 This is Gary Coleman, Senior Managing Director for Deloitte and I actually am very delighted today to be here and privileged to moderate today's panel on chasing the next big idea. So our objective today is to share bold ideas, big ideas that can help redefine East Asian leadership. We'll be talking about things like smart cities, disruptive innovation, digital technologies, new business models, social collateral, collaborative consumption, and how all of these ideas can have a positive impact to business and society for East Asia and emerging nations within East Asia like me and more. So before I introduce the panel, I'd like to tee up kind of the challenge and the opportunities. It's no secret that East Asia has been fascinating. Five countries in East Asia region fall in the top 20 of the forum's global competitive index. East Asia, including Pacific for this fact, is on target to lower poverty rates from 50% in 1990 to less than 10% in 2015. And according to a Deloitte study, manufacturing competitiveness is shifting to Asia as nine of the top 15 most competitive countries will be in East Asia as predicted for 2018. All great fascinating statistics. But there are challenges, many of what you heard in the last day and a half here. According to the World Bank ease of doing business, many countries in East Asia rank low. They rank low due because it's difficult to start a business, high tax rates, poor infrastructure, lack of investor protection, lack of solutions for insolvency, enforcement of contracts, access to electricity and other important infrastructure. The World Bank puts private investment in infrastructure at less than 1% of GDP in ASEAN countries. That compares to 12% for the United States. And according to the social progress index, authored by Michael Porter of Harvard Business School, only two of the seven East Asian countries on the index were in the top 20. But when we look at things with the glass half full, these challenges create great opportunities. But to capitalize on those opportunities, we have to ask ourselves tough, complex questions, such as what investments are needed, smart infrastructure and innovation and technology? What can be done to ensure citizens are brought along in the growth and prosperity of this journey? And how does East Asia take place and play in world markets? To answer these questions, we need big, bold ideas from a variety of sources, including government, social entrepreneurship, private innovation, philanthropy and business. So it is with my great pleasure to introduce our panelists that bring all of these sources together in one spot. I find that pretty amazing, and I hope you do too. Each of these panelists are tremendously gifted and experienced and accomplished. And if I told you about all of their accomplishments, we'd have no time for the panel. So I'm going to be brief in their introductions. And so please take that into account. First we have Pausal Hassan Abed, founder and chairperson of BRAC. Joining us shortly will be the right honorable Tony Blair, who served as prime minister of the UK from 97 to 07. Ms. Hung Do, who is journal manager of iVibu.com, one of the leading online travel sites in Vietnam, and I can attest that it does exist because I went on your site this morning. It's very lively, but it's in Vietnamese, but I did find a flag to go to English. We have Takanakasan, who is the director of Global Research Institute at Keio University, Japan, member of the World Economic Forum Foundation Board, and also on the Global Agenda Council for Japan. Ms. April Rini is the chief strategy officer of Collaborative Lab, a U.S.-based consultancy that is focused on collaborative economy and sharing-based business models, and April is a young global leader here with the forum. We have Haidari Saad, based in Singapore. He is the regional president Southeast Asia for ABB, a leader in power and alternative technologies. So the way this is going to work is that we're going to go through a big idea session, one round. I'm going to collect some notes. We'll do another round with the panelists, and then we'll open it up to Q&A. So I ask you to take your notes, be lively. Let's ask good questions. The panelists, I know, have good answers. So I bet I'm going to start with you if you don't mind. I actually read a quote that you had. And I found it quite fascinating. It says, communities and nations develop only when everyone does their part. We cannot always wait for the government to provide all these central services, or for the private sector to create all the jobs. Somewhere there's a big idea for East Asia in that. Can you expand? Yes, East Asia, of course, is a not a homogeneous region. There are at least three high income countries, Japan, Korea, and Singapore. And then there are middle income countries, China, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Philippines. And low income countries, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos. So if you look at the high income countries, what did they do very well? I thought that all these high income countries, Japan, Korea, and Singapore, all have invested in education, high quality education for their citizens, built high quality universities. And if you look at the top 100 universities in the world, there will be Japan, Korea, and Singapore as the largest number in Asia. And the middle income countries, China, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines doesn't have so many high quality universities in the top 100. And I thought that there is a possibility of these countries not being able to provide or create high quality universities where innovation and enterprise are spearheaded. Unless we can do that, they will be trapped in a middle income countries, as middle income countries. And then low income countries like Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, they need to also invest in education. And the smart infrastructure that we talk about is really the broadband connectivity that will be needed to provide high quality e-education. So educational opportunities for all, if you want to create in our societies, it will have to take new kinds of smart broadband connectivity and provide high quality education to its citizens. And it will also build equity in the society if you can provide quality education to all your citizens, rather than only a small minority at the top or people who can afford private education. So that's one big idea that I thought that these countries need in order to scale up themselves from low income to middle income and middle income to high income. So that's one idea. The other is there are lots of good ideas which needs to be scaled up. Scaling up doesn't happen. Good ideas stay in small scale. So scaling up good ideas in societies is also another thing that has not taken place in many countries. We know many good ideas, but they're in small scale pilot space that has not been scaled up properly. The other thing that I was thinking was the role of universities. Universities, as I said, the world's top universities are in these high income countries like Singapore and Korea and Japan. But how do you build high quality universities where innovation and enterprise can be promoted and spearheaded? So that's another area that I think building quality universities and what it takes to build quality universities is also something that needs to be looked at. I remember I was getting an honorary degree from a Canadian university in 1994. And one of the people who are getting a degree from the university was a historian. And he looked at 15th, 16th century European institutions. And I asked him, what did you find? And he said, I found only 33 institutions still surviving from 16th century. So I said, what are they? He said, there are 29 of them are universities, two churches, one parliament, and one business. So 29 universities are Oxford, Cambridge, Bologna, Soborn, Heidelberg, and so on. You're the best in that. So I said that, why don't universities survive and not other institutions? And he said, I can only speculate on it. I don't know the reason why. The universities are self-governing institutions. They have always sort of contributed to creating new leaders for societies. So even governments provided support to them because the leaders came from these universities. And Mr. Blair comes from Oxford. So the leaders came from high quality universities. And high quality universities are important for any society to try and spearhead new