 Excellent, excellent. Well, ladies and gentlemen, good evening, thanks for joining tonight, this webinar that is on a topic that is very close to my heart. And I would like to say, probably more relevant than ever, given the fact that we live in a very dynamic timeframe. The video that I showed at the opening of this webinar, I had commissioned two years ago, basically to convey the same message. And that is that the world is changing fast. And in my view, we are at the end of the industrial age, as we have known it. And that means that we will have to see unprecedented change to address some of the key challenges that society is facing as a consequence of the phenomenal development that we have gone through. But little did I know when we made this video, because this was all before the COVID-19 outbreak. And I think if anything has become clear ever since, is that the world is probably in need of a change in leadership, leadership that takes responsibility for addressing the key challenges society is facing. And that is a topic that is intriguing me and that I would like to share with you some views on and hopefully have a discussion on in the context of this webinar. Ladies and gentlemen, I told you in the opening that it is my strong conviction that we are at the end of the industrial age as we know it. And the industrial revolution that started 200 years ago has created a tremendous amount of financial and economic wealth. And that has already addressed quite some challenges in society, many people have raised out of poverty. It is also undisputed that the growth that we have seen has also resulted in big challenges of an ecological nature of a social nature, and probably also of an economic nature. One of the things that we have seen growing is the global population. And I was born in 1967. And at that time, we had 3.4 billion people on the planet. So in my lifetime, the population on our planet has doubled because today we are close to 8 billion people on the planet. The global population keeps growing. At the start of the industrial age, we had less than a billion inhabitants of the planet. And the expectation is by 2050, we will have more than 10 billion people living on planet Earth. That's only one of the things that have been growing exponentially over the last decades. And the interesting thing is when you realize it, that growth has probably been realized not always in conjunction and in harmony with all the stakeholders and inhabitants on the planet. But very often, this growth that we also see in economic terms has been realized at the expense of all the resources. You see here some facts and figures and in the middle you see a cartoon that is pretty provoking and I do that on purpose because today we will be talking about responsible leadership and I will focus my presentation on corporate leadership, leadership in the business world. We see that there is an enormous amount of wealth created in financial and economic terms over the last 200 years, but it has resulted in quite some trouble. There's more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than we have seen in any time in history. In 2018 alone, 120,000 square kilometers of tropical forest were lost, deforestation is a big issue. We see that average wildlife populations have been reduced by 60% in just over 40 years. These are just some facts and figures about the issues that we see in an ecological perspective in terms of climate. And I know that making the link directly between business world, business community, the economy and the ecological situation we are at is a provocative one. But hopefully in the context of my presentation I will be able to answer some of the questions around this. I've seen that some of you are raising your hands. I would like to propose that I finish early and that we have sufficient time for what will hopefully be a lively debate. So what we have seen unprecedented economic growth, growth is the birth word, growth in terms of the global population, growth in terms of economic wealth, but also big issues, big societal challenges. People sitting in the middle, if those people represent the business world, I think the point that I would like to make is that the people in the middle need to become part of the solution. And that is, for me, pretty much core to the notion of responsible leadership. If you talk about the challenges that society is facing, and here you see a handful of those challenges, global warming, air pollution, access to clean water and energy, access to healthcare, poverty, inequality, but also pandemic diseases. When this slide was made, COVID was not even there. But what this picture shows is that the situation is complex and there are many, many interdependencies. And if the current COVID crisis shows one thing in my view, is that this interdependency is there, the complexity is there, but what we also see is that there are many underlying weaknesses flaws in the system. Flaws that in my view we need to address. And my hope is that the current COVID crisis is a wake up call for humanity at large, and more specifically for the business world, so that we can take ownership for the solutions for addressing the issues that we see in the world around us in a responsible manner. Because the issues we see, amongst others, due to the outbreak of the COVID pandemic show locally, but only for a very short period of time. Before we know it, we see an impact that we have never seen before, and we are able to basically put society on hold. I hope you realize that neither the world wars that we have experienced the recent times, nor the nuclear