Social entrepreneurs at Davos

People
are often surprised when I tell them how social entrepreneurs are well
received at Davos. We’re full participants in panels, including being
speakers. I think the reason for this integration is the strong support
of the WEF’s founder, Prof. Klaus Schwab, for the regard of social
entrepreneurs.

One great example of this was a major reception
held last night with the following hosts: Marc Benioff (CEO of
Salesforce.com), Prof. & Mrs. Schwab, Michael Dell, Peter Gabriel
(rockstar and founder of Witness), Alan Hassenfeld (Hasbro) and Marilyn
Carlson Nelson (Carlson Travel). The reception was held in honor of
social entrepreneurs and marking the release of a new book edited by Marc Benioff entitled The Business of Changing the World,
which is a compendium of essays about business people and their
engagement with the social sector. I had some great conversations with
people explaining what Benetech does.

Talking to other Social Entrepreneurs

At
least half of the highpoints of this week in Switzerland are the
interactions I have with other social entrepreneurs. I feel very much
at home with these folks, which are my peer community. Last night I was
talking to John Wood about his book, Amazon.com: Leaving Microsoft to Change the World. He gave me the direct advice of a social entrepreneur in the middle of marketing his first book: immensely useful.

Moving
on to dinner, I sat next to Garth Japhet of Soul City in South Africa,
a doctor/social entrepreneur who leads an organization that uses media
to influence behavior that affects HIV/AIDS. Garth was able to give me
(in less than ten minutes) the reason why HIV spreads so much more
quickly in southern Africa than in most other places in the world. He
explained that immediately after infection, you are extremely
infectious for around three weeks until your immune system beats HIV
down to nearly indetectable levels. He noted that while southern
Africans do not tend to have a larger lifetime number of sexual
partners, they tend to have longer term relationships with multiple
partners at the same time. Because a person might be with several long
term partners in that several week initial peak infectivity, you will
infect several people (and you are less likely to use a condom since it
is a long term partner and not a one night stand). And if your partners
are similarly oriented, they could infect several more people. Garth
noted that a single infection leads to many more infections given this
profile compared to societies where you might have as many sexual
partners over your lifetime, but where the likelihood of having
multiple partners during this three week period is much less.

Like
many of my conversations with social entrepreneurs, I feel like I have
a window into a crucial social issue from someone with an unparalleled
vantage point. And, I get to have at least a dozen of these in-depth
conversations every time I come to Davos!

Posted by Jim Fruchterman at 07:45

http://profile.typekey.com/MKraus/ Margery Kraus

Corporate Responsibility Is Now a Business Imperative
I think it is particularly interesting to note that the dialogue about corporate responsibility changed significantly this year. In the past, this was something that companies “did” as a part of their external relations activities. Today, more individuals agree that “giving back” is good business. The issue of corporate responsibility is now seen as a business imperative that is incorporated into the overall strategic planning and actions of a company.
In a recent meeting at Davos, I observed a comment from a participant that businesses cannot succeed in a failed world. This philosophy has definitely helped guide the discussion on corporate actions for the future as businesses are becoming more progressive and see the value in contributing to society to help build sustainability for the future.
This year at Davos, there was an opportunity to learn about some exciting actions being taken by companies to provide leadership in some of the major issues of the day. This engagement helps build trust and enhance the reputation of those companies that seriously engage with stakeholders on issues faced by their employees, their communities and the future of the world. Building or restoring public trust is no longer optional for any business. With the declining role of government as a provider, there are rising expectations for what companies can do. It is very rewarding to see companies not only embrace this responsibility, but also find ways to link their actions to tangible, sustainable business objectives. This is the ultimate win/win situation. Companies and leaders have always valued their ROI. This approach provides the opportunity to build a metric for companies to earn a return on reputation (ROR), moving their role from assuring compliance to asserting leadership on key issues for our future.
There were many examples around Davos this year, but one of the most obvious was Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola clearly articulated its vision and commitment to sustainability by discussing at the meetings the leading role the company has taken in water stewardship. In addition to its water stewardship programs around the world, Coca-Cola unveiled its “eKOfreshment” beverage coolers at an event a few nights ago, launching a joint initiative with Greenpeace and Unilever PLC to reduce emissions of global warming gases. This is a good example of what other companies can do to link their business and societal objectives, and I look forward to seeing more companies take this path.
Margery Kraus, CEO of APCO Worldwide
http://profile.typekey.com/dkmatai/ DK Matai

