Need to be outside!

Last week the Value Web team was in Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico supporting the Young Global Leader’s Annual Meeting. Around 250 YGLs were there, spread out from the pool to the restaurant to the window-less conference room.

Our challenges were many. I’d like to describe 2 of them and hear your thoughts on ways that you’ve managed similar conditions.

Challenge numero uno: how do you herd a band of cats? Even in the best of times, the YGLs ignore our timing in favor of their networking conversations. Here, with a pool and a beach and an all-you-can eat buffet, we knew we’d have to up our game if we were to ever gather them.

Imagine my surprise when the team met to talk about herding and el Nacho came up. I’m no newbie to wrestling: my 17-year-old son is a fan. But who would have guessed that a 30-something Swiss dude would kiss his 2 biceps and call out El Nacho? The next thing that emerged was a team member who volunteered to dress as el Nacho and run through the resort ringing a Swiss cowbell. We bought a Nacho costume (they were plentiful in Mexico) and (mostly he) planned his entrances.

But our response was nothing compared to that of the YGLs. El Nacho turned into a meme! He reminded us of our playful sides and irrepressible spirits. The YGLs invoked el Nacho in presentations, in conversations and in calls for him to be part of the ‘family photo.’

We couldn’t have planned this. The idea caused us to erupt in laughter—always a sign that something is worthwhile. It occurred to us spontaneously as our team came together to troubleshoot thorny design issues. The subject was dead serious. The solution erred on the side of playfulness. I intend to err on that side again.

Our herding hero-- El Nacho

Challenge numero dos: The marker boards were unfit for use and forced us to mostly abandon them and change the design at the 11th hour. Our design had tricky transitions — moving the boards around to enable 250 people to break into small groups in the aforementioned windowless ballroom. All of these plans had to be scrapped in favor of immobilizing the boards and finding a solution for 14 additional breakouts.

Once again the team huddled together with our sponsors. We arrived at a brilliant solution that was so much better than our original ideas: Let the participants work outside in the gorgeous environment. Duh.

Originally, we were working under the assumption that if we ‘let them out’ they would never come back. That proved to be false. In fact, by allowing them to work outside the participants didn’t feel like they were ‘missing out.’ We were pleasantly surprised at how prompt they were in coming back to the ballroom when el Nacho rounded them up.

I’ll question our environment decisions differently from now on. I see how much value can be gained by completely using the environment offered. I believe that this action alone increased the participant engagement more than any other design decision we had made.

Bioversity is an international research institute focused on using agricultural biodiversity to improve people’s lives.  Bioversity works in three broad areas: sustainable agriculture, nutrition and conservation. It is part of the CGIAR consortium of research institutes, which is itself undergoing a major reform and transformation.

The collaboration between Bioversity and its sister institutions, with donors, with other researchers, and with smallholder farmers lies at the core of its new ten-year strategy.
Bioversity turned to The Value Web to design and facilitate a major strategic alignment DesignShop, bringing together 86 senior scientists, economists and administrators and other experts from around the world. Working for three days near Rome, the group deepened their understanding of the new strategy and translated it into individual strategies for eleven research programmes and research themes, as well as drafting guidelines for operationalizing the institutional strategy.

Emile Frison, Director-General of Bioversity International said of the event, “The DesignShop was extremely effective. The three days not only delivered the expected draft strategies, but the participants left with renewed enthusiasm for their implementation. This is by far the best facilitation I have ever experienced”.

This past weekend (25-26 February, 2012), four members of The Value Web supported the Harvard Social Enterprise Conference (#SECON12), one of the world’s leading forums to engage in dialogue, debate, and expression around social enterprise. Over time, the Conference has become an arena to explore innovative ideas that challenge the status quo and inspire a call to action. The Conference is entirely student-run, jointly hosted by students from the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. The objectives of the conference are:

• To showcase innovative ideas, trends, and people within social enterprise to encourage better solutions to the world’s most pressing social problems;
• To expand participants’ understanding of various disciplines and models within social enterprise, with an emphasis on sharing knowledge and increasing collaboration among conference participants; and
• To provide a forum for practitioners to receive feedback so that they continually evolve their models to solving global social problems.

