March 2025
Noor Sweid
Founder and Managing Partner of Global Ventures
Coming of Age: How Technology and Entrepreneurship are Changing the Face of MENA
Coming of Age is the story of the entrepreneurial growth in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) over the last twenty-five years, spanning industries as diverse as fintech, healthtech and agritech, all of which have emerged from the desert since the new millennium, producing globally-leading transformative ventures and leapfrogging technologies. Featuring stories and reflections of pioneering founders from the region, Coming of Age conveys the MENA region’s remarkable entrepreneurial journey to the point of today, where it is set to challenge the global order and to fully realise the potential of the largest young digital population in the world.
June 2025
Bain & Company: Christophe De Vusser and Karen Harris
Christophe De Vusser, Worldwide Managing Partner, CEO, and Chairman
Karen Harris, Managing Director of Bain & Company's Macro Trends Group
The economic and geopolitical landscape in the US and Europe
Christophe and Karen will be joining us to share their insights into the economic and geopolitical landscape in the US and Europe, including the latest developments on Trump 2.0, tariffs, AI, and private capital.
January 2025
Ivan Gazidis and Fergus Bell
President of Kilmer Sports Ventures and former CEO of Arsenal FC; Co-Founder and Managing Partner of The Players Fund
Investing in Sport
Sport is becoming big business, creating an exciting, emerging asset class. Joining us to bring clarity to the opportunities and pitfalls, we are delighted to be hosting legendary ex Arsenal CEO Ivan Gazidis, and Fergus Bell, co-founder of The Players Fund, a London based sports focussed VC firm.
November 2024
Duncan Mavin
Journalist and author
Meltdown: Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse
Duncan takes us inside the hushed corridors at Credit Suisse, detailing its secretive culture and a series of decisions that ultimately led to disaster. It is a fascinating history of one of the biggest financial institutions of our times – and a thrilling exposé of the wider financial services sector. Meltdown promises to shock as Duncan reveals a world of greed, lies and unrelenting human ambition.
Henley & Partners
Global leader in residence and citizenship by investment
Implications and impacts of the 30th October budget
With 55 offices around the world, Henley & Partners is the global leader in residence and citizenship by investment, and author of the seminal wealth migration report so heavily quoted in recent weeks. Joining us shortly after the budget, Stuart and Peter will be updating us on changes to UK tax and IHT and advising on potential relocation options.
October 2024
Gareth Gore
Author, Financial Journalist, Editor
OPUS: dark money, a secretive cult, and its mission to remake our world
An eye-opening exposé of Opus Dei — a secretive, ultra-conservative Catholic sect — and how its members pushed its radical agenda within the Church and around the globe, using billions of dollars siphoned from Banco Popular. When investigating the demise of the bank, Gore uncovered decades of deception that hid one of the most brazen cases of corporate pillaging in history, perpetrated by a group of men sworn to celibacy and self-flagellation who had secretly controlled Popular and abused their positions there to help spread Opus Dei to every corner of the world.
Jean-Pascal Tricoire
Chairman of Schneider Electric
How technology is reshaping the established order in the energy world
How technology is reshaping the established order in the energy world
Jean-Pascal is the Chairman of Schneider Electric. He previously served as COO of Schneider from 2003, CEO from 2006 to 2011, and Chairman and CEO from 2011 to 2023. Under Jean-Pascal’s leadership, Schneider has transformed and become a technology company leading in software, sustainability, digitisation, and electrification. Jean-Pascal joined Schneider Electric in 1986 and held various positions across France, Italy, China, South Africa, the United States and Hong Kong.
Jean-Pascal also serves as an independent director on the board of Qualcomm. He is a director of the worldwide board of the United Nations Global Compact, a United Nations #HeForShe Corporate IMPACT champion and a member of the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum as well as the Asia Business Council. He is also a member of the board of trustees of Northeastern University. Jean-Pascal is a member of the International Advisory Council of the Singapore Economic Development Board and a member of the advisory councils of Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong. He led the France-China Business Council from 2009 to 2019. He is a Knight of the Legion of Honor and an Officer of the National Order of Merit in France.
Marko Papic
Chief Strategist, BCA Research
Geopolitical Trilemma
Marko will present his secular thesis – which he has dubbed The Geopolitical Trilemma – and how it impacts long-term investors over the rest of this decade. In addition, he will give his view on where the alpha may be over the short-term horizon, focusing on the interaction of markets with the upcoming US election.
