How Ukrainian Companies Are Transforming Wartime Challenges Into Lifelines
These four organizations pursued nimble and purposeful innovation when corporate social responsibility shifted from an option to an existential necessity.
Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images
War subjects businesses to unprecedented tests. With governments stretched to their limits, businesses must step in and assume responsibilities far beyond their conventional mandates, profoundly transforming the notion of corporate social responsibility (CSR). As national survival and corporate survival become more and more intertwined, we see questions shift from “Should we do something?” to “What could we do?” — transforming CSR from a voluntary initiative to an existential necessity.
Amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, businesses offer a compelling blueprint for responsibility-driven innovation, with the potential to redefine global CSR practices in crisis contexts. Four Ukrainian companies have distinguished themselves with particular thoughtfulness and ingenuity in their approaches to launching socially responsible initiatives during the war, with wartime adversity fueling innovation and societal impact. Their examples show that embracing CSR as an existential imperative enables scalable impact, imbues companies with deeper meaning, and can enhance corporate innovation efforts ― making responsibility rather than necessity the mother of invention.
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Each of these four companies applied its existing resources and capabilities to fulfill its perceived social responsibilities by venturing into new, adjacent products and services. What follows are the stories of four Ukrainian companies and the lessons we can learn from them.
BetterMe
In the unfolding narrative of war and resilience, BetterMe, a health and wellness digital platform, has emerged as a beacon of hope and recovery. With fun workouts and wellness programs for people of any age and fitness level and 150 million users worldwide, BetterMe took a supportive stance from the very onset of the conflict, offering all Ukrainians free access to its application. But as the war’s relentless toll on Ukrainian society has deepened, the company’s corporate social responsibility mission has similarly evolved.
Victoria Repa, the founder and CEO of BetterMe, shared a stark statistic: Over 50,000 Ukrainians have undergone or are undergoing limb amputations due to the war. The ceaseless barrage of missiles, drones, and artillery shells — with approximately 10,000 shells fired daily — has resulted in a devastating wave of severely injured veterans and civilians. In this crucible of conflict, BetterMe’s leaders felt the responsibility to do more. The company partnered with prosthetics manufacturer Esper Bionics and the Future for Ukraine charitable foundation to create a specialized training program for those preparing for and recovering from amputations.