Fortune Global Forum 2024

Tom Brady, Seven-Time World Champion and Entrepreneur, Nitin Nohria, Executive Chairman, Thrive Capital, In conversation with: Alyson Shontell, Fortune

Fortune Global Forum 2024: Trust And Teamwork - A CEO Playbook

Photograph by Michael O’Shea for Fortune

Conferences

Bjarke Ingels, Founder and Creative Director, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG)
In conversation with: Clay Chandler, Fortune

Fortune Global Forum 2024: Building the Future

Please. Thank you. Ok, we're so pleased to have you uh here. Um There are so many great projects you're working on that. We want to ask you uh about you're uh dividing up your time now between uh between New York and, and Copenhagen. Um You just finished your, your big new studio in Copenhagen. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Actually, we, we, we build our own building at the, at the tip of the pier uh uh inside a small little park. We, we designed sort of reclaiming the industrial port for, for the future neighborhoods of the city and for those of our audience who are New Yorkers, maybe let's take off some of the things that you're most proud of, of your projects in New York. You've done so many. Uh Yeah, like here in the city, we started doing VF 57. It's nicknamed the Court Scraper because it's somehow combining the, the density and verticality of a skyscraper with the communal space of a, of a courtyard building. So, um so it looks kind of a warped pyramid uh on, on the west side highway. If you, if you land in Teterboro, you, you'll you'll see it sort of fly flying in, right. And then the spiral, we, we just finished the spiral, which is the home of pfizer HS BC and, and, and just TPG. Uh and it's essentially a, a classic Manhattan skyscraper, but because we try to make the floor plates as large as possible because tenants really want the largest possible floor plates. Uh We have to, we rub up against the setback requirements. So instead of making a classic zig rod with these kind of incremental steps, we distributed the setbacks in a spiral of uh 66 terraces that cascade up around the building. So each floor has access to their own outdoor garden with trees and plants, but they also have the potential for a double height space. So like one of the tenants have 14 floors and each floor is connected to the floor above and the floor below. So you can actually walk inside the building through throughout the whole office space. So instead of like waiting endlessly at the elevator, you can actually see your colleagues several floors above and, and, and go to them and to them. That's great. Um And I might add that HS BC have found that without changing their company policy, they've gone from uh less than 40% attendance to 80% attendance after moving into the new space because the the joy and and productivity of uh of, of, of being in a better space and, and seeing each other seems to be uh seems to be working more than uh than uh than mandate than badgering people. So, um I want to talk about some of your recent kind of more futuristic projects. But before that, maybe we can go back just like kind of your origins. What drew you to architecture in the, in the beginning because you started very young uh as an architect. You know, I, I wanted to be uh I wanted to be a cartoonist and, and uh the in the absence of a Cartoon Academy in Denmark, the, the, the Royal Danish Art Academy School of Architecture was the closest match. And, and because uh because architecture is free in like education, university is free in Denmark, you can be a little bit more frivolous with your choices. So I thought spent a few years getting good at drawing buildings and landscapes. So essentially drawing the background for the stories I wanted to draw and the characters. Uh and then I, then I became fascinated with the background and uh and, and stayed course on on the plan b marvelous. Um You have a couple of sort of ideas that are associated with your work that are interesting and I hope you can maybe expand on a little bit for us. One is this idea of hedonistic sustainability and the other is a kind of practical utopianism, utopianism. What do those ideas mean? No, it's um the, the, the, the first one, like the first project we ever did uh is actually um uh the Copenhagen Harbor Bath. And it's because uh like two decades ago that because of investments in, in uh in, in, in surface sewers and other things like suddenly the, the port of Copenhagen became so clean that you could swim in it. And our first project was to design the Copenhagen Harbor Bath that essentially extends the life of the city into the water around it. And on opening day, you suddenly saw the Copenhagen is jumping in the port in the middle of the city instead of taking their car for hours to get to the Hamptons or the equivalent of the Hamptons in uh in Copenhagen. And I, I felt this was part of a bigger idea, the idea that the clean port is not only nice for the fish, it's amazing for the citizens that live in that city that the sustainable city or the sustainable building building is not only better for the environment, it's also more enjoyable for the people that inhabit it. And, and we've taken this, we've been pursuing this idea of hedonistic sustainability in various ways. But in um in 2019, uh we, we opened Copen Hill, which which is the cleanest waste to energy power plant in the world in Copenhagen. It's so clean that the steam that comes out of the chimney is actually cleaner than the air of Copenhagen. So, so um, it's, it's a true fact. And so the, the, the, the roof, we designed it, basically the machinery inside steps down. So we designed it with a sloping roof. So, um, the facade is actually the tallest, uh, manmade climbing wall in the world. You need to be a pretty skilled climber, uh, to, to make it to the top. And the roof is an alpine park where you can hike and, and ski downhill all year skiing. Uh I mean, Denmark uh depressingly never gets any medals at the Winter Olympics. Uh But we hope eventually this could change now that the Copenhagen can. This is an extraordinary building. I mean, this shows, I think we've seen videos of this uh Copen Hill. It's actually, it's just amazing. It's a ski resort on top of a recycling plan. Actually, one of the best free solo climbers in the world recently made it to uh to the top without harness. I I'm happy like a very stressful video to watch. Uh OK. So, uh and then practical utopianism. What's, what's that? Yeah. So that's essentially, I, I actually think that fundamentally a lot and I think this transcends the architecture. Uh a a lot of the key breakthroughs in technology or in culture or in, in politics for that matter, could be defined as oxymorons when seemingly mutually exclusive or contradictory elements or ideas become unified. And you can say most people would say Hedonistic sustainability is an oxymoron you, you should either choose enjoyment or, or or the environment, but you can actually have both and sometimes the better, the better the environment, the more the enjoyment of, of living there. Right? Similarly, Pragmatic Utopia is, is essentially this idea that if utopia is this concept of a place so perfect that it can only exist in fiction. Uh And if pragmatism is the idea of dealing with the world as it is, then every project, every building design, every public space, every neighborhood, every master plan has the possibility to be a pragmatic utopia. And actually a great way to explain. I think the significance of architecture is the Danish word for design is a form Ging, which literally means form giving. Because when you're designing something you're giving form to that, which has not yet been given form. In other words, you're giving form to the future because when you're designing a space or building, you are giving form to the world or a part of the world that you would like to find yourself living in, in the future. So, in that sense, and and I think that is essentially the idea of pragmatic utopia that each project becomes a small fragment of the future you would like to see uh see happening. So I want to talk about some of your recent projects which are very much that giving form to the future and not only designing this world but designing other worlds in some cases. Um There is one project that you are working on that is literally a Moonshot. Uh I wonder if we could see some images of that. Do we have we put up uh some slides here or do you have a clicker? Oh, yeah. So um at least we, we see them. Um We have um Yeah, so um we, we're working with um uh it's called Project Olympus. It's part of the Artemis program of uh of NASA. Um Let me see. And um it's essentially working with a, with a 3d printing company icon out of Austin to develop