Lionel Barber
Author, broadcaster and lecturer
Gambling Man: The Wild Ride of Japan's Masayoshi Son
Japan’s Masayoshi Son has made and lost several fortunes, investing or controlling assets worth $1trn in the past two decades through his media-tech giant, SoftBank. Lionel takes us on Masa’s wild ride, from his birthplace in a Korean slum in post-war Japan to the modern-day temples of power. He reveals the man behind the money, what drives him, why he matters, and what he plans for his next act.
September 2024
Scott Malkin
Founder and Chairman of Value Retail PLC
Unreasonable Hospitality - The Bicester Collection
In conversation with John Arlidge, Scott will discuss the differentiated approach taken by each of the fifteen BV locations and how they are embracing and benefiting from the rapid changes in technology.
October 2018
Michael Ovitz
Who is Michael Ovitz?
As co-founder of Creative Artists Agency, Michael Ovitz earned a reputation for ruthless negotiation, brilliant strategy and fierce loyalty to his clients. He reinvented the role of the agent and helped shape the careers of hundreds of A-list stars and directors.
In his new book, Who is Michael Ovitz?, he talks about his journey: how a kid with no connections worked his way into the William Morris mailroom, and become the most powerful person in Hollywood as well as a key figure in producing, advertising, mergers & acquisitions and modern art.
And he addresses the personal questions: what were the consequences of all those deals and what happens now?
November 2018
Reid Hoffman
on Blitzscaling, in conversation with James Manyika of the McKinsey Global Institute
Silicon Valley is home to a disproportionate number of companies that have grown from garage startups into global giants. But what is the secret to these startups’ extraordinary success? Contrary to popular narrative, it’s not their superhuman founders or savvy venture capitalists. Rather, it’s that they have learned how to blitzscale.
Blitzscaling is a specific set of practices for igniting and managing dizzying growth; an accelerated path to the stage in a startup’s life-cycle where the most value is created. It prioritizes speed over efficiency in an environment of uncertainty, and allows a company to go from “startup” to “scaleup” at a furious pace that captures the market.
Kevin Sneader
Global Managing Partner of McKinsey & Company
McKinsey and Company operates in 65 countries globally, with 28,000 staff and 2,000 partners.
Join us to hear the firm’s new Global Managing Partner talk about the economic challenges and opportunities we face today and how he will steer McKinsey through these.
September 2018
Demystifying fintech
Rishi Khosla, CEO of ACORN OakNorth, on building one of the world’s only profitable fintech unicorns
Rishi and his business partner established ACORN OakNorth to solve the problem around bespoke lending to SMEs, leveraging big data and machine learning in order to do this.
They used the ACORN machine platform to establish OakNorth in the UK (the third new bank to receive a license from the Bank of England in 150 years) focusing on lending £0.5m-£30m to businesses. In its first 30 months, it has lent over £1.25bn to SMEs, with no credit defaults, and has made over £10.5m profit.
Outside of the UK, the ACORN machine platform is licensed to other banks and lenders, enabling them to replicate OakNorth’s success with SME lending in the UK, in their own market/s.
The business is one of the fastest growing financial companies in European history and has secured over £360m investment since inception, with a value in excess of £1bn.
July 2018
Alex Cruz
Chairman and CEO of British Airways
Alex was appointed Chairman and CEO of British Airways in 2016.
British Airways, which is part of the IAG Group, carries more than 145,000 customers every day and 40 million customers a year. The company currently has approximately 45,000 employees including 16,500 cabin crew and 3,900 pilots. It will celebrate its 100th anniversary on 25 August, 2019.
June 2018
Morten Hansen
Great at Work
New-York Times bestseller and UC Berkeley professor Morten T. Hansen has published a new management book — Great at Work — that for the first time uses a rigorous study of 5,000 managers and employees to answer the question: why do some people perform exceptionally well in their job, while others don’t?
The book shatters conventional wisdoms and sheds new light on what it takes to excel. Top performers work hard but “do less”: they painstakingly say no to requests and instead obsess over extremely few tasks. They don’t practice “10,000 hours to master a skill” but rather focus on the quality of their learning efforts. They are not trying to be nice in meetings and seek consensus, but instead push for heated debate.
April 2018
The collision of demographics, automation and inequality
Karen Harris, Bain and Company Macro Trends Group
Bain’s new Labour 2030 analysis shows that the collision of demographics, automation and inequality have the potential to dramatically reshape our world, triggering economic disruption far greater than we have experienced over the past 60 years.
In the US, a new wave of investment in automation could stimulate as much as $8 trillion in incremental investments and abruptly lift interest rates. By the end of the 2020s, automation may eliminate 20% to 25% of current jobs, hitting middle- to low-income workers the hardest.
As investments peak and then decline, anemic demand-growth is likely to constrain economic expansion, and global interest rates may again test zero percent. Faced with market imbalances and growth-stifling levels of inequality, many societies may seek to reset the government’s role in the marketplace.
