Champions of growth and common benefit

They look at profit, but not only. So much so that they have amended their statutes to include one or more purposes of common benefit for people, the environment and stakeholders. They have thus become benefit companies. According to the Observatory of the Brindisi-Taranto Chamber of Commerce and Infocamere, at the end of June they exceeded 5,000 (they are 5,161), 24% more than a year ago, and together they employ about 234,000 people for a production value of 67.7 billion. And there are numerous benefit companies among the Sole 24 Ore-Statista Growth Leaders 2026.

"The trend doesn't surprise me because SBs share a very strong modernity profile: they are more innovative, more open to foreign markets, to intergenerational exchange, to diversity and inclusion, and all these characteristics become an engine for growth," explains Paolo Di Cesare, co-founder of Nativa, Italy's first B Corp and first benefit company explains Paolo Di Cesare, co-founder of Nativa, the first benefit company and first B Corp in our country, which in turn accompanies companies on their path of transformation. The numbers of the National Research on SBs confirm this: between 2021 and 2023 they recorded a 26 per cent increase in cumulative turnover in median terms compared to 15.4 per cent more than non-benefit companies, while 62 per cent expanded their workforce (compared to 43 per cent). "SBs," adds Di Cesare, "represent a vanguard on the entrepreneurial scene, with a virtuous contagion effect on the appearance supply chains: suffice it to say that one of the most recurring impact aims is to promote the spread of benefit companies. This also makes them a reference model for the transformation of doing business towards more evolved and inclusive paradigms'.