INSEAD NAA NL Sustainability Club webinar ‘SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES AFTER COVID-19’ with Omar Cordes and Cristina Prat

Click here to watch the webinar.

On 5 October 2018, the Campaign for INSEAD: A Force for Good officially launched to help transform the world for the better. Since then, the INSEAD community has shown incredible support with every gift made and embraced the values that have made this campaign special.

Now more than ever, we need to work together. Your unrestricted contributions towards scholarship, diversity and research will enable the school to continue delivering academic excellence and impact to the wider community. Help us safeguard our world, invest in the future.

Learn how you can support INSEAD on: forceforgood.insead.edu

#INSEADforGood #INSEAD

Video link: https://youtu.be/Tlu_cGdDVR8

Dear INSEAD Alumni,

Fancy meeting a fellow INSEADer for an activity of your liking? Sign up and unwind with a fellow alum!

How does this work?

1.Indicate your location and your preference for an activity on the signup sheet. For activities, you can choose between:

 A walk together
A visit to a museum together
A drink, lunch, bite or meal together
Watch a game or play a sport together
Something else

2.Once all information has been gathered, we will randomly pair you with another INSEAD alum, based on your location and your preference for an activity

3.Once paired, you and your fellow alum will decide on a date and time in October or November to enjoy your activity together

4.Please share pictures of your activity. We’d love to know of your experience!

Questions? Contact Odette Hooft Graafland

Have fun!

The Event committee NAA-NL

Last day to sign up: 23 October 2020

On September 11^th, 2020, more than 7,000 alumni and friends from 74 countries around the world registered for one or more of the 22 interactive webinars held that day. We began in Sydney and ended in San Francisco – with 24 hours of continuous programming!

The INSEAD Alumni Association in the Netherlands organized a talk show themed Using tech to impact communities with a variety of speakers. Among them were Teresa Fogelberg (Deputy Chief Executive of the Global Reporting Initiative and Chair of the Transparency Benchmark), Ingo Uytdehaage (CFO of Adyen) and Maurits Schönfeld (General Manager Northern Europe at Uber). Annet Aris (INSEAD professor, author and executive board member) also contributed to the show, which was moderated by Rens de Jong, a radio and TV anchor.

The 60 minute-show saw a lively discussion, covering a range of subjects, including how tech companies perceive their own role as creating positive impact in their local or global communities. The panel also discussed why tech companies should or shouldn’t integrate impact strategy into their business operations, and the consequences of such choice on their various stakeholders.

In case you were unable to attend the live event or would like to re-watch the talk show, please find the link here or watch any of the other Global INSEAD Day recordings here.

Business as a Force for Good

Bart Hartman
Founder & CEO at NOTS Solar Lamps

My speech to the brightest 2% of international young business leaders.

In 1987 I did an MBA at Insead in Fontainebleau. Last Monday I went back to give the keynote speech at the opening ceremony for the new MBA class. I built my speech on Insead’s mission ‘Business as a Force for Good’ and tried to inspire the 240 students to become a force for good. 

Here’s what I told them:

Why is ‘becoming a force for good’ a good idea? 

“I really enjoyed my life as a profit seeking entrepreneur. And prior to that, working as a consultant with McKinsey was great and I learned a lot.

But contributing something to a better world, in my case providing electricity to low-income African households, gives a unique kind of satisfaction. Working with people from a completely different culture can be extremely frustrating. But when you accomplish something together, it feels so good. And the beauty of it is that this type of satisfaction comes on top of the ‘normal’ buzz you get from things like solving a problem, closing a deal and socializing with your colleagues.

Becoming a force for good is good for you personally because you get to a level of fulfilment you can’t achieve when you remain a profit-seeking entrepreneur or a ‘normal’ employee in a company

A second reason to become a force for good is that it is very much needed. We are facing huge problems in the world: climate change, poverty, inequality, racism, COVID-19, the list goes on.

For a long time, we thought – hoped – that organizations like the UN, World Bank, governments and NGOs would solve these problems. Unfortunately, this isn’t happening. So, we need other actors – and that means you.

If you look at the size of start-ups compared to the size of the problem they are addressing, it becomes clear that relying on start-ups alone will just take too long

There are many promising start-ups that aim to solve one or other of these problems. NOTS Solar Lamps, the social enterprise I founded, is one of them. However, if you look at the size of these start-ups compared to the size of the problem they are addressing, it becomes clear that relying on start-ups will just take too long.

Since 2010 about 500 companies worked towards providing African households with solar home systems. The largest sold about 200,000 systems last year. Compare this with the 125 million African households that still don’t have electricity, and it is clear that if we rely only on start-ups, we won’t solve the electricity problem in Africa.

Unfortunately, the same is true for the other, defining problems of our times.

So, we can’t get there with start-ups alone. We need the big corporates too. First of all, because they played – and still play – an important role in causing the problems. They use scarce natural resources (minerals, water, etc.) for manufacturing their products. They emit CO2. They pay wages in developing countries that are so low, people can’t have a decent living. Secondly, only big corporates have the capabilities, capital, brands and client base needed to solve the big problems at scale.

The big corporates won’t devote themselves to solving the big problems without some push, from inside or outside the company.

