Tag Archives: technology

August 30, 2012 · 12:09 pm

Exploring the contribution of the technology sector to responsible business leadership and sustainable development

By Stephen Farrant, Director at IBLF

IBLF’s redefining growth strategy is gaining significant traction with business leaders around the world, with its focus on identifying new models of growth that are smart, inclusive and responsible, underpinned by leadership and collaboration.

Now, IBLF, working in partnership with ARM Holdings and supported by Fronesys, is developing Technology for Sustainable Development (T4SD), a new programme that will bring together leaders of information and communications technology (ICT) companies to discuss practical ways of enhancing their contribution to responsible business leadership and sustainable development. ARM challenged IBLF to design a new programme on technology and sustainability that would focus on important areas that were being overlooked.

IBLF has been working with Fronesys to analyse trends in the ICT sector and has also mapped existing corporate responsibility and sustainability initiatives. As a result of this research, IBLF is proposing to create a platform to develop solutions within three areas of activity:

  1. The circular economy: exploring how the ICT industry can develop and enable the circular economy, in which products or their components are reused and more of their precious material, energy and labour inputs are restored. This will support IBLF’s drive for smart and responsible growth.
  2. Big Brother and personal data security: exploring how the ICT industry should respond when presented with an unclear legal framework and different regulatory and moral codes, how conflicting stakeholder opinions can be managed and integrated, and how the sector can work together to improve levels of trust and digital confidence. This will support IBLF’s drive for smart and responsible growth.
  3. The Lost Generation: exploring the challenge of structural unemployment among youth, and the extent to which opportunities afforded by technology could help these young people find viable economic and social engagement on a global stage. This will support IBLF’s drive for inclusive growth.

The programme will be based on IBLF’s proven model for sectoral collaboration and collective action as exemplified by its International Tourism Partnership.

ICT has a huge role to play as an enabler for other sectors to achieve social and environmental gains.  However, ICT companies also need to continue to address their own impacts to ensure they have maximum possible credibility as responsible businesses.  We envisage that the T4SD Programme will identify practical opportunities for the industry to contribute to smart, inclusive and responsible growth and will act as a powerful catalyst for transformation.

ARM is the lead partner and the first Founding Member of the programme, and will  take a key role in directing the programme with IBLF. ARM will also  be looking for opportunities to introduce its output to its 900+ Partner community.

We are actively inviting feedback on this programme proposal from leaders in the field.

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January 27, 2012 · 3:55 pm

Davos 2012: Nailing the other foot to the floor

By Clare Melford, CEO, IBLF

The Arab Spring in January 2011 left participants at last year’s World Economic Forum scrambling for sensible soundbytes. This gave this elite gathering the appearance of being somewhat out of touch with the general public.

This year’s Davos meeting badly needed to demonstrate that those gathered were both informed of, and dealing with, the wider concerns of the world. Unfortunately, given the timing of the meeting (falling in the middle of the Chinese New Year), the conference has been somewhat lacking in Chinese participants.

Hence, it does not have quite the diversity of opinion, experience and culture that might have lent a more connected feel. There is however a reasonable contingent from India who are doing their best to raise spirits and forecasts from the overriding sense of Anglo-Saxon gloom pervading proceedings. The jaunty 8% GDP growth rates and flamboyant tech entrepreneurs are a much- needed shot in the arm to the general malaise that dominates other national tents.

However the Indians are in a minority here. The biggest groups (or the most visible ones) by far at the “World” Economic Forum are North Americans and Europeans. Inevitably, this has led to the main themes of this conference being those that currently obsess the Developed World – namely, the euro, unemployment and debt crises.

The risk with this under-representation of Asia, Latin America and Africa at this year’s WEF is two-fold. Firstly, the best ideas come from the most diverse groups. With a somewhat homogenous group here in Davos, can we be sure that we are really getting the best the world has to offer to tackle our undoubtedly large and shared problems?

Secondly, without the voices of more buoyant, dynamic and growing economies loudly in the room, there is a risk that those present “talk ourselves down” and in fact exacerbate the pessimism that will ultimately become a self-fulfilling prophecy. A negative economic outlook will not encourage customers to spend or businesses to invest – and this in turn will curtail job growth and tax receipts, making the problems for developed countries worse.

In an untempered focus on the problems of the developed world – without the tonic of the opportunities of the less developed – we risk “nailing our other foot to the floor”.

During the forum, a Microsoft spokesperson eloquently explained the risk of limited experiences arising from an increasingly networked world, and in creating a culture of fear in the process. To explain – the opportunities from social media mean we can communicate with anyone we want. However, often those we want to communicate with are those with similar views to our own.

Social networks allow us to create large groups of contacts who share our mindset, giving us the misguided belief that our views are the norm.

