Nestle: trying to 'create shared value' in international development

On May 28, Nestle held their annual 'Creating Shared Value' conference and their first 'Creating Shared Value' prize. It consisted of a series of panels on Rural Development, Nutrition and Water. This is the first of a series of blogs on reflections and pertinent issues raised during the conference. Nestle brought together a superb group of academics, thought leaders and their own staff to fill the audience with their thoughts. But judging from the discussions during the break, it was too 'abstract' - not because it was academics who were doing the talking, but because it was unclear what all the talk was really for.

The conference gave Nestle a chance to showcase some of their recent work in community projects around the world and 'creating shared value' (a variation of win-win solutions for business and communities). But was it anything more than an elaborate show-and-tell gathering with some networking opportunities and the added benefit of a chance to hear some cutting edge thinking in critical developmental issues? I questioned several of the Nestle employees who had a hand in shaping the conference and asked them about their goals. One of them said, well, we really wanted to emphasize that business can be a force for good in society. And we want NGOs to stop hassling us.

Nestle's had a bad run with the civil society community, not least due to one of the more powerful civil society boycotts against Nestle in 1998 when it was 'irresponsibly' marketing breastmilk substitutes, breaking the international code of marketing of breastmilk substitutes. Society's elephants, NGOs often have a long memory and are not particularly good at forgetting - especially not what big businesses have done. There is little doubt that Nestle has made huge strides forward since 1998, and their work with several prominent civil society organisations demonstrates that. But the thought that they needed to prove to civil society that 'business can be a force for good' is well, about 10 years out of date. Many in civil society are more than happy to admit that - even work very hard to encourage it. Hence - doing business better. Certainly I didn't meet anyone at the conference who was shocked by the notion that business can be a force for good. That's why they were there, doing the work they are doing - to ensure that it does, indeed, do that. Or at least that it does no harm. Nestle might have coined the term 'creating shared value' but the basic notion has been around for as long as has business itself (a point that I am sure they would agree with).

If Nestle continues to have these conferences, perhaps in the future, they can learn to give people more chance for interaction (which is where learning tends to happen) and to have the conference itself advance concrete goals - to tackle real problems. Not just 'nutrition' or 'water' - that is too abstract (though better than 'business and society', which is even more abstract)! But rather, here is our policy on 'nutrtion' or here are our challenges in getting better nutrition, what can we do differently? What do you want to learn from us? Or find ways to connect the dots in a creative, interactive fashion that really adds value - not just a bit more information - to the participants and for Nestle. Because the challenges we face are too big to let any opportunity of people gathering together miss the chance to have concrete learning's that we can use in our daily work to do 'business better'.