 Good afternoon now welcome to this series about leadership. It's really a conversation that all of us here Actually will be sort of eavesdropping. We have the privilege to listen in on a very interesting conversation about a very important topic What I like to share first is that you know the world economic forum as an institution We set out to help leaders learn but we often don't spend enough time to understand really how did leaders get there? What was their personal journey? And in this regard we have really two really great stories that we'll hear from today a conversation that really is anchored fundamentally around the question of discovery curiosity science I think As you'll know in a moment and it's very apropos that we're doing this at our annual meeting of new champions where the focus is really around Science technology innovation and really how does that all serve the needs of society? So I have the great pleasure to welcome and to introduce a co-chair of this annual meeting new champions And that's Abu Hamed who is not only an eminent scholar and in the sense, but also an entrepreneur Who is the co-founder and CEO of H2 go power? And she'll be joined by actually a former co-chair of this meeting itself as well John Pierre Bourguignon who is the president of the European Research Council, which you probably all aware is really the premier funding funder of science globally not just in Europe and I'm really excited about this discussion because I know that When you you're here today as leaders, but when the journey started you're just very curious people who's devoted a lot of time At university and such really looking at really interesting questions, right? It's about knowledge that pursuit of knowledge But today we're going to ask you to sort of put on your wisdom hat So the short act short way I look at it is you know knowledge is what we put in our minds But then in a way the wisdom is what we start to take out of it and so we're delighted to be part of this conversation and We are also really excited that in this series on leadership that we're actually going to hear from you as citizens of course of the world, but also Your journey as leaders from the perspective of the science community, which I think is very very relevant Of course in this age of the fourth industrial revolution, so I'm going to turn the conversation over to two of you and We look forward to where you take us with your stories Thank you Thank you very much Lee for the kind introduction and Hello everyone. Good afternoon So I am a representative to the young scientist community here in the word economic forum and today our conversation about leadership 4.0 and has to do a lot with science and research and hunting for evidence before making Decisions and therefore this is how we can basically expect responsible leadership so Just as a brief introduction of why we need to talk about responsible leadership and in the context of leadership 4.0 in the fourth industrial revolution age It is because we have got many decisions wrong if we look around and look at threatening problems and crisis that we have Around and my generation has inherited problems like climate change for example And How do we deal with it now? When we should have listened to scientists in the 50s when they said there is climate change crisis coming and I'd like to start by Asking you jump here a question in terms of so we have a growing population From 7 billion to 11 billion expected by the end of the century we have a rising problems and Many of them are going to be solved by a scientific invention How do we increase the ratio of people who can solve problems to people who have these problems? so we make more responsible Decisions and help leaders to be to become more responsible Well, actually you are asking a very difficult question One thing I tend to say as a scientist We have to of course to speak up and claim that we can do some things But to also have to be very careful not to oversell that is to claim to do things that we cannot do I'm sure that the problems you are addressing you are mentioning is very critical for the future particularly in view of an increasing population and Will require actually scientific solutions But at the same time it will not be possible without the proper implementation by many people and This can only be achieved that that's part of the new equation that the level of education has to increase worldwide and Not only increase in quantity, but also in autonomy of thinking I think it will be more and more important that people can really by themselves Convince that were in the sense even some things could become Constraints on people that things that you used to do you will not do them because you you are conscious that they will Go in the wrong direction and so one has to manage by I think the only way it will be education To really get the support of people because they realize that really in order to face some difficulties that you identified some Actually or to implement some solutions which are proposed For example, if you talk about energy, which is your specialty, of course most likely we will need more energy But we know we also know that the quality of energy were producing has to be different But also maybe people have to know that they have to moderate the use of energy and how do you do that? In a good way that is without people feeling really so much constrained that they refuse and in the end They prefer to follow people who give advice to ignore the problem And of course, we know very well now that if we ignore this problem They will become totally insurmountable and then will become really real threats So I think this is this combination and so why is 4.0 important because definitely today we we know that the connectivity of the world has increased fantastically That the access to information has improved remarkably, but at the same time I'm not sure that people have been prepared for that so for the moment it's more a deluge of information and people have a lot of difficulty of Discriminating in this information. What is relevant? What is irrelevant? What is true? What is wrong? And I think I'm coming back to my issue on education I think