Jeff Bezos says his Blue Origin company is exploring space to protect Earth and keep ‘the natural world’ from backsliding

I spent much of this week at the Lake Nona Impact Forum, held in partnership with Coins2Day, with a focus on health and wellness. As at every executive forum I’ve attended recently, much of the focus was on AI. But while executives in other industries talk about double-digit productivity gains in marketing, technology, finance, supply chain management, sales, etc., health care executives talk about gains in research and development that have a different order of magnitude. Here’s what Emma Walmsley, CEO of GSK, said in her interview with me.

“The biggest problem our sector has to face is the productivity of R&D. It costs billions, it takes decades, and 90% of it doesn’t work.”  Applying AI to research  “is the holy grail for us. That is where we can create real material value.”

Walmsley, who sits on the board of Microsoft, acknowledged that gains in research, while potentially huge, may take longer to realize.

“Like most extraordinary innovations, we underestimate how absolutely massive the transformation is going to be, and we probably overestimate the pace at which it is going to happen.”

I also spoke with Chip Bergh, who just stepped down as CEO of Levi’s after 12 years on the job. As CEO, Bergh increased the company’s market value five times over, but also was attacked as a “woke CEO” for taking strong stances on gun violence and voting rights. Bergh was unrepentant:

“This is not about me. This is about the role of the CEO at Levi Strauss and Company. We have a history. We’ve been around for 171 years now. Going all the way back to our founder Levi Strauss…the very first year he made a profit he donated a percentage of it to a church orphanage in San Francisco. And he always believed that, yes, we make bluejeans, but we are here to do more than just make a buck for the shareholders. We are here to make an impact on society.”

Jeff Bezos also spoke at the forum, which was held just 50 miles west of Cape Canaveral, about his space company Blue Origin. He said the real reason he is interested in space travel…

“…is to protect this gem of a planet. If you look at it, by almost every metric, our lives are better today than ever before. If you think about the whole world, literacy rates are way better. Child mortality rates are way better. Global poverty is way better. All of these things have gotten better over time. And there’s one exception. The natural world has not gotten better….We can’t go backwards. We need to go forwards. But what does this mean? We need to continue to use more and more resources and also protect this gem of a planet.”

More news below.

Alan Murray
@alansmurray
[email protected]

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This edition of CEO Daily was curated by Nicholas Gordon.