A successful event! 29th Sustainability Executive Roundtable "The Future of Energy"

The 29th INSEAD Sustainability Executive Roundtable which took place on Friday 5th April 2013 on INSEAD Europe Campus in Fontainebleau, France was sold out. Over 70 participants registered provoking interesting panel discussions and lively debates.

The world's economic system has thus far been driven by the large-scale exploitation of fossil fuels. The depletion of these reserves and global warming make our current reliance on coal and petroleum unsustainable. The effort required to shift from a fossil fuel-based will be massive, as exemplified by Germany's "Energy-Wende". The transition will require significant investment in alternative sources of energy, as well as new ways of delivering it in an otherwise financially constrained environment. Nonetheless, new technologies and innovative business models are emerging that could facilitate the change. The purpose of the roundtable was really to discuss these issues with experts.

Every manager involved in running a business will be confronted with the consequences of the changes in the energy landscape in some way. What to prepare for, and how to do so in a sustainable way, was the focus of this roundtable.

Materials, pictures will be made available (restricted access) for participants only.

For further information, please contact:

Ana DE SA and Miranda HELMES

Coordination and Communications | INSEAD Social Innovation Centre

Europe Campus

Tel: + 33 (0) 1 60 72 91 16

Fax: + 33 (0) 1 60 74 55 53

Email: s-roundtable.fb@insead.edu

More information..

Date: 21 September 2012
Place: Fontainebleau, France
Theme: Sustainability and HR, Challenges for the Firm and its Members

28th Sustainability Executive Roundtable - "Sustainability and HR, Challenges for the Firm and its Members"

The 28th INSEAD Sustainability Executive Roundtable took place on Friday 21st September 2012 on INSEAD Europe Campus in Fontainebleau, France.
As sustainability has always been an aim of any corporation in today’s world it has become impossible to turn it into a business reality without taking into account all relevant externalities.

The 28th Roundtable examined the implications for Human resource management. What are the sustainability competences? And the sustainability talents? Or does competence suffice? Is sustainability necessarily an organisational characteristic rather than a person’s characteristic – i.e. will people always be less sustainable than their members? And what are the requirements for people to become more sustainable? What new dualities do they have to manage?

The 28th Roundtable aimed to address the following areas, by giving space to the results of academic research as well as insights from successful practitioners:

• Personal development – which competences and talents to acquire to make individuals more sustainable?
• Strategic talent management for sustainable enterprise
• Team leadership process – making sustainability a team talent
• Business model agility – managing volatile externalities sustainably
• Sustainability competency development in successful enterprises.
• Examples of sustainable and temporary organisational designs will also be discussed. 

For further information on communications and logistics of this roundtable, please contact:
Miranda HELMES (Office Residence D 0.08) - Europe Campus
Tel: + 33 (0) 1 60 72 91 16
Fax: + 33 (0) 1 60 74 55 53
Email: s-roundtable.fb@insead.edu


Date: 4-5 October 2012
Place: London, UK
Theme: Value versus Cost in Healthcare: Can we have it both better and cheaper?

4th INSEAD Healthcare Alumni Summit - "Value Versus Cost in Healthcare: Can We Have It Both Better and Cheaper?"

The 4th annual INSEAD Healthcare Alumni Summit took place on Thursday 4 and Friday 5 October 2012. The event provided a unique networking forum for the global healthcare industry and will offer fresh perspectives from international thought leaders and a chance to engage with them in a lively debate about today’s and tomorrow’s key topics in healthcare.

The 2012 Summit focused on key strategic questions, relevant to all business in the healthcare sector:

• Where should spending be directed for the biggest healthcare payoff?
• Can innovation deliver better value at a lower cost?
• Which business models are best suited for the “age of austerity”?
• And which strategies do the leaders in value delivery pursue?

For more details please go to:
www.inseadhealthalumni.net/annual-summit/

INSEAD Social Entrepreneurship: INSEAD Social Entrepreneurship Conference 2012

Again it proved to be a great and stimulating conference! More soon!

The Media and Disasters

-by Jurgita Balaisyte, Maria Besiou and Luk N. Van Wassenhove, 6 June 2011-

Introduction

2010 witnessed 385 natural disasters that killed more than 297,000 people worldwide and affected over 217 million others. Some disasters received more media attention than others. Although more than five times more people were affected by China’s floods than by the earthquake in Haiti and the floods in Pakistan combined, China’s floods received far less media attention than either Pakistan or Haiti. In this commentary we discuss the media’s impact on the donations for the affected populations.

Mediatisation
Mediatisation is the process by which political activity and awareness raising has become more focused on media presentation. In this article we use this term to refer to major natural disasters that receive more media attention than others.
The Brookings Institution’s review on the natural disasters of 2010 supports that China’s floods received less media attention than the Pakistan’s floods. The web-portal Reliefweb, administered by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), posted only 243 entries on the Chinese floods in comparison with 2500 entries on the flooding in Pakistan.
Another disaster that was well mediatised was the Tohoku disaster in Japan. Despite the scale of the devastating 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami disaster, it caused only 1/10 of Haiti’s casualties. This disaster also received broader media coverage, followed by higher fundraising, than China’s floods.
The examples above imply that media attention does not necessarily depend on the number of casualties and the size of the disaster. This raises the question which disasters are well covered by media and why. Read the rest of this article...

