Who will champion the next global innovations?

As I prepare for my trip to Tianjin, my mind is preoccupied with the challenges of our time. Europe is stuck in its conflict between growth and austerity while the United States continues to look for its own economic solutions. China is beginning to doubt its self-sustaining growth model. The world is not tackling the most fundamental structural issue: climate change. The momentum to achieve the UN’s Millenium goals seems to have slowed significantly, despite being so close to reaching those goals.

My participation at the Annual Meeting of the New Champions is therefore motivated by a quest for new ideas, new models but most importantly, new ways to bring together creative minds.

The contrast has never been bigger between challenges and ways to solve them, between risks and global capacities to mobilize.

The telecom industry is fascinating in this respect: the smart phone and tablet market is changing the way individuals consume telecoms, telecom network traffic is growing exponentially, new applications are being launched every day.  And at the same time, the industry is facing major changes as well as dwindling financial results.

A global rethink is needed.

We need to find ways to connect growth and innovation, prudent and positive thinking, old and new. We need to find ways for Europe to save its social net that is, despite all critics, desired both in Asia – to boost spending and social harmony – and the Americas, where strong growth has widened the inequalities. We need to find ways to nurture more Silicon Valleys and technology clusters in emerging countries to spread growth and tap new talent wherever it may be.

The Annual Meeting of New Champions or Summer Davos seems the perfect setting for these types of discussions and solutions. And I will look for the bridges between fields, the thinkers without borders, the realists with dreams, the East meeting the West.

Author: Christel Heydemann is Alcatel-Lucent Executive Vice-President Human Resources and Transformation and a Forum Young Global Leader.

Image: Inventions such as the tablet have changed the way we consume information.  REUTERS/Thomas Peter