Sustainability Posters from Davos Summit

It is fashionable to paint all corporate leaders as anti-environment, greedy and insensitive to the impact of their operations of their enterprises on environmental and sustainability issues.

But as I pointed out in my series of posts entitled Transforming the Global Economy, "we the people" need to stop painting all corporate and government leaders with the same cynical brush. The truth is that there are many champions of the environment, of economic fairness and sustainable technologies in the top tiers of the global economy and world governments.

Those of us who support these issues must separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to corporate and government leaders if our vision is to be fulfilled - and take action ourselves.

The concept maps shown on this post were presented at the Davos World Economic Forum to the CEOs of some fifty global corporations on January 29th, 2009. They were created by Professor M. P. Ranjan and collaborators at India's National Institute of Design and will soon be available for download on his blog - Design for India - in a printable format. Computer readable versions are on the blog now.

The top leaders of the Coca-Cola Company, Unilever, Land O'Lakes Inc., Nestlé SA, Monsanto Company, Young & Rubicam Inc., METRO Group, Best Buy Co. Inc., Yara International ASA, IDEO Inc., The Olayan Group, nGenera, The Reitan Group, S. C. Johnson & Son Inc., Kraft Foods Inc., General Mills Inc. and Dow Jones & Company Inc., amongst others saw the presentation.

Here is what Marcello Mastioni. the Associate Director, Head or Retail and Consumer Goods Industries and a Global Leadership Fellow of the World Economic Forum had to say about the quality of these concept maps.

"Everybody here expressed wonder and admiration on the work done. You have been very courageous to tackle such a complex systemic issue as Sustainability with an open universal approach, and then go through the immense task of distilling the discussions into meaningful conclusions and relevant visuals. You had success at your mission and you can proud of that. "

The visionary posters are entitled to illustrate the initiatives they propose:

Rethink Core Business Models (Essence Making)

Collaborate Along the Value Chain (Innovating Value Chains)

Meaningfully Engage Consumers (Co-Creation)

Innovate Out of Stuff Into Value (Dematerialize the Economy)

Explore Emergent Technology (Emergent Technology)

I strongly recommend anyone interested in these subjects review these concept maps as they represent some of the best thinking on the subject of transforming the global economy I have seen.

And after all, why leave all the fun (and the co-creation) to corporate leaders. We all need to re-create the economy by starting that revitalization in our conversations, homes and businesses.