Professor Ioannis Ioannou’s research looks at sustainability and corporate social responsibility. He calls on Davos attendees to lift sustainability up the political and corporate agendas. “I think the issue of sustainable organisations should be at the top of the Davos agenda,” he says. “By sustainable organisations, I mean those which can synergistically co-generate both economic and social value, while remaining sustainable within their economic, environmental and broader social domain.”

He points to important macro trends, such as the growing scarcity of the earth's resources, climate change and massive demographic changes around the globe, coupled with rising levels of income inequality and the anticipated shift of middle-class consumption from the developed to the developing world in the coming decades, as shaping a new world order with a radically different global competitive landscape. In this changed world Ioannis Ioannou anticipates that successful organisations will be those which “acknowledge these tectonic shifts today, and are able to incorporate these broader social and environmental issues into their business models and strategy. In this sense, the emergence of sustainable organisations not only challenges but also redefines what we currently perceive as the role of the corporation in society”.

Read here what other LBS faculty suggest