Dear Jim
I agree with you and you may find the comments below to be of interest in the context of social entrepreneurship.
With best wishes
DK
DK Matai
The Philanthropia, ATCA, mi2g.net
2007 Full Analysis of Global Risks & Opportunities
DK Matai – January 04, 2007
Dear friends
Happy New Year to you and to your family! Here is the 2007 full analysis of global risks and opportunities encompassing: spiritual awakening and consumer activism; countering climate chaos; radical poverty and micro-finance; geo-politics, organised crime and extremism; new technologies; pandemics; demographic skews; and financial markets.
Let us wish this is a highly purposeful year for all of us and may we continue to be guided wisely towards the fulfillment of our nobler intentions. Having arrived back in Europe from India, we must confess that it has been an extremely rewarding trip at a food-for-the-spirit level. India is metamorphosing into an economic and geo-political giant and and no where is this more palpable than in New Delhi, her capital city.
.000 Spiritual and environmental awakening at an individual level and consumer activism at a group level is going to become much more robust in 2007 as people continue to connect with each other around the world in their billions and have more information at their finger-tips to know the truth about events and personalities through blogging and other personalised expression outlets based on independent one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many text, audio and video messaging services as well as newscast solutions. The internet with powerful search engines, roaming mobile telephony and trans-national independent satellite television stations may end up delivering much more by way of protecting human rights, raising awareness amongst the masses, promoting democracy and the values of liberty, equality and fraternity, in comparison to the global wars fought to achieve just that. The more that humanity communicates and connects, the more it bonds to move beyond physical and intellectual differences towards realising the collective universal consciousness or the Omega Point in the words of Teilhard de Chardin. As global inter-faith dialogue develops, greater connectivity, introspection and inner progress is likely to yield further progress in forgiveness, tolerance, compassion and mercy towards fellow sentient beings, the environment and the alternative points of view in the medium to long term.
.001 Reports of climate chaos and environmental degradation are going to continue to proliferate and watch out for the greening of the corporate world, as it tries to reinvent itself in the face of pressure from its major shareholders and the large pension funds’ awakened sense of fiduciary next generation responsibility. Hard nosed short term pure-profits-driven capitalism is now out of fashion and instead the renaissance themes for 2007 and beyond are going to be sustainability, longevity, going green, philanthropy, social entrepreneurship and building a better world together for generations to come, with many minor and some major hiccups along the way. Governments will also wish to be seen to be getting greener in the area of clean energy production, distribution and consumption as well as inventive policies on taxation and resource allocation. Locally generated clean energy solutions will be espoused in favour of centrally planned traditional energy solutions by local, regional and national players. The rise of hydrogen, solar, wind and alternative clean fuels is inevitable and necessary to balance the over-dependence on unclean fuels from an energy security perspective as well as the huge environmental degradation caused by industrial pollution. Nuclear technology is likely to be touted and embraced as a solution — once again — but it may not live up to expectations as the true cost and ten-to-fifteen year output delay of new nuclear programmes is determined including the cost of processing the long life-span radioactive waste over the full cycle. The parallel developments are going to be towards the proliferation of waste recycling solutions and sustainable technologies on the one hand and eco-friendly infrastructure a la “The Dongtan eco-city” project near Pudong-Shanghai, on the other. Water shortages caused by droughts and floods will continue to show a steady rise. The need for the delivery of locally refined water through non-energy-intensive solutions is likely to increase. This presents a great opportunity for innovation. Expect more damaging hurricanes and typhoons in 2007 and a better quality of government response than at the time of Katrina.
.002 Slums and sub-standard living conditions for the mass of humanity gravitating towards urban metropolitan areas is going to continue to skew growth and multi-nationals will announce a number of inverted pyramid solutions taking lessons from players in fast moving consumer goods (FMCGs). They may even address the problem of environmentally unfriendly packaging which is utilised to promote micro-capitalism’s latest assorted set of shampoos, toothpastes, condiments and processed edibles. The growth of micro-finance solutions is going to become ubiquitous as an elegant mechanism for offering small loans for self-employment and small scale entrepreneurship finance, without collateral. Macro development has to be matched by micro development in order to ensure stability and balance in growth. We can also look — with some trepidation — towards the growth of rip-off credit financing schemes in the name of loans to alleviate poverty. There are slum dwellers in so many developing countries, who are being offered credit cards and credit worthiness numbers so that they can purchase electrical goods and vehicles etc without having any real capacity to pay back or service the loan debt.
