Origo works to build businesses that are powerful economic engines, environmental assets, and socially valuable resources. We call these the best businesses ever. Our team is drawn from across the private and social sectors and shares a passionate interest in innovative business systems.

Cross-Sector Team

Origo’s consulting team has been brought together from a cross section of industry, finance and the public sector specifically to allow it to act as a broker and cross-sector strategy group. Our consultants bring extensive experience in both the private and public sectors: from corporate strategy and operations to investment banking and venture capital, from leadership roles at foundations to on the ground work with civil society organizations.

Origo History

Founded in 1999 with initial venture investment from Swiss investor Stephan Schmidheiny and under the steerage of Erica Knie (Avina Foundation), Lloyd Timberlake (Avina Foundation) and Claude Martin (World Wildlife fund), Origo was conceived as an online global social capital marketplace.

Origo soon discovered that the greater need was for customized consulting and partnership brokerage services. We built on the assets developed as part of our online initiatives as we grew into a research and consulting company.

Our early consulting had a social enterprise focus. While we had the opportunity to work with some terrific organizations like the Benetech Initiative and Novica United, we felt constrained and frustrated by the limits of the field. Our search for greater scale and impact inevitably led us to the door of the corporate sector. With corporations carrying such a vast weight of influence, capacity, capital and global reach, questions kept coming up around the role of the corporate sector in large-scale social and economic change.

At the heart of our interest lies a simple idea; what if you could show big multinational companies that doing business in ways that do well and do good actually made economic sense? This concept has had particular resonance and acceptance in emerging markets (more particularly, the lower income segments of those markets – sometimes known as the “base of the economic pyramid” or “BOP”) where the unusual nature of market opportunities and a comparative lack of standard operating practices have demanded that companies open up to whole new market approaches and partnerships.

While our current work is focused on the corporate sector, the very nature of our approach to business means that that cannot be our exclusive focus. As a result of the growth path that our business has taken, we have developed relationships with organizations from across the business, non-profit and public sectors and around the world. And we continue to do work for many of them.

Here at Origo, we are engaged in building a fundamentally different kind of company; one that is dedicated to solving problems for our clients through creative thinking, an interdisciplinary perspective, a belief in the power of entrepreneurship and a commitment to the common good. We will continue to provide strategy consulting to large corporations but will also engage with innovative small businesses, leading non-profits, open minded investors and maverick foundations. We believe that working with a diverse client base allows for a cross fertilization of ideas through which we can serve all of our clients more effectively.