TICC.Talk with Saori Dubourg about Corporate Sustainability
In this university‑hosted talk, BASF board member Saori Dubourg explains how the twin megatrends of climate change and digitalisation are reshaping the chemical industry and the broader economy. She describes two "tectonic" shifts – the rapid market move toward China and the post‑Paris‑Agreement focus on smart resource use – and shows how the European Green Deal’s 11 levers and a flood of new regulations are accelerating the transition. Dubourg outlines BASF’s response: a portfolio transformation that classifies products into accelerators, performers, and phase‑out candidates; the creation of an industry‑wide CO2 database; massive renewable‑energy retrofits; and early chemical‑recycling projects such as a pilot plant in Lagos. She then introduces a new triple‑bottom‑line accounting model that adds social and environmental value to the traditional profit balance sheet, a framework she helped develop with auditors, IFRS, SASB and the EU, now being adopted by G7 task forces. The talk also covers the financing landscape – the rise of ESG‑focused capital, stranded assets, and the demographic shift toward younger, female investors – and offers advice to students: stay curious, ask questions, and collaborate with academia to shape future sustainability education. Throughout, Dubourg stresses that impact‑driven innovation, open‑ended creativity (the "Emmentaler cheese" model), and partnership with universities are essential for the next generation to drive systemic change.
Chapters
TranscriptAuto-generated · 43 min
So thank you very much for this warm welcome. And when we had the conversation, I said it is truly important for me that it's especially the next generation hears about the transformation that's going on. And so I'm happy to be here because I'm trying to get in touch with several universities, because what we observe right now in terms of paradigm shift is unprecedented. So what I brought with me today is not only how we at BASF think about sustainability, I also brought you newest developments of this paradigm shift and what this is all about and why this is the most relevant part for your future. Now, I talked about strategy, or the pre-speaker said I would like to talk a little bit about strategy. And I have to admit, I also studied strategy and business administration at my university. At that time, there was this classical circle of situation analysis. Where are we? What are the changes that are coming? And how do we kind of tackle them? But the challenge is, in a time where there's so many changes, you easily end up with a fluctuating strategy because they are partially coming simultaneously. So there was one person that inspired me a lot, and this was Jeff Bezos from Amazon, not from a managerial point of view, but the question he asked. So he asked, What will remain stable? What will remain unchanged in 20 years from now? And for me, this was an interesting question because when he asked this question, he found that, for example, for Amazon at that time, people will never say, oh, if I get the book in 3 weeks from now, it's also okay. They will never say that. They always want to have the book as much, as fast as possible. So every millisecond in supply chain, in the delivery, that he is faster than the rest of the competition is true long-lasting competitive advantage. Now, if you take this thought, and this is what inspired me at that time, and ask today what will be unprecedented, what will change and what will not change, I think there are 2 things that will be extremely important even in 10 years from now. And this is climate change. It will not be different. It will actually most likely become more severe in 10 years from now. So this is why every single company that works on solutions and creates advantage is doing this for the long term. And second, digitalization. And this is something where you will see a lot of technologies during your courses here, which is very important. But I can only ask you, it's not about just consuming digitalization. It's about What do we want to do with it? And what kind of digital reality do we want to choose? So I talked about the paradigm shift. What am I talking about? The professor mentioned I'm more than 20 years in one company, but I have seen a lot of things. And you know what I observe? And this is the true paradigm shift. We are currently seeing 2 tectonic changes that are unprecedented. One, is a tectonic shift of market. And a lot of things— market is now moving into China. For the chemical industry, it's almost 60% of the market is currently moving to China because of the sheer size of population. Still, we have a lot of geopolitical challenges. Second, and that's the more pronounced tectonic shift, we came from the age of globalization as companies whereby volume growth was at the center stage of what we wanted to achieve. Market share, EBIT gain. But with the Paris Climate Protocol, things have changed. The Paris Climate Protocol means nationwide, this is legally binding. And if we accept that the resources— and that's your generation that will tackle that and will have to tackle and think about this much deeper— if we accept that the resources of planet Earth are simply limited, This changes a lot because this means we are at the beginning of the entrance into a new S-curve where at the center stage it's all about smart resource usage on all levels. What do I mean by this? How to use products in future? It starts with a design. How to do more with less? It starts with a way of looking at things, the whole product functions, business models, the way we do logistics, the way we use capacities. All this we need to think through. At the center stage, it's no longer just about volume, it's about value, value creation. And when I speak about value as an economic function, I give you one example. If you think about agriculture, which is part of the business I'm also responsible for, we have lost 40% of arable land globally because of droughts and severe weather impact. 