disasters in Fukushima, or the bomb on Hiroshima, or any natural disaster has ever in our lifetimes been able to force humanity to really slow down and basically make a side step. That is quite intriguing, because there are challenges that arguably are as impactful or even more impactful when it comes to the survival of the human race, like the climate crisis, that we have not been able to use as an energy source behind interventions to, for instance, slow down air travel. What we have seen is that some of the challenges we see in the world around us are huge, and there is no one stakeholder that can remediate those challenges. If we learn from the COVID crisis a clear thing over the last couple of months is that the state is back, the market is no longer the regulating mechanism for all of the issues that we face. But even states, governments, or multinational organizations or multilateral organizations cannot solve those issues without collaboration. Back in 2015, United Nations formulated the Sustainable Development Goals, and we can be happy to have those goals because, as a matter of fact, they constitute a kind of compass for the world, a kind of compass for humanity, if you want. These 17 goals need to be realized by 2030 in order for humanity to prosper. And you can see them here on the screen, they vary from fighting poverty, reducing inequality, but also making sure that employment is decent, that there is sustainable economic growth, that there is access to health care, that there is nobody behind when it comes to providing good quality health care to the masses, but that there is also clean and affordable energy. So the Sustainable Development Goals, as formulated by the United Nations, provide a very powerful compass for people in leadership positions to take their responsibility. Now interestingly enough, and I made this point before, business has a very big role to play. We would be naive if we would assume that applying the same paradigms that brought us the issues that we are currently being confronted with will also be the paradigms that help us to solve those issues. And when we come to the business world, we rely heavily on economic paradigms and economic notions. And one of those notions is value creation. The point that I want to make is that value creation so far has been mainly defined on the short term by businesses and in economic terms, or more specifically in financial terms. When we talk about value creation, we predominantly talk about the creation of monetary value, financial value, and we try to do that as businesses on a relatively short term. One of the notions that need to be reconsidered is this notion of value creation, because in my view, value creation needs to be defined over multiple axes. And the business needs to be assessed not only based upon its ability to generate short term return for its shareholders, but also to the extent that it contributes to the creation of ecological value and social value. And next to the value creation over multiple axes, I think it is important to also look at the time horizon. We measure currently businesses by their quarterly performance, and there has been quite some debate already that probably we need a longer time frame because if we want to address the big challenges of today, and we want to make progress towards sustainable development goals, we need time. And we should not only hold ourselves accountable for the progress that we make in a quarter. So that is on the notion of value creation, from short term to long term, from a mono dimension, basically economic value and financial value, to multi-dimensional value creation, ecological and also social. But too much focus in my view has been put on growth as the leading doctrine. As we keep growing, I've shown you the numbers of the global population that has been skyrocketing from less than a billion in 70-50 when the Industrial Revolution started to 10 billion in 2030. Economic growth has been the mantra. But during recent speeches, I've made the point that if you look at nature, many things that just keep growing, and especially if they keep growing in an uncontrolled fashion, turn malicious. So we shouldn't be next to focus on growth and value creation, also look at value distribution. Because arguably there is enough in terms of resources to provide all people on the planet, even if the global population grows to 10 billion, a decent life. We need to really put up those concepts for discussion and we for as business people, leaders in the business community and economists to really think differently about value creation and about value distribution. We need to go back to the notion of values. And in my view, and that's a very personal view, many of the issues that we as a humanity are being confronted with and that we see in society as big, wicked issues are also at the root. A consequence of a crisis of values that we have. Now, let me give you a simple example. The world billionaires have more wealth than the 4.6 billion people who make up 60% of the planet's population. And if those people would pay just half a percent of extra tax on their wealth over the next 10 years, we would be able to really address issues in childcare in education and in health and create 117 million jobs in the process. These are numbers that were published by Oxford Novip. What we often see though is that business people and leaders in responsible positions use economic paradigms to justify the inequality that is there. See it as a logical consequence of the fact that we have a capitalist system that focuses on shareholder value creation. And