"We believe economic progress without social development is not sustainable, while social development without economic progress is not feasible."-Klaus Schwab, Founder and Chairman of the World Economic Forum

Historically individuals and institutions have often been limited to the results of their individual efforts to make an impact. With the advent of the Internet and widespread broadband connection, however, it is now possible to efficiently join with others to act collectively -pooling global resources and talents to solve problems too big to solve alone. This is the power of collective knowledge, creativity, and commitment in a connected age. This is what Cisco believes as we consider, plan, and execute our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities.

One way in which Cisco works collaboratively to make a global impact is by participating in events like this week's World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. Cisco is one of the strategic partners of the event and our Chairman and CEO, John Chambers, will be speaking as part of a panel addressingLeading through Adversityon Wednesday, January 23 from  9 to 10 a.m. (CET) (midnight to 1 a.m. PST/3 to 4 a.m. EST).

The World Economic Forum is one of the leading global communities for business, bringing together intellectual leaders of society who are committed to improving the state of the world. In Cisco's 15 years of attendance, we have seen the value of this forum, convening leaders through global cooperation and collaborating as a true community. WEF is an independent, not-for-profit organization, with no political ties, that brings world leaders together to work on projects that improve people's lives. The theme for the 43^rdannual meeting from January 23-27 isResilient Dynamism.

Public/private partnerships, often involving several corporations and NGOs working with governments, are one of the successful collaboration models that we have seen find solutions for key global issues. Two examples of large scale Cisco CSR collaborations include: Global education: Networking Academy and Healthcare: Connecting Sichuan. IT/Technology and wide access to broadband are also essential to enable collaboration in today's connected age.

Cisco looks forward to contributing our experience and resources to the conversations at WEF and being part of the team that takes action to implement solutions. Our goal is always to bring people together for a better tomorrow.

Follow what's going on at WEF:

Find more information about the World Economic Forum online. Many events will be broadcast live.

Key sessions will be streamed live in multiple languages.

After each session, the videos will be available on the WEF website, on the WEF YouTube channel, and in Chinese on Youku.

Follow @CiscoCSR on Twitter for frequent updates.