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Stanford researchers have analyzed the marketing language on bags of potato chips and found that whether you crunch an ordinary chip or the priciest-exotic-root-vegetable chip, consumers of all social classes value the product that they think is most authentic.

“Authenticity is not solely reserved for expensive taste,” said Josh Freedman, who graduated from Stanford in June with a degree in public policy. “It’s important for all consumers; it’s just manifested in different ways.”

The study, appearing in the Dec. 6 issue of Gastronomica, uses potato chips to analyze class identity in food marketing because “you can’t use caviar, you can’t use pork rinds, you have to use something everybody eats and that’s potato chips,” said Dan Jurafsky, a professor of linguistics.

Freedman began the project by marching into a grocery store and photographing the language on potato chip bags. He attracted the stares of employees who didn’t know he was working on his final project for Jurafsky’s freshman seminar on food linguistics.

According to Freedman, their analysis shows that fans of economical brands can be reached with words indicating the chips are from “the same recipe that your grandmother used to make.”

“Authenticity for consumers of inexpensive chips is rooted in tradition and hominess,” said Freedman. Jurafsky added that the wording on inexpensive chips might tout well-known locations in America, or play upon the traditions of the company and its individual founder.

Text on less expensive potato chip bags might mention “an old family recipe,” a time-honored tradition,” or a tip of the hat to “the chips that built our company.”

For expensive potato chips, on the other hand, authenticity is generated through exotic or handmade processes and ingredients that are described as natural.  The ingredients list may include “sea salt” or brag that that every batch was “hand-raked.”

“It’s the difference between identity drawn from family values and America and the kind drawn from naturalness and not being artificial,” said Jurafsky.

Freedman and Jurafsky also found that advertisers attempting to draw consumers to expensive chips use rare words, more text and more complicated grammar, along with more mentions of health. It’s consistent with the tendency for individuals with higher incomes to be well-educated and health-conscious.

Some common words found on inexpensive chip bags: fresh, light, basic and extra. Words for pricier chips: flair, savory and culinary.

Freedman and Jurafsky also found language differences that echoed the ideas introduced by economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen at the turn of the 19^th century. Veblen, and later sociologists like Pierre Bourdieu, thought that the wealthy, or those who could only hope to appear affluent, needed some way to be distinctive from everyone else. While Veblen’s outrageous behavior likely curtailed his Stanford career to only three years, his ideas about social class distinction persist, even on potato chip bags.

Freedman and Jurafsky found that expensive chips mention not only what they are, but also what they are not. The bags might call the chips unique or the finest and they are—unlike other chips—not fried, not greasy, not fluorescent orange.

“Why would it be that expensive chips have all these negations? It’s because they’re trying to be different from something else,” said Jurafsky.

Now that Freedman has completed the project, he can no longer look at restaurant menus without thinking about their careful wording. “It made me more aware of how we use language and how pervasive certain linguistic elements are,” he said.

But the project hasn’t changed Freedman’s snacking habits. “I still don’t eat that many potato chips,” he said.

Sarah Jane Keller is a science-writing intern at the Stanford News Service.

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Cleaning up such sites is a problem that has bedeviled remediation efforts for decades. There has been no simple, reliable, cost effective way to do it. Now a team of researchers led by Stanford geochemist Kate Maher is proposing to imitate nature by using amorphous silica — also known as the precious gemstone opal — to sequester the uranium. Once ensconced inside opal, the uranium molecules would be rendered immobile and chemically inert.

“We have looked at opaline silica in deposits across the western U.S. and almost universally we find very high uranium concentrations,” said Maher.

“From dating these deposits, we have found that they have been stable, closed systems for hundreds of thousands — and in some cases millions — of years.”

Whether in soils, hydrothermal deposits, hot spring or cold spring deposits, when enfolded in an opaline embrace, uranium seems about as active as a bug trapped in amber.

According to computer modeling studies that the researchers have done using their data from natural opal deposits, opaline silica may offer a faster, cheaper, more enduring way to sequester uranium than other current or proposed methods.

Maher, an assistant professor of geological and environmental sciences at Stanford, is presenting the team’s research at the 2011 annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco on Dec. 6.

The sequestering process would involve pumping a solution rich in dissolved silica into the subsurface through injection wells, effectively flooding the contaminated areas with it. As the solution moved through the soil or rock, chemically interacting with its surroundings, amorphous silica would precipitate out and latch on to dissolved uranium.

Various methods for remediating uranium-contaminated zones have been tried. Excavating and hauling contaminated soil elsewhere for treatment and permanent disposal is an expensive way to go, so cheaper on-site, or in situ, remediation is preferable. The most common approach has been “pump and treat,” which is exactly what the name implies – clean water is flushed through the system to displace the uranium-contaminated water, which is pumped out for treatment.

Approaches for in situ remediation generally involve reducing the electrical charge of the uranium atoms — and thus their chemical reactivity — by means of various biological or chemical agents. Certain microbes have had some success in reducing uranium to a stable state, and some chemical additives, such as certain forms of iron and sulfur, also have demonstrated some promise. Introducing phosphate into contaminated soil or sediment, where it would chemically bond with uranium to form a new mineral, also has been proposed.

But all of those methods rely on creating and maintaining an environment in which the agents of reduction are always present. If conditions change and those agents diminish in abundance, either through biodegradation or physically washing out of the contaminated area, the uranium could return to a more mobile – and dangerous – state.

Opaline silica, on the other hand, is not only a demonstrably long lasting host, it is also much more welcoming than other potential mineral hosts such as the calcite that is often precipitated along with the opal. Maher said that, on average, the enrichment of the uranium into the opaline silica tends to be “many orders of magnitude greater” than what the researchers found in the calcite.

“We see up to 1,000 parts per million of uranium in some natural opal deposits compared with a few parts per billion levels in calcite that often precipitates along with the opal,” she said.

Opaline silica is also stable over a wider range of pH conditions than calcite and other minerals that often precipitate with opal, further enhancing opal’s relative durability.

On top of its striking capacity and stability, opal also incorporates uranium into its amorphous form at a relatively rapid rate, according to the researchers’ modeling of different sequestration scenarios.

“From our modeling analysis, within 10 years of flooding a contaminated area with sodium silicate, nearly the whole aquifer has been decontaminated,” Maher said.

“The uranium has been sequestered to levels far below the maximum contaminant level allowed by federal law, while with the traditional pump and treat approach, less than half of the aquifer is beneath that level.”

