 a lot of the people in the impact economy or in the sector that we work with realize the gravity of the situation and realize that we could not afford to be to say okay let's take this one off and sit and do nothing no and wait until things go back to normal. We realize that it's time to actually have a different normal, not normal and build a different build-back vector if you if you hear in many environments of how we think and how we bring innovation at scale and speed and I think so again from my side it has been an extremely positive experience of mobilizing like-minded people that are feeling that the time is right and that the needs are more evident and sadly some of the gains especially if we're going to talk about poverty we are seeing some some negative numbers so we cannot be too late in reacting. Dr. Professor Vanina Farber and Dr. Peter Wolfley are my guests on this episode of Inside Ideas brought to you by 1.5 Media and Innovators Magazine. Vanina is an economist and political scientist with 20 years of teaching research and consultancy experience. She holds the Ella Chair for Social Innovation at IMD. Previously Vanina was Dean of the Graduate School of Business and Associate Professor at Universitas del Pacifico in Peru. Peter is a doctor and senior leader and entrepreneurial philanthropist. He is the founder and chairman of Ella Foundation for Ethics and Globalization and the honorary chairman of IMD. Previously Peter was a partner at McKenzie and Company, the CEO of UBS Group, the chairman of Partners Group and of IMD. In 2015 he published the book Inclusive Leadership and he also started the foundation with his wife and I believe it was around 2006 and so it started out as a nice type of a family effort and the foundation has done wonderful things here today. We have actually four different aspects in the room today so besides my two wonderful guests we're also going to be talking about the book the Ella Way and I want to tell you a little bit about that. Social entrepreneurship and impact investing contribute to a more inclusive capitalism and bring innovative solutions to global challenges such as fighting poverty and protecting planet earth. This book offers practical advice on how to best integrate entrepreneurship and capital for impact and innovation by using Ella's philanthropic investing approach to fight absolute poverty with entrepreneurial means as an example. Written by these two wonderful leading experts the book summarizes insights from Ella's 15-year pioneering journey from creating an investment organization choosing purposeful themes and sourcing opportunities to partnering with entrepreneurs for impact creation this includes suggestions on how to lead impact enterprises in such areas as developing strategies plans and models building effective teams and organizations managing resources and handling crisis using real-life examples in this valuable reading for entrepreneurs investors executives philanthropists policymakers and anyone curious about entrepreneurship and inclusive capitalism. Now with our last guest or mention on the show is the Institute for Management and Development which we will call from now on IMD is an independent academic institution with Swiss roots and global research founded almost 75 years ago by business leaders for business leaders since its creation IMD has been a pioneering force in developing leaders who transform organizations and contribute to society. That was a mouthful and I thank everyone for making it this far I promise we have an exciting show for us please welcome my guests it's so good to have you both here today thank you for being on the show thank you for the invitation and the kind words of introduction to my pleasure thank you peter thank you it's so wonderful to have you both on the show and I really want to get into a deep dive discussion about the book about what you guys have been doing for a while but first and foremost I need to ask both of you the question and I'll let you fight out over who goes first but maybe we could we could give a wonderful professor in the room first the answer and that is with all this experience all this work that you guys have done research and in this area of impact investing about working with social entrepreneurs and being in these topics of inclusive leadership and things over all these years being at a university and academic level has that provided you with any form of sustainability any form of resilience to weather this crazy time we've all had during the pandemic and how have you weathered all this time up until this point good so I think at least from my personal side and I think we have seen the inequality of responses in in this pandemic I think from a very privileged side I found several silver linings if you want in this in this pandemic and one is I think there has been a change in mindset we we realize in a certain way that systemic risk can become very real no certain things in the past when we talk about climate change or even if we talk about poverty in general seem too abstract and when we were talking about the pandemic or a virus seemed like a very small risk or something that was systemic but we knew could happen but it didn't seem real and I think now we're leaving the consequences and the massive destruction of value so I think in a certain point the pandemic brought this different perception of how something that sounds or seems very improbable or or small probability in the tail we say when we talk about risk can actually destroy value and in the other I think from from another perspective probably Peter will be able to address even this side more as I think when you work in in social impact that you make a decision in the impact economy we always talked about being forward-looking and about especially impact investment patient capital no not to look at the profits tomorrow or today or a short span and I think a lot of the answers right now need to be patient no and also need to look beyond the crisis on how how we can build impact into the decision making so I think those two things even though we live in today the idea of before we're looking I think is something important or has helped me to to study relatively same again from a very privileged situation in Switzerland and what a job at a university no before we hear from Peter I want to poke a little bit further and get some a couple more things from you so where you can did you continue this year to teach and offer programs and courses and also you released the book in February so there's been some things about promotion around the book but about the formulas and the methods and the models and the way of thinking in the book have any of those things that are discussed in there or during this time you've seen some aha moments because you've been doing it you've been addressing it for a while that those came to bubble to the surface or you said what we were well prepared because we were kind of speaking about these things and and talking about you know poverty and issues and crisis there's a section in the book that talks about crisis and crisis management as well and and so did that give you any good positive stories or preparedness or how how did you handle those things as well I think again as a professor and an IMD is a relatively small institution and very entrepreneurial we said we we don't get worried we get busy you know so I think this is something that push our creativity to deliver content and to be near in a different way and I've been teaching online for the last 12 years so even before I came to IMD so I'm very comfortable with environment so I think I got very busy I started doing webinars we work closely with Peter I believe that it was the time since a lot of people were captive at home to try to build the community around the last center for social innovation and I tried to activate a lot of my what I would say move my my social capital move the people that I know to actually be also active you know and I think a lot of the people in the impact economy or in the sector that that we work with realize the gravity of the situation and realize that we could not afford to be to say okay let's take this one off and sit and do nothing no and wait until things go back to normal we realize that it's time to actually have a different normal not normal