the technology to uh to build the first uh the first building on the moon. Um And it's using solar powered lasers to essentially melt moon dust into a sort of lunar obsidian. So when, when you, when you, when you melt it in a kiln, it becomes a kind of result. And when you sin it with lasers, it becomes what in game of Thrones they would call dragon glass. So like a black glass, like very strong stone. And in 2028 we are scheduled to land or NAS A is scheduled to land. The first laser printer uh that essentially has a mission success is to create the equivalent of a sidewalk tile. And, and if that, if that sidewalk tile um passes the structural tests, uh then it would release the funding for making the first permanent human habitat. Uh on, on the South pole of the moon, uh essentially melting moon dust into the building material of the future. So when, if it clears that threshold, when would kind of construction and design work on that again? Yeah, but that should be 32. No, no, we're, we're designing the, the, the new Philharmonic in Prague. It's scheduled to open in 32 and we, we're designing the, the, the new airport in Zurich. Uh It's gonna be the largest building uh made out of timber actually. Uh but uh it's scheduled to open fully in 2035. So, so uh we, we have projects uh on the moon with a schedule tighter than uh than, than some of our terrestrial work. My gosh, so futuristic but not that far in the future. Um Amazing. Well, um you mentioned that um you know, the 3D technology designed for this very kind of utopian project also has practical uses right here. Uh You know, on planet Earth, you say a word about that. No, exactly like that because the current technology that icon is using. And, and we are, we right now, we're building the first 3d Printed Hotel in Marfa, Texas Cosco. And we just finished the first 3d Printed Neighborhood Wolf Ranch in Austin for Lenar. Um But it's a gantry, a crane. So it has a maximum print height of 11 ft and a maximum width of 30 ft. That's the span of the gantry crane and also you need to send guys out to put down rails. So, so and you need to level the side. So there is a lot of uh handcraft. So of course, here we wanted to land and deploy immediately. So we got the idea of a single pivot and a kind of multi access arm. So to to be able to deliver that technology um icon has developed the Phoenix the next generation and there's a functioning prototype and it's suddenly instead of 11 ft, it can print 27 ft of height. So multi stories, it has a much greater reach and you don't need to level the site. So you can build on, on much more exciting topographies put that out there. So all of this means that you can deliver much faster, spending way less hours. So in a way you increase the design freedom and the quality, but you lower the cost and increase the speed. So you end up having these positive uh earth bounded side effects of trying to solve a very, very hard piece of designing engineering on on the moon. So just like the the the moon race, the space race and and DARPA, uh you're seeing that this, this urge to solve very difficult problems, ends up having fantastic spinoffs on sort of terrestrial application. Um Let's talk about a different kind of utopia. Uh The work that you're doing in in Bhutan is is fascinating. Maybe you could show us some of those images. Let me see. Um Is anyone Benz a ban? Pretty good? Um It's one of the most beautiful countries in the world. Uh say a little bit about this. Yes. So, so these, these are, are different images of um um of a project we're trying to do in Bhutan. It's, it's not a very uh responsive clicker. Uh but, but essentially um they um uh different, different sort of situations from a, from a city we are, we are trying to create in uh in Bhutan called Tele, the Mindfulness City. And um it's, it's Bhutan is this incredible kingdom in the Himalayas. It borders two neighbors, China and India. So they have like 3 billion neighbors in two countries. Uh And they managed to remain sovereign. They are also the most sustainable country in the world. They sequester almost twice as much carbon as they emit their power, almost exclusively with hydroelectricity. They measure their success as a nation in gross national happiness rather than typical economic parameters. But um a year and a half ago, I met the king after the coronation of King Charles, he came to Copenhagen and I found myself sitting next to him at a dinner and he uh he said he actually came to Copenhagen to uh to uh to meet me because he, he was thinking about creating a city on the border of India. Uh because the young generation of Bhutanese, they're, they're well educated, they speak perfect English. Uh they go to Australia and Canada in large numbers to pursue prosperity and the excitement of the modern world. So he wanted to create a special administrative zone uh that could attract foreign investment and retain local talent without losing the values that make Bhutan. So endearing to, to all of us. And what we've tried to do is we've designed a city shaped by the 34 rivers that flow from the Himalayas down to India through the, the sort of tropical plains uh uh at, at the base of the, of the Himalayas. Um This is, this is one of the bridges that crosses the river. You, you saw one that was a market one that was a hospital, one that was a, a university and um uh in, in, in this environment, we're trying to imagine a city that doesn't displace nature, but actually preserves it, that doesn't displace agriculture, but integrates it into the city. A city that is built with the river rocks and the bamboo and the timber you find in abundance on, on the site. Um So essentially try to merge an environment that can attract global investment and and retain local talent and attract international talent. But then also like the entire city will be powered by, by hydroelectricity. Uh The building you see here is almost like a symbol of the project that um imagine it's, it's like an Indian step. Well, so the rivers flow from uh from Bhutan into India. Uh So the patterns you see when you, when you look closer, uh it's actually a series of steps. So anyone who stand who's been standing on the top of the Hoover Dam has felt the excitement of potentially repelling down. Uh But here you can actually stroll down and, and one of the most famous sites in uh in Bhutan is the tiger's nest, a beautiful temple nested on the side of a of a rock. Uh This would be um the, the 21st century equivalent of the tiger's nest that you can descend down to a temple nested on the side of a dam. It's essentially a piece of architecture. You know, a piece of engineering that converts the power of nature into electrical power. It's a piece of engineering that, that becomes a piece of art. It's a piece of energy infrastructure that becomes a piece of spiritual infrastructure. Marvel. So, so we, we hope that maybe this could be for, for Bhutan, what uh what the Eiffel Tower is to France or the Sydney Opera is to Australia iconic. It really does. Um You've mentioned uh 3d uh uh printers. It's something that's really revolutionizing architecture. We've just got a few seconds here. Tell us quickly about how you're using A I, I mean, I, I think so far A I is incredibly good at visuals. So, in that sense, um and I think it's because there is an abundance of, of image data out there. It's also very good at text because there's an abundance of text data. Uh I think um architecture and, and I'd like to say that to take a pic, a picture of the building says as much about the building as a picture of a, of a dish says about the the taste of food. So, so in that sense, we, we need to find ways to feed data. And I think once we have biped robots and other kinds of domestic assistance robots, uh uh you know, of course, we already have robots in the form of cars moving around the streets, gathering a lot about urbanism and, and, and, and traffic and, but I think uh the, the second we start being able to harvest a much higher bandwidth data from uh physical environments, then, then we will really uh have the power to, to, to, to threaten my livelihood in a serious way. And, and, and, and actually, uh with, with, with icon, we have started a project called Vitruvius where we are attempting to use the data that we already have to, to see if we can, we can, we can teach the next generation of, of art architects. And I mean, if, if, if you can't, if you can't, if you can't beat them, then uh then at least we're gonna try to join them. Well, your work is absolutely fantastic. Uh And very exciting that you could be here with us. I suspect you will have plenty of opportunities to use your human skills for years to come, Bianca Ingels. Thank you so much for joining us. Pleasure. Thanks.

