Perspectives on Purpose: From Shareholder Value to Societal Value

Many corporations now no longer see maximizing shareholder value as their chief aim. With this major ideological shift, brands now need to rethink their purpose—to consumers, employees, and society at large.

Published

September 20, 2019

Publication

Chazen Global Insights

Article Author(s)

Evangeline Lew

Assistant Director: Center on Global Brand Leadership

Issues around sustainability and the consumer attention to upstart purpose-led brands are pushing the corporate community to expand beyond shareholder value to societal value.

With the recent trend of corporations rethinking their values and moving away from the prevailing model of prioritizing shareholder value, brands have had to rethink their purpose. At the BRITE ’19 Conference, we convened a panel of experts from a variety of backgrounds to weigh in on this movement. In the process, we looked at the evolution of the concept of “purpose,” why purpose is important for both society and for your bottom line, ways to measure purpose, and how your brand can discover and fulfill its unique purpose, addressing questions such as:

How has the idea of purpose evolved?
How do you define and develop frameworks around purpose?
How can the value of purpose be measured?
What are the challenges of doing purpose work?

Check out the video to hear from our experts: Jonathan Jackson(Co-Founder, Blavity Inc; 2019 Nieman-Berkman Klein Fellow, Harvard University), Nina Montgomery (Design Researcher, IDEO; Editor and Author, Perspectives on Purpose), Ed Pilkington (Chief Marketing and Innovation Officer, North America, Diageo), Matthew Quint (Director, Center on Global Brand Leadership, Columbia Business School), and Freya Williams (CEO, North America, Futerra).

External CSS