and build a different build but vector if you if you hear in many environments of of how we think and how we bring innovation at scale and speed and I think so again from my side it has been an extremely positive experience of mobilizing like-minded people that are feeling that the time is right and that the needs are more evident and sadly some of the gains especially if we're going to talk about salute poverty we are seeing some some negative numbers so we cannot be too late in reacting thank you very much peter well they're very different feelings and very ambivalent reactions to this crisis on one hand obviously having the privilege to live in switzerland and one just can't get away being feeling incredibly grateful for living in a country with a functioning democracy with a responsible government with a good healthcare system with strong institutions where things are debated where science is considered and obviously comparing that to how some other countries in the western as well as in the emerging world have been dealing with it creates a sense of gratitude at the same time its sadness of how much progress has been essentially undone often not because of the virus but because of the reactions to the virus pushing hundreds of people into poverty hundreds of million of people back into poverty after having reached a lot of progress in recent years with people improving their livelihoods and i guess finally from our perspective dealing on a daily basis with entrepreneurs in these countries it was just incredibly humbling to see how they kind of on one hand fought for survival showed an enormous amount of resilience under much more difficult conditions in their countries with unpredictable government measures with difficult logistics with not as well elaborated IT infrastructure and they still succeeded in basically moving people to home office and having to close their activities and having to reduce at the already low level their incomes and at the same time grasping opportunities i mean we have some of our investments are in the field of informal retail last mile distribution for example one of our investments Dharma life in India reaches 13 million people in rural India and they were able to reach out to them and give them trusted information on hygiene on how to cope with protecting each other against the virus and i think that was very humbling and in a way confirmed one of the basic beliefs in our book by the way the book appeared in November not in February so it was very recently published and it proved that impact results from entrepreneurship i mean entrepreneurial people entrepreneurial attitudes entrepreneurial capabilities they lead to sustainable change that's one of our key belief and on a very personal note i must say covid for me helped me to get the concentration in summer to actually write the book because a lot of the agenda was changed we could no longer travel and for bookwriting home office is actually a good thing that's wonderful so i'm also dealing with that i'm getting ready to release my book menu be people on planet food saving solutions and i know that i was fortunate enough and to let the listeners know to receive an advanced copy here on that and and the date on there was that so i i i assumed that was the original publishing date but there are some timely things about covid and and things that that you can tell that that there was some some aspects of that as well so i want to ask you another question peter and that's kind of a little bit more towards your background and what even got you to the point of not only starting the foundation and from going from ubs hedge fund was it some of those maybe negative experiences and and also with i i don't know if imd ethics work that you did was prior or during ubs or if it was after and how that kind of bubbled to the surface for you to even transition more in this direction which which is probably in my opinion a little bit different than this ubs hedge fund and and the departure of ubs well i was chief executive of ubs group and not of ubs hedge fund but of ubs group until the middle of 2007 and we created a layer foundation at the end of 2006 so before i left and i think there were three elements that drove me to essentially launch a layer foundation one was that i always felt that globalization is the mega trend of our generation and that globalization overall has a lot of net positives provides enormous opportunities to hundreds of million of people to step out of poverty but at the same time has losers and has lots of people that do not have access to globalization opportunities and being born in switzerland and having had the privilege to have the career that i had you you just can't help then to feel some level of solidarity with all those that did not have that access and so that's one part the other part is a very personal one i when i was a student i'm an economist i i developed a passion for poverty economics and i always felt it should be the noble purpose of an of an economist to understand why poverty exists and what can be done about it and so i was incredibly thrilled when a year ago two empirical poverty economists got the noble prize for the first time actually and so it was very much of a deep passion of mine that goes back to my days as a student and the third had to do with life planning i i made as you indicated a quite a rapid career i became chief executive of a large global multinational company at 44 years old and and there was always the question what do i do after because CEOs of large companies last for five to seven years and if we take good care of our mind and of our body we make it to 90 plus hopefully and so it had also to do with how do i want to spend not only my financial means but also my life energy and these were the three elements that led to creating a layer as a organization with a purpose to fight absolute poverty with entrepreneurial means absolute poverty means three dollars and less daily income and entrepreneurial means means essentially investing in companies not investing in development projects or in public policy initiatives but investing in entrepreneurially led companies because we have found a way that this is the best way to create sustainable impact because entrepreneurs typically don't think in a time horizon of 12 to 18 months they think in a time horizon of their own lifetime and possibly beyond and so there's a completely different kind of sustainability level if you invest in entrepreneurs and in companies as opposed to typical development projects i love that thank you both for giving us that update in the insight you are both very fortunate to to be in switzerland i i must say though this the beginning of this year i was there for davos obviously and the world economic forms annual meeting and it was amazing the year started out with a bang and then we were really thrust into the craziest year i've probably experienced in my lifetime uh hopefully yeah and let's i think there's more to come i don't think it uh we need to build in some resilience and some more different steps to to prepare better for for the next crisis of our future um you know paul pulman who's also very active at the forum and he gave you guys a wonderful write-up in the book a little accolade and ella's innovative approach reinforces convergence across corporations investment organizations and entrepreneurs towards social impact and meaningful purpose its lessons are valuable for corporate executives as they realize strategies that benefit societies um not only is paul a wonderful person but i just had his wife kim on on the podcast um last week and and that episode will launch uh sometime in january but uh we're talking about you know what's what's the future of the world economic form where the meetings are they going to be in luke siren and bergenstock now it's official that it's going to be held in may in singapore and that is because switzerland is having some issues with with the crisis and the covet and things like that and that uh i promise you this ties into the next question but that has to do with this globalization right right um when when we don't find livability or the structures the infrastructures or the health in the places where we're at or we do business in order to continue those businesses those foundations and that we start