Bain and Company’s Chairman, Orit Gadiesh, will introduce Karen Harris one of this report’s three authors, for a discussion of the findings.
March 2018
February 2018
Capitalism without capital
Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake
In mid-2000s, a quiet revolution occurred. For the first time, American businesses began to invest more in intangible assets (such as design, branding, R&D or software) than tangible assets (machinery, buildings and computers), a trend that has been mirrored in other rich countries.
In Capitalism without Capital, Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake bring together a decade of research on how to measure intangible investment and what its impacts are. They argue that the rise of intangible investment is an underappreciated cause of some of the greatest economic concerns of our time, including increasing economic inequality and stagnating productivity levels.
January 2018
Dido Harding
on preparing businesses for the opportunities and threats of the digital revolution
Massive amounts of data, cyber-attacks and artificial intelligence are changing the landscape of business in profound ways. Understanding how to navigate this new environment poses an enormous challenge for leaders. Hear from Dido Harding, former CEO of TalkTalk, about her own experience and what she believes will be the biggest challenges in years to come.
October 2023
Luca Faloni
Founder and CEO
Building a luxury fashion brand from idea to international scale
As Luca Faloni approaches its 10th year, Luca joins us to discuss founding and growing the business, his decision to sell exclusively online and through his own stores, the economics of direct to consumer brands and their role in a fast changing retail landscape.
September 2023
Ian Stuart
Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of HSBC UK Bank plc
Opportunities for the UK's innovation ecosystem
Following HSBC UK’s acquisition of SVB UK, Ian Stuart will talk about the global opportunities for the UK’s innovation ecosystem. He’ll outline how one of the world’s largest banking and financial services organisations plans to support the growth ambitions of founders, investors and sponsors in the tech and life sciences sector.
June 2023
July 2023
Sir Danny Alexander
Vice President for Policy and Strategy, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
Reform of multilateral development banks to meet the climate challenge
Danny will be joining us fresh from his return from China to share his thoughts on the necessary reform of multilateral development banks to meet the climate challenge.
May 2023
Paul Johnson CBE
Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies
Follow the Money: How Much Does Britain Cost?
Paul, and the enormously respected Institute for Fiscal Studies, aim to hold the Government to account, monitoring where Government revenues come from, where they are spent, how that has changed and how it needs to change.
March 2023
February 2023
Rohitesh Dhawan
President and CEO of the International Council of Mining and Minerals
Critical minerals and the energy transition
The transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy will need huge amounts of copper, lithium, cobalt and other critical minerals, and there’s a massive expected demand-supply gap. How can this be resolved in the context of geopolitical tensions between the US and China and the war in Russia, and could it put the entire energy transition and our climate goals at risk?
January 2023
Brian McBride
CBI President
Championing economic growth
The current political and economic climate makes it more important than ever that businesses, whatever their size, speak with one voice – and that government is listening. Now both major parties see growth and the role of business in that as key and integral. How does Brian and the CBI walk that fine line of dealing with the major parties and holding the Government to account?
October 2022
Jim O'Neill and Duncan Johnson
Chair and Chief Executive of Northern Gritstone
Northern Gritstone
Learn more about this ground-breaking new investment company based in the north of England, founded by the Universities of Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield. Northern Gritstone is dedicated to start-up financing of university spin-out companies in some of the UK’s fastest growing sectors such as advanced materials, energy, health technology and cognitive computation.
September 2022
Jakob Stausholm
CEO, Rio Tinto Group
Leadership lessons from the front line
Since taking over as CEO of Rio Tinto Group in January 2021, Jakob has dealt with the fall-out from the destruction of aboriginal cultural heritage in 2020 and his own company’s findings of a culture of systemic racism, sexism and bullying in 2022, all while steering a global mining and metals giant through a commodity boom. Jakob will share his leadership lessons and his vision for the future of Rio Tinto and the global mining industry.
March 2022
Merryn Somerset Webb
Editor-in-Chief of Money Week
Share Power: How ordinary people can change the way that capitalism works - and make money too
Merryn will take us deep into the world of corporate capitalism – from the privatisation of state-owned companies in the 1980s to the financial crash of 2008 and the growth of the modern multinational – to show us how capitalism went wrong and how, with six simple recommendations, every one of us now has the power to make it work for us.
Danny Rimer
Partner at Index Ventures
How Index became Europe's most successful venture firm
The philosophy of Index Ventures is to invest in people, not deals. A deal is transactional, relationships endure and are based on curiosity, thoughtfulness and deep conviction. Danny joins us to share the magic of Index’s success.
