- - ILFA - - International Leadership Forum of the Americas

THE NEW PROGRAM 2009-2010

The America’s leadership demands a new mechanism for the perpetual exchange of information and knowledge in an ever-evolving political and economic landscape. The Forum can serve as this mechanism for the emerging generation of leaders to foster their understanding of complex development processes.

The Forum is a singularly unique, pluralistic enterprise without precedent in the international development community. By combining the unmatched experience and expertise of the leading international development bank and academic institutions such as Harvard University the Forom attracts a full range of intellectual, business and civil society participants, forming a repository for a wide array of data on social, economic and political arena available anywhere else.

The Bank will contribute its peerless technical, regulatory, financial and management know-how. Harvard will contribute its unrivaled academic resources. Through the Forum’s sponsors institutions, the former will serve as a catalytic knowledge-broker, channeling and focusing the very best of international development experience.

We believe than in addition to forming a conduit for shared knowledge and experience, the Forum will:

Foster dialogue that transcends political and ideological debates as well as national and regional boundaries.
Promote collective responsibility and accountability in all sectors of truly pluralistic societies
Encourage understanding to overcome the intrinsic fear of change and uncertainty that hinders leaders from becoming active agents for progress
Develop a framework of examination of successes, flaws, and lessons learned since the 80’s until now.
Aid navigation of an overwhelming flood of information, to change a torrent into a stream of practical, reliable and applicable knowledge
Give voice to peoples and territories that are marginalized by the development process

The Forum can be the leading broker for institutional resources and experience, separating what works from what doesn’t in the collective experience of international development. In practical effect, this will create a coherent process of democratic social learning for leaders in all sectors across a large and varying region. We believe the proposed Forum will be a dynamic instrument to achieve our shared goals and vision for the continued improvement of our societies.

OUTLINE OF THE FORUM’S NEW PROGRAM FOR 2009 - 2010

MAIN PURPOSE
The Forum’s Program is committed to create and share knowledge as a global public good with emerging leaders in the Americas. Dynamic and open dialogues with a bank of knowledge, such as Harvard University, the development institutions and others are becoming an essential component for development in today’s knowledge-based economy.

LEADING ISSUES

Ongoing changes in international sphere
State reforms and redefinition of roles in the midst of globalization
Economic development and progress in knowledge-based economy and;
Socio-economic changes in the region

Outcomes
Participants:

Express their thoughts on current political and economic trends and discuss innovative approaches to development in a collaborative fashion aimed at improving good governance and new markets and social participation
Gain a solid understanding of the phenomenon of globalization and a recognition of the necessary tools needed to effectively manage the challenges leaders face
Retrain themselves on a daily basis, expand their careers, share and disseminate their knowledge to others
Assess and evaluate the problems involved in transitional societies (e.g. newly –emerging democracies and free-market economies) and how to overcome these potential apprehensions
Develop skills in problem-solving, analysis and actions in order to instigate and maintain policy and institutional reform
Return to their countries with frameworks conducive to the inclusion of civil society, to make these organizations accountable to their shareholders and the society at large.

Objectives

The Forum will support emerging leaders in their need to understand the evolving regional transformation brought by democratization, market economic reforms, business integration and globalization, and advances in information/communication technology
The Forum will aggressively integrate the most advanced in telecommunications technology, including the Internet, videoconferencing and satellite broadcasts, to broker a perpetual exchange of information, knowledge and experience among the Forum’s sponsors and participants.

‘Leadership and Knowledge-for-Development in the Americas’

Program Content: Good leadership and knowledge-for-development are needed among political, social economic leaders in order to help developing countries become integrated into the new economic and social global scene. These leaders must be able to transfer cross-regional experiences, and lead new regional initiatives to fight poverty and environmental degradation and promote transparent markets among many others.

The new program will have three tiers:

(Tier I) The program will be composed of a series of four Lectures to be delivered via videoconferencing. All the academic and pedagogic material will be available online in advance.

(Tier II) Once broadcasted, lectures will be followed by four Sessions of real and virtual seminars and brainstorming discussions with experts from the international community and leading businessmen from the region and abroad. These seminars will be conducted online and will ensure a truly interactive dialogue with a diverse audience, spread in a minimum of 14 countries different countries.

(Tier III) A real and virtual conference will be held, and broadcast to the entire region will take place three months after the end of Tier II.