Joshua Kushner, Founder and CEO, Thrive Capital
In conversation with: Alyson Shontell, Fortune

Fortune Global Forum 2024: Big Bets

So Josh, thank you for joining us today. I know you don't usually do interviews. So we're lucky to have you live in person. Um The first thing I wanna talk to you about is you said we're in the biggest paradigm shift of your career. Granted, we're both middle aged now. It's not the longest career ever, but there's still a long career for you 20 years in venture about. Um Why do you say that what's going on right now? Yeah. So when I started thrive, uh we were in a very exciting moment and that the internet was starting to kind of gain a tremendous amount of distribution through mobile phones and cloud infrastructure was taking off right now with a I, I think it's a very exciting moment. Uh Primarily because the foundation for the entire ecosystem uh has been set. Um I think as a firm, we get incredibly excited about this moment just because of one, you know, the 2nd and 3rd order implications of a lot of this technology in terms of how impact consumers, how impact enterprises. But also we're kind of living in this exponential moment where things are just happening so much quicker and I think the rate of progress uh that is ahead of us is just going to be tremendously exciting. So there was one other paradigm shift that happened last week uh in the United States, a lot has changed. Uh We have now an idea of what we know now who our next president will be. It'll be President Trump. Um There was a lot of feelings in Silicon Valley and in the tech world about Trump versus Kamala. And a lot of people are saying Trump is great for little tech. First of like, what the heck is little tech and what does this mean for the beer and start up community? Yeah. So I think, um you know, my vantage point is, you know, irrespective of who our president is. Uh it's very important that we're all patriotic. And I think, you know, America's greatest export is innovation. And I think uh in this moment, it's really important that we continue to kind of lean into thinking about how we can all support the ecosystem in every single way possible when I think about how the technologies that are built here impacting the rest of the world. Uh I think it's a moment for us all to kind of, you know, rally behind uh the technology uh industry to kind of make sure that we're pushing the world forward in the right way. But it should be a good thing for the industry. I mean, there's a lot of people who felt like there's no exit happening. The IP IP O market is down, mergers and acquisitions are getting blocked. This feels like maybe this could be good for venture, you know, I think the, the industry at large, um, you know, you have to kind of like disconnect uh liquidity from progress in terms of technology. Um If you think about uh public markets, there are good times, there are bad times. Um It kind of doesn't matter, you know, what administration is involved when you think about kind of the rate of progress in terms of the things that are being built. I would say the last couple of years have been amongst the most exciting uh in my career. Uh You're seeing founders dream in terms of what is possible. And when you think about some of these things, whether it be robotics or life sciences or some of the things that we're all using every day with regards to A I uh things that seem somewhat impossible a couple of years ago, feel very, very, very real uh and, and, and in front of us. And um I'm very excited about kind of what is being built and, and the impact that it's gonna make on the world. Great. Um So I wanna talk about the uh one serve in particular, of course, open A I Elon Musk is now the Center Force of Business in the White House. We just came out with our most powerful people in business list today. He was indisputably number one. Um He has a competitive start up to open A IX dot A I raised billions of dollars. Um He does not like Sam, your founder for Open A I, Sam Altman. They are in a, a quite a public spat in lawsuits and things. Are you worried about your investment now? Like, what does this mean for open A I that Elon is there? Um So first off, I have like deep admiration and respect for Lan. Um and you're a SpaceX investor, uh We feel very grateful to be. Yeah. And I think, you know, my understanding of him, first off, uh he has defied expectations on everything that he's ever been a part of and no pun intended gravity. And um you know, my core belief is that he leads uh with intentionality and with an orientation with regards to kind of what is best for humanity and for everyone. Um my interpretation, my interpretation of uh his excitement to kind of participate in the government is very much driven by his desire to do right by everyone and based on what I know of him uh and to be self aware, uh there are others who know him better. I think he always leads with good intentions and I have extreme confidence uh that he is always gonna do what he thinks is right for all Americans. Well, maybe we'll broker a treaty between the two of them. Some peace between Elon and Sam. I know for certain that both Sam and Greg have deep respect and, and an immense amount of gratitude for, for all that Elon has done for not just open A I but for uh the rest of the world in humanity. So OK, let's talk about what's going on in open A I and the valuation do you guys just put in 1.25 billion, not the first billion dollar check. You've written this company. Um That's more than Microsoft put in in this last round, more than NVIDIA, more than Kla. I mean, you are like all in on this company. Uh I know that you have a rigorous back and forth at thrive. Should we invest? Should we not invest? What's, what's the case for this $157 billion valuation where you all your chips are in versus um I'm sure there were people arguing the other side. What are both sides? Yeah, it might make sense to kind of take a step back to explain who we are and what we do. Um So we started the firm in 2011 and uh when I started uh everyone that I met with on the investor side said no to us. So we kind of took a step back and said, OK, given that we have nothing to lose. What is the right strategy for us? And we kind of created this uh vehicle that was incredibly opportunistic, it was agnostic to stage sector geography. And since day one, as a firm, we have been very much oriented towards being extremely concentrated in people and ideas. Uh We have been of the belief uh that there's a very small end of companies that one should be a part of. You need to be their most meaningful partner. You need to be extremely long term. And, you know, we've always believed in the MGER buffet way of the world. Uh power of compounding one of the wonders of the world and hold these companies for a very long period of time. So since then day one, we've incubated businesses, we've invested early and in extremely concentrated ways, uh we've invested in later stage businesses. Um And over the last couple of years, we've written multiple billion dollar checks in companies like stripe and others uh that, that you're aware of with regards to open A I. Um our framework has always been that there are really four things that matter in this new paradigm shift. Um There's research and talent, uh there is compute and capital, uh there's data and there's distribution uh from our framing open A I is the number one model and research company. It's not the number one enterprise company. Uh And it's also the number one consumer company with a half a billion people using their product when we kind of think about the valuations associated with some of these large language models, obviously, you can value the enterprise business. Um But our orientation has always been uh towards kind of the application layer and the