February 2022
Mark Carney meets Sebastian Mallaby
UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance; Author and Financial Journalist
The Power Law – How Venture Capital Disrupted the World (in collaboration with How to Academy)
The driving force behind Silicon Valley and the digital economy, venture capital has supercharged the 21st century. Mark Carney and Sebastian Mallaby join us with an insider’s guide.
Emil Woods
Managing Partner, Liberty City Ventures
Investing in blockchain technologies
Liberty City Ventures have been involved in the blockchain space since 2010 (buying and mining bitcoins) and cofounded/incubated two major companies in the blockchain infrastructure ecosystem (Paxos and Lukka). As part of our crypto series, Emil joins us to share his expertise in this space.
October 2021
Adam Grant meets Reid Hoffman
Organisational Psychologist and bestselling author; Silicon Valley Entrepreneur and Investor
Lessons for Entrepreneurial Success, in collaboration with How to Academy
Mark Cutifani
CEO Anglo American
Mining in a Decarbonising World
Anglo American have committed to being carbon neutral across all operations by 2040. They are on a mission to use innovative practices and the latest technologies to mine, process, move and market products to their customers – and to discover new resources – safely and sustainably. Mark joins us to explain how.
November 2021
May 2021
Dr. Mike Lynch
Technologist, entrepreneur, investor
Darktrace, cyber attacks and what needs to be done to prevent more British companies from listing in the US
Hot on the heels of the successful listing of Darktrace on the LSE, Mike joins us to discuss London’s vulnerability to cyber attacks, together with Darktrace’s decision to list in the UK and what needs to be done to prevent more British companies listing in the US.
September 2021
June 2021
Gillian Tett
Editor-at-Large at the Financial Times
Anthro-Vision: How Anthropology Can Explain Business and Life
In conversation with Diana Fox Carney, Gillian will be explaining how anthropology can help make sense of the corporate world. Drawing on themes from her book, Anthro-Vision, she reveals why ‘sense-making’ can explain the most erratic behaviour of Wall Street bankers, and why concealed systems of barter shape our relationship with Silicon Valley. She delves into the cultural shifts driving investment in new markets and green issues. And she reveals what anthropology can tell us about our own workplaces, too: by identifying the hidden tribes within the office, or pinpointing which rituals are binding together a team.
April 2021
Meltem Demirors
Chief Strategy Officer of CoinShares
Power, Politics, and Protocols: Why Cryptocurrencies are Much More than Money
Meltem will be discussing macro and meta beyond crypto as an asset class and delve more into other shifts in the macro landscape including compute, semiconductors, energy, and new forms of social organisation.
March 2021
Carlos Ghosn
Former Chairman and CEO of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance
The Great Escape
The former Nissan boss faced years behind bars but escaped to Beirut stowed away in a box on a private jet. He talks to John Arlidge about the great escape, his ordeal in Japan, doing business in Japan and how he’s trying to revive the Lebanese capital.
Dame Vivian Hunt
Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company
How businesses can serve everyone, not just the shareholders.
Companies worldwide are pledging to play a more meaningful role in the well-being of their employees, customers and the environment. How can they turn their promises into action? From creating a representative boardroom to committing to measurable sustainability goals, Vivian discusses the necessary changes companies can make to embrace stakeholder capitalism – and shares how it could change business for good.
February 2021
Adam Grant
Organisational Psychologist and bestselling author
The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know, in collaboration with How To Academy and Penguin Live
As an organisational psychologist, Adam Grant is an expert on opening other people’s minds, and our own. He is one of the world’s most-cited, most prolific, and most influential researchers in business and economics, and, as Wharton’s top-rated professor, his research is sought-after by global powerhouses such as NASA and the Gates Foundation.
To celebrate the release of his new book, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know, Grant will use real-life case studies and the latest scientific research to explain how to develop our individual, interpersonal and collective rethinking skills, distilling complex research into practical, useable terms.
Dror Poleg
Co-Chair of the Urban Land Institute’s Technology and Innovation Council in New York
A roadmap to the future of real estate.
January 2021
Jim Collins
Bestselling author and business thinker
Beyond Entrepreneurship, in collaboration with How To Academy.
In conversation with Andrew Hill, Management Editor of the Financial Times, Jim will build upon the insights of his seminal classic Beyond Entrepreneurship. Bringing together key concepts developed from three decades of writing and research into one integrated framework, Jim will explore how to build a company that delivers superior results, makes a distinctive impact, and achieves lasting endurance.
