The private sector has been having more and more voice and vote in the economies of the countries. And this is a challenge for this sector. Why? On the one hand, because governments are becoming aware of the importance of their participation; and on the other, because the world is trying to solve the main problems of today, and entrepreneurship and efficient innovation are more necessary than ever.
A few days ago I was summoned to participate in Madrid in a meeting carried out by the International Foundation for Freedom (FIL). I talked about it there and stressed that it is enough to look at what happened in the pandemic to see the importance of private companies in the challenges that it left behind. Many were clearly affected, having to re-adapt or closing their doors. I come from the private sector, I really know what we went through, and the anguish generated in the sector that international organizations, such as the World Health Organization, initially said that the virus was not contagious.
We cannot look the other way. Certainly, governments also made big mistakes in managing the Pandemic, such as closing their economies, limiting the debate on the virus, and failing to disseminate the real risks of contagion, revealing shortcomings, scope, and limitations.
What did the private sector do? Commit yourself in front of this panorama. Thanks to new technologies, vaccines have been developed and tested in a short fraction of the time. This is how the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines arrived. This allowed the world to raise its head and look forward. Of course, at this stage and for this to work, the association between those who created the vaccines and the governments was key. I believe that companies that work with governments to solve big problems are a powerful solution to the problems that plague society the most. As is the case in education.
Online education was made possible by innovation in the private sector because without the Zoom or Microsoft teams, how would remote teaching have been possible? How well prepared would the education system have been without the pioneering work in online education? line made by K12 using charter schools in the United States?. What is certain is that the founding of this company required not only innovation in systems, content, and processes, but also required charter schools which were schools that were exempt from many of the traditional regulations and often run by private organizations that allowed innovation occurred at a much faster rate and they introduced educational competition.
In short, it is a fact that the private sector has had and still has a central role in solving the problems that the world currently has, as it was at the time, for example, the role of Bayer introducing antibiotics on a large scale in 1930 that they improved and saved the lives of millions of people; or significant improvements from textbooks to the introduction of technology to improve learning. Given the importance of education and healthcare in people’s lives and the ongoing and accelerating technological revolution, it is more important than ever for employers to drive efficiency and innovation in these sectors.
We are facing a challenge but also an opportunity to create systemic change worldwide.
By Ron Packard CEO ACCEL Schools
