by Tim Leberecht The frenzy around Generative AI continues. Last week, OpenAI released its much anticipated Strawberry model, allegedly capable of the most sophisticated extended-reasoning we’ve seen yet. Earlier this year, filmmaker Gary Hustwit announced the premiere of something unanticipated: a generative documentary on the legendary musician, composer, and producer Brian Eno. Curated by algorithms, this groundbreaking new film (or entire film genre) is
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Tim gave the keynote at VarTech, the annual gathering of IT company BlueStar which took place in Orlando, Florida, this year and gathered 1500 C-level execs and senior managers from resellers and BlueStar clients. Tim’s keynote was part of a program track curated and hosted by TED and moderated by TED curator Cyndi Stivers that
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by Tim Leberecht Could it be that a human-centered approach to business is not the solution but in fact the very root cause of the problems we’re facing? And, specifically, will our desire to humanize machines make them inhumane? And us, perhaps, as well? I was reminded of these questions this weekend when I saw
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by Tim Leberecht Long before Elon Musk spoke with Donald Trump, I did! Sort of. A magazine set up a “fake interview” by confronting me (I had just published my first book, The Business Romantic) with quotes from Trump: Business Romantic vs. Business Cynic, that was the idea. The article is from 2015, and it was clearly
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by Tim Leberecht Matt Klein, the head of foresight at Reddit and creator of the newsletter Zine, thinks the world is getting weirder. If “weird” describes societal norms being turned on their head—if it means being “an outsider in an insider world,” as Olga Khazan, the author of the book Weird, claims—then Klein is definitely onto something. These days,
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by Tim Leberecht I had the pleasure of giving the keynote at Westernacher Group’s (Westernacher Consulting & Westernacher Solutions) all-hands summit in Heidelberg last week. One of Germany’s, if not the world’s, most romantic cities, Heidelberg was the center of German Romanticism and is famed for its rich academic history that boasts some of the
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by Tim Leberecht No one likes a grammar pedant. English is not my mother tongue, and I’m certainly guilty of the occasional dangling modifier or unclear pronoun. I take comfort in the fact that proper usage is an always-evolving concept and that the line between error and poetic license can be delightfully hazy. Yesterday’s malapropisms
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by Tim Leberecht Is romantic love experiencing its own kind of polycrisis? The so-called “fairy-tale industrial complex” (a term coined by love coach Francesca Hogi) keeps our expectations of finding the one soaring high above reality. At the same time, polyamory has gone mainstream, providing an alluring alternative to traditional romantic tropes. Meanwhile, the self-help movement has monetized
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by Tim Leberecht Before my daughter was born, I made a habit of speaking German to her mother’s belly, hoping she would internalize my first language in utero. I rambled aloud about beer festivals and black forest cake, played 99 Luftballons at high volume, read excerpts of Schopenhauer and Goethe, and intonated the longest of the long
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The Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos is upon us again—and Tim will will bring beauty to business with the House of Beautiful Business. On Monday, January 15, he will contribute to a session hosted by SAP on “How to Build Cultures of Belonging and Trust in Times of AI,” alongside Kim Dabbs, Global VP, ESG and Social
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An end-of-the-year The New Yorker article proposed some entertaining epithets for our current decade: the terrible twenties; the new dark ages; the assholocene. And indeed, if something is bad right now, it’s probably rising: sea levels, inflation, violent conflict, partisanship, unemployment, fascist populism, income inequality. The tally of grievances has definitely gotten longer, and it seem as
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Tim was a guest on the Let’s Crew and Riot podcast, hosted by Chin Ru Foo. In this eoiosde, Chin and Tim talk about his intentions for 2024, the value (and difficulty) of thoughtful dissent,  the different roles we can all play in social change (from activism to storytellers) and  what ‘Between the Two of Us’ means
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by Tim Leberecht   “We do not exist in the majority of these times; in some you exist, and not I; in others I, and not you; in others, both of us.” — Jorge Luis Borges, from The Garden of Forking Paths Reality, as we knew it, has ended. It wasn’t a catastrophic event; rather, it was
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by Tim Leberecht AI is here to stay. Are we? In a recent interview, Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of Google DeepMind, the company on a mission to generate Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), warned of the risks of AI — its “omni use” and “asymmetrical effects”, as well as its inherent rogue tendencies and those of AI-powered humans
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by Tim Leberecht Jeannette Neustadt, a director at the Goethe Institute, the German cultural embassy, gave some opening remarks for an AI conference she hosted last week. As an experienced public speaker, a welcome speech was a common task for her. But this one was different. Instead of presenting the text herself, she played a
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by Tim Leberecht It was always going to end in tears. Argentina won the World Cup, the first time since 1986. Their captain, Lionel Messi, finally earned his crown as the greatest footballer of all time (as well as, more controversially, an Arabic bisht). I would have cried regardless of whether Messi’s team won or lost,
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by Tim Leberecht Collective intelligence is on the rise—and it is, in fact, much more effective than our individual brains. That’s the main argument that neuroscientist and bestselling author Hannah Critchlow presents in her new book, Joined-Up Thinking, in which she claims that a connected group of brains will almost always produce better results than the so-called lone genius: in how we
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by Tim Leberecht Summer travel, travel from hell. I just flew with United Airlines from Berlin, Germany, to Atlanta, Georgia, and it took me exactly 24 hours door to door, due to some weather-related delay during my stopover in New York. My journey was not helped by the notorious Great Resignation-caused staff shortage in the
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No matter how hard I’ve tried, how stubbornly I’ve denied the facts or claimed indifference, I just couldn’t stop thinking about it over the past few days: Lionel Messi, the GOAT (greatest of all time) footballer, is leaving his lifelong club, FC Barcelona — Barca, as the fans, and I’m one of them, call it.
