Myanmar’s re-emergence into the global economy presents policy-makers with a series of fundamental dilemmas. As reforms are put into place, foreign investors and international energy companies are keen to capitalize on Myanmar’s abundant reserves of oil and natural gas.

While the attention on Myanmar’s oil and gas reserves is welcome, there should be a balance between the country’s domestic energy development and its international focus on export markets and imported expertise. Today, 74 percent of inhabitants lack access to electricity; population growth and rapid industrialization are thrusting demand for energy ever upwards. Therefore, balance must be sought through an integrated energy plan, a concept elaborated upon in a new report, The New Energy Architecture: Myanmar 2013, developed jointly by the World Economic Forum, Asian Development Bank and Accenture.

There is no denying the importance of foreign investment to Myanmar’s energy sector. The country has benefitted from partnerships involving some of the world’s biggest oil and gas operators, which bring their knowledge, equipment and experience.

But as foreign investors eye the recent bidding rounds for new oil and gas fields (the Government of Myanmar received over 75 letters of interest for 18 onshore blocks in January this year), some stakeholders are concerned about a lack of local involvement in the industry’s development. These views are documented in the report. It also includes concern about whether jobs and training will be available for people in Myanmar as well as the fear that much of the energy produced will be exported, at the expense of developing Myanmar’s own energy infrastructure.

An integrated approach to such occasionally competing interests should be the defining characteristic of the government’s formulation of an energy plan. Such an approach will seek to balance two linked sets of goals. First, there are those of the New Energy Architecture: economic growth and development, sustainability, and energy access and security. Second, it will balance the competing interests of key stakeholders: the Myanmar government, international energy companies, local businesses and the general public.

One of the issues yet to be addressed is how key stakeholders can quantify the opportunities present in Myanmar’s new investment environment, and equip themselves with the tools necessary to cope with a comprehensive and wide-ranging analysis of indicators and interests.

Both the government and international companies should look to develop robust supply and demand forecasting capabilities to gauge the scale of Myanmar’s production capacity and domestic requirements.National energy companies should evaluate their opportunities for up and downward integration. Analyses of relative margins, supply chain optimization and operations assessments would offer national companies a platform for growth as the market opens up to new entrants.

National energy companies should also reconsider their governance structures. A set of guiding principles should define responsibilities and pave the way for transparent financial transactions and open channels of communication.

Finally, new entrants need to devise market entry strategies, and include assessments of the dynamic trends in market activity as well as potential routes to entry, from joint ventures to M&As and partnerships.

Acquiring these tools is the first step that key stakeholders can take in finding an equilibrium between the competing interests inherent in Myanmar’s economic growth. Striking the right balance is not only central to fulfilling the aims of an energy architecture, but will also be the determining factor of Myanmar’s long-term economic development.

Q: Why did the GE Foundation get involved in Haiti?

A: We have a long-standing commitment to disaster relief. In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, the entire GE family provided more than $5 million in relief efforts, including grants from the GE Foundation and equipment donations.

Q: Tell us about the hospital.

A: The Hôpital Universitaire de Mirebalais—or HUM as we call it—will provide free access to quality healthcare for tens of thousands of Haitians every year.  HUM offers primary care services to a catchment area of 185,000 people in Mirebalais and two nearby communities. Patients from central Haiti and areas in and around Port-au-Prince also will be able to receive care. This facility will offer a range of services from HIV/AIDS and TB care to general and orthopedic surgery.    

Q: What specifically did the GE Foundation give to the hospital?

A: We made an unconditional commitment to give essential medical equipment and technical assistance to support the multiple needs of Mirebalais Hospital. When the in-patient unit of the hospital is open, the equipment we gave will improve care delivery and enable medical staff to diagnose, treat and manage trauma, maternity cases, and acute illness. Over the past year as we completed the installation of the equipment, we trained the hospital staff on the operation and basic maintenance of the equipment. We also provided a conducive teaching environment, including support from GE employees, to train medical practitioners in Haiti in an effort to make HUM sustainable.

Q: How did you go about identifying these areas?

