What's Your Country's Strategy?

Oscar Motomura: There is a fundamental question that often gets overlooked: What does a company owe to its country? In Brazil, I'm in the management-education business. In our programs, we stress the important link between business and the environment in which it operates -- the bond between the company and the country. I see business forgetting that one of its most important roles is to help create the environment and the society in which it functions. Companies not only need to craft their own strategies; they also need to help craft a national strategy. It's not enough for the company to move in a positive direction; the country must also move in the right direction.

The question for Brazil is, What kind of future will we create for our country? For businesspeople, the question is, What kind of strategy can we help to develop to realize that future? Right now, there are two competing visions. One side believes that Brazil needs to become more industrialized, which I believe is completely wrong. The side I agree with believes that Brazil should capitalize on its ecological assets and position itself for the future by investing in its irreplaceable ecosystem.

Most recently, I've sought to mobilize the business community to have a serious conversation about the country's future. There is a network of almost 5,000 senior executives from the 27 states of Brazil who have taken our Advanced Management Program. I've asked them to organize dialogues with academics, businesspeople, politicians, environmentalists, and scientists in their communities to discuss alternative futures for Brazil. What we're looking for are radically innovative strategies. After each group sends us a short paper summarizing the results of its dialogue, we'll cull the best ideas and convene a seminar in Sao Paulo, in April, with representatives of all 27 states.

David Dreyer: I want to continue the thread that Oscar has introduced -- the link between companies and countries -- and relate it to an issue that I'm involved in here in the United States. Not long ago, I was visited by Julian Bond, the chairman of the NAACP. He told me about a heroic effort that he's making to transform that organization -- to modernize it, to build it into a vital operation. But the picture he painted suggests that we have a long way to go in this country to combine economic growth and social well-being.

He told me that the NAACP has 2,220 volunteer branches in the United States. Some branches have no telephones. Some have telephones but don't publish their numbers because they're afraid of harassing phone calls -- which makes it impossible for people who need help to call them. Many of the branches don't have fax machines, and most of them are not on the Internet. His question was, How do I bring this organization into the 20th century? The answer was, You need to bring the organization into the 21st century.

Here's what I took away from Julian Bond's visit. First, when it comes to the new economy, we need everybody to participate in it. It is fundamentally damaging to the country's future to have an organization like the NAACP isolated from the technology that is helping to create the new economy. Second, a division between the information "haves" and the information "have-nots" creates a national political problem. It is very hard for elected officials to proceed with the work of global trade, international economic development, and global investment when people in cities and towns across the country are excluded from those policies' benefits. And third, it is not healthy for this country to have so many people who are excluded from all of the opportunities -- all of the startups and other changes -- that the new economy presents.

Steve Pontell: We face a huge challenge: The organizational infrastructure that was created to meet social needs in the past is simply not relevant to today's leaders. In the past, there were plenty of organizations that people joined to help meet community needs: Rotary, Kiwanis, Masons, chambers of commerce, and more. But the leaders of the new economy just aren't joining those organizations. As a result, when it comes to business helping to solve social problems, there's a lack of leadership, a lack of vision, and a lack of organization. All you see are tactics: businesspeople getting involved on a case-by-case basis, coming up with on-the-spot initiatives. Previously you'd see an organization like Rotary launching an international effort to eradicate polio. That's a big vision -- one that has involved decades of effort and millions of dollars, and today it's approaching its goal.