Panel 1 — Busi­ness Inno­va­tion for Social and Eco­nomic Development

Descrip­tion

Inno­va­tion is one of the key dri­vers for pri­vate com­pa­nies to live long-term. Inno­va­tion can take the shape of new prod­ucts, new sys­tems or new busi­ness mod­els. With the increased role of Busi­ness in the social arena and devel­op­ment, Inno­va­tion can also be an amaz­ing tool to address social issues and fur­ther coun­tries’ devel­op­ment. A lot of com­pa­nies have tried to develop Inno­va­tions that could for exam­ple help address mal­nu­tri­tion, improve health access or increase liv­ing stan­dards of pop­u­la­tions. This Panel aims to address what are some of the key Inno­va­tion exam­ples (prod­ucts, dis­tri­b­u­tion, sys­tems…) that busi­nesses or public-private part­ner­ships have put in place and that have allowed to sig­nif­i­cantly cre­ate a social improve­ment and helped coun­tries’ development.

Panel 2 — Big Data and Development

Descrip­tion

Every day, we cre­ate 2.5 quin­til­lion bytes of data — and over 90% of the data in the world today has been cre­ated in the last two years alone. This data comes from every­where: sen­sors used to gather cli­mate infor­ma­tion, posts to social media sites, dig­i­tal pic­tures and videos, pur­chase trans­ac­tion records, and cell phone GPS sig­nals to name a few. The avail­abil­ity of data on human behav­ior is quickly chang­ing how deci­sions are made in the pub­lic sec­tor and in devel­op­ment con­texts. This panel will dis­cuss how Big Data is expected to affect the future of pub­lic pol­icy and how can pol­icy mak­ers lever­age it in achiev­ing devel­op­ment goals?

Panel 3 — U.S. Pri­vate Sec­tor and Development

Descrip­tion

Today more than ever, the future of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment is being linked to the emer­gence of a vibrant pri­vate sec­tor in devel­op­ing coun­tries. As this aspect of devel­op­ment gains greater and greater atten­tion, gov­ern­ments and devel­op­ment prac­ti­tion­ers will be increas­ingly chal­lenged to look at poli­cies that enable the risk tak­ers of the world, and coun­tries and for­eign investors will be ben­e­fit­ing from such a par­a­digm shift. Tak­ing the exam­ple of the US for­eign investor, how are they able to be a cat­a­lyst for local pri­vate sec­tor devel­op­ment and what poli­cies or pro­grams have been put in place to sup­port them? What is the role of the US busi­ness as a devel­op­ment actor?