capacity for consumers to kind of utilize these products in ways in which are improving their life. And the exponential growth of that user base um has been quite stunning and is fairly unprecedented compared to anything else that has existed to kind of frame it in the context of numbers. Um If you kind of look at cloud infrastructure, I think there was about 12 billion of spend uh about a decade ago. Now, it's about a 220 billion run rate that should yield about $2 trillion of enterprise value. And I think that will grow towards five trillion uh over the next five years. If you kind of project forward, our view is there's going to be multiple winners in this space. Um uh We have deep respect for uh Google and, and, and Meta and Xa I. Uh but our belief is that open A I is going to be one of those and we feel very lucky to be partnered with them. You have an approach that's about quality and that quality is scarcity, right? Like you have a a thing you say about Fifth Avenue, always invest in Fifth Avenue, you always are paying a good price for it. Yeah, I think uh you know, one of the things uh that I, that I've once told Allison is, uh I always try my best to kind of explain to my mom what I do. She gets it now, but a couple of years ago she thought I fixed computers for a living. And, um, you know what I try, my best to kind of express to her was, you know, at the earlier stages, we're looking for the new and upcoming community. Uh These are areas that people uh are just starting to find interesting. Um And at the later stages, our view is uh you wanna invest in Fifth Avenue, you want to be in the high quality companies that you want to own for decades to come uh in our world. Uh You know, there's an ephemeral to technology. Uh those assets are, are, are family fairly limited. Uh But I think most importantly, it's so driven by the person who's running those businesses. Um We kind of live in a world in which the founders of these companies are really the heroes. They are really the ones deserving the credit, they're the ones who are operating these businesses. So as I expressed earlier, we're both concentrated in, in, in ideas and in people. Um A lot of people who do what I do think that if they were to be involved in something, it would make a difference, we try our best to be unrelentingly supportive uh to those that we work with and do our best to support them in every way possible. But we have a tremendous amount of self awareness that at the end of the day, they're the ones who deserve all the credit and, and, and deserve to be on stages like this. Yeah, I think, um, a smart investment philosophy is to invest in people and the people running companies. And clearly you were Sam's first phone call when he was raising venture capital and it goes back to a relationship you guys have had for a dozen years. Um I imagine that you had a not so minor heart attack when he was almost fired, he was fired for 48 hours. Um And to me, if I'm you, that's like, oh my God, my investment might just go totally to zero. That's a big proof for my LP S. What did that moment teach you about investing? Yeah, I mean, Microsoft looks like they were like, we're never gonna let that happen again. They diversified. But you're still, I know you have other A I investments but you're still like all in. Yeah. Listen. Uh uh my wife jokes with me all the time that I'm calm and collected uh at most times and uh I don't know if it's a feature or a bug uh to use an engineering term. Uh But, you know, my framing is uh every problem has a solution and uh you know, there's no hope in a better past and there's uh nothing you can gain from freaking out about anything and you just have to kind of look at the play on the field. Um And do your best to kind of write things uh to where they ultimately should be. So, um feel very grateful that uh we were able to play a small part as others were in that very specific moment and we try our best to kind of do that for all the people that we're lucky enough to work with uh in moments of crisis. OK. Last opening eye question, I promise, will you be on the board after it's done transitioning to for profit? And how's that going? No comment, no comment. OK. Maybe, maybe I take that as a, maybe that's my analysis. OK. We'll, we'll, we'll stay tuned. Um OK. So one thing about the firm, you guys are very young. Uh And that's why on purpose. Now, at first I think we talked about in a story that I wrote on you. It was uh sort of like the feature nut bug. Um It was hard to recruit, but now you actually look for people with less than four years of investing experience. Why like don't people benefit from pattern recognition in investing, seeing cycles, knowing cycles. Yeah. So when I started the firm, I was 26 years old and uh we were fortunate enough to uh be seated by the Prince and Endowment and they really believed in us uh and, and what we uh stood for in our approach and orientation as we started to meet with other investors, uh people pushed us to kind of hire people with more experience. And my line at the time was anyone who has experience that is talented, will never want to work with the 26 year old. So there's an adverse selection dynamic associated with the types of people that we could ultimately hire. So what we ended up doing was just kind of aggregating the smartest people that we knew that were our ages, our close friends from college people that they knew from, from, from, from different work experiences. And I think, you know, if I were to orient back to kind of what has gotten us to where we are today, um It's been driven by first principal thinking humility, like an incredible drive to do whatever is necessary to kind of understand uh different topics, uh be there for founders. And we have found that instead of trying to hire the experienced person today, we'd rather just find that young, hungry person who's willing to run through walls like we were 10 years ago and teach them our way and help them grow um and help them become the best version of themselves. That's great. Um So in the time that we have left, I wanna know two things. Really one Sam gave an interview recently and he said, what are you excited about in 2025. And he said first, I'm having a kid. Yeah. Yeah, it's great. Um Two is he thinks that A G I is coming in 2025. Can you explain what is a G I to everybody? And is it coming next year? Um I think uh there's a lot of different interpretations of what A G I is. Um But I think the most simplistic way to uh describe it is this idea that uncertain uh tasks, computers will be smarter than humans. Um And it feels uh like we're making a tremendous uh amount of headway towards that being uh the case. Um And I think as a result of that, um there, there's going to be a tremendous amount of innovation that is going to occur. And, you know, my framework on life is that with any innovation, there's good and bad, I'm an optimist. So I focus on the good things when I think about uh what de S at deep mind has done with alpha fold and the impact uh that protein folding can make in terms of drug discovery that is like an extraordinary innovation that's coming out of large language models, uh things that can come with regards to robotics and uh you know, other things like that. So we're very excited about the transformations that are, that are, that are happening. And um obviously, uh as I expressed, there's gonna be a tremendous amount of exponential growth ahead of us, but um we have a tremendous amount of confidence, not just an open A I, but the other people who are kind of pushing forward on this frontier that they're gonna steer it in the right direction. Well, I was gonna ask you about what's next, but you sort of answered it there with the robotics. So Josh, thank you so much for the time for being here today. Thanks to you.