leadership and enterprise. So I would confine myself to not a new idea, but an idea which has been there and which has not been taken up that seriously by all. So I would say education, quality education for everybody, high quality universities in societies which need leadership, innovation, and enterprise. Good, we'll follow up on that. Mr. Blair, I believe you've been in Myanmar three times. And this is your fourth, if my notes are correct. Visited many people and representatives here. Very active in other emerging developing economies. What's your big idea or introductory comment for Myanmar and or East Asia? I think my reflection would be that the key thing today that makes the difference for a country is the quality of its governance. And by that, I don't just mean whether the government's honest or not or transparent or not, but the effectiveness of the government. I mean, I think the single toughest thing governments find today is getting the job done. How do you get things delivered? How do you make sure that electricity, infrastructure, basic rule-based systems are put in place? How do you make sure that you can create for your citizens the sort of rudiments of essential educational and health care opportunities? And so the idea is that the quality of governments is the central distinguishing feature. And I would say when you're looking at, for example, South Korea, Japan and Singapore, I would put education obviously very important, but I would put rule of law also very important. I think that's a major, major factor that distinguishes countries that succeed today from countries that fail. And I think the other reflection which is linked to that is that the good news about this is that there are actually examples now from around the world. If you go back over the last half century or 60 years, there are examples from around the world of what works and what doesn't. And I think that the challenge for governments is to assemble those ideas and implement them. And it's the doing that's really hard. So when I first came to power in Downing Street, I remember thinking, since I was prime minister, if I sat in Downing Street and ran the cabinet table and gave an instruction, that something actually happened. This became a sad disappointment to me when I realized this was not the case. And that actually there's a whole thing called execution, not in the way sometimes men, but actually getting the job done that was an essential part of the whole thing. So that's, and I think the interesting thing is to focus in and around that and how we help governments do that. Because for here, I would say, look, of course you've got the political challenge around the democratic process, the various conflicts and so on. But unless you can start delivering on things like telecommunications, infrastructure, electricity, roads and so on, it's gonna be hard for those democratic roots to be put down in a sustainable way. So that is my thought. And I think there are great examples of the good and the bad out in this region. And we want to assemble the best practice from the good and put it aside the bad. Good. We're gonna have a follow up on the, how do we actually do that? Hong, I'm going to go to you next for your big idea. And you have really taken technology and innovation in Vietnam sort of to a new level. Not sure everybody's been able to catch up yet. So I'd be interested in how many hits you have on your site. But talk to us a little about your big ideas that relates to East Asian if you choose specific to me more. Sure, firstly it's my incredible privilege to sit in on this panel. I'm part of the Global Shapers Program and it is an initiative to bring the young boys to the table and I hope the young boys counts. Talking about technology, I would have to cite, I would think a very proud example from Vietnam. 10 years ago when you go to Vietnam, there's no internet, it's possibly nothing. But then after only 10 or 15 years, and you imagine from a country of 70 million people, now we have 35% internet penetration and the mobile penetration rate is 120%. So everyone has an average more than one cell phone. That's an incredible number. I think it's a great initiative on the government side. I think the government has done a great job on this. It's a great job on a lot of the private businesses, national champions like FBT Corporation who have really bring the technology to the people. And what I mean here is that it does not only create just an industry, a new sort of income revenue, but then also a platform for everyone to be equal. If you are living in Vietnam, you would understand quite well what I mean. It's the information technology, it's the education access, it's the knowledge. Knowledge is power and on that platform we can build so many other things. So after getting back from business school, I'm now in the travel industry and I kid you not. In travel, people at least in Vietnam, the public officials are not always up to date in online, but all other travelers around the world use 90% use internet to plan their online travel. So we want to use online, we want to use information technology as the gateway to open up our country, to attract tourists, and it's also a great way to create jobs. I think we contribute about 5% of our GDP and also 5% of employment. We want to increase this number. So just by that sheer number, I think the potential is great. And then when I looked at the numbers from Myanmar, I was very surprised in the first place. I could not imagine a country now that has less than 5% of internet and mobile penetration. And then I talked to my colleagues and other participants here and they realized that the problem is the infrastructure. You need to set up the whole energy system first and then it's the ICT infrastructure. And they think if it takes Vietnam 10 to 15 years to establish that, I would say that Myanmar learning from all the lessons around the world, hopefully it would just take five years. And by this time, in five years when we come back, first see everyone equipped with a mobile phone, get access to information, have new ways to build the economy. There are new businesses popping up and that's what we want. You're gonna build a travel site in Myanmar? We would love to. Everyone loves to go to Myanmar now. I thought we ran into each other yesterday in the hallway and we had a chance to, you introduced the topic of urbanization to me. You had some fascinating thoughts around that. Maybe share a little bit of that and if your big idea happens to be around that, that could be fine. If it's tangential to that, that's okay too. Thanks, Gary. I think I probably need to apologize to the audience as well because they all came here expecting to hear totally new ideas. I hope they're hearing about this education, effective government, the internet, and mine is also a fairly mundane one which will be smart cities. But I think the theme behind it is you don't need new ideas, we just need to effectively implement the ones that we know about. For me it was urbanization that got me thinking because we all saw the statistic a couple of years ago that more than 50% of people now live in cities. When I dug into that, it's actually three and a half billion people that are now living in cities and that's equivalent to the entire world population in 1968. So that's when I was 10 years old and you thought the world is a huge place and billions of people and now all that amount of population are living in cities. And between now and 2050, another three and a half billion will be added to that number in cities and 90% of that will be in the developing world. So now what's so special about that? I mean cities today, they occupy about 3% of the land mass but they take up 60% of energy and they produce around about 70% of global emissions of pollution. So if you're gonna add another three billion people to the ones that are already there, we're gonna have to do something different. And there in comes the concept of smart cities where you're talking about how we produce energy, how we distribute energy, how buildings are made intelligent. But I always wondered why buildings are intelligent but cities are smart. I guess we'll find out. It's the consultants, they have to come up with new words. So intelligent buildings, how we move water around, how we move waste around. And all that has to be thought of and in the next 20 years because of what's happening in the cities, people reckon that about $40 trillion will be