This article is part of an FT series examining the risks and trade-offs companies face when they try to define a broader purpose for their business. At the Centre for Diabetes in Copenhagen, a cooking class with a difference is underway. Everyone chopping and mixing under the watchful eye of nutritionist Line Fransen Moth is living with type-two diabetes.
Helping to prepare a meal of fish, root vegetables and naan bread, Jan Schnohr, a 69-year-old retired electrical engineer, joked that he does not know how the group will “survive” a lower-meat diet, but said the centre’s staff had given him valuable insights into how to manage his condition.
The free sessions are not the fruits of the famously beneficent Scandinavian welfare state, however. They are part of Cities Changing Diabetes, a global programme to limit the scourge of a disease that affects more than 420m people worldwide, in which Novo Nordisk, the world’s biggest insulin maker, has been a driving force alongside academic, clinical and government partners.
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On the face of it, the kitchen scene presents a paradox. The better people with diabetes such as Mr Schnohr can manage their condition, or even overcome it altogether through a healthier lifestyle, the less demand for Novo Nordisk’s signature products.
But the company has spent almost a century straddling the sensitive line between making money for its shareholders and fulfilling the mission of its founders, who first ordained in 1924 that any profits should be used for scientific and humanitarian purposes.
That mission was formalised for a new generation in 1989 when the Novo Nordisk Foundation was established. It owns all the company’s A shares, and controls 76.2 per cent of the votes, granting it an ironclad majority at annual general meetings, and distributes funds to support scientific, humanitarian and social causes.
