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13 April: Multilateralism failing us? Big techs saving us?

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OECD Angel Gurria is clear: there is not enough international cooperation between governments to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. To be sure, we did not enter the crisis on a strong multilateral footing. And according to Oxford University Ngaire Woods, nationalist responses and competition have so far prevailed. International organizations have also shown the limits of their power – largely a reflection of that given to them by their member states. Stephen Buranyi, for instance, gives a great historical account of why the WHO can’t handle the pandemic.  So it was refreshing to see 200 former presidents, ministers and heads of international organizations come together to ask the G20 to step up its game. Initiated by Gordon Brown with LSE Erik Berglof holding the pen, the letter calls for heightened global cooperation in response to the twin health and economic crisis and a $8 billion package to help prevent the second wave of Covid-19.  Let’s see if/how finance ministers respond this week when they regroup at the 2020 World Bank and IMF Spring Meetings.

In “How Chinese Apps handled Covid-19”, Dan Grover gives a good overview of the key role played by Chinese big techs in the crisis response. They provided information through integrated tools, helped triage patients towards fever clinics and coronavirus hospitals, scaled telemedicine services, and developed health QR Codes for reporting and tracing. His blog post was published a few days before Apple and Google announced their partnership to develop a new contact tracing platform. Does this further feed into reversing the tech backlash trend flagged two weeks ago? It’s probably wise to take the long view on this one by, for instance, watching the 3-episode PBS “Networld” of Niall Ferguson [available on youtube if you are not in the US]. Little is new in the documentary but I enjoyed thinking about the parallel between today’s digital networks and ancient analog networks used to foster revolutions, and learning about network theory.

My picture this week is from MIT Tech Review Will Heaven’s “Why the coronavirus lockdown is making the internet stronger than ever”. It shows that, with the lockdown, internet connections moved from city offices to suburban homes, ie from highly powered hubs to scattered locations with low bandwidth and outdated cables. According to Heaven this has accelerated traffic capacity upgrade, infrastructure expansion, and data plan loosening – making the internet stronger for more. This is not how I was thinking about this before reading this article. I was thinking about how the lockdown amplifies digital inequalities between urban and rural, and between rich and poor.   

My quote this week is from Brookings Kemal Dervis: “A clear parallel between the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change is becoming apparent. Both feature emergence, path dependence, feedback loops, tipping points, and nonlinearity. Both call for eschewing traditional cost-benefit analysis in favor of drastic mitigation to reduce exposure. And, both highlight the need for much closer, forward-looking international cooperation to manage global threats.”

29 March: People count on businesses to act. So what should they do?

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The 2020 Edelman trust barometer – surveying 34,000 people in 28 countries – showed that 74% of people expect their CEOs to take the lead on change to address global issues. In the context of COVID-19, a follow up survey with 10,000 people in 10 countries re-affirms that people trust their employers to respond effectively and responsibly to the pandemic, and 78% want businesses to act to protect employees and local communities.

So what should businesses do? I asked 4 experts working closely with businesses in the context of the crisis: Peter Bakker, Lise Kingo, David Nabarro, and Anthony Renshaw. First, they pointed to businesses’ duty of care going beyond the health and safety of employees, to also secure employment continuity. Second, they highlighted the key role of businesses in providing medically-verified information to employees – important as employer communications is the most credible source of information about COVID-19. Third, they suggested that businesses find ways to support health systems. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) lists such actions on its website, and the UN Global Compact calls on business leaders to support workers and communities.
Smaller local companies, providing employment to the majority of people around the globe, are the hardest impacted by the crisis. For WHO COVID-19 Special Envoy David Nabarro, all should support SMEs where governments might not provide direct stimulus package. UN Global Compact CEO Lise Kingo is working with global companies to keep the SMEs of their supply chains in business. For SOS International Medical Director Anthony Renshaw, local SMEs which are still open can contribute to the response by adjusting their practices such as defining specific shopping hours for the elderly, or their processes to manufacture supplies required by the health system. Looking forward, all interviewees noted the opportunity to rethink business models; reimagine the social contract of business with society; and move towards a model of integrated capitalism. And putting things further in perspective, WBCSD CEO Peter Bakker argued that this crisis was “a warning that the power of nature is stronger than any human constructs”.

For The Verge’s Casey Newton, who is usually quite critical, big techs’ response to COVID-19 has so far earned them brownie points. They have promoted high-quality information. They have offered money, supplies, and jobs. And this has put the big tech backlash on pause.

My quote this week is from NY Governor Cuomo’s 24 March briefing [35’26’’]:  “And at the end of the day my friends, even if it is a long day, and this is a long day, love wins. Always. And it will win again through this virus.”