Presenter: Professor Tom Oxley, Founding Chief Executive Officer, Synchron

Fortune Global Forum 2024: Mind Meld - A Breakthrough in Brain Powered Communication

Good afternoon, everyone. I'm very excited to be here to talk about what uh is an upcoming space and what promises to be um potentially uh very sh ground shifting for humanity in ways that are hard to appreciate right now. My name is Tom Oxley. I'm the CEO of Synchron. I'm an Australian neurologist. I moved to the US about uh six years ago. Um But about 12 years ago, I started this journey with funding from US Defense agency DARPA in what's now been a critical infrastructure investment in this now emerging space. We are five years into human clinical trials at this point with the num with 10 patients that have now been implanted without technology. And the initial application for this technology is in uh the need for people who have paralysis. We anticipate. This is going to be a very large um area of medical device uh which uh has not yet been addressed by any currently available technology. Paralysis is a wide ranging medical condition from a range of um afflictions of the body. And as as just mentioned, there's a, a prediction that this first generation healthcare t is going to be in the range of $400 billion. As a neurologist, I've been looking after patients who have suffered from injury or disease. And one way to think about how the problem is going to be solved is how does the brain engage with the world around us? You may not appreciate this, but there is a huge amount of information coming into the brain limited information going out at the bottom of that diagram. There is the brain stem which carries all the information out of the brain. So we already engage in a in a digital world every day. We all use our devices to engage with our day to day activities. So one way to think about this is that we can expand our capacity to engage in the world if we have multiple avenues of outputs from the brain. In other words, a virtual nervous system that can engage with the brain. So with people who have paralysis or disease, the brain is often intact and it's how the brain engages with the outside world that needs to be corrected for people who are suffering from that. It's a horrible way to live when you're locked inside your own skull. So the world is now ready and you might have heard about BC I. It's getting a lot of attention in mainstream media now, but this is happening off the back of decades of neuroscience research now, infrastructure that enables edge computing, um very active global leadership from the FDA, especially David mcmullan and now mainstream awareness. Many of you have probably heard of Elon Musk's Neuralink. And I would certainly say that over the course of fundraising over the last 12 years, there's been a big flip in how venture capitalists are thinking about the potential for this space. But there's been one piece missing which relates to how this technology can scale because most people think about open brain surgery for brain computer interfaces. And so what at Synchron we've done is we've looked back to take cues from the medical device field with what enables technology to scale out into market. And so the problem with open brain surgery right now is that none have scaled up to this point, cochlear devices for hearing deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's disease. Oops. Um if we just get over that, please and then uh epilepsy are in the order of around 10,000, uh 10,000 cases per year, um 10,000 cases per year per annum. These are tiny numbers relative to what we've seen in medicine before. And that's not going to be the solution for brain computer interface to go to treat the potential problem at hand. Instead, transcatheter is what unlocked cardiac treatment over a period of decades, going from open heart surgery to now, transcatheter therapies. We've seen a change um from, from the seventies to now, the year two, the year 2024 low hundreds of thousands to now millions of procedures being performed every year. And this happened over a period of decades from balloons, stents, pacemakers and valves. There's now 1 million cardiac stents being delivered in the USA. The key really has been to get out of the operating room and really no other area in medicine has grown like this over the past several decades. So Synchron asked the question, how can we take that revolution into neurotechnology and deliver technology at scale? So this is an example of how we deliver our first technology. We come up the Venus system through the jugular vein using a catheter to come up to the top of the brain and then deliver electronics into the inside of the blood vessels that can interface with the brain from the inside. We utilize a lot of the materials and knowledge that have been the basis for solutions in cardiac over a number of decades. And we've repurposed that to sense brain activity and turn that into outputs that are useful initially for people with paralysis. This is our first generation system. We are calling it sync one and it hopefully will become the first in class implantable brain computer interface. We've conducted two clinical trials over five years with 10 patients implanted. The best way to think about this is a brain controlled system that enables you to navigate through your personal devices without having to use your hands. You may not need this in the audience today, but for paralysis patients. This can be life changing where there is currently no available therapy. So here's one of our users, the system goes in it switches on, you start trying to move your arms and legs. We train the system how to move very simple things around the screen. This is not yet at the level of control of what you can do with a mouse and a keyboard, but it does enable basic use of ios. So we've been using control of Apple products to engage in navigate and select as a minimal viable product. This is where the technology will be starting with our first generation system. We've now engaging in the development of a novel BC IH ID Bluetooth profile. And the best way to explain this is that the example of Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs didn't like the idea of the large iphone because your hand or your fingers could never reach all the way around the screen. He thought all phones should be reachable by any finger at any point in time. So that speaks to the idea that our devices are currently constrained to the built form factor of our human bodies. BC I is going to be constrained not by the physical form factor of the human body, but by the constraints of the brain. And I think we all know that there is more going on in your brain than what you can express. Maybe fighting with your partner or trying to express your emotions. There's far more things happening in your brain than your body can get out. So coming back to the virtual nervous system, I just want to explain how we're thinking about this problem. Probably the most common question I get asked by investors is how is this field going to progress and semiconductor chips? That was the that was the mechanism of Moore's law in in computers. So how do we think about progress over time with BC I? The prevailing theory or thinking has been that the number of channels or electrodes inside the brain think of them as sensors um is is the limiting factor. So more electrodes into the brain, more horsepower, more bandwidth. But we don't believe that to be true, we actually believe that optimizing brain diversity from a data perspective is what's going to drive compute. So compute versus bandwidth. And I want to explain that concept to you today. This is the motor cortex. This is where BC is beginning. It's the most relevant area to begin because it's the most constraining in our body. This is the command center of your brain. It takes up about a third of the real estate in your brain about the size of an A four piece of paper. If you, if you unwrap it, our first device only covers about 0.04% coverage of the whole motor cortex. It's a tiny amount. And we've done that with 16 electrodes that we deliver into the brain. You might have heard of the. And so as I mentioned, uh minimal viable product is navigate and select. And we're doing that on Apple I OS products. The Neuralink device is now being implanted in two subjects, has a much larger number of electrodes. But the idea had been that if you put in a much higher number of electrodes, you can get much more data out of the brain. Navigate select is also the same uh same control mechanism. But something we we noticed something interesting in that first neuralink device, 900 channels were lost in the first month. And that's been publicly reported. And then the system came back online with about 100 channels, about 10% of the number of channels and the function of the device didn't change. And it got us asking the question. OK. So if you had 1000 down to 100 there was no performance change. Why is that? Why were there was there redundancy in the system? And so we've had a theory for some time that there is a optimized amount of information. And the reason for that is that brain function is preserved in packets of neurons around the brain. So neurons that are next to each other do the same thing. The best analogy I can give is listening to a symphony orchestra, you put 1000 microphones on one violin and you're trying to hear the whole orchestra, you lose 900 of them. You're not losing that much information about what you're hearing in the room. So the question became, if you're trying to optimize a system for commercial manufacture and commercial scale, how do we think about redundancy and optimization? And we have a belief that at about the level of one millimeter, you have information redundancy in the brain. So it's not just horsepower of electrode count. it's have you spaced your electrodes in the brain at the right amount. So what we're saying is that at the microscopic scale, there's redundancy. The mess scopic scale is where we think there's the right optimization of naturalistic brain function. So with that in mind, we are building a system with multiple generations. And I want to explain how I think this field is going to progress over time. Firstly, maximizing brain coverage diversity. Secondly, people like their skulls. So leaving the normal physical architecture intact as much as possible. And finally, delivery scale, which I've covered already from the cardiac analogy. So at Synchron, our second generation system is utilizing the blood vessels and the blood vessels are like branches of a tree, they go down in order of size and they reach further and further. So we are minimizing and miniaturizing our electronics into the brain. A second generation system at a maximized at a maximized spacing is going to cover about 1% of coverage of the brain. We predict that will lead to 3D control of robotics. And then our third generation system, we're going to be targeting around 15% coverage in the brain. We don't exactly know what that's going to lead to. But we estimate that at that point, we're getting to full humanoid avatar control capabilities. And it's got us thinking a lot about where this field is headed in the next couple of decades and what it means from a data perspective and it hasn't been obvious because so the the recent the recent A I revolution has shown us that a massive data source can label you to do these incredible things with natural language processing. But from ABC I perspective, we don't have the advantage of having huge amounts of brain data, we actually have a time series brain data set. And what we've realized is the way the brain reacts is only relevant in the environment that it's reacting to. So you need to know how is the brain adapting to the environment? What is the context of how the brain is reacting in that moment? And can we build recursive uh A I platform that is going to enable this virtual nervous system to flourish? So here's our vision of the future axes on one hand model model fidelity over time and on the other hand, diverse brain region coverage, a previous couple of clinical trials with our prototype has got us beyond click one D click to two D and click which with our first commercial system as we move towards a miniaturized second generation system, getting towards 3D control and robotics and then finally moving towards an area that we don't fully appreciate yet. But what I can say is that we will pass the precipice of improving that which the human body can do. And so you know, the 400 billion Morgan Stanley number comes around 12 million user market potential. Beyond that, it starts to get up to an economy that looks a lot like the automobile industry to me. And it got me thinking about how do we think about where this is going to go and what it could mean. So I've been reflecting on the ethics and the morals of where this is going to take us. And it's this might not happen for a period of decades. But it does seem obvious to me that once we have enabled the ability for the brain to engage at the level that it can naturally process and not be limited by the muscles in our bodies, we are going to go on to the precipice of being able to achieve a level of human productivity that hasn't been possible. And I think we will look back as we all are now and think how slow we were. And so what does that make you think of or what it made me think of was something we've seen before, improved exponentially improved human productivity, functioning beyond the physical limit of the body and coming with a minor risk that requires a procedure. Now, the procedure risk, um, is probably less than what we take risks in our daily lives. And it made me think about the fact that when automobiles first appeared, appeared, um, there was huge blowback from the community. Why would you get in a motorized car and risk your life? Then we had flying and the same question were asked about, why would we take those risks and take that on? I think what's going to drive BC I out into the future is the need and demand for human productivity. And I think that's where BC I is going to take us in the future. Thank you.