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by Tim Leberecht First things first: the annual gathering of the House of Beautiful Business will return this fall, in Lisbon (“the capital of beautiful business”) and around the world, for five glorious days of CONCRETE LOVE. Please save these dates: Thursday, October 28 — Monday, November 1, 2021 and go to concretelove.house for details on everything there is to know at this
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by Tim Leberecht In the business world, the idea of “literacy” is often taken for granted. We like to think we know what we’re looking at, that we’re in touch with our customers, and up-to-date on trends. But we often judge a book by its cover, and that is often not good enough. Business can
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by Tim Leberecht Now that the vaccination campaigns, in developed nations at least, are gaining speed, we, the privileged ones, are erasing the pandemic like a bad memory, shaking it off our clothes and bodies and souls like the flu. Despite all the talk about a great reset, we are more or less returning to
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by Tim Leberecht “Everything that needed to be said was said, but no one was listening, so it needs to be said again,” the French writer André Gide once observed. For decades, business literature has been replete with calls to elevate listening skills. From “Chief Listening Officers” to the Listen-Thinking methodology of the startup Tirezio, a plethora
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by Tim Leberecht Basecamp was one of those companies known for “getting it.” It had long prided itself on being a unique moral and strategic voice among same-same tech with a keen ear for customer and employee needs. Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, the two founders, were seen as progressive voices on the future
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by Tim Leberecht An entrepreneur and mother of a seven-year-old son once told me something she admitted she would never share publicly: “My company is my second child.” “I know this may sound frivolous if not unacceptable,” she explained, “not just because of gender expectations, but because it may seem naïve to equate actual human
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by Tim Leberecht Beauty and love — the relationship between the two has been the cause of much passionate philosophical debate (and even war). Urbanism professor Michael Benedikt created a 2 x 2 matrix illustrating the continuum from “lovable beauty” to “unlovable beauty,” and from “lovable ugliness” to “unlovable ugliness.” © Michael Benedict He arrived there
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by Tim Leberecht Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are the latest craze of the crypto economy — but unlike previous hypes, e.g. Bitcoin, they appear to be moving into the mainstream much faster. They are exciting, game-changing, empowering. They are the latest example of group-think, the new bragging rights of the wealthy. They finally give creators and artists the
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by Tim Leberecht “I can’t wait to hear from you” is the ultimate compliment. That’s why I was intrigued when Casper ter Kuile, author of The Power of Rituals, recently reached out to me. Seeking some feedback on a new initiative of his, he sent me a voice memo, and asked me to share my response
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by Tim Leberecht From our earliest days, we are told that there is no good alternative to winning. As kids, we compete for attention in our families, for grades and friends at school, and for victories in sports. Later, as we enter the world of work, we learn we must succeed, or aim for success
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by Tim Leberecht Can I please have 5 minutes of your undivided attention? Attention is the currency of love — and of the digital economy. Both intersect (in fact, collide) at the very moment when the primary challenge for anyone in a relationship is to be more compelling than the partner’s smartphone, as the writer
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by Tim Leberecht If I’m honest, I make most decisions with my gut, and then I come up with a strategy to post-rationalize them. So I can wholeheartedly relate to what the entrepreneur and writer Luke Burgis says: “Show me your strategy, and I show you your desire.” Burgis is the author of the upcoming book Wanting that explores how
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by Tim Leberecht A few years ago, I went to my barber shop in San Francisco’s Noe Valley, and as my barber, Arvin, cut my hair I observed his colleague, Jane, who was serving a customer, an elderly woman. When she was done with the haircut and after the woman had paid, Jane took her and
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by Tim Leberecht Conferences may be dead, but the panel discussion is alive and kicking — on Clubhouse. The much-hyped social app connects members (one still needs to be invited to join) via audio-only conversation rooms where they can either host, contribute to, or simply listen to a conversation. What started last year as an exclusive
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by Tim Leberecht Leaders – whether in politics or business – are understandably focused on winning. To come out on top is an inherent human desire; it shows we have impact and yields both financial and psychological rewards. Countless management books preach about how to win customers, form winning teams, and beat the competition. Losing
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by Tim Leberecht Me: “What did you do at school today?” My 11-year daughter: “Nothing.” One of the toughest things in these lockdown days is coming to terms with doing nothing. I feel like I’ve exhausted myself simply by doing nothing. Sure, this period is a chance for introspection, to explore our interior lives, but
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by Tim Leberecht Wikipedia CEO Katherine Maher tweeted: “It must be satisfying to de-platform fascists. Even more satisfying: not platforming them in the first place.” Indeed, when social media companies suddenly pretend to discover their conscience, like those Trump-enabling Republican leaders — from Betsy DeVos to Mitch McConnell — who are jumping ship after it has sunk,
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by Tim Leberecht Love. I have always tiptoed around it. It’s the most important, most delicate matter. Nothing is more interesting, more essential, but for that very reason there is nothing more trivial. This is especially true in business, where the use of “love” has become inflationary. From brands as “Lovemarks” to the self-motivational motto
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by Tim Leberecht Yuri van Geest, Canay Atalay, and Rudy de Waele, the founders of the Conscious Learning Tribe, asked me to contribute to their last Un-Conference of the year. It was great to see Canay and Rudy again — they had spoken and run workshops at the first two House of Beautiful Business gatherings in 2017 —
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by Tim Leberecht A recent article in The New Yorker by Cal Newport, author of Deep Work, titled “The Rise and Fall of Getting Things Done,” pinpointed the discomfort I’ve always felt with one of the main skills required of the “knowledge worker”: personal productivity. Google it and you’ll find hundreds of thousands of articles and blog posts