December 2020
Jim Mellon
Entrepreneur, investor, philanthropist
The future of food is being developed in labs across the world – it will be cleaner, safer, more ethical and, importantly, will soon be cheaper. Once price parity with conventional meats is reached, there will be no turning back - this is Moo’s Law
Jim Mellon has a vision that within the next couple of decades world agriculture will be radically transformed by the advent of technological innovations for the creation of cultivated and plant-based proteins. His book grounds the reader in why such an advancement is absolutely necessary and informs them of the investments they could make to become part of the New Agricultural Revolution themselves. The harrowing effects on our environment, animal cruelty in food and fashion, and the struggling ability to feed the world’s ever growing population gives us no choice but to grow meat in labs or derive our proteins from plant-based sources.
Richard Edelman in conversation with Chuka Umunna
CEO of Edelman
In conversation with Chuka Umunna, Richard will be discussing how we work towards a more just society: how business can partner with other institutions to demonstrate public leadership and to chart a future that changes the terms of social engagement and delivers a more just society.
As the world confronts the spread of COVID-19, people are searching for reliable information from trusted sources. The problem is a dearth of credible information due to inaccuracy in social media and politicization of the problem.
November 2020
Viktor Shvets
Global Strategist at Macquarie Bank
The Great Rupture - Do we need to be free to be innovative, Prosperous or even Happy?
Do we need to be free to be innovative, prosperous or even happy? Viktor’s book learns from the past and projects into the future and the lessons of the last five centuries were unequivocal – without freedom, there could be no prosperity or happiness. However, does it still hold true in the Information Age? Humanity is at a major turning point, and how we respond to the merger of technology and financialization will decide our future. As we hurtle towards that uncertain future, will it be capitalism or communism, feudalism or despotism? For the first time in at least five centuries, we have an opportunity and tools to build a different society and economy. Will we embrace the challenge?
Marko Papic
Chief Strategist, Clocktower Group
Geopolitical alpha: An investment framework for predicting the future
Not long ago, financial markets danced and central bankers called the tune. Today, investors confront a discordant world transformed by political paradigm shifts. In his new book, Geopolitical Alpha, investment strategist Marko Papic shares his framework for making sense of the new macro landscape. By focusing on material constraints, investors can ignore the ephemeral and irrelevant, generating consistent alpha even in the face of extreme uncertainty.
July 2020
Alannah Weston, Chairman of Selfridges Group
The future of retail
Gerry Fox, Pi member, multi award-winning arts documentary maker and visual artist, will be in discussion with Alannah Weston about the future of retail immediately post lockdown and over the longer term. Building her ideas around the key theme of sustainability meets creativity, Alannah will explore how strong values and empathy will be critical to engage in new ways with customers to redefine and reinvent retail.
May 2020
Dr. Kai-Fu Lee
Chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures
Dr. Lee has been in artificial intelligence research, development, and investment for more than 30 years. His company, Sinovation Ventures, currently manages US$2 billion in dual currency investment funds and is a leading venture capital firm focusing on developing the next generation of Chinese high-tech companies.
He will be talking to us about how technology can help us overcome today’s challenges and how the pandemic has shifted the landscape he described when he last talked to the Pi audience back in May 2019.
Gillian Tett
Business and finance in a post Covid world
Join us to hear the FT US Managing Editor’s view of where we will end up economically as this crisis recedes.
What happens to new ideas of stakeholder capitalism and “moral money”? Will the idea of a more inclusive economy be put on ice as companies battle for survival or will the shock to our economic system yield meaningful positive change?
Mark Carney, UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance
Mainstreaming sustainable finance
In December 2019, Mark Carney was appointed by the Secretary General of the United Nation as UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance. In January 2020, The UK Prime Minister appointed him as Finance Adviser to COP26, the critical global climate talks that will take place in Glasgow in November 2020.
In this event he will address the role of the financial sector in meeting global carbon reduction goals.
April 2020
Sir Ian Davis
The corporate sector and the crisis
Diana will be catching up with Sir Ian Davis to understand how the various companies on whose boards he sits are coping with the crisis.
Johnson and Johnson is at the cutting edge of crisis response and is in the race to find a vaccine while Rolls Royce has been asked to start producing ventilators in the UK. Meantime, BP has to cope with the collapsing price of oil.
March 2020
Matt Moulding
Co-founder and CEO of The Hut Group
Please join Diana for a conversation with Matt Moulding, the co-Founder and CEO of The Hut Group (THG).
THG is a global technology platform and e-commerce business in the health and beauty space, operating primarily through Look Fantastic and My Protein.
It is one of the fastest growing technology startups in the UK, with 2019 net revenues well in excess of £1 Billion, employing over 7,500 people in Manchester. THG operates in more than 50 countries, with 70% of its sales from markets oustide the UK and 70% of its sales coming from its own brands.
