Fortune Global Forum 2020

 JEN WIECZNER: You've been outspoken on a number of issues before. Back in 2016, Target made a statement with an inclusive transgender restroom policy, saying people can use whatever restroom fits their own gender identity, which was controversial, sparked some boycotts. Previously, I think before you were CEO, you've also said people can't bring guns into stores. And also, now with the mask, some people would call these political stances. How do you think about when to make a political statement? And how do you walk that line? BRIAN CORNELL: Jen, I think the announcements we made recently had nothing to do with politics. And it's everything about safety for our team, safety for our guests, safety for our communities. So these are not political statements. They're just the right thing to do right now to protect the health and welfare of over 300,000 Target team members and the millions of guests, the 30 million guests that depend on us every week for those essential products and services. So this is all about the right safety message during a time where we're still facing a pandemic and we have months ahead of us, where we're going to continue to face the pandemic. These are not political statements. These are just the right things to do for the team, the guests, and the Americans we serve each and every day. 

Brian Cornell, Target Chairman and CEO, discusses. 


Target's CEO says its mask-wearing requirement is about safety, not politics

Leadership

Target's CEO: Mask-wearing policy is safety, not politics

Brian Cornell, Target Chairman and CEO, discusses. 

 ELLEN McGIRT: I think that the human moral element of this is going to require a certain kind of courage that some executives who just simply aren't fluent in the language of justice or purpose or stakeholder capitalism need to generate in order to have the tough conversations, including learning out loud. What's your best advice for those executives who are earlier on the path and you and Hamdi? DANIEL SCHULMAN: Well, I try really hard not to give anybody advice because it's so hard not being in their shoes, but I can say what's worked for us. And what's worked for us is having a set of values that we live up to. And that is what takes real courage, I think. Because values that are just up on a wall and you don't act upon them are just propaganda. And it's worse to actually have values that you don't live up to than no values at all because you're-- HAMDI ULUKAYA: I'm going to steal [INAUDIBLE] from [INAUDIBLE]. DANIEL SCHULMAN: That's I mean it's so true. And by the way, living to those takes courage. Because we live in a culturally charged environment where when we stand up for something, people always think you're taking a political stance. And I always say we're not taking a political stance. We're standing up for our values. And even if that results in death threats, which frequently happens to me because what we-- the stance we take are sometimes controversial, but we're consistent on them. Like we will always take down Nazi sites or KKK sites or sites that promote hatred or violence. And sometimes people are upset about that, but I think that is consistent with our values of inclusion. And that courage to do that, your employees see it, your customers see it, and people want to be a part of a company that stands for something. ELLEN McGIRT: You broke some news on fortune.com today with my wonderful colleague Beth Kowitt. Thank you for that. Specifically I'm thinking about stakeholders and your employees. Can you tell us a little bit about your news and why it's important now? HAMDI ULUKAYA: I feel that we still have a long way to go. This is just the beginning. We announced before the stock options for every employees, including factory workers and tell them to lead help for the children. I always keep saying these are not gifts, these are our-- these are our responsibilities. And this should the normal. This should be the normal business that we shouldn't even be talking about these things. But I'm hoping that this pandemic made us all tick. And I see the signs. And, of course, this gathering that you put together and putting this kind of topics in the top of everybody's mind. And we need to be aligned. We need to be helping each other. We need to inspire each other. And we need to make massive convincing out there in the world of business and say, OK, we might not have to figure this out all at once right from the beginning, but let's start this way instead of this way that we've been on for a long, long time that hasn't been helping society and community and humanity all together. ELLEN McGIRT: Because I know that journey really resonated with you particularly around employee pay and your net disposable income efforts. Can you talk us through that journey, please? DANIEL SCHULMAN: Sure. Well, first of all, I want to, again, thank you for having me and Hamdi. It's so great to be on with you as well. You've inspired me for so long, and I've learned so much from watching you in action. To your point, Ellen, I couldn't agree more with Hamdi in terms of employees being the single most important asset that a company has. When I think about what creates competitive advantage, it's always the strength of your employees, their skills, their passion for the business. And I think any company that hopes to move from being a good company to maybe someday being a great company has as its foundation talented, financially secure, financially healthy employees. And one of the things that I was always proud of at PayPal is that we paid at or above market in every single location where we employed 30,000 people at PayPal. And I always thought because we did that that our employees would be financially healthy because I believe that if you rely on the market, then your employees will be OK. And I put out a survey to find out how our employees felt in terms of their financial health. And what I found is that 2/3 of our employees, 2/3 of our entry-level employees and all of our call center employees struggled to make ends meet at the end of the month, which was shocking to me because I came to realize that capitalism in its current form isn't working for a large segment of the population. And so then I really decided to measure just what it meant to be financially healthy. And we came up with this metric called net disposable income, which is after an employee pays their taxes and all of their essential living expenses, how much money do they have left over for the rest of life. And what I found out, to my surprise, is that our employees, entry-level employees, call center employees only had between 4% and 6% net disposable income. And the team and I decided that the minimum NDI that we could accept for somebody to be financially healthy was 20%. And so we lowered the cost of health benefits by 60%. We raised salaries. We gave every single person in the company just like Hamdi did, we gave them actual stock in the company, and we wrapped all that into a financial education program to show them how to save, how to think about their long term financial health. And today the minimum somebody has in the company is 16% NDI, and by the end of next year we'll be at 20%. And what I saw from that is employee passion, engagement, attrition go way down, absenteeism go way down. And I feel like this idea of profit and purpose working hand in hand together is exactly what makes companies successful. 

