Gispen's mission
Gispen stands for sustainable design . By means of inspiring, sustainably designed products and spaces, they want to create optimal environments that have a positive influence on people. Gispen is convinced that well-designed, sustainable products guarantee a sustainable interior.
Gispen believes in a circular economy. For example, they design product components in such a way that these or all components can be reused. Think of steel desk legs that they process and re-lacquer for a coffee table. Are products at the end of their life? Then Gispen ensures that residual materials are safely returned to nature or can be reused as raw materials. They shred a desktop that can no longer be used for something else so that a new sheet can be made from it.
As you can read in the first three examples, the starting point of a social enterprise is often: 'There is something wrong with the market. I am going to do it differently.' Willemijn Verloop (Social Enterprise NL): “ You do not choose the easy way, but the way that ultimately creates the most value ” (pdf).
Existing companies can choose the same approach, because they often know exactly how things work in their chain. Gispen makes an active contribution to sustainability, because they see that things can be done better. It is the conviction of the company in combination with the needs of the market. The big difference with social enterprises is new zealand whatsapp number that Gispen is owned by HAL Investments, which aims to create as much value as possible for its shareholders. This value is mainly expressed in money and not in social value.
Step 2: Create value within the social and ecological constraints
Management guru Michael Porter indicates that companies can tackle major problems such as climate change. Companies can create “ shared value ”. Shared value is created when we build social and economic value at the same time. This can be done at different levels:
By developing a product that contributes to solving a social problem
By structuring all parts of your organization sustainably
By working optimally with all your stakeholders
People, Planet, Profit
The creation of this shared value goes a step further than Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), because social and economic value are created at the same time. The starting point of CSR is the pursuit of a balance between People , Planet and Profit . The 3 P's or triple bottom line were introduced in 1994 by John Elkington (pdf) .