Thinkers 50 Global Summit

November 9, 2015 at Drapers Hall, London UK

What is progress?

Thinkers 50 scans and ranks the best thinkers, and ideas, for business.  The bi-annual global summit, on 9 November this year, is the “Oscars” of business thinking, and brings together most of the top business gurus for when incredibly  intellectually brain-powered day. The agenda is filled with quick thinking, debates and leads to the evening awards ceremony, this year including Zhang Rhuimin, the CEO of Haier Group, the world’s largest white goods business.

This year I will chairing a debate with Amy Edmundson (Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School) and Whitney Johnson (author of Disrupt Yourself, and a former investment banker, and founder of Clay Christensen’s disruptive innovation investment fund) exploring “Do we need to redefine what we mean by progress and how we measure it?”

• If progress is a journey, where are we trying to get to?
• If the destination has changed, do we need to recalibrate the journey?
• When technology progresses exponentially, does everything else?
• When we seek a sustainable, circular economy, what is progress?
• What is progress for an artist, athlete, scientist and politician?
• And what does this mean for business, society, and nations?
• So what is progress today, and how has it changed?

In business, is the pursuit of financial success, and in particular maximising shareholder value (the long-term return to shareholders based on share growth and dividends), still as important as ever? (Remember, that’s the legal responsibility of a board of directors in a publicly traded company!). Or is the pursuit of a better world, of doing good for society and “happiness” increasingly more important? (Which all sounds very nice, but are they more input measures to create a more sustained business model, and if they are equal, how do they connect?)

Come to the Thinkers 50 Global Summit and find out!