… saving the Earth, lighting our future

Jeffrey Chen Chairman & CEO, NeoPac Lighting Group

More and more VCs and funds have been focusing on greentech investment, ie those concerning the reduction of carbon dioxide and power consumption. Global missions in topics like mitigation of climate change, energy saving and self-sustainable slimcity have become manifest at the World Economic Forum.

Speaking at the Inaugural Annual Meeting of the New Champions held last year in Dalian, Premier Wen JiaBao addressed the importance of the above missions and said that, “China will make relentless efforts on resource conservation and creating an environment friendly society” to tackle climate change and set these obligatory targets for China’s national economic and social development plan.

Paving the way to a lighting revolution

Jeffrey Chen, Chairman and CEO of NeoPac Lighting Group, attended the Dalian meeting as a panelist in two sessions: “New Frontiers in Green Technology” and “SlimCity”. He pointed out that artificial lighting accounts for about 20% of global demand for electricity and that an effective way to save electricity is by adopting energy efficiency LEDs lighting technology globally. By taking this measure, it is estimated that at least 50% of the 20% consumed as illumination – or the equivalent of up to more than 10% of the entire manmade energy – could be radically saved. “Most importantly,” Jeffrey noted, “NeoPac’s LEDs lighting technology is actually ready for replacing conventional lighting technologies in major lighting applications.”

NeoPac’s LEDs lighting technology is not only the best fit with alternative energy sources such as solar panels and wind turbines, but is also the right technology to boost the paradigm shift of an illumination revolution for the world. The centurylong lighting market is also prepared to welcome the new LEDs illumination era to come. Much more investment, however, is needed to pave the way toward strategic movements along this trend.

Jeffery Chen is the first person who successfully migrated from thermal management technology for computers to that for LEDs lighting. He is also among the most important entrepreneurs in the LEDs lighting history having founded NeoPac Lighting Group, comprising NeoPac Opto and NeoBulb Lighting, in Taiwan and Hong Kong in early 2005 and which now has operations in China. In past years, he successfully invented a revolutionary technology platform – NeoPac Universal Platform (NUP) – for opening the door to LEDs general illumination.

Examples of the exploitation of his inventions include the installation of his branded “NeoBulb” products at the Badminton Stadium, Beijing Capital International Airport and Yue-Xiu Road alongside the Tianjin Museum, which have successfully footprinted NeoPac’s pride in the LEDs lighting industry and in the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

A dedicated campaign for all

Finding ways towards greener and cleaner municipalities is seen unanimously as a necessary campaign for all governments and statesmen. Indeed, LEDs illumination can be the quickest to stimulate and drive the momentum to such savings. Applications of infrastructure constructions such as street lamps, tunnel lamps and outdoor billboards are undoubtedly excellent places for utilizing LEDs illuminations.

In joining WEF, it is Jeffrey’s hope that a platform gathering statesmen and business figures from major cities in the world provides the means so they can share solutions with one another in attaining the mission by LEDs illumination to “Saving the Earth, Lighting our Future!”, as he had set forth for his company after participating in the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) in Bali last year.

The idea of a “Global Green Lighting Mission” emerged in Jeffrey’s mind after the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for global awareness of the environment was awarded to Al Gore and Dr Rajendra Pachauri, and it has been his inspiration since to a dedication to campaign for environment protection. The fast-growing and drastic demands from the market embracing his advanced luminaries towards powersaving has also strengthened Jeffrey’s belief that LEDs illumination should be a mission far more profound and of value beyond the business itself. “A voice in my heart has made me indulge in solving some technology key issues for LEDs general lighting since 2004,” he says. Since then, Jeffrey is not alone. More and more people have joined on the way.

“But at WEF, I can leverage and make the most of my advantageous technology with enormously powerful sources from the world leaders.” Along the way, he is striving to making the world brighter and cleaner while remaining keen on every step ahead him to “go green”. “LEDs technology for illumination is actually ready in NeoPac Lighting. Global direct investments or projects financing should become the driving force boosting adoption of LEDs illumination around the world – and this is a global green lighting mission.”

by Jules Landon

Jeffrey Chen Chairman & CEO, NeoPac Lighting Group

One of the technological considerations that participants at this year’s Meeting of New Champions will delve into is entitled “Managing Science for a Better World”.

There is one “New Champion” that well understands this consideration and diligently works to this end “night in, night out” – Jeffrey Chen, Chairman and CEO of the Taiwanese NeoPac Lighting Group, is passionate about contributing to a better world to the ¨point that his company’s motto is: “Saving the Earth, Lighting our Future!”.

NeoPac is a pioneer in low energy consumption LED public and private lighting products. The products introduced by the group are considered as among the most efficient and high performing in the industry.

