The Global Competitiveness Forum (GCF) started back in 2007 when a group of world ICT experts came together to discuss how ICT could enable competitiveness. Since 2007 the forum has grown, running an annual meeting to bring together global business and political leaders, journalists and experts in their fields. The aim of the forum is to stimulate discussions and find solutions for how organisations  and national competitiveness can have a positive impact on local, regional and global economic and social development.

The last forum was held in January 2011 in Saudi Arabia and focussed on “Innovation as a Means to Competitiveness” looking at how to develop competitivess to “build sustainability, promote responsible development, and drive economic growth.” The forum looked at the current challenges to competitiveness and how innovation can provide solutions to them.

Sally Osberg, President and CEO of The Skoll Foundation was one of the key note speakers talking about how social entrepreneurs are can be one of these innovative solutions particularly about Conscious Capitalism and Conscious leadership.

Sally’s session focusses on social entrepreneurship and the work of The Skoll Foundation. She rightly points out that social entrepreneurship, conscious capitalism and strategic philantrophy can not work without PEOPLE. Sally states that social entreperneuers are every bit “entreprenurs” but working to solve social problems across the globe. To her, conscious leaders “are motivated by the desire to discover a company’s deeper purpose, rather than by personal gain. They focus on delivering value to all stakeholders, and work to align and harmonize the interests of customers, employees, suppliers, investors, the community, and the environment in as much as possible. Conscious leaders cultivate awareness throughout their business ecosystem, beginning with themselves and their team members,and moving into their relationships with each other and other stakeholders.”

At the Skoll Foundation their work is based on investing, connecting and celebrating the work of social entrepreneurs. Unlike many funders The Skoll Foundation see the full spectrum of assets that they have and make investments that are capable of leveraging change both in the private and third sectors.  The work that The Skoll Foundation does is “shaped by four pillars”:

• The Issue- The mission of the Skoll Foundation is to drive large-scale change by investing in, connecting and celebrating social entrepreneurs and other innovators dedicated to solving the world’s most pressing problems. It supports organizations that are aligned with the following six issue areas: economic and social equity, environmental sustainability, health, institutional responsibility, peace and security, and tolerance and human rights.
• The Innovation- An approach that fundamentally disrupts the status quo to solve social and/or environmental problems.
• The Inflection point – Where an organization has an approach that is proven, having already implemented it with success and is now ready to apply the approach on a much larger scale.
• The Impact- Impact may be demonstrated by behavior, infrastructure and/or policy change in social and/or environmental issues. The Skoll Foundation seek organizations whose innovations are positioned to directly affect one or more of these on a large scale and can show evidence of significant impact already achieved. Broadly, behaviour change includes changes in the awareness and behavior of key actors, including the general public, companies, funders, beneficiaries, etc. Infrastructure change deals with systems or market changes. Policy change relates to government (regional, national, international) and regulatory policies.

The Skoll Foundation looks for those game changing social entrepreneurs who have business models that are driving large scale social change, where the innovation can scale globally.

Sally Osberg The Global Competitiveness Forum Talking About Conscious Capitalism- Social Entrepreneurs.

More presentations from the forum can be found on youtube here http://www.youtube.com/gcfchannel#g/u

For more information on The Skoll Foundation visit their website http://www.skollfoundation.org/