
Do world leaders have the big picture and a good understanding of the world we live in? A Q&A with Gilbert Probst from the World Economic Forum on his new book, “Tackling Complexity.”
Nowadays, booking a flight is as simple as sending an email. But why is it so easy to plan your next flight when coordinating land transportation, an even more common mode of travel, is far more complicated? Australia-based Jayride would like to solve this problem by building a new platform for mobility. As with land travel, sometimes the best routes in industry are the most obvious ones. So Jayride co-founder and CEO Rod Bishop chose a clear-cut path: Why not create a unique booking platform for mobility that groups all available car pools, ride shares, shuttles and public transportation routes under one roof?
Protectionism, keeping the resources for yourself and maybe your neighbour – is that today still a considered strategy? At the World Resources Forum, the answer was clear. The energy supply chain today is more international than ever before. Countries are more interdependent than ever before. But countries are still looking at energy in terms of national self-reliance.
At the World Resources Forum (WRF) in Beijing, all environmental experts agree on the fact that today we need to take actions to tackle the problem of resources scarcity. Problematic, however, is to pinpoint who should lead the change. Prof. Munashinghe, the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner, gives a very pragmatic answer: “ Market share is the key element to understand where governmental policy should focus.” If the market has oligopolistic characteristics, policy actions should focus on the supply side. In an oligopsonic market, the opposite policy maker should take actions on the demand side to make the consumer aware about possible solutions path for the environmental issue. This solution is very important because it give a simple tool for policy maker to focus their strategy on the right market actors and therefore gain in efficiency.
Oily, coaly is our earth. The black blanket of your blue planet is slowly extracted, providing extraordinary power to the humanity. But at what price? Hasn’t the right time already arrived to turn to green energies? The 2011 report of the International Energy Agency (IEA) reveals that globally, energy sources are not diversified.
Making a better world. All citizens should contribute to improve the welfare of society. This is no longer an idealist point of view anymore but a new perspective that many people support, as Muhammad Yunus remind us. This new thought current denotes a strong critic vis-à-vis the individualization tendency in our society. Happiness is not always correlated with individual amount of money accumulated but more with impact of individuals on their environment, according to the Nobel Peace Price winner.