While our session was a wonderful opportunity to connect with the participants at the conference, we also were able to connect with individuals through the visuals we produced. Kelvy captured the keynotes with grace and insight, and Alicia spent the two days preparing an incredible 15 foot knowledge wall, using material harvested from twitter feeds (with the support of the Harvard students responsible for social media), and from panel managers (also students) who emailed salient points from their sessions. The graphics were, as always, a powerful way to engage people in the content in a different manner and to spark further conversation. These visuals provide a powerful record of an incredibly full two days. For larger images, click on the images below to see them on our Flickr site.

Opening Plenary with Kavita Shukla (Fenugreen), Taylor Conroy (Destroy Normal Consulting) and Lauren Bush Lauren (FEED Projects). Moderated by Daniel Epstein (Unreasonable Institute)

Panel Discussion with Bill Drayton (Ashoka) and Vanessa Kirsch (New Profit, Inc), moderated by Matthew Bishop (The Economist)

Keynote: Dr. Judith Rodin (Rockefeller Foundation)

Keynote: David Blood (Generation Investment Management)

Knowledge Wall (Click for larger image)

After having had a few days to digest all that took place during the conference, I am once again energized and enthused at the amount of activity taking place in the social enterprise space. The strength of this movement, if it can be called a movement, is clearly in the passion and energy those involved have for redesigning the way we do business, the way we affect change/achieve impact and the way we bridge the gap between the once-highly-siloed-and-now-increasingly-overlapping sectors. There is certainly no lack of innovative ideas and business models, and while the concept of social enterprise is continuing to spread like wildfire, there remain many challenges on the road ahead. The biggest challenge I can see lies in effectively connecting the individuals and organizations who are driving change to help them share and scale best practices, and to help affect public policy so as to create an environment that nurtures and fosters social enterprise. The Harvard Social Enterprise Conference is one of many events around the world that are trying to make headway here, and we’re very proud to be helping move the needle forward as best we can.

For images from the conference you can visit our Flickr set here, or search for #secon12 on twitter, facebook and Flickr. There has been no shortage of coverage for this event!

The week of February 6, Transmission launched its inaugural Innovation Camp in Victoria, BC. The program, which sandwiched the two and a half day Transmission: Global Summit, brought four young ventures working at the intersection of creative content and technology together with a hand-selected group of mentors from Transmission’s international network of creators, academics, and business leaders. The week focused on business modeling sessions, while also having the opportunity to engage face-to-face with decision-making leaders and experts in the content and technology industries in an intimate setting.

The Value Web, which has been working with Transmission extensively since our involvement in the 2011 Global Summit, helped develop the design of the Innovation Camp and partnered with Jonathan Imme, Principal of Until we see new land, to facilitate the four days of programming.

In what proved to be both a strength and a challenge in the design of the program, the four start-ups were at different stages of development and focused on different markets and value propositions. On one end, the earliest stage start up was barely more than an idea, seeking validation of its principal assumptions and affirmation it was indeed solving a “real” problem for its would-be customers. At the other end, an established organization with seed funding in hand, a portfolio of customers that includes several globally recognized brands, and a product attractive enough to attract the attention of companies such as Apple.

The overall goal of the Innovation Camp prototype was to elaborate whether the Transmission: Global Summit environment – including its community, partners and events – can be a nurturing context and catalyst to help start-ups grow, iterate, network and participate in shaping the future of the creative industries. Typical of a robust prototype, not everything we tried went off as we’d imagined, and there are many things we will do differently next time. But it certainly seemed to be a successful proof of concept.

The centerpiece of the day one programming was having the start-ups work with the Business Model Canvas, and it was definitely the favorite and most valuable activity for the participants aside from the one-on-one meetings with mentors that comprised day three. Day two was all about role playing and storytelling, as we had the start-ups develop customer empathy maps, run product demonstrations and, most memorably, each develop and produce a brief video “commercial” of one of the other start-ups.

We then brought the group back to reality with Why It Won’t Work, where we walked from business model to business model and everyone was given a few minutes to write down on Post-Its all the ways and reasons they would fail. This exercise set up the final three hours of the pre-Summit programming, which consisted of several rounds of one-on-one conversations between the start-ups and the mentors.

During the Global Summit, The Value Web facilitation team was completely focused on facilitating the summit programming, leaving the start-ups and mentors to self-organize their touch points and introductions. In hindsight, we recognized that creating some structure here would have been beneficial. Nonetheless, during the camp wrap up session after the summit, it was rewarding to hear what the start-ups identified as ways in which the camp program and the connected attendance at the summit had impacted their ventures. Among the benefits listed:

• Improved analysis, understanding and refinement of their business models

• Better understanding of their business case and customer groups

• Questioned assumptions – they validated their value proposition in some cases and refined it in others

• Got feedback and contacts that would otherwise be difficult to get

• Were able to get valuable introductions by well-positioned mentors, creating leads for potential investors, strategic partners and new customers

• Clear identification of next steps and short term strategies.

