News and Cluster Activities
EBBF member and CEO of PFW Aerospace Ruediger Fox receives the "best presentation in 25 years" award"
Ruediger Fox presented at the BME Purchasing and Logistics Symposium with over 2,000 participants for the “44th BME Symposium Purchasing and Logistics” at the InterConti Hotel, Berlin. This year’s motto of the symposium was “New Opportunities”. “Against the backdrop of the economic crisis, corporate success is to be secured by using intelligent purchasing and logistics solutions,”.
Ruediger Fox presented next to a distinguished group of CEOs (see below) with his talk rated "Best speach in 25 years" by the Board of the BME.
Four other DAX companies want to now invite Ruediger to speak to their own boards in the next year.
Harald Wolf, Senator for Economics in Berlin - Arndt G. Kirchhoff, Chair of the SME Committee of the German Industry and Employers Federation (BDI/BDA) - Dr. Uwe Schroeder-Wildberg, Chairman and CEO of MLP AG - Joachim Hunold, CEO, Air Berlin PLC & Co. Luftverkehrs KG - Dr. Klaus Richter, Executive Vice President, Airbus Deutschland GmbH
What made his talk stand out so importantly? He presented the way that he turned around a once weak company into one of the most important success stories of these years by applying an uncompromising drive of Values in his company. Starting from an evaluation of current management, according to strict values-based principles, letting managers not aligned to this values-based direction leave the company and then inspiring a totally new, audacious hope in the future based on nurturing the individuals that formed the enterprise and setting aspirational targets for them.
- Ruediger Fox, second from right in this image
EBBF activities in Italy kick off with another full year of events planned
With the opening of activities in Italian Universities so do the activities of EBBF, here follow some dates of the main events for 2009-2010:
1.- University of Bari - Faculty of Economics. The course now in its 14th year now has a double punctuation encouraging even further the students' particpiation. The title remains "Ethics and Economics : Towards a New World Order".
The first lesson held by Beppe Robiati was introduced by the Dean of the University Prof. Girone in front of a packed hall. The first lesson focused on the theme "Ethics and the Economy a challenge for the sustainability of development".
The initial concept offered was that we are now in a situation whereby only global solutions that go beyond separate national interests can solve current global issues.
The increasing number of groups of states such as NAFTA, the European Union etc, show the way towards what is an inevitable move towards a world federation. Current indicators were also mentioned as the current inadequate measurement of wealth and growth - indicators such as the Dow Jones or Gross Domestic Product that now need to be changed for more truthful and effective measurements of global wealth.
To underline the importance of ethics and of the spiritual component of human beings we need to develop spiritual idexes, those indicators that show the ability of nations to care for and nurture the rights of developed human beings such as the equality of women and men, the defence and education for all children, health across the world and the concept of work as worship and development of the talents of all human beings.
As always the over 170 students present in the lecture ended the talk with an enthusiastic applause.
An additional opportunity to spread EBBF's Values to a wider audience comes from this year's introduction of the possibility of downloading these presentations given at the University of Bari form the website dedicated to the Faculty of Economics and Statistics.
- The packed hall that welcomed EBBF's first lesson at the University of Bari.
2.- IFOA Corso di Master d'impresa a Reggio Emilia : IFOA is a post university institute of education managed by the Italian Ministry of Education in conjunction with the Chambers of Commerce and once again EBBF has been asked to offer a course there titles "Ethical Management of Human Resources". Over 20 students following this MBA with at least two year's of working experience will be enjoying ten lessons by EBBF with the courses due to start at the beginning of December and lasting until June of 2010.
3.- Acuto Full Immersion : This year this will be an even more important event than previous years as over 40 students from a number of different Italian and European universities spend four days in a full immersion in the Bahai Study Centre of Acuto. All of the speakers are EBBF members who embed EBBF Values into each presentation. This year the course will be dedicated to the sustainability of the planet and to the principles of the New World Order. The event will take place from the 18th to the 21st of February 2010.
4.- A number of presentations are also expected at the Universities of Pisa, Napoli, Palermo and other Universities where the relationship between EBBF and AIESEC are particularly strong.
EBBF presenting at the Net Impact event "Redesigning Capitalism, the Business Case for Sustainability" at the Instituto Empresa Business School
Augusto Lopez Claros once again filled the hall of the Instituto Empresa Aula Magna with his talk titled "Redefining Value for Society" where Augusto offered answers to questions such as How should governments measure the sustainable development of their nations? What alternatives can we use to define value creation for society? Most economists will agree that output growth is the measure of successful development and the means to lift people out of poverty. Yet if, on a global scale, we are growing beyond the limits of our planet, how should we reconcile poverty and growth? Are there alternatives to fighting poverty, and are there better indicators to measure sustainable development?