A: Our first priority in these situations is to make sure we are meeting local needs. That is why we partnered with the Haitian government and Partners in Health (PIH) over the last 3 years to identify critical gaps and deliver the appropriate technology. We also partnered with Assist International to work with our local GE teams to do the installation of the equipment, as well as training. Through our “GE Ambassador” program, we will continue to support this facility in utilizing the technology to improve services for patients.

Q: When will the hospital open?

A:  It’s a phased approach. Right now, HUM is treating Haitians with out-patient services including adult medicine, pediatrics, chronic care/non-communicable disease clinic, and women’s health. The timeframe for the opening of the in-patient services is to be determined with the Haitian government. When open, the hospital will have general surgery, emergency services, maternity, and hematology/oncology services.  The hospital has 300 in-patient beds and 500 out-patient beds.

Q: How is GE currently involved?

A: This Sunday, I will be participating in HUM’s “Celebration of Partnership” event. Hye Sun Na from GE Healthcare is also here with me as the new “GE Ambassador” to HUM. Hye will help support HUM as it begins to use the new equipment to provide services. Haiti’s Minister of Health, Dr. Florence Guillaume, along with PIH co-founders Paul Farmer and Ophelia Dahl and the senior leadership of HUM will be speaking at the event. Nearly 165 VIP guests from the U.S. and abroad are traveling to Haiti to attend. In addition, more than 50 Haitian dignitaries and business executives will also attend the ceremony.

Q: Aside from equipment donations and employee expertise, what has GE been able to bring to HUM?

A: Partners in Health, the lead NGO running the project, has told us that as a result of GE signing on as a partner early on and being so generous, they were able to open many more doors and leverage significant in-kind contributions as a result.  Once other corporations like HP, Stanley and Fuji, were told of GE’s participation, they were more interested in being involved.

GBI leadership spent over a year planning its meeting in Beijing—held recently. As you can imagine, there was substantial concern about discussing human rights with Chinese businesses and civil society representatives. While there have been conferences in China on corporate social responsibility, this is the first conference we are aware of that focused primarily on human rights. This focus was prompted by the UN Human Rights Council’s having unanimously adopted the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in 2011—encouraging all business entities, including Chinese businesses, to respect human rights in their commercial operations. Leading up to the conference, there was considerable angst among GBI member companies about whether we should use the term “human rights” in our discussions or whether we would be safer speaking of the term’s component rights, such as freedom from discrimination, privacy, religious freedom, the right to collective bargaining and so on.

Fortunately, some key cosponsors of the conference were able to allay some of these concerns. In addition to the UN Global Compact’s local network (the China Enterprise Confederation, essentially the Chinese Chamber of Commerce), the Chinese shipping giant Cosco and Tsinghua University agreed to sponsor the conference. Also attending were representatives from China Development Bank, China Mobile Communications Corporation, Sinosteel and other, smaller Chinese companies. The Cosco representative showed particular leadership and spoke at the opening gathering of nearly 200 attendees. GBI member companies came away with the unanimous view that Chinese companies were more comfortable talking about business and human rights than any of us individually or collectively expected. As GE has over 20 joint-venture partners in China, this was good news.

We engaged in many noteworthy conversations at the conference. Following are we feel could be of interest.

• One of the Chinese corporations that attended the conference was a hydropower company that operates in Myanmar (Burma). While it operates several hydro-electric dams in that country, in September 2011 it was asked to close down operations at one dam due to concerns over practices that fueled fighting between the national army and the Kachin rebels. A company spokesman who was asked about the situation by a Chinese attendee expressed surprise at the forced exit from Burma. He explained that his company had approval from the Burmese central government and, from his experience, this was all the licensee needed to do business— that it was not accustomed to paying attention to local ethnic-diversity issues. GE advisors noted that this withdrawal of the right to operate in Myanmar had not gone unnoticed within Chinese business circles and has prompted greater discussion about how Chinese businesses operating in foreign jurisdictions need to pay more attention to local human rights issues.
• Another Chinese company noted that significant Chinese foreign investment began only in 2005 but that it has ramped up significantly since then. Consequently, Chinese companies have relatively little experience managing these investments and need to attend conferences such as GBI’s in order to learn how to address the human rights challenges that accompany them.  
• During the trip I also spoke at Peking University Law School (PKU). PKU is widely viewed as the equivalent in China of Harvard Law School and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that it offers a course on human rights law. I presented GE’s approach to human rights and business, and a colleague from BASF described its approach to human rights due diligence.