“People want to be a part of a company that stands for something,” says PayPal CEO Dan Schulman.

Chobani and PayPal are rethinking capitalism

“People want to be a part of a company that stands for something,” says PayPal CEO Dan Schulman. 

 ROBERT MACKETT: So Beth, I want to start with you. My fiancé's parents have a cabin in the Catskills. And when I travel up there, I stop getting text messages and emails and calls. I'm off the grid. And I think to myself, ahh, sweet relief. But with all this awareness you're raising about the lack of internet connectivity across this country, it sounds like you're trying to take that peace of mind away from me. What gives? BETH FORD: Well, you know, it sounds like fun when you're normally in a city, and you're moving on vacation, and boy, I'm untethered, and I'm not going to get all of those emails, and isn't that terrific. But the problem is this is a daily challenge for rural areas. 18 to 20 million Americans lack access to broadband. So many of them lack access to Wi-Fi. And the majority of them, probably 80% to 90%, are in rural communities. So here we are in this pandemic where everybody is working remotely. They're trying to see doctors remotely. And there's a shortage of 40,000 doctors in rural communities. There's a food shortage in rural communities. There's a housing shortage in rural communities-- all of which can be enabled with technology. So we've been talking about this for quite some time. But right now, the pandemic has put this in sharp relief. And what we would say is we need to have investment-- it's about a $100 billion infrastructure investment. We need to close this technology gap so that we can enable the vibrancy of these rural communities that have lacked investment for a considerable period of time. If we don't invest in them, they will roll up on us and we'll lose this way of life. We need to remind ourselves this is where our food is being grown. This is about a national security issue. And that national security issue is food security. So I am pushing for this, as is my team and are a number of other corporations. ROBERT MACKETT: So between the two of you, Enrique, HP seems to be the more obvious champion of technology. One could argue that without Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, there would be no Silicon Valley. From your vantage point, how big of a problem is this digital divide issue? ENRIQUE LORES: So first of all, Robert, thank you for having me here. And Beth, it's an honor to be on the panel with you. I think it is a very significant issue that, with COVID, is accelerating. If there is a consequence of the pandemic, is the acceleration that we have seen in our lives becoming digital. And those people that will not have access to technology, that will not have access to digital content, are going to be left behind if we are not very careful. And this will have implications in many different areas-- will have implications in what jobs they can have access to, will have implications, as Beth was saying, as in what type of medical treatments they will have access to given the situation where they are. And also, even more important, are going to be the implications in the education side. We are seeing many kids now working remotely. And without access to broadband, access to PCs, access to technology, that generation will be significantly impacted going forward. So it's a big issue that I think we all have the obligation of trying to mitigate as the leaders of big companies. 

Beth Ford estimates that wiring rural America will cost $100 billion. 