as a consequence, we end up in a situation that we are at, but rather than finding justification for those inequalities and for those issues, we probably should have the guts to put those very concepts up for debate. And I know this is a provocative statement, but I make this statement on purpose because I would like to trigger you to have a meaningful debate with each other, with the people around you and hopefully also with me in the context of this webinar. This ain't right, no matter how you look at it. And the fact that we are currently seeing that there is hundreds of billions of state money being invested in the public sector and in the private sector. Whilst we will know at the same time that the star companies of today, based upon their tax regimes, avoid paying taxes to the tune of approximately 500 billion. But that's an enormous amount of money that we as a world and as a society desperately need to drive the transition that we want to see. So a strong plea on taking another look at value creation. Don't think about economic growth as growth that can take place at the infinitum. Think about value distribution and think about value creation in a multi dimensional fashion. You would have expected probably these type of statements from politicians from people working in non governmental organizations, but not from somebody who currently is professor of practice at the School of Economics and Management, but who just closed off a career of 30 years at a big multinational being Royal Phillips at the last nine years as member of the Executive Committee. The point that I want to make is that also in the corporate world, the thinking about these type of concept is really changing. We see more and more that a new concept for businesses is arising. And we take inspiration from the famous Harvard professor, Michael Porter, who has developed this notion of creation of shared value where you meet societal needs, but you do it in such a way that it makes good business sense. And if it makes good business sense and it constitutes an opportunity, then you will mobilize an energy source be a corporate enterprise behind addressing those issues that is second to none. There was different thinking about these type of concepts in the business world and some of you will know that many companies have been engaged in philanthropy, where you make donations to work courses and you engage in volunteer activities and in the development of that practice we moved on to corporate social responsibility where there is more focus on compliance with ethical standards, community standards, good corporate citizenship, sustainability. But if I'm honest, much of what happens under the umbrella of corporate social responsibility in philanthropy is basically for companies to mitigate risks to ensure that they have the license to operate and to manage and protect their reputations. It is in a certain way obligation driven. What if creating shared value, if mobilizing the company resources could be used also to create shared value and do that in a way that it safeguards the long term survival of your company and your business and constitute your business opportunities. That is what is new in responsible leadership that embraces the notion of creating shared value. It is not only obligation driven. It is also because it constitutes a phenomenal opportunity. When you think about that continuum from charity to, let's say, creating shared value, you also see that you have different players on that continuum. On the left hand side of this slide, you see the charities, the foundations, the non governmental organizations that really put creating of societal value first. And at the right hand side of this continuum, you see the traditional businesses as we all know them with their strong focus on creation of financial value and I might add, on the short term. But you see many new players arising along the continuum, trying to occupy the sweet spot of creating shared value. Social enterprises, purpose driven businesses, impact ventures, sustainable businesses. And the essence of those new forms of entrepreneurship is that they embrace the process of developing, but also implementing innovative and sustainable solutions that address the big challenges that society is facing today, but that are often neglected. And they do that at a for profit with a for profit motive. This translates into social innovation. It's technical innovation. It's business model innovation. It's go to market innovation. It's marketing innovation. But the good news is that if those social entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs, because you increasingly also see them in big multinational corporations, if they succeed, you create traction vis-à-vis the sustainable development tools. Let me give you a couple of examples. And I start with a very small startup company. It's called Interface. And they observed that many consumers bought carpet when they moved into an apartment or into a house. They buy the carpet and when they move out or when they redecorate the carpet is being taken out. It's being brought to waste and they buy new carpet. It's an enormous amount of waste that is generated in this business and they develop the new business model. They developed carpet as a service. So they provide comfort rather than selling carpets. They embrace the notion of cradle to cradle recycling and to end recycling. And in the meantime, this small startup that started as an initiative of a couple of students has grown into an enterprise of a billion US dollar in sales. And in the meantime, they have also provided 1600 