This creates situations where our views, informed or ill informed, get reinforced without the moderating influence of divergent ones. Examples of this can be seen in the polarisation of debate in the American political sphere and in the intemperate reactions of many developed economies to migration. It is easy to see how fear can take hold in such large but self-selecting social networks.

In fact the woman from Microsoft observed that the most common emotion she picked up from her analysis of social networks was fear. Her contention was that the ability to connect with everyone has in fact reduced the likelihood that we will connect anyone with differing views from ourselves – and that the impact of that can be an increase in fear.

In many ways, the European project was as much to address this fundamental human trait as anything else. Centuries of war across Europe have been largely brought to an end by a process of ever deepening integration and mutual understanding, of which the eurozone is just the latest (and most ambitious) facet.

 My overriding hope from this year’s World Economic Forum is quite simply this: Those of us that are present should not let the lack of diversity encourage us into talking up a more fearful future than the one that is most certainly possible.

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December 9, 2011 · 12:34 pm

3 reasons why India can beat the corruption ‘curse’

By Clare Melford, CEO of IBLF

It is often said of India that whatever is said about it, the opposite is equally true. And returning from a recent series of meetings with business leaders in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, I am struck by just how true this is.

India has a fast growing and increasingly open economy, yet it can take 30 years for a legal case to come to court! It has a vigorous, world-leading IT sector and yet a closed – and in some segments primitive – food sector. It displays a strong culture of education and saving, yet almost 30% of the population is illiterate and it suffers double the rate of childhood malnutrition of sub-Saharan Africa.

Corruption is to be found at the heart of many of the challenges India faces, from the teachers who don’t show up for work to the officials who steal the payments destined for the very poorest, to the rotting food that never makes it to market as the money to build the cold storage facilities disappears.

Recently, corruption has risen to the top of the national psyche. There has been national outrage about the handling of the 2G mobile spectrum “auctions”. An outspoken activist Anna Hazare has mobilised huge numbers of the public to protest at what is seen as government foot-dragging on implementing anti-corruption measures. A website – ipaidabribe.com – is encouraging people to report all the instances they are asked for bribes in their daily lives. And a group of eminent business, academic and other leaders (some of whom I had the privilege to meet this week), have written two open letters to the government urging them to take greater steps to reduce the endemic rent seeking.

Corruption, or the fear of being accused of it, has now brought the business of government to a standstill, with no ministers willing to take decisions lest those decisions later be unfavourably scrutinized by India’s vociferous and free press. When one takes the oil out of the engine, the engine seizes up.

While in the short run this inertia is driving the business community to distraction, there are 3 big reasons to be optimistic about India’s chances of beating this curse.

1. India is a democracy, and a real one at that. Despite Winston Churchill’s apparent ridiculing of the idea that an independent India could manage a democracy, Indian governments have taken office on winning an election and quietly left it when they lost. One of the advantages of a democracy is that status quos can be challenged and the populace can kick out the rulers with whom they are dissatisfied. So in fact the seizing up of government out of fear of being accused of being crooked is a sign of the power of the people.

2. India has a free and vigorous press that can sniff out and shame wrongdoers. Coupled with a reasonably impartial (if slow) judicial system, this has lead to some recent convictions for corruption.

3. India has a world-class technology sector. There is exciting potential to remove human intervention from processes via technologies such as mobile banking, unique identity numbers and online tendering – and hence eliminate the possibilities for corruption.

However I have also heard these three factors used by those in positions of influence as justifications for why cleaning up the system could wait!

“We have democracy and a free press, we have the tools we need to clean things up when we need to, but right now our focus has to be on maintaining our growth and lifting people out of poverty” is something I have heard more than once. This is the same logic as saying cheerily “don’t worry, we have insurance if the house burns down” whilst lighting a bonfire in the basement.

Well, as growth begins to slow the public dissent increases and government grinds to a halt. The house is burning down and the time for cleaning things up is now.

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IBLF’s work in India is about supporting the business community in its efforts to reduce corruption. We help companies to benchmark their policies and share best practices from India and around the world, and we work with business leaders to support their efforts in setting the tone from the top and using their influence on government policy and practice to help create the right regulatory frameworks.
 The emphasis is very much on companies taking a leadership role and showing the measures they are taking, not finger pointing at others. This stance is evinced no more clearly than in the actions of 14 of India’s business, academic and other leaders who through their open letters to government have clearly shown a constructive desire to find shared solutions. Azim Premji, Jamshyd Godrej and Ashok Ganguly, to name just 3 of the leaders involved have shown great personal leadership through their efforts. Such leadership is unusual in my experience of anticorruption work around the world and I am reminded of another often used Indian quote this time from the father of the nation Mohandras Gandhi “Be the change you want to see”. I wish them, and everyone else working to free India from debilitating corruption, luck.

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