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by Tim Leberecht In her New York Times review of Barack Obama’s memoir, A Promised Land, the writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie calls him “an overwhelmingly decent man.” And by all accounts, that’s an accurate verdict. Decency has also been referred to quite often in the past few days and weeks to describe the president-elect of the U.S., Joe
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by Tim Leberecht This week has been one of the darkest of the year: sunsets at 4 PM here in Berlin where I live, and in the U.S. alone the number of COVID cases is growing exponentially, with as many as one in 300 Americans now testing positive. But there is light, too. Along with
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by Tim Leberecht Nature is excellent business. The World Economic Forum projects that if countries and businesses prioritize nature, they could generate $10.1 trillion in annual value and create 395 million jobs by the end of 2030. McKinsey touts the “bio revolution,” and BCG views “Deep Tech” as “the third wave of innovation,” referring to the combination of advanced bio-fabrication and machine
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Tim Leberecht helps organisations and individuals create transformative visions, stories and experiences. He’s also the co-founder and co-curator of the House Of Beautiful Business, a global think tank and a community for leaders and changemakers with a mission to humanise business. Having spent 15 years in Silicon Valley, he began to see its cracks. He
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On data and romanticism, the myth of “alignment,” infinite games, emotional intimacy, beautiful business, and the shape of The Great Wave , Tim was a guest on the Catching The Next Wave podcast with his colleague, House of Beautiful Business co-curator Monika Jiang.: In the age of machines business needs more romanticism. In this bonus episode we talk to Tim Leberecht, the author
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There is no going back to business-as-usual after the COVID-19 pandemic. Tim Leberecht, the founder of the House of Beautiful Business, believes that businesses do better when they are soft, soulful, and socially responsible. He presented his vision of Beautiful Business as part of the Future Generali Masters Speak series, which also featured Tom Peters,
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by Tim Leberecht Without doubt, the object of the year is the mask. Covering many faces and missing from some, the pandemic has made the mask a prominent feature of daily life, becoming both a fashion statement and locus of culture wars, straddling fraught ideological fault lines. Some find it unmanly to wear one, others
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by Tim Leberecht This week, my new book, Against the Tyranny of Winners: How We Can Lose Without Being Losers, was published in Germany (the English edition should be released next year). It’s my second book (after The Business Romantic in 2015) and the most personal and political text I’ve ever written. Unlike The Business Romantic, I wrote the
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by Tim Leberecht When astronauts look down on planet earth from space, their feeling of awe is often described as the “overview effect.” The experience is reportedly quite moving and leads to bigger-picture thinking, including a sense of intimate responsibility for the planet’s wellbeing as well as a deep connection with its citizens. The COVID-19
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by Tim Leberecht Twitter, Facebook, and even good old Siemens have done it: allowing large parts of their workforce to work from home. Whether remote work is the new normal or not, it certainly feels somewhat antiquated these days to let the workplace—and your talent strategy—be limited by physical location. Companies allowing their employees to work from home
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Christina Boesenberg and Daniel Breitwieser interviewed Tim for their Transformation Universe podcast, and they had a far-reaching conversation about: – hiring fuck ups – the death of humanism – romanticism in business – imagination, resilience and the lack of smart decisions during crises – the collective mid-life crises imposed by COVID-19 and its possibilities for
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by Tim Leberecht If we want a true reset after this crisis, and not go back to “normal,” we need to do much more than reexamine shareholder value, profit maximization, and other business fundamentals. We need to loosen our attachments to money and power. Deeper still, we need to rethink winning — and turn the
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by Tim Leberecht In 2011 the French philosopher Anne Dufourmantelle published her book In Praise of Risk. In 2017 she died in rough waves in the Mediterranean Sea near Saint-Tropez after attempting to rescue two children from drowning (they survived). But it would be foolish to consider her tragic death an all-too-literal irony of fate. Hers is not a book
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by Tim Leberecht Restrictions are being lifted in several countries, schools and shops are re-opening, and some workers are returning to the workplace. “The summer vacation is safe!”, one German Sunday newspaper’s front-page headline exclaimed. While this whiff of normalcy is reassuring and comforting for some, it stands in stark contrast to the economic reality
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by Tim Leberecht As we are confined to our four walls, we witness pent-up frustration, aggression, and even violence. Reports indicate that domestic abuse has increased since the lockdown worldwide. But there is also a lot of pent-up love. In fact, so much love has accumulated that it will be bursting at the seams soon. It
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by Tim Leberecht A friend of mine who works as a conflict mediator once told me about a social experiment, or rather, a simulation he ran at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Convening about 100 politicians, business, and civil society leaders, he explained the rules of the game: an unknown
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by Tim Leberecht A lot has already been written about the world after coronavirus. Right now, it’s hard to imagine that there will be a new normal and what it might look like. But since “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste,” as the Stanford economist Paul Romer once noted, it is worth discussing
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by Tim Leberecht UN General Secretary António Guterres reckons that “recovery from the coronavirus crisis must lead to a better world.” For all of us to collectively imagine a better future, each of us must envision their own. That’s not an easy task these days, because it seems we’re in a present and future-shock at once, incapable
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by Tim Leberecht Schools are closing. Cultural life is canceled. Restaurants are expanding the space between tables. In-person contact is discouraged. All of this in the name of “social distancing,” the second-runner in the contest for word-of-the-year (“corona” takes the crown, obviously). And yet Berlin, the city I live in, is still somewhat in denial.
