Agenda

9:00am-9:30am: Registration & breakfast
9:30am-11:00am: Presentation 

Spiritual Entrepreneurship: Towards Corporate Enlightenment
 
For quite some time, the corporate world has given lots of attention to business entrepreneurship.  This is the entrepreneur who is truly aware of the nature and scope of the business enterprise (corporations).  This has accompanied the expansion of markets, the scaling up corporations at the global level, and the attaining of high profit levels.  Recently, the attention has shifted towards social entrepreneurship.  This is the entrepreneur who is not only aware of the business but also of the potential and actual impacts on the external environment – the human and natural environments.  This has led to many concepts, ideas and strategic thinking (e.g. social corporate responsibility, triple bottom line).  However, social entrepreneurship is demonstrating to be limited and insufficient, despite of the great efforts to attain many new corporate goals.  A new paradigm is proposed so that the conditions are created to develop spiritual entrepreneurship.  The spiritual entrepreneur should not only be fully aware of the business and the external environment of corporations, but also, of itself.  Self awareness, inner identity, and inner consciousness are the foundations of social and business entrepreneurships.  Thus without spiritual entrepreneurship, the corporate world will continue creating poverty, destroying the environment, etc. 
 
The presentation will address a number of corporate issues leading to the nature and scope of spiritual entrepreneurship.  Examples of those issues are: values and belief systems, realization of corporate goals, avoiding management by terror, and adopting a new paradigm in business: The Paradigm of Corporate Enlightenment.

Presenter

Alfredo Sfeir-Younis, Ph.D.

Alfredo was hired as the World Bank’s first environmental economist in 1976 and later appointed director of the World Bank Office in Geneva, Switzerland. He served as special representative to the United Nations and the World Trade Organization from 1996 to 1999. In both institutions, he worked in the general fields of human rights, peace and social justice.  Alfredo has authored numerous books, articles and lectures internationally on spirituality and global issues. He is particularly interested in developing approaches that include the spiritual dimensions of sustainable development, the role that human values play in national and global policy, and the elements that enliven the soul of business. He has received numerous awards, including Lifetime Ambassador of Peace (2001), World Healer Award (2002), and Peace Ambassador Award (2006).  Alfredo is currently president and founder of the Zambuling Institute for Human Transformation, a non-governmental organization based in Washington, D.C., aimed at creating a grassroots world forum on human rights and human responsibilities and mainstream spirituality in public policy and business.