Emmanuel Faber, Co-Chief Operating Officer, DANONE on the profit that you accept NOT to do

An interesting presentation from HEC Social Business Conference, by Emmanuel Faber, Co-Chief Operating Officer, DANONE, on “How to manage business objectives and social objectives?” - a question that Emmanuel rephrases into "How can you achieve business objectives without also perusing social goals?"

"The goal of a company is to serve society through the people that it serves in its interaction with those people. Whether they are consumers, customers, employees, shareholders, suppliers, they are people and these people are the ones who ultimately judge whether the company is efficient or not efficient, each of them having their own stakes."

"The real value of the company is not what derives from the valuation of its profits, or the actualization of its profits on the long term, what really makes a company valuable is the profit that it accepts not to do. What really makes a company a solid company is the profit you accept not to do, the profit that you accept to share with the stakeholders of the company."

"There is a possibility that in the next 2-3 years the stock market valuation will have to take into account more than just how the profit evolve whether they go up or down, what is the PEG to growth ratio etc. I think that there is a likelihood that the market will be requiring a better understanding of what fundamentally these companies are about. Are they based on sound business models that make sense from the community in which it engages."

How to motivate employees to take social issues into account