spent on urbanization on cities, on infrastructure in cities. And how we build that infrastructure will tell a lot about whether we increase the way that we're attacking the planet or whether we're trying to improve it. And smart cities of course will go towards improving it. Now then I thought maybe let's try and talk about some examples. So if you look at Stockholm, you've got the Royal Port Area in Stockholm and they're building a smart grid around that which will be powered by renewable sources as well as traditional sources. That power will go to homes, factories and the port as well as ships in the port. And I'll come back to why ships in the port in a little while. But they hope that in the next 20 years that whole entire grid in that area will be powered by renewable sources including solar and wind. Now why ships in the port? A ship when it comes to port tends to run its diesels to generate electricity. And normally ships stay in a port for about 10 hours. During those 10 hours a ship will produce about 20 tons of CO2. So now you suddenly think, think of all the thousands of ports and I live in Singapore, the world's biggest port and think of the thousands of ships that are coming there, running their diesels, producing stuff. And a simple idea is just plug them into the grid instead of letting them run their diesels if they need electricity. And if you can plug them into a grid with renewable sources even better. So that's what Copenhagen did, is one of the first countries to do that. But they're also now pilots in Shanghai and in Hong Kong to try and do the same thing. And we're trying to persuade the Singapore government to do the same thing in Singapore as well. So smart ways to power ships and ports. If you think about buildings, intelligent buildings, think of the amount of lights that's wasted in the building when no one's there. So a lot of buildings now have sensors in there, they automatically turn the lights off when people are not there. A good example is the National Library in Singapore. What they do is they have the light sensors even better tuned and they adjust the light according to the amount of sunlight that's filtering in. And if you can build a building which uses natural sunlight and then adjust the internal lighting, what they've been able to do with that is the energy consumption of the National Library in Singapore is something like 120, no 102 kilowatt hours per year. And you compare that to the Singapore average of 220. So they've halved the energy use just by intelligent control, intelligent use of lighting. Now if you think of the amount that goes into heating or cooling, you can also have buildings that actually heat or cool themselves or preheat or pre-cool at times when energy is freely available. So why not cooler building more at night in Singapore when there's cheaper energy available and allow that through good insulation to cool for much of the day. Then of course transport. Everyone talks about electric cars. The average family car will produce six tons of CO2 in a year. And if we can have electric cars and try and power again with renewable energy and I keep hopping on about renewable energy because I think especially in this part of the world just look at the sun, right? There's enough solar energy that falls on the earth in one day to power the earth for one year. So in a year we get 5,000 times the amount of solar energy that this earth produces in one year. Now if we could efficiently harness that and coming back to electric vehicles, power our vehicles through that, that's a good thing. But then if you think about six billion people living in cities, you don't want them all to drive around even electric cars, right? So we just done a pilot in Geneva on electric buses. Electric buses. And these electric buses pull into a bus stop where with our technology robotic arm comes on immediately within one second of a bus pulling in, hooks it up to a charger, an ultra-fast charger that charges that bus in 15 seconds, right? And that 15 seconds is long enough for bus stops normally 15 seconds. People get in and get off. And at the end of the route it goes into another place where it's charged for three to four minutes. And that's enough to keep that bus going all day and charging. So if we can fill a city with electric buses, you not only have do away with a lot of pollution but you also do a bit of those overhead lines that look pretty ugly as well. That's right. So I think three and a half billion people living in cities and other three billion to come, we've got to make those cities smart. Otherwise we're gonna go the wrong way. Okay. We're gonna come back to you. I wrote down a couple of notes. We'll come back to that. April, you and I ran into each other yesterday. I think we were both trying to find a quiet spot and we ended up running into each other and I don't think we got our quiet work done that we had intended. But your conversation with me was fascinating. It deals also with the work that you do at Collabor Labs. But you talked to me about new global business models that are coming and you talked about collaborative consumption. Share with us your idea here to kick things off. Thank you. I'm honored to be here with all of you today and my idea might be new to some people but it actually draws on a lot of the threads that we've heard already. Might be quite new to some of the people in the audience. My next big idea actually though is an ancient idea. It centers on one of the oldest behaviors known to mankind, sharing. But that ancient behavior now amplified through technology has turned into a growing global movement called collaborative consumption or the sharing economy. A collaborative consumption is defined as the reinvention of traditional market oriented behaviors such as renting, lending, swapping, gifting, bartering through technology in ways and on a scale never before possible. And in the process of doing this, we're reshaping business, we're rebuilding communities and we're changing the way that we think about the assets that are all around us. We're discovering that many times access to a given asset is preferable to ownership. We're creating markets for things that never had markets before. And in the process, we're also creating local jobs and livelihoods, promoting local economic investment and sustainable growth. So pause for a minute and consider the assets that are around you and how often they sit idle. On average, a car sits idle 22 hours a day. Take an appliance like a power drill which costs maybe $100. A power drill on average is used 14 minutes in its entire life. So pretty expensive hole in the wall. Office space, at any given point in time, 70% of office space sits empty. Now collaborative consumption starts to make these assets visible and exchangeable. And sometimes for money, oftentimes for money, but not necessarily. We can think about value creation in which money is not necessarily changing hands, but wealth and value are being created. And in the process, we're also reconnecting people to one another, providing very meaningful local level benefits and income generation. So I like to think about it, sharing assets net net. It is more economically efficient to share assets rather than own them outright. It's more environmentally sustainable because we're producing and consuming resources more efficiently. And it contributes to community building and social capital. Now if you like any one of those things, you should like collaborative consumption, the sharing economy. If you happen like me to like all three, then this is really a trifecta. So pause for just a minute and I'll give you a few examples of the kinds of collaborative consumption models and systems that are out there. One is really what's called a redistribution market in which we're thinking about how do we get assets from where they no longer need to be to someone or somewhere where they can be useful. So an easy example is clothing for those of you who have children in the room, kids outgrow clothing quickly. Outgrown, how do we get those two children that are now in that age cohort or that size cohort? There are companies that are being built, ThreadUp is one in the United States which is where I'm based, where you'll never have to buy clothes for your kids again and they'll actually get new clothes every month or every three months. Another example is called product service systems and that's where we're basically building and again this is through technology