The Power of Collaborative Innovation

23 Jan 2008 – John Elkington

Elsewhere, the global financial crisis builds. ‘Panic Sparks Global Plunge,’ declares a front page headline in the Financial Times. Here in Davos, a strange calm seemed to prevail as we arrived at Davos Platz station. But things are warming up. The snow may appear deep and crisp, but in places it is already highly uneven – thanks to the tramping of legions of feet – as several thousand participants turn up for the 2008 World Economic Forum (WEF) annual summit meeting. As we stepped off the train, we were already being filmed by TV crews, energetically compiling background footage for their news stories. The theme this year, the seventh time I have taken part, is ‘The Power of Collaborative Innovation.’ And, in an extraordinary coup organised by WEF founder Klaus Schwab 1,500 of the bags issued to participants this year will contain free copies of our new book, The Power of Unreasonable People. The book, sub-titled ‘How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World,’ will not be formally launched by Harvard Business Press until 5th February, but the Skoll Foundation have generously funded a special printing to ensure the book gets a high profile in Davos.

We arrived in Davos after a couple of days spent in Swiss Re’s Ruschlikon complex outside Zurich, which hosted the seventh summit meeting of The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, founded ten years ago by Klaus Schwab and his wife Hilde. Kicking off the meeting, she noted that the original idea had been to insert social entrepreneurship “into the genes of society.” Fine, but the early years weren’t too promising. For example, I was involved in a meeting at the 2002 WEF summit meeting in New York, hard on the heels of the 9/11 attacks, a gathering which aimed to introduce leading social entrepreneurs to mainstream business, financial and government people. The turnout was pitifully low – and most of those who did come mainly came to see the Schwab Foundation’s Trustees, people like film-maker David Puttnam and best-selling author Paulo Coelho. How things have changed. The new book, which I have co-authored with Pamela Hartigan, Managing Director of The Schwab Foundation, draws out some of the implications of the intensifying efforts in the field of social entrepreneurship for leaders in the private, public and citizen sectors.

For me, two striking things about this year’s Schwab Foundation summit were, first, the way in which the sustainability agenda has moved to centre-stage and, second, the much greater number of financial people taking part. Jacques Aigrain, CEO of the giant reinsurance company Swiss Re, stressed the central role of sustainability issues for his company and its sector these days. He and others underscored the parallel – extraordinary – growth in interest in the whole field of social entrepreneurship. And one of the biggest issues these days is that of scaling, as speaker after speaker noted. The active engagement of the financial world is going to be crucial in ensuring that emerging solutions to issues like climate change and access to clean energy, clean water and to affordable drugs for such diseases as HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria scale at a sufficient pace to meet future demographic challenges.

A day or two before the Schwab Foundation summit opened its doors, The Economist executed a screeching U-turn from its earlier critiques of corporate social responsibility, publishing a not unfriendly 14-page survey of CSR. Furthermore, during the Schwab summit, Matthew Bishop of The Economist noted that just as the dot-com era resulted in a rash of new ventures and investments, so social entrepreneurs should now “strike while the iron is hot.” Certainly, many of the financial people taking part are looking for ways to take a stake in all of this new activity. At the same time, there is a great deal that mainstream business and government leaders can learn about the markets and business models of the future from what these entrepreneurs are doing.

Still, although some 50 social entrepreneurs will take part in the Davos event, they will have to share the spotlight with leaders from many other sectors – among them the Young Global Leaders (YGLs) selected each year by the Forum. Of the 250 new YGLs selected in 2007, 125 came from business and overall the successful candidates came from nearly 70 countries. In this context, I was interested to see the results of the latest survey of the YGL community- who were asked to think through how the world would look in 2030. The most pressing issues a couple of decades out, they predicted, will be global warming (selected by 59% of respondents), the depletion of resources (37%) and asymmetric warfare (27%). No less than 64% believe that weapons of mass destruction will have been used by non-state actors by 2030.

China is expected to be the leading nation state, followed by the USA, India and Russia, with Germany, France and the UK significantly losing ground. 60% of respondents thought that national states will lose power, although they are expected to remain the most influential actors in dealing with the global challenges mentioned above. By contrast, 96% of YGLs see multinational corporations and individuals gaining power over the next couple of decades. With so much turmoil in the pipeline, even when the financial markets recover from their current excursion, leadership will be increasingly important, wherever it comes from, top down, bottom up, inside out or outside in. And my expectation is that the YGLs and people like them will have a great deal to learn from the world’s top social and environmental entrepreneurs. But as the issues of scale become ever more urgent, I also expect the exchanges to run powerfully in both – indeed multiple – directions.