The Great Wave is a both an in-person event and a virtual festival to reinvent business—and yourself. A first-of-its-kind hybrid global gathering, it takes place in person via smaller events, meetups, and field trips around the globe, as well as online on Zoom, WhatsApp, and in immersive 3D virtual environments. The Great Wave is this year's annual gathering of the House of Beautiful Business, a global community and think tank to make humans more human and business more beautiful.

Over the course of four days, The Great Wave features a carefully curated set of online and offline experiences, including more than 100 talks, performances, master classes, rituals, social experiments, deep dives, and field trips. You can log in from your computer or smartphone, meet up with fellow participants online or safely in person in your part of the world, or take part in and follow the action at one of our more than 30 local hubs around the globe—from Berlin to Kigali to New York, from Bangalore to Shanghai, from Sao Paulo to Vancouver. Participants can ride The Great Wave solo or as part of a group (“Ripple”). Virtual and in-person, global and local, indoors and outdoors, in cities and nature, alone and together: The Great Wave will be four days you will never forget. 

Virtual and in-person, global and local, indoors and outdoors, in cities and nature, alone and together—The Great Wave is an invitation to collectively reimagine business and set the agenda for our post-pandemic societies.  

You can learn more about our vision for The Great Wave in the Journal of Beautiful Business here.

This has been a challenging year to say the least, and given the continuing uncertainty ahead we believe we can find some solutions from the fluidity and momentum of a Great Wave: a wave of imagination, connection, and optimism to carry us forward to a fresh start; a personal and collective learning journey; an immersive experience to attune us to something greater than ourselves, starting with concrete, small actions.

2020 might just be the year when humanity reaches a tipping point: a now-or-never opportunity for more beautiful work, post-techlash tech, movements that go places, and a new communion between humans and business, business and nature. From planetary well-being to the new fluidity in our identities and organizations, and new concepts of value-creation and measurement, we will discuss and experience topics that are not yet part of the mainstream business conversation.  

The first hybrid business festival of its kind, The Great Wave is the weekend we come together to collectively reimagine business and set the agenda for our post-pandemic societies.  

Even as many economies are reopening and we rush back to a (false) sense of normalcy, we must not let this crisis, this space of possibility, go to waste. Is it possible to take action and dream at the same time? What are the new stories that enable us to search for and find meaning? How can we surf the new quantum age where everything is connected with everything, and means at least two things at the same time? How can we go with the flow and yet stand for something? And do all of that in and through business? These are some of the questions we will explore in The Great Wave.

The Great Wave is a global-local, virtual-in-person festival to reinvent business—and yourself. It provides people all over the world with an opportunity to extend the transition space that we have been ever since the pandemic hit us. It gives them the opportunity to ask big questions—How do we want to live going forward? How will we work? And: What kind of businesses do we desire?—while also taking small actions, offering big-picture discussions while also serving practical advice. Both are needed to reimagine and reshape business and societies, and the way we work and live going forward. 

The Great Wave marks the groundswell formation of a movement to reset business from scratch, celebrating the full range of our humanity and resulting in an actionable Playbook of Beautiful Business with practical tips that you can implement in your organization. 

Taking place from Friday to Monday, October 16–19, across different media and timezones both online and in more than 30 local hubs in cities worldwide, The Great Wave features a carefully curated set of individual and collective online and offline experiences, including talks, music and dance performances, social experiments, deep dives, master classes, field trips, meetups, silent dinners, masquerade balls, and much more. Take a look at our initial lineup of speakers and performers.

Instead of one main event in Lisbon as in previous years, we orchestrate smaller events in multiple cities and in virtual locations. Together with the hosts of our Chambers of Beautiful Business worldwide and other partners, we run more than 30 smaller local hubs that will feature viewing parties and additional programming and experiences, and will allow for connecting with fellow participants in person.

We tackle the big societal questions—from social justice to immunity passports, gene editing, basic income, and late capitalism—as well as organizational issues like the crisis of management, the merits of resilience, new leadership, steward ownership, and the future of work. And we get personal and explore our bodies, emotions, and relationships. 