Land O’ Lakes CEO calls for big federal spending on rural broadband

Land O’ Lakes CEO calls for big spending on rural broadband

 BETH KOWITT: Even before the pandemic, there's been a lingering culprit that's wreaking havoc around the globe-- climate change. It's a problem that's not just affecting the beautiful world in which we live, but one that poses an existential threat to us all. Getting to net zero by 2050 is key to controlling climate change. So how do we do it without upending business progress? We're joined by two leaders with innovative strategies-- Roberto Marques executive chairman and Group CEO of Natura &Co, and Steve Oldham, CEO of Carbon Engineering. Gentlemen, welcome. STEVE OLDHAM: Thank you. BETH KOWITT: Thanks so much for being with us. Now, Steve, I'd love to start with you, here. Because you have a very interesting analogy for explaining the differences in how you and Roberto approach this problem. So Steve, maybe you could set this up for us and frame the conversation that way. STEVE OLDHAM: Sure. And yes, it's one I used when I testified before the United States Senate. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's simple. So what do I think of when I think about climate change? I think of the atmosphere as a bathtub filling with water. And there's only so much water that we can have in that bathtub. And if you can imagine that bathtub in your bathroom, you would be very quickly-- if you saw that it was overflowing, you would race and you would turn off the faucets-- taps, as I call them, because I'm from England. So the challenge we have is that I don't think we can turn those taps off fully. I don't think we can turn off every single emission on the planet. The bathtub is going to continue to fill. So luckily, the people who invented bathtubs also came up with a strategy for dealing with that. They invented the plug. So if we have the ability to pull the plug out of the bathtub at the same time as we turned down the taps, the water level in the bathtub-- the CO2 in the atmosphere-- would drain much, much quicker. And that's where I think we need to look at both sides of the challenge of the water in the bathtub, the CO2 in the atmosphere. How do we turn off the tap and how do we pull out the plug. BETH KOWITT: Great. So you're working on the solution by pulling out the plug. So tell us a little bit about how you're doing that. What does Carbon Engineering do? And how are you pulling out the plug? STEVE OLDHAM: Yeah, so our mission as a company is to facilitate large scale removal of CO2 directly out of the atmosphere with technology, and then permanently, safely, and accountably put it back underground again. We created our climate change problem by bringing carbon out of the geosphere on the ground and bringing it and putting it into the atmosphere. To fix it, we need to do the reverse. So we've developed a technology which is a series of chemical reactions that capture the CO2 from the air. And then we produce a pure stream of CO2. The CO2 in the air that we finish with goes back into the atmosphere again safely. And then we can take that CO2 and bury it underground. 

A conversation with two CEOs on why sustainability and financial growth go hand-in-hand.

Carbon Engineering CEO discusses getting to net zero

Uncategorized

 CLIFTON LEAF: You mentioned telemedicine. Some of the rules were relaxed to allow us to embrace telemedicine, to have cross state practices, for example, there's some billing changes that would happen. And on your front, in terms of allowing technicians, pharmacy technicians to do more and more procedures, that's something that has happened in this pandemic and you hope that it will continue, I imagine. LARRY MERLO: Well, Cliff, you're absolutely right. And if you think back to, it was 11, 12 years ago when we had the H1N1 scare. And there was a need to how are we going to immunize the country, and at the time, there were only a few states that permitted pharmacists to provide immunizations. And the accessibility and the locality of pharmacies became the solution, the answer to that. We're seeing pharmacists again play a critically important role in the management of COVID. Pharmacies will play an important role in terms of the administration of a COVID vaccine once it becomes available. And we've got a tall order ahead of us. We've got 330 million Americans that we need to make sure that they have that accessibility, and at the same time, educate them on the importance. Cliff, we're seeing that right now is we think about the importance of the seasonal flu vaccine. As we all know, the seasonal flu symptoms mimic those symptoms of COVID. I know, as an organization, we've done a lot to educate our customers around the importance, more important than ever. And as of about a week ago, we had already administered over 11 million seasonal flu vaccines and that's almost double what we would have administered this time of year ago. So the encouraging news is people are heeding that advice, and hopefully that will play an important role as we move into the winter months. 

A conversation about how to recalibrate in the face of crisis and what new health care trends are here to stay.

