Initially, GLASPARTNER participated in our project Future Now to find new ways to design their production to ensure future relevance for their customers. Expertizing in customized glass solutions, they deliver a wide range of customized products and services in a variety of requirements. Their basic approach was to think in production terms. However, the company came out of the three-month program with a new stance on sustainability within the process industry.

The Results: Tools for the future

As a direct result of the program, GLASPARTNER has now implemented new tools that they actively utilize in their daily dialogue with customers: 

• A Catalog of SDGs: GLASPARTNER has created a catalog that breaks down each of the 17 UN global goals into the sub-goals they can provide their customers. In this regard, the catalog serves as a dialogue-creation tool to simplify and enhance the creation of a green partnership between GLASPARTNER and its customers.
• A Concrete Plan of Action: As a result of the catalog, GLASPARTNER now participates in important meetings with their customers when they discuss future green initiatives. In doing so, GLASPARTNER has evolved into being an active part of the product development process for their customers rather than just being a supplier. 

The Challenge: A strategic overhaul

Despite having worked on a few green initiatives before, GLASPARTNER found it difficult to incorporate them into its corporate strategy.

“We have not been able to solve the problem on our own. We have perhaps taken the green focus more as a duty than a desire because we expect to be challenged. But in this process, we realized that maybe this has more potential than we initially thought,” Ib Madsen explains. 

Participating in Future Now has given the company an overhaul that places them ahead of many other companies in the process industry. The shift in values has also influenced the way GLASPARTNER enters into new strategic collaborations with its customers. In addition, it has enabled them to identify what clients may fit into GLASPARTNER’s evolving green strategy.

Due to their change in focus, GLASPARTNER has gained the lead over several larger companies that offer similar products to the same type of customers. Firstly, their new, sustainable focus provides their customers with goodwill. Additionally, it allows them to improve their customer relationships by assisting them in driving their own green agenda.

Ultimately, this has also led GLASPARTNER to the decision about hiring in-house climate specialists: 

“I am convinced that the green focus is something that will benefit so many people, both directly and indirectly, that we clearly see advantages of hiring people with expert knowledge in this field,” Ib Madsen adds, pointing out that this change in culture actually makes them a pioneer within their field.

The Approach: Insane future scenarios

Among many different tools, the Future Now program instructs the participating companies to use realistic future scenarios. And for GLASPARTNER, it was precisely these future scenarios that made the difference. They “forced” the company to think in new ways.

“When the scenarios were spoken aloud, they sounded completely insane and out of place. And since this was part of the process, we had to discuss them all. If we lived in those scenarios, we couldn’t just say ‘we don’t care’ – we would have to figure out how to deal with them,” says CEO Ib Madsen, who expresses his particular enthusiasm for working within the framework of design thinking and the exercises they were exposed to.

In the past, GLASPARTNER would prefer to stay in the comfort zone and work with the most convenient tasks. This also applies to working with the SDG goals.

But now, GLASPARTNER has reached a point where they are actively pursuing global goals and identifying which ones to prioritize, as well as enhancing the green agenda within the constraints of the process industry.

You can check out some similar future scenarios here.

The Future Now project was a collaboration with DI – Dansk Industri and Industriens Fond that ran from fall 2020 to fall 2021.