to look around the world and a lot of the examples in your book as well as fighting poverty and things are in other places outside of switzerland where you're supporting entrepreneurs and wonderful projects so that leads me to this this question how do you feel uh or consider maybe yourself as a global citizen and how would you feel about a world without nations borders divisions of humanity one from another i can start if you want then we had just uh uh john lennon's imagine big imagine no i was born in argentina and i've been living outside of argentina and last almost 30 years and i've been very privileged to have open doors in every country that i live i live in the us i lived in spain and now in switzerland but i know that that it's a privilege my mom was actually a refugee from world war two that came to to latin america and so and i i have that i would say dream of being able to to share the wealth if you want and to uh to become a global citizen but i also understand that that reality it's it's for people like me with a relative privilege you know so i do think we and i work from the leah center for social innovation now in a coalition with the red cross with the wef is part of this and other main players on how you address the refugees so i i do believe in the movement and the free movement of people but i also understand that there are a lot of regulatory and that there are a lot of things that you need to add that it's not as simple as saying okay let's open the borders and let's everybody move in a way that probably my experience has been so i think that the the issue especially in times where we are questions are the things of globalization and we are trying to become more local and protect each other from the borders i think it is again an important issue but it's not as simple as saying okay let's just move around freely uh in economics many times that and that was the the dream of the u for example that was a pro an idea that i support and i still support uh strongly so but we know that in practice as if you look at the u how challenging it is you know so for me in a certain way the way of working on on impact and as we do an impact investment and on education it's a way to find my own niche without borders if you want to in the education piece of the story the reason i really don't yeah i have a similar i have a similar kind of openness in my genes i mean my granddad was a very poor fellow uh grew up during world war one and basically had the possibility to become an apprenticeship in in metal working and he basically took one of the first ships that went to the us in 1919 and stayed in the u s and learned a new technology that he then brought back and essentially could develop in in a small swiss industrial company and he was the one in our family who made the biggest jump because he came from a very poor background to basically becoming a manager of that company and and i myself as well i mean i was an amateur radio ham when i was a young guy and i was in contact with the whole world and i was in mexico doing my phd i lived three years in the us two years in chicago one year in new york i obviously since we've done the foundation i've visited almost every country in in africa and in south asia and in latin america and i must say one of the things that worries me most right now are all these strong forces to put up borders and even in switzerland where more than half of our gdp comes from essentially serving the world and we have very strong nationalist tendencies and i must say that's also besides the very tangible purpose to fight poverty it's also to create awareness for how beneficial globalization is and so yes of course i would wish that we can build bridges and not build walls and that we tear down all these kind of nationalist movements that we that we have right now by essentially caring for each other and also finding ways to collaborate across sectors i mean vanina has mentioned the icrc the right cross uh peter mower as you may have noticed has written another very nice comment as a good friend of mine and we had you know quite debates how important it is that for example humanitarian humanitarian organizations work together with governments and private sector companies to improve livelihoods and so all what can help collaboration i think will reduce risks of instability poverty and and ultimately war i really appreciate that and and your insight i i want to tie it even more a little bit so during the pandemic as a prime example humanity is for the most part now going into second and third lockdowns and discussions depending on where you live in um and and because of some of those lockdowns now advance are totally moving online and and uh the weft making the move to to move it to singapore and have it be a blended on and offline type of a format as is pretty telling but during the pandemic as well those things that weren't locked into nations and borders for food air water uh species you know the pandemic um and uh of course we're all global citizens or part of this globalization model so to say that uh still moved around the world i had on my show dr parag kanan uh and he uh speaks a lot about geospatial data and the two maps of our world were we have this satellite satellite data of supply chain movement or or satellite data of our globe lights at night and and different things on where humanity lives and how they move around the world and how goods and services move around the world that show us a really different map of the world of the probably the two way that that things work and function and so because you you do address that as part of the things not only in the book but in in the foundation and other things and works that you've done i'd like to almost see if you could tickle the surface some more and give us some more insights on why that's important why you discussed that topic and and how it's progressing has this pandemic bubbled some things to the surface signed the microscope uh under things and made it said we've got some some problems in our system and maybe we should think about some bigger models like this can you give us more insight on that yeah i think if i look at our portfolio of investments i mean one of the real positives is the easiness for communication uh with the locations where our investments are and that our countries like Kenya like South Africa like Bolivia like Peru like India like the Philippines and i must say what for me was the biggest positive surprise is how smoothly that worked and how we had with many of our entrepreneurs being in crisis mode we were in touch almost on a daily basis i mean we could essentially do restructurings of companies in remote mode which five years ago i would have said is impossible across these long distances and also along these across these cultural distances and so i think there is reason to be optimistic uh that this forced application of communication technology helps to tear down barriers and ease communication and make it more natural to basically hop on a call and debate things uh and and very tangibly all our investments that are in the employables kill building area i mean they were forced to essentially leapfrog a period of three to five years of distance learning i mean they were forced to to go online in their learning modules within a few weeks and so i think that has achieved a lot of progress which i would consider a good thing and so i think i'm not in the camp of people who say well globalization is dead because a pandemic and b nationalist movements i think globalization has found some limits i think one limit obviously is the exaggerated business travel and and i meet many colleagues of mine who look very fresh very healthy very happy not having to deal with all these jet blacks myself and leading a much healthier life spending more time on sports than in planes and and so i do think it has positives and people will recalibrate a little bit they will also recalibrate these highly sophisticated and optimized value chains i mean for example transporting mineral water across the globe is just not very sensible in a world where our planet is threatened so i think buying local having more simple value chains not being dependent on faraway places that you're not really familiar with so i see a lot of positives that come and that will