Revolutionizing Global Value Chains

HOME > ACTIVITIES > EVENTS > REVOLUTIONIZING GLOBAL VALUE CHAINS

The Fourth Sector: Revolutionizing Global Value Chains

January 23, 2019 | 18.00 – 19.00

Loop Pavilion 109 Promenade, Davos Platz

Davos | Switzerland

At the current trajectory, the world will fall very short of meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. Bold ambition and speedy response are required to mobilize the trillions in private sector investment that’s needed.

Global companies can drive at-scale impact across all the SDGs by leveraging their procurement to create demand in their value chains for “for-benefit” businesses—companies that prioritize people and the planet alongside profits.

The Fourth Sector Group is teaming up with Philips, Unilever, CARE, the World Economic Forum, the UN Foundation, and the International Chamber of Commerce to leverage the power and potential of global value chains to achieve the SDGs.

This session kicks off a series of consultations this year dedicated to building an alliance of corporate, government, and civil society leaders committed to shifting corporate procurement preferences by $100+ billion towards inclusive, sustainable for-benefit businesses by 2020.

Please RSVP at f.mondello@fourthsector.org

For-Benefit Enterprises: Delivering on the SDGs

Many of today’s global challenges are largely downstream consequences of outmoded economic systems and business models that incentivize short-term financial gain over long-term sustainable value creation. Responding to the scale, urgency and complexity of these challenges demands that we fundamentally rethink business-as-usual.

For-benefit enterprises are a promising pathway for such a transformation.

For-benefit enterprises are neither for-profit nor non-profit; they are hybrid organizations whose primary purpose is delivering social and environmental benefit, alongside commercial gains. For-benefits constitute a fourth sector of the economy which has been emerging at the intersection of the private, public, and nonprofit sectors for decades. Scaling this sector by trillions is critical to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

As a streamlined, systemic strategy for contributing to the SDGs, global companies can leverage their buying power to create demand for for-benefits in their value chains by instituting a procurement preference for them. This will incentivize new for-benefit entrants and conversions of existing players, thus improving social and environmental outcomes throughout value chains and delivering across all the SDGs.