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The new dialogue

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The new dialogue: Approaches that open up the game

To address the most pressing issues facing society today demands new, multidisciplinary approaches to innovation. Collaborating across sectors allows organizations to exchange valuable insight from disparate fields of knowledge.

Breakthrough innovations typically appear at the intersections. So IBM is taking our ecosystem on deep dives across some old boundaries.

Since its inception in 2004, IBM’s Global Innovation Outlook (GIO) has used multidisciplinary collaboration to seek breakthrough solutions to some of the world’s most vexing problems. The first two GIOs took on issues from healthcare, to the environment, to transportation and the future of the enterprise. GIO 3.0, in 2007, focused on two areas:

  • The challenges facing Africa in a globalizing economy, including how technology-based innovation might spur investment, partnerships and entrepreneurial opportunities for Africa’s 930 million people.
  • The future of media, content and messaging, in light of technology that sends ideas and information around the globe instantly, democratizing content and changing the ways we learn, play, work and communicate.

This year, 264 leaders from business, academia, the public sector and IBM participated in 18 GIO sessions held in 11 countries, an innovative model of stakeholder engagement. As in the past, IBM is openly sharing the resulting insights and investing with participants, not just to get their views, but to transform ideas into initiatives.


A new media ecosystem camera phones are now the most widespread image -capture devices in the world . At current growth rates , there could be ONE billion camera phones in use worldwide by 2008. Teens in the U.S. spend 60 percent less time watching TV than do their parents and 600 percent more time online—interacting with , influencing and being influenced not by institutions , marketers or professional communicators , but by their peers.

A new era for Africa 'I think the climate for business in Africa has never been better than it is right now, with opportunities for productive long-term investment and public-private partnerships that will facilitate and sustain economic growth and development. Africa is now being taken seriously within the global economic community — and that community won't be disappointed.' Bamanga Tukur, Chairman, New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) Business Group

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2007 IBM Corporate Responsibility Report

A new model of global citizenship among individuals, organizations and society at large.