A few leading companies are marching boldly ahead in search of new business opportunities. What does the future hold and how can visionary leadership gain an advantage for your company?
A Global Alliance for the 21st Century
One of the great business advances of the 20th century has been the gradual
recognition that business, society, and the environment are partners in a global alliance.
Not an unnatural alliance formed out of political necessity, but a dynamic partnership
with a shared bottom line.
Nowhere is that shared bottom line more obvious than in the global communications industry. There's nothing short of a revolution underway in global communications today, fed by new technology and the liberalization of national telecommunications markets.
Growth in communications enables the kind of broad-based economic growth that's opening up opportunities for people all over the world. Borders are coming down - political borders, trade borders, monetary borders, social borders - and as a result, whole societies are emerging into the economic mainstream. They want to compete in world markets to generate the kind of economic growth that translates into improved standards of living. That's why there is a global boom in telecommunications infrastructure investment.
We envision a near-term future in which people will be able to routinely download information from the internet 100 times faster than over standard phone line.
Economic growth and environmental responsibility go hand in hand. Economically advanced nations can more easily afford the cost of implementing clean air and water standards. And a modern communications infrastructure offers creative ways to protect the environment.
For example, the communications industry has the potential to substantially reduce unnecessary transportation. Teleworking (working from home or other remote locations) has been growing at 15% a year among North American companies. But the big growth in teleworking and its payoff to society are still ahead of us: the development of high-speed "broadband" communications direct to homes will fundamentally expand such options in the coming decade.
AT&T's merger with TCI will speed those broadband connections to homes by taking TCI's broadband cable TV network and converting it into a two-way system for communications, information, and entertainment. We envision a near-term future in which people will be able to routinely download information from the Internet 100 times faster than over a standard phone line. As communications technology dramatically expands the information available instantly to families and corporations, the potential social, economic, and environmental benefits are enormous.
AT&T understands the need for a global alliance of business, society, and the environment. In the 21st century, the world won't tolerate businesses that don't take that partnership seriously, but it will eventually reward companies that do.
Individual choice is now a fundamental part of economic life. The breakdown of monopolies, advances in technology, and the spreading of prosperity and information have all enabled people to be active rather than passive participants in economic life. The extension of choice has to be at the core of the offer that any successful company makes to its consumers.
For the energy industry the hard edge of consumer choice is focused on the issue of environmental protection. Consumers want the heat, light, and mobility that oil and gas provide and they want it at a reasonable cost. But over the last two decades they have come to want something more - energy that can be produced and used without destroying the natural environment.
That seems to me an eminently reasonable objective. Though we and many others are working on long-term alternatives such as solar power and other forms of renewable energy there is, for the moment, no viable economic alternative to hydrocarbons. We cannot ignore either immediate concerns about air quality in urban areas or the long-term threat of global warming. A company like BP Amoco can't ignore those issues because this is our world too. Oil companies are not vast inhuman machines pumping out profits. They are collections of human beings with families, and with hopes and fears about the future. Our staff is more important than any lobby group in telling us what the world is thinking.
Of course, no single company can solve such global problems. But we can use our experience and know-how to make a difference. In that spirit BP Amoco has launched two major initiatives which we believe can help to protect the environment here in the United States and internationally.
First, we have set ourselves a target to reduce our own emissions of carbon dioxide - from our refineries and oil fields and petrochemical plants - by at least 10% by the year 2010 from a 1990 baseline. To ensure that target is met in the most cost effective way possible we are developing our own internal emissions trading system, with the benefit of great assistance from the Environmental Defense Fund.
Secondly, we have established a program to provide a new choice of clean fuels to consumers in at least 40 cities around the world over the next two years. Using BP's experience and Amoco's unique technology, we believe we can provide the unleaded, low-benzene, low-sulphur or no-sulphur gasoline and low-sulphur diesel required to match the ever advancing quality of auto engines. Within three years, for example, we intend to be a lead free company - producing only unleaded fuel - worldwide.
These are just first steps. In both cases we are still at an early stage and as we learn from experience and extend our know-how we will be able to do more. At the same time we will work with auto manufacturers to produce vehicles with engines and fuel that together reduce emissions to the absolute minimum and with governments to design regulation in ways which give us and other companies the incentive to use innovation and creativity in the search for the best answers.
As these initiatives proceed I believe we can demonstrate that it is possible to explore for, produce, refine, distribute, and use hydrocarbons in ways which don't damage the environment - ways which offer the consumer a new choice.
Too often in the past the corporate approach to the environment has been cautious and defensive, denying the problems and using size and influence to resist change. In the end that approach is doomed to failure because it cuts against reality.
For some, the idea of an oil company that delivers environmental improvement is so counter-intuitive as to be incredible. So, perhaps, is the idea that a big company can be more interested in consumer choice than in the accumulation of market power. But times are changing. Size is not enough to guarantee performance. In an era of choice, the ability to listen and the speed of movement are what really count.