Once uranium has been incorporated into opal, about the only way for it to get back out would be if fluids that contained very low amounts of silica began circulating through the zone in which the uranium was sequestered. If the silica content of the fluid was low enough, the amorphous silica could start dissolving and set the uranium free to roam and contaminate its surroundings.

But silicate minerals are the most abundant class of rock-forming minerals in the crust of the Earth, composing about 90 percent of the crust, and in many geologic environments most of the waters are close to saturation with silica. Maher said that makes the researchers confident that opaline silica will be stable over long time scales.

Silica is also relatively inexpensive, making it an affordable method for storing uranium in situ in the subsurface.

So far the researchers’ work has been focused on sampling and analyzing naturally occurring deposits of opal and using that data to model the reactivity and transport of uranium under different scenarios. They are particularly interested in how iron oxides, which are commonly present in soil and sediment, might affect the incorporation of uranium into opal.

But Maher said they hope to try the method at the experimental scale in the laboratory within the next few months and then run a trial at a contaminated site.

“Our initial feasibility study suggests that this is a potentially more reliable and more effective strategy than trying to create reducing conditions in the subsurface environment,” Maher said.

Michael Massey and Joseph Nelson,  graduate students in the departments of Environmental Earth System Science and Geological and Environmental Sciences, respectively, contributed to this research, as did Craig Bethke, a visiting professor from the University of Illinois, and Scott Fendorf, a professor of environmental Earth system science.

—     Louis Bergeron

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Edelman said she mentions Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Protestant theologian who died opposing the Holocaust, in almost every speech she gives.

She continued that tradition Nov. 30 when she delivered the fourth annual Harry’s Last Lecture on a Meaningful Life, a yearly address that honors the late Stanford law Professor Harry Rathbun. The lecture was the culmination of her three-day visit to campus as the 2011 Rathbun Visiting Fellow.

“Bonhoeffer believed, and I share that belief, that the test of morality of a society is how it treats its children,” Edelman. “The United States is failing Bonhoeffer’s test every day, by permitting a child to drop out of school every 9 seconds a school day; to be abused and neglected every 42 seconds; to be born into poverty in our still very rich nation every 34 seconds; to be born without health insurance every 42 seconds; and to be killed by guns every three hours,” Edelman continued.

“We have lost – since we began to document gun violence and children in 1979 – over 110,000 children to gunfire in America, more than all the U.S. battle casualties since World War II.”

Edelman also cited grim statistics on the below-grade reading, writing and computing skills of black and Latino children in the United States, and on the high risk of imprisonment of black and Latino boys.

“Now these facts are not acts of God,” she said. “They are our choices as human beings and American citizens. We can and we must change that.”

She said it was time to break the cradle-to-prison pipeline, which she called the “new American apartheid,” and transform it into a pipeline to college, “so that our children can have hope, and our next generations, rather than moving backward as they are, will be able to move forward and build a strong America of the future.”

Edelman touched on the income gap between rich and poor; nuclear disarmament; defense spending; the ongoing struggle for civil rights; the Occupy Wall Street movement; her childhood in South Carolina; the value of laughter and the solace of silence; and “lessons for life” from her 1993 book, The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours.

She asked many questions.

“What kind of people do Americans seek to be in the 21st century?” Edelman said. “What kind of people do we want our children to be? What kind of choices and sacrifices are we prepared to make to realize a more just, compassionate and less violent society and world – one safe and fit for every child?”

Edelman drew inspiration from the words and work of many, including Sojourner Truth, who was born into slavery, but escaped and became an abolitionist and women’s rights activist, and Martin Luther King Jr., the African American civil rights leader who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and was assassinated in 1968.

She urged the audience – students, faculty, staff, alumni and invited guests – not to let anybody else define their lives.

“Struggle to figure out who you are,” Edelman said. “You each have your own very distinctive DNA. I hope that you won’t let anybody rain on your dreams.”

She quoted the late Shel Silverstein, children’s book author and illustrator, from his 1974 poetry book, Where the Sidewalk Ends: “Listen to the mustn’ts, child. Listen to the don’ts. Listen to the shouldn’ts, the impossibles, the won’ts. Listen to the never haves. Then listen close to me – Anything can happen, child, anything can be.”

Harry Rathbun was a beloved business law professor on the Stanford Graduate School of Business faculty who became known university-wide for setting aside his final course lecture to talk about the kinds of values and commitments that would lead students to a meaningful life.

It was a lecture he delivered each spring from 1929 through 1959, when he retired.

The Office for Religious Life at Stanford revived the “last lecture” tradition in 2008, establishing the Harry and Emilia Rathbun Fund for Exploring What Leads to a Meaningful Life, named in honor of the late professor and his late wife. The fund was endowed with a $4.5 million gift from the Foundation for Global Community, which is headed by the Rathbuns’ son, Richard Rathbun.

The purpose of the fund is to help Stanford students engage in self-reflection, moral inquiry and exploration of life’s purpose, especially in commitment to the common good. Its centerpiece is a visiting fellow program that brings notable, wise and experienced people to campus each year.

Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor gave the inaugural Harry’s Last Lecture in 2008; followed by former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz in 2009; and by His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, in 2010.

- Kathleen Sullivan

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 ”Their basic message is: ‘This system doesn’t work for us anymore. It’s not creating jobs. The distribution of wealth is completely out of control,’” said Scofield. “That’s always been the message in developing countries.”

 Scofield is president and chief executive officer of the Foundation for International Community Assistance or FINCA, a nonprofit nicknamed “the World Bank for the Poor” because it acts as a lender to impoverished entrepreneurs in developing nations. FINCA has more than 880,000 clients spread across 5 continents, and a loan portfolio of more than $470 million. The average loan was about $600 last year, according to the organization’s website, and the nonprofit reported a 97.7% on-time loan repayment rate.

FINCA’s social venture covers 21 countries in Latin America, Africa, Eurasia, and the Middle East.

 Scofield, who cofounded FINCA in 1984 and has served as its top executive since 1994, spoke to a student audience November 29 during an appearance sponsored by the Stanford Graduate School of Business Public Management Program and the student-led Social Venture Club.

 Social enterprises hold the most potential “to effect the kinds of changes our society needs right now,” Scofield said. “I think if we can reach the point where every enterprise is a social enterprise — not just in name, but in action — then maybe we’ll get the world we want.”

 He wasn’t always such a social enterprise advocate, having stumbled into the sector in the early 1970s while he was in his twenties and serving as a Peace Corps volunteer stationed in Guatemala. Scofield’s job then was to help rural farmers get $50 worth of fertilizer to boost their crop yields.