jobs in their company. A good example of a business innovation and business model innovation where you combine doing well with doing good. This is a small startup that happened to be successful in scaling. But some of those smallest startups also team up with bigger companies like Grameen and Danone. Grameen is a very small enterprise that brings low cost fortified yoghurt to malnourished children in Bangladesh, but they couldn't do that alone. So they teamed up with Danone and they happened to have a leader, Frangibault, who said, well, for me, the goal of my company is bring health through food to as many people as possible. And if I do that well, my business will prosper as well. He teamed up with Grameen and sourced the milk from local micro farmers, set up a distribution system of door to door delivery by local agents, local community workers. And they have established a franchise that has given access to nutritious food to hundreds of thousands of children in Bangladesh. And in the meantime, they have created thousands of jobs. So where the first example was a small startup, the second one is a small startup teaming up with a giant. But we also see that those giants are reinventing themselves. We don't have a lot of time to go too deep into Unilever, but I can assure you that Unilever, next to companies like DSM and also Philips, that I will come to talk about, have really made a deliberate choice to align their strategies, their business models and their policies to addressing those big, wicked issues that society is facing, not out of charity or corporate social responsibility motives alone, not only because of the obligation they feel as good corporate citizens, but also because of the opportunity it constitutes. And Unilever has, for instance, made a very strong commitment towards SDG3, which is about water and sanitation for all people. I already referred to Philips, and that is the company that I worked for. And I would like to give you an example on how Philips is trying to operationalize this notion of responsible leadership and acting with purpose. First of all, it formulated its main objective in non-financial terms. The highest goal that the company has publicly stated is to improve the lives of three billion people a year by providing good quality healthcare to the masses. It is not only looking at its shareholders. As a matter of fact, business decisions are being taken by using this compass where you look at multiple stakeholders, starting with the underserved, customers, but also the environment and our employees. And we don't only look at the positive effects of our decisions, but we take the cost of our decisions into account as well when we make business decisions. You see that here in this pie chart in the green areas which are the benefits, but also the red areas that are the cost. It is, in my view, quite unresponsible for big corporations, for instance, to not pay a price for, for instance, the CO2 emissions they are accountable for. It's a price of doing business, but it is a cost for society and not for the shareholders. Many companies, I can assure you, not only the small ones, not only the social enterprises, but also the big corporates like Philips, like Unilever, like the SM, are changing in this direction. What is really different now? Because weren't companies also responsible citizens in the past and weren't they socially engaged? Yes, for sure. But as said, mainly out of an obligation driven motive and perspective, mainly because they felt that it constituted their license to operate and being part of society made them almost go in the direction of also taking care of society at large. But the new notion is that innovating your business, reinventing yourself, reinventing the concepts, the economic concept below value creation or beyond value creation constitutes a business opportunity that is phenomenal. And this report was issued in 2018 by the Business and Sustainable Development Commission, which is a group led by 35 CEOs and civil society leaders. And they said that if businesses go in this direction where they align their strategies more with the Sustainable Development Goals and they innovate the way they think about value creation, there is a 12 trillion opportunity and there is an opportunity to create hundreds of millions of new jobs. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is also a notion that gives me hope because if business people and if the economist see an opportunity to prosper and secure the long term survival of their companies in the world that is changing that rapidly as evidenced by the movie that we showed before the presentation, then there is hope that we can tap into the phenomenal amount of resources and capabilities that those businesses have. But it requires responsible leaders, leaders that really take their responsibility seriously. So the key message is that that I've been trying to convey in my short presentation is that in my view we are coming to the end of the industrial age as we know it. We see that an enormous amount of economic financial wealth has been accumulated over the last 200 years since the Industrial Revolution, but we also see that there are big complex interdependent problems of an economic nature of a social nature of ecological nature that have been accumulated and they might become irreversible if you continue to apply the same concepts and theories that arguably might have contributed to those problems in the first place. I think that the COVID crisis is a wake up call in that sense, because it really clearly shows the underlying vulnerabilities, dependencies