essentially address some exaggerations of globalization but also make more meaningful connections through technology on my side and a little bit on the on the same line is i work a lot also on what we call esg integration in the financial sector environmental social and government and every time that you talk about this it used to be environmental or governance and this was a little more flu and i think that's something that pop up to to the center now with with with coven and and also how those companies that had labor relations that had inequality that had asked part of their dealing was part of their culture actually performed better and had more resilient value chains and had at the dose that protected health of the workers in the value chain also did better that companies that did not care no so i think again from a from a positive side realizing that that the s that the social indicators sometimes are a lot harder to measure no because when we talk again about in the book we talked about impact investing investing needs intentionality but also measurement of impact it might be a little harder now is showing that there are ways to to to measure to connect and actually to consciously make a decision to improve them and this is what i think is interesting for me is that we we think about the the the downside of the globalization we need to include this idea of fighting inequality of including inclusiveness and i think feature has also inclusive leadership in the book as a key word that comes with the business models in order to to have this positive view that we are talking about no without fighting inequality and without fighting without inclusive even for technologies thinking about inclusive technologies is a key piece of how you look at business models these days no i definitely see that the the big part of the investments is in the social capital the human capital so to say and also throughout the book it also discusses you know how you develop people how you can help them and give them the tools and the empowerment and the models but it also starts out really with some wonderful examples and gaza bagel sphere coffee circle the dharma life as well that are social entrepreneurship and a lot of small hold farmers and the small medium enterprises and developing countries to empower them enable them with some tools and monies and ways to really make a huge impact and and that is so vital to see that part but i want to go even deeper in something that you've touched upon uh anina and and that is this esg one fabulous thing and i'm sure you've seen it as well i'd like to get your thoughts or feelings on this is during a pandemic during a crisis like this that is really it's grown exponentially um there's you know and as an economist peter there's a lot of things that they say oh my gosh are we ever going to recover this as an economic tragedy um that those companies that had divested or invested in environmental social governance into their business models and made investments in that direction in the first quarter second quarter third quarter and now the fourth quarter have all outperformed their conventional counterparts and we're not talking just by a little bit we're talking eight to nine out of ten uh to their conventional counterparts and even during the holiday season where some forms of purchases would would shift to the non at esg products or companies um we're still seeing that but also in the morning star review 25 out of 28 uh i believe the last number in the third quarter we saw are outperforming their conventional counterparts and it's not just a few it's nicky nasdaq new york stock exchange goldman and sacks it's it's um the s and b 500 s and b global um that are saying wow this is a better business model and here's the proof the proofs in the what we're seeing in these these quarters and in the investments in the returns that you would say how in the heck are these companies climbing and receiving investments and funds and and growing during this time where the rest of us are struggling and with that just one more caveat before i have you guys answer this question is that those companies who did that are actually seeing or those organizations that have made that shift are seeing that they they've got this resilience that we talked about at the beginning that now they were able to pivot and deliver vital digital technologies or services food or pivot on a dime to create respirators or vaccine help or or whatever it is during this time to help others who weren't prepared and in that showed that that's a better more resilient model and so i'd like to see i know you guys are very politically correct and you don't want to point the fears haha we've told you we've been talking about this model for years and this is the better way and it's always about you know is there a return is that truly profitable it can can we do that why do we want to be more sustainable and so i'd like to hear not only stories but also what you guys have seen during this time in those areas from both of you and please i'll leave it up to you who would like to go first i can go first a little bit if you don't mind and i i'm doing some research and uh on this but there are nuances if this is not a foolproof that you go into sustainability or an ESG and you're going to perform better so even though i may be liver and i work on this and from IMD we work with companies in this transformation uh it's not as simple as that when many times when even if you look at some of the results in many cases some of these indices the technological companies are more part of the ESG and we're driving some of the higher returns or the lower prices in the first two quarters still this resilience is proven and there is more and more research showing that those that include ESG on material issues over perform and why do i go to this idea the idea of materiality shows that it's not that you just include anything if you include the core topics and sustainability that are tied to your business and i think this is something that that in the book we talked a lot or i think peter at the leah methodology looks a lot when they do the they're investing the investment is that the impact is really the core of the business so when the business actually grows and scale up impact scales up so when we talked about transforming these business models we're not talking about doing project titles and doing a lot of things on ESG but really transforming the way that companies produce that companies package their processes their product in their business models so again i would there's still a lot of research being done about precisely proving this resilience but i think and and you see the movement i think this is why you're seeing the financial sector moving so fast because the the research and the results are piling up that we're starting to have that business case but obviously depending on the asset manager depending on the investor the results can be more more nuanced it's not a blank check and it's a hard transformation to do before peter answers i just want to say something to that that the positive thing at the beginning of the year at the world economic forum this year was that black rock also came out and said you know if we don't make this shift to ESG and that our portfolios don't include that that there's going to be some i don't know punishments the right word but there's going to be some fines or consequences of that and so those that shift i've been seeing more and more over the years and i just love to see that the right people are on board and more and more understanding that but peter please let us know your thoughts yes i think from a from a practical perspective we have seen tremendous momentum in the recent i would say two three four years in that direction i think before quite frankly when we started the layout 15 years ago it was a little bit of a niche activity and people did not really know what the impact investing is and also yes g was kind of to some extent more part of the pr department and of the public affair and responsibles and what we have seen in recent years is that it has really become mainstream and it has reached the chief executive level and i guess data points for me are one we just recently had the co-round table that we regularly do at imd every year with about 60 70 CEOs