Rosabeth Moss Kanter the author of “Supercorp” discusses how providing for societal benefits as a part of business strategy can help companies reap substantial benefits. These societal benefits need not be goals which conflict with a company’s interests or to fulfill which it has to go out of its way. One of the examples she provides is of Procter & Gamble which had employees staying low-cost housing in Brazil to observe how the company could serve them best. Among the successful products that the insights of this exercise yielded was Tide Basic, developed for people who washed clothes with their hand, this was a low cost detergent that was environment friendly and gentle on skin. The company also used insights learned in Brazil in other countries around the world.

Source: MIT Sloan