Ms. Angela Joo-Hyun Kang, Founder and Executive President of Global Competitiveness Empowerment Forum (GCEF) was invited by POSCO PR Group to contribute CSR column series about global companies famous for their CSR leadership. The 1st column was about Intel.
POSCO News - Thursday, July 14, 2011
* Web link: http://www.posco.co.kr/homepage/docs/kor2/jsp/news/posco/s91fpdf001l.jsp?onload=Y (Page 14)
Global CSR Leadership - Intel
“There is a sharing ecosystem in Intel”
By Angela Joo-Hyun Kang, Founder & Executive President, GCEF (Global Competitiveness Empowerment Forum)
<POSCO News Editorial Room> We will introduce global companies to new ideas about how they gain competitiveness through their innovative social contribution activities and realize sustainability management from this issue. We hope to win your interest and support.
- Supporting teachers in the world through Intel® Teach Program
- Providing computer classes to disadvantaged children in 15 countries including Palestine
- Nurturing dream trees for science by running the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair
The key to David’s victory over Goliath was a small stone. Little levers can turn small forces into large powers. In 1971, Intel revolutionized the global semiconductor industry by developing the world’s first microprocessor; fingernail-sized but enormously powerful, like a lever. The ‘Intel Inside’ brand plays the role of the heart pumping power and energy into the digital civilization era.
Intel’s CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility: CSR) strategy is condensed as Creating Shared Value (CSV). In 2011, Michael E. Porter, a Harvard Business school professor and business management guru, and Mark R. Kramer, Founder of global social impact consulting firm FSG, suggested CSV as the way to reinvent capitalism arguing that it improves corporate competitiveness by enhancing economical and social values. They also insisted that companies should make CSV part of their core strategy. Further, they argued that CSV should replace CSR.
As a leading technology company, Intel has focused on technology training. Intel is “Empowering Today’s education to Inspire Tomorrow’s Innovation” in every corner of the world. Intel has invested more than USD $1 billion into educational activities in order to improve the global education infrastructure.
Intel has been actualizing their belief in education through continuous, close and cooperative collaboration with governments, educational institutions, teachers, nonprofit organizations, development assistance agencies and intergovernmental organizations like UNESCO etc. The ecosystem, formed for development of education, is organically connected and moves dynamically like a circulating blood system comprised of heart, veins, arteries and capillaries.
Over 9 million elementary & middle school teachers in more than 60 countries play the role of veins, receiving training and materials to develop the 21st century technology capacities through Intel® Teach Program. Intel® Learn Program provides computer and on-site trainings in local community centers to underprivileged children and teenagers aged eight to eighteen in 15 countries such as China, India, Russia, Mexico and Palestine, etc. This program plays the role of arteries, bridging the information divide and solving education issues. Intel Computer Clubhouse Network , which is spread across 20 countries like capillaries, offers information technology learning and mentoring programs to children and teenagers as after school courses.
However, the most outstanding example of delivering Intel’s belief in the importance of technology to change society would be the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, which acts like a powerful heartbeat. About 1,600 students aged from six to nine years, and from nearly 60 countries, selected from around 500 science competitions worldwide, take part in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. All are aspiring scientists who dream of becoming like the legendary figure, Gordon Moore, who created the famous Moore’s law.
Matthew Fedderson, 17, and Blake Marggraff, 18, of Lafayette, California, were given highest honors and awarded the 2011 Gordon E. Moore Award for their research on a safer, more effective and less expensive method of radiation therapy for cancer treatment. Intel’s values of technology, innovation, creation and change are engraved in the hearts of all participants, regardless of whether they receive awards.
The CSR performance of Intel, expressed in its main business and corporate values, is reflected in its employee bonus system. This enables corporate values to be embedded in every part of its organizational culture. Like the heart’s right ventricle, right atrium, left ventricle and left atrium, Intel’s business and CSR are not separated. They are driving forces conveying their values of innovation and growth to every part of the whole body. <The End>