Our line-up of more than 100 speakers and performers includes Kara Swisher, tech journalist, “Pivot” podcast host, and New York Times columnist; Carola Rackete, the Sea-Watch captain who saved migrants at sea; Suleika Jaouad, Emmy Award–winning writer, cancer survivor, and creator of The Isolation Journals; Rebecca Henderson, Harvard Business School professor and author of Reimagining Capitalism; pro-democracy Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong; Azeem Azhar, the creator and writer of the Exponential View newsletter; Safiya U. Noble, associate professor, UCLA, and author of Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism; Rahaf Harfoush, digital anthropologist and author of “Hustle & Float;” Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage; Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media and the “conscience of Silicon Valley;” David Heinemeier Hansson, co-founder and CTO of Basecamp and co-founder of the new email app Hey; Emilia Roig, founder and executive director of the Center for Intersectional Justice; Trevor Martin, co-founder and CEO of CRISPR start-up Mammoth Biosciences; Husayn Kassai, co-founder and CEO of digital identity and immunity passport company Onfido; Anab Jain, speculative designer and CEO of Superflux; Rumman Chowdhury, global lead for responsible AI at Accenture; Cherae Robinson, founder and CEO, Tastemakers Africa; management thinker Margaret Heffernan, author of Unchartered; Gianpiero Petriglieri, associate professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD; Paulo Pisano, chief people officer at booking.com; Dr. Keolu Fox, indigenous geneticist; Alan Murray, CEO of Fortune; Martin Reeves, chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute; feminist quantum scientist Shohini Ghose; “living things designer” Yasaman Sheri; social psychologist Elizabeth Dunn; bioethicist and philosopher Francoise Baylis; and TikTok stars Sky & Tami, among others.

The narrative arc follows the movement of a wave, from Formation to Immersion to Integration to Flow. We sense what has changed and will need to change, reimagine business from the ground up, play with alternative identities and forms of value creation and collaboration, and end with the most beautiful Monday meeting ever, launching us all into a new era of business.

Friday is the day of arrival and orientation, Saturday the day of exploration and deeper connection, and Sunday—the breaking of the wave—the emotional crescendo, inspiring new communion and commitment. On Monday morning, participants will return to their workplaces and lives newly energized, invigorated, and ready to take action and further grow the momentum of the Wave, making beautiful business a reality.

Consider The Great Wave a viral gathering in response to the disruption the virus has brought us. Or a movement that starts with small ripples of personal stories, grows into cascades, and then becomes a Great Wave, potentially growing to thousands and thousands of people. As a hybrid local and virtual experience, The Great Wave can reach into households, boardrooms, meeting rooms, workplaces, and public spaces, even nature—there are no limits to the imagination and the reach.

The House is not your typical conference. It’s a full-body, wholehearted immersive experience that engages you not just intellectually, but also emotionally. 

Wait…. you might say, how will that be possible if we don’t gather in person? 

First of all, you WILL gather in person, at least if you like—you can meet fellow attendees in your city or at one of the more than 30 local hubs in cities worldwide. Moreover, we have learned from the 45 Living Room Sessions we hosted over the past six months how to create emotionally gripping and intimate experiences online. You’ll be surprised! And finally, we will play in the hybrid space between virtual and real world: there will be small work assignments, field trips, and experiences and encounters that intersect online and offline spaces.

So it is fair to say that The Great Wave won’t be four more days on Zoom (who wants that, seriously?). Yes, there will be Zoom, but only in small doses. Rather than relying on one central platform, we will combine various platforms and technologies, e.g., WhatsApp, Slack, audio-only, and even 3D internet.

Despite the local hubs and meetups, The Great Wave will not be like a regular in-person event either. It will be different and ultimately what you make it. 

It’s an exciting experiment. Come along on the ride!

We hope we do! House gatherings are known for healthy and animated debates, and while we can always do better in ensuring an inclusive and diverse lineup and attende base, we pride ourselves with attracting a community of diverse backgrounds and viewpoints. One attendee called the House “the most un-like-minded community in the world.” What appears like an inherent contradiction is very much our hallmark—to celebrate ambiguity, and even tension, in a playful and respectful way. At previous gatherings, we invented a format we called “Team Battle” to allow participants to “perform” different opinions and oppositional views. At The Great Wave, we will feature the “Society of Skeptics,” a safe space for those who remain skeptical of the ideas presented on stage, inviting them to challenge them. 

The attendees are from more than 40 countries. Participants are diverse in terms of gender, age group, and seniority. Our audience ranges from students, CEOs, artists, academics, and technologists to freelancers and entrepreneurs. You will meet people from all over the world, from a wide range of backgrounds and cultures. Our audience values open-mindedness, respect, and transformation of the self, business, and society. They’re interested in a holistic worldview—one that pays attention to business, socio-political affairs, technology, the environment, philosophy and spirituality, and the arts. 