You have to be impressed by the candor of these conversations. I hope it gives you a sense that businesses around the globe are increasingly recognizing their obligation to respect human rights. This is a good thing for the citizens of the world and for GE.

“Do you get any exercise?” When we posed this question to Chicagoans, one in four responded “no.”

While Chicagoans are doing slightly better than the national average on issues like obesity, hypertension and diabetes, we are still facing challenges (Illinois Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System). In certain neighborhoods, residents are disproportionately affected by heart disease and the risk factors that lead to it.

That’s why the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) has partnered with the GE Foundation and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine to launch Keep Your Heart Healthy—an innovative plan to identify the Chicagoans most at risk. We provide them with the education and resources to reduce their cardiovascular disease risk factors and better manage their own health, in part by referring them to community health centers to ensure access to care. It’s a plan that requires one-on-one outreach through community partnerships. This new initiative aligns with the national Million Hearts campaign.                

Keep Your Heart Healthy is being launched in two Chicago neighborhoods whose residents are disproportionately impacted by heart disease. Residents of these neighborhoods will benefit from direct linkages to community health centers affording them long-term follow-up care. Sound familiar? This is the same type of underserved community investment that the GE Foundation has employed all over the country (Developing Health U.S.).    

We will be monitoring the success of this new project and hope to expand it to other neighborhoods in the future. Keep Your Heart Healthy will also provide a framework for other communities to create similar partnerships between foundations, medical care providers and government agencies so we can help more people say “yes” to living longer and healthier lives.

The Middle East, North Africa and Turkey region is witnessing a great transformation across its social and economic fabric. Development has taken a grassroots shift, with the emphasis squarely on enhancing the quality of life of the people, creating jobs for its youth population and promoting a culture of research and development to create localized solutions. Increasingly, governments across the region place an unprecedented emphasis on innovation, as a priority, to help address the overall developmental goals for a better future.

What makes innovation the game-changer in this fast growing economic bloc? Why is there greater focus on creating it anew? Where does the region draw on for resources to drive innovation? How can it become ingrained in the economy as a tangible tool for progress?

These four questions have but one answer: People.

Innovation in today’s context across the MENAT region places utmost importance on the community. It is a people-centered and people-oriented approach, whereby innovative practices and solutions are expected to have a cascading effect, touching every section of the society.

This is reflected in the strategic vision documents of the regional governments. Innovation, be it in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar or Turkey, is perceived as a driver to achieve the bigger goals of faster economic growth, more social cohesion, and better community engagement.

It is in this context that the findings of the GE 2013 Global Innovation Barometer Survey become relevant for governments and businesses, and in fact a referral point on how the region perceives innovation as a driving force for future growth.

Not surprisingly, and as GE has observed through its long-term partnerships, respondents in the region strongly believe that innovation is their strategic priority, and a tangible force that has helped them in the past to achieve business growth.

However, what is particularly relevant in this year’s findings is the openness of the region’s businesses to tap into the power of partnerships and collaboration in promoting a culture of innovation and to co-create new technologies and solutions that are tailored to meet local needs.

Simultaneously, and as a complement to the development approach of the governments, businesses seek stronger linkages between educational institutions and businesses, and place a high level of emphasis on attracting and retaining talented and innovative people.

I believe that it is validation of GE’s growth approach to the region, where we have been led by partnerships with public and private sector entities, have nurtured industry-academic linkages, and continue to invest in human capital development.

We will continue to invest in innovation as a prime force of growth, and in this journey forward, we are particularly proud to have the support of the business community. Our vision and outlook towards innovation resonates seamlessly; together, let us strive to fulfill the growth aspirations of the region.

Indeed, as game-changers go, there cannot be a stronger strategy than keeping a firm finger on new, original and creative thinking and action that is not necessarily imported but steadily, surely and genuinely home-grown.

The bond that brings people together across society, social cohesion, is one of the “soft” inputs for sustainable development. It is often seen as a “nice to have,” particularly for emerging economies, and deferred as something to focus on at a later stage of development.

Over the past two years, the events of Arab Spring have shown that creating a cohesive society is in fact an important precondition for sustainable development. Closer to home for me, the labour unrest in South Africa following the Marikana tragedy also demonstrated the same thing.