.003 No longer relegated to the back seat, the United Nations is going to be seen as an important platform in dealing with the turmoil in Afghanistan and Iraq, which is likely to continue with attendant consequences for the US and UK as well as various countries in the Middle East and South Asia, especially Saudi Arabia and Iran on the one hand and Pakistan on the other. The Shia-Sunni divide is fracturing Islamism with extremely destabilising consequences for Iraq and its attendant fallout for the world. The Israel-Palestine and Iran nuclear proliferation challenges are going to come into sharper relief. The relationships between China and the Middle East plus Africa on the one hand and Latin America on the other are going to get stronger. China and the US as well as China and Japan are going to continue to have a rising number of differences but the economic ties will remain robust. The depth and breadth of the socio-economic and geo-political relationships between the US, EU countries and Japan with India are going to strengthen further. China and India will continue to strengthen their collaboration on joint energy initiatives. Russia will continue to flex its energy muscle and strengthen bridges with China and India — expect the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) to have even more momentum. The interlinked hand-maidens of organised crime, recruitment of radicals and extremists — drug production and trafficking, counterfeit goods, illegal immigration, child pornography, small and sophisticated weapons trade, trade in forbidden chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear material etc — are going to show significant signs of presence and proliferation in the high growth developing countries, their dependents and the established G8, with alleged and real bases in failed states or quasi-isolated countries. Some of the hitherto small but stable developing countries will also suffer from varying degrees of destabilising pressures as a result of the hand-maidens’ operations.
.004 The new technologies of the 21st century are going to continue to proliferate and to cause disruptive innovation, with their attendant challenges. Expect more opposition to genetically modified food and a push towards organic food and fair trade products in super markets. Nanotechnology based devices and materials are going to be even more ubiquitous from personal entertainment devices to “special properties” clothes that perform better than cotton, silk, wool or any of the traditional natural fibres in surpassing their key benefits. Robots are going to make their foray into domestic automated appliances and also at some airport lounges and traffic monitoring. Smarter mobile telephones, PDAs and computers that can anticipate your next logical requirement will become common place and fulfil multiple functions. The need for a high quality camera, dictaphone, mobile telephone, music player, video player, photographs viewer, child monitor and translator is going to be increasingly integrated into the same device.
.005 A trans-national pandemic or health scare is expected at some stage in 2007 on a small, medium or large scale exacerbated by international travel. This may cause the aviation industry to suffer significant set backs on the passenger side and increase its cargo side and logistics operations. It could be the beginnings of the Avian flu or some other mutated strain of well known diseases like tuberculosis.
.006 Demographic skews in terms of aging populations in Western Europe and America will continue to impact immigration patterns and more Eastern Europeans and Asians are expected in the EU and more Latin Americans and Asians are expected in NAFTA regardless of regulation and political posturing. Asia will continue to be a magnet of the world as geo-political and socio-economic West-centric hegemony of the late 20th century shifts towards the Asia-Pacific in the 21st, with South Asia performing a more and more significant balancing act and lead partnership role. North South inter-dependence in favour of the South is also going to increase partially because of demographic skews and the need to maintain uninterrupted services and product supplies for the wealthier and elderly North.
.007 The interlinked global financial and capital markets plus large hedge funds are going to continue to feed vast flows of speculative capital into short-term investments causing some of yesterday’s bubbles to burst and some new bubbles to come alive. Expect a number of hedge funds to collapse as a result of bubble bursts and associated higher volatilities. Expect the US Dollar to decline further in 2007 and also the EU countries and Japan to suffer the consequences in terms of damaged export capability as their currencies rise. Many commodities including oil and copper will struggle to maintain their high prices on the world markets. Gold may prove to be an exception depending on the Dollar’s speed of decline. The Dollar decline may also derail economic growth in the US if interest rates have to be raised even further by the Federal Reserve. If there is a significant revaluation of the Yuan in 2007, it would seriously dent the China growth rate which is more production and supply skewed rather than consumption and demand based. Long term foreign direct investment into high GDP growth countries such as Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) will continue to accelerate and in the case of the US, it may stabilise or decline. The US slow down could spark a major retreat in global financial markets. India’s growth rate is likely to exceed China’s in 2007 for the first time in decades.
Having given you our two pennies worth, we are eager to learn about your thoughts, observations and views! Look forward to keeping in touch…
With all good wishes and love for the New Year!
DK with family
DK Matai
The Philanthropia, ATCA, mi2g.net
http://profile.typekey.com/jimfruchterman/ Jim Fruchterman

I agree, Margery. I attended a couple of meetings this Davos on disaster response and (even better) preparedness. Strong corporate voices were explaining why getting involved in these issues was an imperative, and beneficial to their businesses. These voices were from many different sectors, and I think it reflects an understanding from both the corporate and UN/NGO sides that corporations have tremendous assets to help with these issues beyond money.

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