CVS CEO: We have a tall order of accessibility ahead of us

 ANDREW NUSCA: Stuart, I'm interested to hear how Slack is reimagining some of the more organic interactions, such as bumping into each other in the hallway, things like that, to ensure the foundation of the relationship is being tended to in the work from home environment. STEWART BUTTERFIELD: Yeah, so there's two things that we're doing on the product side that we announced at our user conference a couple of weeks ago. One of them you can think of more or less exactly as Instagram stories. And that might sound absurd or it might sound really interesting, and I'm not sure, depending on who you are, but it's actually been pretty magical. Because the same people who you're sick of seeing in yet another conference call, I don't know what it is, it's you can pause the video whenever you want. You're not on video yourself. People kind of hold themselves in a different way or communicate in a different way, when they're not worried about being watched in the moment. And so the way that they end up speaking feels different, whatever it is. A lot of these interactions-- I don't even know what to call it-- moments of viewing the video, content consumption-- that sounds disgusting-- these moments end up kind of delightful in a way, where they're not exasperating, but they're tiring, I guess, in the video conference sense. And because Slack is already aggregated the attention of users into channels and the channels correspond to whatever people are working on, there's really a natural place for that to happen. The other one is always on audio. And I think this probably goes more to the heart of the question. You can imagine I would shout across to someone one row and two desks over and ask them a question. And everyone would overhear it. We want to create a little bit of that not interrupting people, of course, but you tune into the audio. So rather than have a call be a thing that starts and ends and that's scheduled for a specific time, it's you join and leave whenever you want. And when you're joined, you have your speakers on. And you're not necessarily speaking, but if someone arrives and starts speaking, you hear them. And so it allows for these spontaneous conversations, which sometimes can be a more effective way to communicate or a more effective way to resolve something. But the threshold of having to schedule something or to actually call someone, it feels like there's a certain amount of importance that has to have. For me to call someone-- telephones are a different thing, I guess, but for me to call someone on Slack, or on Zoom, or teams, or anything without telling them in advance, it feels a little bit like an emergency, but it's definitely an intrusion, whereas this kind of situation where people are floating in and out, I think is really much more organic, allows for a lot more spontaneity, a lot more of the serendipity. And then the last thing I would say is our quarter closes on Friday. And from noon, until like 11:00 PM, it is just chaos with the sales ops team, and legal, finance, the sales leadership, all these contracts going back and forth, and having this kind of system, where there's just always on way to participate and get the latest is I think going to be really impactful. So far we seem to be impactful for similar things, for launches of features, and teams working really tightly together. So those are two. Those are from us. I think the world is going to produce a lot more. We're going to continue to innovate and produce more. I can really imagine two years from now we end up with not a whole new set of tools, but a lot of augmentation to what we have today. 

Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield discusses the changing nature of work and communication.

How Slack is reimagining organic interactions

 PHIL WAHBA: When I was watching your analyst day last Friday or Thursday, I was I was struck when the head of the Gap brand talked about largely getting out of malls and 20% of stores still being malls of yours. That just seems so, so bold, so radical for the retailer. And you've been trying to revive, rejuvenate rather, the Gap around for years. So has this crisis do you think giving you the pretext to really do something as dramatic as what you've announced? SONIA SYNGAL: I think that I'm pleased with the momentum that we're seeing from Gap brand in that it takes a combination, as I say, of the art and science, the soul of the brand being lived up to, as well as the clarity, and conviction, and fierce execution that needs to happen to reshape a lot of how we gain commerce and gain revenue. And so you're seeing that with our decision. I think Gap brand is much bigger than the way we were monetizing the brand. And so while we've been in business for 51 years in malls and certainly 21 years in e-commerce, we're announcing and we're finding many new interesting ways to bring the brand to customers, whether it's new partnerships, such as one of our largest licensing partners or our announcement with Kanye West. So I think these are a couple of examples of new ways to reach new customers and at the same time commit to living up to the promise of the brand with respect to inspiring marketing, excellence of the product, and we're committed to all of that. 

Sonia Syngal, Gap Inc. CEO, shares how she’s working to rebuild the brand.

Gap CEO: We’re not leaving all malls

 CLAIRE ZILLMAN: So the [INAUDIBLE] in June, the most recent estimate is is that air travel globally will lose $84 billion this year. And that's just one measure of the travel industry and how it's been impacted by the pandemic. We're 9, 10 months into this now. I'm wondering if each of you can start by sort of telling me, telling us the biggest lesson you've learned so far in all of this, whether that's about your own business or about the travel industry, in general. Karen, do you want to start? KAREN CHAN: Sure. I guess one of the biggest lesson that all of us have learned as we are actually in the forefront of unfortunately of the results of the pandemic is that never waste a crisis. As you can imagine, the aviation industry has been quite hard hit. And we are doing whatever we can. If you don't see a silver lining, you need to go and create one. And that's why in October we have actually relaunched AirAsia.com to become the fastest growing ASEAN [INAUDIBLE],, not just covering travel, but also covering lifestyle as well. If we look at what's actually been happening to travel within ASEAN, I think Asia is actually in a relatively better position than maybe some other parts of the world. Most of the countries that we actually fly to are actually in green zone, whether it is China, whether it is in Taiwan, Australia, Indo-China. And we are working very, very closely with a lot of the different governments to ensure that we can actually go and start accelerating the green bubbles. Now what that means is that international travel will still be about three to six months away. So a lot of our focus is now basically moving to domestically. We are very fortunate. For AirAsia, we are actually in eight different countries. So we actually have flights to somewhere and not flights to nowhere. So a lot of the effort right now that we are doing is, how do we actually go and pivot and really start accelerating domestic travel? Understanding that domestic travel is only about 40% of what are basically the revenue versus 2019. How do we actually go and start expanding beyond just flights to other complementary travel-related activities, like hotels, like activities in ground, like mobility? And that's where we have actually been focusing in the past six months a lot of our effort in ensuring that our foundation, our platform is ready, our consumers can continue to stay relevant and come to our site, and also ensuring that as we actually pivot when a lot of people actually are in lockdown, we can also go and have a last mile logistics fulfillment e-commerce play. CLAIRE ZILLMAN: Yeah, that's great. Angel, I'm curious to hear from you too. What's the what's your number one lesson so far in all of this? ANGEL MANCAS: Yeah. The lesson that I would say is while they're trying to be as big and agile as possible run, themes are changing week after week. And the customer's needs and the customer's preferences are also changing despite them and then quite drastically. So basically, we've been able to-- [INAUDIBLE] we've been able to do some changes from a demand perspective on how we treat our product and how we can cover the supply in a different way in order to adapt to the new reality that we have today. And that is the best thing that we can do for our customers as quick as possible. 