Many members of our community find themselves at inflection points in their careers or lives, and looking for new inspiration and orientation. Some use the House to meet new interesting people and hear fresh ideas. Others consider the House a place to access original thinking, next-generation technologies, and novel practices to spur the innovation efforts in their organization. What all of our event attendees (and members) have in common is an insatiable curiosity, an inquisitive mind, a big heart, and desire for real, honest connections. Simply put, people come to the House searching for three things: intelligence, meaning, and love. 

You will meet people from organizations including Accenture, Ageas, Airbnb, Airbus, Amazon, Bayer, BCG, Beiersdorf, BMW, Boss Zhipin, BPI, Capital One, CARE USA, Daimler, Deloitte, Deutsche Telekom, European Commission, Facebook, Farfetch, Galp, Google, Hubert Burda Media, IBM, IEEE, IKEA, INSEAD, Korn Ferry, LinkedIn, Lufthansa, Magnum Photos, McKinsey, Microsoft, Nestlé, Netflix, Novo Banco, Otto Group, Pfizer, Porsche, Salesforce.com, SAP, Sennheiser, Shenzhen Open Innovation Lab, Siemens, Sky, SYPartners, TED Conferences, Uber, UBS, Union Square Ventures, Wikimedia, the UN, and XING, among many others.

Theoretically, yes, but since our programming is almost 24/7 and includes some parallel arches during certain times of the day, as well as some asynchronous field trips and other real-world activities, it will be virtually impossible to take part in all the action live. You have to make choices. The good news is: (almost) everything is being recorded. After a session premieres you will be able to access it as a recording via The Great Wave Library until the end of the calendar year.

The local hubs are pop-up physical spaces that will bring the House spirit alive in cities around the world. Organized and curated by community members of the House of Beautiful Business, each local hub will have a unique program that allows you to experience The Great Wave in person, virtually, or using a hybrid approach.

What is the difference between a local hub and a “Ripple”?

In cities where we are not hosting a local hub, you are invited to ride The Great Wave with a cohort—an informal group, led by a representative selected by the House. A Ripple will connect you with fellow attendees in your city so that you can share the experience of The Great Wave in person, virtually, or a bit of both.

Where are the local hubs and how do I attend? 

The local hub cities can be viewed here. If you have already bought a pass to The Great Wave, you will be able to reserve your spot by registering online from early September.

There is no local hub in my city, can I host one? 

No, but you can get in touch to form a social circle—a so-called “Ripple”—so that you can meet up with fellow attendees of The Great Wave in your city. Get in touch with us at collaborate@thebusinessromanticsociety.com.

Sadly, no. But you greatly improve the odds by acting fast. Your Great Wave pass is step one toward attending the in-person events, but because venue capacity may be limited due to local COVID-19 restrictions, attendance will require prior sign-up via an Eventbrite registration form. (Registration will open in early September.) Spots will be made available on a first-come, first-served basis.  

Chatham House rule will apply to some of the sessions; if that is the case, it will be explicitly stated. Everything else is fair game.

The more than 100 speakers and performers will include Kara Swisher, tech journalist, “Pivot” podcast host, and New York Times columnist; Carola Rackete, the Sea-Watch captain who saved migrants at sea; Suleika Jaouad, Emmy Award–winning writer, cancer survivor, and creator of The Isolation Journals; Rebecca Henderson, Harvard Business School professor and author of Reimagining Capitalism; Azeem Azhar, the creator and writer of the Exponential View newsletter; Safiya U. Noble, associate professor, UCLA, and author of Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism; Rahaf Harfoush, digital anthropologist and author of “Hustle & Float;” Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage; pro-democracy Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong; Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media and the “conscience of Silicon Valley;” David Heinemeier Hansson, co-founder and CTO of Basecamp and co-founder of the new email app Hey; Emilia Roig, founder and executive director of the Center for Intersectional Justice; Trevor Martin, co-founder and CEO of CRISPR start-up Mammoth Biosciences; Husayn Kassai, co-founder and CEO of digital identity and immunity passport company Onfido; Anab Jain, speculative designer and CEO of Superflux; Rumman Chowdhury, global lead for responsible AI at Accenture; Cherae Robinson, founder and CEO, Tastemakers Africa; management thinker Margaret Heffernan, author of Unchartered; Gianpiero Petriglieri, associate professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD; Paulo Pisano, chief people officer at booking.com; Dr. Keolu Fox, indigenous geneticist; Alan Murray, CEO of Fortune; Martin Reeves, chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute; feminist quantum scientist Shohini Ghose; “living things designer” Yasaman Sheri; social psychologist Elizabeth Dunn; bioethicist and philosopher Francoise Baylis; and TikTok stars Sky & Tami, among others. You can find the list of confirmed contributors here.