 He said he would never forget the jubilation from the cheering farmers when he delivered their fertilizer. “This small amount of capital had a huge impact relative to its size,” he said. “It was a really life-changing event for them.”

 After returning to the United States just as the nation entered an economic stall, Scofield managed to find a sales position at a vocational school — a job he didn’t like very much. While addressing one high school class, the teacher suggested that rather than speak on vocational training, he instead tell students about his Peace Corps experience. “I began to talk about that, and all the old feelings, all the enthusiasm came back,” Scofield said. “I realized that this was my passion, and I somehow had to find my way back to that.”

 He went to graduate school and, while finishing up master’s degrees in agricultural economics and public policy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, noticed a job posting for an ex-Peace Corps volunteer who was fluent in Spanish to take a consulting position. Scofield applied and a week later received a letter with a plane ticket to the Dominican Republic, a check for $1,500, and a note saying: “You’re hired. Meet me in Santo Domingo.”

 The position was working for John Hatch, a Fulbright scholar committed to advancing Latin America’s poor with small business loans. The pair soon partnered to found FINCA in 1984 as a means to break the cycle of poverty.

 Back in the 1980s, Scofield said, capital for the poor was so scarce, micro-entrepreneurs in the developing world often had no choice but to borrow from loan sharks charging interest rates of 10% a day.

 While their microloan program did grow, Scofield admitted the pair made critical mistakes. In 1994, his first year as CEO, the nonprofit discovered a $1 million fraud in El Salvador, had their program “hijacked” in Guatemala, and experienced “a diversion of funds” in Mexico.

 It was a “traumatic year, which nearly killed the organization,” Scofield said. While dealing with those crises, other microfinance organizations grew and knocked FINCA from its position as the top micro-lender in several countries.

 They regrouped by beefing up internal controls and diversifying their product line to include savings plans, remittance programs, and micro-insurance policies. They have also embraced idea sharing with other micro-lending groups. For example, they are members of the Microfinance CEOs Working Group, a coalition of microfinance networks that focuses on best practices for ways to make sure their clients fully understand loan terms and don’t get in debt over their heads.

 The microfinance coalition will also strive to measure what he calls its hardest goal — measuring the impact of microfinance by gathering data on clients’ income and expenditure levels.

He urged students to follow their heart when choosing a social enterprise career by asking themselves these questions: “What do you care about? What great injustice in the world — what big, scary problem — really engages you to the point where you want to devote your life to it? Passion is the really important thing.”

— Michele Chandler

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There he was, in an executive job at Honeywell and sitting atop a short list of people being considered to become the U.S.-based international conglomerate’s next CEO.

However, during that period back in the late 1980s he was miserable, George admitted to an audience at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He was assigned to oversee several corporate turnarounds, and his heart wasn’t in it. “I’ve always loved being engaged with customers and employees,” he explained. “Well, we were chasing numbers.”

Rather than being a “values-centered leader” who contributes to society while keeping a passion for his work, George said he was focused on “trying to impress everyone and say just the right thing at the right time. I was playing the corporate game.”

So, he switched gears and accepted the number two job at medical device maker Medtronic. Within two years, George became CEO of that company, a maker of cardiac pacemakers, spinal implants, insulin pumps, and other products that bolster people’s health.

Joining Medtronic, where he worked for 13 years, “was the best decision of my professional life,” George told MBA students during his View from the Top address on November 14. “I felt like I was coming home (to) people I could work with and learn a lot from — and really make a difference.”

George left Medtronic in 2002 and is now a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School.

During more than four decades in the corporate world, George has learned it’s a myth that the smartest people become the best leaders. In fact, he believes, top-notch leaders don’t need a high IQ, but do need a high EQ — “emotional intelligence,” a different way of being smart. EQ is characterized by the ability to recognize, control, and evaluate emotions, and use that knowledge to inspire, influence, and develop others while managing conflicts.

George finds that military veterans are often the best leaders in his Harvard management classes, success he attributes to their experience in completing difficult missions at young ages. However, experience alone isn’t enough. He gave the example of GE, a company he said gives managers tons of opportunities to be in charge, but keeps them “moving so fast that they keep repeating their mistakes in every job they move into.”

He urged the new generation of leaders to avoid getting caught in the same trap by taking time to reflect while meditating, jogging, taking a long walk, or talking things over with a trusted sounding board. George said he relies on feedback from a small group of trusted advisors that he’s met with every week for years.

“These people know me inside out,” he said. “They were the ones who could see where I was coming from. You need to have some way of processing in your life what’s going right and what’s going wrong.”

George wasn’t always regarded as someone worth following, even though he tried. While an engineering student at the Georgia Institute of Technology, some classmates took him aside and quietly told him that no one wanted to work with him — much less be led by him — because his super-ambition left him no time to invest in others, a trait that turned people off. 

He took their assessment to heart and changed his ways. He went on to be elected to leadership posts at Georgia Tech and at Harvard, where he earned his MBA in 1966.

After holding civilian jobs at the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Navy, George got his first shot at managing people at Litton Microwave Cooking Products when he was 27. “Somebody bet on me at a very young age,” George explained, adding, “I made a lot of mistakes, but it was a fabulous experience. You don’t learn just by studying other people’s experiences or textbooks. You learn by actually doing.”

He found his professional passion in the health care industry. After joining Medtronic as president and chief operating officer in 1989, George became immersed in the business’ mandate to make a difference in people’s lives. He went into operating rooms to observe doctors using Medtronic products and talked with employees who were fiercely dedicated to producing high-quality medical devices.

In fact, George said his major achievement at Medtronic wasn’t boosting the company’s financial standing. Instead, he’s most proud of the number of people who are restored to health after receiving a Medtronic-developed medical device. “Every minute that goes by, 20 people are being restored by a Medtronic product,” he said. “To me, that’s what it’s all about.”

He urged students to also chose a career for which they have personal passion:  “You’re going to spend more time at your work than you will anywhere else in your life, so don’t you have a right to have meaning in your work? People are not cogs in a wheel.”

George’s book, True North, A Powerful Path to Personal and Leadership Development, was published in September. It is coauthored with George Baker, MBA ’62.

— Michele Chandler

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Reliable access to water could change the farmers’ perilous situation. Stanford scientists are calling for investments in small-scale irrigation projects and hydrologic mapping to help buffer the in the face of climate change in the region.

