First Book Founder and President Kyle Zimmer just returned from participating in the Summit on the Global Agenda in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The Summit is held by the World Economic Forum as a mechanism to bring over 700 experts and thought leaders from business, academia, civil society and government together to brainstorm solutions to the most pressing global issues. “This is really the blueprint of the future direction of the global well-being,” said Summit Co-Chair Mohamed Alabbar, Chairman of Emaar Properties, United Arab Emirates, in the closing plenary.

Kyle Zimmer joined representatives from other social enterprises across the globe who were invited by the World Economic Forum to share the critical social needs that must be addressed by the global redesign initiatives formulated at the Summit. Ideas and proposals created at the Summit will be presented at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland in January 2010.

“This is about developing and testing ideas that will help us improve global cooperation,” said André Schneider, Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer of the World Economic Forum. Added Richard Samans, Managing Director of the World Economic Forum: “There is a growing market for out-of-the-box ideas. Our concept of what constitutes a better international system has to be thought about in a more expanded nature.”

Much discussion at the summit focused on the 2008 global financial crisis. “The global financial crisis impressed on us the distance between how our economy is organized and how our political and public policy culture is organized.” warned David Kennedy, Director of the Institute on Global Law and Policy at Harvard Law School. The crisis highlighted the need to rebuild confidence and trust and ground the global economy on the principles of sustainability and social responsibility. “Indeed,” said Mark Malloch Brown, Senior Adviser for the Global Redesign Initiative at the World Economic Forum, “there is obviously tension between our analysis of how complex the modern world is and our desire to find things we can do.” But, he reckoned, the will to act is strong. “There is a growing sense of global responsibility for each other, that we share problems in this small neighbourhood of ours, planet Earth.”