It will have taken an unprecedented pandemic to realize the damaging effects of several decades of strategies which were certainly profitable in the short term, but which created multiple dependencies, ultimately destroying value in the long term. We can measure today the impact of localizing 80% of the world’s production of masks in one province in China, a country in which 70% of smartphones’ production is also located. We are rediscovering today the full meaning of the word value, which comes from the Latin valor, value, derived from valere, to be worth, to have value, to have virtue.
In 2018, by measuring the human capital of each country and comparing it to the one it had in 1990, with an indicator that combines the skills, experiences and knowledge of a population with its state of health, a study(*) concluded that there is a correlation between investment in education and health, and better GDP growth.
Beyond public policies at the level of a country, looking at corporations, the effects of the pursuit of profit at all costs have been measured more than once in the 21st century, from the Enron scandal in 2000, to more recently the most serious crisis Boeing has ever gone through in 104 years of history with the crash of the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX. The choices of investments of companies as well as those of States contribute or not to the common good, and to sustainable value creation. There will undoubtedly be a “before” and an “after” coronavirus, which will push States as well as businesses to question their long term strategy and their wider purpose.
About the Author: Nandini COLIN
Senior Advisor, thought leader, change maker. Click to view Nandini’s short bio