“Irrigation is really appealing in that it lets you do a lot of things to break this cycle of low productivity that leads to low income and malnutrition,”said Jennifer Burney, a fellow at Stanford’sCenter on Food Security and Environment. Her team partnered with the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF) to measure economic and nutritional impacts of solar-powered drip-irrigated gardens on villages in West Africa’s Sudano-Sahel region. Burney will present the group’s work on small-scale irrigation Wednesday, Dec. 7, at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

Modern irrigation often means multi-billion-dollar projects like damming rivers and building canals. But Burney says that these projects have not reached sub-Saharan Africa because countries lack the capital and ability to carry out big infrastructure projects. Today, only 4%  of cropland in sub-Saharan Africa is irrigated.

Irrigation in sub-Saharan Africa involves cooperation. Individuals or groups, called smallholders, organize to farm small plots and ensure their access to irrigation. These projects allow farmers to grow during the dry season and produce profitable, high-nutrition crops like fruits and vegetables in addition to the cereal crops they already grow.

Burney and her colleagues’ work in two northern Benin villages with women’s cooperative agricultural groups to install three solar-powered drip irrigation systems that conserve water and fertilizer runoff.

The team surveyed 30 households in each village and found that solar drip irrigation increased standards of living and increased vegetable consumption to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recommended daily allowance. By selling the vegetables, households were able to purchase staples and meat during the dry season and even realize money to send kids to school or buy small business equipment like a sewing machine or market stall.

“That’s when I think it really becomes a ladder out of poverty,” Burney said.

For solar technology projects to be successful, Burney said, just dropping in and giving people irrigation kits doesn’t work. Communities need access to a water source and need to see the benefits of a project. But solar is only one answer. “Solar is great if you have an unreliable fuel,” she said. “But if you’re someplace that’s connected to the grid, an electrical pump would more economical.”

“There are a lot of different solutions that involve many different kinds of water harvesting,” Burney said. “Groundwater, rainwater, surface water, and there are a lot of places in the Sahel, like Niger, for example, where there are artesian wells.” The Sahel is a transition zone between the Sahara Desert and the savannas further south.

Given the diversity of water resources in West Africa, Burney suggests that nongovernmental organizations and governments prioritize detailed hydrologic mapping in the region. Otherwise, the cost of geophysical surveys and finding water sources, especially unseen groundwater, could become an insurmountable barrier for farm communities.

“It needs to be really detailed, comprehensive, usable information that’s out there for everybody to be able to take advantage of,” she said.

Burney says that both of the benefits that farmers get from irrigation systems –growing outside of the rainy season and producing more diverse, profitable crops – are important for adapting to climate change.

“You can produce more value on less land in most cases and not be as beholden to the whims of the rainy season,” she said. Having more disposable income also will reduce vulnerability to hunger and malnutrition. “Economic development can be a form of adaptation,” she said.

Rosamond Naylor, director of Stanford’s Center on Food Security and the Environment, and Sandra Postel of the Global Water Policy Project  collaborated on the project. 

—Sarah Jane Keller is a science-writing intern at the Stanford News Service.

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Yet, new research by long-time collaborators Jennifer Aaker, Cassie Mogilner, and Sep Kamvar suggests that people don’t make choices based on a single or shared notion of happiness. In “How Happiness Impacts Choice,” a paper forthcoming in the Journal of Consumer Research, by Cassie Mogilner (The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania), Aaker (Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business), and Kamvar (Stanford University Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering), they conclude that people’s relationship with happiness is a complex one, subject to factors both demographic (age) and psychographic (living in the present versus focusing on the future). Still, people’s individual experience of happiness can be influenced in systematic ways, and can lead to predictable choices.

In their 2010 collaboration, Mogilner, Aaker, and Kamvar identified two types of happiness. Some consumers define happiness as an “arousing” or exciting emotion. Others experience it as a calm, peaceful feeling. In their 2011 work, these researchers concluded that people can toggle back and forth between these two distinctly different experiences. Depending on which view of happiness they favor at a given moment, people will make different choices.

Based on earlier studies, the researchers believed that attitudes toward happiness — as either exciting or calm — depended largely on the individual’s age. “The Shifting Meaning of Happiness,” published in early 2011 in Social Psychological and Personality Science, summarized those findings. For that paper, the researchers analyzed 70,000 independent instances in which online bloggers wrote about feelings of happiness. Younger bloggers were much more likely to describe situations that reflected the happiness-equals-excitement mindset. Older ones tended to subscribe to the happiness-equals-peacefulness point of view. “We knew that as we grow older, our priorities change.  But what we haven’t known is that our definition of happiness also changes — in systematic and predictable ways — over the course of life,” said Aaker.

Yet, why would these effects hold? Why is it that people’s definition of happiness changes as they age?  The results of six new studies answer this question.  As people age, their temporal focus changes —whether they are likely to be focused on the here and now or on the future.  And it is this temporal focus that drives the basic effects. “We now think that individuals’ views of happiness depend far more upon their sense of time than their age per se,” said Aaker.

In one of the six studies, the researchers recruited young adult volunteers — individuals who they expected would perceive happiness as an exciting experience. They told half of the volunteers to focus on the present, and to relinquish thoughts of anything but the current moment. That group of volunteers was later far more likely to define happiness as “peaceful” than the volunteers who were not led to focus on the present moment.

As a result, “we now believe that attitudes toward happiness are highly malleable, and, in fact, easily influenced, simply by shifting the timeframe people consider,” said Aaker.

Businesses promoting the idea that their brand will make consumers happy should first consider which type of happiness (calm or exciting?) their products are most likely to evoke. They then need to place marketing images, slogans, or activities in a context that encourages consumers to think of happiness in the appropriate timeframe.

For example, BMW’s global “Stories of Joy” campaign includes a website where consumers can upload homemade videos that demonstrate the joy of driving. Whiskas created the “Happy Together” online community as a place people could share happy moments with their cats. Based on Mogilner, Aaker, and Kamvar’s most recent research, these brands could be more effective by “preparing” consumers to experience happiness in a way that puts the campaign in the best light.

BMW’s campaign clearly hopes that consumers will view happiness as an exciting state. To maximize its effectiveness, BMW should push consumers to take a long-term, future view of happiness. Alternatively, Whiskas’ website portrays happiness as an exceedingly peaceful emotion. It should provide contextual cues that encourage consumers to savor the present moment.

Since happiness doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone, marketers should consider what types of consumer they want to reach. They also need to consider how to convey happiness. As a benefit of using the product? As an aspect of brand personality? Even the colors they deploy in advertisements and collateral matters.

