Category: Allgemein

Impact Before Profit: SocietyVision Unfolds Its Purpose

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— By Hugues Chatelain, President and Founder —

How profoundly is your business influencing society? During my 30-year working with major groups, it became increasingly clear to me that the future of all companies would depend on this very question. It is reality. We now are living in an era when companies need to broaden their horizons and focus not just on products and consumers, but on society at large. Brace yourself for an age of transformation like no other – societal, ecological, technological. It’s the age where forging business’s ties to its town, region, community and the planet is critical, rather than optional.

Rooted in optimism and clarity, I conceived SocietyVision in 2009. Our mission? Establish bespoke partnerships between businesses seeking an amelioration in their performance and societal impact, and non-profit organizations (NPOs) aspiring to broaden their influence. We aim to stimulate the implementation of projects with profound impact across varied domains – be it housing, arts, ecological transition, or social inclusion, facilitating an exchange of cultures and competencies.

Our raison d’être

In constituting its own business model, SocietyVision prioritized societal impact over financial gain. Opting to be an association rather than a consultancy firm, we embraced this status in October 2023, a testament to our commitment to public interest. We follow a simplistic business model: the fees we charge companies contribute to a support fund for NPOs, embodying our dedication to building bridges between the existing economic fabric and the one we envision for the future.

Emphasizing “we,” I acknowledge that we’ve grown to a team of three in the board. Apart from my expertise as a corporate executive, we have the talents of an architect, Urs Keller, and an entrepreneur deft in human resources and novel agricultural models, Daniel Rolla. This range of skills is now being harnessed by our association to the benefit of our partners – business and NPOs alike.

A Proven Method

SocietyVision follows a method I devised in a book (Penser Autrement : l’entreprise, la société et le capitalisme durable, 2014) and innovative field experiences. I spearheaded low-cost housing projects in Austria in collaboration with Raiffeisen Bank St. Johann-Wagrain-Kleinarl. Together with Euromaster Switzerland, of which I was Managing Director, and Accademia Teatro Dimitri, we utilized theatre performances to gear up for social commitment and change. SocietyVision demonstrated in 2022, at the ELIA Biennial in Helsinki that when connected to society, arts, and education, the economy can strive for virtue.

All these projects bear a commonality – they yield measurable benefits in terms of enhancing corporate reputation, team motivation, innovation, and also trim expenses and boost profitability. It’s clear that social commitment is not merely about philanthropy. Impact evaluation, reporting, CSR reports – these emerging key indicators determine how customers, investors, public entities and employees perceive a company. It’s imperative to disassociate performance from the sole pursuit of profit.

Unfolding New Projects

  • 2024 poses to be a year full of challenges for SocietyVision. Alongside a Swiss canton and Avantrace Architekten, we are fabricating a contemporary, inventive housing solution for asylum seekers which is a environment-friendly, modular wooden lodgings. A rental model takes the burden off public coffers and avoids precarious stacking of containers.
  • In 2024, we are endorsing PIMAS, a business specialising in outfitting vehicles for individuals with limited mobility. We aim to assist it in embracing our association’s transformation model and embarking on new, positive impact projects.
  • In our endeavor to disseminate our ideas as closely as possible to the field we intend to host a series of conferences across a network of Swiss dealerships (consumer goods). The underline? Demonstrate the potency of unconventional tools, like arts, in transforming businesses.

How do you envision amplifying your social impact in 2024? SocietyVision is all ears for your ideas and projects!

By Hugues Chatelain, President and Founder

Contact us at: hc@society.vision

  • Impact Before Profit: SocietyVision Unfolds Its Purpose

    Impact Before Profit: SocietyVision Unfolds Its Purpose

    — By Hugues Chatelain, President and Founder — How profoundly is your business influencing society? During my 30-year working with major groups, it became increasingly clear to me that the future of all companies would depend on this very question. It is reality. We now are living in an era when companies need to broaden…


  • A Devastating Critique of our Profit-Driven System

    A Devastating Critique of our Profit-Driven System

    ©Hugues Chatelain – SocietyVision CHE-378.733.097


  • Business, art and society: SocietyVision and the Accademia Dimitri at the ELIA biennial

