Last night I went to the Blogger's nightcap at a hotel at the eastern end of Davos. I came out after midnight and found that there were no buses or shuttles running anymore, so I just walked back to my hotel's funicular. That's not a term I use frequently! It's a train that takes you from town level up 1000 feet to the Schatzalp hotel, which sits well above the valley. Like several hotels in Davos, it's a former TB clinic, and was featured in Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain." I hadn't eaten dinner, and so ended up getting food at the one bar I found open while walking more than half the length of the main drag! I ran into some fun Brazilian social entrepreneurs I hadn't met before (based in the Amazon) and we ended up drinking beers and swapping stories well into the night.
And, that's a key part of the Davos flavor. Yes, you are meeting people you want to meet or people you already know. But, the magic comes when you let serendipity lead you forward. Almost everyone here does something interesting, and you are more likely than not find a common interest with someone you would never would have a priori guessed would be passionate about human rights, or technology, or the political situation in Bangladesh, or environmental change, or...
And of course, the best place to meet people are in the six person minivans. Last year I jumped into one and sat across from George Soros. People are accessible and interested in knowing more about everybody, and it creates a real opportunity to accelerate three month's of new meetings into three or four days.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Sunday was a day of content aimed just at the social entrepreneurs. We discussed leadership, recruiting and succession, among other topics. This content has been driven by requests from the SEs themselves, looking for help in developing their leadership style and their organizations. Many of the SEs are senior, having been leading their organizations for longer than a decade, and many longer than that. Succession issues: how do we build an organization that will outlive our involvement, and how to approach recruiting a successor to the founder, was a session that I moderated. My panelists were Jeroo Billimoria, a serial social entrepreneur from India who founded Child Helpline in India and took it global (as well as starting three other social enterprises); Tom Friel, the Chair of Heidrick & Struggles, the global recruiting firm; Bruce Pasternak, CEO of Special Olympics (and the first CEO not from the founding Shriver clan); and Jennifer Broggini, board member from TechnoServe (member of the search committee that found successors to her father, the founder of TechnoServe).
On Monday we were joined by a dazzling array of global leaders who are interested in social entrepreneurship. Schwab Foundation board members Paolo Coehlo (the noted Brazilian author), Zanelle Mbeki (first lady of South Africa) and Hilde Schwab, the co-founder of the Schwab Foundation. Notable attendees included Larry Brilliant, the head of Google.org, Jonathan Greenblatt, founder of Ethos Water, Ron Grzywinski, founder of ShoreBank, Tim Wirth, head of the UN Foundation, Matthew Bishop of the Economist, and scores of other similar luminaries. The foundation community was also well represented, especially the Skoll Foundation. Skoll and Schwab have the two leading social entrepreneurship networks for senior practitioners, and it's great to see them working together to advance the movement.
Tuesday was kicked off by Jacques Aigran, the President of Swiss Re, the insurance company that hosted the summit at their elegant facility in Ruschlikon, a suburb of Zurich.
Aigran noted that Swiss Re was interested in several aspects of the SE field, including bringing insurance to the developing world, as well as being involved in the global warming crisis (which he feels will disproportionately hurt the poor in the developing world). Hilde Schwab declared the Schwab commitment to making social entrepreneurs better known throughout the world. Her best example was Muhammed Yunus, who is also a board member of the Schwab Foundation, who of course won the Nobel Peace prize last year. She noted that Yunus worked for twenty years before anyone in the West noticed!
Out of all the panels I attended, I especially wanted to let you know about the kickoff panel on Monday. The panel was moderated by Greg Dees of Duke University, one of the leading business school professors tracking and analyzing the social entrepreneurship movement. He pointed out that SEs are all about breaking away from charity and alms giving and focusing on pragmatic problem solving. Mirai Chatterjee of the Self Employed Women's Association in India explains social entrepreneurs as private initiatives that used business models around financial sustainability, self-help and empowerment. Her inspiration for this work included Gandhi, who of course was all about self-reliance!
Matthew Bishop of the Economist Magazine made some interesting points. He continued the theme of claiming social entrepreneurial status (we had earlier heard that insurance was an SE as well as Gandhi), by explaining that the magazine had been started in 1843 to remove trade barriers in the UK, which were hurting the poor by driving up food prices. His analysis of global entrepreneurship is that it has gone through a revolution in the last thirty years, driven by transparency and innovation in capital markets. Breakthroughs by entrepreneurs are followed by productivity improvements embedded in more traditional organizations. He foresees a continued drive towards improving effectiveness as the relationships among states, corporations and private individuals evolve. We've come to recognize the limitations of the nation state, especially around innovation. He also forecast an evolution in capital markets and a rise of intermediaries in the SE field.
Roger Martin, dean of the U. Toronto business school, talked about the need to drive new skills into the business school community, especially improving the teaching of entrepreneurship and trying to teach empathy. Bill Drayton rounded out the panel. As the founder of Ashoka, the biggest and oldest global network of social entrepreneurs, he's known as the godfather of the movement.
The final quotes are from the man of the hour, Larry Brilliant, the new head of Google.org. Everyone in the SE movement is waiting to hear more about his vision for Google.org, since anything seems possible for Google. Larry described his ten months at Google as drinking from a firehose, and explained:
This is the morally most challenging moment in my life,
but I've never felt more alive!
He also announced that Microsoft (and I think Yahoo!) and Google are planning to work together in the area of disaster preparedness.
It was a gratifying couple of days, and I've only scratched the surface. But, tonight I'll be in Davos and getting ready for the next phase of this trip!
Labels: Economist, Google.org, Klaus Schwab, Skoll, social entrepreneurs, WEF
Saturday, January 20, 2007
This is where many of the key global players from the social entrepreneurship field get together, under the auspices of Klaus and Hilde Schwab. The first event is the Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur Summit. Klaus is the founder and head of the WEF. And, later in the week I move to Davos for the World Economic Forum - Annual Meeting 2007.
I very much enjoy blogging from Switzerland, and sharing my experiences. I feel it's a privilege to attend, and appreciate the enthusiastic engagement social entrepreneurs receive from the most senior corporate and government leaders. The leaders who take a week out to attend Davos are very interested in global issues, both as these issues impact their business but also their families and the world.
This will be my fifth Davos in a row, and I am definitely far more comfortable than I was the first time. The key epiphany I had was how human the Davos attendees are. This is a chance for them to interact directly with other people without the all-encompassing cocoon that normally surrounds them.
This is a place where their concerns for their children and grandchildren can be openly expressed rather than being deemed inappropriate for polite business conversation. These are real people who yearn to be part of the solution rather than the problem.
I look forward to sharing the (nonconfidential) parts of the conversations I have, and hope that at the end of this coming week you feel slightly heartened about the future!
Labels: Klaus Schwab, social entrepreneurs, WEF
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