Senior leaders from Mastercard, Energias de Portugal, Baker Hughes, HSBC, Shell, ICRC, Tata and Unilever met in Seattle for the Leadership Vanguard Exchange.
They presented preliminary conclusions from the insights gathered during field trips to India and Tanzania, where they met with promising impact enterprises, to a global community of experts and leaders.
The Leadership Vanguard is Xynteo’s 12-month leadership experience that seeks to develop the leadership skills required in a rapidly changing market. The participants practise these skills to help accelerate impact enterprises working to positively impact some of the world’s trickiest problems. This year’s focus is on the themes Revaluing Plastics, Financial Inclusion and Low Carbon Cities.
Combining the high potential of these local impact enterprises and the expertise, networks and business skills of the Vanguard participants and their organisations will create scalable impact such as improved and more inclusive plastic waste management, increased access to financial services for those that are excluded and sustainable solutions for mobility and waste.
Innovative solutions to global problems
In Seattle the leaders announced which impact enterprises they have shortlisted to collaborate with, and how they can contribute towards growing their business models.
They presented insights gained during the field trips where the Revaluing Plastics team went to Bangalore to explore plastic waste management, the Financial Inclusion team travelled to Dar es Salaam to explore how stakeholders work to increase financial inclusion and the Low Carbon Cities team went to Bangalore to explore sustainable solutions for mobility and waste management. They met with a range of promising impact enterprises working in these areas.
At the Vanguard Exchange in Seattle, the participants presented their analysis of the chosen impact enterprises. Based on their barriers to growth and opportunities to scale, they shared their provisional proposals on how they could meaningfully support the selected enterprises to accelerate progress.
These collaborations are intended to create mutually beneficial relationships, where the Vanguard leaders develop their leadership capabilities and ability to intervene in systemic problems to facilitate sustainable growth, and the impact enterprises receive additional skill-transfer, networks and guidance.
The Vanguard leaders received feedback from practitioners and change-makers, including impact entrepreneur Joanna Bischel from Kasha, Zahir Khoja from Mastercard, DD Johnice from Kaiser Permanente and Clive Allison from Unilever.
Innovation expert John Shepard, Director of Global Development Incubator, a non-profit building startups and partnerships to address global development challenges, advised the leaders on impact innovation and partnerships between large corporations and impact enterprises. He highlighted the importance of constant value exchange and a mutually beneficial partnership between a global company and an impact enterprise.
The Vanguard Exchange marked the transition into the acceleration phase of the programme where the participating leaders will engage with organisations, to explore and identify potential opportunities for collaboration, partnership and support.
The participants will work actively to create a fruitful collaboration and acceleration to scale the work of their chosen impact enterprises. They will present their progress at the next Vanguard Exchange, which will take place in Bangalore in November 2019.
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