Also, take a look at the speakers, program, testimonials, and photos of our gathering in 2019 to get a sense of what the House (a “not-a-conference business conference,” as one of our Residents called it) is like. Previous speakers include Pauline Brown, Susan David, Sir Paul Collier, Anand Giridharadas, Dennis Mortensen, Ebele Okobi, Priya Parker, Tina Roth Eisenberg, and Douglas Rushkoff, among many others.  

First of all, we believe that nothing is more impactful than a beautiful experience shared with others. Participants found the time spent at the House to be soul-nourishing, inspiring, and transformative, and many of them returned home and made profound changes to the way we they work, live, and lead. You can read here about what attendees of previous gatherings said about their time at the House. Moreover, our gatherings have initiated countless new professional relationships and friendships, and have led to many new hires, collaborations, partnerships, investments, and ventures.

As a hybrid virtual and IRL festival catering to a global audience, The Great Wave is different from our previous annual gatherings in both reach and scale, and our hope is to instigate, connect, and activate a worldwide community of people who are passionate about seizing the historic opportunity of the pandemic and the underlying crises it has exposed to make business more beautiful and help build better, more humane societies as a result of it.

Specifically, we will use the following vehicles to drive impact beyond the event itself, ensuring that The Great Wave continues to grow:

• Ripples: small, carefully curated groups of participants that are formed before The Great Wave, serve as cohorts during The Great Wave, and are encouraged to expand to include additional members after the event.

• Playbook of Beautiful Business: as a participant you will receive a digital copy of the Playbook of Beautiful Business on the final day of The Great Wave. The Playbook is a practical guide that summarizes and documents the main themes of the event and provides you concrete ways to apply the ideas and insights to your everyday work and life.

• Content that lasts: we will produce more than 250 hours of content for The Great Wave, featuring more than 100 speakers and performers. The majority of this content will be recorded and made available to all participants until tne end of the calendar year.

• Custom workshops: For our corporate partners, we also offer custom briefing and debriefing workshops before and after The Great Wave in order to help them navigate the program and ensure they get the most out of the experience.

• A growing global community and movement: Founded in 2017, the House of Beautiful Business has grown to become a global community and platform, and our publications and events (online and in-person) will continue to gather and galvanize leading thinkers and doers dedicated to the humanization of business. We consider The Great Wave an important milestone on our mission that will increase our momentum and visibility. With local hubs and ambassadors present on almost all continents, we hope that we can build on this infrastructure and energy to further enhance our impact and reach more people around the world going forward.

You will have to buy a ticket in order to attend. Regular four-day, all-access passes cost 275 Euro (plus local VAT). A discounted rate of 125 Euro is available for students and nonprofit employees. You can also purchase a discounted team pass for 1000 EUR (for 4 people) + local VAT. Furthermore, we offer fellowships for select individuals who may not have the financial means to buy a pass. For more about fellowships, email us at collaborate@thebusinessromanticsociety and tell us why you would like to take part.

• You will get the most compelling hybrid-reality equivalent for the value you could expect to receive from a traditional conference experience—and yet so much more!

• You’ll become part of a local community and a global conversation, based in both your locale and, via virtual access, to places all over the world

• You’ll take a personal and collective transformative journey—online and offline—over the course of four days

• You’ll help write the Playbook of Beautiful Business, and receive digital copies after the event

• Four days of online and offline experiences: Plus access to all programming during the event (talks, films, discussions, masterclasses, workshops, podcasts, articles, photography, mind maps, charts, music, work assignments)

• Invitation to visit one of our 30+ local hubs: in person without additional charge (if capacity allows)

• One-year access to The Great Wave content

• A digital copy of the Playbook of Beautiful Business: a new agenda for business and a practical guide to making your organization and work more beautiful

• Connect with other participants: in person at the local hubs, and through video, messaging, collaboration platforms, and in virtual environments

• Join smaller circles of participants (“Ripples”) to extend the conversation before and after the event

We will tackle the big societal questions—from social justice to immunity passports, gene editing, basic income, and late capitalism—as well as organizational issues like the crisis of management, the merits of resilience, new leadership, steward ownership, and the future of work. And we’re going to get personal and explore our bodies, emotions, and relationships.

