Join The Great Wave to Reinvent Business, Your Organization—and Yourself

As the world anxiously awaits a second wave of the pandemic (with parts of it already in it, and other parts still suffering from the first), the House of Beautiful Business is forming a very different—and much more joyful—wave in return: The Great Wave, a hybrid, experience-driven festival that will take place online, in the real world, and in the spaces in between.

The Great Wave is not just another Zoom event, and it’s definitely not your typical business conference. Rather, it’s an invitation to use the pandemic—an ultra-marathon of a crisis—to think about how we can shape the future of our workplaces, economies, and societies, making them not just “humanized” but fully human, and in fact, perhaps even beautiful.  

Over the course of four days and three nights, from October 16 to 19, we will connect thousands of people around the world. We’ll use video, audio, and text, and meet in both the virtual world and in the real one at more than 30 local hubs from Amsterdam to Johannesburg, Buenos Aires to Vancouver. We’ll hear from more than 100 speakers, watch and take part in dance and musical performances, listen and break bread together, sit quiet for a silent hour, take sound baths, dive—literally and metaphorically—into the ocean, go on field trips, challenge lofty ideas at the "Society of Skeptics," form "Ripples" of discovery and learning, try on different masks and identities, explore and experience new technologies, discuss incremental and radical measures of change, co-create the new agenda for (beautiful) business, and bring it all back to our workplaces and lives on Monday.

Our line-up of 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 Harfouch, 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 Uncharted; 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. 

We are delighted that in addition to some of the world’s leading thinkers and leaders, The Great Wave will include many voices from a diverse range of professional backgrounds, sectors, communities, cultures, populations, and generations around the globe: dreamers, skeptics, doers, and makers, as well as artists of all disciplines and children of all ages.

We want to hear your voice, too, and hope you can join this important conversation! Become part of The Great Wave and come with us on a first-of-its-kind inspirational journey. It will be an experience you will never forget.

Buy your pass for The Great Wave

The 275 Euro (125 Euro for nonprofits and students) ticket includes:

• Four days of online programming and offline experiences
• Access to all content during the event (talks, films, discussions, master classes, workshops, podcasts, articles, photography, mind maps, charts, music, and work assignments); after the event, one-year access to The Great Wave content 
• A digital copy of the Playbook of Beautiful Business at the end of the event—a new agenda for business and a practical guide to making your organization and work more beautiful
• Connections to other participants at The Great Wave, in person at the local hubs, and through video, messaging, collaboration platforms, and in virtual environments
• Invitations to visit one or more of our 30+ local The Great Wave hubs in person without additional charge (if capacity allows)
• Invitation to join smaller circles of participants ("Ripples") to extend the conversation before and after the event

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The Great Wave is a creation of the House of Beautiful Business, in partnership with FORWARD31 by Porsche Digital, Grupo Ageas Portugal, BCG Henderson Institute, SAP, IEEE, and Indeed Innovation. For more information about partnership opportunities, please contact us at [email protected].