    Business, art and society: SocietyVision and the Accademia Dimitri at the ELIA biennial

    SocietyVision shows at the ELIA Biennial in Helsinki what can be achieved by linking business, society and art. The association’s collaboration with the Dimitri Art School demonstrates the benefit of art to society: academic art used as an instrument to transform society. From 23 to 26 November 2022, Helsinki is hosting the 17th ELIA (European…


  • Impact Before Profit: SocietyVision Unfolds Its Purpose

    Impact Before Profit: SocietyVision Unfolds Its Purpose

    — By Hugues Chatelain, President and Founder — How profoundly is your business influencing society? During my 30-year working with major groups, it became increasingly clear to me that the future of all companies would depend on this very question. It is reality. We now are living in an era when companies need to broaden…


  • A Devastating Critique of our Profit-Driven System

    A Devastating Critique of our Profit-Driven System

    ©Hugues Chatelain – SocietyVision CHE-378.733.097


  • Business, art and society: SocietyVision and the Accademia Dimitri at the ELIA biennial

    Business, art and society: SocietyVision and the Accademia Dimitri at the ELIA biennial

    SocietyVision shows at the ELIA Biennial in Helsinki what can be achieved by linking business, society and art. The association’s collaboration with the Dimitri Art School demonstrates the benefit of art to society: academic art used as an instrument to transform society. From 23 to 26 November 2022, Helsinki is hosting the 17th ELIA (European…


  • Impact Before Profit: SocietyVision Unfolds Its Purpose

    Impact Before Profit: SocietyVision Unfolds Its Purpose

    — By Hugues Chatelain, President and Founder — How profoundly is your business influencing society? During my 30-year working with major groups, it became increasingly clear to me that the future of all companies would depend on this very question. It is reality. We now are living in an era when companies need to broaden…


  • A Devastating Critique of our Profit-Driven System

    A Devastating Critique of our Profit-Driven System

    ©Hugues Chatelain – SocietyVision CHE-378.733.097


  • Business, art and society: SocietyVision and the Accademia Dimitri at the ELIA biennial

    Business, art and society: SocietyVision and the Accademia Dimitri at the ELIA biennial

    SocietyVision shows at the ELIA Biennial in Helsinki what can be achieved by linking business, society and art. The association’s collaboration with the Dimitri Art School demonstrates the benefit of art to society: academic art used as an instrument to transform society. From 23 to 26 November 2022, Helsinki is hosting the 17th ELIA (European…


Business, art and society: SocietyVision and the Accademia Dimitri at the ELIA biennial

   |   By  |  0 Comments

SocietyVision shows at the ELIA Biennial in Helsinki what can be achieved by linking business, society and art. The association’s collaboration with the Dimitri Art School demonstrates the benefit of art to society: academic art used as an instrument to transform society.

From 23 to 26 November 2022, Helsinki is hosting the 17th ELIA (European League of Institutes of the Arts) Biennial. It is one of the largest European art school conferences on art research and cultural education. The last ELIA Biennial was held in 2020 at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK).

This year’s event is under the motto “No stone unturned” and thus confronts the discourse on the importance of art in times of climate crisis, inequality and political conflicts. The biennial aims to promote solutions that address the needs of the environment, art and social justice by bringing people together and uniting them. The slogan illustrates the urgency of not letting anything pass that could contribute to solving the current challenges of humanity.

Under the sign of this slogan, Hugues Chatelain, founder of SocietyVision, wishes to give impulses during the biennial on how art can be associated with a company to illustrate the impact of responsible engagement in and for society. For Chatelain, art is an instrument that inspires companies, motivates their employees and can invite shareholders to assume long-term social responsibility. In collaboration with the Accademia Dimitri University School, he presents his approach to cooperation at the Helsinki session, based on his own practical experience: a new concept of a sustainable and profitable relationship between companies and society. His aim is to show how important it is for companies to make their commitment to society a priority, especially now, in times of economic uncertainty. His model shows how investment in social purpose, which goes beyond the usual CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) measures, leads to significant positive effects, including increased profits.

SocietyVision helps businesses accomplish their contribution to society. We connect business with the right NGO in a long-term and sustainable way to accomplish their contribution to society.

