There is plenty of research evidence documenting the business benefits from high-trust business relationships. Unfortunately at times like this (2009), the knee-jerk crisis reaction of many companies is to squeeze suppliers harder rather than to combine a call for greater efficiency with a collaborative approach to finding sustainable solutions. One study documented in A Guide to Trust (by the Relationships Foundation with Ci) examined supply chain relationships in the motor industry and found dramatic benefits for those with high-trust relationships: Design and distribution ideas were shared, and purchasers handled twice the value of goods when dealing within highly trusted manufacturers. In another industry, Jim Sierck of Xerox USA estimated that the bureaucratic structure created to handle the lack of trust in their buyer/supplier relationships cost them around 7 cents in the dollar.The evidence is clear: If you want efficiency, you need to release all the available talent,...

We argue that tomorrow’s company will be operating in an era and a new business environment in which value creation depends on environmental and social issues as much as on economic ones – what we call the ‘triple context’. More than ever, companies will need to think in terms of their own sustainability and that of the ecosystems and communities in which they operate. We believe this means that companies should think afresh about what they mean by ‘talent’. At present most companies reserve the word ‘talent’ for high fliers who are destined to become top executives or high-level specialists. This is too narrow a view for a world with multiple challenges, needing people with a wide range of capabilities. Talent, we argue, is all around us waiting to be unleashed. Contrary to popular belief and practice we argue that ‘talent’ should not be seen as a rare quality, but a diverse, multifaceted one that exists in everyone; it is abundant. It is a nice quirk of the English language that...

Developed in conjunction with the Talent & Enterprise Taskforce, this paper situates the content of the report on global trends in the context of the UK. With contributions from Sir Mike Rake, Chairman of BT; Lucy Parker, Chair of the Taskforce, and insights from the Global Fellows, the paper is intended to shape and inform the understanding of key players in this country about the the talent challenge for the UK.

In Tomorrow's Global Talent we asked how leading global companies create value through people and challenged how we think about talent. We argued that talent is abundant, not scarce; that talent exists at every level, not just the high fliers and that the key challenge is how to inspire, engage and harness talent.In our new UK based report, we have talked with business leaders, in the UK and abroad to find out if and how businesses in the UK are coming to terms with globalisation, and with the new drivers of value creation and as a result what this means for talent management in the UK.We argue that as a nation we must pay our way through our one natural resource – the talent of our people, but that we can do this if we have a shared sense of national purpose, one which embraces the world we are a part of.  We argue that we are being held back by a 'fortress Britain' mentality - this could mean huge problems for us as a nation, whilst failing to harness the talent of our people,...