platforms, access to services, you're accessing the services to get to the product as opposed to owning the product outright. And there we can think about a variety of car sharing, bike sharing programs where you're accessing the product and paying for it only for that period of time that you need it. And third is what's called collaborative lifestyles and this is where we're really talking about how do we share more intangible assets around us such as time, skills and experiences. So if we think about each of these models, you know what are we doing? We're efficiently connecting people to one another. We're helping to build trust between strangers. We're unleashing the idling capacity in all of these assets and we're redefining what wealth and value creation mean in today's new economy. So that's a global snapshot of what collaborative consumption is and if we turn to the East Asia context, overall it's relatively nascent here. But I think we're sitting on a huge opportunity and a really ripe moment in time. So there's one notable exception in the region and that is actually Seoul, South Korea. Now Seoul is probably the premier collaborative consumption city in the world. The government has self-proclaimed itself as a sharing city. It's passed legislation to have a multi-pronged implementation plan that includes investment, it includes new public-private partnerships and it includes supporting the work of collaborative consumption entrepreneurs. Now that's Singapore, but we all, sorry that's Seoul, South Korea, but we also do have activity in Singapore, in Japan, but also places like the Philippines and Vietnam, much smaller, but I think we're just beginning. And I'll just end by saying, I think that one of the areas where we see an enormous amount of collaborative consumption activity already is tourism. And we're talking about companies like Airbnb, for those of you who have heard of that, but in the case of Korea, they have Airbnb, they also have a company called Kozazu, which is in the Korean language, owned and run by Koreans and really allows for a different type of local experience. So it's a homestay or you can stay in a temple and you can meet local entrepreneurs that are also your guides, et cetera, et cetera, and you're paying for this. But this is really leading to a virtuous cycle of jobs creation, local economic investment, entrepreneurship, and innovation. And even here in Myanmar, I think there's an enormous opportunity to look at models like that and help those, integrate those into the tourism agenda and strategy for this country moving forward. So look forward to discussing further. April, you may have called this an ancient idea, but maybe six months ago, the Economist, my favorite magazine, had a special feature, I'm sure you read it, on the sharing economy. And that was the first time that I was exposed to that. So I've got some questions for you coming back. Great. Takanakasan, you've been very active in Japanese government and private sector. I believe you oversaw the privatization involved in the postal services. So in this introductory remarks, do you have an idea that for East Asia that you would like to share? Well, in my understanding, Japan, we also have already that kind of share custom. I'd like you next time to raise the case of Japanese cities, almost all cities, besides Tokyo maybe. Tokyo is very special about that. Anyway, we have a strong sense of share. But anyway, I'm asked to raise some big idea. Is this correct? A mediocre idea would you? Well, honestly, I'm a little bit hesitant to raise a big idea because my boss, Mr. Koizumi, I hear very good relations with Mr. Blair at that time. He often told me, there is no magic stick in policymaking. There's no magic way in management. Very steady effort is needed. However, today I dare to raise one idea, I will support your request, okay? That is, maybe this is not very new idea. That's a PPP, public-private partnership. Yesterday I came here and I attended some sessions here in HLW's meeting. And a lot of discussion was done mostly on infrastructure. Yes, this country, Myanmar, your more infrastructure investment is needed. And also other countries in ASEAN also face the lacking infrastructure. However, also in Japan, Japan is relatively high income country as you know. Still, we are suffering from lacking infrastructure. Two years ago, we had a very serious disaster in the form of tsunami and earthquake. So we need more infrastructure to protect this kind of disaster. On the other hand, in order to increase investment, as you can easily imagine, we need some source of investment. That's savings, savings. However, well, Japan was recognized as a country of high savings for a long time. But the household savings rate is as low as that of the United States now. Reflecting the aging of the society, aging of the demography. And similar problem is happening almost all countries in this region. Well, birth rate is now declining very rapidly in all Asian countries. And sooner or later, Japan or all other Asian countries will face very similar problem of Japan or aging of the society. Under such circumstances, the lack of savings will create lack of investment. So how to conquer this kind of situation? This is the most serious problem that we will facing the coming 10 years or so, the 10 or 12 years or so. So, well, one way is to make use of the vitality of the private sector, or PPP, that is PPP. Private financial initiative, et cetera. Also, we will use the term concession. Well, road construction is needed. And also in this country, Myanmar, the infrastructure in Dawe, the city of Dawe, is causing, drawing attention. I think this is very strategic, very interesting project. But still, we need some source of savings. So we have to make use of the private sector's idea. And this idea is applicable to internet and infrastructure also, even university system. Well, in Korea, for example, they quite often use the term concession. Well, infrastructure itself is owned by the state. However, the right to operate this infrastructure is, the right is sold to the private sector. Well, this will have three good impact. One is, well, this will create a new business sector, business opportunity. The second, the quality of service, infrastructure will be increased, improved, because, well, private sector has its own idea in management. And thirdly, this will contribute a lot to the consolidation, fiscal consolidation. Well, now in Japan, we often discuss the term abenomics, how to strengthen our growth strategy. But in this regard, we are now making some kind of action plan for this concession. Of course, this is not a magic trick, a magic way. However, making more use of this method, private, public-private partnership in many fields, infrastructure, internet, and also university, et cetera, et cetera. Well, in this regard, the British effort, we should study more. Yes, today we have a very good teacher on that. So anyway, I'd like to propose, if I'm asked the new type of very bold idea of PPP in this region. So private-public partnerships, so maybe when we come to the audience, we can follow up. We are going to go to the audience, but I do actually just have one follow-up question for Mr. Blair, because we all said that while these ideas can help, it's not exactly if they're new. They could be big and bold for this region, but we're trying to learn from them. And you had indicated when you first stepped into office, you thought you could just go give some orders and things would happen. But I think I have a president in my country who's experiencing some similar difficulties. But you made reference to how we can help. How can maybe the developed economies or people in this room, how can people help the governments and the societies in the emerging economies? Can you just take us a little bit further down that journey before we open it up to Q&A, please? I think it's a great question, actually. And it's a real pleasure to be on the panel. My reflection, listening to everyone, is how many smart people and smart ideas there are outside government, really. You mean there's smart people inside government? Well, no, I think that's part of it. I think one of the things that is very interesting to me today is that I think that governments to function obviously require the types of things that I was talking about earlier, but they also require a willingness to go and engage and listen to new ideas that are found outside of government. And I think a