and weaknesses in society. In my view, the positive power of COVID could be that it could act as a catalyst or an accelerator to the transition that we need to a new era, but we need responsible leaders in the public sector and in the private sector that don't only look at short term economic value creation, but also long term ecological and social value creation that don't only look at growth as a goal in itself, but also in the distribution of wealth and value. And therewith, make the society a bit more fair, because if you want it to be fair, you need to share. Now the good news is that this is not only something that people in business and leaders need to do because somebody tells them to, or that they are being forced because of situations that we are experiencing in recent times like a health pandemic. It's also an opportunity. It's also an opportunity if you innovate your business model, and you take the responsibility for the innovation of your business model, applying those new concepts. You have a phenomenal opportunity to develop sustainable business that benefits multitude of stakeholders, and therewith, I believe you have the best guarantees for ensuring the long term competitive staying power of your company in a world that is changing fast. And if that is not good enough, then I would like to close off with a quote from Albert Einstein, who said, those who have the privilege to know also have the duty to act. And I think, if anything, we should be more aware that this is the time to act. With that, I would like to close off my presentation and open it up for any questions that you might have. Thank you. Thank you very much for your very inspiring and challenging presentation, I would say. Many questions are coming in at the moment, so you have challenged us with this. So, let me first start with the first question that already came in after about 20 minutes by Derek Young. So, Derek Young, I'm going to ask you, are you, Derek, can you maybe close your question yourself? Derek Young, can you unmute? Yes, I was on mute. Go ahead. Welcome. Thank you for the inspiring presentation. You already referred to him afterwards to Paul Polman. I just finished his book and I was happy to hear many of those aspects are echoed in your presentation. This is a good practice, I think, in a global company like your neighbor, but is he a role model now as you can see as a big global CEO, or did he really miss some crucial elements in his leadership? I know Paul Polman very well and he's been a source of inspiration for me as well. I think, and I also read the book with a lot of interest. But what I think is that if you want to change something that has been persistent for decades, then you will be at first the one that is shouting in the desert, as they say in the Netherlands, the Hoepen in the Wustijn. And you will be faced with a lot of opposition. And people will say that you're foolish, that you don't get it, that this is not the way it works. And then you need to do it at opposition. And I think that in a sense people like Paul Polman, not only Paul Polman, also people like Fekke Siebersma, the former CEO of DSM, who's currently doing a stellar job as the COVID government, they are paving the path, I would say, for more corporate leaders and business leaders to follow their suit. I don't think that I'm in a position to comment on the specific personal leadership style of Paul Polman. I know that he is very passionate about this, and he is also very determined to change things. As a matter of fact, since he retired, he is dedicating his entire time and a big chunk of his fortune to drive the system change in the business world. Thank you, Ronald. Thank you. A second question is coming from our colleague, Frederik Knuts. Frederik, are you online still? You might be on mute, Frederik. Sorry, I would hope that I finally have found the mute button by now. Keep struggling with it. So, I don't know, it seems to me that a lot of companies undertake this shift from going from a shareholder value to a stakeholder value approach. But from the fact that there's a burning platform, really. For example, you need to have a whole tea thing, they realize at some point if they continue like that, there would be no more earth really to grow their tea, and that's what started the whole process. So, do you think that it's things like that, the real burning platform, or is it like intrinsically motivated new generation that's coming in? What's your view on that? This is a great question, Frederik, and I think there is not one answer to it. Party is a burning platform, but let's be honest. We have seen and I saw a chat popping up about how many wake-up calls do we need. I mean, how many times did we hear about air pollution? I mean, more people died in the last three months from air pollution than people dying from COVID. And we know that, for instance, the airline industry and big industry is contributing to that. But we have never been able to make an intervention to slow that down. As a matter of fact, relying upon the market as a regulating mechanism using the old economic doctrines, we have seen that ticket prices have been dropping. And despite the fact that we need to get away from the fossil industry, the IMF is subsidizing the fossil industry with five trillion US dollars a year. So point being, there is not only a burning platform has been there. I think now it is more acute due to COVID. But it is also the opportunity that people see, arguably, and that is a point that I've been trying to make. And to a certain extent, it is generational. My own personal view, though, is another provocative statement, probably, that we also should not overestimate that. I think that very often the way we talk about millennials and generation X, Y and Z is as if they are a different species. And if I go back in my own, let's say, life, I see also many similarities between what people are after today versus what we were after 30, 40 years ago. So it might be partly generational. It is partly the burning platform. We are with our back against the walls. It's also partly the opportunity that people see and that these leaders are feeling attracted to. So maybe finally, it's sort of perfect storm. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Frédéric. So we've got another question here from Thierreukers. Are you still on board? Yes, I'm definitely still on board. Thank you. Hi, everybody. It's Tom Reukers, but I can see yes. So no, I commented and posed the question at the same time. So I commented that I believe in general it's a good start for organizations to embrace as Ronald also showed the sustainability development goals. But at the same time, I have a question on that. Is there data available demonstrating that companies who have embraced those goals, that they perform better on stakeholder value and perhaps shareholder value compared to companies who didn't embrace those. And the short answer is yes. But there is a question that is underlying the question that is, if you say, do they perform better than my challenge to you would be defined perform. One of the things that I see and I've been trying to elucidate that based upon that purpose compass that I showed is that also management accounting will be changing quite drastically over the next couple of years as a matter of fact that Tilburg University. We are doing some work on that with Bart Deering also from the School of Economics, but then in the accounting department, where you see that the performance of a business is being evaluated, and not only by looking at the pnl in the balance sheet, but at all the factors as well My feeling is that we will see more and more of that. What I also see is that many shareholders and big investors, institutional investors but also financial analysts are as a matter of fact putting pressure on corporations to start reporting their performance in a multi dimensional fashion, which I think is a good thing. You might have read the letter that Larry think the head of BlackRock, which is one of the biggest, let's say asset management companies in the world, sends to CEOs of a company she invests in or as company investing where he basically actively calls upon them to embrace the stakeholder model rather than the shareholder model. I mean this goes back to the fact that the Anglo American model, the neoliberal model is slowly but surely making place for a revival of the Rhineland model that we used to have in Europe in the early days. So we will see more and more of that, we need to redefine the performance, but there is evidence, there is data as well, and I can share that via the organizing committee separately, and that as a matter of fact those companies perform better as well. A long answer to a complex question. Thank you. Okay, okay, for you, Tom, yeah, well, there's many questions coming in, Ronaldo. So there's about 10 minutes left. So I'm going to ask quickly to Yolanda. Berikov, you also posed a question. Are you still online? Yes. Fine. Yeah. Okay, welcome. So the question is about the era you refer to as the end of the industrial era. What errors are are next ahead of us. Personally, I believe the information era, but we are. Yeah. The key is that the way this is being talked about very often is that we are entering before we are basically in the midst of the force industrial revolution where the first one was the steam engine, and the second one was the mass production. The industrialization mass production and consumption of goods. The third one was the computer era and the fourth industrial revolution is one where a lot of things come together. Bioengineering, big data, smart algorithms, digitization in the broader sense. Well, technology, and all of, and the revolutions we see in healthcare technology, the genomics, all of that coming together at the same point in time. So that is what is being referred to as the force industrial revolution, a society that is incredibly complex, but also offers a lot of opportunity to address those wicked issues. And only if we abandon some of the old paradigms in thinking about how you run a corporation as a leader. And that's the point I've been trying to make a lot of things coming together at the same time. It's kind of perfect storm. Okay. Yeah, okay. Thanks. Well, don't we have free papers. Are you still online? Yeah, I'm still online. Hello, Ronald. Thank you. Interesting speech you're painting a giving a hopeful perspective. We're slowly but surely to a certain direction. But if you if you look at the challenges you picture at the beginning of your of your speech about 2050 is a question you can propose is it isn't too little too late. Do we have an alternative? I mean, my point is, if we this is almost a bit of a philosophical debate, but I think that we need to have the guts to abandon those old paradigms. And I don't know whether it's too little too late. We also have strong belief in the resilience of people in their ingenuity in the in the in the persistence to achieve goals. Yeah, as a matter of fact, I think that this is this COVID crisis that we are all seeing is also giving me hope in in the strangest shapes and forms. Despite the fact that people are working remotely there