40%. Now, we still will see 3 billion more people on planet Earth, which means we have to increase efficiency by 50%, 5-0, So how to do more with less? For example, by using weather-related data, that's digital technology, knowing where is dry area, where are dry areas, and how to spray more precise. That's one example of a completely changed business model. So this is the paradigm shift that is currently happening across the entire industry and also worldwide. Now you can also see this in the meantime that this is no longer a niche topic of a few departments and companies. It has arrived on the political level. Be it Xi Jinping, who already announced that he wants to come up with a CO2 emission peak before 2030. Still, he's coming up with a lot of coal and other factories, but before 2060, he wants to really peak. Same Joe Biden, who is now much more pronounced going after CO2 reduction. And Europe. And here comes my question also to those who love Europe. You know, you can complain a lot about the Green Deal and what we do at the moment on the European level, but it's the first time historically that Europe has a clear strategy. Did you notice? We have a strategy, a vision. And the €1 trillion that Europe wants to invest into the Green Deal is historic. It's 5 times the Marshall Plan that we currently activate as an economic substance to this transformation. As BASF, we saw that coming since years. And this is why I was interested, because I could see and follow movements. You see on the right-hand side just a customer request, you know, picking up more and more for sustainability. And when Mrs. von der Leyen spoke about these Green Deal targets, what is really unprecedented is the speed of how the European Commission currently runs forward in this transformation. She's not only talking about the move to a zero pollution environment and circularity, but also climate neutrality. And if you look at this picture, these are 11 levers. That's the strategy of the European Commission to tackle sustainability. Now you see these white boxes surrounding. Since May last year, we have analyzed more than 250 regulations that will now come into the European market. It is just the beginning. This is unprecedented and it will be followed by China and the United States, maybe not to the extent. But we looked at this from a global level and it's pretty clear China alone will invest $74 billion into renewable grids. Same the United States with $56 billion. We have by now 1,500 legal litigations on climate-related action of companies. In Europe, it's 56, which sounds much less. But there is certain severe cases in there where big conglomerates were by jurisdiction asked to stop their CO2 emission strategy. Now, when looking at all of this, I just wanted to give you a flavor of the speed of strategies that Europe is developing. What you see here, I've never seen before. Every single month there's a new strategy paper coming out from the European Commission, and that's just the beginning. So everything you learn, you have to think much more thoroughly, how do we actually connect normal business strategy with such an environment? And this is why I believe sustainability no longer is a departmental topic. It's the paradigm shift of the next decades. Now, when you translate this into what are they actually targeting, and this I thought was pretty interesting. Because when you look at this picture, it's very, very, very concrete, like 50% less chemical pesticides. They want to have a healthy and sustainable diet, avoiding food and waste losses. That means you have to think in value chains. They're talking about renewable energy as they are talking about greenhouse gas emissions. Now, I have to admit, I'm also working currently with the European Commission how to tackle this from an industrial point of view. This is not risk-free. For the industry, this means huge transformation, and the impact on business is fundamental and substantial quantitatively on our business right now. Now, while this is high risk, it also comes with chances, because if you have a coin, it's usually never one-sided. So what we did since May last year, we translated these kind of regulations into, so what's the future And this is why I brought a glimpse into the future for you today, because we have found 50 to 100 innovation markets that will be triggered by these kind of regulatory frameworks. What kind of markets are these? Take circularity. What you see here are all kinds of new applications. Recycling markets are the future. Innovations for closed loop, meaning how to close the loop when you innovate with product and materials, battery recycling, natural plastics, that is biodegradable, additives for this kind of recycled plastics, and, and, and. What is interesting, and this is just one example, the other example would be sustainable agriculture. If you want biodiversity, you need to know where to apply products. So digitalization, innovation, all of a sudden is interlinked with sustainability and precision farming. So that's why we have more and more ecosystem corporations, for example, with Bosch that is spraying on the field, measuring by data, oh, how dry is the soil and how much product do we really need. So it's a much more targeted approach and you see there are much more natural formulations in future. The interesting paradigm shift for the industry is while old applications or the former applications are severely at risk, these markets are currently developing simultaneously. They have a growth rate of 2 to 35%. And here comes the challenge to you. We in Europe only have 3 to 5 years to grab these opportunities to make a competitive edge out of it. This is why the government also, no matter who wins at the end in September, you know, it's important that we make sure that we grab these innovation fields very, very fast because other regions are after it as well. And if we want to keep you know, the USP of our technologies, it's now that we have to design it. This is why we are talking about this with several companies, how we can grab that market opportunity. Now let me shortly make a step back because you probably wonder now, this is the framework, so how is BASF doing it? I've just one chart to show you how we tackle it. We have certainly much more, but I just wanted to give you a little glimpse. How do you do this in a structured way? So we have more than 45,000 applications in BASF going in all kinds of industry, from agriculture to detergents to cosmetics to automotive to coatings. That's why I stayed so long, because it really takes a lifetime to understand all the different industries and their needs and business models. However, we classified how much of them are true accelerators, meaning products that make a huge USP difference in the market, meaning a competitive edge. This is today 16.7 billion of our business. 