John Stankey, Chief Executive Officer, AT&T
In conversation with: Diane Brady, Fortune

Fortune Global Forum 2024: AT&T CEO on the Future of Communication

Good morning, everybody. And hello, John. I'd like to see you wore the company shirt in case we forget where you're from. So that's good. II I like that. So, um and, and also I, one thing that wasn't including your buy is that you are now an op ed writer because you did a piece that appeared in fortune this morning. So thank you for that. I had to stay up late last night. We will, we will get to that. The, the thoughts. Well, let, let's start with your reaction to the election. What's now, are you feeling optimistic or um I would say probably encouraged, maybe a little circumspect. I'm encouraged by the likelihood that we're gonna probably have a little bit more of a pro investment tax approach moving forward for a company that invest $25 billion a year. That's a big deal. Um I would say I'm encouraged by maybe having regulation targeted in the right places as opposed to everywhere. Uh for headline purposes might be good circumspect. Um You know, this is a, I think one of the elements of the election was somebody who was elected because inflation was really problematic for a lot of Americans and the economic dynamics were certainly an element. And yet I, I look at some of the policies that are in place and I listen to kind of what's in front of us and you ask if that's what's got you here, you want to make sure that that isn't what gets you out when you're done. Right? And so that piece and how it squares is my circumspection. Let's then let's live the dream. Let's say I'm from the government and I'm here to help. And so what give me advice. So say I'm from the FCC and I'm here to help. What, what advice would you have in terms of the right mix of regulation going forward since we're talking about America's digital future? Yeah, I'd pick up right where I left off is let's not spend time with taxpayer money and energy on regulation that really doesn't need to be fixed. I mean, why are we worried about anybody's internet being blocked or throttled or there's plenty of choices in the market yet, we spend all these cycles on things like net neutrality. Yet we spend our energy studying the spectrum and spectrum is where the future is for this country. It's where we're going to remain competitive. It's what's necessary to bring in the next generation of technology. It's essential to put more capacity into service to keep prices down because if demand is going up 30% a year and there's no more capacity coming out. We all know supply and demand and you end up with higher prices. So a looming airwave gap will bring higher cell phone bills. I think that was the title this morning. That can certainly be one of the outcomes from this. I mean, give us a sense as to why the average person. I mean, first of all, it's something that feels almost like you can't control it. Give me a sense of what's been happening to this point with regard to, you know, this airwave gap. Oh, I, I think it very much can be controlled. I think the notion that you can't control it is just it, it's patently false. So let's go back to the front end of the first Trump administration and uh GP walks into the FCC and we were all thinking that mid band spectrum was going to be auctioned sometime in three, maybe four years. He puts his muscle behind it. He works with the executive branch. They make some hard policy decisions. They kind of make the Pentagon kind of come to the table and play and lo and behold in 18 months, we're in an auction for the largest swash of spectrum that we've had in this country. And so I do believe that somebody can walk in and change the profile of what's going on here. And I don't think it's hopeless at all and I think we need to absolutely put our muscle behind it. So, one of the things that, um, well, let me, one thing I'm curious about since we're talking about the future is will we even need cell phones in a few years? They'll be cell phones? Um, I think the way to think about it is how does behavior change around using other devices to do maybe intents or things that you do today by naturally picking up your phone opening up and starting. And so when you start to think about the future, I expect there's going to be more devices on a person that you could choose to say my intent is to do this, but I'm going to launch it differently than going to my phone. I may have a voice assistant that sits with my lapel. I may have something in my glasses that helps me with a visual intent. Um Have you tried out any of those I have? And what do you think? Um I can see it? Uh I, I think we're getting, I think it's going to, it's not gonna be a revolution. They will evolve over time. And to my point, you're not gonna in five years, say I never use a cell phone, but there may be a half a dozen things you used to do here that you'll start somewhere else. And I think uh ambient computing will start to play in, it's not gonna be overnight, but you walk into your house, your presence in your house will alert you to other devices around that you can use to do things that you might have initially gone by going to the deck of your phone to get started on. So I think we'll be in a very different environment as it evolves and that's going to open up innovation in terms of software players and who's involved in search and who's involved in how apps get constructed and where they run. And those types of things that will be interesting to watch. You know, you, you raise a good point when you start to talk about software, which is basically when you think about digital future, the mind drifts to big tech, right? And so um you've created this infrastructure on which these players thrive, you know, give me some sense as to like um the platforms that are basically leveraging a lot of the investments that you've made. Um How, how do you think that they should be regulated? Well, I first of all, I think we all work together. It's a, it's a good ecosystem, right? And that we've gotten a lot of policy right. In the United States, we've had pro investment policies that have driven world class infrastructure in the US spectrum is one of those things that we've gone from being 1st, 2nd or third in the globe to like we're 14th in developed countries right now. We're sliding and we need to get back to doing the right thing. And this is not like infrastructure is built and we're done, we refresh it, you know, 24 to $25 billion a year at my company alone. And there's other companies that play in the space and you've got to make sure you have the right policy to continue that reinvestment. And so if I think about what we need to really contemplate is we built a great communications infrastructure in this country where we said every household should have a phone, everybody should be able to talk to one another with very overt policy. And the policy was make sure there's access in everybody's house. But we're going to use the incremental decision to make a phone call is the way to subsidize that infrastructure so that everybody could afford what would have been too expensive. Otherwise at the farmhouse in the urban areas, that was the overt policy, long distance calls, subsidized access to the home. We have never come up with an overt policy of how we make sure every home is connected to the internet. We've never made that decision. The core digital, the corollary to that is everybody should have a connection. But how do you make sure you have subsidy for those that can't afford it or the places that are too expensive to build to, that's the long distance phone call issue. And so if you have third parties that are riding that infrastructure that are making a lot of money on the long distance phone call that rides on top of it. Everybody should participate in that. And that's not just the people building the infrastructure, the app stores have revenue, there's services that come on top of it. If we need subsidy to make sure it stays cost effective. We should think about it in that, in that construct. So let's unpack this a little bit in terms of what can actually happen. So let's put it in. Perhaps, maybe Congress give me some sense since life is about priority. What would you prioritize day one coming into the administration that would help at the very least move America back up to being 12 or three. Well, number one, we need to restore auction authority for the FCC to put new spectrum into the market that lapsed. Congress has not renewed that authority. So if we wanted to put new spectrum out, the FCC actually couldn't even take action to auction because that's a refreshing thing that Congress has to do. They can decide what spectrum they wanna put out. They just have no authority to do it right now without being able to auction it uh to this issue of universal service that we just talked about. We're, we're still subsidizing universal service based on long distance phone calls. How many of you are paying for a long distance phone call these days? You think about it? That whole construct needs to be relooked and there there is reasons to do it because we want to solve the digital divide. We want to have a cohesive policy. Do you think Elon Musk will be a force for good or ill in this respect? I don't know. What's your suspicion? Look? I think anybody who starts out with the intent to maybe streamline government and get it more focused. That could be good, that could be good for our country. I think we should also step back and be really practical about this and understand that when you look at entitlements and defense, um without dealing with those two issues, you're not going to fix government, you're not going to fix the balance sheet problem of the United States. So great. Let's go look at government waste and let's understand what we can do to operate government more cleanly. But let's also be honest brokers in the political environment and understand that we need to come to grips with those other two things. If we're going to deal with the balance sheet, that possibly is one of the causes of this inflationary environment that I kind of opened with, right, that we need to really be mindful of. Um I want to talk about how you've transformed AT&T and I know time is ticking. But one thing that hasn't come up that much here is is the sustainability which I know is a big priority for AT&T and some of the conversations in the past, what are some of the tough choices that you see there because we're making these major investments in A I, obviously we're trying to do it in a way that is sustainable, that helps the planet. How do you think about that in terms of the digital future of the US? There's a lot about our infrastructure that aids sustainability. When you start to think about how we allow for work to be done from virtually anywhere and, but all the bosses want us back to work anyway. Well, you know, but think about how much more you're getting done over that period of time. And, and I, I would tell you that, I think that uh the biggest issue we have to deal with in our company, we consume power to allow for that capability that's out there. And we've worked really, really hard to make sure that our power consumption has been more efficient over time and working really, really hard has kept us about even, even though networks are getting bigger and there's more data and bits being moved. Um I worry about the next several years because I, I think broadly speaking, there's a little bit of a friction between, we wanna lead an A I, we, we think it's a national priority for defense reasons. We think it's important for global competitiveness. And at the same time, we talk about the fact that, you know, we wanna cut greenhouse emissions, um the power that's required here to do this. There is no plan on how to produce that much power without driving more greenhouse gasses. And I'm not saying that it couldn't be done if there was a well thought plan, but there is no plan right now. Would you prioritize? I think it's really important. I think this is going to become the next big social and economic issue in the United States. If $5 a gallon gasoline gets people elected or kicked out of office. Uh Two years from now, people are gonna be looking at the power bill in their house. You know, because there's going to be a shortage of power and people are gonna be consuming it to push the boundaries on A I. And we're gonna be asking ourselves, you know, how did this happen? Why do we not have a, an approach here that for critical infrastructure on power, it's gonna be necessary to make this happen. I tell you, we're probably further along on getting sounder communications policy that allows for data to be transported to enable the A I revolution. But I worry about whether or not we're going to have enough power to make all that work moving forward, especially when you lay it on with what's required in these data centers. So the answer is to prioritize nuclear power. What's the answer? I difficult choices. Yeah, I personally don't see a future that gets us to where we need to get on emissions without some equation of nuclear. And back to your question about government is like if we don't start permitting faster than we are right now, um We aren't going to solve that problem. I mean, we're well over eight years off for any kind of reasonable online nuclear power coming on and, and most people don't want to go build natural gas power plants right now. Anything quickly. But just the transformation internally, I think when I sit with the CEO on stage in terms of A I, how transformative is that for your business right now? I think it's look, I think this is a huge seminal moment for all of us. And again, it's not, you're not gonna wake up and just go well, it was fizzled out. It didn't happen this year. This is, this is as big as, you know, 1999 1998 and the founding of the internet and we had the internet bubble and all, you know, we had the internet bubble, it went away. It's like, well, I don't think we'd all sit here today and say the internet really didn't deliver much. I mean, it's completely changed how we live. It's completely changed all of our business models. The bubble burst maybe because of some investment misalignment, but it was fundamental. I think we're at the front end of one of those things we're gonna be sitting here 10 years from now. Looking back, there'll be some battles won and lost of money and didn't go to the right place in the capital allocation perspective. But will it fundamentally change us 100% if the parts of making your business more efficient, are going to be necessary just to survive those benefits will accrue to the consumer. When I operate my business for less money will become more price competitive, those benefits will accrue through to the product in the marketplace. The question is, how do you change your business model for competitive advantage? That's the harder part. It's the part we don't know about yet. That's the part that comes from having a unique data recipe that nobody else has. Um And that part of it is where you get some competitive advantage and differentiation that comes in. We haven't seen that part work its way through and it will take some time for that to. Ok. Food for thought, please join me in. Thanking John. Thank you. Thanks very much. Thank you. Thank you.