across the globe from different industry and these was the number one topic i mean how do we ensure we have a purpose that goes beyond profitability obviously it includes profitability because if we're not profitable we cannot survive we cannot reinvest we will not attract capital but beyond profitability we need to demonstrate a purpose that goes and that demonstrates benefits to society and this is driven by three major elements one is clients i mean customers want ethical products they and they will not buy products that involve child labor they will not buy products that are damaging to the to the to the planet it's driven by investors as vanina has said i mean there is a an explosion of indices on sustainability of asset managers and investment professionals now really asking the right questions and most important of all it's talent young people they want to work for a company where it's clear what their meaningful purpose is and we have at elea we have started two years ago with an elea talent program for young people bachelor master kind of mid 20s kind of guys very talented we got 182 applications for two jobs so it's unbelievable and and absolutely terrific uh curriculums people who would otherwise apply with Accenture with McKinsey with UBS with a big with a big brands and so we really see a change and i think that is encouraging i think that shows that the message that societies have been sending to business since probably eight to ten years that the business has to serve society and not the other way around i think this has been listened to and has been heard and so now i think it's about taking the right actions also managing expectations i mean take time and just putting money at problems doesn't help and i think that's one of the key messages of the book that you need both you need entrepreneurial capacity capability skills mindsets in order to make good use of resources and that means that investment organizations need to appreciate what entrepreneurs can do and entrepreneurs need to be in a position to make good use of capital and that's essentially what our formula for inclusive capital is about entrepreneurship times capital equals profit plus impact that that's the essence of what we want to show in the book there's a big section in the book you know pops up in the beginning as well but also around chapter five really talking about ethics and really uh liberal ethic concepts and importance of that which is is vital is their specific reason besides imd or the center that you decided to really focus in on ethics or what's the what's the movement in general that it was focused on as much i must say that's a bit of a hobby of mine since 40 years i actually wanted to do my phd on ethics and then i decided to do it on with direct investment in mexico because i somehow felt too young to write on ethics but when i left ubs i was asked by a business school actually in switzerland to give a talk about leadership and ethics and i was fascinated about the topic and i took out all my material and i just felt there is so little written about the implications of globalization for ethical thinking and there are libraries on what globalization is and what it means for trade for politics for power for security for ecology and so on but there's very little on on ethics and at the same time i mean we are today and i think the pandemic is a beautiful example we are confronted with confucius authoritarian type of ethics on one hand and extreme tea party libertarianism in the us right and then we have a lot of ethical systems in between and so one of the key messages in my former book inclusive leadership is that leaders have to articulate what they stand for in this world otherwise we can leaders can't provide orientation and so what i would expect leaders to do is a to reflect on where they stand and there are different there's not one size fits all i happen to be a freedom lover but a responsible freedom lover not a libertarian i i also happen to believe that people who have more freedom more wealth more ambition more capability need to do something with it that they can articulate that it helps society and in my case it was the philanthropic work but there can be other ways to do that but but doing nothing just enjoying life and not making everybody else jealous but not contributing anything is in my book not ethical and so in that sense i do think leaders have to meet a higher threshold of demonstrating to the world that they contribute and so that's a real passion of myself that we have more ethical but not in a way that right now also we have it that every topic is moralized right that wearing a mask is a political statement that's not what i mean what i mean is a real debate at global levels among among leaders about what are the right models what are the right values what are behaviors that are sustainable for the planet and for society yeah and i and i share a little i also share that view of leadership with peter even though we can have political views that are different in many cases we share that that i think deep believe that leadership uh requires an ethical uh engagement no and i think for me was also important to include this in in the book in every chapter and i like it also from a pedagogical point of view as a professor i think a lot of the interesting decisions that we put at the end of the chapter are right versus right dilemma no i think a lot of the key leadership decisions are not right versus wrong because that's a very easy answer you know what to do right so you have to be to decide the wrong thing and to to violate human rights or to do that purposefully takes a certain type of personality but most of the decision that we make on the business is make governments make individuals make our more nuanced and our right versus right and then i think that's what we include at the end and they make a great pedagogical tool and i think we have that aspiration also of the book not only to be an interesting book to read as a content but to be used for teaching that to be used in a classroom setup to to to get the right debate behind these issues because again and also to be practical so this decision have practical implications so when you make the decision there are certain tradeoffs there are certain courses of action there are certain applications so how do you bring that ethical stand so that ethical point of view into your everyday practice and i think that is what makes a leader different and that's also what we believe at IMD you know that the kind of transformation that leadership can can bring forward before you started out on this turning of the book and kind of collaborating on it together was there a bigger aha moment or thought process of why you decided to to work on it together is there a story behind that at all well the story is that basically at ELEA when we completed our 10-year anniversary in 2016 we kind of went into soul searching i mean we were wondering what are we doing here how successful have we been and how do the next 10 years look and i think one of the conclusions out of that exercise is that we are learning such a tremendous amount of insights of methods of tools of data that it's kind of a shame not to make best use of it and share it with others and out of this and obviously because of my link with IMD we developed this idea of sponsoring a chair at the ELEA chair for social innovation and then we found a privilege to find Vanina who was a perfect fit for us given her background given her professional kind of credibility in this field and so when Vanina and I got together it was actually one of the first projects that we said why don't we write the book because that will help us as a forcing device to really think what we learned what we did tell our story and it will give her a possibility to have an objective outside in view of what we have done to have an academic lens to it and i must say i give Vanina full credit to the name i would not have had the courage to call it the ELEA way but Vanina essentially said no you need to kind of stand for this with the ELEA way so it was it was Vanina's contribution and this title and i think it was just a terrific exercise and it proved i think that what what i said before that this whole topic is now reaching mainstream and one of my biggest moments in the past 