An “eye-opening” encounter

“The environment was a focal point during my participation at the “New Frontiers in Green Technology” roundtable discussion at the Dalian meeting in 2007,” explains an ebullient Chen. “Since then, global warming has become an even more pressing matter and I am very happy to sense that many of the participants I met there understood how NeoPac can contribute to stabilize such environmental considerations.” Chen’s participation at Dalian proved of great interest on many levels.

“Although this was the first Meeting of the New Champions, I had the opportunity to meet a number of world-class company leaders and our exchanges gave me fresh insights into specific challenges that we were facing – or may face – as we grow. And, you know,” he continues, “NeoPac was only founded in 2005 and, with a portfolio of products that have proven important innovations, growth-generated challenges are constant. Speaking with fellow participants with the same type of considerations was eye opening!”

A foundation for commercial relationships

Business opportunities were also an important benefit Jeffrey Chen derived from his participation at the meeting. “Dalian was an excellent occasion for meeting with political authorities’ business heads and proved to be a platform from which I could detail the particularities of our products,” he explains. “Consequently, we laid the foundations of a number of commercial relationships, of which some led to interesting projects. I believe that Tianjin will offer the possibility of further contacts.” By many estimates, impressive improvements in LED technology – as well as an urgent need to deploy more energy-efficient lighting in the face of escalating fuel prices – will light the way for the LED-lighting market to multibillion US dollars worldwide by 2012. NeoPac has already positioned itself outside its home market. Its LED technology is to be found, for example, lighting the Badminton Stadium at this year’s Beijing Olympic Games as well as the city’s international airport. That this year’s Meeting takes place in Tianjin is indicative of the appeal of NeoPac’s products – the company won a contract to supply LED streetlights to the city of Tianjin. Most assuredly, Jeffrey Chen will literally be lighting the road to the Tianjin Meeting.

Article by Eugene James

Jeremy Jurgens on the ways and means

Jeremy Jurgens

The World Economic Forum has been actively engaged with China since the start of China’s opening and reform policy in 1979. At that time, the Chinese leaders sent a senior delegation of economists and ministers to Davos to participate in the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting. For the World Economic Forum that was the beginning of a long relationship and within a few years they were hosting their first China Business Summit.

The China Business Summit became a tool for international business leaders to visit China, to better understand China and interact with their Chinese business counterparts.

“The key shift,” says Jeremy Jurgens, Senior Director, Global Growth Companies at the World Economic Forum, “was the change to what was to become a ‘Summer Davos’, an international meeting taking place in China and approaching international issues – business, political – from an Asian perspective, not just a Chinese perspective.”

This is reflected in the participation in the event – 75% of participants coming from outside China with, over the last few years, over 80 countries represented. This year there will be between 1200 and 1400 participants.
A truly global meeting
All of these factors come together to make a truly global meeting, across the industries and regions represented a range of topics are explored – political issues, social issues, economic and financial issues, evolution of science and technology, all looking at the role of Asia in a broader context.
“I’ve been at the World Economic Forum for 10 years,” says Jurgens. “When I look back and think of the evolution of the ‘Summit’, it actually ties in to larger transformational changes we’ve been observing taking place, and I think that one of the aspects that I appreciate most working at the Forum under the dynamism of our chairman, is that he’s willing to lead change, looking beyond today.”
With a shift in both economic and political power from the West to the East – almost a cliché today with many Chinese companies still growing at rates exceeding 15%, which is down from 30%, but nonetheless impressive considering the number of economies that experienced negative growth in the past year.

The Global Growth Companies

“Anchoring the Summit are the Global Growth Companies,” says Jurgens. “These are companies that have demonstrated their ability not just to have an idea but to actually start scaling it up. They have high growth, solid business models, they’re approaching new markets, and they have strong executive leadership. We have as members a number of banks and financial companies that entirely avoided the sub-prime crisis and as a result did not suffer the same challenges of the large financial institutions.”

Those GGC members present in emerging markets have also been relatively sheltered from the financial crisis, although those in the manufacturing sector have been hit to one degree or another. “Before these companies were competing against the large multinationals that were coming to their markets for talent. Since the multinationals are currently not hiring, people are being hired at an ‘affordable’ price,” comments Jurgens. “That completely changes the game. So when I speak with the Global Growth Companies’ CEOs, I would say there’s cautious optimism and that’s one of the aspects we want to highlight in this year’s Summer Davos. Who will be driving this growth? Let’s actually hear from those that are growing despite the economic malaise. What are they doing differently? How are they positioned? How do they understand the markets?”

