Dear CWB Friends, 

CWB was at the World Forum in Davos this month! As always, the forum included numerous interesting sessions, each one approaching its subject so as to promote debate.

Throughout the meeting, the questions of how the rise of Asia will affect markets and, particularly, how this trend will affect the current geopolitical situation were brought up. In disagreement with recent comments by the Chinese central bank, many supported the decoupling of the Asian economy from that of the USA.  They believed this possibility to be good for Africa, given the recent strengthening of the links between those two economies. Sessions on Asia’s rise ended with remarks on the fact that Asia could also be a role model for Africa’s rise, hopefully with an avoidance of the tendency for corruption.

Along this line, an interesting discussion came up about the entrance of the emerging champions in the global economy. The CEOs of Mittal, ICICI Bank and Dubai Holding explained how they see their companies changing the prospects of the global business environment. Given established beliefs about their low standards of procedure, they explained they had to work especially hard on cultural issues and demonstrate even higher standards than western incumbents. Interestingly, they remarked that since their initial successes, their businesses have changed their orientation towards a broader concept of wealth creation, including wealth creation at the community level, in their home environments. You can learn about the subjects addressed, speakers and attendants, and even read summaries of the WEF sessions at http://www.weforum.org/

In addition to CWB news, remember to check out our monthly readings and the three news publications that have recently come out!

For issues regarding the Newsletter, please write to mbueno@ceoswb.org.

Enjoy the reading!

Profile of the month: Larry Brilliant

Larry Brilliant is a medical doctor, epidemiologist, technologist, author and philanthropist. He is also director of Google's philanthropic arm, Google.org, and recently decided upon Google’s philanthropic strategy.

Previously, Dr. Brilliant helped to lead the World Health Organization’s successful smallpox-eradication program. He then entered the world of non-profits in 1978 with the founding of Seva, an international non-profit health foundation. Seva's projects in Tibet, Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Tanzania, Mexico and Guatemala have given back sight to more than 2 million blind people through surgery, self-sufficient eye care systems and low-cost manufacturing of intraocular lenses.
Dr. Brilliant was appointed Executive Director of Google.org in February of 2006. Google.org will be funded with 1% of the firm’s profits, equity and employee’s time (a strategy pioneered by Salesforce’s Marc Benioff that was explained in our December 2007 Newsletter).

In its philanthropic efforts, Google.org wanted to leverage power and technological expertise from its parent organization.  Only recently has Larry Brilliant unveiled its strategy.  Google.org will pursue five “core initiatives” in three areas: fighting climate change by developing Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal and accelerating the Commercialization of Plug-In Vehicles; building an early-warning system for pandemics and other disasters, something Dr. Brilliant has had in mind for several years (a proposal related to this issue even won him the 2006 TED Prize, granting him $100,000); and economic development. In the area of economic development, the belief of Google is that it is most important to fill in the gap between the majority of micro-enterprises and large businesses. These two have access to financing either through micro-finances or the formal banking sector.  In the middle group, the SME are the entities with more potential to create jobs and a strong middle class, but have more limited access to capital. Google will contribute to the growth of SME in less developed countries, facilitating access to capital by lowering transaction costs, deepening capital markets to increase liquidity, and catalyzing capital for investment.

Dr. Brilliant is now in charge of $1 billion to spend on the pursuit of these objectives. However, according to him, the most important thing is not the money, but the people working at Google who will devote part of their time to helping him solve these problems.