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Given the billions of aid dollars spent to improve the health systems of Africa, it may surprise you to learn that the majority of Africans still turn to the private sector for their health care. Not because the private sector provides cheaper prices. But rather, for many, it remains the only option.
Japan's spirit is being tested by the same recession and financial crisis afflicting all industrialized nations. But paradoxically, there are answers to be found to Japan's very modern crises in its most ancient traditions. There are shrines and temples and gardens everywhere. It is common to see monks meditating and easy to join them in meditation. And the latest twist is Buddhist temples using Zen meditation, cold-water ablutions and other traditional ceremonial practices to help young people looking for jobs! By taking its traditions and adapting them to solve new problems, by going both forward and backward, both outward and inward -- juxtapositions that in Japan don't have to be contradictions -- the people of Japan are poised find a new and vibrant balance for the 21st century.
Today, the day before the World Economic Forum conference in Lima, a group of Peruvian kids and their adult allies will make a case for why a childhood free from violence and filled with playful learning is the key to the kind of innovation that can drive economic prosperity in this century.
The basic message here was: when we live with dignity, we live from the heart, and to live from the heart is a noble thing indeed. For when we live with that inherent nobility which we all possess, we become heroes.
It is a global conversation that has shifted vertical hierarchies into horizontal webs, thus forming a conversation where all players interact with each other and where governments are part of the game, rather than the one exclusively controlling it.
As the Victorian writer Matthew Arnold once wrote, we are "wandering between two worlds, one dead and the other powerless to be born." The establishment might reinforce that fatalism, but from the vantage point of the World Social Forum, the horizon hails a new world ready to be born.
The impact of 'backcasting' is palpable and transformative. The biggest 'ah-ha' moment from immersing oneself in a future world is a striking awareness of the interdependencies of all systems.
At this year's annual meeting, I had the privilege of shadowing Oliver Cann and Yann Zopf, members of the communications and media team. Being a newbie to the news and media industry, it felt like an intensive one-day apprenticeship.
At the same time, the solutions to these crises need to be approached in a new manner. The 19th -and 20th-century model of thinking, where one problem is solved individually, is grossly outdated given the connectedness of the current challenges.
Can the world's most powerful CEOs, beholden as they are to tradition, the profit demands of shareholders and Wall Street financial analysts, embrace the concept of the common good and lead their companies in a more people and earth-friendly way?
We have the opportunity and means to apply microtasking to enrich our lives, our cultures and build better societies. As it was in the case of Benjamin Franklin, success is ours: people just need the right leaders, tools and incentives to motivate them to act.
The world's travel and tourism industry has bounced back from a period when it seemed to be battered by every conceivable shock. Now on a path of growth once more, it has the potential to play a big role in helping to bring about a sustainable global economic recovery.
With billions of hours spent playing them, and built-in patterns designed to keep people hooked, will games have a positive or negative influence on the world? I think it all depends on what kinds of games we choose to play.
Although performing arts play an important role at the World Economic Forum, it is not common to have such a famous musician as Chris Washburn on the stage who combines art with an exercise in jazz, improvisation, and life lessons.
Athough the short-run unemployment problem is constantly addressed, the long term change in the nature of work -- that is, the fact that certain jobs become obsolete due to the availability of technology -- is often forgotten, and even ignored.
Taking stands for what you believe in is core to Sandberg's credo in her new book, Lean In. She urges women to "lean in" to their career and not hold back, as she feels that women have been conditioned to do.
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