The CEOs of Blackrock and former CEOs of Unilever and DSM are still the exceptions. For instance, last year the CEOs of 180 large companies that form the US Business Council announced that they would move their focus from shareholders-only, to all stakeholders including employees and clients. And just last week an interesting analysis of the 2019 annual reports of these 180 companies was published. Over 95% of the CEOs in their ‘letter from the CEO’ addressed only the shareholders. No other stakeholders were mentioned. So, these companies, and most others, still have a long way to go to become that force for good.

Here is where you – profit seeking entrepreneurs and ‘normal’ company employees – come in. If you want a prosperous, healthy, happy future for yourself and for your children, you have to become a force for good.

In business there are two main routes to that goal. You can become a social entrepreneur. Or as an employee and senior manager, you can convince your CEO to replace profit maximization as goal #1 with an impact goal, which makes profit a means to a better end.

It would be irresponsible for you to leave these challenges to others

Plus, don’t forget, becoming a force for good brings you to a higher level of satisfaction and happiness. Way more than you’ll find as a profit-maximizing entrepreneur or manager.

Most of you came to Fontainebleau because you want to change something drastically in your professional life.You can’t address your desire for change in a better way than by becoming a force for good.

I want to challenge you as individuals but also as a class. You, Class July 2021, use your time together here at Insead to develop a force for good project that has such a big positive impact that you are proud of it. Do something so good that papers like the Economist and Financial Times write about it.

I am sure that with your combined brainpower, you will come up with an excellent Class July 2021 Force for Good project.

Good luck.”

Shifting collective mindsets. This is the 4th in our series of webinars “Perspectives on sustainability post Covid-19”.
Click here to watch the webinar.

Dear INSEAD Friends,

As you might know the Community Impact Challenge (CIC) launched their first campaign in plastics last year. It was very successful, but we also learned a lot and have made improvements to make this next challenge even a bigger success. This time we focus on sustainable food habits.

In our eyes, your awareness and action are already a success for this campaign. What we do on an individual level, might seem like a drop in the ocean, but together we have the potential to create a powerful trickle-down effect. Changes, not only for us but, for our next generations.

Earlier this week, we heard Ronan Harrington speak about how we have 12 years left to take radical action. Be that drop of change and join us in the sustainable food habits challenge.

You can choose from three actions:
1) Consume less meat
2) Reduce food waste
3) Buy locally and seasonally

Watch this interesting webinar for more information.

The challenge starts on 15th October and ends on 12th December. For more details click here.

Best wishes,

Dianne Baunbaek
Sven Cobben (President NAA-NL)
Raymond van Eck (Vice- President NAA-NL)

Hilversum 23 september 2020. Classic-Cars met allure glanzend geparkeerd in de ruimte van de smaakvolle entrée van het kantoor van UMENZ. Het is een ongewoon decor voor een ongewone avond.

Door de Corona lock down was deze avond eerder afgeblazen de organisatoren trokken alles uit de kast om een Corona veilige omgeving te creëren. Niet eerder werd een INSEAD presentatie in Nederland gevolgd door participanten getooid met mond-neusmaskers van goede kwaliteit. Deelnemers kregen bij ontvangst een eigen ‘dinner sandwich bag’. Social distancing, handdesinfectie en ventilatie waren vanzelfsprekend goed geregeld.

Een eerste event weer F2F was geweldig. Al snel ontstond er een open vertrouwelijke sfeer waarin de echte issues en vragen op tafel kwamen. Bevlogen spraken Pieter-Joep Huige (UMENZ) en Oscar van Dijk (Medicine Men) over de ‘struggle’ van het ondernemen in E-Health in Nederland. De passie om waarde te willen creëren en de cliënt als vanzelfsprekend centraal te stellen in hun oplossingen hadden zij gemeen. De waarde verzilveringsvraag bleek een lastige. Het vertrouwen dat die vraag positief beantwoord zal gaan worden is echter rotsvast aanwezig.

Gerichte opbouwende vragen van deelnemers leidde snel tot verdieping en nieuwe oplossingsrichtingen. De sessie deed met momenten denken aan de INSEAD case avonden waarop een van de deelnemers een issue uit zijn eigen praktijk deelt met andere deelnemers en hen uitnodigt mee te denken. Persoonlijk contact maakt zo’n avond in deze tijd extra bijzonder.

Cynthia Go en Thomas Calis

INSEAD Special Interest Group Health Care & Life Sciences

INSEAD Alumni Association NL Webinar ‘Value-based leadership in post COVID-times’ with Klaas van Egmond and Hanneke Dingen (click here).

Dear alumni,

I assume that all of you have seen the shocking footage of the devastation caused by the unprecedented explosion in Beirut. Our alumni friends of the IAA Lebanon have started a fund raising campaign to support the Lebanese Red Cross. It would be great if we could all help a bit by donating to their cause.

Please have a look at iaalebanon.com, where you can easily make your donation. The IAA Lebanon will donate this to the Lebanese RedCross in the name of all the INSEAD Alumni Assocations: A Force for Good.

Any support would be greatly appreciated!

On behalf of the board of the IAA The Netherlands.

Sven Cobben
President