16.7 billion, it's a whole company. Our aim is to increase that share dramatically. We have products that are as good as competition, that's the performers, and we also have products that we have to either phase out, that's a challenged one, or transition into performers. So this is number one, the product portfolio. And while I'm speaking, more than 13 operating divisions are working on this portfolio transformation. The second part is CO2 reduction. How do we do this? Our problem is a little bit that over the last 10 years we have already saved 50% of CO2. Now, if you have already done that, it's much more challenging to do another 50%. So we have created the first and only industry-wide CO2 database. Here's the digital element again. where we really know by every single participant in the value chain what CO2 footprint do our customers have, what our products have. And by this, we can first of all manage, and we have formed alliances into renewable energy. You have to imagine the entire energy grid has to be transformed. Just to give you the number for Germany, Germany needs 2,000 terawatts of renewable energy, and we would need by 2030 half of this to manage this transformation. This is huge. We are talking hundreds of production sites that need to be transformed. And it's not only BASF, it's the entire industry. Now, last but not least, recycling. BASF has started very early with chemical recycling. And just to give you a concrete project, in Lagos, Nigeria, we have a first pilot plant where we collect plastic waste from the street. together with our partners, collect it and transform it into oil again. Because if you do chemicals, you cannot only compose molecules, you can also decompose them. This is why chemicals is a key, or chemistry is a key lead technology if you want to recycle. And so we have built a recycling unit in Lagos and plan to do much more units there to take plastic out of the cities, transform it into product. This creates new jobs and new interesting application fields. So this is just a small glimpse on how we are tackling this. If there are more questions, I'm more than happy to give you more insights. Now let's come to the financing question. And maybe you have watched recently also several panels on— oh, also political discussions on how do we finance this whole transformation. That's the most unusual in the panels, most unresolved questions, because some say let's open the debt level of governments. Others say, okay, we need more taxation, and, and, and. So there are all kinds of concepts. Fact is, in 2017 already, globally, we had €117 billion of economic losses due to nature impact, weather-related losses like droughts, severe impact from weather, storms, and so on. This number today in 2020 is 220 billion. So it has gone up significantly. If you look at the Paris Climate Protocol, we have globally a lot of production plants. 240 billion euros of production plants are so-called stranded assets. What does this mean? This means these are assets, production plants, that are not conform with the climate protocol. They cannot produce with the target of the Paris Climate Protocol. We have to change this. Now, you can imagine how expensive this transformation might be. And this is why the financial industry, the investors, are no longer accepting that companies just go on as in the past, because these economic losses, weather-related losses, increasingly become market-related losses in their balance sheet. Now, this is the reason why when you look at investment landscape, there is one big paradigm shift. While we are talking, 33% of the entire investments globally by now are invested in sustainability assets. And if you ask who is investing, you can see it with a slide on the— your side, right side. It's basically a lot of women. It's millennials, which is you, and the generation, the younger generation, and those who have a lot of, you know, high net worth income. Because they say, if we invest, we want to do this sustainably. But this shift is also triggered by governmental regulation. And I have brought you these newest developments. So what is this transformation in the finance sector all about? And here comes something which you probably only will appreciate at the end of your study. It's more easy to comprehend when you have studied business administration, because what you usually learn is the shareholder value. Some talk about Michael Porter's shared value. So what is this? Shareholder value in the '90s were the biggest concept on planet Earth, I would say, on the capital market, where business was mainly there to optimize profit. It was the prime task. Let's optimize profit for itself. Michael Porter already said, well, maybe that's not good enough. We have to improve, you know, shared value between business, society, and environment. And the big paradigm shift that is coming is now when the resources of planet Earth are limited. That's the framework we are operating in. You cannot change that. And society has to be the target while business is the solution for it. So it's kind of systemic value, system value, that will be the future. So while this might be a little bit too conceptual for those who start studying, let me give you an example why this is absolutely historically changing the status quo. Does anybody know when the