We need you at The Great Wave!

Extraordinary times require extraordinary experiences: In light of the pandemic, the House of Beautiful Business is going global. The Great Wave (October 16-19) is a virtual and in-person festival that will connect thousands of people all around the world to re-imagine business from the ground up.

The world is on fire. People everywhere are hurting.

Business-as-usual was broken even before the crisis. Technology was already disrupting long-held models, practices, and behaviors. Many of us were already unhappy and disengaged. Societies were increasingly polarized, and economic models only working for a few. And there was climate change, raising the temperature on it all.

Then COVID-19 cracked open the many wounds and made us painfully aware of what we lose when winning at all cost is the only option: everything. 

We’re at an inflection point— and we have a choice.

We can pursue relentless growth, extractive value, data-based surveillance, enhanced productivity, greater efficiency, the bottom line.

Or we can dream bigger and build something new, something more beautiful—with imagination, empathy, and joy. 

We can create businesses that: 

• help us feel fully alive
• are soft and nimble, like water
• are one with nature, including our own
• allow us to bring our full self to work, including our bodies
• celebrate diversity and the non-binary
• allow us to be sad and not just happily productive
• embrace romance and not just efficiency
• draw from the arts and humanities as much as from science and tech
• care deeply 
• ask beautiful questions instead of having all the answers

In other words, we can create beautiful business.

The Great Wave, our hybrid virtual and in-person festival from October 16 to 19, is an invitation to go deeper, by designing companies that become waves themselves: fluid movements and organic systems instead of edgy, sharp-elbowed firms devoted to disruption. The world can’t afford any more soulless corporations. 

The Great Wave is an invitation to fundamentally rethink the idea of value: how to define and measure it, and how to use its power to shape futures, like waves shaping rock.

Through local events, meetups, and outdoors activities around the globe, as well as video and audio online programming on Zoom, WhatsApp, and in immersive 3D virtual environments, The Great Wave will feature a carefully curated set of online and offline experiences, including talks, performances, master classes, rituals, social experiments, deep dives, inner work assignments, and field trips. 

You can 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 Hong Kong, from Sao Paulo to Vancouver. You can ride The Great Wave solo or as part of a group (“Ripple”), collaborating on the Playbook of Beautiful Business or simply learning, connecting, inspiring, and getting inspired.

Virtual and in-person, global and local, indoors and outdoors, in cities and nature, alone and together, 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 business.

Now is the time to set a new agenda.

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

Come join us to make it real!

The Great Wave will take place Friday through Monday, October 16–19 online, offline, and at 30 local hubs around the globe. It is a creation of the House of Beautiful Business, in partnership with Porsche, Grupo Ageas, SAP, the BCG Henderson Institute, IEEE, Indeed Innovation, Stadiumred Group, and Waltz Binaire. For more information, please contact us at [email protected].

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; Audrey Tang, digital minister of Taiwan; 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 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.  

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