Blendhub, a leading example of sustainable social impact for the World Economic Forum

During its annual meeting in Davos – the focal point for leaders to accelerate the partnerships needed to tackle global challenges and shape a more sustainable and inclusive future-, the World Economic Forum released a paper that calls for new collaboration between organizations, businesses, investors and entrepreneurs to attract the investment needed to strengthen fragile communities and unleash sustainable social impact.

And Blendhub has been selected as one of the world organizations with the capacity and strategic thinking needed to develop sustainable solutions to make a difference to the lives of nearly 1 billion people living in fragile and conflict-affected settings worldwide: “Blendhub focuses on creating sustainable and transparent supply chains that ensure shared value creation by connecting local farmers to entrepreneurs and food brands across global supply chains. In a decentralized winner shares it all approach to doing business, it dedicates a certain amount of capacity at each hub to social collaboration and sustainable food design for underserved communities”.

“It takes more than a single intervention to unleash transformational change in complex ecosystems. To truly leverage the potential for positive and sustainable social impact while meeting investor demand for returns, new ways of collaboration across sectors are needed,” said Børge Brende, President of the World Economic Forum.

Henrik Stamm Kristensen, Founder and Chief Moonshot Officer at Blendhub, states: “This is what we at Blendhub have been claiming for decades as we were pioneers in creating a multilocalized network of food production hubs on 4 continents, closer to raw materials, creating local value and making healthy and safe food products available to more people in more places”.

This discussion paper is an evolution of the work initiated by the Forum’s Humanitarian and Resilience Investing (HRI) Initiative, which was launched at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2019.

The IKEA foundation is a partner of this initiative. Over the next three years the partnership will develop innovative business models and investments that strengthen local economies and increase the self-reliance and resilience of the most vulnerable communities and economies.

Download the discussion paper