 So, welcome. Glad to have you here. My name is Olivier Shaw. I'm a Managing Director at the Forum. This is a short session with two of the Forum's Board of Trustees members. And the way we're going to conduct this, there's no moderation. It's a dialogue between the two of you. And, you know, certainly feel free to take questions from the audience if you want. But the way I propose to get started is, you know, we have on the stage, we have Andre Hoffman. Andre, you're the Chairman of Masella, but you're also Vice-Chair of Rush and Fourth Generation Business Owner, and Faike Sibesma, CEO and Chairman of Royal DSM. Both of you, Faike and Andre, you are known for championing and leading your organizations with purpose. And we talked a lot during the annual meeting about this notion of stakeholder capitalism. We talked about ESGs, but I want to dig a little bit into the notion of purpose, into the notion of values. In a previous conversation, somebody ventured that, you know, for the sustainability of businesses, the culture may change, but the values stay the same. And then maybe dig a little bit into leadership, what kind of leaders do we need and what needs to change today. So I will let you conduct this dialogue. I will start with an opening question, which is what personal experience has led you to, you know, to take on this very strong approach and positioning of driving your organizations, driving your business with purpose. Thank you. Well, I don't think there is one particular moment, one particular experience which has started the process. It's just a realization of what's happening around the planet. We have been using business models since the beginning of the invention of the company 150 years ago, accounting systems since 200 years ago. We have created wealth to grow the planet, not to grow the planet just a moment, to grow the humanity, and this system is obviously not working. We're getting to a point where it is at a clicking point. We have environmental damages, and my focus is much more on biological, environmental, then social or human. And we're getting to a point where we need to invent a new system to continue to create the wealth we will need to increase prosperity for the planet. And so part of the problem is the business, and I hope that part of the solution will be the business as well. So we need to define what role business can play in the future so that we can help them, so that these businesses can help humanity to go to the next stage of growth, which is in front of us, especially in terms of demographics. So to answer the question to the person who's not moderating, so perhaps I should answer to you. We need to invent something new as a coexistence among humans. Corporations, in particular business corporations, have a great role to play in this, of course not completely disconnected from the regulatory environment, but as a great contributor to the regulatory environment. In fact, if you want to avert the systemic crisis which is coming towards us, we will need creativity, and nothing has demonstrated more creativity in the past than the corporation, in the corporation of companies working together. But for me it was quite an easy situation because I came in it as an owner and I think that family businesses have an edge on this. You took on the public listed company, which is a much more challenging situation, so it would be interesting to hear your answer to the same question. Thank you, Andre. And indeed Andre and I, we know each other well. And we have the same philosophy about that we should drive companies with a purpose for stakeholders, for multi-dimensions, etc. But we come from a different situation because he is a company which also has a private ownership and our company is totally, publicly quoted on the stock exchange. And what happened with me, I was 33 coming in the executive committee of the company. So I made fast career in the beginning of my professional life. And if I'm honest, when I made fast career, I liked it. I said, oh, it's going well with me. And then I said, hey, what does that mean? You get more and more responsibility, you get more and more bigger job. You can impact more people, not only in your company, but even outside your company. And I thought, hey, if I have more impact, what do I do with the responsibility which goes together with that for our own people, for the planet which we influence with our products and operations, for society and mankind, etc. And then I start more reading about what is the role of business in the world. How did the economy ever started? And yeah, the economy ever started very simple as barter trade. One find out that he was better in catching buffalos and the other was better in growing crops. And he said, if you do the crops, I do the buffals. And then we exchanged at the end of the day. And then number three, four, five came and then became too complicated. And then we said, let's invent something to trade. Can we all agree gold is worse a lot? And we exchanged with gold. Okay, we do so. You do this, I do this, and we exchanged with gold. And then later on this became too complicated. And we said, can we agree that the gold we put in the bank later on also not anymore. And we have paper and we do as the paper is gold. And we exchanged with paper and we called up money and we did that. And later on we said, this is too complicated. We write it down in the computer and we believe that the money is there. The money is not there. We'll go only 10% of the money which is there is really there. The rest is not there. That's secret. Nobody's supposed to know that. So, but the economy is just, you do this, I do this. We exchange goods and we live all here happily here together. It's not more complicated than that. And the last couple of decades we derailed a little bit thinking I think that making money is the goal. And making money is not the goal. And therefore I introduced in our company when I became CEO a certain years ago. Listen, we really want to, of course we need to make money. And of course the company need to be successful. It's not the charity foundation. But equally, equally we need to take care of society. Equally we need to take care of our planet. Now, like Andre is saying, we are 100% publicly quoted company. When I became CEO some people said, oops, equally take care of society. Equally take care of the planet. That's not a good CEO. Why did we nominate him? This is not good for our share price. Now the last 13 years it went very well, quadrupled. So today people say, okay, the