From synthetic biology and CRISPR gene editing to Universal Basic Income and immunocapital, workers’ rights, new activism social change, and our relationship with technology and with nature—we’ll discuss it all. Watch this space as we reveal more of the program in the coming weeks!  

We want to generate ideas that you can take home, and to produce lots of thought-provoking content. We would like to think the weekend of The Great Wave will be transformative, and will change the way you/we think—beyond next Monday’s meeting. We have several tools that will help us sustain the momentum and extend the conversation, including many more beyond those attending the gathering. Starting with the closing session on Monday, we will invite colleagues, friends, and family of attendees to join the program; and in the days and weeks following the event we will continue and expand the social circles that helped attendees navigate The Great Wave—so-called “Ripples”—and open them up to the contacts of the attendees. Finally, we will write the Playbook of Beautiful Business.

The House of Beautiful Business is a global think tank and community with the mission to humanize business in an age of machines. We bring together business leaders, technologists, scientists, philosophers, policy makers, creatives, and artists who share a common interest: to make humans more human and business more beautiful. 

We host events on all continents, yearly gatherings in Lisbon (and this year, both in person and virtually, all over the globe), and private meetups and dinner festivals throughout the year. We are also a media platform, producing virtual Living Room Sessions, an online journal, a newsletter, books, white papers, and a podcast series (with our partner Porsche), and we run a membership program for individuals and corporate partners. In everything that we do, we aim to create an imaginative and playful space for transformation on a personal and organizational level, and for our societies and economies at large.

Due to the coronavirus crisis, our yearly gathering will be a hybrid, global virtual-local event, “The Great Wave,” October 16–19, 2020, instead of the annual in-person gathering we had originally planned. We’ll host a Lisbon gathering again in the fall of 2021.

Our Living Room Sessions, which we launched in January this year, are online salon-like conversations and lectures on relevant topics from business, society, culture, and sports, all related to the idea of beautiful business. Initially only available to members (or House Residents) of the House, we made them free to the public in response to the coronavirus crisis. Encouraged by overwhelming demand—and fast-growing global audience—we will continue to offer them for free going forward. But full recordings, executive summaries, and transcripts of the sessions—along with extra “Ask-Me-Anything” exchanges with speakers—will be available only to members (“House Residents”).

Past attendees of the annual House of Beautiful Business gathering have called it “the most non-conference conference I’ve ever attended” and“the world’s most un-like, like-minded community.”

“Imagine the best house party in the world where everyone is phenomenally interesting as well as interested in talking to you, where diversity of thought and background is beautifully represented, and where you come away from a week of intense thinking, extraordinarily energized.”

— Sophie Devonshire, CEO, The Caffeine Partnership; Author of Superfast: Lead at Speed

“In my 35 years on this planet it was the most meaningful conference I have ever attended. It spoke to all senses, to the mind and soul.”

— Anne Kjaer Riechert, Co-Founder and CEO, ReDi School of Digital Integration

“An experience that I wish my entire life can be like.”

— Joe Fletcher, Managing Director, argodesign

“I have rarely had such a good time at not-a-conference.”

— Mathieu Lefevre, CEO and Co-Founder, More in Common

They are the principles by which we design, host, and live:

Enter. 

Begin with mystery. 

It takes a village; it starts with a House. 

Humanizing business means making it more beautiful. 

Beauty is something that may or may not exist. You decide. 

Change the world by creating a new one. Even just for a few hours. 

Create a space where people can get lost without losing. 

Show up when it’s showtime. 

Don’t waste time with efficiency. 

If software is eating the world, we might as well have a glass of wine with it. 

Put on your own oxygen mask first. 

We are one. But not the same. 

We are ugly, but we have the music. 

Whatever happens in the House should not stay in the House. 

End in silence. 

Leave the door open on your way out.

Over the course of the past three years, we have been fortunate enough to imagine, design, build, take down, and rebuild the House of Beautiful Business with dedicated and trusted partners. This year’s House would not stand without them.

Strategic Partners 

Porsche Digital | forward31
For the second time, the legendary German automobile manufacturer and one of the world’s most prestigious brands is a strategic partner of the House. Interested in conversations about new definitions of value and the next frontier of mobility, forward31, the company-building arm of Porsche DIgital, has collaborated closely with the House to launch and grow its Next Visions thought leadership series, including an event series, publication, and a podcast series featuring House speakers.