seems to be more community sense. As recently as today, we get signals that there might be a medicine. It's the famous Oxford medicine and the test results are hopeful. I mean, we talk about a couple of months that we are able to make those statements where normally in the pharmaceutical industry you talk about years. So is it too little too late? I hope not. Because as some people say there is no planet B. So, but but we will need to see sustainable behavioral change. And we need leaders to initiate that change and role model that change and go as fast as they as they humanly can. And I hope it's not too late. Thank you, Ronald. Thanks if I can. So when it comes to leadership, there's a question from Patricia. Patricia, are you still there? Please unmute. Yes. Thanks Patricia. Thank you and thanks for this very interesting presentation. And my question is about the the leadership which in this presentation you focus on the leadership at a strategic level. And I'm interested in what your personal view is on the way we can spread these ideas throughout the whole organizations. Yeah. That's, I mean, I realize that when I have 30 minutes to make a pitch on a complex topic, that you cannot do justice to, let's say, the notion of leadership in its broader sense. As a matter of fact, I'm trying to set up a new course at the University on responsible leadership and that will be multiple, let's say classes and lectures over a longer periods of time where we go into all those into all those elements. I think it starts with leadership. I think that is that is for sure. Leadership behavior very often of people in a responsible position gets copied. The good behavior the bad behavior also the ugly behavior. So leadership in that sense is important value based leadership is important. And that that have the courage and the guts to challenge existing paradigms and face the adversity and opposition that is important. And how does that percolate into the organization. Look at companies like Unilever DSM, but also Phillips, you will see that as a matter of fact, one of the main reasons that people want to work for those companies and stay there is is the purpose is the fact that those companies trying to do the right thing are aware of the fact that they might have adverse effects based upon decision they take, but they put that on the table and try to mitigate that. I think that is increasingly probably something generational where being purposeful and responsible is a magnet for talent and talent will at the end of the day define the success of your organization. So I see that leaders have a key role to play there, and that we talked tonight about about corporate leaders. I saw a pop up of a chat where my opinion was asked about some of the political leaders we have in the world around us today. I don't want to go too deep into politics but I think by comparing and contrasting people will eventually do the right thing. That is my hope. We could also assume that they will do the wrong thing. But that is a very doom and gloom perspective. So leaders have a very important role and their gentleness, their authenticity is very easily recognized and is very easily followed. If it's not genuine or not authentic, it fires back tremendously and there are also examples of that, but that's for one of those lectures that is in the making. Okay, thank you very much. So Ronald, you already referred to some of the political leaders and Leynard de Jong asked a question about Donald Trump. But I think you dealt really a little bit with that question of Leynard. Leynard, can we go on to the next person that asked the question, is that okay to you? Because I think that Ronald already answered some of it. Yes, that's a good idea. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right, so then I go to Brent. Brent, are you still online? Yes, I'm still here. Hello everyone. Hi, and welcome. Hello Ronald. Well, hey, my question is about the aspect of value creation. In some cases, shared value and traditional value creation depends on the month and the market. And so it would be possible for an organization to operate 50-50, let's say 50-50, maybe 30-70, in the old and new way of value creation. Because some people want still cheap products and other ones, one more products are made responsible, for instance. My question is, should we not be looking at the cost side or supply side of this whole question, and by starting internalizing costs and making companies really accountable for the true cost of business, so to say? Yeah, the simple answer to that question is that I wholeheartedly agree. So that's one of the paradigm shifts that we need to make. And I realize that I've not been clear, but there is what you do in that purpose compass, where you add the cost of doing business. Whether it ends up in your P&L or not, I mean, is a matter of time. But if you use it as a factor to base your decisions upon, you come to different outcomes. And I am pretty much convinced that over time, laws, regulations, but also demands from the financial world will result in a different way of taking those factors into account that so far have been considered externalities. I mean, the point, this is the very essence. My statement would be, and again, a bit black and white, that the wealth accumulated over the last 200 years was very often at the expense of resources, natural resources, ecological resources, also human resources, and not in harmony with those resources. Now, if you want to balance it out, I mean, what gets measured gets done. So you need to make sure that you price that in. I'm very much in favor of that rent. Okay. Maybe if I can ask one follow up question. And I'm looking at here, John, he is the boss today. Yeah, you know, we got three minutes left. So that's, that's going to be the final question. And before you post that question, would you be available or would you be open to answering questions by email because there's about seven additional questions. How would you like to go about that? Yeah, no, that is fine. So maybe we can agree that Renske sends me those questions. I answer them. Seven is fine. 15 is also not an issue. 