company is successful and took care of the planet and society. So those three things can go hand in hand together. And our philosophy is, no, those two things making profit and running companies successful take care of society cannot go hand in hand together. They must go hand in hand together. And otherwise people don't work for your company anymore. They don't buy your products. You lose correctly so your license to operate. And it is not the philosophy. Now I don't know how it is in Russia. But I need to say, Andre, that from time to time we get pressure from our shareholders. Some love that we take care of all the different stakeholders. But often I need to say when I'm on roadshows I get only differential questions. Nobody asks all on our climate initiatives or our societal initiatives. And we get pressure on all the things which we do. And I don't know you have partly, you have a mix in fact in your company, because you are partly privately owned, but you're also publicly quoted. Do you see a difference in those group of shareholders in the company? Absolutely. There are two parts to the answer I could make. One is yes, being a company that is privately controlled and you're right to make the distinction because we only control the company with 9% of the issued paper. The rest is quoted on the stock exchange. It does not give the voting right. It's a dividend certificate. And that sort of hybrid structure allows us to be a family-controlled business while being on the market, quoted on the market and under the scrutiny of financial analysts. I mean, thousands of analysts are removed and we need to sort of talk to them about this quite regularly. But the point I wanted to make early on is this point about the incredible restrictive nature of financial accounting. You know, we have chosen finance to communicate about companies with humanity. And that is, it's convenient. It's useful. We all know that, you know, a franc is a franc, a dollar is a dollar. But it is not the way society functions. This is not humanity. Humanity has a lot to do with all sorts of other phenomenon. For instance, there is Yo-Yo Ma playing in the corridor which explains why all these are these empty seats anyway. So, you know, this is art. Art is not something that's linked to material goods. And yet we choose to identify business opportunities only based on the profit you can make out of them. That does not correspond to reality. And so what our shareholding has allowed us to do at Roche is to bring back a part of an enlightening situation. We are not interested at just a financial return. We're also interested in the contribution of our company to its purpose, which is to do today what the patient needs next. It's easier to explain that to shareholders in a pharmaceutical business because our purpose is health. You know, the patient is in the middle. Last year, 21 million people took our drugs. We did not succeed with all of them, but a lot of them went better thanks to us. We deal with life and death. And that's of course a purpose which is evidently more measurable than others. So I think that's partly the answer. But for me, being able to move between the world of NGO and the world of civil society, I've been for a long time on boards of several non-governmental organizations and the board of big corporations, there is a mission there. There is a bridge to be built. We are a whole single humanity. We're all people and we should work together. For far too long we had this dichotomy where we said business is bad, business makes money. And on the other side, NGOs are good because they spend the money and they do something positive with it. It's too simple. We are cleverer than this. Collectively, I give us the gift of cleverness. Let's bring the two together. Corporations can achieve their goals, can execute their purpose, can come closer to what they want to do without destroying natural system or social system or human relationships. And NGOs can contemplate the notion of long-term and durability if they generate some positive cash flows. So profit is not a swear word. It's something we need to prove. It's something we need to support. But profit at all costs, no. I totally agree. It's funny. You say business is sometimes perceived as bad or bad people. I hear two business people. And NGOs, governments or media are good. I say the same. It is not that after high school, all the people without a heart went to business. And all the people with a heart went to government or NGOs. Most people have a heart, by the way. And I don't believe in good guys and bad guys, good ladies and bad ladies. But life is much more complicated than that. And when I get the question, yeah, but why do you really want to take care of the planet that said, what is secretly behind that? Because that is a secret business model to make money via those narratives? No. Because I have kids, because I think about the world, because I would like to transfer the world when we leave to another generation. That is what we want. Building on that, help me, Andre. Where did we went wrong, if I go back to my philosophy, that the economy should help to live all here happily together. That is basically the model. You do this, I do this. We exchange, we all live happily here together. And money is just good to exchange, and not more than that. There is only one country in the world, a tiny little country, Bhutan, who said basically what we should do is happiness for the people. And if we achieve that, if everybody in the country is happy, we achieved what we want to achieve. There is only one tiny little country in the world. The others measure their success. GDP grows, and that, and state deficit, and economic growth. That is how we... In your philosophy, how come there is only one tiny little country which sticks to how we ever started? All the other countries in the world are more or less derailed a little bit. I think humanity in general, and humans in the group, have a tendency of behaving a little bit like lemmings. We just follow the same principle. And we just have this notion here that being a proper businessman is taking hard decisions. We have this conversation with friends. I mean, this sort of quasi-schizophrenic. We have this conversation with friends, and in the evening we drink a glass of wine, perhaps two. And we have a discussion about what the world is all about. And the same guy the next morning goes into his office, closes the door, and the only thing that matters is the margin. And it's not because he's a bad guy. It's