Before lunch we had a plenary session on Global Business and a special sessions on Your Role in Delivering Sustainable Development, Introducing the B Team, Social Business with Muhammad Yunus, and a Q&A with Richard Branson.
The Global Business session started with a talk from Blake Mycoskie (founder of Toms Shoes) who shared his story of how he came up with the idea of the one for one concept, where a pair of shoes is delivered to a child in need for every pair of shoes purchased, and how they expanded the company with the same one to one idea for Toms eyewear. The delegate speakers for this session covered how businesses need flexibility, especially between different cultures, and projects such as helping teach more nurses in Mexico; free fishing trips to teach children about marine science in India, and engineers without borders building a clinic in the Amazon with the help of Siemens.
Next, Paul Polman (CEO of Unilever) discussed sustainable business growth and said that 30% of food produced is wasted and that 12 billion people use 75% if the resources. He also told us the quote, "if you want to go fast go alone, if you you want to go far go together".
Richard Branson (founder of Virgin Group) answered lots of questions from delegates in the Q&A session including how to overcome learning and physical disabilities in business, and also how to compete with big brands. One thing he said was "screw it, just do it"! He was also asked about Virgin Galactic and one delegate challenged him that once there was a green way to go to space, to invite her on a trip!
Introducing the B Team was about delegates who had written a charter for the members of the B Team to agree to. Some of the B Team members are Richard Branson, Kathy Calvin, Jochen Zeitz, Arianna Huffington, Guilherme Leal, and Shari Arison.
After lunch was the internal breakout sessions, Malaria No More, The Power of Protest, Leadership & Government, and The Orbital Perspective. The interal breakout session I chose was Digital Economy: Friend or Foe? Within this we were split into smaller groups and discussed different things about the digital economy. My group talked about trust, what it means within the digital economy, why we don't trust, and solutions to increase our trust, mainly focusing on data and content of the internet.
Malaria No More was a talk from Martin Edlund about the organisation Malaria No more which he founded. He said that there has been a 33% decline in cases of malaria in Africa in the last 6 years, and claimed that malaria will be the first disease to be beaten by mobile, since the organisation uses a text system to remind people to use mosquito nets and to authenticate their malaria treatment drugs. If you visit act.po1.org and use the code OYW they will send 1 test and 1 course of treatment to save 1 person's life in Africa.
The Power of Protest involved Christine Ockrent and delegate from Brazil, Turkey, Bulgaria and Egypt. They discussed protests that have happened recently in their countries, what the causes were, what was done as a results, and what needs to be done next.
Leadership & Government plenary session was the last before the break. The delegate from Pakistan spoke about a project where professors from the UK teach workshops to young people in Pakistan. There were also speeches from delegates from the USA, Venezuela, Israel, Jordan, and Greece who spoke about the different projects they are part of in their countries.
After the break, Ron Garan (NASA astronaut) spoke about the orbital perspective, innovation through collaboration and said that "the key is we". He also showed some amazing pictures and a time lapse video of the earth from the International Space Station.
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