For Jurgens, the other major global changes taking place are the shift in power from large established companies to more nimble companies, and also a shift in power from the company to the consumer – in some cases even from governments to the consumer, or the citizen.
“One of the interesting changes now is that there’s greater competition among markets,” states Jurgens. “Hyundai is selling their cars in Italy or France, challenging the domestic automaker. Even a small device such as a telephone – when I was a kid every telephone in every house looked the same. Now, just in downtown Geneva alone, you’ll find hundreds of different mobile phone options. You look at the evolution of companies such as Inditex that brought an entirely new model to the apparel industry. Today we can turn around a fashion in six weeks as opposed to the traditional 18-month fashion cycle. That changes the nature of the game and also gives the consumers more power.”

Societal changes

Jurgens believes that successful companies are giving power to consumers. “If something comes up on the Internet, you’d better address it. If you hunker down like the turtle in its shell you’ll miss its growth. We saw this recently with Amazon when they removed George Orwell’s 1984 and their customers’ devices and there was an immediate uproar. You have the CEO coming out and saying, ‘We made a mistake’, yet some people would argue even two or three days isn’t fast enough. All this makes for a very different operating environment and it also gives an advantage to small companies that are structured to be more agile.”

If you look at these changes they’re all large societal changes taking place over a period of time. “We were looking at these changes five years ago in order to see how we should position ourselves. One of our thoughts was to complement Davos. Davos is essential
– you need a place to address the large macro-economic, global issues. But we also wanted a place where we could engage the new generation of companies, and the ‘Annual Meeting of New Champions’ was born. It’s the Global Growth Companies, it’s our community of Young Global Leaders – dynamic leaders from all fields; business, society, government, all under the age of 40 who have made a specific contribution and want to do more.”
Another group the Annual Meeting of New Champions engaged with is the technology pioneers. These are extremely dynamic technology companies – Internet, telecommunications, energy sector, health sector – that have a truly innovative technology or approach and have demonstrated that they can scale it, that there’s a market for it.

A community of leaders

Jurgens has been with the Forum for 10 years having previously worked in educational software with Microsoft in Redmond, the head office. He joined the Forum because, he believes, at the Forum they are creating a learning environment for leaders, an environment where leaders can come together and engage and learn from each other, exchange and share ideas.
“I think that one of the aspects that truly shapes the Forum,” confides Jurgens, “is this community of leaders that want to share, that actually care about their responsibility to society.
Some people envisage CEOs as only focussed on money; well, in our experience it’s quite different, they’re actually engaged in a number of business facets; business is part of society, there’s no distinction. So we bring together those leaders who have demonstrated their ability and their commitment.”
This will clearly be seen in this Summer Davos under its theme; “Relaunching Growth”. What do we do? What are the tools available to us? What are the ideas? What are the risks, the challenges as we move ahead?

Introducing new groups

The Meeting puts a focus on the quality of participants. “We want this to be an interactive dialogue among CEOs,” says Jurgens, “so we’re really putting the emphasis on that, introducing new groups, like the Young Scientists, which will join us again this year. These are young scientists under the age of 40 who are doing something truly innovative in the scientific field from a developing country. We asked each National Academies of Science in different countries to nominate their two top scientists under the age of 40. We received over 200 nominations and from this group we selected 60.”
Elaborating further, Jurgens commented, “Young Scientists is one of the communities that look beyond today, even beyond tomorrow, and that is particularly important in this and previous Summer Meetings. Their presence creates interaction among business leaders and scientists with many of the scientists commenting that they have never before attended a non-scientific conference and had so much interest shown in what we’re doing. CEOs are curious – wanting to know what it is all about;”

Leverage from the periphery

As Jurgens foresees, “Many of the most important strategic changes that we see taking place are at the periphery of business, not at the core. If you can leverage that change at the periphery, then you can gain a strategic advantage. At the core it’s about optimization and reducing costs, scaling up, relatively well know from industry to industry. But if you can leverage something that’s outside of the core and bring it in, then that’s a ‘game changer’.”
Jurgens believes that that is one of the advantages of the cross-industry nature of bringing in business leaders together with political leaders, technologists, scientists and different actors, allowing that interchange to catalyse new ideas.

And as for conflicts of interest, “I think that’s one of the main aspects of the Forum,” smiles Jurgens. “If we look back to our mission, ‘Committed to improving the state of the world’, this is not exclusive – so we want everybody at the table who shares that commitment and is willing to make a positive contribution, and dialogue is one of the most important aspects to share and exchange ideas.”

The strength of the Meeting is that while there may be a number of areas of, competitive interest, there is also a number of areas of shared interest and shared contribution for a societal benefit. So the Meeting focuses on those topics where a positive contribution can be made. “We implicitly say to a company, when you’re a member, you are going to be engaged with potential competitors, but they’re also collaborators and partners,” states Jurgens. “And that’s actually, a lot of our work where we’ve tried to catalyse new ideas in the social sector, on global health, on education, on environmental activities. It’s actually bringing people together. For example, with the G-20 – and already with the G-8 in Hokkaido for climate change, our members came together to share common perspectives on topics they thought needed to be addressed.”

