Bain & Company is an industry advisor to the Food, Beverage, Retail and Consumer Goods industry initiative. Bain has contributed towards the community by active participation and the production of three whitepapers. Historically, these whitepapers have formed the starting point for the closed-door Governors' meetings in Davos.

• Growth through sustainability
  January 24, 2008
  by Darrell Rigby
  
  This paper examines how companies can create a sustainable business platform in both the environmental and economic sense of the word. Sustainability is often regarded as a cost of business but leading companies are taking a different tack. Instead of a risk-management perspective, their view is that sustainability can be a platform for profitable growth.

• Mapping uncharted issues
  January 27, 2005
  by James Allen and Richard Fleming
  
  A poll of the Food & Beverage, Consumer Goods and Retail Governors showed that the following five issues were top of mind: the falling dollar, doing business in China and India, industry consolidation, marketing effectiveness and innovation.

• The responsible value chain: What are you responsible for?
  January 22, 2004
  by James Allen
  
  This paper addresses the question of how accountable should branded-goods companies be for activities in their value chains, even those that they do not directly control?

Bain is an industry advisor to the Healthcare industry initiative. Bain has contributed actively towards the community by active participation and the production of the following four whitepapers. These documents are traditionally the starting point for the closed-door Governors' meetings in Davos:

• Indian Opportunity in pharmaceutical R&D and manufacturing
  January 22 & 24, 2008
  by Phyllis Yale and Charles Farkas
  
  Global pharmaceutical firms are watching closely to see how rapidly Indian companies step up investments in R&D. This paper examines four issues that will impact the current and future offshoring potential of India's pharmaceutical industry. Although the opportunity is large, the question is whether India's pharma industry can move quickly enough.

• Improving Healthcare effectiveness
  January 25, 2007
  by Phyllis Yale and Kara Murphy
  
  This study examines the issue of effective care through the lens of three chronic diseases - diabetes, coronary artery disease (CAD), and congestive heart failure (CHF) - in the US and the UK. The work focused specifically on incentives as a key lever to drive effective care, which remain largely untapped despite emerging best practices, even though incentives can enhance the performance of other effective care levers. The study concludes that aligning incentives for both consumers and providers will increase the traction of existing process-of-care improvements and can generate savings and greater value for each healthcare dollar spent.
• Can enlightened consumers contribute to rationalising health spending and improving quality of care?
  January 27, 2005
  by Phyllis Yale, Franz-Robert Klingan, and Brian Martin
  
  This paper addresses some of the issues around consumerism in healthcare and how to make it work best for patients and society.
• Addressing the innovation divide
  January 22, 2004
  by Jim Gilbert and Paul Rosenberg
  
  The topic addressed in this paper is imbalanced innovation in the pharmaceutical industry. The pharmaceutical profit pool is shifting toward the US, but Europe's ride is not "free." Despite spending significantly less on drugs than the US, Europe suffers a net loss when all the economic and societal costs of the "free rider" model are added together. The gap between its benefits and costs will become so large that the system is likely to break down. Therefore, fixing the "free rider" problem is in Europe's best interest. Leaders should act now, before the current system reaches the potential "tipping point."

Bain has contributed actively towards the Technology, Information Technology and Media, Communication and Entertainment Industry community by the production of the following whitepapers. White papers are traditionally the starting point for the closed-door Governors' meetings in Davos:

• Mobile Internet For Growth
  January 2009
  
  The Mobile Internet is entering a critical phase. Since its emergence in the late 1990s, relatively low bandwidth and coverage and the limits imposed by handsets have held back the development of truly innovative applications and hampered consumer adoption. Until recently, it seemed that the potential of Mobile Internet services to create value for individuals and societies would take much longer than expected.
  
  
  
  Watch a summary of opportunities and challenges facing the industry
  But over the last 12 months, several significant developments have contributed to the evolution of Mobile Internet to bring the promise closer. Mobile access has improved dramatically: In April 2008, the number of cellular users worldwide passed the 3 billion mark and reached an estimated 4 billion by year end. Growth in third-generation (3G) penetration is accelerating, reaching nearly 7 percent of the global population by the end of 2008. New smartphones with innovative features such as touch screens and larger displays have been released and are closing the gap between the mobile and wired Internet experiences. The bandwidth and reach of the mobile data network infrastructure has improved. Increasingly, standardized and open software platforms ease the development of mass-market content, resulting in millions of downloads from popular application stores in the last quarter of 2008 alone. Innovative yet low-tech services, such as mobile money transfer or mobile health applications, have been launched and are gaining traction in emerging markets.
  
  Still, the remaining challenges need to be addressed jointly by industry participants, regulators and governments in order to usher the Mobile Internet to its full potential. At this critical point in time, the World Economic Forum initiated the project "Mobile Internet for Growth" to foster dialogue among the key parties on how to address the emerging bottlenecks and collaborate in the future development of the Mobile Internet ecosystem. This report summarizes discussions with industry experts, academics, entrepreneurs and public representatives held between June and December 2008.
• Emerging Digital Ecosystem Business Models at the Confluence of IT, Telecoms and Media & Entertainment Industries
  January 25 - 26, 2008
  
  This paper examines the issues generated by the recent evolution of business models in the three sectors of the Digital Ecosystem, the Telecommunications, Media and Information Technology (IT) industries. Massive changes have hit all three industries over the past seven or eight years and have caused the three industries to begin rethinking their core mission and at the same time to question their traditional commercial models.