Global Forum on Business as an Agent of World Benefit Underscores Co-Creation as Key Solution

Some significant messages emerged from the recent Latin American forum on business as an agent of world benefit, the top among these being that igniting eco-innovation and opening the way to a greener world is dependent on developing a co-creative mindset and approach.

Spearheaded by economics professor Marcos Schlemm of Brazil, the Aug. 30-Sept.1 forum was designed around one main question: In what ways should management innovate to face the world’s sustainability challenges?

Cintia Takada

The question was explored within three potential activity containers: education, design-thinking and society/culture.

Reflecting on the common themes from the 60 speakers who presented for the virtual forum, event co-organizer Cintia Takada says the importance of personal responsibility was one of these.

“The main thing is, if you want to change your world, you have to change yourself first,” she tells Axiom News.

Notably, the forum itself was based on this principle, with its carbon impact at close to zero, thanks to its virtual delivery platform.

Co-creation was the other identified pathway to creating a sustainable world.

“If we want a sustainable world, we cannot teach people to be warriors. But it’s about getting together, and co-creating, co-inventing,” says Takada.

Again, the forum was ahead of the curve in this respect, as it engaged the business world, academics, government representatives and other citizens to listen to the lectures and be part of the follow-up dialogue around innovative and successful practices to implement.

The forum is to be archived for at least a year, so that people can continue to have the opportunity to connect and work together.

Other prevalent themes included the importance of having a generous mindset, in the sense of taking into account how one’s actions have a ripple effect.

Anna Karina Boszczowski

“What is your impact to the world? If you (think about) that, you begin to change,” says forum executive co-ordinator Anna Karina Boszczowski.

U.S. resident and co-founder of the organization Positive Change Core Marge Schiller was one of the 60 invited presenters.

Noting that she would argue the image and voice of innovation and sustainability is very often young people, Schiller, who is 73, spoke on how to work through the strengths of multiple generations’ perspectives in the workplace and business world.

Schiller tells Axiom News that she sees that three ways of being are crucial to fostering high-impact intergenerational collaboration: respect, relationship and a recognition of multiple realities, that is, being aware that someone in his 30s will have a “whole different range of supposed-to’s and meanings of words,” compared to someone of another generation.

Summing up, Takada says these and related messages “were not messages in the wind,” and that they will provide salient guideposts by which to move forward.

The global forum is the result of the international business community adhering to a set of principles from the human rights, work and environmental area, and forming the Global Compact. 

Marga Bosch was the forum design and content co-ordinator.

The first conference was held in the United States in 2006, the fruit of a partnership between Case Western Reserve University and the Academy of Management. It attracted more than 1,000 executives from companies such as Alcoa, Toyota and Unilever, as well as renowned professors of business administration, managers, individuals responsible for public policies, social leaders and students from different countries. 

Since then, five conferences have been held in different Brazilian states: Paraná, São Paulo, Paraíba, Mato Grosso and Pará, as well as two Academic Congresses, that brought together over three thousand representatives from the business, academic sector, and civil society.

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