Several participants commented that the camp indeed shifted the direction of their venture in some way:

“We realized during the innovation camp that we really need a well-defined value proposition for our complex product. We also got a better notion of the selling cycle in the education industries and how it is important to tackle low-hanging fruit. We will now start to develop a new strategy of giving free packages to teachers to get universities as customers at a later stage, using a bottom-to-top approach.”

“I came in with big ideas on our product and what it could do, but we did not have a realistic approach. We concentrated too much on defining what the user experience would be, but not on the business model itself. So we gained clarity of our business model and also identified a promising new group of customers.”

For more on Transmission: Global Summit and Innovation Camp, visit the transmitNOW website, or check out blogger Mike Vardy’s impressions from his visit to Innovation Camp during day three.

Photo courtesy Chris Nohr of thenumber:creative.

The Value Web has co-designed the Investors Heatmap session in Davos for years. Each year we’ve ramped up the complexity of the tasks and this year was no exception. We decided to add the gaming component of poker this year. Tongue in cheek when you consider the track record of the past few years? You decide.

The game is well-described in this BBC article by Tim Weber, who was part of a team. It was enlightening to hear his insights on the game that I designed. I learned a lot from his reflections. I also, by chance, sat next to another participant at a dinner who went on and on about the importance of the outcomes of this game and how we should be more methodological about capturing and sharing them. Love happy participants!

Would love to hear your thoughts, too!

Here’s the original url:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16759970

The year is 2012.

The global economy is in turmoil. Exchange rates are swinging wildly. Politicians have to organise bailouts galore. Interest rates are absurdly low – or absurdly high if you find yourself out of favour with the financial markets.

So what would you do with $1bn (£640m) that you’re given to invest?

That’s the premise of a fascinating workshop called Investment Heatmap, run every year at the World Economic Forum in Davos. It’s an opportunity for top investment managers to network, discuss strategy, try their skill and have fun.

More importantly, it gives some insight into how top investors think, where they would put their money – although you’d probably need some $10m or $20m to buy your way into these funds.

The task

Walking into the room where the workshop is held is not for the faint of heart. Assembled before you are women and men who between them manage hundreds of billions of dollars. If there’s one thing that’s not lacking, it’s confidence and self-belief.

Under Davos rules, I can’t name names, but think of some of the biggest names in the world of private equity, and investment and hedge funds.

And every year, the organisers ratchet up the difficulty of the task to solve.

This time, we were given at random

• a region where to invest,

• two industries to choose from where we could put our money,

• assigned a fund type (private equity, hedge fund etc), and

• given a choice what kind of top talent to recruit to run the fund.

Then we had 20 minutes to develop an investment strategy and work out a pitch to persuade investors to give us their money.

Finally, our six groups were given $1bn to “invest” in the best “fund” that had just pitched at the event.

By the way, not everybody in the outside world will chuckle with appreciation that the workshop had been fitted out like a casino, replete with images of slot machines and poker cards.

Meet the India Future Fund

Remember that, for many in the room, $1bn is not a lot of money.

“With Russia you know there’s corruption at the top, so that’s more like a tax. In India there’s corruption at every level”

That’s especially true if, like our fund, the luck of the draw turns you into a private equity firm wanting to invest in India’s infrastructure (we discarded the option to invest in mining straight away; there would have been just too much hassle with environmentalists and bureaucrats).

Our team leader, one of the most respected veterans of the US private equity industry, cut to the chase: “We don’t need a strategy, we need talent” and rushed to the board where we could select the kind of person we’d want to run our fund. He opted for “ex-chief executive” and “corporate superstar executive”.

“We’ll surround the two with MBAs and a few veterans from our firm,” he quipped.

And so we went to work. It was fascinating to join a group of top-end investment professionals at work. Expertise in our group of 10 was identified, discussions were short and sharp, pros and cons were clearly laid out, there was little hesitation making decisions.

And so we launched the India Future Fund, specialising in infrastructure investments (providing high-voltage power transmission), and led by an ex-CEO as chairman, ideally a well-known Indian industrialist who would be able to cut through bureaucracy, understand the market and appease all sides of India’s lively political spectrum.

