Hare Koninklijke Hoogheid!!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, its true... today,

I MET HER ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCESS MAXIMA OF THE NETHERLANDS!!!!!!!!!!!



Now this might not mean much to anyone outside the Netherlands but here it is a BIG deal. It's like meeting Princess Diana back when she was around... really!

I was attending a seminar on Base of the Pyramid strategies by Stuart Hart (another celebrity in fact - founding director of BOP learning laboratories, more on that later) for Young Professionals of Heineken, my bank and DSM, another Dutch company this afternoon. Before the session started, a young woman went up to the podium and announced that we would have a special guest, a woman whom we should address as "your royal highness".. she then told us that the special guest was Princess Maxima, to which I was in somewhat disbelief despite everyone else's gasps.

A few minutes later, none other than Mr. Rijkman Groenink, Chairman of our bank struts in, followed by the Princess and her entourage. I was so excited to see both of them, cuz I had never been in the same room as royalty and our Chairman and it was a big thrill for my usually mundane life :p I dug around in my purse for my digicam but of COURSE, i left it in my other bag just on the day when I'd need it most!!

The seminar itself was also reeeealy interesting. I had never heard of Base of the Pyramid nor Stuart Hart, who is actually one of the founders of the whole concept of sustainability for corporations, and if anyone's interested, he has a book called "Capitalism at the Crossroads." (I like him so much I'm going to endorse him now hehe). I got a free copy of the book on my way out and will probably read it on the train to Poland later.

Basically, the whole idea behind "Base of the Pyramid (BOP)" is that in order to facilitate sustainability in the world, corporations need to start doing business with the 4 billion people at the BOP. That is, currently, markets are saturated in the top of the pyramid, and competition is fierce in the 'middle of the pyramid' where many up and coming consumers are growing. What needs to be tapped is the bottom of the period, where many are suffering from lack of basic needs, such as clean water, education and food for example. Corporations need to focus on these markets in order to 1) profit and in doing so, bring these people to better standards of living.

Stuart Hart says that in the 70s when he was an environmental science student, he was totally ANTI-corporations and thought the only way towards bettering the world would be to bring down the evil corporations. Now, he has a different view. He says that governments no longer have the power/clout to affect global change. They are nationally oriented, and that is what they are meant to do, and cannot handle the weight of world issues. Corporations on the other hand span the globe, and have enough money to do what they wish with, and if they focus on helping the BOP, many many people in the world can have a better life through new services offered by companies. Therefore, the key to sustainability lies with corporations in this day and age.

To read more about Stuart Hart and his Base of the Pyramid strategies, click here.

Anyway, we had lunch and broke out into smaller groups based on which company we worked for, and Princess Maxima joined ours! She was so intelligent with everything she said, because she had lots of experience working in developing countries doing charity work, cuz as an ambassador of the NL thats what you do.. but she's really approachable and kind and I can see why she is the favourite member of the Dutch royal family.

She herself is quite interesting because she is Argentinian actually, and met the Prince of Holland at some party in 1999. There were some issues with her marrying the prince because of the shady past of her father, but if you want the full scoop on this, click here! :)

I'm so glad someone out there is thinking about sustaining the world.. and has some concrete way of doing so.. I feel so inspired now!