Grupo Ageas
We’re delighted to welcome, as a new strategic partner, Ageas Portugal Group to the House! A member of the multinational insurance group Ageas, headquartered in Brussels, Grupo Ageas is one of the leaders in the Portuguese insurance ranking, operating since 2005 through known brands such as Ageas Seguros, Médis, Ocidental, and Seguro Direto. Ageas is committed to contributing to the development of the country and society, helping clients to manage, anticipate, and protect against risks and unforeseen events, so that they can live the present and the future with maximum security and serenity. A hundred managers from Grupo Ageas will take part in The Great Wave. In addition, the company will host a local hub in Lisbon from which it will contribute to the global programming of the event. 

BCG & BCG Henderson Institute
Since the first House of Beautiful Business in Lisbon, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and its Henderson Institute have been closely involved in the House’s development. As one of the leading global management consulting firms, BCG not only keeps us on our toes, but provides a forward-thinking yet realistic assessment on the possibilities of beautiful business. Martin Reeves, chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, will co-host sessions again and also present key insights from his new book on imagination (besides playing the Shakuhachi flute 24/7).

SAP 
SAP is the market leader in enterprise application software, helping companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: 77 percent of the world's transaction revenue touches an SAP system. After SAP managers took part in and contributed to previous year’s gatherings of the House, we are excited about SAP joining us as a strategic partner this year, enjoying the benefits of House Residency and connecting ideas and insights from our community with mission-critical needs of the enterprise.

Event Partners

Indeed Innovation
The human-first innovation and design firm Indeed were with us at the inaugural House of Beautiful Business in Barcelona in 2017, and they have been a loyal partner ever since. Having run a Chamber of Beautiful Business in Hamburg and exhibited a wondersome tech installation (“The Apparatus of Euphonious Thinking”) in 2019, they will this year host the Hamburg local hub in the form of an evening-long boat ride through the Hamburg harbor.

IEEE
We’re delighted to welcome IEEE (The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) back as a partner of the House this year. With more than 420,000 members worldwide, IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity, and it recently earned wide acclaim for releasing the first ethical guidelines for the use of AI that put human and planetary well-being at its center.

Moi Moi 
Headed by the remarkable Mónica Ribeiro, Moi Moi is one of Portugal’s premier event agencies. Its tireless assistance and love for the local have helped make the House in Lisbon feel like home. With the House going global and hybrid this year, Moi Moi will support our partner Grupo Ageas with the organization of the local Lisbon hub.

What do House partners do?

Support us financially and with contacts and content. It is very important to us that their contribution is meaningful and in the spirit of beautiful business.  

This year, we are partnering with a global network of communities, institutes, and organizations that support our mission by promoting The Great Wave due their respective audiences.

The Aurora Fellows enable the future changemakers of tomorrow to rise up. They pair 18-23 year-olds in Europe with mentors, coaches, and corporates and provide them with concrete growth opportunities that will help them to tap into their full potential. The future of beautiful business requires us to listen to the youth, so we’re looking forward to opening up the conversation to include them!

Bethnal Green Ventures is Europe’s leading early-stage tech for good VC. They support and back founders who will use technology to address the big social and environmental problems of our time. At the House we’ve always believed that tech can be beautiful so it’s great to welcome BGV!

Business of Purpose empowers purpose-driven business professionals to make the most of the new economy by providing education resources, community meet-ups, innovation opportunities and job postings. They call it business of purpose. We call it beautiful business.

The Corporate Rebels are on a mission to make work more fun. They research the world’s most inspiring organizations and then they tell the world what’s possible and help companies to overhaul their traditional organizational structures. Just like the House, the Corporate Rebels challenge the status quo and imagine new possibilities. Hear, hear!   

Falling Walls connect science, business and society. By looking for breakthroughs across borders and disciplines, they are champions of interdisciplinarity who feature and support impact-oriented ideas and discoveries. At the House we love to bring together diverse thinkers from different fields and industries and the Falling Walls Foundation is a big believer of this approach too.

Girls Gearing Up equips girls from all over the world with the confidence and skills they need to become our next generation of female leaders. We’re so excited to have younger and more female voices on board because for us inclusivity and diversity is one way of making business more beautiful.

The Humanistic Management Network brings together people who believe that organizations exist to serve people and who believe that it’s time to rethink what business is all about. As a think tank their purpose is to encourage, promote and support economic activities and business conduct that demonstrate unconditional respect for the dignity of life. We’re excited to have this like-minded community on board!