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by Tim Leberecht The outbreak of the novel coronavirus is like a real-life sci-fi movie, except we don’t know yet whether it’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy or Alien. At least that’s how I feel, as I find myself in a state of anxiety in which “oh my god” can mean everything from “what a hype” to
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by Tim Leberecht At the recent DLD conference, a leading gathering for the digital elite taking place in Munich every year on the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos, the curator, Steffi Czerny, was assertive in her opening remarks: ideas are no longer good enough. What we need in times like these, she said,
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by Tim Leberecht On New Year’s in 2015, a few weeks before the release of my book, The Business Romantic, I gave a talk at an event in Charleston, SC. Afterwards, a man approached me and wondered: “You spoke about romance, but you never mentioned nature.” He thought it was an inexcusable omission. On Portugal’s Algarve
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by Tim Leberecht Depression and suicide rates are rising sharply among young Americans. One factor is social media enhancing anxiety, as users exhaust themselves in the dopamine rat race on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter; it’s an unregulated and boundless marketplace that puts them in 24-hour competition for recognition with everybody else in the world, leading not only
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by Till Grusche, Monika Jiang und Tim Leberecht In the early 1960s, when 16-year-old Eddie Aikau got his first paycheck from the pineapple cannery where he worked, he bought a surfboard. It was the start of his career as a legendary surfer and the first official lifeguard at Waimea Bay, a beach on the North
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by Tim Leberecht First things first: the time between Christmas or Chanukah and New Year’s is the time you should spend with your loved ones. So, do that — and stop reading! But….just in case you have some extra hours (or for those rare moments your family might be getting on your nerves), here are
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Since the release of Tim’s first book, The Business Romantic (Harper Collins, 2015), and the launch of House of Beautiful Business in 2017, a global think tank and community with an annual gathering taking place in Lisbon, Portugal that Tim founded and curates, followed by Chambers of Beautiful Business in 17 cities around the world this year, the principles of Beautiful
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by Tim Leberecht We spend the majority of our waking hours at work, but for the most part, we do it as disembodied brains that we carry from meeting to meeting. In assessing the performance of knowledge workers, we rave about bright minds and leveled heads. Moreover, it has become fashionable recently for us to
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by Tim Leberecht Study after study insists that soft skills are the new hard factors. From the LinkedIn skill ranking to the WEF Future of Jobs Report to the Pearson Global Learner Survey 2019, 21st-century workers are being consoled that their inherently human qualities will be key differentiators in AI-shaped economies. But instead of teaching soft skills, what’s truly needed
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by Tim Leberecht On July 20, 1969, the first human landed on the moon. Fifty years later we are in desperate need for another “moonshot” to tackle some of the pressing and overwhelmingly big issues of our time — from the climate crisis to the decline of democracy to the upheavals to our labor markets
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by Tim Leberecht Worries over an imminent economic downturn are on the rise. Growth in China is stalling; Germany, the bellwether of the EU economy, is on the brink of recession; stock markets are volatile; and the bonds in the US are showing “inverted yield curves,” an anomaly that some consider a historical precursor to troubles ahead. As a result, not
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by Tim Leberecht Beauty is whatever puts me outside of myself,” the writer Pico Iyer told me in our recent podcast conversation, and “a beautiful business is one that is devoted to making this world a better place.” That also perfectly describes what we are aiming to do with the House of Beautiful Business: creating a transformative experience
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Tim hosted a conversation with Pico Iyer for a new episode of the Masters of Business Arts podcast series. Pico is a British-born American essayist and novelist who made Japan his chosen home 32 years ago. He is the author of 14 books including The Lady and the Monk, The Global Soul, The Art of Stillness, and most recently Autumn Light. He
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By Tim Leberecht When Larry Fink, chairman and CEO of Blackrock, the world’s biggest asset management firm, declared that companies needed to reconcile profit and purpose in his letter to business leaders earlier this year, Twitter feeds, news articles, and Powerpoint charts were quickly filled with his words as they helped support the welcome narrative of purpose-driven, do-good business.