education has to play a much more significant role in training the next generations in being able to face this and to really Well at the same time cultivate the curiosity But also cultivate the level of responsibility of people if we cannot manage to do that and I think we have the tools to do that, but it may it means a long-term effort and really a willingness of Governments over the planet to look for a more educated More educated population as you know one of the very stable laws in terms of for example The growth of population is if you increase the level of knowledge of women then you decrease the number of children they have actually Still a significant number because we need the population to really develop properly, but this is a very well known So I think without We have to use these new tools to really make Education more efficient and people more by themselves self Having a better capacity of deciding So now concerning your area, which is energy. Do you what do you see the future of energy? How can energy be transformed in the way which contributes to the challenge that you raised? so Very big question that I've been thinking about it the past ten years of my life I'm not sure I have a full answer or a full firm formula for that I'm sure also so many world leaders and leaders in the energy industry Have a full clear clear answer for that for many reasons First as I mentioned the challenge of demand To be growing and The other challenge from the Other side around the way we are used to Generate energy which is polluting with the emissions that we produce and the way as users we are used to consume energy in some parts of the world We don't have access to To energy and some other part of the word we leave the house and leave the the lights on so First there isn't there isn't One formula that would work in Nigeria and in the US that would apply for for everyone that we would say we need a better system We're gonna follow this manual and then we have one problem that we solved within with with a manual or with one formula So that's a challenge. We have to look at different areas in the world and see where the areas that are For example, they don't have a lot of access to power and understand that if we want to introduce power to these areas We have to take into account What's going on in this region or if we go to Places where they have options to implement renewable energy they can afford the cost of that they can afford to work with zero emission and Educate and train their customers to be more efficient when they consume energy So they reduce their carbon footprint and carbon emissions We do it this way in one part of the world we do it differently in other parts of the world So there is an energy transition movement We have to move a more efficient energy system a much cleaner system and really look at our carbon footprint because it's gonna come back at us and and if we don't solve this Climate change is our biggest enemy Another question is so you are in a position now where you really were trained in the academic world But now you move to be an entrepreneur How was this transition possible? I mean who was this your Decision very early on where even you were a little girl or you just just happened that At some point you felt that the right way of developing what you wanted to do was to get out in some some sense of the academic system It was a completely unplanned journey So when I was doing My PhD back in the days And I was really interested in the topic that I was researching As a typical scientist as I thought that my my research meant the whole word for me Because that's where I spent most of the time the lab doing my experiments I was working on an energy related research and I didn't necessarily know what problem is solved and Then I was invited to go to Africa and give a talk about my research results I went there and That was the first time I realized actually that there are people in the world who don't have control over the switch It's not like a matter of clicking it on and off They they basically work around when the Sun is out and that's basically the most efficient hours I realized that there are hospitals in some part of the world who run out of power because of you know They run out of diesel and then that means that they cannot do operations and I was started to think that You know what this exciting research is Not gonna solve a problem unless I design it in a way Where we take the learnings from the research and we do something about it So if we can work on a product that could be introduced to especially people in the developing world to solve a real problem I think that's where in my opinion my science could could be purposed in a best it could be positioned in the best way and This is what I wanted to do from from that from that point from that trip like my Perspective about what I wanted to contribute to as a scientist and changed I really saw the value in acting like an entrepreneur very good, but Do you find this new involvement? Fundamentally different from the one you had before or is it Is your life a different life now that you are doing this or? Yes, so My responsibilities are very different and I Am not the person who is doing the research anymore. I am not the The solo inventor I am the person who think about the team and how basically we can bring in the best person in the best area So we can structure a business together because it's Putting an operation unit where many different people can contribute to different sides of the business It's very different than the job of of a scientist who look at specific problem and try to come up with a study that solve that but So you are this stage of your life where you have already achieved something quite remarkable in developing a company How do you see the future for that is that? You would like at some point come back to academia or is You see you have an idea about that or you just expect things will just happen and Yeah, so I do have two umbrellas one of a scientist and the second one of an entrepreneur I obviously spent Almost all my time under the hat of the entrepreneur and I Don't know if if if I have a short-term plan to go back to academia