lot of what is most creative now is actually found outside of government. And the question is, how does government manage to multiply that creativity and empower it and enable it and not actually get in the way of it, which is what government's pretty good at doing? Again, when I first came into office, because my party had always thought, and everybody had always thought that the bureaucracy and the civil service in the UK was a conservative conspiracy. And after a time, I realized it actually wasn't a conspiracy. I had a conservative or labor. It was actually a conspiracy for inertia. And that was the chief characteristic of the system. And that systems are very good at stopping things happening and stopping change. And I actually think whether developed or developing, there is a need to kind of use a lot of that creativity. And one of the things I say to developing country governments now is, look, because very often they say, when will we get a system like yours in the West? And I say, don't ask yourself that question. Ask yourself what you can learn from our experience, because there's good and bad. And if you're sensible about it, you can learn from the good and you can avoid the bad. Because we've built up legacies that are often obstacles now to improvement of the conditions of our people. So that's my thought about it, that I think one of the things, because I look at this obviously from a sort of policymaker perspective, is how do we manage to take some of the types of ideas that have been talked to, which are really interesting? How do you manage to enable those to happen and make a difference in a country and get government actually moving with the grain of where that change is going, rather than saying, well, look, we've done this this way, and we're always going to do it this way. So interesting for you guys to talk, but leave the serious business up to us. Whereas I actually think this is where the limits of government are very, very clear. And the challenge of government is, in fact, to take some of this energy and creativity and use it. OK, wonderful. We're going to open up to the audience, please. And so I think there are mics that are roving around. Please raise your hand. We have a lot of hands. I saw hers first. I'll come back to you. Please identify yourself if you don't mind. And then ask your question. If it's to a specific panelist, please do that. Thank you. We had great ideas. My name is Runa Khan. I'm from an organization, it's NENGIO, dealing primarily with integrated development in Bangladesh. We've had great ideas here on the panel. Thank you for them. I want to know that when an organization, a person, or even a development agency like ours starts implementing an idea for tomorrow, by the time the idea comes, it's already day after tomorrow. So what is the mindset of any of these, to be able to see, have that vision, and take that leap of faith to jump into day after tomorrow instead of just going up to tomorrow? What would be the mindset of the individual, the organization, or social enterprise like ours? Would you like to try that? Sure, I have a couple of ideas now. Yeah, I'm sure you do. And actually, referring back to your comments around, how do you get governments to come around it? I think it all folds together. And it really focuses, for me, on noting that the way things are today is not the way they're going to be tomorrow, nor the next day. So let's look at this as an organic, evolving process. And what that means, because one of the things that we encounter a lot in the sharing economy, are policy and regulatory issues. We've built our legal and regulatory system on an ownership-based set of assumptions. And when you apply these laws and policies, oftentimes, it's not as though something is all of a sudden illegal, but they're clumsy and awkward. And what do we do? So there, what we've begun to do, and we do do some work with cities. We were speaking early around shareable cities. And what does it mean to look at a city in this way, or an enterprise? And for me, it ultimately boils down to having an iterative process of evolution, and building in feedback loops, so that you're able to course correct if and when you need to, and you're also getting community-level feedback. So not sure exactly what an initiative for you would be, but we look at cases in which people are very, intellectually, they understand the power of collaborative consumption, but they're quite afraid of what does it mean when I actually start sharing stuff, or how do I know that I can trust others? And you build in all kinds of feedback loops, and then you build in all kinds of verification systems, and so that even if something were to go off the rails or there would be a mismatch of expectations, it's pretty quickly that you can actually come back course correct and then leapfrog to the next step. And we see this play out within startup enterprises. We see this play out within communities that are trying to manage themselves. We definitely see this within governments as well. So I think it's more of a universal comment. Thank you very much. Next, right? Hi, my name is Laila Janna, and I'm a new young global leader. I run a website called Sama Hope that allows anyone to fund a critical medical treatment for someone else on the other side of the world. So my question is for Mr. Abed. Martin Luther King Jr., after we had passed civil rights legislation in the US in the late 60s, he said, what is it profit a man to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he can't afford a hamburger? And in the Asian region, we have 900 million people who live in extreme poverty and a lot of the economic growth, I fear, will leave them out if we don't intentionally try to create jobs for them. So what are some of your ideas to create additional living wage jobs for the very poorest people, particularly in the wake of all of the gains we've made in civil rights and liberties? Good question. Well, the answer is a difficult one in the sense that there are many, many poor people in poor countries like Myanmar, Bangladesh, and so on. It's difficult to find jobs for everybody, but there have been attempts at creating opportunities for poor people to earn an income and livelihood through micro-financial services. Microfinance, we have tried out in Bangladesh for over the last more than 30 years, but then let me give you some examples of where micro-finance can also not help people. We have, we now have, my organization has eight million borrowers in Bangladesh, and we give out $1.3 billion annually to in small loans to poor people. But then financial services helps quite a lot of people and they can earn a livelihood out of that. But then there are obstacles to earning a livelihood in some areas, remote areas, rural areas, and so on. So what happens then? I remember that when we had three million borrowers, we found that almost 10% of the borrowers were actually doing vegetable gardening, produce vegetables to earn a livelihood. But then we found that the productivity of these enterprises were not very high in the sense that there were lack of good quality seeds for vegetables. So we went into a social enterprise to try and develop seed multiplication for vegetables. And once we created that business and we were able to supply high quality vegetable seeds, then of course their productivity went up and they had a living livelihood improved. So the productivity improved and the livelihood improved. The same kind of thing happened with people who invested in livestock and they couldn't sell their milk in the village because there was no market for milk. So we collected those milk and processed them in. So we set up a dairy industry which was again a social enterprise and then brought their milk from remote villages and processed them and made butter and pasteurized milk and marketed outside. So you not only need to do just one thing in terms of just microfinance, it's not going to solve all the problems, but also all the other problems that are created or the marketing and inputs that are needed that also needs to be provided. And then of course you can create jobs and we tried to create jobs for people because financial services alone can't create jobs. So what we did at one point is that we thought that we could create maybe half a million jobs in silk, celliculture, silk, warm-rearing and spinning and weaving and so on. So we planted 25 million mulberry trees in the roadside verges all over Bangladesh so that