A conversation about how companies are reimaging travel and what’s in store for the future of travel throughout Asia.

Future of travel: To Asia and beyond

What’s in store for the future of travel throughout Asia.

 CLAY CHANDLER: We've got a couple of important technological developments on the horizon in China, very eminent. The shift to a digital bankruptcy is one. And of course, the rollout of 5G. What are your thoughts on those two things and how much will they accelerate this revolution? [COUGHS] KAI-FU LEE: The digital currency is an area where I think China has moved faster than most countries. But it is a large endeavor. It's still in experimental stage right now. The idea of digital currency is really a cash replacement. I think China has dramatically reduced the cash usage already. But the government is rolling out further ability for phones to be able to transfer cash even when they're not connected to the internet. So that would really completely eradicate the use of cash. And that would create tremendous efficiency and convenience. But it will take some amount of time to roll out. I do believe a lot of the ideas when Facebook proposed the digital currency. I think there are a lot of good ideas. And the Chinese model will have some of their ideas in it. I think China had some of the same ideas already. I'm not sure who came up with it. But I think it's fundamentally flawed for a company or a consortium of company to build a digital currency as a first step. I think countries should think about it. And I hope China's efforts will make other countries think the same, so the whole world can be cash free. Digital is so much better, safer than paper cash, which can have all kinds of problems. On 5G, China is moving forward. It's an important national priority. China, in fact, has an effort called the New Infrastructure Project, which is trying to really help all of China move up in terms of the digital infrastructure, including 5G, data centers, IoT, big data, and AI and cloud infrastructure. And that infrastructure, with government helping to produce, will make it easier for application developers and entrepreneurs to build applications on top of that. And I think it's smart for governments to do things, to do infrastructure building, in areas where private companies cannot really afford to do. And 5G is a big part of that. The rollout is significant. 

Kai-Fu Lee shares insights on what to expect from the next generation of A.I.

Sinovation Ventures CEO discusses accelerating the A.I. revolution

Sinovation Ventures CEO on accelerating the A.I. revolution

 CLIFTON LEAF: It is a good time to remind people-- as if anyone has forgotten-- the extent of the pandemic's impact and reach. 43 million cases of COVID-19 have been diagnosed around the world so far. And nearly 1.2 million deaths have been caused as a direct result, though that number is likely to be much higher. So my first comment to you, Dr. Yu, is thank you for dedicating your time and your talent and your energy into trying to produce a protective vaccine. This is great to be with you here to talk about this. YU XUEFENG: Thank you. Yeah. Just go ahead. CLIFTON LEAF: Sure. In an unprecedented move, the Chinese military approved the vaccine as a specially needed drug-- the one you're working on, this Ad5 vector vaccine-- as necessary, as you've told me in the past, to protect their soldiers in endemic regions. Starting in September or so, you begin running Phase III trials in a number of countries. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Russia, Mexico, and, I think, Brazil. There was talk about a trial in Canada, but that seems to have evaporated. Why no countries in the West or in the rest of Asia? Why these particular countries? YU XUEFENG: Well, for us to evaluate the effectiveness of vaccine, we need to find the high disease burden area. And to be honest with you, I think those country we choose are very high in disease burden. And we haven't really expecting much from the more developed country with the good health care system has been running for many years. Of course, the situation, the reality is really unexpected to the current situation. But when we decided to go to evaluate the vaccine effort effectiveness, we decided to choose the country which have the high disease burden that allow us to quickly to evaluate the efficacy of the vaccine candidates. That's the rationale behind our decision to choose those countries. 

A conversation about CanSino Biologics hunt for a breakthrough and its quest to distribute its vaccine around the world.

The great vaccine race: View from China 

A conversation about CanSino Biologics hunt for a vaccine.