More in Common is a non-profit organization working to strengthen the forces that help bring us together. They focus on building communities and societies that become more resilient in the face of increasing threats of polarization and social division. In House terms, we’d say they help to make humans more human. A long-time friend of the House, it’s wonderful to welcome them back this year.

The New Constellation Project is exploring transformational leaps towards regenerative social, political and economic models. With The Great Wave we’ll be reinventing business and ourselves and we’re looking forward to learn from and hear from the New Constellation Project!

Whether it’s sustainability consulting, advocacy or addressing the plastic crisis: Ocean Purpose Project cares about the multiple problems affecting our oceans. With the help of everyone—science, industry, social enterprises, NGOs, governments, creatives and yes—even the "big bad polluters" themselves, they’re doing something about it. The Great Wave encompasses many themes, but our role in the climate crisis and in our environment is definitely one of them, so we’re delighted to welcome the Ocean Purpose Project!

One Fair Wage works tirelessly to eliminate the subminimum wage for all workers in the United States. One Fair Wage conducts policy advocacy, voter engagement, worker and employer organizing, and culture shift activities to ultimately lift millions of tipped workers out of poverty nationwide and engage them in the political process that governs their lives. A beautiful business does not operate at the expense of its workers and we’re proud to support the OFW cause. 

The Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley works to identify and eliminate the barriers to an inclusive, just, and sustainable society in order to create transformative change. The Institute engages in innovative communications, arts and cultural strategy, and strategic narrative work that attempts to re-frame the public discourse from a dominant narrative of control and fear towards one that recognizes the humanity of all people, cares for the earth, and celebrates our inherent interconnectedness. It’s through community and belonging that we make humans more human and business more beautiful and the House is grateful that the Othering & Belonging Institute will ride The Great Wave with us!

The team at Purpose Economy make steward-ownership accessible to help keep businesses independent and purpose-driven. They are developing an ecosystem of resources, expertise, and capital to make transitioning to steward-ownership and raising capital on alternative terms easier for businesses. They’re building a new reality for business, just like the House is doing—great minds think alike!

Secret City Trails use playful experiences to connect people to their cities, the outdoors, and to one another. Through discovery and curiosity, they help people to see the beauty that surrounds them. Business does not have to be boring or bland and just like the House, Secret City Trails believes that business can operate in a beautiful and fun way.

Companies can help to solve today’s problems, not exacerbate them. TheDive assists you to become part of this world, one where economic success and social responsibility go hand in hand. A beautiful business indeed and the loyal host of the Berlin Chamber of Beautiful Business. We’re lucky to be riding The Great Wave with TheDive.

No, the House is produced by The Business Romantic Society, a company registered in Germany and the United States. Till Grusche and Tim Leberecht are co-founders/co-CEOs. 

Founded in 2017 by Till Grusche and Tim Leberecht, The Business Romantic Society makes humans more human and business more beautiful. We help leaders and organizations identify and articulate their visions and translate them into transformative narratives, emotionally gripping experiences, and human-centered growth strategies. At the intersection of emotions, ethics, and aesthetics, we draw from the humanities and arts to inform strategy and learning. With a presence in Berlin, Cape Town, Lisbon, London, Munich, New York, and San Francisco, we work with Fortune 500 companies, SMEs, startups, and nonprofits worldwide. Clients include Airbus, diffferent, Google, National Head Start Association, Otto Group, Porsche, Sky, and Syzygy Group, among others. thebusinessromanticsociety.com

Music has always played a big role at the House of Beautiful Business. For the first time, we are now launching a global Musician-in-Residence program. For five months—from August to December 2020—we will bring together 10 artists and ensembles to explore how music can support the mission of the House of Beautiful Business, to co-create with fellow musicians-in-residence, and to perform for our global community.The Musician-in-Residence program is open to musicians and performing artists from all genres. Email us at collaborate@thebusinessromanyticsociety.com to apply.

To bring The Great Wave experience alive across types of media and storytelling, challenging Zoom fatigue and one-dimensional online conferences, we are turning to the art of filmmaking and editing. For five months—from August to December 2020—we will bring together 10 filmmakers and editors to amplify the mission of the House of Beautiful Business, to co-create with fellow filmmakers-in-residence, and to be a part of our global community.  Email us at collaborate@thebusinessromanyticsociety.com to apply.

No, we just provide a forum. The more, the merrier. 

Beautiful business is in the eye of the beholder, but here are some suggestions and starting points:

The Manifesto of Beautiful Business

Such a Place Must Exist

The Possibility of Beautiful Business

And of course, our very own Journal of Beautiful Business.