As political, labour and business leaders begin to appreciate the importance of social cohesion, I hope to see more action in 2013 on how to build connections between people; bridging divisions of class, race, wealth and education. Societies need a strong bank of social capital that enables cooperation and allows people to achieve social mobility. While South Africa is seeking to build itself as a  “rainbow nation,” social cohesion is needed everywhere. Robert Putnam, at Harvard, argued over a decade ago that both bonding and bridging networks are critical for healthy societies and economies. This is not just a pipe dream, but a source of value creation. What is needed now is to develop the institutions to build those networks. This will be one of the crucial paths that needs to be opened in 2013.

These new K–12 English Language Arts (ELA) and Mathematics standards were adopted by 46 states and the District of Columbia. Led by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State Officers (CCSO), these standards reflect the hard work of the best thinkers in our country. The new standards are designed to improve the academic performance of our students. They also meet the business community’s expectations—they prepare students for college and a career, are grounded in evidence and are internationally benchmarked. We firmly believe these standards will better prepare students for college and the workplace.

Our shared commitment intends to do but one thing—let America’s educators know that the business community is behind their efforts. We believe in America and its students. We believe America’s schools hold great promise for creating a more highly skilled workforce. Our local, state and national economies demand it. We believe our students can achieve more, and we believe the Common Core State Standards serve as a necessary foundation for making the changes needed to improve student achievement and ensure a strong U.S. economy for decades to come.  

Learn more at www.achievethecore.org/business-speaks-for-the-core

As a business enterprise, under the UN Guiding Principles, GE is obligated to respect human rights. This is the corollary to the primary obligation of states to protect human rights. Many who describe the legal principles of human rights speak in terms of “soft law,” as human rights principles arise from international treaties that do not necessarily find expression in the specific statutory framework of a given country. While viewing human rights as “soft law” is flawed in several respects (which I will not go into), this perspective is losing ground as a practical matter, as governments around the globe are enacting regulations and statutes that are turning human rights into hard law.

A recent example of this is the conflict minerals provision of the Dodd-Frank Act, which legally requires companies like GE to indicate whether their products are made from conflict minerals: gold, tin, tungsten and tantalum extracted from the civil war–torn mines of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Another example arises from lifting of certain restrictions by the U.S. State Department for U.S. companies seeking to do business in Myanmar (formerly Burma). These restrictions were lifted this past summer, and GE was the first U.S. company authorized to operate in Myanmar. Such restrictions, however, are only permitted where certain conditions are met as required by General License No. 17. The requirements of this license closely follow the precepts established by the UN Guiding Principles, intended to assure that businesses operate in Myanmar in a manner that respects human rights.

Recall, however, that states hold the primary obligation to protect human rights. What if a state widely fails to shoulder this obligation, yet a business entity—like GE—seeks to do business in that country? In fact, the government of Myanmar has faced UN sanctions (enforced by the International Labour Organization, or ILO) for a dozen years for rampant violations of forced and child labor laws. Maplecroft, an internationally recognized rating organization, has listed Myanmar as presenting “extreme risk” in the following categories: Rule of Law, Business Integrity and Corruption, Human Security, Regulatory Framework, Business Environment, Labor Rights and Protection, and Civil and Political Rights. Given this woeful failing by the Myanmar government to protect human rights and provide other elements of a working and ethical social framework, what chance does GE have to conduct business in Myanmar in a way that respects human rights that are not otherwise protected? Can we fulfill the requirements of General License No. 17?

These are the questions that brought Bob Corcoran, vice president of GE Citizenship and president of the GE Foundation, and me to Myanmar last week. We participated in a series of meetings with NGO leaders, government officials, UN officials and the U.S. ambassador. The meetings offered a fair amount of hope for both our business interests and the advancement of Myanmar reform, but also presented reservations about what GE can reasonably expect to achieve in the current environment. It is still early days for the new government, and the entire social and political landscape is changing very rapidly.

First the signs of hope.

