A New Era of Collaboration and Partnerships

greaterthan › 2009 — a Great Success

There is a clear sense developing of the interdependency of business, government and society. The inaugural greaterthan › conference was designed to explore and address this emerging new model. Consider the following:

• In his remarks at the New York Stock Exchange on April 27, 2006, Kofi Anan said, “if societies fail, business fails.”
• Bill Gates, addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2007, said: “We need a creative capitalism where business and non-governmental organizations work together to create a market system that eases the world's inequities.”
• In the book Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit From Passion and Purpose by Raj Sisodia, Jag Sheth and David Wolfe, an expanded vision of corporate purpose among exemplary companies is documented, as is the success of these companies: “The best form of corporate social responsibility is not making monetary donations to charities, but the dedicated involvement of everyone in a company in meaningful pursuits that transcend the bottom line.”

Global society, as a whole, appears to be setting the stage, if not explicitly calling, for new approaches to addressing the world’s problems. As Paul Hawken illustrates in his book Blessed Unrest, there are hundreds of thousands of grassroots organizations springing up all over the world to address local, regional and global challenges. He likens this widespread phenomenon to the natural response of an organism to illness or disease.

The Promise of New Approaches
The growing urgency of global problems, the heightened sense of personal and corporate social responsibility, and the willingness of organizations to work with partners from other sectors is inspiring new models of partnership and what appears to be a promising “blurring of the lines” between corporations, NGOs and public-sector agencies.

The greaterthan › conference was developed and produced by Swardlick Marketing Group, in association with its partners at The Soap Group—and with the support of dozens of corporate and nonprofit organizations—to explore and foster such partnerships, across sectors, among multiple organizations, public and private. It was designed to help bring ideas, creative approaches, tools, techniques and a supportive community together to be employed by those who are seeking new ways to tackle pervasive problems.

Visit the greaterthan › conference site.