OECD Forum 2017 - Highlights

Paris, 6-7 June

www.oecd.org/forum

“Gender equality is a basic human right. It is not only the right thing to do, it is smart economics.�

Her Royal Highness The Crown Princess Denmark

“The economic system that we built and promoted for decades is leaving behind many people; it’s time to fix it.”

Angel Gurría Secretary-General, OECD

“The technological energy revolution is a 3D world: decarbonisation, decentralisation and digitalisation.�

Isabelle Kocher CEO, Engie

“China is committed to the climate change issue, which we have embedded in our national strategy.

The Chinese national strategy is pursuing innovation-driven, coordinated, green, open and inclusive growth.�

Shiji Gao Director-General & Research Fellow, Institute for Resources and Environmental Policies, Development Research Center (DRC), State Council of China

“By diagnosing a lot of diseases earlier, we would prevent it getting much more costly. We are now focusing on disease interception. I think it’s an exciting future.”

Jane Griffiths Company Group Chairman, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson

“In Latin American countries, we have seen many improvements in the past 10 years, and the last 20 years have been the best in the history of the region. Regarding globalisation and trade, the people aren’t against them.

Our story is very different from the backlash.”

Rodrigo Valdés Minister of Finance, Chile

“What are the key features of the Nordic model? First, a well-established and financed welfare system, available to and used by everybody. Second, a tradition of collaboration between employers and unions, for restructuring and adapting to new technologies and globalisation, through education, re-training. Third, a conscious effort to promote gender equality. My prime minister is proud to be leading a feminist government.�

Hans Dahlgren State Secretary to the Prime Minister, Sweden

“Millennials don’t trust governments, they don’t even trust their doctor. But they will quite happily leave the keys to their house under a doormat for a complete stranger, because of their good Airbnb ratings! Think about it, technology allows us to rebuild trust.”

Richard Dobbs Director, McKinsey; Member, McKinsey Global Institute Council

“We are facing a world where inequality is being created by design, it is not inevitable… Unless we work together, then nothing is going to change.”

Sharan Burrow General Secretary, International Trade Union Confederation

“The question is not if we have Artificial Intelligence or not, the question is whether we have any intelligence at all. That is the question that springs to my mind when looking at the world today.�

Salil Shetty Secretary General, Amnesty International

“We need shareholders, we need clients, but first and foremost we need people. At the end of the day it is all about people. Unless we put people at the centre, unless we are driven by people, we will fail.�

Michel Landel CEO & Member, Board of Directors; President of Executive Committee, Sodexo

“By the time we finish this conversation, someone will have invented something. For BBCs (Born Before Computers), it is difficult to understand what is happening. We need to accept how we move on with this. BBC teachers need to be taught how to deal with technology.�

Oley Dibba-Wadda Executive Secretary, Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA)

“Any digital transformation cannot stay separate from cybersecurity processes. I’ve been in this job for 8 months now: although there are processes in government for everything, there isn’t any for basic digital procedures.”

Diego Piacentini Government Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, Italy

“When we talk about workplace conditions, women still predominantly have caregiving roles in their homes. One woman couldn’t do our bootcamp as it required her to be in the office and she was breastfeeding. I said to bring Frankie in. Now she runs a microsaving start-up. That wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t readjust the social conditions in the workplace.”

Nicola Hazell SheStarts Director, Head of Diversity and Impact, BlueChilli

“Millennials are incredibly values-oriented. More than 80% of millennials globally believe that a company should be evaluated by whether or not it is good for society.�

Chris Lehane Head of Global Policy and Public Affairs, Airbnb

“Equality doesn’t mean you do exactly the same things. Choice really is the basis of everything. That is why balance is very important – at the national level, the global level, but also the personal level.”

Akiko Yamanaka Special Advisor to the President, Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)

“People need to know that there’s a life-raft and they’re not going to drown.

Workers have the entire economic risk of our society put on them, and we have to figure out ways to reduce that risk.”

Bill Spriggs Chief Economist, AFL-CIO

“I look at myself as a destructor of jobs. I’m convinced that for every single job I create in Vivino, I am destroying 5-10 other jobs. That’s the nature of the technology we are using today.”

Theis Sondergaard Co-founder, Vivino

“We need to explain why diversity is important. We need to convince men in positions of influence.”