27 April 2018

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I read the Arbinger Institute’s “Leadership and self-deception” this week because it is about a man starting a new job. Like me. The messages were deeper than I had anticipated. Through the fictional story of this man, the book highlights the challenges people face when they focus on their emotions and insecurities rather than on the results they are trying to achieve. It shows how self-awareness leads to happier times at work and at home. The tone is somehow patronizing but it is a quick read that I found helpful at a time I am confronted with a new culture, new politics and new expectations.

I enjoyed Noah Kulwin’s conversation with Jaron Lanier in “One has this feeling of having contributed to something that’s gone very wrong”. Lanier, a virtual reality guru, who works at Microsoft Research reflects on what went wrong with the internet and social media platforms.  He describes a very centralized Silicon Valley culture where “this very open collective process [is] actually in the service of this very domineering global brain, destroyer of local interpretation, destroyer of individual voice process.” Lanier is publishing a new book entitled “Ten arguments for deleting your social media accounts right now” in which he unpacks the political, economic and spiritual arguments behind his call to action. Politically, social media is “empowering the most obnoxious people to be the most powerful”; economically, it is “centralizing wealth”; and spiritually, it is “lacking in empathy or any kind of personal acknowledgment”. An important perspective, I think.

My graph this week is from the Global Findex Database 2017 collecting data from 150,000 people through representative surveys in 140 countries and showing that two third of unbanked adults have a mobile phone. These are big numbers, illustrating the potential of mobile for financial inclusion. But the report also shows that these numbers are much lower for women, the poor, and the less educated.

My quote this week is from Elon Musk in “Progress, Precision, Profit”, an email to his Tesla employees: “Walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it is obvious you aren’t adding value. It is not rude to leave, it is rude to make someone stay and waste their time.”

3 November 2017

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It is always good to have a quick read through the OECD DAC high level meeting communique. Two specific points caught my attention this year. One, the club of 30 richest countries agreed on the accounting rules for in-donor refugee spending. Certain costs can now be reported as official development assistance (ODA) during the first year of refugees in host countries with no cap on expenditure levels (Annex II). Provision of food, shelter, healthcare and education, rescue at sea, and voluntary resettlement costs are eligible. Spending associated with detention, border control, return and resettlement following asylum rejection is not eligible. Two, DAC members decided to explore the possible “reverse graduation” of rich countries affected by natural disasters or humanitarian crises (paragraph 41). This decision was triggered by the U.K. seeking ODA eligibility when supporting their Overseas Territories in the Caribbean following hurricane Irma. This is important as there has been, up to now, no rule for high income countries experiencing crises-induced GDP drops to be re-instated as aid recipients. As these two developments have implications for the redirection of ODA away from the poorest countries, these conversations are worth monitoring and, I would argue, engaging with. For the second-time in 40 years of its existence, the DAC high level meeting allowed civil society participation and NGOs issued common statements – a possible entry point.

In “It is time to end the opacity and secrecy of social media” Ghonim and Rashbass suggest to develop standardized public interest APIs (application programming interfaces) to improve the transparency of social media. The idea is to create “public good” algorithms to scan and surface problematic content and sponsors on digital platforms.  I found this interesting because it does not only look at the symptoms of the on-going social media crisis. As we have argued before, the root causes of the problem have to do with the ethics of digital platforms design and what drives their expansion (money, not societal progress). But, of course, there are also limits in using tech to fight tech.

My graph this week is from Heidrick and Struggles in “To understand whether your company is inclusive, map how your employees interact”. It shows the results of a network analysis done with employees of a large professional services firm to understand whom they trust and turn to to ask for help with decisions. In that particular example, we see that women (red dots) have less connections than men (blue dots); that there are more same-gender ties than cross-gender ones; and that women are less central than men in the innovation network. This type of evidence is key to understanding diversity and inclusion at a deeper level than counting the number of staff from different groupings.

 

 

My quote of the week is from Pekka Kuusi’s “Social policy for the 60s: A plan for Finland” (H/T Ronald Wiman) referring to the universal child grant system introduced when Finland had a GDP per capita equivalent to that of 2015 Namibia: “A heavenly gift to a country where there was scarcity of everything – except of number of children”.

