“It’s not rocket science” – Bill Clinton

Yesterday, I had the chance of going to see Bill Clinton speak in front of the Vancouver Board of Trade. Given that the event was run by the business community, I was a little apprehensive, worrying that Bill Clinton would speak of trade liberalization, his main focus during his Presidency. But I seemed to have forgotten that since he left office, he has embraced more humanitarian goals. In 2005, he inaugurated the Clinton Global Initiative . Since he has traveled the world trying to inspire people to commit to global change. When speaking to a business community his message can be summarized to “keep making money, but change the way in which you make money”. In his opinion, we currently face 3 challenges:

1)The persistent inequalities
2)Unsustainability
3)Global identity crisis (understood as ethnic clashes, fear of the other)

Accordingly, each of our actions, each government policies and each business practices should be evaluated in terms of how they contribute to the alleviation of the above-mentioned challenges. The main advantage of this model, is that it is relatively simple to understand, but how inspired and innovative is it?

The above video opened the speech he gave, and is truly a “World Vision” ad aimed at businesses which both praises what the foundation has accomplished (let’s not forget that Bill clinton and his foundation were partly responsible for the reduction of the price of anti-retroviral drugs for children in developing countries ) and calls for action by using images of suffering child, of their big bright eyes and by presenting quotes from celebrities.

Now that you’ve had a look at the video, do you think it is effective and will inspire businesses to change their practices? And has it inspired you? If so you might want to check out Bill Clinton’s new website that asks individuals to share their commitments to the world.