The Idealists

To evade the so-called coffee paradox, four coffee enthusiasts set out to form the Coffee Collective in 2007 in Copenhagen. Hear how co-founder Klaus Thomsen built a sustainable business with a mission to create the best coffee experiences in the world while bringing better returns to the farmers.

Klaus belongs to a new generation of entrepreneurs taking a stand and inspiring others to improve the coffee industry collectively — one bean at the time. In this episode, we talk about purpose-driven profits, transparency from seed to cup, and continued investments in the company culture for future growth.

Henrik Marstrand is the founder and CEO of Mater, a furniture brand dedicated to sustainability, ethics and craftsmanship. Listen to his take of growing a Copenhagen-based impact company that solves the global waste problem through design.

By balancing idealistic ambitions and practical business realities, Henrik is part of a new wave of entrepreneurs using the power of consumerism for lasting change. In this talk, he gets real about balancing ice-cold business with idealism, closing the furniture loop with renewable material solutions and having the right brand narrative.

Hear why Maximilian Strecker, PhD Student at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, founded the Consortium Purpose, a platform offering interdisciplinary dialogues. Consisting of companies, researchers and purpose experts, the consortium faces and explores the increasingly urgent question of meaning in society and at the workplace.

In this conversation, Max shares deep insights into his research circling organizational sense-making, meaning as one of the key business currencies of the future, purpose-oriented leadership, and the return of the human in the corporate world.

By focusing on design, functionality and sustainability, Swiss backpack company QWSTION encourages customers to consume less but better goods. Hear how Christian Paul Kägi, co-founder and creative director, built a global lifestyle brand that keeps lifting the standard in sustainable production.

A decade into the journey, Christian stands for a new generation of entrepreneurs showing what’s possible by asking the right questions. In this episode, we talk about a key ingredient in hiring, the power of trial and error and the story behind Bananatex®; a fully biodegradable fabric made from banana plants.