so-called balance sheet— and that's— you don't— yeah, was invented in this room? Any idea? It's 1500 by Luca Pacioli, an Italian monk and mathematician, friend of Leonardo da Vinci. So he invented die Soll und Haben balance sheet comparison. You know, and this is one point that I would like to give to you. I was a student in business administration. I was not in the ABS, I have to admit. But at my university, we took everything we learned for granted. And when I entered the company, I wondered, why are we always accepting the status quo if the world is changing? Because the balance sheet that had its origin in 1500 was invented when there was no climate change and there was no digitalization. So in the balance sheet, this is the orange bar that was there so far. Humans had no value. When you look at the current balance sheet of companies, the humans are a cost factor in terms of labor. That's business administration. I give you the entrance lecture, right? This is administration and macroeconomics. In the macroeconomic theory, that has a welfare impact because if you pay salaries, some of you might go shopping and then this creates purchasing power, right? Some.
They do go shopping.
Yeah, they do. So what we did 10 years ago, I was— I have to admit, this is a true story. I was sitting with 2 colleagues, and we were discussing after the financial crisis, is it good enough? Is it good enough for our generation just to optimize the orange bar, the profit? If humans have no value in the balance sheet and digitalization comes and digitalization optimizes cost and we are a cost factor, so what are we optimizing? Are we actually cutting off the tree we are sitting on because more and more people will be unuseful? And what does this do to the market? Have we thought it through to the end? What is the macroeconomic effect of replacement of human labor? That was a really serious discussion we had. And the second thing we discussed was, what's the value of nature if it doesn't cost anything? If we just, you know, in the GDP, if you would deforest the Amazonas, it would still appear as a positive outcome of the GDP. Unfortunately, we then do not have enough, probably due to making trees anymore. But that's it. That's how we economically define GDP. So we dared 10 years ago because we were sitting there and said, look, we are Generation Internet, or as Florian Illies said, Generation Golf, the generation that never has seen a war. We lived in peace. We came like you to the IBS. Most of us came from a wealthy family or had a good life so far. Who cares? But our question was, what's the impact of our generation to you? Is it good enough just to leave the traces of the break of a golf for you? Because your nature will not be the same like the ones for our parents. So this is why 10 years ago, on our own initiative, we started calculating. We wondered, we really questioned, is it good enough? And then we calculated not only the profit we generate, that's the own operation, But also what purchasing power do companies generate by giving salaries. And surprise, the blue bars are €70 billion purchasing power, the orange bars are €60 billion. So BASF, with 70,000 suppliers and all the customers, is generating more purchasing power than even profit, and nobody cares. Not even the capital market knows about our value creation. Why is this important? Because we have seen during COVID-19 what happens if there is job insecurity. People do not spend money. All of a sudden the market goes down, and then governments have to spend like hell. So this is why understanding the economic function of salaries was important to us as one element. And thirdly, nature. How do you measure impact on nature? You can talk about this. But you can't— you know, what you can't measure, you can't improve. So for the first time, 10 years ago, we started to do the first balance sheet not only on profit, but also on social impact, blue bars, and environmental impact. And guess what? It's minus $30 billion. Now, the beauty of it is, you know, the blue bars— robots don't go shopping. Yeah, this is why if you have such a view, for the first time you can really discuss What's truly value creating? And so we tried to use this method also by investments in countries like Poland or China for a catalyst plant. The interesting part was the economic benefit was the same. The social benefit was higher for Poland because it had more people with a higher salary. And in China, we wanted to invest in an area, but unfortunately there was little water, water-stressed area. So this was much higher environmental cost. So this is the way to measure true impact. For the first time, we could compare what's the better invest. In this case, Poland overall was the better investment. These tools were not there 10 years ago. We invented them. And this is linked to a huge data network. You see how we looked at the impact. It's not only the greenhouse gas, it's all the different levels. By now we own as BASF 8 million data globally around these elements. And as we are not the only company we are doing it, in 2017— and that's my last chart— when I became board member, we decided why not do this properly. So we gathered several big companies and said, look, let's do this together to develop a joint language. We have the 4 audit companies, plus we are working with IFRS, SASB, and the big investment houses. We are now awarded by the EU Commission and wrote the EGAP principles for new accounting. And while we are speaking here, simultaneously since August, there is a task force at the G7 to come up with a completely new reporting that will resemble this kind of impact methodology. And that's what will be your future. Companies in future no longer will be just looked at from a profit perspective, They will be measured by the impact on profit, but also environment and social impact. And with that, if you ask me, business success tomorrow means creating value not only for business and profit, but also for environment, society, and business. And with that, I would like to close. Thanks for your attention.
