Companies must reinvent to survive: CEOs at WEF

DAVOS: Business leaders on Wednesday called upon global corporations to re-invent themselves and become socially responsible to survive in today's challenging economic conditions.

The companies must change them fundamentally if they have to meet the economic challenges of this year, they warned here at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2012. The global economy is facing the prospects of a slowdown, against the backdrop of the euro-zone debt troubles.

Cisco systems Chairman and CEO John Chambers said that the company had about hundred big competitors in 1990s, but there are only two left now. "If a company continues to do what it has always been doing, it is going to be left behind," he warned.

NYSE Euronext CEO Duncan Niederauer said that European crisis was not the only trigger for a change, but the rise of hundreds of millions of new customers in the emerging markets would also require the companies to change.

Alcoa CEO Klaus Kleinfeld said that companies can no longer pretend to be good corporate citizens when they are not in today's 25/8 world, where we are living beyond 24 hours and seven days in the age of Internet and always-on media.

The business leaders were unanimous that companies must be good corporate citizens and become socially responsible.