This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio. Molly, we are crossing over the threshold into the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Can it solve the world's challenges? And there are many challenges out.
There, and we are also crossing over to the Atlantic for our next guest. Marca hoche Is on Zoom from the Netherlands Market. It's got to be pretty late there. Thank you so much for joining us. Marga is the chief executive officer. She is a She just came out with a new book that's all about tech. It's called Tech for Good Imagine solving the world's greatest challenges. So Margat, thank you once again for joining us on this exciting Monday evening in the Netherlands.
Thanks. It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me of course.
Yeah, so tell us a little bit about the book. What inspired you to write it and what's like your background in this topic.
So the book is coold, like you said, Tech for Good, and it's a book that synogized is on the one hand, sustainability and on the other hand technology, and both of them are very important topics, but not very often they're brought together to see how, you know, the intersection of
technology and sustainability looks like. And I've been a CEO in the past, and then I moved on to lead a sustainable business association because I was passionate about the fact that business can be a first for good and having a good business case at the same time, and even more so, being progressive on sustainability strengthens companies competitive position.
And before this, I wrote the book The Trillion Dollar Shift, which was about the sustainable development goals, you know, the goals that we set out in twenty fifteen with the timeline to twenty thirty. You just refer to the intro to all these challenges which are in these sustainable development goals. And in that book, I described all the opportunities that arise if companies really engage with sustainability in their business, you know, to do less horror but really see how
they can create value. And then it appeared that technology is you know, maybe even our biggest ally moving forward because it can be huge force for good and also strengthen companies' commercial positions. So though that's exciting, because you know, the whole debate is so often about how we fear technology how you know, it's supposed to do bad things
and you know, replacing our jobs and all that. But I think it's important with all of those challenges around us, you know, in a way, the consequences of the former industrial evolutions, that in essence we have to embrace what technology can do for both humanity and the world. And that gets a bit lost. And so that's the reason why I wrote the book Imagine Tech for Good, Solving the world's challenges, to put people's you know, and hopefully inspiration with that positive view on technology.
We already have technology who's doing it right at this point? Do you look at specific companies as example?
Yeah, of course in the book, I have written about seventy five real life business cases from all over the world. So there's many companies that do the right thing. Of course, it's not enough, you know, it's still a minority and it should become a majority. But yeah, we have either large companies that do a bit good or smaller companies that do a lot good, or anything in between. But we have enough good examples to learn from.
I want technology Mali to cure cancer. I want technology, with the help of business at this point to come up with the challenges of climate change. I want all these things. Is it going to deliver?
Yeah? Can you tell us? I mean some of the hope here, I have no idea, don't ask me.
Yeah, it can deliver, I mean, will not go by itself. We have to you know, join efforts and have all stakeholders you know, pointing in the right direction and focus on that. And if we put our energy, our mindset, and our investments toward that, then it can actually be achieved. I mean we have actually still no clue what technology can do. We want to, you know, come across as if we do know, but to be fair, we don't know.
I mean even the other day there was a message and I put it on Instagram that, for instance, Google's Deep minds AI has predicted over three hundred thousand, three hundred eighty thousand stable materials, meaning there's all kinds of new advanced materials that can do take care of technological breakthroughs, and we have no idea what they will be, so nobody can predict. But I am absolutely sure that we can do much more than we think. And John, the
topics that you pointed out is hugely important. I mean tech for for medical reasons, and for healthcare is hugely important, also hugely important to close what they call the digital divide, meaning that we have to disseminate progress technoy that technology brings us equally around the world.
Yeah, I mean, wasn't there something recently? I think that I saw that It was the chat GPT, one of the other bots was giving like faulty medical advice I believe on one of those. I mean, there's some there could be some potentially really dangerous stuff out there, MARKA. Isn't there right, of course?
Yeah? Yeah, of course. And we need we do need rules and regulations and policies around technology, and they have to do both. They on the one hand, have to uh as much as possible, you know, prevent bad intent because after behind every bad technology is people that have not the positive intent, of course, and on the other hand, help and support technology to do good and not paralyze that or prelimit it. So it has to do both well.
It's like at the dawn of the nuclear age, the promise was for free, clean energy for the world. What we got also were nuclear weapons that could destroy us in the blink of an eye.
Exactly exactly. And we can have drones in wars and we can all imagine what they're doing there. But we can also have robots in battlefields that save people because the first seconds is first thirty seconds is the most important. And drones that can deliver medicine and seeds to remote areas. So there's always those two sides. But if we only, you know, focus on fearing the downside of technology, we forget that we actually also needed to achieve the good.
And you know, margut is something that this brings up the question of sustainability and ESG and that's become you know, as I'm sure you know, a very political debate on our side of the pond, but you're telling us that, you know, you don't think that it necessarily has to be.
Well again, we need both, but you know, sometimes to make a big of a joke, I was talking to a big bank and then they said, yo, you because I'm based in Europe, you have all these rules and regulations. We have to you know, settle whole departments to monitor all that, but where are the deals? So in other words, you know, the sustainable business has to be profitable and sustainable by itself, and then of course rules and regulations can close the back door, but it very rarely opens
the front door. In other words, you know, businesses have to do it by themselves because they see good rules for it. And then it can be sative to have rules and regulations and all kinds of policies around it, but it won't solve it by itself.
In this new Industrial revolution, the Fourth Industrial Revolution as you term it, do you have a favorite technology that stands out that you see as most promising?
Well, what's actually my favorite, if you will, about this fourth Industrial Revolution? That it's so very different. So in former industrial revolutions we have one two things you know, like coal, oil gas. All these a few innovations, but they had big effect. The difference with the Fourth Industrial Revolution if that it's like, you know, a huge toolkit.
In my book, I describe eight groups of technologies from AI and data to three D printing, robotics, advanced materials, and so on and so forth, and they blend physical and digital technologies and in every solution, the culbination of those eight groups appears. So what's my favorite. Why I like it so much is because we're so rich this time, with so many options and combinations that we can do
you know things beyond the unimentionable. To give you an example, you know our core reefs are about to disappear for instance.
Oh well, we'll only about twenty seconds. But coral reefs three D printing at the intersection. You believe it's actually something that could could save the coral reefs.
Mark correctly. It can reverse the damage you inflicted because we can print and then the ecosystem doesn't recognize it as artificial, so we can actually restore nature.
Margaret Hope, we appreciate your appearance that I CEO of Business for Good, author of Imagine Tech for Good, solving the world's greatest challenges,