Diana will be asking Matt: what prompted him to act so quickly; what he has done to respond and prepare his people, management team and operations in the 10 weeks since mid January; how he continues to adapt and manage his organisation as the crisis spreads globally; how sales and consumer behaviour have shifted in Asia and recently closer to home; and how he sees global commerce and supply chains evolving in the wake of the crisis.
January 2020
How Jim Simons launched the quant revolution
Gregory Zuckerman of The Wall Street Journal
Shortlisted for the Financial Times / McKinsey Business Book of the Year award, Gregory Zuckerman’s latest book paints a portrait of Jim Simons, the founder of Renaissance Technologies and the greatest money maker in modern financial history.
Drawing on unprecedented access to Simons and dozens of current and former employees, Greg tells the gripping story of how a world-class mathematician and former code breaker pioneered a data-driven, algorithmic approach that’s now sweeping the world.
But this story goes beyond finance. As Renaissance became a market force, Simons became a major figure in scientific research, education and liberal politics. Another senior executive at Renaissance, Robert Mercer, is perhaps more responsible than anyone for the Trump presidency and also impacted the Brexit campaign.
December 2019
Understanding the impact of investments
Clara Barby, CEO of the Impact Management Project
Work done by the Impact Management Project is helping investors measure, disclose, aggregate and compare impact across a wide variety of metrics and asset classes with a view to doing less harm and more good.
Clara will talk about the latest in impact measurement and its relevance for all asset classes and all types of investor.
October 2019
Impact investing: an introduction
Elizabeth Corley of the Impact Investing Institute and David Blood of Generation Investment Management
In conjunction with the UK’s new Impact Investing Institute, Pi will host a series of events to demystify the world of impact investing.
The goal of this first event will be to lay out the basics. What is impact investing? How does it differ from ESG and other types of bounded or purpose-oriented investment? What types of asset class are involved? Who can get involved? What type of returns should investors expect in this space?
All these and many more questions will be answered in this highly interactive session with speakers including Elizabeth Corley, Chair of the Management Board of the Impact Investing Institute and David Blood, co-founder and senior partner at Generation Investment Management.
Character-based engagement, virtue and performance
Peter Rea, VP integrity and ethics at Parker Hannifin
When workers at a factory in Tijuana Mexico were asked what could be done to make their lives better, their surprising request was that their leaders focus not on them but on those who lived in neighbouring areas in dire poverty.
Is this just a nice story or is there a business case?
It turns out that the relationship between engagement and financial results is well documented. The Tijuana team at Fortune 250 company, Parker Hannifin, had the highest engagement scores and financial results.
Parker now operates a business underpinned by character-based virtues to protect its culture and create competitive advantage. Virtues provide a forum to unite rather than divide people and people practice virtue not because they have to, but because they want to.
May 2019
Radical ideas from the world's smartest minds
David Rowan, founding Editor of Wired-UK
Too often, companies think they can innovate through jargon: with talk of change agents and co-creation gurus, ideas portals and webinars, make-a-thons and hackfests, paradigm shifts and pilgrimages to Silicon Valley.
It’s mostly pointless innovation theatre — corporate nonsense that has little to do with delivering real change.
Traveling the globe in search of the most exciting and pioneering startups building the future, David Rowan has got to know the founders of WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Google, Spotify, Xiaomi, Didi, Nest, Twitter and countless other ambitious entrepreneurs. During his quest, he has also discovered some genuinely exciting and transformative approaches to innovation, often in places you’d least expect.
April 2019
Mark Pilkington
Why the retail industry is broken and what can be done to fix it
The news is full of stories about disappearing retail chains, from BHS and Maplin in the UK to Toys’R’Us, Aeropostale and A&P in the US. Recognised names are vanishing overnight with the loss of hundreds of stores and thousands of jobs. As such large organisations disappear, so the malls, shopping centres, high streets and main streets become less appealing to visit.
Mark Pilkington argues that, while the decline in manufacturing receives more news attention, the retail sector is more important in terms of job numbers. Anything that jeopardises this sector will therefore have a deep and lasting impact on millions of lives, as well as on public policy.
While many people point a finger at the ‘Amazon effect’, this is an oversimplification. Deeper forces are at work that are changing people’s relationships with brands, the balance of power between producers and consumers, and the whole nature of the supply chain that has existed since the industrial revolution.
March 2019
Timo Boldt
CEO and Founder of Gousto on hiring for growth
Gousto’s CEO and founder, Timo Boldt, will talk about how he has built the company from zero employees in 2012 to 500 people in 2019. He will cover what he has learnt about people and culture along the way, with a special focus on how to hire the right people for the right stage of business.
