At a time when the focus was on this Swiss mountain village, Dr Shu showcased how the work of the IEC encourages international trade.
Here is an excerpt of Shu’s Davos address where he speaks about the IEC:
“I have been working for the IEC for many years. IEC stands for International Electrotechnical Commission. The products of the IEC are standards. Standards can promote international trade, with technology standards.
"IEC has now over 20,000 expert engineers from all over the world. With IEC standardization, the manufacturers and the labs can manufacture their products according to unique (international) standardization. This is very helpful.
"IEC was founded in 1906, we are 110 years old already. And it has a very good working procedure – everyone can participate in standardization development…the Standards are produced by consensus. Every expert has to agree with the Standard.
"The IEC work is divided into many groups. We call these groups Technical Committees (TCs). In the TCs they are working in a specific area, for example, like electric cars. The engineers come together, they meet several times in a year.
"For one Standard it may take several years to finish. So they are very careful for the standardization but it is not difficult, people are very enthusiastic to participate in the standardization development.”
Also on panel were:
- Mary Barra, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the General Motors Corporation
- Vishal Sikka, Chief Executive Officer of Infosys
- Marc R. Benioff, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Salesforce
- Mukesh D. Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries
- Moderator: Professor Ngaire Woods, Dean of the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford
