Global Forum

Task Teams get to Work at the Global Forum

noreply@blogger.com (Shannon Dortch) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:12:00 +0000

The first full day of the Cornell Global Forum focused on the work of 11 task teams, covering topics such as water, sustainable materials, health, food and agriculture, renewable energy, and alternative fuels. Theteams spent a total of four hours together on Tuesday. In the morning, they were to address the question: "What does the Great Convergence mean to you and your business success in the coming decade?" The afternoon's outcome was difficult for most of the teams, for it required them to state a specific initiative to undertake now, to accelerate the rate of change toward sustainability.

I spent my day with the Alternative Fuels task team. Like other task teams, mine spent time discussing processes and systems, but it also got seriously down to the business of forming a plan to accelerate the rate of change in alternative fuels, specifically biofuels. Our work was aided by a great mix of delegates. From the finance realm, we had Paul Ferreri, who runs a clean-tech hedge fund; Martin Lagod, a venture capitalist investing in clean tech; Rajan Kundra runs a social venture fund, with investments primarily in India.

Two of our delegates are actively engaged in biofuel production and distribution on the ground in the developing world. Rod McLaughlin founded a biodiesel fuel company, informed by his solid background in auto manufacturing. Sagun Saxena founded a company, primarily operating in India, that converts tree-seed oil to fuel to run diesal engines, in a process that does not require the chemicals or equipment needed to produce biodiesel.

Larry Walker, a biofuels expert from the Cornell faculty, served as our technical expert. Among the value he brought to the endeavor was to gently remind the delegates throughout the dayt to consider the systems that would be affected and altered by whatever initiative we propose. Larry particularly held our feet to the fire on the topic of sustainable production of the raw product for biofuels: the base of the pyramid is not well served by energy initiatives that result in greater deforestation, increased degradation of crop soil, and conversion of food-growing lands to production of fuel plants, in a world that currently can't feed its population.

So is it hard to convert oil seeds, such as coconut, cotton, and those grown on the Jatropa tree to oil to fuel diesal engines, (which, in developing countries, are most heavily used to irrigate crops?) Does the process require complex technology, highly skilled technical specialists, and massive amounts of capital?

This task team agreed that the technology to create biofuels, while not in the currently sexy early-stage clean tech domain, is readily available and fairly in expensive. The group's final initiative and plan for roll out will not include a proposal for eye-popping new technology, but rather one to demonstrate in practice that a model for sustainable, finanacially viable biofuel production and distribution can be achieved. The financiers on the team think it can; so do the scientists, and the business development specialists.

Today, the team will nail down how.

noreply@blogger.com (Shannon Dortch) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:16:00 +0000

In the opening session of the Cornell Global Forum on Sustainability, held at the Museum of Natural History in New York City, presenters made a compelling case for disruptive, rather than incremental, advances in sustainability, globally and in the U.S.

Stuart Hart, the S. C. Johnson Chair in Sustainable Global Enterprise at the Johnson School, set the agenda for the global forum by introducing his concept of the "Great Convergence," sometimes referred to as the "Green Leap.” The idea is to bring disruptive, clean-technology enterprises to the 4.5 billion people at the base of the pyramid, the world’s poor living in the developing world. Hart suggested that the base of the pyramid is the perfect place to "incubate the green technologies that struggle to come in at the top of the pyramid."

Most new technologies do, in fact, enter the market at the top of the pyramid, he says, because that’s where the money is. Yet, with solar energy as an example, it’s clear that these technologies must come to market with a premium price, compete with existing "old" technologies, and eventually hit a "hard stopping place, before hitting the mass scale out," Hart says.

The alternative, Hart says, is to incubate clean technology innovations at the bottom of the pyramid. "As you get traction, you can migrate it up, adding features and increasing the price," he says. "It’s a reverse logic."

H. Fisk Johnson, chairman and CEO of S. C. Johnson and Son, Inc., took the podium after Hart, and offered examples from his own experience of the barriers clean technologies face at the top of the pyramid, where we in the developed world reside. After many months of work, Johnson says he remains unsuccessful in installing wind-generated power in his own backyard. "The hurdles are amazing," he said, coming from zoning ordinances, the local conventional power provider, and liability concerns of the company selling the wind generator.

Incremental solutions—doing a little more of what we do already or doing it a little better—will not work before the human population uses up the earth’s resources, Johnson says. What’s required are disruptive solutions and disruptive leadership, by three different groups: businesses, consumers, and government.

His example of disruptive business leadership is an unlikely one: Wal-Mart. Concentrated laundry detergent had been in use in Asia for many years. It reduces numerous environmental impacts, including cost of transporting the product, the amount of material used to make containers, and the size of used containers that eventually make it to recycling facilities and landfills. Yet no single American manufacturer was willing to be the first to offer the concentrated product, fearing a loss of shelf space and market share. When Wal-Mart took leadership, essentially requiring all manufacturers to switch to concentrated detergent, the change finally occurred.

Consumers in the U.S. lag considerably behind those in China, for instance, in their willingness to accept "disruptive" alternatives that will slow environmental degradation. In China, Johnson’s company sells cleaning products in a trigger bottle, and offers refills in a plastic pouch. Chinese consumers are happy to cut open the pouch and refill their trigger bottles, while paying less for the pouch than for a new trigger bottle. Not so, for U.S. consumers, Johnson says.
"A large number of U.S. consumers don’t like the inconvenience," Johnson says. "This example illustrates that environmental considerations are not top-of-mind for consumers here."
Finally, Johnson suggests that disruptive leadership by our government is essential. "Government must provide organization around critical priorities," he said. "Diffuse priorities spawn incrementalism."

In closing, Johnson provided an example from a recent session he attended, where a state governor introduced his "greening" plan. When Johnson asked the governor how he planned to get consumers engaged in his plan, the governor responded, "The people know what to do." Yet much of Johnson’s experience as head of S. C. Johnson belies that assumption.

"A plan is not leadership," Johnson says. "It’s getting people to act on that plan."

Three Great Days...

noreply@blogger.com (Shannon Dortch) — Fri, 29 May 2009 19:29:00 +0000

As the month of May draws to a close, the faculty and staff of the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise are journeying to New York City for the Cornell Global Forum on Sustainable Enterprise. This landmark event, two years in the making, runs June 1, 2009, through June 3, 2009.

The Cornell Global Forum was conceived by Stuart Hart, the Samuel C. Johnson Chair in Sustainable Global Enterprise at the Johnson School, and embodies the vision of our Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise—facilitating a new private-sector-based approach to development, focused on creating profitable businesses that simultaneously:

Raise the quality of life for the world’s poor
Respect cultural diversity
Conserve the ecological integrity of the planet for future generations

The organizers of the Global Forum have invited 100 delegates to participate in this event. These delegates include the world's leading entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, change agents, and financiers engaged in sustainable innovation and base-of-the-pyramid enterprise development.

Their goal and that of the Cornell Global Forum is to accelerate the rate of change toward the "Great Convergence" in the world—the joining of clean technologies with the base of the pyramid. The Great Convergence seeks to fuel growth through the incubation and rapid commercialization of new, sustainable technologies.

The Global Forum kicks off on Monday, June 1, 2009, at an opening session featuring remarks by Dr. David J. Skorton, president of Cornell University, L. Joseph Thomas, dean of the Johnson School, H. Fisk Johnson, chairman and CEO, S. C. Johnson & Son, Inc., and forum founder and co-organizer, Stuart Hart. For the next two days, the delegates will meet in closed sessions to create ideas and initiatives around the Great Convergence.

While these sessions are closed to the public and the media, you can follow what’s happening in this blog, through daily updates on the Johnson School Web site, and frequent posts to Twitter.

The Cornell Global Forum is about conversations and emerging ideas. So please bring yours to the virtual table! Use the "comment" feature of this blog to join the delegates’ deliberations on topics such as:

What does the Great Convergence mean to you?
What is the importance of “convergence” to business success in the future?
What specific convergence initiatives are most important to undertake now?

Let the conversation begin!