Sandbox

Global Perspectives for a Global Company

October 6th, 2009 by Paolo Rigutto

Even the largest company, spanning the globe with over 80,000 employees in a 160 countries, needs a fresh perspective, and a more global one. For this reason Ericsson partnered with LSE and Duke Corporate Education to host two sustainability lectures and a dinner with some of London’s most exceptional recent graduates. Sandbox had the opportunity to recommend 10 members to this promising event, among them Taz Rajwani and Raj Dey.

The Global Perspectives programme was tailored for 30 Ericsson top executives who are on the fast-track to the management board; all speak multiple languages, have worked in various countries and are considered the best in the company.

The lectures were given at The Box at the LSE (http://www.boxexchange.net/), with inspiring talks on sustainability (See Do the Green Thing, http://www.dothegreenthing.com/) meant to challenge the participants of the programme. Group discussions about the role of Ericsson with respects to sustainability showed the various perspectives held. Questions as to whether Ericsson was being reactive in its approach to sustainability or proactive were hotly debated, while the impact of the new regulations by the EU proved to be salient. Where the group split in two among the Ericsson participants was the question of how to change the culture such that sustainability became part of the decision making model. Some advocated a top-down approach while others sought change to occur at the lowest possible level.

Dinner took place at La Floridita where we enjoyed Cuban food and discussed the experiences of the Ericsson participants in the various jobs they had. The diversity of the group was overwhelming with Venezuela, France, Iceland, Ireland, Netherlands, Italy, Romania, America, and Sweden represented. The discussion moved from sustainability to how we, as recent graduates, saw the future of the world, what interested us, and what we expected from our future employers.

As the dinner came to an end and we sipped the last of our drinks we realised that as much as each of us were different we also had much in common, and all participants left with global perspectives they would have never imagined before that day.

We’re looking forward to organizing similar initiatives soon again for our members in the UK and allover the globe!

Paolo is currently an analyst in Private Wealth Management at UBS in London as well as having the amazing opportunity of being the London Ambassador for Sandbox.