Because I have started a journey that I'd really like to continue as an entrepreneur and try and Amplify the impact that a scientific product could make as a product when we introduce it to Many people even if they don't have the ability to understand the scientific depth behind it They will be able to use it and benefit from it So I really like that mission and I think I'd like to to to continue on this journey, but at the same time and Sharing knowledge and sharing my experience Without teaching people about like, you know, this is a formula you take the formula you apply it to something and it works This way this is expected I might I might be able to to go back to Sure share my experience and knowledge as academic give lectures and stuff like that so the title of our session contains 4.0, so in a sense it is related to the new world in which we live which has a lot of Data available and a lot of decisions are made on data with the consequence that actually we are under deluge of information and the key point for I'm sure in your profession, but also in my situation is to Analyze this data and retain only the ones which are reliable But also relevant for for what I want to do. Maybe if I want to do something else I will use all the data So how do you see the the capacity of the world to really move in this environment again? I'm touching to What I said about education that also this is something for which Presently at least if I look at the French system, I'm a Frenchman the education system is not training students to or even young Young students to really discriminate between the information is information So you have to learn I think it's more and more important now to learn and to discriminate between relevant information between reliable information Do you think there is something which is needed in this area or whether it will just solve by itself that Unreliable information is going to die by itself or how do you see the future of this because this is a new dimension for which I think many systems have not been prepared and In particularly even the scientific community, of course is benefiting fantastically from this access to information access to data, but at the same time are we Mastering it in the right way. That is how do we train our students in the best way to use this information? Yes, so obviously we have introduced Something new to our system. So we need to really train the system to work efficiently with all the data and access to information that we have so A child now doesn't have to go to Competitions or even to to school to learn about a topic they can Google it and they can Make basically their own curriculum of something that they are there of things that they are interested in so access to information is Can make our learning much more advanced now the question of Is all the access the accessible knowledge is it good and because it's accessible shall we really go ahead and Get what we think you know accept what we get even if all if we what we get is packaged With with the wrong type of knowledge that we actually should not access and we should not know and we should not really introduce to Definitely we need measures and controls to make sure that when we are training Researchers when we are training students when we are training kids to access knowledge and they don't exceed Their capacity of absorbing a certain type of information and it's monitored in a way that you know, we don't really Play with their like brainwash them or give them wrong impressions of the word So we can really like use the knowledge in a very positive way and and make advancements rather than You know be easily accessible and get radicalized and these are these are one of the problems that we've seen and and I really hope that we can really focus on Trying to get the right measures in place to where to tackle this issue One thing I've seen in my own life very important is to seize opportunities when they come and very often they Come at the moment. You don't expect them for myself for example I've been a mathematician in my life and at some point I was in charge of Committee to select mathematicians in France at the CNRS and I was not expecting to chair this committee I was too young to do that but the person who was supposed to do that just didn't get elected so there was somebody missing and then all of a sudden people fell on me by saying you should do that and Actually, I hesitated a lot because I didn't feel I was prepared but at some point They decided to take the chart take on the challenge and try to do it Which of course resulted in my obligation because of this new function, which I didn't was not prepared for to really broaden my landscape also to be able to Defend my field towards other disciplines which I've never done before so I think in terms of leadership they very often these kind of Unexpected moments, but and then you have that you have to face and you have to say yes or no Extremely important. Did you face similar situations or do you think it's something? For everybody to think about that is to say if this happens to me, what do I do? so I Think everyone's career in many ways Like develop in ways that they don't they don't plan it and sometimes Maybe in the old generation People did choose what they wanted to study. They did choose a job and if they didn't choose to change it they stayed on the job and for for many years, but I Think my my generation represent Because there are so many opportunities now around us You cannot plan your journey accurately. You cannot say I'm gonna Study this and then do this and this is a job that I'm gonna do for the rest of my life So in my case, I did not plan my journey I thought and when I when I was doing a PhD. I was thinking about the PhD I really had no idea what I'm going to do afterwards I thought that I was going to get a job in an energy company I did not think that I'm going to start an energy company myself I definitely did not have any plan or imagined. This is what I'm going to do and When we officially registered the company, I remember we did that because we got a European Commission grant and that When I took the check to the bank they said You need to register a company