70 would be a bit too much. I guess to digest that for sure I will do my best to answer them all in a short period of time. Okay, Brent, so we'll go ahead with final question of tonight. All right, thank you. The question is, who would be responsible for setting the standards would it be the market in the government with government agencies, maybe on the continental level, or a combination of them and why. Yeah. I think you will see a mixed model in some cases the biggest and the most powerful form of regulation self regulation. Again, and that is that is also not always happening. So, I think that we, I literally said the state is back that is what we have seen in the COVID crisis, and not only from let's say a negative connotation but also with a I think a positive connotation. So the state will have a role to play, but all the stakeholders as well, and the very essence I think of leadership in the new world is this collaboration, this collaboration between various people that at the end of the day make up society. So, it will be a combination where self regulation is proven to be powerful and they're where government needs to help to get that going and provide guidance that is very much needed as well. All right, thanks. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot, Ronald, because we're coming. Yeah, this 829 so we promise to keep this one hour. So, like, like I just proposed, if you would have any additional questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to Ronald. You will find Ronald's email address on the presentation that will be sent to you tomorrow by our relations department. That's one thing. I was going to ask you one more question, Ronald, but you're not going to be able to pose tonight, but we'll talk about it because I was just wondering what is the role of academia of our university or universities in this respect, but you don't have to answer that tonight. Well, but this is like giving me the opportunity to make a statement that I've been wanting to make for a long time. A lot of the thinking will have to be substantiated and it will have to be, let's say, be rooted in research and new models will have to be concentrated. So, my, and that is why I want to embrace this at Tilburg University as a, as a new, let's say, theme, because Tilburg is very strong in economics, we know that it's very strong in humanities as well. And it is for me a bit frustrating as a professor at this university to see that many other universities are really very active in this field, developing new concepts, testing new concepts, doing a lot of research. And I think there is a lot done in Tilburg, but it is very compartmentalized. And I think we need to bring it together. And I want to, let's say, invest my energy in doing just that. Thank you very much. So dear, dear alumni, before closing the session, I'm going to ask you to just stay a little while online, because we're going to end with a short video of Frédéric Knut, who posted one of the first questions tonight on the right of Alumni Relations. But after the presentation, the short video, then the session will be closed. So let me wish you a very nice evening. Thanks again, Ronald, for your very inspiring presentation. Hope to see you next week again. Bye bye now. Good evening. I really hope you enjoyed today's contents, today's webinar. It was offered to you by TS School for Business and Society in cooperation with the professional learning program of Tilburg University. And I hope it was exciting and that you learned something. And that's what we are as a university. We're supposed to learn you something and inspire you. And my name is Frédéric Knut. I just wanted to tell you a little bit about our students. I'm director of Alumni Relations. I'm also director of the Tilburg University Fund. And there is something that's concerning me. And I wanted to share that concern with you. A lot of our students, especially international students, are having a really hard time. Many of them lost their jobs in bars and restaurants. So they have no access to funds. Many of them have lost the support of their parents because their parents became unemployed. So they struggle financially. And we all know if you struggle financially, it's really hard to concentrate on your studies. And that's why the Tilburg University Fund has decided to allocate funds to help these students. And today I would like to ask you for your support. If you enjoyed this webinar today, I'm really hoping that you would like to show your appreciation by donating to the fund to help our students. We'll be taking the liberty to send you a SMS, a ticket with a request for a donation. And obviously, if you don't like this, please delete it. No obligations. But if you share my concern for our students, then please consider donating. And that would not only make me very happy, but obviously it would really help our students and make them happy. And make them able to concentrate on studies and finish this year successfully. Thank you so much. Hope to see you again next webinar. And have a nice evening.