6 October

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Antonio Garcia Martinez’ “Chaos monkeys” is a deep dive into the Silicon Valley ecosystem illustrated with the up and downs of Martinez’ career from the Goldman Sachs credit derivatives desk to the Facebook ads team. His writing style is casual and witty but also show-offy and sexist. If one manages to rise above that, the second half of the book gives an illuminating unpacking of the digital advertising mechanics, and is worth reading. Rarely can one find straightforward and comprehensive information about this exploding sector which increasingly shapes economies and societies. And Martinez does that with brio. Here is a digest of a couple of chapters I’ll share with my kids (while they remind me again that “Facebook is for old people”): Facebook makes money through (people clicking on) ads; Facebook does not sell users data to ad companies, it triages and packages users data for better ad targeting; Targeting was initially done by classifying users’ “likes” and allowing ad companies to plug targeted ad in their feeds; The big revolution in targeting was about bridging online with offline users data (what you do on Facebook with what you buy online and offline with the same credit card); The bridging is done by connecting real world IDs (eg home address) with digital (mobile, tablet, desktop) IDs; “What is generating tens of billions of dollars in investments and endless scheming inside the bowels of Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple is the puzzle of how to tie these different sets of [IDs] together, and who controls the links.”; This allows these companies to have full pictures of behaviors; “The match rate (ie the percentage of offline personas that can be found online) for Facebook’s Customs Audience product is as high as 90%”. Martinez says that this information (and more) is shared publicly by Facebook but agrees that it is not easily understandable. And he adds that too many people don’t care, even though they should. Oh, and I should also probably add this other quote: “Facebook has run out of humans on the internet. The company can solve this by either making more humans (hard even for Facebook), or connecting what humans there are left on the planet. This is why Internet.org exists, a vaguely public-spirited, and somewhat controversial, campaign by Facebook to wire [the developing world] with free Internet.” I’ll stop here.

The International Financial Corporation’s “Tackling childcare: The business case for employer-supported childcare” investigates the business impacts of employer-provided childcare. It complements a literature review with an in-depth analysis (~100 interviews and 40 focused group discussions) of 10 companies in different countries. It shows benefits for recruitment, retention and productivity. On-site child care helped the Village Nut Company (Kenya) attract young talent and prevent urban migration; cut staff turnover at Nalt Entreprise (Vietnam) by a third; and led to a 9% drop in sick leave absence in MAS Kreeda Al Safi-Madaba (Jordan). The evidence is here. The impact for companies is clear. This could move the needle for women who remain outside of the workforce in much larger numbers than men (27 percentage point difference). A no-brainer for action!

My graph this week is from the 2018 World Development Report “Learning to realize education’s promise” and shows big learning gaps between poor and rich children in African countries. A good graph pointing to sad realities.

 

 

My quote this week is from the late Tom Petty: “I’d have to give technology a D-plus. I think it is unhealthy for rock. I can hear digital anything. It sounds different. It’s very cold.”

15 September

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The just-released Bill and Melinda Gates’ “The stories behind the data 2017” tracks 18 SDG data points on poverty, child and maternal mortality, stunting, vaccines, universal health coverage, sanitation and more. It is a quick and easy read with clear graphs and good stories about what works, accompanied by a cool video. It will be published every year until 2030. Complement or competition to the UN SDG monitoring report?  The Gates report is a teaser for the Foundation’s Goalkeepers GA event, one of the three off-site foundation-led events I will be tracking next week to see who wins the race to fill the gap left by the Clinton Foundation. The other two are the WEF’s Sustainable Development Impact Summit andBloomberg’s Global Business Forum. What is your bet?

This week, Apple released its Iphone X. It uses Face ID, a facial recognition option to unlock the phone, make payments, and use third party apps. It is advertised as easy, fun and super secure. But reviews andonline conversations also point to the possible creepy side, eg law enforcement abuse.  Last week’sEconomist had four articles on facial recognition, its growing market, and possible uses and abuses. Short and good reads on this topic that some of you said could have featured in our last Horizons.  Indeed, facial biometrics has applications and implications for children and young people. Our innovation team explores its potential for detecting malnutrition. This article shows how a software combining AI and facial analysis could “improve the performance” of online courses by picking up when students daydream and quizzing them on what was taught then.

My graph this week is from Brady and al’s “Emotion shapes the diffusion of moralized content in social networks”. It analyzes 560,000 tweets on 3 polarizing topics (in the US) – gun control, climate change and same-sex marriage, to understand how social networks transmit emotions and shape morality. The findings: emotional tweets are contagious. Each moral-emotional word included in a tweet increases its diffusion by 20%. But this effect is much greater within like-minded groups than between. So beware, getting emotional on twitter feeds the echo-chamber.

 

 

My quote this week is from Mars CEO Grant Reid launching his $1 billion Sustainability Plan: “Data and connectivity are helping us get smarter about our impact every year. Today, climate science is clear and we understand the environmental and social challenges in our supply chain better than ever before. With this knowledge, it is clear that the scale of intervention needs to be much bolder – now is the time for business to reassess its role and responsibility in the face of the evidence.”

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