Steward-ownership
Steward-ownership brings together start-ups, medium-sized businesses and large corporations. It combines modern with traditional entrepreneurship, sustainability with profitable business. And much more.
Steward-ownership is a proven ownership model that has been in place for many decades – having been implemented by companies like Zeiss (Germany), Novo Nordisk (Denmark), Patagonia (USA), Bosch (Germany), Signal (USA), BuurtzorgT (Netherlands), Carlsberg (Denmark) and many others around the world.
It presents an innovative alternative to conventional ownership models. It allows start-ups to legally safeguard their mission and set-up aligned financing structures. It enables medium-sized business and Hidden Champions to set-up sustainable charters, where successors can become steward-owners independent of family affiliation or acquisition power. It also allows large corporations and market leaders to set up aligned and sustainable structures for the future.
What Is Steward-ownership
Stewards-owned companies are guided by two principles:
SELF-DETERMINATION
The company cannot become an object of speculation but remains self-determined and independent in the long term. The steering wheel always remains in the hands of people who are connected to the company and its mission.
PURPOSE-ORIENTATION
Profits are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. They serve the company’s mission and long-term development or can be used to fund charitable activities. The value created within the company cannot be extracted by the company owners for their personal benefit.
Watch our 6 Minutes Explainer Video
Implementing Steward-ownership
The principles, together with their (legally) binding implementation, constitute the very core of steward-ownership. They express the entrepreneurial attitude at the heart of the idea.
Depending on the cultural, historical, regional, and legal context, they can be brought to life in different ways: from ‘the Danish model’ – large corporations majority-owned by foundations, yet with a stock-market listing, like Novo Nordisk – to foundation/trust-owned enterprises such as Bosch (Germany), John Lewis Partnership (UK) or Patagonia (USA), to startups that implement the principles using veto share models.
The diversity of ways of technically implementing the principles is certainly one of the concept’s strengths. The principles leave it up to each entrepreneur, as an individual, to find the technical derivation and implementation that is appropriate for the respective company.
Learn More
If you want to learn more about steward-ownership please feel warmly invited to visit www.steward-ownership.com.
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