2015 marked a momentous year for the Australian share value community with an impressive presence at the Shared Value Initiative’s Shared Value Leadership Summit in New York.
Continuing from the momentum around the 2015 Shared Value Forum in Melbourne earlier this year, a record number of Shared Value Project members including Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, Ellis Jones, IAG, NAB, and Suncorp Group, along with other Australian business leaders travelled to New York to take the stage and share their valuable experience, highlighting the impressive progress and action being taken by Australian companies to advance the shared value movement.
This year’s Summit proved to be another valuable event for the global shared value community, bringing together 400 practitioners, world leading companies and high calibre speakers, with a major focus on the question: what is the global state of shared value, right now, in 2015?
David Harrington, IAG & Sasha Courville, NAB Ramana James, IAG
Our Chair, Peter Yates AM and Chairman of Bendigo & Adelaide Bank, Robert Johanson helped to contribute to this discussion as part of the ‘Regional Champions for Shared Value’ panel on the first day of the Summit. They were joined by Amit Kapoor, Chairman of the newly launched Shared Value Initiative-India, and Wilfred Aulbur, Chairman of the India Council on Competitiveness, to discuss how Australia and India have seen the benefit of building regional peak bodies that have been able to advance knowledge and practice in specific countries whilst also contributing to the global dialogue around the shared value movement. Robert shared Bendigo & Adelaide Bank’s long-term experience with their Community Bank model as an impressive example of creating social value in communities through regional engagement whilst generating unique economic benefits for the bank nation wide. Watch the video below.
A number of other Shared Value Project members and Australian’s also spoke at various sessions throughout the Summit. Sasha Courville, Head of Corporate Responsibility Strategy at NAB spoke during the breakout session ‘Food Stability: Opportunity in Climate-Smart Agriculture’; Zoe Piper, Co-Founder and Director of Ecolour presented the company’s non-toxic paint as a case study during the Storyteller sessions; Leith Greenslade, Vice Chair of the UN’s MDG Health Alliance chaired the breakout session ‘Identifying Opportunities in Global Health: New Perspectives’; and Jeremy Heimans, Co-Founder and CEO of Purpose presented the closing keynote ‘Harnessing New Power to Build a Shared Value Movement’.
Sasha Courville, NAB Jeremy Heimans, Purpose
The Summit provided a platform for discussions around important issues in the advancement of the shared value movement such as: how today’s employees need shared value leaders and the role that intrapreneurship can play in advancing shared value internally (which was demonstrated by Barclays with their Social Innovation Facility), how social purpose changes brand, best practices for social change makers, the opportunity for shared value through empowering women, the role of philanthropy, the role of the Sustainability Development Goals, and how we can redefine partnerships and get back to basic strategy.
Stay tuned for future Shared Value Project events and activities in which we will be working to incorporate some of these new ideas and insights.
Catch up on all the Summit videos, photos, top takeaways and insights via the Shared Value Initiative.
Read more Summit highlights from our Executive Director Helen Steel, and Chris Newlan from Suncorp Group.
See photos of the Shared Value Project and our members at the Summit.