The great vaccine race: View from China

 MATT HEIMER: Deanna, you and I had a chance to talk about this privately a little bit. You've been at Guardian Life now for 12 years, you just wrapped up nine years as CEO, and you talked about seeing some of these skills gaps emerge within your own workforce. Where did those gaps appear, and what did you do as a CEO on the ground to address them? DEANNA MULLIGAN: Thanks. It's great to be here and I would just add one statistic to Liz's great statistic of 300-plus million jobs changing, and that about 85 million jobs will go unfilled by 2030 if we don't change the skills mix that we have today. And the skills that we have been working on at Guardian are, we did a big transformation about five or six years ago from data center skills to cloud skills. When we moved mostly to the cloud, we had to reskill about 500 people in new technologies, and we learned some interesting things. First of all, of course, not everyone opted to be reskilled, but many people did. And one might think that it would be the people who are younger, tenured, or less time in their career who might be more willing to switch. But we found that many people who are very long tenured made a fairly easy switch from the data center skills to the cloud skills. And one study that recently was done by Gartner Group back that up, where they did a study on digital skills and they looked at all types of people in the workforce and found that 50-year-olds who decided to make that switch were actually quite successful. And the reason why was that having a deep subject matter expertise is foundational to making the switch to new skills. And we found that as well. We found that our long tenured people with their deep subject matter expertise, if they were motivated to learn the new skills, did quite well. So I think that's a really positive finding that we should be sharing out there with companies. MATT HEIMER: What has to happen at the top to make that happen? What needs to happen? Does it need to be a change in the mindset of CEOs and C-suite level executives? How do they need to change, reskill themselves, perhaps, in order to reskill their companies? Alan, I think he's trying to weigh in on that. ALAN: Yeah, a few things on that and what Liz had said before, we are helping each organization around 400,000 people to rebound every year. And unfortunately, in the months to come there will be more of that kind of rebound. What we say is that we should invest in employability, not per se in protecting jobs. So it means that it is very important that we and employers are taking the responsibility regarding their employability and their upskilling and reskilling people, either for their own needs because they need new skills, or to make sure that these people will be able to rebound in a positive way in the labor market. And we are happy to help them. I think that's extremely important to have that kind of mindset because we see many companies today, on one hand, laying off, restructuring, and at the same time hiring new people. It's quite, I would say, strange to see that kind of press release when you see the two numbers. So many people being laid off and at the same time so many, thousands of people that will be hired. And what we say is that it is much cheaper and much more socially responsible and much more effective/productive to look at your own workforce, look at the people that you can upskill and reskill, and make that investment. Because we have also figures. When you lay off people and then you rehire somebody with new skills, it will cost you, on average, and these figures are coming from ABB, for example, to US$100,000. But if you take the commitment to reskille or upskill your own people, it will cost you between US$30,000 and US$35,000. So also financially, this is really a great investment to be done. 

85 million jobs could go unfilled by 2030

Guardian's Deanna Mulligan on how to fill the skills gap.

85 million jobs could go unfilled by 2030


 CLIFTON LEAF: One of the other lessons about thinking small is really in government, too, where, as you say, it's not about the dollars. It's about the quality of government. And the words that keep coming up are competence and simplicity and transparency and the free flow of information and also speed. And really, the fixes in some ways are kind of small. It's not like this big, giant new age plan that we need to come up with to prepare for the future. FAREED ZAKARIA: Absolutely, [? Chris. ?] And again, this applies to companies just as much as to countries. If you look at Taiwan, I really feel like we should spend a lot of time studying what Taiwan did. They get the gold star for the response to COVID. 24 million people right next to China-- they get millions of tourists from China. And yet, the number of COVID deaths in Taiwan is 7. And by the way, they are an open democracy, very transparent. And to add to this, they spend 1/3 as much on health care as the United States. So what did they do? It's exactly as you say. They acted early, aggressively, and intelligently. And the most intelligent part, they did not do a lockdown. Lockdowns are a sign that you have failed. You are using a big, blunt instrument, and you're crushing the economy. I'm not a fan of lockdowns at all. What the Taiwanese did instead was they did very smart testing, tracing, and then the most important part, isolating the potentially infected. So in a sense, they took a surgical scalpel at the problem rather than some kind of big mallet. And it wasn't just Taiwan. South Korea-- same thing. Singapore-- same thing. Vietnam-- to a large extent, the same thing. The most successful countries did not do lockdowns. Lockdowns are a sign you have failed. Intelligent testing, tracing, and isolation is the way to do it. And if you can manage that process-- and it just requires smarts, by the way. Taiwan is Democratic. South Korea is Democratic. Nobody used some kind of police powers that the Western governments don't have. If you are smart about it, you can do it. Companies need to be thinking about this. How can you get the most bang for your buck by being open, by being transparent, and by being intelligent? People say, well, they deprive people of liberties who they isolated. Well, aren't we-- we're depriving people of liberties when we shut down the entire economy. That's also a deprivation of civil liberties. You just got to be smart about it. 