18 months was this trip we did together to Peru one week with the executive MBA students of the IMD program and these were 32 kind of senior executives across all industries from all types of geographies and the whole topic during the week was essentially the activities of the ELEA center and doing ELEA cases on due diligence on investment proposals and i must say was for me a real eye-opener it was also actually one of the reasons why i approached Paul Paulman with his quote on convergence because i felt now we are we are there right the executives basically don't treat the social entrepreneurs as a species somewhere on the side doing interesting thing but not really being taken seriously i think the executives recognize that this is mainstream i mean we need to transform our economies into impact economies in order to serve society from my side i think what was also interesting you can find a lot of books about social entrepreneurship and then you'll have a lot of books about impact investing you know and at the same sometimes about research we like to divide our fields and we have journals where you publish certain things and then others no and i think what i found interesting in in the experience of the ELEA foundation and the methodology of ELEA was this idea of this putting both together to look a more holistic or a more systemic view of how you create impact that is not just putting money or mobilizing private resources towards certain problems and it's not only about looking at social entrepreneurs that you need to actually have them together to get innovation and impact so from from a research point of view from a pedagogical point of view i also like the idea of the book and i thought i could bring also part of the experience from the academic side and from the pedagogy side into a stronger book so i think we complemented each other quite well while writing and from my side also an absolute respect for the job of peter and the writing of peter and also about the work that the ELEA foundation does so we try to make justice and get some learnings that also can go beyond of what the ELEA foundation does and can inspire others does ELEA have an acronym is there a deeper meaning behind that that you can give us and also will one of you depart the i know it but my listeners don't the ideology the the principles of ELEA as well so yeah ELEA was essentially created as a result of a of a brainstorming that we did when we created it and my only rule was it cannot be named the woofley foundation a because my name is just not spellable many people make mistakes writing it but more importantly there are too many foundations out there that serves the glorification of the founder and not the purpose that it was created for and so we then came up with his name ELEA and ELEA is essentially the name of a town that was created by the Greeks in the 8th century BC in southern Italy it's today called Velia and it has a pre-socratic philosopher school Parmenides was one of the philosophers and it was for us in a way apart from being just a nice sounding name it was a symbol for globalization both with its philosophical aspects but also with its kind of fragility because Velia flourished for about three centuries and I think by the fourth century it was essentially destroyed and it was it was abandoned so that's that's the genesis of the name thank you very much did you have anything you wanted to add Vanina no i think that that's okay so i think the lea center comes also with with that name from the donation of the family of Peter and again it's not from the foundation but it's actually a generous donation from the family perfect i really think that um there this book i loved it and there are so many far you're most welcome and i actually want to ask both of you to to give me a signed physical copy the next time we hopefully will see each other in davos or in singapore or or somewhere i would love to have that because i always like to to have a physical signed copy and know the the people who wrote it and and has a lot of meaning to me but i recommend it to all my readers it's and listeners that it is really far-reaching i don't believe that there's just one specific target group who needs to read us who this is valuable for i think it is very diverse and it's for multiple people even those small medium enterprises small hold farmers the social entrepreneurs that the ground roots it's important to have some of this not only the the models the the development the the ideology and the ethics of all of us in that understanding but to see both sides of of where the money's coming from or where it should come and what kind of not not only how to be in a positive impact investor but the flip side of that how to choose the right impact investors in your social enterprise or your social business to help you get to that next step because they're in this arena of impact investing in general or investing period there can be numerous amounts of wasted time the wrong people for your your business for your project for what your goals are and so i really like that you know the focus and you know throughout i think it was after a little bit before chapter nine but also kind of picked up even more the purpose and the reason on those things basically three different stages of these models you know the candidate creation the enterprise development and the potential realization then going into the purposeful transformational Ella investment themes and and really giving scale up and answering numerous questions for all sides and so i really like that but as far as and it goes throughout you know clear to chapter 17 or beyond of this focus of impact investing and kind of the the full a to z so to say unfolding of the importance of this and how you look at it and i have worked for several foundations and i used to do a lot of impact investing innovations for purpose that solve global grand challenges and gave you know five million dollars a year out to those who needed investments that for innovations that solve global grand challenges and honestly the type of experiences that i had with those individuals those startup those entrepreneurs they were beaten down trodden and in this quick pitch and elevator mode in this you know it was just kind of i hate to use the word bastardized type of a system but they felt belittled that like they were forcing these quality purposeful projects and these things that dealt with existence and sustenance or solving global grand challenges that they really had to jump through some circus loops to get some monies and investments and it's almost a demeaning process and to understand and and vet your investors and those impact investors as well as the flip side as an impact investor how do you want to set that up how do you want to do that how do you look for the right people and your your book just goes through and details that navigating the crisis navigating and developing and answering all those questions that's so wonderful in that respect is there are some contributions that you can each give us around impact investments your top takeaways and things that you think that are vital for for those out the social entrepreneurs out there to know i think you hit the nail exactly on the point with the with your level of how to how to bring capital and entrepreneurs together and i guess for me the keyword here is partnership that you are takes the time to understand what entrepreneurs are doing that you respect what they're doing and that you establish a level of trust to work together where there is not a charitable model where capital givers give out and donate money in order for essentially a bit of gratitude and and self-pride but where there is a level playing field of partnership of mutual respect and i think that's incredibly important and and i think that has been missing in traditional models be it the traditional development aid where you always talk about aid and you talk about donors and you talk about receivers but it's also missing in in traditional paternalistic foundations where essentially wealthy people donate money to receivers and and i think they're both very asymmetrical models and i think what we wanted to establish with the book and also based on this ethical grounding of freedom liberal ethics is that level of partnership that level playing