In one of the other studies detailed in their most recent paper, the researchers presented 50 consumers between the ages of 19 and 68 with a list of colors, objects, people, activities, and brands. The consumers indicated which items on the list excited them, and which ones calmed them down. Hot colors like red tended to excite participants. Cool colors like blue promoted a sense of peacefulness. Nike, Target, and Apple brands were deemed exciting, but Johnson & Johnson, Lululemon, and Borders evoked calm feelings. Even certain types of people (kids, friends) and activities (dancing, running) were considered exciting, whereas other types of people and activities (spouses, parents, reading, yoga) induced calm.

Brands that want to promise happiness should consider that these associations already exist in consumers’ minds. Although such associations will vary based on demographics (such as age) and psychographics (whether they are focused on the present or future), companies do have the power to shift them. To fully leverage investments in “happiness” campaigns, companies need to forgo generalized or generic ideas of happiness and focus on the real experiences their customers seek.

— Alice LaPlante

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“If you want to learn more about leadership, learn more about human beings, starting with yourself,” Thiry said in a Nov. 17 speech at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Leadership isn’t a function of position, either, he said. “Leadership is a function of behavior, so don’t fall into the trap of ‘well, I can’t really be a leader until they promote me to vice president.’” Leaders lead, regardless of the time or place, he said: “Leadership is a way of life. It’s not a temporary tactic. It’s not a tool. It’s not a practice. It’s a function of how you behave.”

Those were two bits of advice from the chairman and CEO of one of the largest U.S. providers of dialysis services for patients with kidney failure. DaVita has 1,400 dialysis centers in 43 states. The $6 billion Denver-based company has 34,000 employees.

The DaVita story is told to GSB students as a business case in organizational behavior classes.  The company underwent a remarkable turnaround between 2000 and 2005, in part based on building a strong values-driven culture and an emphasis on community. The story of how the company went from one that was barely making payroll 11 years ago, was being sued and investigated by the SEC, and was losing more than 40% of its employees each year, is one that Thiry relishes telling.

When he took over in late 1999, all eyes were on DaVita, a company in crisis. As Thiry tells it, his talk of core values and mission statements and creating a culture of interdependency, democracy, and development of its employees was scoffed at by many. “About a third said, ‘OK, that’s the fad of the month.’ A third of the room was literally insulted that I would be demeaning them by thinking that they’d fall for that sort of rhetorical flourish, and maybe a third were interested,” he said.

But he persisted, saying a company culture that believes employees should “feel an emotional level of trust and mutual commitment” was a company that didn’t sacrifice performance.

DaVita operates like a village, meaning employees are citizens and neighbors who watch out for each other and work toward the good of the community. Its business objectives support the village rather than the other way around. “We say we are a community first and a company second,” Thiry said. “That doesn’t mean we don’t care about profit, but that’s a means, not the end.”

Describing leadership, Thiry said: “It doesn’t matter one bit what kind of leader you think you are.” What matters is that “you are the type of leader other people experience you to be.”

DaVita’s leaders walk the talk, opening themselves up to a 360-degree review by subordinates, peers, and supervisors. Thiry said early in his career he kept a spreadsheet of his behaviors, “to recognize when I was going down the bad path.” In response to a question, he said he’s worked hard on eliminating ”getting angry with people when they underperform” and micromanaging.In conjunction with that openness, Thiry advises leaders that they should “speak the dream” and encourage others to buy into the vision by letting them help design a special place to work. That entails, “letting the people speak about their degree of ownership or lack thereof.” If you don’t, “you are never going to get the point where you have it.”

DaVita has a rigorous recruitment process, and Thiry advised students not to impress strictly with their knowledge gained from an MBA. “Most of the people know very quickly that you have the arsenal,” the business skills. “They’re wondering if you care about them, if you respect them, and if you are a team player.”

He also said students can learn from a Buddhist saying: “One cannot pour from an empty cup.” He urged them to “refill your cup physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually” in addition to going on to successful careers. His objective at DaVita, he said, is not to create better business leaders: “It’s about creating life leaders for whom business competence is a subset.”

Thiry earned his BA degree, with distinction and Phi Beta Kappa, in political science from Stanford, and his MBA from Harvard Business School in 1983. Previous to joining DaVita he was chairman and CEO of Vivra Inc., and a partner at Bain & Co.

His appearance was part of the student-run View from the Top speaker series.

 — Joyce Routson

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In a November 21 talk at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Kristie Lu Stout, BA ’96, MA ’97, an anchor and correspondent for CNN International, discussed the burgeoning internet and social media scene in China. The Stanford graduate described a fast-changing country where daily life increasingly takes place online and where social networking has created new ways for Chinese citizens to interact and express themselves, even as their online activities are strictly monitored for offensive or politically sensitive content.

China has a “vibrant community of netizens and entrepreneurs who are actively challenging the boundaries,” Stout said. “They’re able to come up with creative ways to bypass [restrictions]. It’s a story of expression, control, and innovation.”

China has the world’s largest internet population, about 500 million users, and it has experienced an explosion in the popularity of social networking.

Based for a decade at CNN’s Asia headquarters in Hong Kong, Stout has been at the forefront of covering China’s online community. She anchors a daily news show for CNN International, which broadcasts globally (outside the United States). Her talk was sponsored by the Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, part of the GSB.

Stout said that Chinese government controls have tightened over the past year or so, ahead of a transition of power expected in 2012-2013 for China’s top leadership. Officials recently have ordered Chinese media outlets to “strengthen information management,” “crack down on false rumors,” and “enforce real-name registration” on social media sites, she said.

“The rules are broad and vague. There’s a blanket ban on anything that would harm state security and social stability.”

She listed some keywords that were blocked from online searches in China over the past year: protest, sex, Hillary Clinton, occupy, empty chair, jasmine. In addition, leading Western sites, including Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, are blocked.

The CNN journalist discussed her coverage and interviews of two leading figures at opposite extremes of the Chinese internet. The “establishment” figure was Charles Chao, CEO of Sina.com, the online media giant that abides by Chinese censorship rules while also operating Sina Weibo, a microblogging and social networking site that is a popular venue for public discourse. The “anti-establishment” figure was Ai Weiwei, a dissident artist and political activist who recently was detained by Chinese authorities and whose name is banned from the Chinese internet. “Both represent the different story lines that we, as journalists, look into,” said Stout.

Stout highlighted the tactics Chinese netizens use to circumvent the “Great Firewall” of China. Individuals and businesses have used virtual private networks, or VPNs, to access forbidden sites. It’s estimated that more than 100,000 Chinese are on the Google+ social network and 20,000 on Twitter, Stout said.