Fareed Zakaria: 'Lockdowns are a sign that you have failed'

Taiwan gets the 'gold star' for its coronavirus response.

He says Taiwan gets the 'gold star' for its coronavirus response.

 Clifton Leaf: One of those historical patterns is that the effects of this pandemic will be regressive. They are regressive. We've seen that, not just within economies, but across economies, in terms of poorer nations, emerging markets, frontier markets. That, though, has been a particular concern of you at the World Bank. Talk a little bit about what the sort of focus is right now, in terms of remediation. Carmen Reinhart: So this crisis-- and this is different from-- I mean, most crises have regressive consequences. It is the most vulnerable sectors of the economy that get hit, but this crisis is particularly regressive. Especially, it's regressive within country, with the poorest segments of the population being hit. And it is also regressive across countries because it is the poorest countries that will be facing the biggest spikes in poverty rates, the biggest challenges to almost any social marker, ranging from health to education. So it's a very regressive crisis, and what to do about it? Well, first of all, there is overall government support. And if you look at the multilaterals, the IMF and the World Bank, and the regional development banks lending in the balance of this year to date, it's setting records, not only the amount of lending but the number of countries that have been receiving lending. And an important element of that lending is that it's relatively front-loaded and fast relative to the usual programs. It's emergency lending. And with the aim that this kind of general support also allows governments, especially those that have most limited resources, which is very much the focus of the bank. The poorest countries, those with the most limited resources, have the capacity to deal with the needs in the health industry. And also, some of the lending has been more targeted to things like cash transfers. Cash transfer programs, like in Brazil, Bolsa Familia as an example, are a way of trying to maintain the livelihood, maintain some adequate capacity to survive this crisis for those many households that are not covered by-- in cases where social safety nets are either very limited or nonexistent. So big emphasis on general support, cash transfers, and of course, the World Bank had a long history of many programs on providing support for health, education, food security, and the like. But the two that I highlighted, I think, figure prominently. 

The coronavirus crisis has been more regressive than most other crises 

The World bank Group's Carmen Reinhart explains why.

The coronavirus crisis has been more regressive than others

 Jen Wieczner: It's interesting what you were saying, Diane, in terms of reducing the density in the floor plan. And we saw this move to open offices before the pandemic. But is that over? I mean, do we have little cubicles with Plexiglas in between them in the future and open offices are dead? Or how do you see that? DIANE HOSKINS: I don't think open offices are dead, but I think the open office really grew out of a model of one size fits all. And I believe what we're starting to find is that that model maybe isn't the optimum model. And what we're learning through this experience of work-from-home and all the surveys and the voice that we've given our office workers is that there's a whole range of needs that need to get met. In fact, in our most recent survey, people said, look, we'll work in the office 100% of the time if I don't have to share a desk, if I actually have an assigned seat. And there's a real backlash against the open work environment where there's unassigned seating. And also, over the last 10 years in which we've been doing surveys, the issue of noise in the workplace has been getting louder and louder, no pun intended. But it really has become a problem. So I think what we're seeing is that it's a referendum, if you will on, some of the things that need to be addressed in the workplace. And actually, it's an opportunity to address those issues. There's a real move, I believe, toward understanding in a more individualized way what it takes for people to do their best work, not just to work but to do their best work, to excel. And that's what people are looking for. And I really believe that this moment is a time where we're going to see some of that transition in place. 