His sidekick would be an experienced industry executive, maybe poached from a company like ABB.

We agreed that doing business in India would not be easy, but were confident that our Indian ex-CEO would resolve any problems.

We promised our investors not a crazy rate of return – just 18-20% a year – but returns would be steady and arrive in the near-term.

If this were real life, I’d put all my money in our fund, said our private-equity-veteran team leader. But there were five other teams to compete with.

Brazilian Growth Fund

This team hailed Brazil as “the best of the BRICs” with huge growth potential. This private equity fund decided to bet on Brazil’s rapidly growing middle class, investing heavily in the food and beverage sector, as well as sports.

“Brazil’s middle class is exploding,” argued the team, and said it would recruit an ex-president who’d proven to be an excellent deal maker (no prizes for guessing who they meant).

Beluga Ventures

Would you fancy being a venture capitalist in Russia? This team tried to have a go at it.

For starters they solved any political crisis Russia might have, and lured former (and future?) President Vladmir Putin to lead their fund (he’ll know how to get things done, they said with a wink and a hint at heavy-handed tactics).

A well-known Russian industrialist rounded off the talent pool.

Internet usage was growing rapidly in Russia, they said, so a hefty share of the billion would go into web ventures.

And as the wealth of Russia’s oligarchs trickles down, the team predicted a rising demand for financial services and healthcare services. They painted visions of chains of dental clinics, hospitals and cosmetic surgeries.

But a cruel jibe from one of the competing fund managers deflated their balloon: “Will the clinics treat bullet wounds as well?”

The Souk Fund

The Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) is a tricky region. Comparatively small, but in parts very rich, it requires a good strategy to crack.

The team called itself the Souk Fund, after the Arab word for market place, and as the name suggests the team planned to bet on the retail sector.

The money would got into chains of electronics and mobile phone stores, with a sideline in ecommerce.

The key, though, would be talent and they resolved to poach the boss of Goldman Sachs in Dubai, who would bring along his friend, the MENA chairman of consulting firm McKinsey to run the business.

This fund were “strategy consultants”, planning to invest heavily in young companies well beyond the stage of “seed investment”, with the hope of selling them on within three to five years.

Their ex-Goldman man would have the experience to bring growing companies to the stock market.

“This is an exit-driven fund,” they said, listing top banks who had lined up to take their charges to the stock market.

The Ascending Dragon Fund

No investment discussion is complete without at least considering China.

This was a “global macro hedge fund”, that would keep plenty of money on the side “for liquidity and hedging, which is important in these times” and once again bet on the rapid growth of the country’s middle class.

Goldman and McKinsey people are clearly in high demand, because this team was also determined to find its talent within these companies.

They planned to put about 80% of their money in securities of public firms, and leave the rest “liquid” for some light macro hedging.

The MacMe Fund

Finally, we had a US focused team, that was keen on riding the wave of the current social media boom.

It would invest $100m to build up a website that would be a social network for professionals, and they claimed – to howls of laughter – to have recruited no less than Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to lead their team.

However, this so-called “macro” hedge fund also claimed to have a young superstar trader who would have free reign with the remaining $900m to generate a great rate of return.

Choosing the winner

We were six teams, we had six investment strategies to pick from, and in the second phase each team had $1bn to distribute among the funds. There was just one rule: you could not invest in your own fund.

It didn’t take the teams long to allocate the money.

During the countdown we also discussed the strengths and weaknesses of each fund’s strategy.

Poor Mark Zuckerberg: MacMe came bottom of the pile, attracting just $100m. The reasons were obvious. Social network MacMe would have to face an entrenched competitor, LinkedIn.

More importantly, though, the rest of the money was in the hands of a single trader, and that was just too high a concentration of risk in these difficult economic times.

And spare a thought for the Russian fund. It received a mere $600m – and that’s only because the Brazil team had injected $400m.

“Did you invest in the weakest proposition to hurt your rivals?” asked the workshop’s official investment strategy adviser – and got knowing chuckles from the Brazil team in response.

So why did so few dare to invest? “I’m worried about getting my money out,” said one. “The guys in charge after Putin are sure not to like him,” ventured another.

Next up was the Chinese fund, which got $800m. Why so little money? Surely, China is a one-way bet?