each woman could have 100 trees and that could collect all the leaves from these trees to feed to the silkworms and then have silk, silk could become a business. So like that we have tried many things to create jobs to improve livelihoods for people through microfinance program was the platform but then we tried many other things in social enterprise creation in order to help poor people to come out of poverty and to create jobs for people. Very good question. Right here please. Thank you to all the panelists. James Mwangi from Dauberg, we are a strategy firm working in developing countries around the world. I was intrigued by the idea of smart cities and think that the biggest opportunity for smart cities is likely to be in the emerging markets where you're seeing rapid growth and rapid urbanization. However, when policymakers in those countries typically have the opportunity to start from scratch, what you see in terms of the choices, in terms of design, construction, et cetera, is relatively energy intensive and not necessarily smart. And I look around and I don't see, for example, given the opportunity to start a fresher than new capital here, the application of some of the ideas that might be possible. How is it that we convince leaders in places where they're inclined to copy old models from elsewhere to really try and do things differently and be pioneering rather than lagging adopters of smart technologies? You wanna start? Yeah, maybe I'll try that. I think if people are making decisions that are suboptimal, then companies like us also have to share some of that responsibilities because we haven't done a good enough job selling what we're preaching. And that means, I think it's not just good enough me coming up here and spouting a few statistics. We need to work with universities, we need to sponsor some research, we need to talk to the ministries, we need to arrange the seminars and build up kind of groundswell of opinion that takes people in that direction, I think. So that's certainly one way to help it. Another way, I think, is also to try and help people understand that, part of transparency, for example, is when governments are building infrastructure, they have a very strict set of bidding criteria and then the bids are open and the governments tend to have to pick the lowest bidder. Now, the way that those bids are structured, the lowest bidder is often not the one who's going to invest in, as part of a major project, building up local competence, working to certain standards of health and safety, transferring some technology and leaving behind something as well. So again, that goes back into it, helping educate governments that don't just try and find infrastructure that's going to be the cheapest short-term and give the business to the lowest bidder, but work in a more long-term way. And I really think it's part of our responsibility as companies. It's not just good enough to do the R&D. You've actually got to go and create examples, create research, create data to help sell that message. Mr. Blair James did kind of talk about how private enterprise has the design that could be potentially efficient and then the people that sign off on the designs that actually maybe approve the work tends to be from the government. So do you have something to add a little bit, James? Just very briefly, the problem for governments is often that they're under huge pressure to get something done, right? And then what they often think, I believe now wrongly, but they do often think this, that the quickest way is just to do it in what can sometimes be the dirtiest way, actually. And I think you're right. I think what we've got to do is to, we've actually got to build up a kind of intellectual capital around government as well where people are able to see, actually it would be possible to do it differently and more sustainably for the city and the country in the long-term. And in some of the work we do with different governments around the world, particularly in Africa, we try and introduce some of those concepts, but it's very tough for the political leaders in today's world. The expectations of the people are very large and the gap between the expectation and how fast they can deliver the realities is often very severe. But there are ways of meeting it, actually, and that's where the collaboration, as I say, from government to the outside is very important. Thank you, James, good question. Another one, right, a couple over here. Hello, my name is Tamar Abed. I work for BRAC in Bangladesh and I'm a young global leader, 2010. My question is to any of the panelists here, I wonder what they think about the role of women as the next big idea, increasing the participation of women in the economy and government as the next big idea for East Asia. Ahn. It doesn't have to be the next big idea. It's as ancient as, you know, I just said, you know, we play a prominent role in our government and as you look around, the participants around here, there are a lot of women faces and also the global shippers program, the young global leaders programs, I see women and I think we are very confident and, you know, we are smart too and we take on challenges. So I think it's just we have to step up and take an active role. We don't sit back and wait for people to give responsibility to us. No one can really define what exactly is the ideal role of women, right? We build that ourselves, we define it and then we just take it on. We challenge the world. So I don't think it's never the next big idea. It's always a big idea. All right. Good. Let's go over on this side. I saw a couple of hands. Thank you very much. All the panelists. And my name is Sugiyama from Kokusai Kogo Japan and we are working for the infrastructure, infrastructure investigating and surveys. And I'm very pleased to hear that there are a lot of, you know, discussions for the infrastructure in the future. But almost same question for that lady. But I think that one of the most valuable and the precious infrastructure, hidden infrastructure is the ladies, and I'm quite sure about that, that those two ladies in front of me is that quite smart and must be overcome that the most difficult things in the past. So could you give us any tips or something like that? Not only for the business peoples, but for the government that how to make it possible for the women to join that in the society or business in a good way. April, you wanna take a stab? Sure. Happy to provide a couple of comments that also actually relate to your question. And my background actually, I have spent the last decade plus in microfinance and in base of the economic pyramid, marketplace creation. And I have transitioned into the sharing economy in recent years, largely because I've started seeing very similar trends, very different markets, different terminology, but the end result again is around empowerment, around jobs creation, around enterprise. And kind of like I said, I didn't get into microfinance necessarily to promote women. It's key to what I do and what I stand for, but for me it was always, I wanna create jobs and small enterprise for everybody. And what you find is in the space of microfinance, most of the people that are unbanked in the world are women. So there's a natural synergy there. What I'm seeing as well, and I'll speak just from the perspective of the sharing economy and collaborative consumption, I mean what we're helping people to do is not only reimagine your relationship to assets and where is wealth held and what does it mean to create value, but also in many cases, you see a lot of entrepreneurs and users of collaborative consumption platforms redefining their relationship to time and priorities. And it all relates to sort of at the end of the day, what do you need for a thriving livelihood? And as we know by and large, it's not that buy more stuff and you'll be happier. It's that we're largely proving that paradigm wrong, but what we do find is it's a new form of microenterprise and a lot of the users and entrepreneurs and providers of collaborative consumption services are women. Again, I'm not in this per se to promote women, but those especially that are looking for a work-life balance. One example of a collaborative consumption or collaborative economy company is called Etsy. Some of you might have heard of Etsy. It's an online portal where you can sell creative goods. They now have nearly a million shops selling on Etsy. The number of women and men that have been able