A second session moderated by Daniel Truran was titled "Leadership by Social Entrepreneurs" and showed how Social Entrepreneurs are the ones who could be redesign the system from within. Social Entrepreneurship and Social Enterprises, rapidly growing socioeconomic movement worldwide, is changing the face of business through its combination of market principles and ethics. Through the sharing of real examples and experiences of various models, we will see how social entrepreneurship can change the way we do things, and lead to a sustainable capitalism.
More good news from Spain comes from the inauguration of a new MBA course that EBBF will be offering at the EOI Business School.
The master titled - International Master In Sustainable Development and Corporate Responsibility - will see EBBF offering five classes dedicated to Innovative Social Entrepreneurial Solutions. The five sections aim to offer the students innovative ideas coming from the world of social entrepreneurship and social innovation. We aim to give the students the tools by which they can build the bridge from the traditional business enterprise to a more responsible, meaningful and truly successful form of creating and managing an enterprise.
We will start by introducing Social Entrepreneurship, showing how this innovative new way of doing business bridges the current gap between business and the social environment and the issues that the latter faces. We will then offer ways in which these social innovators manage and motivate their staff, partners and stakeholders in a unique values-driven way.
All successful enterprises require an effective measurement of their impact. This is required both to assess the progress that the organization is making and also to determine where improvements need to be made in order to reach the enterprise’s goals. This third part of the course will then be followed by a session dedicated to creating the students’ own social enterprise highlighting the key turning points and common issues to be addressed / to avoid in setting up such an enterprise.
The final session of the course offers the students an overview of the opportunities that the new web2.0 technology and New Media / Viral Marketing offer to progress social enterprises and also as channels through which social innovators can learn and create powerful communities.
Report from the AIESEC Access Conference in Finland
Submitted by Kimmo Vesajoki
- Kimmo Vesajoki (left) and Mika Korhonen (right)
Mika Korhonen and I delivered a 2 hour workshop on Values Based Leadership today at the national AIESEC ACCESS 2009 conference at Helsinki, Finland. We had 20 participants in the workshop from Finland, France, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Russia, Israel, Pakistan, India and Vietnam. The content of the workshop consisted of EBBF introduction, discussion on meaning of work in the 21st century, values based framework including the EBBF definitions of principles, values and virtues, group discussions on how to find and prioritize values in leadership situations and discovering the true purpose of leadership including the will, attitude and motivation for leadership. We also had a practical exercise, where individual had to try out their values based leadership skills in real life situations.
Other worskhops were given by Accenture on problem solving, PMI on project recovery and Tieto on innovation. You can take a look at the conference program at: www.access2009.tk.
The feedback was very positive; for example Heini Kärkkäinen, who is the Vice President Talent Management for AIESEC in Finland said that the session was outstanding and eventhough she had participated in the session we gave last year on the same topic, she learned a lot from this years' session that had many new elements. Our competitive advantage compared to all other organisations preaching about values based leadership is that we can make the values (such as promoting the well being of humankind) concrete in practical day to day situations.
We also examined the AIESEC mission statement linking it to the values that should be applied in leadership situations. We hope that the participants gained a different view of their own mission statement that will contribute to a broader understanding of the purpose of their involvement in AIESEC. Afterwards we had interesting discussions with many of the participants over a cup of coffee and we gave out some of the new brochures Mika had printed for the event.
We will be meeting with the national team in November to start planning the leadership week that will take place next March.
Below a testimonial form one of the participants: "The Value based leadership workshop was wonderful. Actually, I could come home with a concrete output that I shall try to implement in my everyday life to be a better man and better leader.
That is why, I would very much appreciate to receive your slides to reflect on the session for my self and my members. Maybe, I will be able to deliver them a session as good as you did. Moreover, after visiting EBBF website, I become more and more interested in your organization. Can I also call you on Wednesday to discuss about it."
To make sure you do not miss any of the future EBBF events do check the latestEBBF worldwide agenda of events here.
Contact Us if you wish to organize an EBBF event in your own region, we have a number of interesting presenters and topics to offer or you could organize a more informal gathering amongst friends and contacts perhaps reading some lines and starting a conversation from one of EBBF's publications.