A new lexicon has emerged on the Chinese internet, consisting of code words, homonyms, and vocabulary laced with mockery, satire, or sarcasm. The words “empty chair” refer to jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize but was barred by Chinese authorities from going to Oslo to accept it. Being “harmonized” means being censored, a reference to top leaders’ frequent calls for creating a harmonious society. Chinese netizens invented the “grass mud horse,” or “cao ni ma,” a mythical creature whose name sounds like a Chinese profanity. The alpaca-like creature emerged online as a symbol of resistance to censorship, setting blogs, and social sites abuzz with images, songs, and poems about it.

Despite China’s strict controls, the internet has become a far-reaching venue for venting public frustration and anger over government corruption and incompetence. When two high-speed trains near Wenzhou crashed in July, killing 39 people and injuring many more, there was an outpouring of anger online against officials for their handling of the disaster, Stout said. Similarly, a photo of Gary Locke, the new U.S. ambassador to China, carrying his own backpack and buying his own coffee at a Starbucks in the Seattle airport in August, went viral on the Chinese internet, where netizens noted the contrast with Chinese officials who often travel with large entourages and expense accounts. The photo sparked “a huge online debate about corruption and values,” Stout said.

In response to a question, the CNN journalist said it’s impossible to estimate how many people are involved in China’s censorship apparatus. However, she said, “the most powerful way to control the internet is through self-censorship.” By “creating a climate of fear,” Chinese authorities can put much of the responsibility onto media organizations themselves.

Stout acknowledged that many Chinese believe the internet has introduced a level of freedom previously unknown in China. She suggested that it is in China’s best interests to further ease controls. “If you want to be a truly innovative country, you can’t censor the internet,” Stout said.

— Maria Shao

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About 30% of children living in China’s rural areas are anemic – sick with an iron deficiency that Stanford researcher Scott Rozelle and his colleagues with the Rural Education Action Project have proven leads to bad school performance. And a poor education coupled with anemia’s physical blow puts those kids at risk for lives of poverty and missed opportunities.

But things are changing. Influenced in part by the research Rozelle has conducted and presented to Chinese officials, the government recently launched a policy to improve school lunches for about 20 million children across the country.

The plan invests $2.5 billion a year during the next nine years to ensure the meals are more nutritious for elementary and middle school students. That doubles the amount spent on lunches for China’s neediest children.

“For 5,000 years it was OK to be anemic if you’re never going to leave the farm,” said Rozelle, an economist and senior fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies who is still experimenting with ways to improve children’s health in rural China and get the government to adopt the most effective methods.

“But we’re looking 20 years into the future where there are much fewer farms and you need at least a high school education to make a living in the city,” Rozelle said. “If you are sick with anemia, it is going to affect your cognitive ability, educational performance and ultimately your chances of going on in school.”

Rozelle began studying anemia and its links to school performance in 2008.

After conducting an initial study of about 4,000 primary school students in Shaanxi province, he found that nearly 40% of the children were anemic – the result of diets that consisted mostly of rice and noodles in regions where meat, fruit and fresh vegetables are expensive and often hard to come by.

Those survey results were presented to the government in a 2009 policy brief written by Rozelle and his collaborators. Officials adopted the brief, making rural primary school nutrition part of China’s official policy discussion.

A second study conducted between 2008 and 2009 found that anemia rates dropped when schoolchildren were given vitamins fortified with iron. And as their iron levels rose, so did their test scores.

An experiment followed to back up those findings, while another set of large-scale surveys across four provinces reinforced that childhood anemia was indeed a widespread problem.

The findings from those surveys and tests were packaged in another policy brief that was accepted by the government earlier this year, prompting a government directive urging more concrete action in the area of student nutrition.

Those documents, along with several presentations Rozelle has made to government officials and commissions, have culminated in a move to pour $22.5 billion into more nutritious school lunches between now and 2020. It will likely be up to local government and school officials to decide exactly what those meals will include, but Rozelle is hopeful they’ll lead to diets with more meat, vegetables and iron supplements.

“Research-based results are an important avenue for affecting policy in China,” said Chen Zhili, vice chair of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress and a former minister of education. “The new programs for child nutrition were only made possible by the work of groups (like the Rural Education Action Project).”

And a national policy aimed at improving nutrition and curbing anemia helps ensure that China maintains its foothold in the world’s economy and grow in a more stable, equitable way, Rozelle said.

“The social return is huge,” Rozelle said. “These kids will be able to do better in school, work harder and sustain China’s growth.”

-Adam Gorlick

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 Instead, she has ended up in a totally different realm —professional football, where she works as the director of community relations and philanthropy for the San Francisco 49ers, helping to raise millions for charity.

 Likewise, as a youngster Lorie Murphy aspired to be the unlikely combination of an attorney and professional dancer. Today, Murphy is president of entertainment production firm E2K, which directs all the eye-popping entertainment put on during the San Francisco 49ers football team’s home games — everything from National Anthem singers and team cheerleaders to skydiver performances at the 49ers’ current home at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park.

 Pasternack and Murphy were part of an all-star panel of women who described what it’s like to have a career in the professional sports industry. The panel discussion highlighted the Women in Sports Symposium, held on November 9, and sponsored jointly by the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the San Francisco 49ers.

 Panelists included three women working in influential posts for the 49ers, as well as five others holding jobs with the team’s partner organizations, including Stanford Hospital and Clinics, which provides medical services for the players. Sports journalist Andrea Kremer, sideline and feature reporter for NBC Sunday Night Football, served as moderator of the event.

 While the sports industry is more an old-boy’s network than a meritocracy, 49ers’ chief operating officer Paraag Marathe said that’s changing as team owners strive to find ways to meet player costs that are rising as much as 20% each year.

 ”It is not just about winning games, and the business part is an afterthought. They need to be able to run their businesses more efficiently to be able to afford those players,” Marathe, MBA ’04, told the gathering. That means finding talented employees “regardless of their age, ethnicity, or gender,” he said.

 The search for the best has brightened prospects for young women aiming for influential posts within professional sports. Marathe pointed to the 49ers’ principal owner, Denise DeBartolo York, who has “long been a champion — not just in the National Football League but across all sports — to advance opportunities for women in sports.” The team recently started an internship specifically for college women interested in sports careers.

 ”It is really the perfect moment in time for all of you to be considering a job in sports,” Marathe told the mostly young and female audience.

 Several of the panelists came to the sports industry through circuitous routes.

 Before assuming her current role with the 49ers in 2008, Pasternack said she worked as a senior analyst with the City of Mountain View. Armed with a law degree from Santa Clara University, she helped the mayor and other city officials write speeches and analyze legislation. “It was a very comfortable job,” she said, but it wasn’t exciting.