What is the Link Between Economic Development and Humanitarian Response?

-by Jurgita Balaisyte and Luk N. Van Wassenhove, 10 May 2011-

May 11th marked the second month of the relief effort in response to the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis in Japan. As of May 5th, the number of deaths was 14,817, the number of injured was 5,279, and the number of missing is 10,171 (according to the National Police Agency). The 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami disaster showed that even a prosperous and a well prepared country like Japan can be challenged by complex disasters. When disaster occurs in a highly populated area casualties are almost unavoidable. However, preparedness can minimise casualties and losses. Prepared countries with governments that exercise strong leadership and internal resources usually are more coherent in disaster response.

Disaster life cycle includes four stages: mitigation, preparedness, response and rehabilitation. Mitigation addresses the proactive social component of emergencies. This includes laws and mechanisms that reduce the vulnerability of the population and increase resilience. Mitigation leads to better preparedness, putting in place the response mechanisms to counter factors that society has not been able to mitigate (Tomasini and Van Wassenhove, 2009). In addition, governance and socio-economic conditions often have a great impact on the disaster preparedness and response.

Therefore, we look at how preparedness, governance, and socioeconomic conditions can help individuals and countries to reduce the resulting deaths, injuries, costs, and disruption. In this commentary we focus only on natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunami. We compare the disaster Japan to other recent disasters of similar magnitude such as the 2010 Chile and Haiti earthquakes. We suggest that both Chile and Haiti are good examples for comparison because they represent two extreme poles in terms of preparedness, governance and socioeconomic environment. Chile is among the most prosperous countries in Latin America  whereas Haiti is one of the poorest nations in the region. Below, Table 1 depicts the differences between the three disasters in terms of magnitude of the disaster on the Richter scale, the number of casualties and GDP per capita.

Table 1: Disaster Characteristics and Socio-Economic Factors

Disaster	Magnitude	Casualties	GDP PPP (2009)
Japan 2011	9.0	13,858	$33,100
Chile 2010	8.8	562	$14,900
Haiti 2010	7.0	230,000	$1,200

First, we explore preparedness in the light of the earthquake and tsunami. Second, we examine the governance impact on the relief efforts. Third, we look at how socioeconomic conditions and citizens can affect response. Read the rest of this article... Please share your opinion and comments here regarding Japan's disaster preparedness and contingency plans, measures towards a nuclear treat, your experience in Japan or with other disasters.

The Ongoing Response to the Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan

-by Jurgita Balaisyte, Alfonso J. Pedraza Martinez, Orla Stapleton, Luk N. Van Wassenhove, 14 March 2011-

The earthquake, measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale, which took place in Japan on Friday 11th March was the world’s fifth largest earthquake since 1900 and was 700 times more powerful than the one that struck Haiti last year. However, despite the devastation playing out on our television screens, the damage and losses are relatively low when we consider the magnitude of the disaster. In Tokyo for example, the damage from the earthquake was very limited and the reaction of the people on the streets illustrated the level of preparedness of the country for this type of disaster.

However, the situation has become much more complex since the initial disaster. The earthquake unleashed a monstrous tsunami, up to 10 metres in some areas, that surged water in some areas 10 kilometres inland, causing extensive damage and resulting in numerous casualties. In addition, there is a high risk of meltdown in one of the countries nuclear power plants and an oil refinery has been set alight. What began as a sudden onset natural disaster has degenerated into a massive humanitarian crisis. Although initially foreign assistance was not deemed necessary, due to the complexity of situation, the Prime Minister of Japan has called for international assistance to deal with emergency response activities while continuing the massive search and rescue operation. Read the rest of this article...

Please share your opinion and comments regarding Japan's disaster preparedness and contingency plans, measures towards a nuclear treat, your experience in Japan or with other disasters.

Social Innovation Revisited

-by Professor Luk N. Van Wassenhove, 23 August 2010-

About four years ago, our new dean asked me to set up a research centre bringing together all existing initiatives related to the role of business in society. The man had a clear vision: sustainable enterprise would become an important trend in the years ahead.

In response to the dean’s request, I set about amalgamating a number of more or less successful initiatives: our Health Management Initiative, the Sustainability Group (energy, environment, sustainable mobility, etc.), the Social Entrepreneurship Initiative, the Corporate Social Responsibility and Ethics Group, as well as my own Humanitarian Research Group. To this was added a new Africa Initiative, which aimed to devote more attention to the needs of the Dark Continent. While being quite a mixture of disparate themes and objectives, it was also a golden opportunity to move beyond the stereotyped pigeonholing of such initiatives and to look more comprehensively at complex, multidisciplinary problems with a group of highly motivated colleagues. Read the rest of this article...