From CSR to creating shared value

“ (…) Beyond business organisation principles, an ideal story inspired by the thinking of its founder has for many years shaped how our company operates.

The social endeavour of the Ivrea factory, which I would not hesitate to say is still incomplete, responds to a simple idea: create a new type of business that moves beyond socialism and capitalism, since it is urgently apparent that the extreme pitting these terms against each other does not solve the problems of humanity and modern society.

While operating within an economic context and its rules, the Ivrea factory has made its aims and its greatest concern the material, cultural and social elevation of the area in which it operates, steering the region towards a type of new community where there is no longer a substantial difference between the aims of the people involved in ensuring the sons and daughters of that area have a future, a life more worth living.

Our company believes in spiritual values, science, the value of art and culture and, furthermore, it believes that the ideals of justice cannot be alienated from the persisting contentions between labour and capital. Above all, it believes in man, their divine flame and the possibility of their elevation and redemption.

(Adriano Olivetti, 19551)

  1. “Notizie Olivetti”, no. 26, April-May 1955, pp. 16-17, in Adriano Olivetti. Un umanesimo dei tempi moderni, Bruno Segre, Imprimatur, 2015. ↩