 She had grown up as a competitive ice skater and did a stint as manager of international corporate relations for the Special Olympics, so Pasternack decided to go for the 49ers” position because of her zest for community relations and passion for sports.

 As part of her duties, Pasternack arranges for players, former players, team owners, and 49ers employees to participate in service projects, such as building playgrounds in underserved communities or heading to Ronald McDonald House to play board games with young patients. “That’s the really fun part of the job,” she said.

 When searching for prospective college interns, Pasternak doesn’t focus on students’ grade point averages. Instead, she’s impressed by candidates who have played on a sports team or taken a leadership role in a campus club or sorority.

 ”I’m looking for somebody who’s able to come in and take a leadership role, but who also understands how to be part of a team,” said Pasternak. “That’s far more important to me than what they majored in.”

 Panelists also reminded the students about the importance of paying their dues while building expertise and credibility.

 ”Honestly, I think you have to do unpaid internships and if you’re not willing to do that, you’re not willing to work in sports,” said Hannah Gordon, the 49ers’ director of legal affairs and a Stanford Law School grad. After getting a foot in the door, she added, determine which people see your value to the organization and tap them to help you advance.

 And, Gordon said, be conversant about sports: “If you can’t hold your own, no one will have respect for you and what you do.”

 A strong work ethic and commitment to follow through with assigned duties is crucial to success in a sports industry career, according to Murphy. “The game kicks off on Sunday at one o’clock whether you are ready or not,” she said. “So, I want someone who’s going to share that intensity and sense of urgency.”

 Here are some of the other insights for young women embarking on a career in sports, gleaned from the panelists’ wide-ranging, two-hour-long session:

• Prepare for a different world. Because the sports industry remains male dominated, women must be realists and deal with that culture, said Alana Nguyen, executive producer of SFGate.com, the online face of the San Francisco Chronicle. Be assertive and speak up in meetings, Gordon  said, “otherwise you will get drowned out and lost.”
• Don’t take criticism personally. Ali Towle, the 49ers’ director of marketing, says in the face of criticism she finds that “women will go off and obsess.” However, “men will have moved on to the next thing, and they haven’t even thought about it another second. I just wish somebody had told me that.”
• Use technology. SFGate.com’s Nguyen gets hundreds of resumes, but one she recently received immediately caught her interest because it contained a Quick Response barcode leading to an online site with more information about the candidate. She also likes people who network using communications tool Twitter. Internship candidates who incisively comment on Nguyen’s Twitter feeds or solicit her opinion on their own blog posts “have got their foot in the door” if they later request an informational interview, she said.
• Enlist mentors, female or male. “It’s really great to find wonderful female mentors, but you have to be open to the fact that a lot of your mentors are going to be men,” said Gordon, since sports remains such a male-dominated industry.
• Network with like-minded people. Panelists mentioned these groups as especially valuable for students and professionals alike: WISE: Women in Sports and Events and the Association for Women in Sports Media.

 — Michele Chandler

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As a new government led by economist Mario Monti takes place, Ronald Spogli talks about Berlusconi’s fall, what’s next for Italy and whether the United States should get involved in the eurozone’s tailspin. Spogli, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Italy from 2005 to 2009, is a Stanford trustee and major benefactor to the university’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

What will Italy’s government look like under Mario Monti, and how will it trim the country’s $2.5 trillion debt?

Monti is an economist by training and has been president of Bocconi University, Italy’s most prestigious business school. He was the European Commissioner and that position earned him international influence and experience. So here’s somebody who has economic savvy, institutional gravitas, and the ability to be perceived as above politics.

The new government is expected to carry out the stability program enacted immediately before Berlusconi’s resignation on Saturday.  This law contemplates asset sales to reduce debt, among other measures.  The idea of a wealth tax has been floated in Italy — which by most measures is the richest country on the continent — as a way to immediately and significantly pay down the nation’s debt. 

The Monti government is likely to consider this and other options to reduce the country’s indebtedness.  However, it will have to gain parliamentary approval for any new laws. And depending on the nature of the bill proposed, passage of legislation could prove problematic.

How did Berlusconi manage to survive sex scandals and corruption charges, only to be brought down by Italy’s financial crisis?

I think he survived because for most Italians, his personal life was less relevant than his actions and promises as a politician who could do good things for Italy.

He came into power in 1994, and his ability to dominate Italian politics for nearly two decades has been the main story. He came in with an expectation that as Italy’s richest man and as a successful businessman, he would help jumpstart a country that had begun to stall economically. The notion was that after stagnation had begun to creep in, Silvio Berlusconi was the person to break the logjam and move Italy forward.

But for the last 20 years, Italy has had half the economic growth rate of Europe. That’s the biggest issue against Berlusconi. But nobody is 100% convinced that he’s really gone for good. He has an amazing ability to resurrect himself. He’s proven that throughout his political career.

How does Italy’s debt burden fit in to the rest of Europe’s economic woes?

In terms of the sheer magnitude of the problem, the Italian circumstance dwarfs Greece’s situation and the ability of the initiatives meant to deal with other countries’ crises. The issue is whether the new Italian government will be able to calm the bond markets.

Restoring credibility is absolutely vital. The fundamental concern is that there’s no offered solution to an Italian debt problem. There is no bailout being contemplated that’s big enough to be able to deal with the issue, unlike Greece.

The euro crisis has claimed the political lives of prime ministers in Greece, Spain and Italy. Can we expect more high-profile political casualties?

It’s interesting how the markets — in such a short period of time — have forced a political change that the internal Italian political system has been unable to achieve for quite some time. It’s difficult to speculate as to whether those forces will move to more counties. But it certainly wasn’t contemplated that they’d have this impact on Italy, so it’s fair to say that nothing is completely off the table.

In the United States, candidates vying for the Republican nomination in next year’s election say America shouldn’t get involved in Europe’s financial mess. Is that the right attitude?

Europe is extremely important to the United States. Not just for economic reasons, but for political reasons. This is a European problem to solve. On the other hand, if it gets to the point where it continues to have a very damaging impact on the world’s capital markets, I think the resolve to keep it as an isolated problem may fade.

Beyond the narrowly defined economic impact of the crisis, we have many issues of global security that we cannot effectively deal with without the help of Europeans. If they’re going to go into a pronounced period of economic contraction, that’s going to heavily impact their ability to be a great partner for us.  Italy is a perfect example of this concern. We counted on its help in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon. Those are expensive missions, and if the country doesn’t grow its economy, it’s harder for them to be a great American ally.  Italy’s economic situation extends to our basic international security interests.