Thank you very much. This is going to be an online session, so we have like a 3-stage process now. So first of all, Sven and I, we will ask like 3 to 5 questions, then the online community, you are free to ask questions. Please use the chat function for it and we will moderate it. And then we will close the online session and we have a talk and a discussion here in the room because today for the online group is the first— marks the first day of our semester. And as you already have heard of, you know, we have— we're bringing 2 transformations or 2 trends together. We're bringing sustainability and digital transformations together. And as it's the first day of the semester, you also mentioned you studied business administration, not at EBS but at Trier. And maybe what's the one thing that you— one piece of advice that you want to give our students who start today and kind of the first day of their career? Yeah.
No, as I said, with digitalization, you know, answers you will more and more find in Wikipedia. And the one thing advice that I would like to give you going forward, questions will become much more important than answers. So please stay a curious mind. Don't take things for granted. Always check, is what we learn still good enough for what we do and what the environment does? Because without that question, we would never have come to that solutions. And I think That's what is changing for the future, and you are not just a small single student in this world. Yeah, I— when I started in BASF, quite frankly, I was young, I was innocent, and when I had ideas, I always felt like, okay, it's like I drop a little stone into the ocean, it makes plop, and the stone is gone. I was so wrong. What I'm trying to say to you is, if you really want to make an impact, stick to it, stick to it, work on it, try to gather more people. And if it's good, sometimes let it go, maybe others take it. And if they are the ones who did it in the end, it's also okay, but you made a change. So I want to encourage you, I've not thought when I was your age that we would ever come to that point that we could influence and work on the global future reporting system of the world, which is completely changing the trillions of capital in the market while we speak right now, will go to this function of environment, social, and profit. I would not have dreamt of it. The reason why I do it is for you, exactly for you, because I want you to have a future. And I said, my generation, what are we giving back? Yeah, and this is what I would like to give back to you so that you can measure and better improve you know, how business is done. And this is why my encouragement is never let go. If you're just a single person, you have a tremendous opportunity to change. Yeah, no matter how big or small you are, doesn't matter. You just have to believe in it.
So it's not just me preaching that. The good thing is you mentioned like many years ago you also studied it, and now we teach economics, business management, and so on. What do you think how will business schools evolve over time? How will education change? And what is actually necessary to tackle all those problems and be equipped to actually kind of be prepared to tackle these challenges?
So as you have seen on my last chart, we are working with several universities, and that's why I'm also here, because I'm trying to gather partnerships with the next generation and with the next kind of professor, the next wave of professors, because We see that Oxford, Stanford, also lots of big institutions are already trying to get their mind around this. And I would like, you know, once and forever, Germany and German universities to lead this, because social market capitalism was invented here, was invented in Europe, and was invented in Germany. Yeah. And I think that is surprisingly the concept of the future, if we augment it a little bit with ecological Yeah, social market economy. And this is the chance we have to grab it. So that's why I believe we have to evolve jointly. So there's an active invitation also to the professors of EBS to join us because we need the best minds to really work on the new concept. And that's why I'm also here.
Yeah, we will follow this invitation. And afterwards, just for information, we will sit together with some professors, some PhD students, and we will discuss how we can collaborate in the future and how we can make this possible. One last question, because I'm an innovation professor, of course, like digital transformation and sustainability. This is the whole topic of the onboarding project. How is it ingrained in kind of your DNA at BASF? How do you use those 2 megatrends to actually drive innovation? Yes.