John Hope Bryant, Founder, Chairman and CEO, Operation HOPE
In conversation with: Kristin Stoller, Fortune

Fortune Global Forum 2024: Rethinking D.E.I. - The Economics Of Inclusion

Hi, John. Thank you so much for being here. So you founded your nonprofit operation. Hope in the aftermath of the Rodney King riots. And now we're more than 30 years later and we're still at a point of racial tension in this country. So I wanna start off by talking about, of course, I'm surprise the election. How are you feeling about the outcome? And what do you think the impact is gonna be on DE I initiatives and policies? Uh First of all, I wanted to be here and thanks for uh being a leader in this space. I really do believe that the private sector is gonna be the hero and the shero in the next 20 or 30 years, 88% of all jobs in this country come from the private sector. They don't know in fact. And as I tell folks, I grew up with, even if you wanted to shoot money like a socialist, if the first collected like a capitalist. Um I'm not overly concerned about the moment. I think it's a moment. This is about insecurity, it's about economic insecurity. This election was about the green. Um it, it, it and I, I've known that for a long time. Um, I think President Bill Clinton sort of was able to get that right. Right in the center. He has, you know, lower, uh, uh, deficits and higher GDP and an inclusive agenda and I don't think a lot of people have gotten it right. Uh, since then. Um, but this is about insecurity and people who want a narrative that for a time that has long passed, I'm about the future and I think that's why the in your car, the front windshield is bigger than the rearview mirror. Uh I I I'm look, I just think there's not enough white men. Why do you say that? That is not a popular belief, not what you thought would come out of my mouth. Look. Uh I like math because it doesn't have an opinion. So Melody Hopson quote, I just love it. Um The math is that uh I want every white male to be successful if they can be, I want everybody to be successful. But we we need every successful college educated white male to be on the field of economics. But mathematically, there's not enough college educated, successful white men to drive GDP for 30 years. So do you think education is the problem here? What went wrong or I mean, leadership is always the problem and courage is always the problem. But yes, education is the ultimate poverty eradication tool. I think financial literacy is a civil rights issue of this generation. I, I think that A I literacy is right behind it and next to it, which is why I'm co chairing the, the Financial Literacy For All Initiative with the CEO of Walmart. Uh Doug mcmillan is and co-chair in the A I Ethics Council with the Steve Jobs of this generation, which is Sam Altman. Um But going back to, let's hit your question directly though, I want to answer the question. Uh White white population in 1950 was uh 90% not 1850 1950. Today, 40% of this country is black and brown. Within 10 to 15 years, it'll be a majority of minorities. Um White wealthy baby boomers read what, you know, 65 years of age will outnumber Children by 20 th by, by 2034 I'll repeat that those over 65 will outnumber Children by the age of 2034. Everybody is trying to retire and go play golf at the same time. All you guys are hard audience, I'm giving you good stuff. Uh They're just walking off the stage at the same time and my rich friends, my poor friends would do better if only to stay rich. If you've never had a superpower, that wasn't the economic power at the same time. But this, this economy is 70% consumer spending 70 that 70 is going to look different and that group has to be financially literate. They've got to have a good job. They have to have a ladder of opportunity. They've gotta be stockholder shareholders. We've been here before, by the way, it was women. It was your mother. And in, um, in 19 sixties, Johnson and Kennedy proposed affirmative action for blacks, Nixon, the Republican president codified it. But the courts, uh, uh, said, basically put all these blockages in place. Sounds familiar and blacks did not get those benefits. Who got the benefits? Women specifically or first of all white women in 1972 a woman could not get a credit card, not 1872 a woman could not get a bank loan without her husband cosigning it. This is shocking. This is a real debate like women should not have these opportunities that should have a job. We of course made the right decision as a as a country today. Forget the morals. Now forget the ethics about this. Put that aside today. Women are $67 trillion of the GDP of this country where they are a third of the GDP of the largest economy on the planet, which means if we had gotten that wrong, if we let our small mindedness overtake us, we'd be a third rate nation today. I think we're at the same inflection point. And so when I said not enough white men, I mean, mathematically that the so you, you, you, you look diversity, all those reports have shown the diverse businesses are more profitable with, without question, diverse regions including New York City are, have, have very more viability and more profitable. This is not even, the data is so stark and, and overwhelming. It's not even close. I got a call by the way backstage from a board member from a uh one of the biggest banks in the South and in Georgia, technically, they're in Georgia. Uh if you can figure out who they are um saying we need minority board members. This was 20 minutes ago. Can you help us? Because our customer base is, is, you know, we want to reflect our customer base and it's growing, we're, we're, we're having all kind of economic prosperity, but we want to reflect that on our board. Can you help me find somebody sure happy to this is the people are, they're afraid to speak out. Well, how do you explain to business leaders? And I think some, a lot of business leaders mistake, you know, de I for just hiring to fill a quota. How do you explain to them the purpose and the value behind it in a way that benefits them and their bottom line? So as I, I wrote in the piece uh in time and, and you guys reflected in your pages and fortune when I've spoken to you, um I think that we're looking at this in the wrong way. I think de I became weaponized, it became political, it became uh emotional, it was designed, I think emotionally and I think whenever you make an emotional decision, it's the wrong one. I like the math and inclusive economics, which is my approach is just neutral. It's, it's just math, it's emerging markets. So do you want, uh how does, how does hockey league, how does, how do you find professional hockey players in Canada? They, they farm club from elementary school. How do we find professional football players and baseball players and basketball players? Here we farm club in the middle school. Where are the future capitalists? How we farm clubbing, business leaders, entrepreneurs, real estate, people, professionals. We, we don't, we just leave it to chance unless you go to a private school, unless you come from a wealthy family. In which case, you're talking about that at the dinner table or you got an internship in your dad's business. Uh So we need to create a farm club system. K through college. I've gotten a bank account for every kindergarten kid at Atlanta public schools, the hope Child savings account and studies have shown that if a kid has a bank account in elementary school in kindergarten, they're 50% more likely