field which i think also points to globalization i mean there are not regions in the world that are worth less than others even though their GDP might be less developed so that's for me one of the very very key notion that you commend you i you have written it really carefully and read it really carefully so thank you very much for taking the effort at the end you kind of surmise it as well you you go beyond thinking in single organization type of levels and and you use a beautiful term that i love it's aligning ecosystems and it's really this complexity system so it's not investors out here the the the social enterprise here and then something else they're all a part of the organism together working together for that success and and i really like how how you surmise it vanilla in my yeah in my case and and again that was a very conscious decision we made and it obviously reflects the the lea but sometimes when you write a book people ask you okay what's the target audience this is for investors is this for entrepreneurs so having this holistic view we had to fight it no they obviously the tutorial understood from the very beginning and they were very supportive but but it's not a traditional way of writing a book with a very clear one-minded i would say reader no and for me in from the learnings of the book that you're saying it also goes to this this holistic view but also it start with a problem no don't start with the money so start with the intentionality be absolute poverty or or another grand challenge that you want to face and then identify a plausible solution and again i lead a center for social innovation on imd maybe and bias on this but try to find a solution that is more effective and efficient than the way that we've done in the past that also is able to scale and and and be sustainable no so and after you if you have that if you have the right address the right problem and have an innovative solution money will come so but how it will come also be picky and investors will do and choose the right financial tools that will help you scale and build a strong business model because there are different ways that investors can mobilize capital it was traditionally grants especially for a sector now you can go into loans into equity etc so now think that we have the tools we have the financial tools we have to innovate and adapt them but always in terms of the life cycle of the business in terms of the problem that you want to address and look at them again in a partnership in a type of a relationship that that that would yield the better results because probably things will change along the process what you need at the very beginning might be one thing but after five years and if you have a covid crisis so building that relationship and being able to adapt in the process i think it's key i really love that i i love the fact that you you're you're speaking about you know the elephant in the room to start with the problems and not with the money we need this money to do this well let's resolve a problem or fix a problem first and what i've seen in my years of innovation and dealing with that is that the best social entrepreneurs and innovators out there are ones that one way or the other they've experienced that problem firsthand and then they say hey how can i make my life better how can i solve the problem for myself and those have been and it's not always the case but in a big majority they're those who are really solving the problem for themselves a one a big one that i really like with you know eyeglasses you know the expensive cost of eyeglasses one dollar eyeglasses and helping hands and it's really the fact that you don't want to have any insurance to to pay for that you're probably never going to be in the insurance system but then also to get an eye exam and how do you how do you get glasses and so that we came up with these one dollar eyeglasses which was all pivotal around a less than four dollar bending pool and then some chinese uh and the pennies or less than pennies optics of different variabilities that bypassed the entire insurance industry and medical industry to to get children and workers in india and around the world glasses into their hands so that they could work and go to school and and have the basics and so there's some wonderful beautiful things out there and i see those as well as the people the social aspect of what you're addressing in the book i do some research on that and i actually call them life printers it's people that solve the problem in their own life and sometimes feel privileged because they were able to solve it for themselves so they realize that others cannot do that and they're able to mobilize and create a solution that scales and becomes a business you know people know i talked about this whatever i love to see that so i i have um four major questions for you the very first one is going to be probably the worst and hardest that you've you've had so far but before i get to those i want to ask if there's anything that i didn't touch upon that we didn't discuss about the book that you would like to bring to light that that people are it would be vital for them to know so that we can really i want to push them out there to go get a copy and to read it and and apply it especially those who are thinking about starting business those who have a business i believe there are some invaluable tools in there i think it was very comprehensive and and recommend you for the depth of knowledge that you acquired i mean just three details and in terms of facts i think a imd is 25 years old not 75 years old and i was head of not of ubs hedge fund but of ubs group and and the third is the book appeared in november and not in february perfect perfect do you have anything i mean no i'm fine okay so here i'm going to hit you hard with the first question and i want you both to answer and i want you to answer it um from your aspect from your family standpoint and not in the bigger political sense or for switzerland or the world it's the burning question wtf and it's not the square word although we have all been asking it and pulling out our hair this year it's what's the future and what's the future in my case i have two teenage daughters elan and zoe they are my concern every day to live a better world or at least partially better what i think i'm failing for now just for them and and i see them qualitatively different i see them making decisions in a very different way that i did when when i was a teenager uh so for me and i and i make like for example i teach an executive mba at imd and they just had precisely on these topics they had to make a presentation and in the past as you as peter mentioned i took peter and other finance people in the panel for their presentations this time i put a young activist so i chose six u n incredibly feisty smart young activist to put in the panel so i think i think something will learn probably with grita but in our own experience with young people is that we need to answer to younger generations and the things that i do for me i put the face of my daughters there for me that's what's at stake and makes it very personal i know sounds cheesy but it's the truth it's continued to stay alert curious probing innovative flexible interested and through that also interesting and for me one of the key measurement on whether i stay that is whether young people are still interested to work with me to listen to me to learn from me and that actually also involves my kids i have three children that are grown up as well they are 32 29 and 26 but not only it's also the team at the leah for example young ambitious terrifically talented people and i want to convey a glass half full perspective i'm always getting frustrated with old people living in wealthy surroundings being incredibly privileged and knowing doing nothing less than complaining about life and about circumstances these are the ones i have very little patience for that's that's beautiful i um in case you didn't know i'm also a father i have four adult children i'm actually a grandfather my fourth grandchild was just born october 14th and so i have i have a nation thank you very much i have a beautiful vision of the future that really ties closely to the my grandchildren my children and the future generations i have a lot of hope in them