"There has never been a more exciting time to lead"- Takeaways from the inaugural 'Dreams and Details Summit'.

Part of the joy of starting this newsletter was that my collaborators and I would be ‘building in public’ with it–it would be an iterative process, and there would be no fixed format.?

Each week, we would address different challenges faced by leaders across a diverse array of industries, weaving the ‘Dreams and Details’ methodology into essays and interviews. No two editions would be alike, but they would all emphasize the importance of leadership in a time of exponential change, and would adapt based on feedback from our subscribers.??

To that end, today’s newsletter will, once again, be different. It is both a summary of an incredible event, and a preview of what’s to come.?

This past Thursday and Friday, Idonea produced our?inaugural 'Dreams and Details Summit'. To say our attendees came away inspired, motivated and ready to get to work is an understatement; in panel after panel, broadcasting from all over the world, our guests showed what true leadership looks like in an effort to build a more sustainable and democratic future.?

Please read on for a summary of the conversations we held over the course of the 2-day experience. In future issues we will share videos of these interviews (working on that now!) And for all those who enjoyed the interview Shai Tamary and I conducted last week with Justin Hendrix–who was also a brilliant participant in our summit–we have more of those coming your way, too!?

Day 1: “Business In A Rapidly Changing World”

Our chairman Jim Hagemann Snabe opened the summit with a keynote entitled? “Dreams and Details for a Sustainable World.”? In this presentation, he explained the radical shifts experienced by all aspects of society as the industrial age transitioned into the information age, and walked us through the Dreams and Details methodology in order to show how business leaders can plan for exponential, not linear, growth, and reinvent their organizations from a position of strength.?

He was then joined by Murat Aktihanoglu and Signe Horn Rosted for our first panel, “Sustainability is Good for Business”. Our panelists discussed how customer demand, plus declining costs, make the global adoption of renewable energy an inevitability–but time is not on our side. There is much work to be done to fight the great, existential threat of our era, and one phrase, spoken by Murat, plays on in my mind all these days later: climate tech is not a ‘sector’, it is the whole economy.????

Up next, we spoke with? Selma Bueno and Mark Haidar in our “Insights are Good for Business” panel. Here, each of our guests offered some fantastic perspectives on the urgent topic of data utilization and insight generation: how to do it responsibly, how to generate the most valuable and predictive insights, and how to utilize these insights in order to supplement decision making.

For the final discussion of the day, I was joined by Mayor Kamal Johnson and Joan Hunt , who described their work launching HudsonUp, a pilot program that provides a basic income guarantee to selected citizens of Hudson, New York. In the context of a broader, day-long narrative outlining the impacts of deindustrialization worldwide, it was an honor to speak with leaders of a community hit especially hard by these trends, and who are offering a uniquely information-age solution to counterbalance fast-changing work conditions.

Finally, the day was wrapped up in conversation with our CEO Mikael Trolle , who summarized some key takeaways from the event, and explained why there is a need for a paradigm shift in leadership.

Day 2: “Unleashing Human Potential”

We kicked off Day 2 with a keynote from our vice chairman Jesper Lok , describing how to apply the Dreams and Details methodology in the boardroom to shape an organization's future and drive both performance and transformation.

Next,? Shawn Golhar addressed the complicated relationship between tech and democracy alongside previous ‘2030 Leadership’ guest, Justin Hendrix . The discussion also provided meaningful insights into where and how businesses can support democratic norms, the limits of corporate power, and whether or not we are in a ‘democratic recession’.??

In our second panel, Zoe Hunter and Justin Finkelstein shared their insights on how to create a workplace that fits the values and needs of an organization’s employees, based on lessons learned during the pandemic.?

Then, Mary Cline , Lawrence Di Rita , and Emily Bayley took a deep dive into the concept of ‘Stakeholder Capitalism’, an economic movement which argues that businesses have a responsibility to focus not only on short-term profits, but on how to benefit all manner of stakeholders in society. It is an increasingly popular approach for incentivizing business leaders to tackle some of the world’s most pressing issues, from climate change to the fight for racial and gender equity.

In our final panel of the summit, Sebastian Hassinger , Sylvia Wong , and Tejpaul Bhatia presented our attendees with a vision for some of the most ambitious dreams imaginable for humankind: a future where a new kind of computing is capable of simulating natural systems; where we have achieved universal access to sexual and reproductive health; and where the story of humanity takes us far beyond the borders of our planet, out of Earth’s orbit and into the heart of the cosmos. It doesn’t get much more “Dreams & Details” than that :)?

Once again, thank you so much to all of the incredible speakers and panelists. And, of course, a big thank you to all of the participants who tuned in to listen and ask fantastic questions!

This experience was an absolute thrill for all of us at Idonea, and we can’t wait to share the content with a broader audience in the days and weeks ahead.

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#performance #transformation #tech #democracy #inclusivity #stakeholdercapitalism #dream ?