Tim Leberecht, co-founder and co-curator of the House of Beautiful Business, puts it this way: “Soon, everything that can be done more efficiently will be done by machines. To thrive, we humans must do our work beautifully—with empathy, imagination, emotion, and a sense of purpose. With the House of Beautiful Business, we aim to develop frameworks, rituals, and practices for a more beautiful way of doing business, both as a key differentiator for companies and a critical factor of human flourishing.” 

The theme of our 2020 annual gathering is The Great Wave. In January, when we announced it, we had no idea how eerily prescient it would be. Here’s what we wrote:

“2020 is a tipping point for humanity, and a now-or-never opportunity: for more beautiful work, post-techlash tech, movements that go places, and a new communion between humans, business, and nature. Something big is underway, a massive shift that will change everything: The Great Wave is coming. What are you going to do? Surrender, resist, ride, or become a part of it?”

We are not sure whether this was a premonition or simply a very strange coincidence, but clearly the wave has arrived in a different way than any of us imagined.

Like so many others in the face of this crisis, we then asked ourselves a question: What is the one thing that the House of Beautiful Business could do to contribute to a better post-COVID-19 world? How could we rethink and redesign the House to increase our impact?

Business-as-usual was broken even before the crisis, and the pandemic has shed light on the cracks. Digitalization, the platform economy, and AI were already disrupting long-held models, practices, and behaviors. Many of us were already unhappy and disengaged, with mental health deteriorating. Societies were increasingly polarized, and economic models were only working for a few. And then there was climate change.

Since the outbreak of the pandemic, we have hosted 45 virtual Living Room Sessions with more than 10,000 attendees. We have witnessed beautiful moments of our shared humanity in these sessions, as well as a profound desire not to simply return to “normal” but instead to fundamentally reshape the way we do business and redesign our societies, organizations, and lives.

We believe this crisis presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity. We need a reset, not just a recovery.

Now is the time to dream bigger and build better.

Now is the time to assemble leaders and changemakers with a common quest: to co-create a positive, optimistic, and hopeful vision and roadmap for the future of business—one that draws from the arts and the humanities as much as from science and economics, that is symbiotic with nature, and makes us fall in love again with our work.

Now is the time to set a new agenda for business to be soft, soulful, and socially responsible, and to promote imagination and belonging over efficiency and winners-take-all growth.

Now, more than ever, we must insist that business can and must be beautiful.

• Host or attend a Chamber of Beautiful Business

• Read or contribute to the Journal of Beautiful Business, our online magazine

• Read Beauty Shots, our email newsletter (please subscribe!)

• Read or contribute to the Book of Beautiful Business, our collection of essays and case studies in beautiful business

• Take part in Beautiful Business Bootcamps, week-long, all-inclusive residential training programs

What emerged from our community at the House of Beautiful Business in Lisbon received such an enthusiastic response that seemingly overnight there were little doors leading to pop-up spaces in villages all around the world.

Co-hosted by regional members of the House community who have attended at least one annual House gathering, Chambers of Beautiful Business bring a taste of the House (one chamber at a time) to more people in various cities across the globe.  

Over the past year, we’ve been taking the House on the road, to 17 cities in 15 countries on four continents. Each Chamber explored a different aspect of “beautiful business,” from climate change and the circular economy in Stockholm to the mysteries of business in Vancouver to the beauty (and art) of imperfection in Melbourne to pace and purpose in London to the future of (African) capitalism in Cape Town. Some Chambers were living room conversations with 20 guests in a casual setting, others more polished affairs with stage lights and hundreds of attendees. Venues ranged from the inner courtyard of a riad in Marrakech to a co-working-space-meets-music-studio in Istanbul’s Arnavutköy neighborhood, a 17th-century townhouse in London Hammersmith, and Sweden’s first and now defunct nuclear reactor in Stockholm.  

Write to us at collaborate@thebusinessromanticsociety. We'll be in touch!

With The Great Wave, we want to help shape a more inclusive (post-)pandemic economy, and we are keen to include as many voices as possible in this effort. Among other measures, we’re inviting people who’ve recently lost part of their incomes and livelihoods due to COVID-19 or do not have the financial means to buy a regular pass to join The Great Wave free of charge.

 If that's you, simply email us at collaborate@thebusinessromanticsociety.com with a brief note about your situation and personal interest in The Great Wave, or share this offer with someone for whom this might be relevant.