Chiara Corazza Managing Director, Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society

“In our romance with the digital world we must not forget that having someone who talks to the patient, who cares about them, is core to healthcare.�

Susan Greenfield CEO & Founder, Neuro-Bio Ltd; Member, House of Lords, United Kingdom

“Paternity leave has to be promoted in Japan.”

Naoto Ohmi General Secretary, JTUC Rengo

“We have an opportunity to stop thinking about housing as just a box that people are supposed to live in, and start to build much more heterogenic cities that are made to support community and social mobility.�

Stav Shaffir Member, Knesset, Israel

“The traditional employment relationship is being replaced by a diversity of more detached, agile and adaptable forms of employment. Workplace flexibility – with respect to contracts, time and location – is the name of the game in this new world of autonomous, result-driven and project-oriented work.”

Jacques van den Broek CEO, Randstad

“The toys space and children’s media space is extremely gendered; often the walls themselves are either blue or pink.”

Björn Jeffery CEO and Co-Founder, Toca Boca, Sweden

“It’s normal for human beings to gravitate to echo chambers, it feels cosy. But we must go out there, and talk to people who are different from us. How can we create institutions that represent different groups of people?”

JD Taylor Author, Island Story: Journeys through Unfamiliar Britain

“Instead of walls against globalisation we need to give people a bridge to the future. We can no longer neglect the fact that for many people globalisation means fear of losing their job. Job creation is by far the most effective answer to those who fear globalisation. How do we respond? The basic answer was given 70 years ago by George Marshall: we need to take complete action, and ensure that nobody is left behind. Let us be as visionary as Marshall was.”

Lars Løkke Rasmussen Prime Minister, Denmark

“We do a survey of millennials, and what is consistent is that people want to work in organisations that have a clear sense of purpose. They want to see progression but not necessarily in the same company.

But they want to see their career passport being developed.�

David Cruickshank Global Chairman, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu LLC

“Gender roles are an increasingly stressful factor for young girls today. There’s something very bad going on out there, where there’s enormous pressure on girls to perform their role as girls.”

Rasmus Kjeldahl Executive Director, Børns Vilkår

“It is all about empowering patients, as they will want to be involved in the process. Asking the client and the patient what they want is truly important.�

Ginette Petitpas Taylor Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance, Canada

“We need to change the growth model because first, it did not prevent the crisis from happening, second, it did not prevent the increase of inequalities in income and opportunities, and third, it did not consider the impact on the environment.�

Gabriela Ramos Chief of Staff, G20 Sherpa & Special Counsellor to the Secretary-General, OECD

“I think young people face a better future than we do, thanks to robots and artificial intelligence. There are so many opportunities for them that we didn’t have. Why should we train people for jobs to go into at 9 am, work till late and come home tired? There should be so many other opportunities than that. So I am optimistic.�

From the floor

“I’m a 60-year-old home owner, but my 30-year-old son’s worry is that he will never be able to afford to buy a home.”

From the floor

“Big disruption hasn’t come from technology. The biggest disruption came from saying you’ve got to go with a deregulated economy.”

John Evans General Secretary, Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC)

“We have to make sure that our citizens have the competency in understanding basic security when online. Cybercrime is the fastest‑rising crime in any country right now, and a third of all online crimes are committed against 18‑23 year-olds.”

Jacob Bundsgaard Mayor of Aarhus, Denmark

“Housing policy is complex, but fundamentally what you’re talking about is a basic human need – for shelter. There’s also a basic need for connection. How can we create places and communities that foster positive social capital?”

Elizabeth Rapoport Content Director, Europe Urban Land Institute

“Our fiscal systems were built on a pre-digitised, pre-globalised, pre‑climate change world, whereas natural resource use and pollution are hardly taxed at all. The idea is to shift tax away from labour to natural resource use and consumption in order to shift incentives. It sounds difficult but it can be done.”

Femke Groothuis Wavemaker, The Ex’tax Project

“We are considering artificial intelligence in the healthcare sector. Doctors say that artificial intelligence has learned how to diagnose in the US, but in Denmark we diagnose differently. There is a cultural and ethical dimension to consider.�

Lars Qvistgaard Chairman, The Danish Confederation of Professional Associations (AC)

“The US has never been richer, yet we tell people to take lower wages, less healthcare, and no pension, less days off and less time with your family.

People are pushing back because they’ve had enough of it.”