Well, it’s all about pitch and strategy, and the heavy hitters in the room worried about China’s bubbly property sector, increasing regulation – and the fund’s reliance on public securities.

“This fund is just short on execution, and they have to fire their head of marketing,” said an investor.

My team, the India Future Fund, was runner-up, attracting investments worth $1.1bn.

India has infrastructure needs of $3tn, said a man who runs an India-focused fund in real life, “it’s a very safe bet”.

Others were not so sure. “India is a very capricious environment,” one said. “With Russia you know there’s corruption at the top, so that’s more like a tax. In India there’s corruption at every level.”

Another investor had even harsher words for India: “The Indian government has just condemned thousands of children to die, because they refused to liberalise the food market. As a result, things will continue as before, with 40% of India’s food going to waste in an inefficient supply chain.”

The winner

That left Brazil the runaway winner, attracting a massive $2.3bn investment.

Still, many in the room were left feeling queasy.

“This is not the Brazilian Growth Fund,” said one, “it’s the ‘Not China, not Russia, not India, not LinkedIn, Not Middle East Fund’.”

Another urged the team running the fund not to invest in food manufacturing. “If you make stuff, it will be difficult to make money. If you move it or market it, you’ll be fine.”

If you add up the numbers, you’ll notice that $600m were left on the table – to hedge our respective investment strategies. We all had been mandated to put at least $100m into a hedge, but there clearly was no appetite to go beyond the minimum requirement.

Brazil may have been the winner, for some reason there appeared to be a lack of enthusiasm for BRIC countries. Maybe they were spooked by the uncertainty that’s haunting even these high-growth countries.

One would hope they feel more certain when they put real money on the table.

On Monday (and over the past few months), members of the Value Web had the privilege of supporting the first gathering of the Global Shapers Community in Davos. Two days before the start of the official programme at Davos, 70 Global Shapers, from all corners of the globe, came together and spent a full day exploring their dreams and aspirations, sharing their perspectives on critical issues, and finding ways to help one another achieve objectives specific to their upcoming week at Davos.The issues they identified were framed within 4 Pillars that are central to the programme of the Annual Meeting this year: 1) Resource & Sustainability, 2) Growth & Employment, 3) Leadership & Innovation, and 4) Society & Technology.

During the session on Monday, small groups of Shapers worked on identifying the issues critical to their generation within this pillar framework, and then explored these issues through the lens of their regions. We emerged from the day with a list of approximately 48 critical issues, which have been submitted to the Global Shapers private online platform for input and prioritization from the 530 Shapers who are not physically present in Davos. Those who are present in Davos will spend the week attending and speaking at many sessions, both on the public and private programme. On Sunday, four Global Shapers will participate as panelists at the closing plenary, and will share their own personal insights and experiences from the

week in addition to a synthesis of the experiences and perspectives of their fellow Shapers, which we will arrive at through a series of workshops on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

It’s been an incredible honor to be part of the inaugural Global Shapers gathering, and we at the Value Web are thrilled to see how this group will contribute to the dialogue here in Davos, and more importantly, how they will continue to help shape the emerging paradigm. This theme this year at Davos is The Great Transformation: Shaping New Models - and the Shapers are arriving as a WEF community just in time to contribute much needed and valuable insights and innovative solutions from the perspective of a generation that will have to live with this transformation (however it emerges) for a long time to come.

If you are curious to learn more, you can watch a livestream of the closing plenary here and can see the public facebook page for the Shapers here. We’ll be sure to report back with reflections post Davos.

Last 29th of November The Value Web supported with Graphic Facilitation the UN Global Compact LEAD Symposium: Unlocking Consumer Demand to Drive Sustainability throughout the Value-Chain. The session focused on understanding how the consumer trends are changing and how much they are influenced by the products that are offered.

The UN Global Compact is a strategic policy initiative for businesses that are committed to aligning their operations and strategies with ten universally accepted principles in the areas of human rights, labour,environment and anti-corruption. By doing so, business, as a primary driver of globalization, can help ensure that markets, commerce, technology and finance advance in ways that benefit economies and societies everywhere.

The 7th Annual YGL Meeting attracted more than 350 YGLs to Dalian, China and The Value Web was there to facilitate them. They had their own room– wing, really– of the Congress Center, so for the better part of 5 days, the YGLs hung out, networked and dreamed together about ways to make a difference in the world.

