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IBM CEO calls for business to be part of change agenda
A day after change swept through our political institutions, IBM CEO Sam Palmisano addressed the Council on Foreign Relations with a call for business and other institutions to connect to a larger global change agenda. “Our political leaders aren’t the only ones who’ve been handed a mandate for change,” Palmisano said. “Leaders of businesses and institutions everywhere confront a unique opportunity to transform the way the world works.”Palmisano said the crisis in the financial markets “jolted us awake to the realities and dangers of highly complex global systems” and cries out for new forms of leadership. The reality of global integration, as Palmisano puts it, requires multi-sector engagement that brings stakeholders from many parts of society to move beyond their traditional comfort zones.
In the speech titled A Smarter Planet: The Next Leadership Agenda, Palmisano outlined a blueprint for a technology-led recovery that infuses, as he says, intelligence into the systems and processes that makes the world go round-including food and water systems, the energy grid, and healthcare systems. ”The world will continue to become smaller, flatter … and smarter. We are moving into the age of the globally integrated and intelligent economy, society and planet.”
In the speech he presented an inspiring vision of many technology solutions that he said must be applied to the many challenges in this world. “There is another reason we will make our companies, institutions and industries smarter,” said Palmisano. “Because we must. Not just at moments of widespread shock, but integrated into our day-to-day operations. These mundane processes of business, government and life – which are ultimately the source of those “surprising” crises – are not smart enough to be sustainable.”
In connecting his vision to this historic moment, Palmisano said, “The importance of this moment, I believe, is that the key precondition for real change now exists: People want it. But this moment will not last forever.”
Do you believe business will be part of the change agenda? What new ideas and behaviors can business bring to the table? Leave us a comment and let us know what you think.