“When I speak with the Global Growth Companies’ CEOs, I would say there’s cautious optimism and that’s one of the aspects we want to highlight … Who will be driving this growth? Let’s actually hear from those that are growing despite the economic malaise. What are they doing differently? How are they positioned? How do they understand the markets?”
The  World  Economic  Forum  members in the Forum to suggest that recognized that a shared response to  they bring in the business perspective climate change was needed. It was from  in the G-20 session. The Forum has a this impetus that Gordon Brown invited working group that covers a number of different companies across different sectors, involving NGOs, various people, and academic experts, working together towards Copenhagen.

Key focus areas and important questions

For the 2009 Dalian Meeting, the focus will be in three key areas:
First, the overall theme of “Relaunching Growth” and how the Meeting looks at this in more depth, breaking it down into a variety of subtopics. “We’ve experienced significant turmoil in the past two years,” says Jurgens, “so the questions are important.”

To address the issues – and questions – the overall programme is based on five pillars:

1. New Business Models in a Deleveraging World – How will businesses operate in a new financial ear and how will tax policies, educational priorities and incentive models change to create a new competitive environment?
2. Opportunities in a Green Economy – Discovering the different dimensions of creating a green economy.
3. Rethinking Asia’s Development Model – Understanding how the global recession will transform Asia’s export-driven model of growth and the industries that have relied on it for so long.
4. Driving Economic Growth through Science and Technology – Exploring how government and business sectors can work with the science and technology community to jump-start economic growth.
5. Addressing Societal Needs through Innovation – Examining the opportunities for business and government to address society’s needs and the risks if those needs and expectations are not met.

“The second key area that I think will make this year special,” says Jurgens, “is the diversity of the participants. It’s this intermix between the growth companies, the young global leaders, technology pioneers, the young scientists, our mentors, members and partners. All these people coming together will learn from each other, inspire one another and ultimately help develop new approaches and catalyse growth.”

Jurgens confirms his belief that it is the people who step out, identify the opportunities and take the chance who will be the growth drivers. Just by choosing to come and committing – despite the financial crisis – shows that they’re prepared to lead growth.
The final key area is China and – although the Meeting is being held in Dalian, it is a global meeting – China is an important actor. “Statistics may differ,” concludes Jurgens, “but China is somewhere between the second and third largest global economy by GDP, although still relatively low on a per-capita basis. There are a number of new large Chinese companies – banks, technology companies and manufacturers – that will be joining us in Dalian. What’s their perspective? So many people look to China as the new global growth driver making this a very important aspect.”

A pivotal moment

Given the Dalian programme for “Relaunching Growth” and the impressive list of committed participants – and taking into account the fact that the Meeting is being held in China at a pivotal moment of its global positioning – this will no doubt be a truly memorable “Summer Davos”; one that could have an important global impact, not just on global economic aspects, but on the future of our world.

As viewed by WI Harper Group’s Peter Liu

(left) Peter Liu, the founder and chairman of WI Harper Group

You’ve all seen the Chinese “ economy, you’ve all read about it, but we’re actually dealing with it,” Peter Liu, the founder and chairman of San Francisco-based venture capital firm WI Harper Group, tells Swiss Style.

Undoubtedly, these newspaper readers are inclined to think of large state-owned firms and government price fixing when they think of the Chinese economy.

Thanks to several critical decades of reform and influential pioneers like Liu, China and Taiwan today are also hotbeds of innovation and opportunity.

Born in Beijing, raised in Taiwan and educated at the University of California-Berkeley, Liu was first invited in 1985 by the Taiwanese government to start a venture capital enterprise in Taipei.

Since then, Liu has spearheaded the birth of the venture capital industry in East Asia, founded WI Harper offices in San Francisco, Beijing and Taipei, and helped raise seven China-related investment funds for his company.
Today, WI Harper’s portfolio includes over 100 key firms in high-growth industries such as information technology and healthcare, including Focus Media, DivX, Beijing Xin Wei, Vizio, Creative Technology, Commerce One and Intraware. Recognized as one of the world’s highest performing venture capital firms, WI Harper and its portfolio companies have won numerous awards in international business forums, including “Best Venture Capital Institution” at the China Venture Capital Forum in 2006 and the “Technology Pioneer Award” at the World Economic Forum Davos Meeting in 2009.
Recently, the firm announced the appointment of Kai-Fu Lee, the founding President of Google China, as Chairman of the Advisory Board of WI Harper Group, beginning October 2009 (see following article).
Peter Liu offered to share the story of WI Harper’s rise to success, his insights into the evolution and current challenges facing the Chinese economy and his predictions of what the future holds for China and Taiwan.