not because he's somebody who is inherently evil, or he or she. But it's just because that's the societal norm. We reward money with success. I mean, people listen to me because I happen to own a company. Otherwise, I would be somebody in the street. And so this notion of money representing power, this notion of money being the best measure we have of success, is something we need to change. So you can see it's a society quite difficult to do. But to start with, as employer, what we should be saying to people is it's okay to be nice. You don't have to be a bastard to be successful. Come into the office, bring your values with you, and when you take a decision in a business context, take it in the same context that you would in your private life. You know, talk to your employees like you would to your friends. Talk to your boss like you would to your wife. I mean, there's something to be built there. And it starts with values. It starts with the capacity to be yourself in the office. And I think that's what I say in the office. It's a conceptual office, of course. But it's important to be able to be yourself. Schizophrenia is a disease. And if you cannot leave your value into your daily life, you're going to end up a little bit screwed up. And there are no crowds of people around here who can demonstrate that. By the way, what André is saying is, by the way, and then maybe some questions from you. But it is the reason why we are in the board of trustees here of the forum and be active here. When we try to contribute, can we not, what the forum represents, go build further on this whole stakeholder model. Take care of all the interest of all the involved groups, whether it is business or governments or academia, NGOs. Take care of the planet. Take care of society. Take care that we continue to run our companies, et cetera. Take care of all those interests. That is the team this year also stakeholder model for cohesive, everybody in the boat and sustainable society. And we find out every single day that there are also factors working against it to do not want to move yet. Step by step we hope to make progress in the right direction. I remain also saying, and I said it this week a few times, the elite in the world is whole here. And you, we are privileged to be here with more or less the top of the world. If you look in the dictionary on the elite, you find a very strange description. People who earns the most. People who are the upper layer of society. People with the most power in society. That is what the dictionary writes about the elite. Those who are privileged. And I add to the dictionary, but I don't write dictionaries, but I add to the dictionary. Those who take responsibility for people who maybe do not have the power to influence the world in that direction. If you have the privilege to be here, you better take up the responsibility to do something which influence also the people who cannot be here. If you don't do that, then you belong to the elite in the old way of the world to be the upper layer, the best income, the most powerful people in the world. Who cares? I care more about the people who take the responsibility to improve the world. That is for me the elite. And that brings us back to this notion of purpose. You are working for a company. I assume that the majority of us have an activity at home and activity in the office. In the office we work for a cause. The cause is not to make money. The cause is to contribute to the purpose of the employer that we happen to work with. Be it a government, be it a company, be it whatever. And so this notion of working for something else and just material satisfaction is a very important notion. If there is one that you should take home with you, it's this one. How can you find your daily activity? How can you frame it into something that fulfills your values? Not necessarily the values of society, but your own. And I think that's a very important key to moving forward. You talked about Rush making the medicines and making people healthier. That's what he is doing. We are providing food ingredients, making food healthier, etc. I was in a session two days ago and somebody said, yeah, you have an easy story because you make sustainable energy in your company and you make healthier food ingredients. So of course you have a purpose. And he could say that they may be to André also. Our company, that person said, is not contributing anything to society. So we found it much more difficult to define their purpose. And I said, could you repeat that sentence? But yeah, you have an easy story, Mr. Sivitman. But you said your company is not contributing anything to society. And I said exactly that. And please repeat that sentence for the mirror next evening and see how long you will exist. Because if you don't contribute anything to society, I don't want to be rude. But why are you here in society? I think we made our point. Yes, question. And when did it go wrong? So those are the two questions because it's so sort of obvious what we are discussing here. That you are just, as a leader, like one person at home, your personal life and your professional life, there is no difference. And of course you serve your family and your professional family as well. And we might, if we go back in history in the Golden Age after the Second World War, leadership was a little different. There are a few inflection points since then. And we discussed a lot about the 1970, the Friedman Chicago School of Economics and shareholder value concept. So where and when did it go wrong? And what can we do to undo it? We have to undo it. We have to go back to this very natural kind of leadership that existed at some point at least and isn't it sort of the leadership, sort of selection and education? Isn't it that that we need to actually look at sort of what are the leaders that we select to run the business? The business has to heal society. Politics is not able to really heal society. So the business world has to do it by bringing our society again a little bit more together. I don't like the philosophy of back to basics. I like the idea of forward to basics. We don't need to bounce back, we need to bounce forward. And for me, this can do attitude, this attitude that we do have issues in front of us, we can solve them. It's something we need to submit to move. I completely agree we need a new brand of managers, we need a new brand of leaders who are trying to not only propose a financial return but also a social and environmental return. So we need to change