Gousto’s business is the home delivery of recipe kits. The company leads an industry with a unique blend of technology and food: more than half of their orders come from artificial intelligence-powered recommendations, for instance.
Amy Edmondson
Creating psychological safety in the workplace for learning, innovation and growth
According to a 2017 Gallup poll, only three in ten employees, believe their opinions count at work. Even if a company hires creative individuals, innovative ideas will never have a chance unless people are encouraged to speak out without fear of being discounted or demeaned.
Drawing on 20 years of research and field work, Amy Edmondson sheds light on the crucial workplace factor of psychological safety: what it is (and isn’t); how it affects employee performance in wide-ranging organizations at every level; and what business leaders need to do to build it—and get it back when it’s lost.
January 2019
Understanding digital engagement
Matt Vignieri of digital marketing technology company, Kenshoo
In today’s age of digital, mobile and always on business, brands face a complex challenge: how can they attract new customers and keep loyal ones buying their products or services?
For brands to succeed, they need to embrace the digital landscape, make it part of the customer journey and maintain an agile approach to marketing and sales.
Join Matt Vignieri of Kenshoo, a digital marketing technology company, to take a fresh look at what is going on in the digital space and how existing brands can themselves become the disruptors.
November 2017
Tony Fernandes
Group CEO of AirAsia and co-founder Tune Group
Tony Fernandes is one of Asia’s best-known, and most charismatic, entrepreneurs. In 2001 he acquired AirAsia turning it into the hugely successful budget airline that it is today, carrying 50 million passengers a year to 120 different destinations and democratising air travel in Asia.
The face of Apprentice Asia, chairman of Queen’s Park Rangers FC, and owner of many other businesses, he is without doubt an exceptional leader with a hands-on approach to business. In FLYING HIGH, his long-awaited memoir, he shares his inspiring story.
September 2017
David Rowan
How smart organisations are rethinking their business opportunities in the face of technology-led disruption
David Rowan is Editor-at-large and founding Editor-in-chief of WIRED’s UK edition. He’s taken 120 flights in the past year to investigate the companies and entrepreneurs changing our world, recently spending time with the founders of WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Google, Spotify, Xiaomi, Nest, Twitter and countless other disruptive startups from Tel Aviv to Shenzhen.
He is currently on a global quest for examples of successful companies that have found effective ways to innovate in the face of technology-led disruption.
Women in the workplace
Dominic Barton, Global Managing Partner, McKinsey & Co.
There is a growing consensus among top executives that gender diversity is both an ethical and a business imperative. Yet progress is painfully slow. Despite modest improvements, women are underrepresented at every level of today’s corporations, especially in senior positions.
Why is gender inequality in the workplace so persistent despite growing attention from business leaders and the media—and what should we all do differently?
Drawing on research conducted in partnership with Leanin.Org, Dominic Barton will talk about what makes this such a stubborn problem and what practical steps can be taken to translate top-level commitment into a truly inclusive work environment.
March 2017
Data, Machines and People
James Manyika, Director of the McKinsey Global Institute
Drawing on the two reports that he has recently co-authored (Harnessing Automation for a Future that Works and The Age of Analytics: Competing in a Data-driven World) James Manyika, Director of the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), will share his view of what we can expect from, and how we should prepare for, an increasingly data and technology intensive world.
May 2017
E-Commerce and the Future Fifty
Breakfast with the UK's most influential late stage tech companies
In partnership with Tech City’s Future Fifty initiative, Pi is hosting an extended breakfast around opportunities in the e-commerce area, introduced by Brian McBride, Chairman of ASOS and Wiggle and a member of the UK Government’s Digital Advisory Board.
Hear from some of the UK’s most exciting and forward thinking new consumer goods companies about the landscape and challenges they face, both in the UK – with data protection and Brexit uncertainty – and in terms of expansion overseas.
November 2016
Disruption in Finance
Charlotte Hogg, COO Bank of England
Lawrence Wintermeyer, CEO Innovate Finance
Lawrence Wintermeyer, CEO Innovate Finance
Also featuring: Mariano Belinky, Managing Partner, Santander InnoVentures; Taras Chaban, CEO, Sybenetix; Dan Cobley, Managing Partner for FinTech, Blenheim Chalcot; James Sherwin Smith, CEO, Growth Street; Nadeem Shaikh, CEO, Anthemis; Dr Tim Sievers, CEO, Deposit Solutions.
Digital innovation is driving unprecedented levels of change in the financial services sector and attracting huge sums of money: over US$12bn of venture capital was raised globally in 2015, and over US$16bn during the first half of 2016. Top tier financial institutions are entering the space and new technologies and plays in distributed ledger technologies, machine learning, analytics and digital security are beginning to reshape the wholesale capital markets infrastructure (in the same way that we are already seeing in retail finance).