Now and then

When asked to describe how he developed a fledgling initiative into a world-class venture capital firm, Liu attributes much of his success to the political and economic climate in Taiwan and mainland China in the last two decades of the 20th century.
“I was in the right place at the right time,” says Liu. “The mid-80s to mid-90s were the prime time for growth in Taiwan. The Taiwanese government at the time took all the right steps to promote economic development – good monetary policies, active promotion of capital markets and development of specific platforms (like semiconductors, liquid crystal display, personal computers, etc) for growth.”

During those years, the Taiwanese authorities supported the emerging venture capital market, in particular with policies such as the Taxation Pioneer Status, a tax exemption incentive given to encourage venture capitalists to invest in key start-up firms. “These initiatives enabled venture capital to become a development vehicle for the entire country,” says Liu.
Venture capital enterprises played an especially important role in building Taiwan’s IT infrastructure over these two decades, laying the foundation for growth in a variety of other sectors. “IT became the backbone of Taiwan’s incredible economic growth,” Liu explains. “Venture capital was a catalyst for development because it was able to mobilize the latest technology from Silicon Valley. Starting from the IT platform, we quickly branched out into other Taiwanese industries such as manufacturing and assembly.”

Meanwhile, significant economic reforms were also taking place in mainland China, a world that had been completely dominated by state-owned enterprises until the late 1970s. Slowly but surely, the Chinese authorities were taking steps to liberalize the region’s markets and transfer national firms to private ownership – steps that eventually fuelled China’s spectacular growth and allowed Liu to open a WI Harper office in Beijing in 1992. Says Liu, “When you’re operating something as new and innovative as venture capitalism and you’re dealing with a transitioning economy like China, the timing is everything. This could only have been done during that crucial period of reform in the 1990s.”

Elaborating further, he says, “China is one of the few socialist countries that made a smooth transition from a centrally planned to a market economy. In this way, it is a learning model for other transition economies like Vietnam and North Korea. When you think of China right now, you think of the private sector, which now constitutes 75% of the economy as compared to 0% in 1978. This is truly an economic miracle.”

Advantages and stumbling blocks

At a time when much of the Western world is becoming destabilized and spiralling ever deeper into a pit of despair and financial chaos, Asian business leaders are rolling up their sleeves and getting resolutely down to work.

Although most analysts pinpoint the export sector as the key driver of the Chinese economy, Liu claims that China’s most important advantage moving forward is the potential size of its emerging domestic market. “China is now painted as the factory of the world because it is dominated by its exports,” says Liu. “However, if you look at China’s key export sectors in appliances, furniture and other manufactured goods, the key is the Chinese’ low real wage and a large amount of surplus labour. The domestic value added on Chinese exports is also very low at an estimated 20%. China therefore needs to refocus its growth on the domestic economy.”

Liu also names specific precautions that China must take as it moves forward, namely the need to balance capital payments and to curb the new wave of speculative stock trading. “As of now, China has an excessive capital account surplus,” Liu explains. “It is sitting on nearly US$ 2 trillion in foreign investments. Chinese companies need to make some major acquisitions in order to maintain the balance.”

Due to its large trade and capital surpluses, the Chinese economy suffers from excessive liquidity. Renminbi deposits are accumulating at home because Chinese investment far exceeds domestic consumption, while the inflows of foreign capital reserves keep pouring in. China’s excess liquidity and capital imbalances can lead to many economic ills in the long run, in particular the risk of inflation for Chinese corporations.

Liu is above all concerned with the asset price bubble looming over the Chinese stock market, the result of a new wave of speculative trading in short-term assets. “The most serious problem facing the Chinese stock market today is the very short holding period,” says Liu. “Although the price to earnings ratio is not too high, short-term speculation has inflated prices and created a situation in which profits are not sustainable in the long run. In order to help deflate the bubble, the Chinese government needs to give shareholders more incentives to increase their asset holding period.”

Liu suggests that one such policy incentive could be to cut the costs of issuing cash dividends for Chinese corporations. “Increasing cash dividends could encourage shareholders to hold on to long-term equities, because these dividends represent additional income for consumption,” he explains. Shareholders receiving an extra stream of income from cash dividends are less compelled to take advantage of speculative prices to dump assets on the market. In this way, efforts to increase cash dividends wean investors off, as Liu puts it, the “psychology of a free lunch.”

The future of Chin-Wan

Despite the problems confronting the Chinese economy today, Liu is confident that greater intercountry cooperation within East Asia will move the region forward to ever-higher levels of innovation and economic performance. “Chin-Wan is the new buzzword in the air today,” says Liu. “China and Taiwan are collaborating today and making peaceful progress. Moving forward, this collaboration is going to lead to huge economic growth.”