The open office concept might not have been the optimal model

The open office concept might not have been the best

 CLIFTON LEAF: It's undoubtedly something that Pfizer Chairman and CEO, Albert Bourla, has in mind while Pfizer works towards developing a COVID-19 vaccine. He joins us right now. Thank you for being here. Albert, I want to-- ALBERT BOURLA: Thank you. CLIFTON LEAF: Sorry about that. I want to start with what everyone has been thinking about, which is the vaccine. And today, you announced your earnings. And there were a lot of people waiting with bated breath to see if there was per chance some information about the interim analysis that you do. You look at the data in your phase three trial. You have a couple of looks pre-scheduled in. And you're looking for events. Who's getting sick with COVID and who isn't? And the share of those in the intervention arm versus the vaccine arm. Talk a little about the process, just so everyone understands how this works. ALBERT BOURLA: Thank you very much. And as I said, thank you very much for having me here. There was a lot of questions today. And there are a lot of questions constantly. And it is very clear to me that the interest about the vaccine is very, very high right now, given whatever is at stake. The process of works is that we are vaccinating people either with a placebo or with a vaccine. And those people, they don't know if they received the placebo or the vaccine. The physicians or the nurses that are injected, they don't know if they received the vaccine or the placebo. The computer that stores this information, it is protected with codes. But very few people have it and they're not allowed to get in unless there are significant events that are happening. And all of that is monitored by a committee that's called Data Monitor Committee. But it is a committee for external, independent from Pfizer [INAUDIBLE] these are professionals of universities, people that they know very well what it means to develop a vaccine. Those people will be the first ones, that they will have a look in unblinded data. And this happens when it's pre-specified number of cases of COVID have occurred. What does this mean? We vaccinated the 40,000 people. We are going to go all the way to 44,000. Then we let them live their lives. And because there is a lot of disease out there, some of them will get the disease. So we are waiting to see how many of these 44,000 people will get the disease. And once we know that we have collected a specific number of events, we are going to unblind this data-- not us, only the independent data committee. And they will see those that have disease, they belong to the group that took the placebo or they belong the group that took the vaccine. Likely, will be done in both groups, but what we want to see, for example, it is very high efficacy. So very, very few people vaccinated got infected and all the rest are from the placebo group. So this is where we are. Once this is done, the Data Monitoring Committee, if we demonstrate efficacy, then they will inform us. And they will tell us that you have demonstrated efficacy in your primary endpoint. And this is what we will make public to the world. But that will take us from the day that we know until we make it public, typically a week. 

How Pfizer is testing its COVID-19 vaccine

 JEN WIECZNER: Let's talk more about those middle seats, because I believe you're the only US airline that's still blocking the middle seats. You've said you won't sell those middle seats until at least January 6. Is that the key to making planes safe? Is not having some person in the middle? ED BASTIAN: I don't think it's the key to keeping planes safe. In fact, we just came out as an industry with a study by the Harvard School of Public Health today, which indicated, and they did a lot of science and a lot of research around air travel and the impact of filtration systems and all the steps, the protocols we're taking. They have concluded that being on an airplane is actually safer than most things people are doing in public, like going to a restaurant, or going to a grocery store, or a shopping mall. So as a result of that, we have confidence in the safety of the plane. But there's a big difference between feeling safe on that plane and then feeling confident that you're sitting in a safe zone. And it's going to take some time, I think, before customers are confident sitting next to people on a crowded flight. And at Delta, we want to give them a little bit more time, certainly into the new year, to evaluate that for themselves. Obviously, our business model doesn't work blocking middle seats forever. But we have the ability to continue to manage that for the next few months. 

Delta CEO: Being on a plane isn't as unsafe as you think

Ed Bastian discusses air travel during the pandemic.

 BRIAN O'KEEFE: You mentioned China. As an investor, you look at the fundamentals. We were chatting the other day, you said when you look at the fundamentals of the US versus China, it seems clear to you that China will grow faster. And you said that-- and written-- that you think there's a little bit of an anti-China bias that obscures that fact for many people. What gives you the conviction that China is primed to grow faster than the US going forward? RAYMOND DALIO: I've been going to China regularly since 1984. And I know the people, I'm intimately involved with policies and economic policymakers and so on. So it's through that intimate understanding and seeing how it's opening up. It's called state capitalism, but they'll produce more billionaires. I think probably capitalism and capital markets and the development of the capital markets could in a few years be more embraced in China-- I know they are embraced in China-- than in the United States. And so when you look at the inventiveness, I think it speak for itself. Since I started going there, per capita incomes have increased by 30 times. And all measures of power have increased a lot. And so they are educating, they're putting out eight times as many computer engineers, stem cell graduates, and so on. So it is a place where there's a vibrancy of creativity and the development of the capital markets. And if you look at monetary policy for example, there are three types of monetary policy. Monetary policy one, I call its interest rates. Monetary policy two is when interest rates don't work, it's quantitative easing-- print money and buy financial assets. Monetary policy three, which we're in, has the coordination of fiscal policy to get the money in the hands of those who need it, to target it by governments rather than to have a free market settle that. There's still at monetary policy one. Their interest rates are more attractive. The capital flow picture's more attractive. They're opening the capital account. Foreign investment can go in. And also, the world is underweight in Chinese assets. If you have a world that's overweight someplace and underweight someplace else, and that market's more attractive and is opening up, it benefits from flows. So you see, the exchange rate is relatively stronger and markets are relatively stronger. So that's how it looks to me. 

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