So how we came to such kind of thinking, and we started in 2017, that's just one example, to interview more than 9,000 global thinkers opinion makers, NGOs, politicians. And when we asked them, so what do you see? What is coming up? I was very surprised because the future is usually much earlier visible than most people think. You just have to be curious enough to ask. So we saw there is a huge hype of technologies coming with the peak in 2021, 2022, where 70 to 80% of these new technologies, be it biotech, be it green tech, be evolving. And we were like, what's going on? That was really weird. And so I thought, you know, one way of looking at innovation is not only, you know, just in yourself, but I think the key for innovation are 2 things, in my opinion: being outside, outward-oriented, and listening very careful— you could call it as well ground— of what's evolving. But then also linking it to your own capability. And I always say, you know, companies today are so full with processes and guidelines and God knows what. What we often miss, and this is why I like the workshop today that you initiate, is open, undefined room for creativity, or the Emmentaler cheese model, as I call it. There's little holes where you have air in the Emmentaler, which is so urgently needed because usually creativity comes from deviation potential, I call it. Ja, Abweichungspotenzial. If you allow a community to think beyond, that's exactly what you're doing here today. And that's why it's great that people have an idea and can evolve for it, but you need to give space for that.
Yeah, we have like 2 or 3 more questions from Sven, and then we will moderate 2 or 3 questions from the Q&A.
A lot of things have already been answered. First of all, thank you very much. If you want to give the initial lecture every year. It would be fantastic. Then you can't learn more. And what's really— I've learned, I've had so many C-level talks, and I've never had a talk which was not company advertising, but just content related. So that's really something special. I've never had a talk which was that open, showing strategies, not discussing about the revenues of BSF. First of all, thank you very much. I think it was amazing to see. And the slide I was really, really positive about was the investors of the future are young people and women. And that's something. So female and young people are the ones who are driving that industry. And you've talked about being here, being at universities, but there's so many more young people who want to engage. We have got Greta Thunberg and the whole Fridays for Future campaign. Do you have any approach to really get in touch with those people and How do you make sure that they are heard and really are systematically heard, not just in a lecture like this and then you leave? How do you do that? What is the approach to really do that?
Certainly. Well, the way I try to get in touch is first to listen. So I went like 2 years ago already, I went to a gymnasium, a high school in Bensheim. I was invited by Fridays for Future. It's funny because as an industry, people talk about Fridays for Future like an independent NGO. And when I came to this high school, there was Emily, Liamba, and Florian. And they were the ones called Fridays for Future. And so I was sitting on a stage together with community from the city of Bensheim, some people who worked on certain waste topics in Bensheim and so on and so forth. forth. But then all of a sudden, Florian, Leander, and Emily said, look, we don't know whether we have a future. We don't know. What do you do? You are adults. Why don't you take more ownership? And you know, when they were talking, it touched me a lot, because it's not only that Fridays for Future is our own children. It's not some NGO. It's our children who rightfully request ownership from us. And this is what I understood, you know, and this is why I take them very serious, because it's the voice of— I have it at home with my children as well. They say, hey, let's talk about plastic waste. It's cumbersome, but we have some processes installed at home. Yeah, so this is the consequence. So what I'm trying to say is, I talk to you about the new S-curve of values, but it's not only business value. The new age will be about What business conduct, how responsible will you do your business, what kind of values do you attach to it. And this is what the next generation is asking for. This is why ESG goes up, because it has a financial impact. It has a financial impact if you don't care. And so I think they have a point, we have to take it serious. But what is not okay, and this is what I also saw in this, in this high school at the very end, the director also said, Emily, Leander, Florian, it's great that you're doing this, and if you go on, climate change will also be resolved. And I felt a bit sorry for them because they were completely left alone with the topic. And I thought, wait a sec, we are the adults and they are our children. So, you know, we cannot just dump the whole responsibility to them. We have to take ownership. And that's for me what I learned in this interaction. Yeah, so I have a lot of interactions like that, so I'm constantly trying to stay in touch. Yeah.