In particular, Liu believes that greater collaboration between Taiwan and mainland China will be a critical factor in the latter’s sustained growth and progress as the two economies move forward into the 21st century, since economic partnerships with Taiwan will greatly benefit China’s emerging industries and increase its long-run technical capacity.

“What China is missing out on today is the shortage of integrated circuit (IC) design capabilities,” says Liu. “IC design is largely limited to Taiwan, where companies like Media Tek and Himax lead the industry. Collaborating with a country that has already developed solid IC infrastructure is therefore very bene-ficial to China’s emerging telecommunications and healthcare industries.”

According to Liu, the collaboration with Taiwan could also help Chinese corporations increase their foreign investments, move operations abroad and absorb some of China’s huge capital account surplus. “As you know, the Chinese government now has excessive investment capital,” says Liu. “The Chin-Wan collaboration is an opportunity for China to broaden investment activities into Taiwan, Hong Kong and the East Asia region. We can definitely expect to see this in the years to come.”

from infrastructure digital security to consumer digital security

Secret codes, hidden ciphers, information encryption, hidden extreme-security data centres in the Swiss mountains, military-grade USB keys and participation in cutting-edge projects such as the world-first Internet voting system and securing the data of the Alinghi Team (the winners of the America’s Cup, world-renowned formula-type sailing race), have all been the mainstay of WISeKey’s business since its foundation in 1999.
Exciting? The WISeKey team thinks so as they have eagerly worked day in, day out to help their large and small government and corporate customers worldwide to secure their IT systems, buildings and data – and even their executives as they travel around the world. As any member of the WISeKey team will tell you unreservedly – it’s never boring at WISeKey!

The security of security

As it moves towards its IPO, WISeKey is bringing these exciting technologies, products and services to you as a consumer to, for example, help avoid identity theft, ensure the brand-name products you buy are authentic, store your data online securely, secure access to your social networking accounts and even ensure that your valued membership to a sports or other club (and the online perks that can come with it) can be exclusively leveraged from your mobile phone, laptop or even from a public internet café.

As it is nominated for the third year running as a Swiss New Champion of the World Economic Forum Global Growth Companies, WISeKey wants to give consumers the value of its security systems in ways that avoid their traditional complexity without watering down their trustworthiness.
With these guiding principles in mind, WISeKey has worked intensively over the last two years to make this a reality through what they call the electronic identity (e-ID) 2.0 and 3.0 solutions, which mirror the developments represented by the Web 2.0 (e.g. YouTube, Facebook, etc.) and Web 3.0 (e.g. location services, ubiquitous banking, telecommunications or other services adapted to your preference, location or other attributes associated to you at any given moment).

What’s to come

Here is just some of the cool stuff WISeKey is launching – which we’re sure will be interesting to more than just a few of us:
e-Key+ – Imagine having a USB key that securely stores your bank accounts, credit card details, health records, pictures, music, movies and other personal data on the key and in a Swiss secure data centre. If you lose the key, no problem, nobody will be able to access the data on it as it is protected with a combination of biometrics and cryptography. You can even recover your data from your online data store later on.
That’s what WISeKey’s eKey+ is. It can also be used to encrypt data and to digitally sign documents, as well as an access control key to your laptop or home computer. It’s the digital version of the Swiss pocket knife.

WISeKey is now hard at work to allow its customers to access many other secure personal data services available through the eKey+, which it will be surprising its customers with in the comings months.
WISeAuthentic secures your investments – Paying for an expensive luxury watch, bag or other luxury product is always a bit scary when one thinks of the amount of counterfeit products that are out in the market today. During the financial crisis, the issues surrounding this phenomenon have come to a head as counterfeiting has increased and consumers seek to make the luxury goods they own more liquid. As many people have seen, selling a luxury-brand good over eBay and getting paid what it is really worth is no easy task due to the counterfeiting uncertainties that exist.

WISeKey developed its WISeAuthentic solution to this with a world-first launch at BaselWorld 2009 (the watch industry’s global premium event). Essentially, it enables the purchaser of a Hublot watch to validate the authenticity of the watch online as well as access the Hublot Certified Owners Club, where unique privileges are available to its members.

WISeAuthentic

WISeKey is now expanding the application of WISeAuthentic to many other luxury brands and expects its patented technology to become a standard in the avoidance of counterfeit luxury goods globally.
The Digital Fan Club – The extent to which a fan will go to show support for his or her favourite team is, to some people, astounding. To the WISeKey team, it’s no mystery. This is why they developed a Digital Fan Club which takes the eKey+ and VIP Club approach to the next level.
Using its security technologies, with a single team-branded eKey+, WISeKey now allows the fans to access recorded games online, the online VIP lounge (where they can chat with the players and managers), get fast-track access to the stadium, use team-branded e-mail accounts securely, store their personal data securely through their team’s online Fan Club and even get special discounts on merchandise purchased online.
Using its ground-breaking e-voting technology, WISeKey can even enable it to be used for voting online to choose who will be on the next board of directors of the team.

