Some years back, I had what I recall as a particularly stimulating 3-hour breakfast in New York with Niels Christiansen, the man who in 2005 had coined the term ‘Creating Shared Value’ (CSV) for Nestlé. We were both in the city for one of a series of Nestlé CSV Forums.
The company’s original mapping of the CSV agenda is shown below:
The CSV concept had been pushed into the mainstream by a 2011 article in the Harvard Business Review by Michael Porter and Mark Kramer, but the former had triggered a fairly animated debate by insisting that Shared Value would replace both the corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability agendas.
Though I enormously respect Porter and Kramer, I disagreed – see here and here. And now Niels has plunged back into the debate, concluding that CSV has been “lost in translation” and proposing 6 steps for those who want to create true shared value in their businesses. Recommended: well worth reading.
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