Become Part of The Great Wave

The House of Beautiful Business will run a global-local, virtual-physical happening from October 16–19, 2020, online and offline, in more than 25 local hubs and many more meet-ups around the world, to set a new agenda for business after the crisis: to make it more beautiful.

In January, when we announced the theme of our 2020 gathering in Lisbon — “The Great Wave” — 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.

Last week we decided not to host our Lisbon event. We did not take this decision lightly but rather out of the greatest concern and consideration for our community in the wake of COVID-19. The expert guidance available suggests that travel restrictions, safety measures, and government regulations will still be in place this fall, due to the ongoing pandemic as well as the possible convergence with the start of the seasonal flu season. Since we can’t say with 100% confidence that we can host an in-person gathering for 500 people to which many attendees travel from overseas, we don’t feel that adding more uncertainty for our speakers, performers, local partners, vendors, and attendees makes sense.

Like so many others in the face of this crisis, we then asked ourselves the 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?

A reset, not just a recovery

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 25 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 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 belonging and imagination over efficiency and winners-take-all growth.

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

A global, more inclusive movement

We are keen to not only bring different disciplines into this conversation but also more insights from diverse global cultures and voices from all parts of the world.

Imagine people all over the world coming together through the House of Beautiful Business everywhere to form The Great Wave.

Imagine them creating the architecture of the post-COVID world by forging forward over unknown territory, both in person and by exploring the full depths of the still-nascent reality of the human experience in the virtual realm.

Imagine creating intimacy at scale and finding humanity in this new hybrid reality.

Imagine a movement to not only plot the future of business — but to feel it.

A new kind of gathering

So here’s what we’ll do:

The Great Wave will be a four-day global-local, virtual-physical happening to make business more beautiful. Taking place Friday to Monday, October 16–19, across different media and timezones, it will comprise three streams: a public stream (main-stage programming), a private stream (inner work and personal development), and an “undercurrent” (the dangerous stuff). It will feature a carefully curated set of individual and collective online and offline experiences, including talks, music and dance performances, experiments, deep dives, masterclasses, field trips, mystery meet-ups, silent dinners, masquerade balls, and much more.

BECOME PART OF THE GREAT WAVE

Instead of one main event in Lisbon, we’ll 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’ll run more than 25 smaller local hubs that feature viewing parties, additional programming and experiences, and allow for connecting with fellow participants in person.

The narrative arc will follow the movement of a wave, from Formation to Immersion to New Shores to Reformation. We will 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 morning meeting ever to launch us all into a new era of business.

Consider The Great Wave 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 Playbook of Beautiful Business

This summer, we will release a publication — A New Vision for Beautiful Business in the (Post-)Pandemic Era — that outlines the main tenets of a future vision for business, describes the principles of beautiful business, and issues a clarion call to leaders and workers worldwide.

But this publication is just a starting point designed to spawn a much richer conversation during The Great Wave, one that refines the vision and principles of beautiful business in each respective local context. Our goal is to write the Playbook of Beautiful Business together during the four-day happening, including perspectives and insights from all over the world, and create a blueprint for the practical application of beautiful business in all sectors and cultures going forward.

At a glance: Why you should attend

• Become part of a movement and help shape the post-crisis agenda for business
• Connect with local communities, thousands of global participants, and worldclass contributors
• Dive into a supercharged learning experience by yourself or as a team
• Embark on a personal and collective transformative journey
• Bring it all back to your work on Monday morning

We want the House of Beautiful Business community worldwide to create what this unique moment in history needs most: inspiration and forward-momentum, structure and flow, intimacy and scale.

A Great Wave indeed.

We hope you will ride it with us!

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To learn more about The Great Wave (October 16–19, 2020) and become a part of it, visit thegreatwave.house. The Great Wave is a creation of the House of Beautiful Business, in partnership with Porsche, BCG Henderson Institute, SAP, IEEE, INDEED, argodesign, SYPartners, and The New Constellation Project.