In partnership with Innovate Finance, the UK’s membership organization for FinTech companies, Pi is hosting an extended breakfast to provide an inside view of the disruption, the disrupters and opportunities for investment. Lawrence Wintermeyer from Innovate Finance will provide an overview of the sector in the UK, its growth prospects and opportunities. Charlotte Hogg, COO of the Bank of England, will bring the regulator’s perspective. We will then hear from a number of top FinTech companies from across the sector about their own plans and objectives for growth – followed by discussion.
February 2016
Professor Dr Herminia Ibarra
Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader
Today’s breakneck pace of change has an immense impact on leaders – and as a result, on the organizations they run. All too often, people remain stuck in outdated mindsets and modes of operating, even after others recognize the need for change. Leaders need to learn to pivot even when there are no obvious signals guiding their way.
In this unconventional book, Ibarra, one of the world’s foremost experts on leadership transitions, provides the first practical guide on how to change when you also need to lead. Defying standard leadership development guidance, which encourages deep self-reflection into strengths and weaknesses, this book shows that the most effective way to change is through action, not analysis, and by learning from experience, not introspection. In short, it will teach you to change from the outside in by first acting like a leader and then thinking like one.
May 2016
Alibaba: The house that Jack Ma Built
Duncan Clark
This book presents an engrossing and eye-opening insider’s account of how a teacher built one of the most valuable companies in the world – rivalling Walmart, Amazon, and eBay – and forever changed our global economy.
In just a decade and half, Jack Ma, a man who rose from humble beginnings and started his career as an English teacher, founded and built Alibaba into the second largest Internet company in the world. The company’s $25 billion IPO in 2014 was the world’s largest, valuing the company more than Facebook or Coca Cola.
Granted unprecedented access to a wealth of new material including exclusive interviews, Clark draws on his own first-hand experience of key figures integral to Alibaba’s rise to create an authoritative, compelling narrative account of how Alibaba and its charismatic creator have transformed the way that Chinese exercise their new found economic freedom.
December 2015
Lord Browne of Madingley
Connect - How Companies Succeed by Engaging Radically with Society
Connect fundamentally redefines the role of business, combining captivating stories from inside today’s boardrooms with absorbing history and original research.
Drawing on the experience of John Browne, former CEO of BP, with the assistance of McKinsey consultants Robin Nuttall and Tommy Stadlen, this book articulates and explores the recurring rift between big business and society, offering a practical manifesto for reconciliation. Breaking the centuries-old cycle of anti-business sentiment is possible, but it requires genuine leadership and a new way of thinking about commerce. Connect identifies four tenets of ‘connected leadership’, a radical new paradigm which shows how companies and executives can thrive by close engagement with society.
November 2015
New Entrepreneurs Foundation
with Oliver Pawle, Lord Mervyn Davies of Abersoch and Sir Nigel Rudd
The New Entrepreneurs Foundation (NEF) was founded by Oliver Pawle and Dee Stirling with the support of Lord Davies of Abersoch and Sir Nigel Rudd in 2010. The Charity’s vision is to develop the entrepreneurial leaders of the future and to create an active community of bright young entrepreneurs with skills, knowledge and vision to start, build and lead scalable businesses.
The organisation runs a unique one-year programme in the UK which combines hands-on work experience with a high-growth start-up, an interactive programme of training workshops, individual coaching and business mentoring.
October 2015
Gillian Tett
The Silo Effect: The Peril of Expertise and the Promise of Breaking Down Barriers
From award-winning columnist and journalist Gillian Tett comes a brilliant examination of how our tendency to create functional departments – silos – hinders our work…and how some people and organisations can break those silos down to unleash innovation.
One of the characteristics of industrial age enterprises is that they are organised around functional departments. This organisational structure results in both limited information and restricted thinking. The Silo Effect asks these basic questions: why do humans working in modern institutions collectively act in ways that sometimes seem stupid? Why do normally clever people fail to see risks and opportunities that later seem blindingly obvious? Why, as psychologist Daniel Kahneman put it, are we sometimes so “blind to our own blindness”?
April 2015
January 2015
Lynda Gratton
The Key – How Corporations Succeed by Solving the World’s Toughest Problems
In The Key, Gratton maps out how bringing resilience to a fragile world starts with what happens inside a corporation when intelligence and wisdom are amplified, emotional vitality enhanced, and social connections harnessed. She explains how corporations can leverage this inner resilience to help solve global problems and how a corporation s unique innovative, scaling and mobilizing, and alliance building capabilities are some of the tools for combating global ills.