and then we will create a bank account So we registered a company that was the the catalyst of starting a company really like and starting to do it and Maybe even then like at at At some point I thought that by the time I finish my PhD will probably shut the company down and I'll go find a job and Obviously things did not go according to plan because we're still growing but But it's been an incredible journey and I could not have planned it But in a sense what you said is that to start the company you got some public support And so how do you see this the future of a relation between public and private because I think the new world the 4.0 is a world in which clearly I mean a lot has to be correspond to long-term investments Some long-term investments can be done by the public sector and some others are also done by the private sector So how do you see the interface between the two? Such a great question and I'd really like to share my experience with the with the audience I mean I can see like an international audience here, so The investment world work and the private investment world work in a way that investors are mostly focused on short-term returns and Any business proposition gets funded if it gets if it takes a few boxes and It might be like the simplest idea that gets funding and it might be like the most Fascinating idea that solves a big problem that won't get funded by private money Because of the process that takes to develop it because of how long the return cycle could be and that's where Public funding comes Into the picture and it will have an instrumental rule to push Hardware energy technologies for example that are very very needed to reduce carbon emissions but you cannot develop them without a lot of money and especially like at the initial and Phases of the business if we did not have public support and I'm talking from experience We would have not existed by now Because private investors did see the long journey and they did not find that appealing We were competing on the same pots of money with people who generated businesses that could be Productized and introduced to user within six months Whereas the development cycle of a hardware energy business could take more than five years So you see this in your case for example, if you didn't have this public support you will not have been able to Develop your your company. Is that the correct understanding? Yes Absolutely not it wouldn't have been possible without public support and Europe is doing extremely well on that front Obviously, we can always improve and do more but there are many other countries and many other continents where public support is Not available and the potential of innovation and scientific inventions and contributions scaling solutions like that Doesn't get the same chance doesn't get the same shot because of the lack of public funding and I really hope that this is something that could be introduced to places where it's not available in so Everyone in the world could really benefit from innovation that pops in one area So we have only three minutes. So what would be your conclusion or advice you would give to leaders of the next generation So I'd like to go back to my message as a co-chair for this meeting and Say that there is a lot of value in Scientist and their contribution to the decision-making process If we are able to find a system where we increase How much contribution we can take from scientists and how to turn to the scientific community? To capture validation Hunt for evidence before we make decision Because decisions specially political decisions corporate decisions. They are long-term Decisions are very difficult to reverse once they are made if we can make them based on evidence We will have more confidence that we're making the right decision and this is what? responsible leadership Could be and should be in the fourth industrial revolution Well, if you allow me to draw my own conclusion for for this discussion. I think for me One thing I've seen all my life as a scientist, but also in the positions I've had in particular was director of an institute, but also president of Europe European Research Council has been really what makes the difference our people. So I think we are always to be extremely careful in choosing people in giving people opportunities and That to make sure that we design systems in which people are really coming up with their really most daring ideas because taking risk is Not the spontaneously what the institutions tend to do. They tend to be very protective they tend to really look for the worst when actually they should look for the best and Actually, this is something which is very important to when you do when you design a system an ERC was a system Which was designed after a long struggle That you make sure that you are not because of the way you conceive the whole system You put yourself in a situation where actually you you don't get the right people to Want to work with you and actually the privilege of my function has been to meet so many fantastic People with a lot of ambitious ideas taking risk And I think we have to be careful that in many areas This risk-taking is really taking seriously Because I think spontaneously the organization tend to limit the risk which at some point I understand why but it could have the negative effect that actually you push away The people you would like actually to attract so it's very important to create the conditions when you attract the right people Thank you so much. There's been a pleasure extending with you. Thank you. Thank you John Pierre Many of us in the room are parents grandparents aunts uncles and such and I think you know one thing We're drumming in our head is the importance of in the future stem in the fourth industrial revolution But I think you break, you know you articulated and I think revealed to us another dimension to that and that it's really a journey and And for us to really help that next generation enable that and also the role of the public sector and the private sector Working out which is very much at the heart of the forum. So thank you for letting us listening on this very interesting conversation Thank you. Thank you. Thank you