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by Tim Leberecht “The business of business,” according to management guru Peter Drucker, “is to create a customer.” Sounds like a no-brainer: Of course the customer should be at the center of any business, because otherwise, well, there wouldn’t be a business in the first place. And yet, it is a banality that needs frequent
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On July 5, Tim gave the closing 45-minute keynote at the Global Communications Council of global insurance group Generali, speaking about the changing role and responsibility of external and internal communicators in an age of AI and algorithmic manipulation. Tim started by giving an overview of the state of the art of AI. In the
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“The end is in the beginning, and yet you go on.” ― Samuel Beckett, Endgame Last week, a string of seemingly disparate events — the heroics of British football teams in the Champions League, the Uber IPO, and the UN extinction report — gave us a glimpse into the changing nature of failure and why it matters. Epic comebacks For starters, British
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By Tim Leberecht Writers are told by their editors to “kill their darlings,” as William Faulkner famously put it. Artists and designers know “less is more.” Even neuroscientists agree: a new study by Cardiff University has found that the human brain may require fewer initial cells to grow than that of mice and monkeys. And Japanese bestselling
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Tim spoke at the Unleash19 conference to talent professionals from all over the world about the businesses power to create intimacy and meaning in an age of volatility and exponential change, and the Personnel Today magazine’s Ashleigh Webber reported. Work is at risk of losing its human side as technology takes over many aspects of our
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Are People Analytics evil? Can we overcome the “Efficiency Paradox”? And can we truly “unleash” human potential without losing control? These are some of the questions Tim will tackle in his keynote at Unleash 19, one of the world’s largest HR shows, in London on March 20. Tim will speak to 5,000 HR and L&D
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How can the intersection of neuroscience and artificial intelligence enable young children to flourish? Tim took part in the “Mind, Meaning, and Machine” Tech & Early Ed Catalyst event hosted by the HeadStarter Network in Chicago on March 14 and 15. The first few years of our lives are formative and a crucial factor of a
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by Tim Leberecht It takes a village and starts with a House. That’s how the entrepreneur and book author Andrea Kates recently referred to the House of Beautiful Business, a global think tank and community I co-founded that is dedicated to making business more human in the age of machines. Going into its third year, the
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by Tim Leberecht The Italian designer Brunello Cucinelli, creator of the  eponymous clothing line, is known not only for beautiful cashmere clothes but also his company’s office culture, especially the on-site restaurant where workers can enjoy extended, 90-minute lunch breaks. Alternatively, they may also eat at home with their families. And afterwards, they are free to
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One could say that President Donald Trump is authentically false rather than falsely authentic. That would explain the strange appeal of Trump’s off-the-cuff rawness, and why his base doesn’t seem to bother about his, to put it mildly, loose relationship to the truth. Salena Zito observes in The Atlantic: “The press takes [Trump] literally, but not seriously; his
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Tim will return to The Next Web stage, the leading tech festival in Amsterdam taking place on May 9-10 this year, to feature in a track on the Future of Work, along with “Getting Things Done” author David Allen and others. In his talk on May 9, he will explore “What It Really Means to
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by Tim Leberecht Business leaders today must constantly wrestle with opposing forces: They must embrace data and at the same time listen to their gut feelings. They must cater to efficiency pressures and also create a culture of trust and creativity. They must ensure short-term profit while thinking about the long-term impact of their business,
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by Tim Leberecht When I read about the tech trend predictions for 2019, I feel a strong sense of déjà vu. So many of them sound exactly like the future we envisioned five years ago. Big data is big business. AI is the new electricity, and smart machine learning algorithms will empower consumers, personalize their
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by Tim Leberecht It’s that time of the year again, and everyone’s getting busy making new year’s resolutions: more of this, less of that; this year I’m really going to do x; and so on. New year’s resolutions make us reflect on the past year, our role in the world and the location in our
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By Tim Leberecht A couple of months ago, I was invited to speak at the Edinburgh TV Festival, as part of the “How to Win the Future” session with futurist Monika Bielskyte and blockchain-for-TV startup founder Ashley Turing, moderated by the Irish comedian and TV show host Dara O’Briain. I spoke about the need for romanticism in business, which was
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by Tim Leberecht “In order to enter the room, you must hum a tune. Any tune will do,” is written on the wall at the entrance of Adrian Piper’s recent show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Priya Parker, the author of the new book The Art of Gathering, pointed out on her Instagram feed
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By Tim Leberecht Speaking, learning, and linking at Talent Connect 2018, October 9-11, in Anaheim, CA. More than 4,000 talent professionals will gather in Anaheim, CA from October 9-11 in a few weeks for LinkedIn’s Talent Connect conference. Attendees of the annual event will share best practices around the key challenges and trends shaping the future of work
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Tim gave the keynote at an internal leadership event of Merck at the company’s headquarters in Darmstadt, Germany. He spoke about business romanticism and healthcare, and how to activate a strong sense of purpose among your employees by bringing it to life everyday at work. Tim also recorded a hologram-version of his talk that will
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Can AI be beautiful? On behalf of The Business Romantic Society, Tim launched the AI Society initiative this week, in partnership with T-Systems, with an animated, wide-ranging, three-hour long dinner debate with European founders, executives, academics, journalists, and technologists on the eve of the Demexco digital conference in Cologne, Germany. Participants included German AI experts Sarah
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Tim spoke in the closing session of the Google UK Executive Summit in Oxfordshire, sharing the stage, among others, with trust researcher Rachel Botsman, 2018 Tour de France winner Geraint Thomas, and Gareth Southgate, the manager of the English national soccer team that had won so many new fans at the recent World Cup in
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Lollapalooza-like stage at Techfestival! Tim spoke at the opening night to an audience of 1,000 in Copenhagen, followed by a more intimate Q&A in the meatpacking district. Here’s the abstract of Tim’s talk: “Workers replaced by automation, refugees and migrants, fluid identities, or artificial intelligence: there are more and more who are not like us, which