I think it might be that I've been at the same school. I did an HR talk with a lot of people in the gym, and then we discussed human development. And one thing which came up that was not— that was just, okay, it's the wrong way to hand over all the duty to us. So we were allowed to have cars and enjoy, and we could Smoke, and you're not allowed to smoke, you're not allowed to drive, you're not allowed to fly. And it's the wrong way to do restrictions, right? That doesn't work. What do you do at BASF? Because I would expect— just, just to check, who of you has ever thought of joining BASF after doing this, after having finished the studies? What I mean is, you are not on the— Yeah, yeah. You're changing more things like Deutsche Bank or like McKinsey would ever do. How, what do you think, how could you emotionalize that topic? How could you really make people engage? Do you have a kind of marketing strategy as well to really make it sexier? Because we would never think, okay, chemistry, that's too difficult, I would never join it, I don't understand it. Have you an approach for that as well?
Well, I have to admit, I just learned, you know, I know that chemicals is probably not the prime thinking. It's usually consulting or banking or these kind of, you know, big branding companies. I'm fully aware of that. I have just one advertisement I can do from my side. When I joined BASF, I thought it was gorgeous because it's a whole field of opportunities where you can learn about every single industry because we are delivering everything. So I'm speaking to Unilever, to all of them, and you can actually design a lot business model-wise. Yeah, so there's a lot of freedom, especially if you have started business administration because there's a lot of chemists. So it's like a greenfield of opportunities. What I do think is, of course, the attractiveness is an issue where we see that it's much more attractive for chemists, for engineers, because it is technology related. But the number of business administration people have increased a lot, and especially in managerial functions. So what attracted me at that time to go to BASF was I had very early on the opportunity to make an international career, being sent abroad. We had high potential kind of programs as well, where you are really seeing the financial department of different areas, be it abroad. My assistant, for example, started in Hong Kong and then he came to Ludwigshafen later on. Yeah, so there are all kinds of opportunities there.
Nearly as attractive.
Yeah, yeah. Well, Hong Kong today might not be the prime location, at the moment, but what I'm trying to say is we are globally present and I feel you get responsibility relatively early. That attracted me. That's all I can say. Yeah,
and one last question. I just seen that also Deutsche Post DHL Group, which is a member of one of our projects, they are also listening to you and they always ask me, is there really a willingness to pay for things like that? You have talked a lot about the macro perspective, but do you really believe, and it might be a gut feeling, are people more willing, especially the gray-haired seniors sitting and making decisions, are they really willing to pay more for your sustainable goods compared to somebody else who is producing at a lower level, let's say in Asia or somewhere
else? Well, I think it depends on which industry you look at, because we see industries specifically where it's getting the license to operate. Without being sustainable, you're simply out. So I'm not sure whether it's the right question to ask, are we willing to pay more? Because that's a sensitive issue if you're fighting on a shelf space, for example, in cosmetics and others. Right. But what I can clearly see is all the big conglomerates, for example, in the detergents, in the cosmetic industry, in agriculture, they do not tolerate any more products that do not comply with certain renewable, biodegradable, or other standards. Because all these companies have high, high targets for transformation. So 70%, 80% is the current standard in biodegradability of products alone in the cosmetic industry. So you have to really work a lot to get there as a conglomerate. So I think the industry is changing, the product function will change. The willingness to pay, I think it depends on the category.
Hmm.
There are some where it's high competition, just like in any market where it's squeezed. And this is why we are also talking about this balance sheet change, because what happens right now, all the companies spend billions for this transformation. But if the stock market does not understand that investing into environmental solution creates future value, then it's just a CapEx deducted from profit. Like, think about e-mobility. You invest into it, it's a huge amount from the CapEx, This goes out of the balance sheet, and then you are punished at the stock market. The moment when you give nature a value, and when you give social elements a value, this becomes a function at the capital market. And this is the paradigm shift. So the willingness to pay is clearly linked also to stock market functions. Yeah,
thank you. So as you can see, it's very complex. We would like to teach also responsibility. We would like to teach transparency. And I think that's That's what we could learn. It's very important to elect in 2 weeks because politicians are also important to make those rules, as we've learned. G7 are organizing a lot of things in order to make things come true, because once the regulation is done, combustion engines and cars are also done because they decide things and therefore they do change. But companies have to be aware of those changes, have to be in close touch. It's very interesting, very complex thing.
More from Saori
50 Years of "Limits to Growth". With Prof. Dr. Dennis Meadows, Saori Dubourg & Dr. Patrick Graichen
Keynote "The future needs a better design" by Saori Dubourg, Board Member at BASF
Less but better! – Saori Dubourg, BASF SE über nachhaltiges Wirtschaften im Leadership Salon
