TACKLING GLOBAL CHALLENGES: Lessons in System Leadership from the World Economic Forum’s New Vision for Agriculture Initiative

Abstract

A special form of leadership, system leadership, is needed to tackle global challenges like food security, climate change, job creation, and gender parity. These challenges are complex and systemic, rooted in the actions and interactions of diverse yet interconnected, interdependent stakeholders. Leaders in business, government, and civil society increasingly recognize that they cannot be addressed in a top-down, pre-planned, linear fashion and that point solutions don't work. Instead, the solutions require stakeholders to change the way they operate at the global, national, and local levels. Over time, they must develop new technologies, products, services, business models, public service delivery models, policy and regulatory innovations, voluntary standards, and cultural norms and behaviors that together deliver new results. System leadership can help align the efforts of diverse stakeholders in order to accelerate this process, and ensure that it delivers more sustainable, inclusive business growth and human development.