This comprehensive activity will convene lecturers and scholars from Harvard, experts and practitioners from developments banks, business community, regional think-tanks and NGO representatives. The month between Tier I and Tier II will allow us to prepare a final program, based on the exchange of new ideas and innovative initiatives that will respond to the imminent needs of regional, national and local leaders. It will also help to assess the demand for further executive programs to be sponsored by the Forum, Harvard and the Business community.

The themes and issues will reflect the needs and priorities as identified by the Americas leaders will be supported through a survey addressed to these leaders by a professional consulting enterprise and will be available at the end of Tier III.

It is suggested, that in order to expedite the setting of a pilot project, the new executive program could use a combination of the current curriculum themes, cases and issues of the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard’s Business and Law School and specialized centers. This pilot project will use the same venues (Harvard’s Campus in Cambridge, MA) reducing significantly costs and technological difficulties.

2 - Lectures and Seminars
The themes presented below are suggestions that will facilitate our consideration for the preparation of the lectures:

1) “Governance in the New State, and Innovative Institutions: the Challenge of Political, Social and Economic Leaders in the Midst of Globalization”;
2) “New Challenges for Sustainable Development in Knowledge-based Economy”;
3) “Building Human Capital, Information Technology and Knowledge: a New Era for International Public Policy” and;
4) “The Nation State, the Corporate World and the International NGO Community Actors.

Can we actually build a common agenda?
The lectures and seminars will show the Forum willingness to learn from other organizations, underscore the fundamental importance of client-focus, results and partnership, illustrate the powerful impetus to change in large organizations, demonstrate the importance of leadership and accountability as a force for change, and link the ability to build a learning organization into gaining a competitive edge.

C - AUDIENCE and PARTICIPANTS
Participants will be invited to take part in the Execugive Program:”Leadership and Knowledge-for-Development in the Americas” and will include emerging leaders from the Americas involved in different sectors of society.

Who should attend?
Government ministers and elected officials in local, regional or national governments, policymakers, business community leaders, non-profit representatives, media academia, international organizations, and sponsoring institutions

D) BENEFITS FOR PARTICIPANTS:

Gain a solid understanding of the phenomenon of globalization and recognition of the necessary tools needed to effectively manage the challenges leaders face.
Express their thoughts on current political and economic trends and discuss innovative approaches to development in a collaborative fashion aimed at improvinggovernance and competitive markets.
Assess and evaluate the problems involved in transitional societies (e.g. newly –emerging democracies and free-market economies) and how to overcome these potential apprehensions
Develop skills in problem-solving, analysis and actions in order to instigate and maintain policy and institutional reform
Encourage and undertake further research in their respective sphere of influence with local policy issues institutes, with the guidance and cooperation of Harvard’s KSG and specialized centers.

Focus of the Executive Program
Trends, challenges, opportunities and the need for good leadership
Intergenerational and Inter-sector dialogue among leaders will be key to social stability and progress in the decades ahead. As the truly global human civilization emerges, society and its institutions become increasingly complex.

Development theory and practice are in question, since the gaps of inequality and injustice continue to increase and large international institutions and governments are making significant long-term decisions and investing heavily in institutional reforms that will directly affect the quality of life of today’s young people half a century and more from now. We must be part of the process.

Increasing complexity, rapid change, and other forces have led to rapidly flourishing service industries in leadership, entrepreneurship and management, and yet the services offered and technologies developed are not being effectively used where they are needed the most. The application of the tools, insights, and experience developed by these industries holds significant promise for the international community, developing countries, as well as OECD nations, and yet the rate of diffusion is slow and inefficient.

A technological revolution is underway and yet there are few systematic attempts to use communication, information, and distance learning technologies to empower leaders, and more specifically to empower leaders in emerging and developing countries. On the other hand there are promising endeavors being carried out to address the challenges of development, and there are programs and institutions that are quickly developing the infrastructure as well as the expertise, and with effective coordination and rather small investments, leader in nations across the world cold have access to knowledge that would further assist them in their efforts to meet the challenges of leadership for development.

Revolutions in knowledge in general, and in science in particular, are giving rise to new and daunting questions that are of concern to all societies, such as the rapid evolution of new sciences and fields of understanding in the past century, in disciplines from biotechnology to artificial intelligence.

Paradoxically, the revolutions in knowledge “what some call the great Convergence” seem to be paralleled by the rapid disappearance of other forms of knowledge and understanding which can be traced back hundreds, even thousands of years. For example, customs, habits, traditions, and entire lifestyles are vanishing. The pressures of globalization, the integration of markets, the diffusion of mass media leading towards standardization, homogenization, loss of cultural diversity.