Barclays Capital Vice Chairman examines the situation

Sir David Wright, Vice Chairman of Barclays Capital

In the light of the upcoming World Economic Forum in Dalian on 10–12 September, Swiss Style Chairman John Béguin spoke with Sir David Wright, Vice Chairman of Barclays Capital, the investment banking division of Barclays PLC, to discuss the future of Asia Pacific’s economic stance in the world platform and what is to be expected from the imminent forum in China.

Barclays Capital provides risk management, financing and advisory services to corporations, financial institutions and governments, and has extensive global reach and the distribution power to meet the needs of issuers and investors worldwide.

Fluent in Japanese, Sir David, who joined Barclays Capital in January 2003, is based in London and is the firm’s senior relationship adviser with special emphasis on the United Kingdom and Asia-Pacific.

What to look for in Dalian

The highly anticipated World Economic Forum is set to take centre stage in Dalian, with the world feverishly watching. Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao confidently declared that Asians know how to pull up their sleeves and work through any difficulty and, with that said, it is safe to say that expectations are high not only for the success of the upcoming forum but also in terms of what the future holds for China and Asia-Pacific in general.

Sir David will be in Dalian in September and noted that he will be interested primarily in seeing two things from the forum. First of these is how the forum itself will succeed in developing the concept of the New Champions Meetings, in a unique “Asia based” way, and whether or not it will be able to successfully bring forward a sufficient number of different experiences and national issues to the debating forum.

Second, Sir David is interested in the extent to which it is possible for Wen Jiabao’s comments in Dalian pertaining to China’s ability to work through any difficulty to take effect. An advocate of how the Chinese have managed their economy over the last year, particularly in terms of their package to revive the economy, Sir David points out that the Chinese have done so at a time when there is increasing concern in some quarters about what China’s growth will mean. “When one looks at the rest of the region,” he adds, “one finds that the situation it is not pan-regional. Things are different in terms of different geographies.”
Despite this, and with the positive numbers that have come out of China over the past weeks, Sir David points out that China is continuing its global revival in an encouraging manner.

Evolution of Asian economies

While somewhat averse to the idea of “crystal balling” the evolution of Asian economies over the next 18–24 months, Sir David suggests remaining diligently observant in regards to the region’s progression. When asked to discuss various locations in Asia as examples to his point, he notes that with a country such as Indonesia, for example, there does appear to be a healthy prospect due to the size of the country and its abundance of resources, as well as the considerable “natural and human talent which can be tapped.” With regard to Thailand, however, while Sir David is a great believer in the capacities of the Thai people themselves; he remarks that nearly three years after the coup, major internal political problems persist which have implications for Thailand’s near-term growth on the back of fragile consumer and business sentiment.

On a more positive note, the new Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mohamed Najib bin Abdul Razak, seems to understand the changes that need to be made in his country, Sir David explains, and “he appears to be dealing with the issues quite well.”

With regards to Japan, a country with enormous residual strength and financial resources, the future will be determined in part by the upcoming elections, where “for the first time in nearly sixty years, Japan could see a policy shift from a heavily export-driven economy into one focused on more domestic demand,” he adds. Japan provides a lesson, Sir David cautions, on the extent to which a heavily export-driven country is able to sustain itself as a locomotive for economic growth in the next 20 years.

Corporate bond markets

The surge in the corporate bond market, which Sir David dubs a “phenomenon of great importance”, is seeing a radical change in terms of the shift away from traditional bank lending. He comments that while many emerging domestic corporate bond markets are relatively underdeveloped, you only have to look at those countries with a mature domestic corporate bond market to see how these have provided companies with access to new capital resources and provided a major boost in growth in North America and Western Europe.

“We want to be part of Asia’s similar growth trajectory,” Sir David adds. “Barclays is well positioned to play an integral role in the continued development of the corporate bond market in the region. We see great benefit in a fully developed regional bank capital market and its ability to provide a source of sustained, low-cost financing for the region’s borrowers. This potential is supported by not only the large pools of liquidity in the region, but also by the respective governments’ efforts to further develop their local markets.”

Shifting activity and Asian hubs

Sir David acknowledges the possibilities that lie ahead for the Asia-Pacific region and questions the extent to which Western institutions will shift their resources and activity eastward. He believes this shift is important for major institutions such as Barclays and specifically points out Barclays’ increasing resources and platform in Asia-Pacific from Pakistan eastwards in terms of private, corporate and commercial banking.

