“We engage audiences through all forms of media - and through keynotes at some of the most significant events in the global business calendar.”

Sam Lakha, Manager, Volans Outreach.

New Champions and distributed leadership trend

During the closing remarks of the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of the New Champions, held in Tianjin, China, Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum, argued that the unfolding crisis presents a tremendous challenge to the existing financial order. “This is probably the first transformational crisis of our globalized age,” he said . “Many things will change.” While several of the world’s leading businesses in recent weeks have disappeared, new corporations will emerge from around the world to take the lead. That, in a nutshell, has been the founding insight for Volans - and our aim is to identify and support some of the highest potential champions of the new economic order, most particularly those in our Trailblazers portfolio.

In a poll conducted during the event, participants pointed to the current crisis as the greatest threat to global growth over the next 12 months. Old and new stakeholders need to work together to meet this common challenge, argued Robert Greenhill, WEF Managing Director. Meanwhile, the Forum’s Global Growth Risk Report 2008 argues that risk is exacerbated by focusing only on the current crisis and not planning to move beyond it.

Unsurprisingly, a majority of participants agreed that the greatest opportunities for growth lie in Asia and particularly in China. But now, more than ever, the participants concluded that real leadership is required, and that, while China’s US$ 2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves may make the country wealthy, it is unlikely that China will become the world’s sole leader. More than ever, leadership must be cooperative to weather the current, transformational crisis. “The whole notion of leadership has shifted,” Schwab concluded. “Leadership today is much more distributed.” And that, we believe, is where the power of unreasonable people fits in.

The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2008/09/new-champions-and-distributed-leadership-trend/.

- John Elkington

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