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Tim gave a talk and took part in the panel “How to Win the Future” at the Edinburgh TV Festival, along with with futurist Monika Bielskyte and blockchain-for-TV startup founder Ashley Turing, moderated by the prolific Irish comedian and TV show host Dara O’Briain. Watch a video of the session   Tim writes about his experience:
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iStock By Tim Leberecht As we look ahead to a world with less work, or even no work, we can take control — by using our hours with greater meaning and purpose. Many of us divide our days into 8 hours of work, 8 hours of leisure and 8 hours of sleep. But what will happen when
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Just three months to go until the House of Beautiful Business, an event Tim is co-curating and co-hosting on behalf of The Business Romantic Society and together with the BCG Henderson Institute and other partners in Lisbon from November 3–8, 2018. The hosts expect more than 300 participants, among them 75 speakers and performers. Leading up to the House, Tim will
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By Tim Leberecht What if you are in the middle of a digital transformation, and you realize the digital age has just ended? It certainly looks like the thrill is gone, given the recent scandals and subsequent techlash(Uber, Theranos, Cambridge Analytica), the crash and burn of Facebook’s stock, and the mishaps of everybody’s ex-darling, Elon Musk, who has
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Apollo and Daphne by Bernini (Villa Borghese, Rome); Source: Andrea Jemolo/Scala / Art Resource, NY By Tim Leberecht At the World Economic Forum in Davos this year, Alibaba co-founder and chairman Jack Ma made the case for investing in our emotional capacities and even proposed a “love quotient.” Management thinkers believe that socio-emotional skills are going to be a key
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By Tim Leberecht Soccer is simple: “Eleven players compete against 11 players, and Germany wins,” as former British soccer player Gary Lineker famously put it. Last week though, Germany got knocked out from the World Cup in Russia—in the first round, for the first time in modern German soccer history. But some basic truths remain: Despite experts
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by Jenny Darmody The Inspiresfest audience were prepped for two days of phenomenal speakers and inspiring panel discussions around all facets of STEAM, including automation, AI and the age of machines. However, in the rapidly growing world of technology, connectivity and efficiency, it’s important to still go back to basics and look at what makes
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LinkedIn’s first Talent Intelligence conference in Europe took place on June 12 at the legendary music hall Le Trianon in Paris-Montmartre, and it convened 400 European HR heads, heads of recruiting, and professional development and learning professionals for a one-day program devoted to the future of talent and the workforce in the age of AI
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by Tim Leberecht and Gianpiero Petriglieri The game had ended. The applause had died down, and people had gone home. His work was done, now he could rest. So he took off his cleats and he sat down. Someone took a picture, and it went viral. Andrés Iniesta, one of the most gifted and successful soccer players of
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As part of his Business Romance by the Sea tour, Tim stopped by Brighton, UK, the beach town south of London known for its vibrant music and club scene, to give a keynote at the Acumen Business Convention, an annual trends gathering for SME owners and executives hosted by the law firm Acumen Business Law.
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The “Business Romance By The Sea” mini-tour will feature keynote talks at the Cascais Tourism Forum in Cascais, Portugal on May 8; the Acumen Business Convention at the British sea bath of Brighton on May 9; the annual customer conference of Kao Group in Marbella, Spain on May 14; the annual meeting of Mercedes on
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From April 16-29, the annual Art Directors Club (ADC) Festival gathered leading German-speaking art directors, designers, marketing executives, and agency heads to explore “Visions of Tomorrow” – key trends and innovations affecting the ever-changing field of advertising. The time for new visions is ripe: With AI and automation disrupting existing paradigms and business models – and
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by Tim Leberecht Are we indeed entering an “Age of Amazement,” as the theme of this year’s TED conference taking place two weeks ago in Vancouver, suggested? When it comes to business, one could argue that is an exaggeration, if not an outright illusion, at least if you take the term amazement at face value. Clearly, marketers
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by Tim Leberecht I’ve been in San Francisco for the last week, and I’m feeling torn: Silicon Valley is dead; Silicon Valley is alive and kicking. Everything is more extreme: the unbridled optimism as well as the gulf between those who can and can’t afford to live here. At a recent event, I met Andrew Yang who
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The Marketing Academy’s Inspire Live conference returns on 26 April, and this year will look at how marketers can future-proof their skills in a job market where the rise of automation, remote and flexible working, and ‘side-hustles’ are shaking up the world of work. Now in its fifth year, the leadership conference will take place at the
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By Martin Reeves, Tim Leberecht, and Jack Fuller Business is dominated by plans and analysis. But people are not moved by logic alone. According to the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, behind every apparently sensible scientist is a child who was irrationally fascinated by fire.¹ Reason, when animated by the fire of emotion, has the power
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by Tim Leberecht When even in Silicon Valley the future doesn’t look all that bright anymore, it is fair to assume that things in the rest of the business world are not too rosy either. The recent Cambridge Analytica/Facebook scandal has shattered the data-driven digital economy at its core, both the reigning tech juggernauts and
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KUKA, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of industrial robots, known for its brand claim of “Orange Intelligence” and various appearances in Hollywood movies and other pop cultural events (i.e. the Paralympics), invited Tim to deliver a keynote to the company’s global marketing team at its headquarters in Augsburg, Germany. Tim spoke about the concept of
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With more than 1,000 exhibitors, the Internationale Handwerksmesse in Munich is the leading trade fair for the craft trades. This year it celebrated its 70th anniversary, and German chancellor Angela Merklel, among other visitors, paid tribute to both the rich tradition and innovation of the sector. As part of the opening session, Tim participated in
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Tim was one of the keynote speakers at the MMM Kongress, the annual gathering of Germany’s FMCG industry, in Munich. This year’s edition focused on the theme of “Human,” and Tim presented his thoughts on the future of FMCG and retail amidst the backdrop of platform thinking, disruptive digital technologies, and ever-changing consumer expectations. He
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Tim gave the opening keynote and ran a workshop at the AI Masters conference in Berlin on January 25-26, 2018.  The event, hosted by Publicis, is known as the premiere AI conference for marketing and e-commerce leaders in Germany. Tim believes that that “marketers have a tremendous responsibility to project and model a humanizing brand of AI.