one one way that i would answer that question and i believe you both know that i'm a sustainable development goal advocates speak a lot about the sdgs and esg advisor as well um is that our future is uh is is not uncertain and there is numerous plans in our world for the future we want to reach a lot of us don't know those plans or don't know that vision um and so when we ask ourselves what's the future and we don't have an answer if we don't have it understood what those global plans or those plans are for us then we don't have a plan and usually what happens is the future happens to us and a lot of i have a lot of friends who and colleagues that are sort of so called futurists um that are dealing a lot with foresight modeling in the future but but in reality we cannot wait for the future to be delivered to us and what most people misunderstand is that the 17 united nations sustainable development goals are a historical precedence that the world's first ever global moonshot 197 countries came together for the first time in history and agreed on the sustainable development goals before the paris agreement september 24th if you know anything i will tell you that this is an absolute historical precedence if you know delegates or politicians or these countries that decided on that it's hard enough for two of them to decide where they're going to go to lunch or what they're going to feed their kids for dinner let alone 197 decide on a roadmap and plan for the future that is foresight backcasted with dynamic systems modeling with money targets and indicators as a roadmap to achieve by 2030 so that is not only a historical precedence but it's one that many people don't know if you realize that if you know about it you start working towards it which you guys address in in your book as well talk about the sustainable development goals lanina you also are big on this as well and peter i'm sure you are as well it is a great roadmap if you don't know if you don't have the leadership or the guidance in your life to know where's the future going what we're doing here is a super one for the world and it's a historical precedence if we jump on board i know that we can reach the exponential function just like covid reach the exponential function to be spread around the world we can reach critical mass apply the things and the roadmap into our lives and we will have a much more resilient desirable future to live in with that having been said and kind of throwing out my vision i have three last questions for both of you and they're kind of selfish they're for my listeners their takeaways for them that they could apply into their lives and to their businesses that would help them if you had a sustainable takeaway to depart words of wisdom one message for my listeners what would it be your message in my case is that again it's not about money it's not only about financing it's about who you are so and and you were talking about this life printers and i'll think about what kind of assets you have what kind of skills capabilities and how can you put that into practice and how you can collaborate with others that bring different things to the table but always have it and bias towards action so choose intentionally your purpose the problem you want and bring who you are into the table the things that you have your life experience your skills your education even your money is the money case to solve a problem but i always ask my when i ask nba students or somebody to do a project i always ask why you know why you can solve these problems why you can pull this off you know i would say be inclusive be open curious look beyond your own job your own family and look at across boundaries be it geography boundaries cultural boundaries time boundaries kind of sector boundaries and build bridges and don't put up walls and don't create divisions and create connections in order to make globalization work and that would be my key message thank you what should young innovators philanthropists young social entrepreneurs those who want to study economics those who are in your field be thinking about if they're looking for ways to make real impact and i don't know if you want to start Peter or yeah maybe we have one chapter here is that we love plans and we actually do feel that planning is a really important thing for innovators to be sit down and write down what you want to do what you want to achieve and and i know sometimes this is not a very popular thing because obviously in our turbulent world today the plan may be obsolete already in two weeks but in my experience also working with entrepreneurs those who regularly sit down think ahead reflect on what they want to achieve and i think are just better often are better able to articulate their views their their their vision and then also obviously attract following including their own team but also capital providers in in my case i i agree with peter but also i what i would say is keep that action by us alive no do things pilot and pivot and change because we need speed is not enough at the speed we're changing so keep pushing the boundaries and and i'm seeing again as peter was talking about inclusiveness and we can talk about diversity and inclusion as bring a different lens and a different views so don't be afraid of of telling because you're a young or of having a voice and i think i i truly believe in agency of young people and we all older generations not be paternalizing and and listening now and have a voice at the table so and that's what i tried to give a space for that too yeah the last question i have for you both is really what have you experienced or learned in your professional journey so far that you would have loved to know from the start in my case you're getting a little personal here but it was that my that my passion was an asset and it counted no as a female many times you try to tame your passion i know it doesn't show peter i think many times i thought i had to comply to certain rules and and i'm laughing too so but i what i own i think as i'm getting older is that the passion that i put in the things that drive my actions and my learning and my research can be an asset and that is part of who i am and and and the pioneering that i try to bring at the table for me it's empathy and patience i guess i was a pretty aggressive young executive conforming in quite a lot of ways a typical McKinsey consultant profile and i think i obviously learned on the way how complicated human beings are and how important it is and to understand what they are driven with and that when you speak louder it usually does not change a lot of things but what really helps is to actually listen to them and try to understand and see that when they have a different view from your own it's not because they are stupid or they are mean but because they just have a different perspective and that it helps to understand that perspective i hope you both so much it's been a sheer pleasure we could actually talk for hours because not only is the book over 200 pages long but your research your time that you've put into this wonderful work and into the foundation and to the center is is valuable for the amount of time but we could just have so many bridges or so many rabbit holes we could go down to but i want to thank you both for your time and i hope we can do a follow-up and and i was serious about the book i want your signature and both a nice little thanks for the podcast or something i want to see you guys in person and follow up again in the future on your progress and how things are going and i really tell them all my listeners please go out there get the book read it it's a stretcher trove of knowledge and wisdom that we all need to go to be on the right side of history to move forward in the right direction and to get some tools and skills that we all need around these important topics for the future thank you both and and i would like to thank you for making the effort to reading the book we know from writing that it's not easy to read it and i just want to make sure that everybody understands if you buy the book you actually donate to a layer because vanina and i have both said that we will not take any any personal gains from it and so it's essentially you contribute to a layer that's beautiful yeah good thank you mark it's a pleasure thank you