  • We improve corporate reputation in the long term
  • We create a successful social & economic vision
  • We intensify the intrinsic commitment of employees
  • We increase the profitability of the business

At Society Vision we believe that the decisive differentiating factor for the business is its long-term societal commitment.

A Success Story : When a Company Teams up with an Artistic Movement !

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When two environments benefit from eachother with a common goal: to improve their impact on society. This is the story of a partnership between Euromaster Suisse SA & Accademia Dimitri (university affiliated to the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland).

What happpens when a company decides to avoid using mainstream marketing tools & communication streams? What if a company decides to put more than half its marketing budget into a long term societal project? How would the main stream management actors react?

Breaking the golden business rules learnt at university and business schools would mean in every case taking risks. We do not learn enough to try something different which could have an impact within the company and on society. We don’t necessarily speak about huge impact but it all starts with lesser impacts, which when accumulated achieve more and create value for both society and business. It is all about having the courage to question habits and dogmatic theories of a system which seems no longer to achieve progress in a societal direction but mainly (only?) in growth. Growth and financial return on investment is the mantra. Dealing with progress is different. It means combining those energies, which, at first sight, seem to be contradictory. And our society needs to replace principles of growth with principals which target a balance between Profit, Planet & People.

Taking the initiative and investing half of your marketing budget in a societal project with a high impact is an act of courage that most of us should cherish, support and actively try to implement. In fact its not all about courage but about common sense.

The nurturing of a different way of thinking and doing has a tremendous impact on innovation and on how we all percieve our environnement. This fosters new ways of solving problems, of adressing complexity and of coping with outstanding solutions which have a chance to be more progressive and have a positive impact on society.

The experiment launched between Euromaster Suisse SA and Accademia Dimitri shows, from the beginning, that the two organisations thus achieve a mutual benefit. The partnership project between the two entities has one common goal: to build an inclusive movement to trigger a changed mindset recognizing the necessity to invest in environmental and societal sustainability. The project focusses at first on Sustainable Development Goals (UN Global Compact SDGs) Nr.10 Integration and Nr.13 CO2 emission’s reduction. Accademia Dimitri is engaged on all 17 SDGs and translates each goal into a vision : “What would the world look like if every goal is achieved?”. Euromaster Suisse SA commited to recycling 100% of its tires and be the initiator and promoter of a movement towards a better world, including Business & Arts.

Putting money (50%+ of its total marketing budget) and human resources into that project combining Business & Arts is for Euromaster Suisse SA a call to all the actors of the economic world to re-orient themselves so as not only to reduce the negative impact of their company on society but, above all, to create positive impacts thereon0.

What if a business decides to avoid using mainstream marketing tools & communication streams? … The company profits from this opportunity to fuel new energies and produce innovative ways to motivate society, people and PROGRESS forward! This is a fact.

Most efficient thinktank ‘cost free’: how does that work?

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Many companies try to keep their momentum investing in outsourced thinktanks, enabling spin offs or having an eye on start-ups who could bring value into their own model. Is this worth the efforts and costs? Their focus is rather concentric than systemic. Does it make sense? Companies miss perhaps one important point which is imbedded into the societal ecosystem.

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The Virtuous Path from Value [€] to VALUES

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Are we too much focussed on value? Monetary value is at the centre of any valuation process for business or private purpose. Each and every single peace of land, property, material, or immaterial is worth an amount of money. What about VALUES? Is it worth to give up on transforming anything that surrounds us into monetary value? And integrate instead more values for the sake of more meaningfulness?

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Swiss Green Economy Symposium 2018

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Sustainably managing a business. How can positive effects on society and the environment through sustainable management be considered in a company value assessment? Finding the balance between Retrun on Investment (ROI), Return on Society (ROS) and Return on Environment (ROE) ist at stake.

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Cooperation with the Dimitri-World in Verscio (CH-Tessin)

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Would that make sense to bring business and culture closer? If we look at the vision of the Dimitri World, we can easily state that culture is at the forefront of society transformation. The strong will of the Dimitri foundation is to shape a new long-term cooperation with a business partner. Society.Vision builds with the Dimitri World team the frame of the new organisation setup that will be housing a business for a strong and long partnership.

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