- Adam Gorlick

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 At the top of the list: ignore self-appointed experts bearing bad business news — a group including social media and computer technologists, journalists, and industry analysts.

 Be very skeptical if one of them declares something “can’t be done, shouldn’t be done, isn’t necessary, or won’t work,” Kawasaki advised. If Apple and Jobs had listened to naysayers who doubted whether the graphics-focused computer line would ever catch on, he said, the company “wouldnt be with us any longer.”

 To punctuate his point, Kawasaki listed three powerful business leaders who got it very wrong. In 1943, IBM Chairman Thomas Watson declared there was a world market for only five computers, tops. Western Union concluded in 1876 that the telephone had “too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communications.”  And Kenneth Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corp., sniffed in the late 1970s that there was “no reason why anyone would want a computer in their home.”

 These incorrect forecasts show that while experts think they know it all, “they’re pretty much clueless,” Kawasaki said during his standing-room only, no-holds-barred Oct. 28 talk at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, sponsored by the student-led Stanford GSB Entrepreneur Club. “These ‘experts’ are typically people who criticize and analyze, but they don’t do. I would advise you that you’ve got to listen to them, but I’d also advise you not to believe them.”

 Another lesson Kawasaki learned from Jobs is that design counts, and served as the hallmark of a groundbreaking line of products released during the past three decades, from the Macintosh personal computer to the iPod and iPad. In 1984 Jobs introduced the first Macintosh, which went on to become the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and reliance on graphics rather than text-only commands, according to Wikipedia.

 ”Many people are thinking it’s all about cost of goods sold, return on equity, or the return on the rate of return. Design counts, and it’s a very emotional thing,” Kawasaki said. “Don’t underestimate that.”

 He urged the MBA students to resist asking customers what they need, just as he said Jobs never relied on focus groups or market research when developing new products, going with his gut instinct instead. 

 ”If customers haven’t seen anything different, how can they describe something different?” he asked. “This is not to say you should ignore customers, but I will tell you that it is very difficult to get ideas for a revolution from customers. They will tell you how to fix what is out there already, but they cannot tell you how to get to the next curve. The real message I got from Steve is: the real action is by jumping curves, not by duking it out in the same curve and giving better sameness.”

 Kawasaki said he wouldn’t emulate some of the things he learned from Jobs. He called the CEO, who died last month, a “brilliant and difficult” man who wouldn’t hesitate to stomp on people’s feelings.

 ”When I worked there, I lived in great fear of his temper. He would tell you in front of the rest of the division, ‘You’re a piece of s***, and your work is s***,’” Kawasaki said. “You know, that’s not exactly standard HR practice. But it was a really motivating force, and I can tell you it drove me to do great work. I don’t think I would be as tough on people, but maybe I would not have gotten such great results.”

 Still, Kawasaki said, helping build Apple and working for Jobs were great experiences that “definitely changed my life.”

From 1983 to 1987, Kawasaki worked in the Macintosh division as an Apple evangelist, promoting Macintosh products to software and hardware developers. He left to start ACIUS, a Macintosh database company and went on to become a writer, speaker, and consultant.

 In 1995 Kawasaki returned to Apple as an Apple Fellow responsible for maintaining and rejuvenating Macintosh sales. In 1997, he again left the company, this time to start Garage Technology Ventures, which has funded about 40 companies including financial services firm Motley Fool, Pandora internet radio, and job search site Simply Hired. He also is a cofounder of online news site Alltop.

A member of the board of directors of online firm FilmLoop, Kawasaki holds an undergraduate degree in psychology from Stanford, along with an MBA from UCLA and an honorary degree from Babson College.

— Michele Chandler

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“Without action at the global level to address climate change, we will see farmers across Africa – and in many other parts of the world, including here in America – forced to leave their land,” the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize winner told a crowd of about 1,400 people at Stanford’s Memorial Auditorium on Nov. 10. “The result will be mass migration, growing food shortages, loss of social cohesion, and even political instability.”

Citing numbers from the World Bank, Annan said rapidly rising food prices since 2010 have “pushed an additional 70 million people into extreme poverty.” He called a lack of food security for nearly 1 billion of the world’s population “an unconscionable moral failing” that is also a stumbling block to a strong international economy.

“It affects everything from the health of an unborn child to economic growth,” he said.

Annan’s talk, “Food Security Is a Global Challenge,” was delivered as part of a daylong conference on global underdevelopment sponsored by Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. The event drew leading experts in the field and featured panel discussions that explored the connections between global security and food supplies, health care and governance. Keynote speeches were delivered by Annan and Jeff Raikes, chief executive officer of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The conference marked the launch of the institute’s Center on Food Security and the Environment.

“With this facility, and the creative thinkers and inquisitive minds for which Stanford is famous, you are well equipped to undertake research which advances our knowledge and helps to shape our response to the many global challenges we face,” Annan said. “And with the resources at your disposal, you also have the capacity to actively engage to influence policy, implement solutions and thus improve the lives of the most vulnerable people on the planet.”

Annan also lauded government initiatives that focus on alleviating global hunger, such as America’s Feed the Future program. He recently met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, and Raj Shah, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, to discuss ways to address food insecurity.

“If we pool our efforts and resources, we can finally break the back of this problem,” he said.

But he challenged wealthier nations to do more than pay lip service to the problem.

“We need to make sure that promises of extra support from richer countries are kept and involve fresh funds rather than the repackaging of existing financial commitments,” he said.

Annan, who is the chair of the Kofi Annan Foundation, the Africa Progress Panel, and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, said Africa represents both the greatest problem and the greatest promise when it comes to food security.

The continent is home to 60% of the world’s uncultivated arable land but cannot produce enough food to feed its own people, he said. But if Africa can grow just half the world’s average yield of staple crops like wheat, corn, and rice, it would end up with a food surplus.

Transforming Africa into one of the world’s biggest crop producers will take more than supporting farmers, he said. It entails sound environmental stewardship.

“I hope this is an area where the Center on Food Security and the Environment can make a major contribution to finding solutions,” Annan said.

Without those solutions, the future is bleak.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, where global warming brings the threat of persistent drought, current crop production is expected to be cut in half by the end of the century and 8% of the region’s fertile land is expected to dry up.

“Those arguing, here and elsewhere, for urgent action and a focus on opportunities to green our economies still find themselves drowned out by those with short-term and vested interests,” Annan said. “This lack of long-term collective vision and leadership is inexcusable. It has global repercussions, and it will be those least responsible for climate change – the poorest and most vulnerable – that will pay the highest price.”

Adam Gorlick is the communications manager for Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

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