He adds that the world “cannot underestimate the opportunity, but at the same time should remain active and well-positioned in North America, which Barclays certainly has done with its acquisition of Lehman Brothers, and in Europe.”

In addition, Sir David questions the extent to which we can expect to see some development of financial hubs in Asia. Noting the ongoing competition between places such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Seoul and even Mumbai and Kuala Lumpur, he anticipates that the development of hubs in Asia may take more time and remain an unsolved question for a while longer.

In the spotlight with André Schneider

André Schneider Managing Director & COO, World Economic Forum

As the World Economic Forum returns to the venue of Dalian for the Third Annual New Champions Meeting, Swiss Style discussed the objectives of this gathering of new emerging multinationals with André Schneider, Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer of the World Economic Forum.

Having begun his career at the World Economic Forum in 1998 as Chief Technology Officer, Schneider has since seen the rise of the “New Champions” and the Global Growth Companies in becoming pioneers and world leaders in their chosen fields, and is therefore well versed in what it takes to become a participant in a New Champions Meeting.

Although, it must be said, one might not have envisaged such a future for the energetic Schneider given his initial endeavours upon completing his education.

While holding degrees from IMD (International Institute for Manaagement Development, Lausanne) and the University of Geneva, we discover that André Schneider launched his professional career as a classical musician. He has played for the Philharmonic Orchestra of Berlin, the Staatstheater Kassel, the Symphony Orchestra of the Radio Saarland and the Lucerne International Festival Orchestra.

In adding to his calling in the world of music, he became a researcher in parallel computers for the European Community. At IBM Consulting Group, he was Product Developer, Consultant and Principal. Before joining the World Economic Forum in 1998, he worked for IBM and was an IT consultant for various companies and organizations. In 2000, Schneider was appointed Director of Knowledge Management and Associate Member of the Managing Board of the World Economic Forum. He has been  a member of the Managing Board since January 2003.

A new platform and opportunity

Given its overall theme of “Relaunching Growth”, the Dalian Meeting is particularly focused on what some of the world’s leading minds in business, government and academia think about the ways out of the global crisis gripping the world’s economies.

“The New Champions Meeting provides a platform to the new generation of internationally working multinationals. In the first place, there has been no such platform before, and in times of crisis we need an informal platform to exchange ideas,” Schneider says.

“The New Champions is an opportunity for these new companies to meet with existing multinationals, with governments and with other stakeholders. Simply put, if we want to get out of such a crisis, we must create the right environment for these new players,” he adds.
“Our wish is also that these new companies seize the opportunity in what we call ‘green growth’. We should not forget that we are in an economic crisis, but that’s not the only one to look at. We should not forget that, in parallel, we have to address climate change,” Schneider emphasizes. “We want to make this Meeting an enhancer for development in this area as well.”

These thoughts are echoed in the World Economic Forum’s statements regarding the agenda for the New Champions Meeting, with the first theme being, “Opportunities in a Green Economy”. According to this, every major stimulus plan from among the G7 assumes that green investments addressing global environmental challenges will create new technologies, businesses and jobs to improve national competitiveness over the long run – but the question is: What are the most critical investments to be made and what will they deliver in the near term?

Going forward into the future

“While at the World Economic Forum in Davos we bring together existing multinationals, at the New Champions Meeting we want to look at the new generation of these. We also want to bring them together with technology pioneers, the new genera•tion of technology companies, as well as young scientists, people who will play an important role in the world going forward.” Schneider underlines.

“It is extremely important that we look at the next generation because they will be part of the growth to come. And through having many of our strategic partners and many of our other member companies present in Dalian at the New Champions Meeting, we are building bridges and allow for the best synergy between these two communities,” he adds.

A wider opening door to Asia

When asked how he envisioned the evolution of the New Champions, Schneider says, “Evolution will be marked by participation of an increasing number of Global Growth Companies – we now have over two hundred of them – but also an increasing Asian angle because the business world is becoming more and more strongly influenced by Asian companies, Asian states and China, in particular.”

In remarking on the apparent shift from West to East and the World Economic Forum’s focus on this, Schneider remarks, “We need to find platforms where we can much better incorporate these ideas because, today, if we look at leading business com•panies, a majority are still based in Europe and the United States, and we really need to work on how we increase our capacity to be open to this new generation from Asia. We know that in the next twenty to thirty years the boundaries will be greatly changed and will go much more toward the Asian world.”

As Schneider puts it, “Globalization is showing that there is no decoupling anymore – we are all sitting in the same boat. And as I mentioned earlier, climate change is showing that very clearly.”
With these thoughts in mind, there can be little doubt that the New Champions Meeting in Dalian will not only address some of today’s most compelling agendas and issues, but also explore – and hopefully discover – the paths to a more sustainable and “green” economic future, where the world is one and the answers are found by working together.