The Next Frontier: Corporate Governance
Feel like you've heard the acronym ESG pop up with increasing frequency? You're not alone. These 'environmental, social and governance' indicators are now seen as critically important to any organization's viability. They also generated record inflows of money into dedicated funds last year.
But there are risks. With pioneering tech comes bias, inequity and unfair access, not to mention privacy concerns. How can enterprises put technology front and centre?

Speakers in this session are: Gillian R. Tett, Editor-at-Large and Chair of the Editorial Board, The Financial Times; Amy Weaver, President and Chief Financial Officer, Salesforce; Luis Alberto Moreno, Member of the Board of Trustees, World Economic Forum; Todd Cort, Lecturer in Sustainability, Yale University; Claire Lee, Global Brand Ambassador, SVB Capital, Silicon Valley Bank; Christina Montgomery, Vice-President and Chief Privacy Officer, IBM Corporation; and Kay Firth-Butterfield, Head of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning; World Economic Forum.
Tech is a social creature
For Todd Cort, the challenges of tech are as society-based as they are three-fold: 1. Rights of individual (data privacy and online bullying); 2. Cohesion of groups and communities (digital access and job losses); and 3. Health (fitness, sedentary lifestyles and gaming addiction)
Amy Weaver agrees that employees and customers are driving the sustainability fight. "If you don't get this right you can really put a bulls-eye on your back. But if you can do this effectively, I am convinced that really laying in on ESG is one of the best ways to build a strong and durable company."
Tech in the community
Tech companies certainly can't work alone, says Cort. "What we do is work in communities of people. When it comes to ESG, we need help to project scenarios of what's going to happen - deforestation, hurricanes, global warming, for instance."
Christina Montgomery sees an increasing number of IBM investors asking about ESG practices. "They want to know how we're operationalising those principles and practices," she says. "They see our trust in technology and demand to know how it's playing out in practice. They want real-life examples", she adds.
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Luis Alberto Moreno says: "Take a country like Bolivia, where 50% of country has access to bandwidth. It's low-speed and high-cost. The more that bandwidth is accelerating, the more important it is that we're all connected - and we're all connected the same."
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We need a new way of working, says Claire Lee. "Start-ups will always look to disrupt spaces. And there is an industry around us that needs to be brought more up to date. It's our role to educate and reform."
T for technology
There's definitely "a little T in the ESG economy", says Cort. "If I were to suggest one set of metrics, it would be around how it's enabling solutions beyond its borders.
Should we regulate that? No.
Would investors be interested in learning about that? Yes."
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"We need a unified framework around ESG metrics so that there's more comparability," says Christina Montgomery. Currently, individual metrics aren't applicable enough to be useful. But the technology is evolving and there's much to be hopeful about.