to quit their jobs and actually raise a family at home and have a home-based business and earn income and all of that, the impact upon women is enormous. I do think that there is a very large call for what the government can do to promote that kind of activity because the hard part there, if you're an Etsy entrepreneur, you've got a very interesting and highly successful work-life balance, but you don't necessarily have access to the same kind of benefits that you would have if you worked at a company. So there's a big question around what does this mean from public services? How do we make sure that we've still got a safety net in this space of micro-tasking and micro-entrepreneurship and so forth? So I think that's where, going back to your point around what does it mean to reinvent, reimagine public-private partnerships and also what does it mean to reimagine public services and civic innovation in a new economy where we're working differently, we're collaborating differently, we're creating value differently. I think it's just an enormous opportunity and I could talk about this all day. I'll leave it there. Takenakusa, you want to comment? May I raise a short comment? Well, Japan is not the right country to discuss this gender gap issue because of World Economic Forum is issuing the report or the ranking. You are in the... Japan is 100 plus or something like that. But still, we have some kind of discussion on that. We now have a minister who is in charge of narrowing the gender gap, et cetera, and the Japanese government decided to have a kind of affirmative action. For example, you're giving some tax incentive to the companies which have some favorable action for narrowing the gender gap. Of course, this is not very sound, I'm afraid. But still, to some extent, this kind of affirmative action is needed. At the same time, we should recognize where women's role is, and the men's role are both sides of the coin. So women's role should be changed. This is indicating men's role should be changed. This is a very serious discussion. We need more on the male side. This is my... Thank you. We have time for one more. This is my back over here. So let's go here. Thank you. Ken from the local energy sector. The question is mainly to Mr. Tony Blay. There is always the question of the first move advantage. And that's also the question of the less-mover advantage also, so where we can leapfrog. So considering the mine country situation right now, we may be one of the less to move. So where do you see any leapfrog model in terms of the energy or infrastructure or whatever, so that we can innovatively employ these models in terms of saving the social, economical, environmental costs as we save the environmental costs, and also making sure that we can employ in the right timing. So how do you see that? Just very quickly. I mean, I... You see, I think there is a lot of examples of best practice now. So if you're talking about things like energy and infrastructure electricity and so on, there is a huge amount of intellectual capital and expertise, management expertise from outside the country that can be brought in. By the way, countries often don't like to bring in people from outside because they think somehow that is, you know, that sort of reduces our sense of national pride. I mean, I really think this is a wrong-headed way of looking at it, and I think of somewhere like Singapore that started by importing intellectual capital and now exports it. So I think you get in the right actual expertise as to how to do it. You look at, for example, ways that you can do it in a way that's sustainable for the future on things like energy and the environment where, again, there is best practice from around the world as to how you do it. And I emphasize this issue to do with the predictable set of rules so that people know when they're coming into a country, what can they expect, and what they expect is what they get, and they don't suddenly find everything changed further down the line. So, you know, this is, look, the great thing about the world today is that it is more connected than ever before. The ideas are out there, the capital is importable, the technology is available, but you've got to be sort of tough-minded enough to just access it, and if you do access it, you can make your country move. And by the way, I would then, on a whole set of other things, I mean, one of the things that fascinates me, for example, nowadays, is I think in the West, we would never create the education and healthcare systems that we have now if we were starting from today. The reasons of technology alone, you know, we just wouldn't do it like that. And so, if I was looking at a country where, you know, you've got to get the rudiments going, I think you could do a massive amount to leapfrog over the practices and the legacy systems in the West, which have built up these vast interests, as I say, that stand in the way of change. So I think there's an enormous amount that can be done. I just make one final point, which is this, because, you know, we were talking earlier about the young people and their impact on this situation. You guys have also got to get involved. I mean, one of the reasons why I love the concept, and I was discussing this with Klaus Schwab earlier about the global shapers and so on, is, you know, it's no, politics needs help. Okay, in case you hadn't noticed. And, you know, I'm afraid I get impatient now when people say, well, a politician's got to, I say, look, go and get involved and start helping in this situation because in the end, whether a country like this progresses or not is gonna depend not on my generation of people actually, but on your generation of people and getting involved and being prepared, never to take no for an answer, but making the country move in the way you want it for the future. Thank you. All right. Thank you. So, in our remaining minutes, what I'd like to do is go around the panel, try to be brief, you know, what's your one minute, two minute takeaway from what you've heard and one last thought for the audience. If you don't mind. April, can I start with you, please? Wow. Sure, of course. So, I've really enjoyed the conversation. I'm finding it's interesting to note that we've actually, this whole notion of, there's no, well, are these new ideas? Are these big ideas? They're sort of germane ideas where we're in a way reading between the lines, but we're also trying to project into the future. I've noticed a lot of synergies between the different things that we're pulling out and I tend to be one of those people that tries to take a really big picture view, scale out, look at the big picture lens and what are some of the linkages that I found and, you know, Mr. Abed, your point, and we didn't dive too deep into it, but I'm really intrigued about the notion of investing in e-education and making that, potentially, I'll be a little provocative here, a sort of fundamental human right for every member of your nation, including the poorest of the poor, which then in turn can, the question over here, lead to leveling the playing field around access to education, access to information, and then obviously jobs creation. So what does that look like? Because I'm starting to believe that one of the most fundamental investments that any government, anywhere on the economic pyramid, can make is in technology and sort of not just open data infrastructure, but access to technology because that opens up a world of possibilities. And then that technology in turn, not selfishly, but back to the collaborative piece, when I talk about collaborative consumption, this is something that wasn't possible without the internet. I mean, we've had sharing circles and community-based things all the time, but we're now talking about, you can share pretty much anything, anywhere in the world, from cars and bikes, but to surfboards, and you can show your pets online. You can, it's crazy, and so, but then that then turns, becomes a dog- I've got a whole lot of thoughts going on right now. Yeah. Dogvacay.com. And we, there is- The other thing is I was thinking about that. Oh, yes, we can have, I've had many spirited conversations around where you draw the line for what you do and don't share. But in fact, and there is, I'll just put this out there as a public resource, a global directory of companies on collaborativeconsumption.com, where if you want to learn about a vertical country, like what is happening, but this becomes a