Richard Trumka President, AFL-CIO

“Character and social-emotional skills are the area where demand is growing most rapidly, and yet it is the area in which we are doing least well.�

Andreas Schleicher Director for the Directorate of Education and Skills, Special Advisor on Education Policy to the Secretary-General, OECD

“It is already clear that where you live has a lot to do with how you live, even how long you live. The trends driving these divisions have deepened in recent decades, and the differences are even more dire.�

Ann McDaniel Interim CEO and Editor-in Chief, Foreign Policy

“There cannot be a 100% security.

And it’s probably not so bad, since we take the risk to get into a car, although you can have an accident.

I think we need a new culture that realises it can happen to anyone.”

Christoph Steck Director, Public Policy & Internet, Telefónica

“There isn’t a culture of security within companies and the general public. We have big security agencies and they are efficient only towards very large companies and critical infrastructure but security has to be global or it is not security.”

Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin President, CNIL, France

“The great paradox we’re struggling with is that globalisation does bring innovation and, for poor countries, it brings economic benefits. At the same time, it’s very disrupting for first-world countries and social welfare systems.”

Tim Costello Chief Advocate, World Vision Australia

“Everything you need requires production. In Denmark in 2000 we thought that we could make a living out of knowledge, but now we can see that exporting knowledge is very difficult. Exports are not coming from big cities in Denmark, but from the smaller areas where the factories are. We cannot make a living working only in offices.�

Carsten Kissmeyer Mayor, Ikast-Brande, Denmark

“The 2 000 people in Finland testing our basic income programme can now start their businesses again, and start living again. Their dignity is back, and they have got their citizenship back. I hope that this leads to a bigger renewal of social security systems.�

Marjukka Turunen Director of Change Management, Kela, Finland

“Why are we still talking about bridging divides? Because people feel it in their daily lives, and in their pockets. This populist backlash is based on the fear and the insecurity which working people feel. Our labour markets have not recovered from the financial crash.�

Philip J. Jennings General Secretary, UNI Global Union

“As an Australian student I can say that many of people my age don’t want kids, because we’re afraid for their future.”

From the floor

“Are we the last heritage generation? We spend all we have, we do not seem to be thinking of handing on to our children and grandchildren.�

From the floor

“Global growth is expected to pick up modestly. The bumper sticker for what represents our view of the global economy is: better, but not good enough in reducing persistent inequalities.�

Catherine L. Mann Chief Economist, Head of the Economics Department and Special Counsellor to the Secretary-General, OECD

“The self-employed are the least prepared for retirement.�

Maarten Edixhoven CEO, Aegon, The Netherlands

“In some countries you see a real attraction to universal basic income because it simplifies the welfare state system – it reduces bureaucracy!”

Kenneth F. Scheve Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, United States

“We need a clever system of defaults: that you participate in a pension system unless you want out, or participate in a training programme unless you want otherwise. It is a lie that people who are free make the best choices.

We need to correct that lie.�

Aart de Geus Chairman & CEO, Bertelsmann Stiftung

“Thinking about education throughout the whole spectrum of our lives will take some creative thinking about how we finance our education.”

Jo Ann Jenkins CEO, AARP

“A basic income is not a panacea, but it should be seen as part of a new distribution system suitable for a globalising economy and a 21st century society. People who have basic income security work more, not less.�

Guy Standing Professorial Research Associate, SOAS, University of London, United Kingdom

“There’s no way that the skill sets we can conceive of right now will even last for the next century. We’re talking about the next decade or two. That’s enough for investment. Entrepreneurship, along with a maker mindset, is a skill set that we need going forward, because we won’t have our jobs for the next thirty years.”

Nicholas Haan Vice-President, Singularity University

“From the trade union perspective, globalisation, inclusiveness and growth should go hand in hand. We want to create societies where everyone can participate actively in globalisation and we need politics and institutions that promote equality.�

Lizette Risgaard President, Danish Confederation of Trade Unions (LO)

“Are we guilty of talking only to people like us? If so, we are guilty of being in a bubble and we are guilty of being in silos.”

Anthony Gooch Director, Public Affairs & Communications, OECD

“Attitudes and views of the economy today are better than they were before the crash. OECD Forum attendees feel better about the economy than the general public does. But the young among you are a little more pessimistic than us old guys. And most people – up to 60% – think their children will not be better off than they are.”

Bruce Stokes Director, Global Economic Attitudes, Pew Research Center

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