and environmental issues. Today I met students at SLU (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences) in Uppsala.

SLU in Uppsala

Two years ago I wrote a quite extensive blog post from another meeting with SLU students. I then incorporated questions from the students and my answers to those questions in the blog post. Similar questions like these were presented to me also prior to today’s lecture, however with an even higher percentage of “social responsibility type of issues” to “environmental matters”. I think this is an interesting trend. Students have become more and more interested in the wider perspective of Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability.

Hence, in addition to discussions on environmental sustainability matters such as Pharmaceuticals in the Environment, Energy and Climate Change, Green Chemistry, Environmental Audits of 3rd party manufacturers, we also had discussions around some of my favourite “CSR-slides”, for instance:

The Sustainable Quadrant, showing how countries with a high UN Development Index tend to have large ecological footprints. And we all know, that large ecological footprints may very well result in lower public health… Hence, actions are required.

A picture borrowed from Stina Billinger, SPP

The Walderik-Mattson pyramid, showing the different kind of CSR-related activities we persue on different markets around the globe.

Walderik-Mattson Pyramid

As always extremely interesting to have discussions with students!

Sustainability for different businesses and companies

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I have just returned back from a week of vacation in Funäsdalen. It has been a very good week - skiing, just hanging out, and feeling good!

Sun shines over Ramundberget

The first thing I read coming back to the office made me unfortunately sad… In the March 2011 issue (No. 2) of MiljöAktuellt there is a brief “pre-launch” of the survey called Sustainable Brands 2011. The results from the survey will be presented March 27, but already now some general conclusions have been published. One of them made me sad…

The pharmaceutical industry is the branch of enterprise with the lowest trust and reputation. In the top of the list you will find business like “food supermarkets”, cars, hotel and restaurants, and the the bottom of the list are business such as tele communication, banking and insurance, and pharma…

I have to admit that I am very disappointed. It is not new to anyone of you who follows my blog that I actually think that we are a responsible sector, we contribute to good health, and we continuously strive to become even better. Read for instance my two blog post from Oct 11 2009 (post No 1 and post No 2) and the blog post from March 29 last year.

But I guess it is as simple as this: If we do not manage to communicate our story to the public, how could we expect them to have trust in us as a sector and as a company. We have to be better in communication. And interactive communication as this blog initiative is one of many important steps…

In my opinion we belong higher up in the list - but it is up to us to prove that to the public!