Let’s start with the people of Myanmar. They are friendly, engaging, energetic and yearning to improve themselves and their country. Fifty percent of the population is under 24, so jobs are needed, especially if and when the military retrenches. Several individuals we interviewed spoke about how the Myanmar people welcome change, and balance change against stability. Even Aung San Suu Kyi, the reformer who is credited with helping to lift the UN sanctions, is viewed as having been practical in her recent dealings with the president and majority parties in parliament. Bob and I both expected to see a substantial military presence in the streets of Yangon, the new government having taken over from a military dictatorship less than two years ago. We observed no such presence. In fact, the absence of police or military was notable. The streets were alive with the hustle and bustle of a thriving democracy, with nearly double the number of cars as compared with a year ago. One afternoon while caught in traffic we noticed young boys selling candy, newspapers and other literature to passengers (like us) in the idling vehicles. I asked our driver what one boy was selling, as the papers he was holding up did not look like newspapers. The driver’s reply was that these were translations, in various languages, of Myanmar’s Foreign Investment Code. These are clearly people who feel a curtain has been lifted and are eager to welcome the Western world.

It is clear that the Myanmar people feel they have been isolated from the good influences of democracy, sustainable development, human rights and corporate social responsibility. Many of those we interviewed decried the loss of these noble tenets that were learned by the Burmese people decades ago in university and military exchange programs in such Western countries as the UK, the U.S., and the Nordics. During the sanctions period, Myanmar was forced to turn to China for commerce and sociopolitical interaction. In their view, this was an unfortunate source of dependency that they wish to turn away from as rapidly as possible. There is a great distrust of the Chinese, and many in Myanmar see Western culture and businesses as an antidote for their country’s dependence on China, and what they see as China’s aggression. One of the key government advisors we met specifically discussed GE as a leader in corporate governance and transparency that could help build capacity among Burmese businesses that seek to follow the tenets of corporate social responsibility but do not know where to start. Likewise, this same advisor noted that the UN Global Compact had started a local chapter and proposed that GE could assist in developing programs to combat corruption.

Finally, nearly 90% of the Burmese people are Buddhists. Bob and I felt the warmth, sensitivity and peaceful nature of the people we met. Picking up on the theme of change and stability, several times we noted that conversations tended to always look to the future and not dwell on the past. For example, one former political prisoner, only recently released, talked about corruption due to the constitutional weight given to the military—guaranteed 25% of the seats in parliament. He decried the generals’ influence on the judicial system, where he said that “legal victories were simply bought.” Yet, his call was not to have the generals pay for his past imprisonment or for the rape of women in his home province of Shen. Rather, he simply expressed his desire for the corruption to stop and for the military’s influence to become transparent. As he so aptly put it, “There is no purpose in fighting over old bones.” Bob and I contrasted this sentiment with the tendency of some in the U.S. who carry grudges—some are still living out the Civil War, for instance. I believe the Burmese people, with their Buddhist mind-set, have an extraordinary yearning to look forward and hope, not backward seeking revenge.

Despite the breathtaking speed of positive developments in Myanmar, there is cause for concern on multiple fronts. The most obvious is akin to what we are seeing in Egypt today—impatience for progress following the Arab Spring. The Burmese dictatorship was overthrown and no peace dividend is at hand. The ethnic conflict continues, inadequate food and shelter still persists in most of the provinces, electricity is still not available, and the military hegemony remains unchecked. There is so much that must be accomplished, and one has to wonder if the pace of change can keep up with the Burmese people’s expectations. This question is particularly salient because “capacity building” is a huge underlying issue if change is to be effectuated. Whether our discussions were about new hospital equipment, employees’ right to strike, government transparency, education or corporate governance, most of those we interviewed recognized that the Burmese people—particularly due to their years of isolation—were not up to handling or absorbing the positive developments that are rapidly coming as a result of political and social reforms.

Second, rule of law and corruption are very real problems that threaten to turn away good Western companies that wish to do business in Myanmar but can’t compete amid the common-place sordid business practices that now exist. Getting basic things done in Myanmar can be a real problem for an ethical company. GE had problems opening an office because several of the local banks we tried to do business with were on various U.S. corruption blacklists. We eventually found a lawful way around this problem, but it took time and perseverance. Similarly, the ILO delegate we met talked about having to make several “facilitating payments” merely to get an electricity bill paid. For my own part, it took three tries by my wife going to our bank before the bank could get MasterCard to approve payment of my hotel bill—and then only if I agreed to surrender the card upon return to the States and get a replacement card. And while the U.S. dollar is common currency in Myanmar—which is largely a “cash and carry” economy—don’t try to pay for anything with slightly worn bills. Even the Buddhist temple we visited rejected Bob’s $20 bill, as it had a slight ink spot at one of its edges. Corruption is so rampant that doing even simple business tasks ethically will require patience and determination.