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Tim spoke at the annual leadership summit of Portuguese energy company Galp in Lisbon on January 30, 2018, to an audience of over 700 Galp employees, emphasizing the importance of building and becoming a human company in the age of machines. Galp consists of over 100 companies within the energy sector. The company’s activities include the production of
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Tim will be speaking at The Future of Operations in the Robotic Age (FORA) Summit, an event presented by HfS Research, March 7-8, 2018, in New York City. The FORA Summit brings together the HfS team and their diverse community for a dynamic event that will challenge the way you think and work. FORA is all
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by Tim Leberecht After scanning the myriad new year’s predictions from professional and amateur futurists, I’ve come to the conclusion that 2018 will be the year in which AI will become mainstream. Duh…you really don’t need an AI for that insight. But hear me out. I like the idea of going mainstream, but it also
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Falling sales, programmatic advertising and automation, the power of digital platforms, algorithmic communication and analytical and increasingly creative tasks delegated to AI: the marketing industry is (again) in a crisis. This time it’s all about the big picture: who needs brand creators and marketers if supply and demand can be calculated precisely and artificially controlled?
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Tim was one of the keynote speakers (along with Steve Martin; Oliviero Toscani, Benetton; Rana el Kaliouby, founder and CEO of Affectiva, and others) at the annual Sky Future Leaders summit in London that presented game-changing ideas and key trends to Sky’s cohort of high-potential leaders. Tim’s talk focused on the big issues surrounding the
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Tim completed his 2017 tour with Xero, the innovative global provider of cloud-based accounting software, with a keynote at the company’s Xerocon conference in Austin. Tim had already spoken at Xerocon in Australia and London earlier this year. Xero prides itself with having moved “from app to platform to community” and aspires to create “beautiful”
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In his opening keynote at Digital Copenhagen, Tim presented four principles of beautiful businesses and argued that “being human” will soon be the ultimate differentiator in a marketplace saturated by brands that are focused on maximizing and optimizing. Read the Storify recap  

By Tim Leberecht A new pop-up community that appears near large technology and business conferences, the House of Beautiful Business serves as a sandbox, stage, and salon for a growing community that wants to shape the very human future of business. The House of Beautiful Business is driven by the belief that as machines do things more
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In his keynote, titled “Advantage Human: Live, Lead, and Work Beautifully,” Tim argued only humans can do things beautifully, and he made the case for combining AI and dataism with a new, radical humanism. The inaugural me Convention took place in Frankfurt, Germany during the IAA (International Motor Show) September 15-17, 2017. Tim was among a speaker line-up including astronaut and
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  The article, by Richard Waters, asks what cobots, or collaborative robots, mean for the future of employment. Waters spoke to experts about the economic and psychological implications when cobots become a part of everyday work life. The article originally appeared in the Financial Times.

By Rachel Gee His book, The Business Romantic, looks at the importance of romance in everyday lives and business, urging people to design products, services and experiences that connect them to something that is “greater than themselves”. He has also given three TED talks, with the most recent, ‘4 ways to build a human company
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by Tim Leberecht The most common outcome of meetings without outcomes?–“Let’s start a Slack channel.” Don’t get me wrong: Slack should be proud of having brought a more human voice and conversational tone to formerly stiff enterprise collaboration. It is a fantastic, easy-to-use alternative to email and project management software, and it’s a perfect tool for small,
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By Jonathan Cook and Tim Leberecht Our technologies have not only changed what we do, they have changed who we are. — Sherry Turkle Our future has been hacked. It used to be that when we thought of the future, we dreamed of the new and wonderful things people could be doing in it. Now, when we think
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By Tim Leberecht “Suppose people… had few wants, almost no furniture for instance, and no servants, and studied the (difficult) arts of enjoying life, and finding out what they really wanted: then I think one might hope civilisation had really begun.” So wrote William Morris in 1874. At this point, the first industrial revolution was
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SXSW in collaboration with Mercedes-Benz announced the initial programming for a first event in Europe. The inaugural me Convention will take place in Frankfurt, Germany during the IAA (International Motor Show) September 15-17, 2017. Tim will be among a speaker line-up including astronaut and rocket scientist Buzz Aldrin; Head of Industrial Design at X – The Moonshot
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Tim was invited to give a presentation on “Inspirational Leadership” to a group of high-potential leaders of Accenture Latin America in Sao Paulo. In his 45-minute talk, he emphasized the importance of vulnerability, empathy, and critical thinking as key traits of future leaders, especially against the backdrop of AI and automation. Tim encouraged the participants
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By Frederic Etiemble For one second, picture yourself as a researcher 20 years down the line, trying to find the root event that started a profound shift in the business world in Australia. You should be able to trace it back to one guy reading one book. In 2015 Mykel Dixon read the Business Romantic
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By Simon Waller In a month or so I’m delivering a keynote entitled ‘Will technology make us more human?’ It’s a keynote I’ve had in my speaker guide for over a year but until now, no one has actually booked me to deliver it. I’m not sure why that is. It feels like a discussion
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  Dedicated to exploring the “radical rehumanization of the workplace,” The Business Romantic 2017 Oz Tour kicked off on March 27, with a full-day conference in Sydney, followed by two 15 Toasts dinners, private workshops, and a full-day conference in Melbourne on March 31. Tim was joined by a stellar line-up of Australian entrepreneurs, business leaders,
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Tim was named one of the “10 Movers and Shakers Who Are Driving the Future of Work” by Catalant, an honor he shared with Simon Sinek (author of “Start with Why”); Charlene Li (Founder and CEO of Altimeter Group); Andrew McAfee, Principal Research Scientist, MIT; or Diane Mulcahy (author of “The Gig Economy”). Throughout his career,
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The dinner gathered 25 business, government, and nonprofit leaders for a rich discussion on what it means to run a business (or organization) beautifully. Over dinner, Tim shared a new framework that defines a “beautiful organization” as open, mindful, caring, and artistic. NationSwell dinners are intimate gatherings of Council members, a few special guests, and leading
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by Tim Leberecht I am fascinated by public moments of silence to commemorate the dead. In Spain, it seems as if every other first-league football game starts with one. Shushing as many as 80,000 people, ready to cheer for their team with raw emotion, has always struck me as quite an accomplishment, and the resulting
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Customer-centricity is an overused buzzword. Every can agree on its importance—but what does it really mean? In his closing keynote at Getinge Group’s EMEA Sales Summit in Prague, Tim explored four principles of what he called culture-based customer-centricity: 1) Understand your customers as human beings; 2) Make them suffer (a little); 3) The journey is
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As individuals and organizations, we need a radical humanization of the workplace. The companies courageous enough to explore and embrace a fresh approach to business that is not just efficient and purposeful, but beautiful, are positioning themselves as market, industry, and global leaders. Tim will bring this message and experience to Australia as part of
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Tim Leberecht was invited by the Swiss futurist and author (“Technology vs. Humanity”) Gerd Leonhard to join him on his podcast. Listen here

In February 2015, Tim gave a short talk during TED University at the TED Conference in Vancouver. The talk was now posted to the TED Archive, and you can watch it here.

