To Oxford’s Examination Schools last week for a much more inspiring, less harrowing experience than my last visit 20 years ago when I was sitting my finals. And this time I didn’t have to wear ‘sub fusc’. I was there as a participant in ‘Resource 2012’ a collaboration between Sir David King’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment and the Rothschild Foundation, and featured a very high profile line-up of politicians, academics, business leaders and investors for a two day conference focused on managing natural resources, longer term thinking and aligning people and profit. Speakers included Hans Rosling (founder of Gapminder.org), Professor Amartya Sen (Harvard), Jeremy Grantham (founder of GMO) and Amory Lovins (Rocky Mountain Institute), alongside politicians including David Miliband, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and President Bill Clinton, together with broadcasters and journalists such as James Harding (Editor of the Times), John Micklethwait (Editor of the Economist), John Landau (Producer of Avatar) and Sir David Attenborough (no introduction required…) Business leaders included Sir Terry Leahy (former CEO of Tesco), Jean-Marc Huet (CFO of Unilever) and Peter Brabeck-Letmathe (Chairman of Nestlé).
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