Finally, ethnic conflict and undue military influence (corruption) must be brought under control. While Myanmar has made substantial progress in curbing ethnic violence and signing peace agreements, armed conflict in Kachin continues to rage. Given the special protection afforded the military under the Constitution, it is unclear how this reform will be effectuated. While many of the state-owned enterprises under military control have been turned over to the new government, several others—including the copper mines—remain under military control and their revenues are unknown to the minister of finance.

Myanmar is a country of 60 million people that has tremendous resources in mining, oil and gas, and other industries in which GE participates. The Burmese people are in dire need of our sustainable energy equipment, healthcare products, and oil and gas. They also need our help—through philanthropy and through good practices in corporate governance, human rights and business ethics. A single trip to Myanmar, especially one confined to Yangon, by no means makes me an expert on doing business in this emerging country, and I recognize our interviews were confined to progressive thinkers.  Clearly, the challenges of doing business in Myanmar are fraught with risk. However, with careful planning, adequate due diligence and measured initiatives, I believe we can use our ethical reputation to help our businesses win orders for our sustainable-product lines. In doing so, we will be doing “good” and “making a difference” for the people of Myanmar.

It is increasingly recognized that a business’s impacts on society and the environment don’t stop at the factory gate. The company’s footprint starts with its supply chain and extends into the impacts that its products have during the life cycle of their use and ultimate disposal. Assessments for many products indicate that the largest impacts, and therefore the largest opportunities for making real change, are in the use phase.

Reducing negative impacts and enhancing benefits and efficiency requires a change in the mind-set of and approach to product development. Researchers have to find out how customers really use products so that they can develop new solutions that work. They need to include a broader set of criteria than traditional cost and performance in their assessments, and they need to think about this at the earliest stage in the development of new products and technologies. Often, important shifts are needed not only in the design of products, but also in the way that they are used. Critical to the innovation process is working out how to communicate to customers and enable them to change their behaviors to take advantage of innovations. Compound this with the imperative of developing culturally appropriate products to meet global needs and it can feel like an overwhelming challenge to the research community. 

Life-cycle thinking—both in terms of impacts and cost—is a critically important tool, but maximizing the value of the approach depends on researchers having a fundamental understanding of sustainability challenges.  In the end, we don’t see what we have not thought about, so expanding exposure to sustainability thinking is the first important step in integrating sustainability into the product-innovation cycle. 

The framework for business and human rights the UN Human Rights Council adopted unanimously is relatively new. But its underlying expectation—that companies undertake due diligence to ensure that their conduct does not undermine human rights, and in fact respects rights—is an old one.

This challenge has grown in a world where the lines between business and government are blurring. For a company of GE’s size and scale, the processes the company develops to identify and address risks is critical to delivering on its responsibility to respect human rights. In some respects this is no different than establishing any other set of companywide processes; but in going through the process of human rights impact assessments, new challenges and dilemmas are likely to be uncovered.

One such challenge is understanding the responsibility of the users of products and services, and how this relates to the responsibility of the company that develops them. GE’s products include component systems that support the functioning of defense equipment that can be used in weapon systems, and it is critical that the company has in place systems, protocols and processes to ensure that its products or services do not contribute to human rights violations. This is not an easy task for a company that has contractual relationships with governments. Relations with governments can pose challenges in other areas too: Governments may choose to use technology to provide certain services to certain groups only, or may ask the company to modify products in a way that may undermine rights. These challenges simply raise the bar for due diligence.

Likewise, there are human rights challenges and implications with regard to the collection of healthcare data. Access to data can enable researchers to identify patterns and assist in the treatment of diseases. But the same data can be misused, and there are implications for individual privacy if too much data is collected or shared without adequate safeguards. Dealing with that is a delicate balancing act. Once again, it is not easy. And once again, it is necessary.