“Towards a better society” was the theme of this year’s EmTech Europe conference in Toulouse, France, and Tim gave the closing keynote to an audience of European founders, corporate executives, academics, and policy makers. Watch the summary video here.

Tim spoke at the Cusp Conference last Fall in Chicago, and a video of his talk is now available online. You can watch it here: Tim Leberecht

The DO Lectures series asked me a few months ago to contribute a piece to a collection of essays on stress (of course on a tight, stressful deadline), which it just released as The Stress Report, “a modern compass for a new, smarter, more productive way of working.” The 134-page report examines the stress levels
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Harald Neidhardt, the prolific founder and curator of M Forum, had invited 100 handpicked tech and corporate leaders, digital innovators, artists, and start-up founders to this exclusive gathering taking place at the German spa resort of Heiligendamm, right by the Baltic Sea. The main themes of the three-day event were AI, mind-hacking, exponential organizations, connected
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  As aFrogleap we have been writing about robots and chat bots, AI (Artificial Intelligence), data and, endlessly, about how to make a personal and contextually relevant experience. As you might agree with me, this is all driven by gathering, measuring, analyzing and enriching data. When we recently peeked into the future, we also explored the ideas
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Marketing trade Canvas Magazine reprinted Tim’s essay in its January/February issue. Download the PDF here.

1. Now is the time for a humanist perspective on technology and a new romantic era in business. As big data, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality are shaping tomorrow’s business, inherently human qualities such as creativity, empathy, passion, and love are becoming ever more critical success factors. The more human capacity you build, the more
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The word “enchantment” originally meant to surround with song or incantation, to cast a spell with sounds. The modern-day definition is a bit broader: to engage the senses, elevate the spirit, and leave a person “transfixed in a simultaneously pleasurable and uncanny state of wonder,” as Jane Bennett writes in her book Enchantment. We often find
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TED Talks are the gold standard when it comes to inspiration and learning more about the world we live in. While some TED Talks center around marketing and social media explicitly, other TED talks focus on topics like creativity and shifting perspective. These talks can be just as effective when it comes to generating ideas and forming a well-rounded understanding of social marketing
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At the Cusp Conference in Chicago, the annual gathering of technologists, designers, and entrepreneurs, Tim Leberecht described the perils of our super-quantified selves in this new brave algorithmic age and argued that we need to reclaim uncertainty, mystery, and vulnerability as the cornerstones of a truly human society. On the heels of his talk, he
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Tim Leberecht spoke on the main stage of NEXT15, one of Europe’s leading digital technology conferences, which this year returned to its home town Hamburg, Germany. 1,300 decision-makers from various industries gathered to discuss the future of work, commerce, and life. In addition to his talk, Tim also took part in panel on “Productivity 4.0”
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In my undergraduate days I was a part-time telemarketer handling calls in response to TV commercials that advertised everything from medals to stamps. Armed with a script, I cold-called strangers of all ages and educational backgrounds. Once, I called more than 50 women in an attempt to sell just one pair of anti-cellulite tights. It
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If you hesitate to agree then you’re not alone. In business, we often call someone a “romantic” if we view them as naïve or idealistic, if they are overly optimistic or have outlandish ideas. Sometimes, in meetings, we are told to “stop romanticising.” So we do – but that is a huge mistake. Romance is
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Business Romantics are people who consider business the ultimate human adventure and find mystery, wonder, and meaning in the mundane of their day-to-day routines. Meet Tania Luna, the founder of Surprise Industries and the co-author of the book “Surprise: Embrace the Unpredictable and Engineer the Unexpected.”

From time to time, I am invited to give a keynote presentation. More and more i am adding multimedia elements to that: video, audio, even silence. This transmedia approach is also something that keeps inspiring me when doing my day job, where i am architect and content curator of “events”. I always say that i
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It was about time. As Derek Irvine, Vice President, Client Strategy and Consulting at Globoforce, pointed out in a quick historical office tour stretching from the Ancient Greeks to the knowledge age, we have “2,000 years of experience in removing humanity from the workplace.” And the window for the human workplace, barely a crack open nowadays,
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These days, sci-fi movies can hardly catch up with reality. We are woken up by our Pebble smartwatch, set our Fitbit, order an Uber to get to work (where we use Kloutto gauge our influence, Meeting Mediator to manage social dynamics in meetings, and mood sensors that tell us when we’re happiest). We outsource our
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