the way we teach business education. And I think the major business schools in the planet should take notice and some of them are. And I have some examples if you want, later on. Actually, this requires a total change in the way we assess people in our organizations. Today, a guy who is achieving the targets by hook or by crook, he's the guy who gets assessed as a very hard taskmaster, a guy who goes up in the ladder. And we never check the real core values of that person. So unless we do that, unless the performance matrix is kept slightly aside, we will never have this change. It will only remain a discussion point because we always want a guy who performs, who delivers at whatever cost. And he is like lauded in the industry. So I think the basic assessment by which the leaders are assessed and brought up in the ladder, that needs a change. I know it's very difficult, but then that's the way I think it is. I totally agree with you and André is helping business schools to develop a different level of MBA education and a different level of future leaders. By the way, most business schools still in the world teach finance, marketing, technology and innovation management and general management. And then, you have your MBA and you can lead the business. And maybe in the side there is one course if you want on values and other stuff, et cetera. But this is the core of you being a leader. And André is helping to change that, which I like. And you add to that in the companies assess whether you represent the values. And I agree the most dangerous species in any company are people who do not really stand the values of the company, but very successful. And normally, if they're very successful in their business goals, they have a lot of power in the company and if they do not represent the values of the company, but are very impactful because they get their results. It's a very dangerous species in a company. I mean, the people do not respect the values and not perform, most likely they get out of the company. So I agree with you. It's very important to see that. I'm building on your question also. I see, I'm an optimist, I see a little bit of a change, but your point is right, 30 years ago, we had an economist like Milton Friedman, et cetera, said it's all about shareholders value. With CEOs like Jack Wells, he said all about shareholders value. We had a cult of conducts in countries. He said you should take care of your shareholders. That's your fiduciary duty. And that served us really nothing in the last 30 years. You see in the climate, you see in the hunger, you see in the inequalities, we see people who are angry and are protesting. And we are step by step, two forward, one back, two forward, moving hopefully to a new area with developing people in different ways. But the question is this, we agree that we need leadership and then you come back to this definition of elites. What is the elite? If you measure it against purpose, if you measure it about outcome against purpose, I think you are likely to get a much clearer answer than if you only look at the salary level. I think it's going to be the last one because the room is occupied afterwards. So that's going to be the last question, sorry. I'm trying to build one of those different business schools. My question is around leadership. If we give our children rules and then they become pretty religious about following these rules, we are animals built for simple stories and both of you talked about very nuanced stories. It's not just this KPI, it's two of those KPIs. What for the two of you was the thing that made you able to hold these multiple perspectives? Leadership or wisdom is the ability to hold multiple perspectives. What made you able to do so? Because most of us can't, 75% of adults can't. And what do you do to install that in your people? It was a bit of the beginning question. How do you sort of wake up to the notion that purpose for a company is as important as profitability? In my case, it's my history. I grew up in a natural world environment. My father was a conservationist, an ecologist, a non-ethologist, especially some birds. I always grew up with this notion of nature. I got involved into NGOs quite early and then at a later age went into the family business. So, you know, the two experiences, the two tracks were in parallel. So that allows me to have different perspectives. In fact, it forces me to have different perspectives. I don't know if you want to talk about them. It's maybe a strange answer. I know we need to close, but I close them with a little bit strange thing. I realized that one day I will leave this planet. And we all know that. We don't like it, but we all know that one day will be the last day. And already for quite some decades, I realized there will be a last day. Then I will leave. There will be a last week, a last month. And at the end of your life, you will reflect a little bit and look back. And I will discuss with my kids and my wife how was my life. And I predict that a little bit for myself. What kind of discussion do I want to have? And what kind of discussion will I have? And I want to have the discussion that I inherited the planet in a nice status from our parents. We lived well. And I want to finish that sentence. And I realized also that we borrowed the planet from you and we handed over in a good status that you, the next generation, can continue. And since I predict that I want to have that discussion at that moment in time, I need to do now different things and different perspectives like you said. If I don't do that now, then I won't be able to have that discussion at that moment in time. And I will regret it then. And then it is too late. It's a little bit, maybe it's a little bit philosophical, but that is what I put in my mind why I do the things that I do. Very powerful remarks. I'm not sure I can add anything to that. But I would like to say, since it is the closing statement, how incredibly excited I am about what has been happening over the past four days. The issue that there is a limit to growth, the issue that we live in a one planet system and that we are not going to be able to continue on the current path is becoming apparent to a lot of people. I see new models. I see new thinking. I see people who I never knew would articulate the world environment or biodiversity talking about it. And that is really exciting. So, you know, we are making an impact on the rest of the planet. We are realizing it and now we're going to take control to do that better in the future.