MARK FLORMAN
Mark is a businessman and entrepreneur active in policy making. His mission has been focused on driving and measuring economic & social impact and harnessing human potential.
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There is increasing ubiquity in considering the ‘impact’ business has on people and places. Environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues are mapped by corporations, ‘social enterprises’ are abounding, governments are launching ‘social impact bonds’ and there is integration of ESG considerations into financial analyses by traditional investors. Even archetypal profit-focused investment banks, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, include ESG and impact activities in their business. The notion of the social impact of business has become so mainstream that government at the highest levels – including G8 leaders and even the Pope – advocate the creation of institutions to give greater attention to driving social impact.
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Tipping points
Tipping point: the point at which a series of small changes or incidents becomes significant enough to cause a larger, more important change. The modern condition is best captured as a series of multiple, interconnecting tipping points: the Pandora’s box of cause and effect, with no knowing where the domino trail will end. These tipping points – environment, social and economic – are the tight-ropes we walk daily; some…
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The citizen factory
“This progress from one of the poorest countries of Europe to one of the most prosperous has not been an accident. It’s based on this idea that when there are so few of us—only 5.5 million people—everyone has to live up to their full potential,” he said. “When people are afraid, they focus on short-term…
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Halting truth decay
‘As Hannah Arendt wrote in her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism, “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (ie the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (ie the standards of thought) no longer…
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The war of words
In Ibsen’s little performed play Rosmersholm – little performed because it was considered too radical for 1886 Sweden-Norway – two idealistic lovers contend with lost faith against the backdrop of a democracy hijacked by those who would twist populist rhetoric to tragic ends. Its recent revival on London stages this summer and the critical acclaim it received…
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The civil war
“But the tide is beginning to change. In August, the Business Roundtable, the influential US business group, amended its two decade-old declaration that “corporations exist principally to serve their shareholders”. The Roundtable said: “While each of our individual companies serves its own corporate purpose, we share a fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders” —…
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Food for thought
“More than 250 million people are undernourished in Africa, making them vulnerable to disease, deficiencies, and prone to developmental stunting that inhibits their full potential. The long-term economic costs of this are staggering: this must change. With the effects of climate change expected to further negatively impact global food production in the next decades, it…
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The migrant camps
“If migration is the driver of the populism that defines the current political scene, it is demography — specifically the radically different demographic profiles of north and south — that creates both its demand and supply.” Migration is as old as time, but today – unprecedented in its scale and volatility – it is one…
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The stubborn optimist
Christiana Figueres is the force behind the historic 2015 Paris Agreement and convener of Mission 2020, which seeks to bend the global curve on greenhouse emissions by 2020. She is also a self-declared “stubborn optimist”, which she credits as the root of her astounding success on a path that has led so many to failure. …
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