virtuous cycle in which you invest in education, it turns into enterprise, then in turn those entrepreneurs end up being able to create new businesses and engage in government. And I think too there's this redefinition of what government looks like down the road, which is something very different than today, and I would say in some ways lighter weight. I think if you actually enable, largely again through technology platforms, if you enable certain community members to take an active role in their government, but not big G government, small G. Agreed. There's, they want to contribute, they want to participate. So we look at in the case of sharing in the public specter, what would it mean to implement collaborative consumption principles in cases of disaster relief and emergency planning? What would it mean for neighborhood connectivity, education, et cetera, et cetera? So I know I only have a minute, but these are some of the threads that I've been weaving as we've been talking over this last hour. Thank you. You bet. I do, you got a final point for the group. Yeah, I think my final point was triggered exactly by a question from Ms. Khan from Bangladesh about why is tomorrow's technology only implemented day after tomorrow? Why do things take so long to do? And I think it's because it comes back to effectiveness that you mentioned, Mr. Blair. And that effectiveness is not just in government, it's in companies as well. Leaders come to the top and they expect that they'll be able to change things, but there's a whole layer of people in government and in companies that are there to stop that change happening. They don't like that change. And the way to get that done is to break through that layer and make sure that we have the systems and the processes and the methodologies to make sure that we're effective in implementing what we want to implement. It's just like in government, so many business leaders get appointed CEOs in the think right now I'll issue a declaration and everyone will jump and of course that doesn't happen. And I think a great example of someone who's a place where that's happened is my adopted country now in Singapore. It was, Singapore was nowhere 50 years ago. And it didn't necessarily start off with great democratic government and great transparent government, but it started off with very effective government. And that government was dedicated to doing the right thing by making sure it was implemented. And that spirit is still there. You know, Singapore is now one of the world's richest countries, but they're still not satisfied. And there was a recent survey done on which people are happiest in the world and Singaporeans came near the bottom. Yeah. And the reason for that is they asked the wrong question. They didn't say, are you satisfied? They said, are you happy? Right? And the highest praise you can earn in Singapore for something is not bad. If you, if someone's, you know, you say, how's the food? The guy said, not bad. That means it's really fantastic. So they're never satisfied. They always believe there's something better. They got that from the British, actually. I was the colonial hangover. Another government's going through a whole new process on how to take their productivity to the next generation. So it's make sure you're able to effectively implement stuff and never be satisfied with what you have. And I think that's the way to get things done. Thank you, Abed. I just wanted to say one more thing about women's role in society. I had started work in almost 40 years ago, but found that most traditional societies, women manage poverty in poor societies. So we thought that if they could manage poverty, they might should be able to manage development also. So we focused our total entire focus was on women's development. So microfinance program that we have is 100% women-centered microfinance. So women's role in societies has to become a focus of attention for most societies. So that's one comment. The other comment was about being effectively implementing program that Mr. Blair brought out. Effective implementation and effective delivery of programs is so important that most programs don't seem to put enough energy into effectiveness of their outcome of their programs. So I think this is something that we need to put in place. It's not just program being implemented, but how to do it more effectively. And I could give lots of different answers to how effectiveness is created within programs. So this is something that we need to understand. I take from this session a lot of knowledge from various people who talked about it, effectiveness from Mr. Blair, collaborative consumption, and of course, smart cities. I've learned many things. Thank you so much. Dr. Naki-san. Yes, in this session we discussed the big idea. The big idea is really needed just to solve the problem. Solve the problem. So in case we discuss a big idea, we have to identify what's the problem to be solved first of all. Still, this is not easy. The problem, the existing problem to be solved, varies among the countries, also different. In some cases it's good, in some cases it's not good, et cetera, et cetera. So especially in the field of politics, we have a tendency, Prime Minister knows quite well, we focus the policy to help, help. But yes, policy to help is needed, but much more important is policy to solve. In this regard, policy to, from policy to help to policy to solve. This is the important key when we discuss the big idea. In this regard today, as I mentioned, yeah, making use of the big idea in the private sector in the policy field is very important. Today we have a lot of idea from the private sector and also public sector, so private, public partnership. And very finally I'd like to stress the importance of the intellectual exchange among the region. This morning I heard in this country, Myanmar, the government established the research institute. And this is a very, very great advances I believe. And so in order to enhance the intellectual exchange, so in this kind of effort, another round of new big idea will emerge. Thank you. Thank you. Han? I just want to echo April's previous idea on how technology gives access to everyone and how it opens the world of opportunities because I think some of everything that I have learned in this section, I think technology is inclusive. We don't talk about just technology for women, technology for men. We talk about technology for everyone. And I think it really helps to solve all the problems we are talking about now. I think one day, in a very near future, I think all the poor people will be equipped with a small, smart tablet and that basically solves a lot of problems. That gives them access to the best education in the world. And I have a very strong belief in that. And we discussed that in previous sections as well. So yes, I think technology is the key. The young force is the key. And we do need help and we do need to learn from all of your expertise around the world. Thank you, Han. Yes, I learned masses too, so I'm very pleased with that. But there's one thing I just want to ask, which is, right, so there are 33 institutions that have survived since the 16th century. 29 universities, right? Two churches. Two churches, one parliament, I think we know, possibly. No, it's Icelandic parliament, mind you. Icelandic parliament. Icelandic parliament, damn, okay. Well, I think we are one. Well, it wasn't quite a fair one, though. I agree. One business. And that's what I want to ask. What is the business? It's a Hudson Bay company, it still survives in Canada. The what? Hudson Bay Company. Hudson Bay Company. You see, the important thing is to learn something new every day, even if it's a piece of information that will be of no practical utility for the rest of your life. Wonderful. Ladies and gentlemen, I just want to close with one thought to leave you with, that's a nice thought. We talked about the big ideas. We talked that what's really important is to figure out the how to. How to get government, society, and business to work together to implement these ideas. But just think. Just think for a minute. In the last 20 seconds, what can be done? Individual responsibility can be achieved. Social equity. Prosperity for the hardworking. Economic growth. Business productivity. Skilled workers that match needs. Reliable infrastructure. Stable public policy. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much. Please give an applause for the panel. Enjoy yourself.