Day 1 began and ended with this question: What is your vision to improve the state of the world? It was explored through martial arts, theatre, and large and small group discussions. One important thread that kept emerging was the need to “protect the asset.”

Day 2 carried on with this theme asking YGLs to define quality growth. A group of Chinese YGLs kicked off the discussion and, while there were geographical differences in the answers to this question, almost everyone, everywhere agreed that quality growth was dependent on finding ways to enhance happiness and redefine the ‘success metrics’ to include happiness and well-being.

Day 3 was led by YGLs. Ahead of the YGL Annual Summit around 40 YGLs submitted op-ed articles related to the theme of the Summer Davos, “Mastering Quality Growth”, in which they defined what quality growth means to them. Nine were selected and profiled live in Dalian from an individual, community, organizational, societal, ecosystem and global perspective.

Throughout the rest of the week, YGLs met in their space to meet a variety of leaders, work on taskforces and to hear YGL-led ‘Leadership Competencies’ on topics as diverse as storytelling to Sustainable Business Models to Stone Soup to Protecting the Asset.

It was a great week and, as ever, a stellar experience working with the YGLs and the WEF team.

Below are just 2 of the many amazing graphics that Kelvy and Aaron crafted during the week. To see more from The Value Web team in China, go to our Flickr page.

The Value Web just returned from the 3^rd future symposium of the Generali Zukunftsfonds in Cologne, Germany, which is the non-profit division of Generali Insurance. Their aim is to counteract the growing overageing society by supporting projects that activate the existing potential of elderly people in regards to their competencies, energy and time.

170 participants from government, business, academia, non-profit organizations and volunteers joined the 3^rd future symposium to discuss impact measurement and social investment in the third sector and the engagement of the so-called “Generation 55 plus”.

Some key questions were:

• How can we measure social and political impact of volunteer work? What (new) models do we need, if at all?
• Is there actually such a thing as social return on investment?
• How can we best exploit the potential of Generation 55plus?
• How much can we count on civil society to support the engagement of Generation 55plus?

What we observed:

• Is impact measurement just another hype, as it could expand into a $500 billion industry in the next decade?
• What cannot be measured cannot be controlled; but should we still measure social impact although this might lead into economization of voluntary work?
• There is no one model to measure impact – we might need several “light” models for measurement: leave unnecessary administrative measurement tactics behind and just support what is effective
• Projects are only funded in the starting phase, nothing is left once they are up and running
• There is no failure culture: why can’t projects fail first to succeed in the end?
• The quality of an NGOs work is primarily determined by the quality of its relationships with its intended beneficiaries
• Generation 55plus is seen as being very credible but individuals of that group do not want to be squeezed into institutional frames and norms for impact measurement
• Sharing knowledge and learning across generations is key – despite their large experience of life, Generation 55plus is as eager to learn as the younger generation

Quotes that inspired participants and us:

“Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.” Albert Einstein

“The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The truly dangerous thing is asking the wrong question.” Peter Drucker

“Take the experience and power of judgement of people over 50 out of this world, and there won’t be enough left to secure its existence.” Henry Ford

The Earth Security Initiative (ESI) aims to reposition the conservation of species and ecosystems as a major security issue. This is in addition to the importance of conservation for intrinsic or economic reasons. The understanding of our dependence on natural systems and the threats they face has greatly increased in recent years. However, the implications for human security of continuing to degrade oceans, forests and freshwater systems have not been well communicated. If conservation is recognized as essential for human security, it will concern a much broader sector of society and will likely lead to new funding streams as well as greater civil society support and political will for action.

The workshop, hosted by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), aimed to develop and drive forward the Red Lines Agenda, which highlights the amount and location of natural ecosystems that need to be conserved if we are to ensure humans security. The workshop had four major objectives:

1. Define the Red Lines Agenda and current status of research (How much do we know about the amount and distribution of intact forests, oceans and freshwater systems needed to ensure human security?).

2. Identify major research gaps in the Red Lines Agenda.

3. Define criteria for identifying ecological ‘ticking time bombs’ (sites that will experience human security risks over the next 20 years due to poor governance of natural

resources) and form the basis of a paper that demonstrates where these sites are likely to be, current trends and the likely security risks associated with inaction.

4. Develop a communication strategy to place the Red Lines Agenda at the centre of Rio+20 and society as a whole.

The Value Web supported the workshop creating eight graphic frames of the key topics to be shared with other stakeholders and hopefully the rest of the world.