to go to college. Hold on. If that same kid has money in that account, 50 bucks, they're 75% more likely to graduate from college because you're connecting education with aspiration. So if you connect a account at, at, at kindergarten, which everybody can, I think everybody would love that idea. Financial literacy, uh, get your professionals to go and volunteer in schools where, where they're white, poor, rural or they're mixed race, uh you know, middle class or whether they're black and brown urban doesn't matter. And now you put internships from those schools, apprenticeships from those, those schools hiring from those schools, you're going to reflect America, you're going to find best talents. You're going to find the Steve Jobs and the Sam Altman's and the Oprah Winfrey. So wherever your hero sho is, you're going to find them all over America. There's genius everywhere. Now, I want to come to the audience in a second for of questions, but really fast before I do that, you mentioned the A I Ethics Council that you founded with Open A I CEO Sam Altman. Um You had your inaugural meeting in July, what was the biggest issue that you identified that you think needs to be addressed? First of all, it terrified me. Um The first meeting I had with Sam. Well, I mean, everything is gonna change. I mean, we have not had this since uh since 19, since 1850 1850 to 1910, you went from the horse and buggy to the automobile, right? And the same debate was happening in that 60 year period. All we don't, everything was horses, uh agriculture, transportation, class structures, wealth. It was all about horses. By 1910, the most valuable thing you could do with a horse was create glue and I'm not, I mean, no, no offense to the horse or horse lovers. But that was the fact in 1910, in 1919 10, there were 100 automobile manufacturers. And then you had Henry Ford, uh and his great, great grandsons on my board. Now, yet Henry Ford who created a AAA middle class by paying the workers enough to buy the automobiles. They were making everything changed. We're at this inflection point again, but it's gonna be six years, not 60. And, and you've got to reimagine everything because it's happening while I came from the airport last night. All the, the fast food restaurants, the convenience stores, it's all a pad. It's, it's, it's already happening. You're already punching in your order. You, you don't notice it but it's, it's sort of, you go to CV S or go to your grocery store. It's a self checkout line with one person overseeing it and all the checkout counters are gone. If you have a high school education, no aspiration and no education, you're, you, you got a real problem in America in the next 10 or 15 years. So we, we have got a, I think I can't, I can't. This topic is overwhelms me. I'm, I'm terrified by it and excited about it because we, we're gonna, we're gonna possibly cure cancer in 10 years. So, but half of all jobs for Black America as an example. And underserved America. Poor white who poof gone. If you, if you of all you have is a high school education, you're gone. But there's gonna be new jobs created by the way, accountants problem for them, lawyers problem. Anything that can be automated. So if this is a, this is changing everything all at once and you combine but, but we can equip our Children with financial literacy and A I literacy and I'm gonna be doing a pilot in Atlanta which I announced next month in my, in my hope global form uh with, with A I Ethics Council with Sam Almonds co sharing it. We're gonna create a farm club system in Atlanta from college, from, from kindergarten all the way through college uh to farm glove. The next generation of A I learners, innovators, app creators, inventors. And uh yeah, the the future that is the future and I wanna save time for one audience question. I think we have time for. Does anyone have one? They wanna to ask? OK. No one's courageous, no one's courageous. And that's OK, John, because I I have many more I can ask you. So my last one for you is by the way, this, that, that didn't surprise me. This issue of diversity and all this, it's hard to talk about. And I think that what leads to my next question is that I think a lot of companies feel that they've seen the legal challenges that other companies have faced through and they've implemented de I or inclusive economics. Should companies be be fearful of legal challenges? And what do you tell business leaders that are scared? You should be, you should be fearful of failure. You should be, feel fearful that you don't have enough customers. You should be fearful that you don't have enough employees. You should be fearful that you, that you don't meet your stock, your stock market and your stock, uh, and your, your price targets and your income, what you've told Wall Street quarter to quarter that you're going to hit. You can my rich, I'll say it again. My rich friends need. My poor friends would do better if only to stay rich. This is not even a debate. And II, I had a private debate with, with, uh, Bill Ackman about this and I can't say what happened in the conversation. I'll just say that I had receipts and he didn't. And when I asked him what, what was behind it, he couldn't answer it. But when I asked him, do you, do you have a business plan for America? Other than the one that I presented, he couldn't answer that too. In fact, he said he sort of agreed with me, but he wouldn't say that publicly. I say to anybody if you, if you don't like, forget de and I put that aside the terms did, if, if, if you have a business plan that's different from diversity and different from demographics, please present it. I, I mean, I'm not, to me this is not complicated. You can't fight demographic changes. Demographics are destiny and we're going. And if you look at the, the most, the most successful markets in America, what are the two biggest economies? California and New York. What are the two most diverse places in America? California, New York. What's the biggest economy in the traditional South Atlanta? What's the big, what's the most diverse place in the traditional South Atlanta? Atlanta is the 10th large economy in the United States of America, busiest airport in the world. Uh $450 billion a year in GDP. But we fought over who got the contract and who went to a AAA lunch counter who got into a room or all this other silly stuff that was been people in fighting over for 100 years and we're still arguing over silly things about race and position again. Unless we want to be speaking Mandarin in 20 years. No disrespect. I love, I love the world. I love China. I've been there many times. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm saying, unless you want to be speaking Mandarin or Russian in 20 years, we gotta stop arguing with each other. Everybody wants to, everybody wants to be an American but Americans and that we've got to figure out whether we are better together. Can I get an Amen? And that is the perfect way to end it. So, thank you so much. Don I appreciate you being here with me today. Thank you. Thank you.

Adena Friedman, Chair and CEO, Nasdaq
C.S. Venkatakrishnan, Group Chief Executive, Barclays
In conversation with: Lee Clifford, Executive Editor, Enterprise, Fortune

Fortune Global Forum 2024: The Next Decade in Finance

Hello, everyone. Uh well, be out. We're going to dive right in. Uh tell us what you make of the US election results and did Wall Street get what it wanted? Um Well, the markets think so. Uh Thank you for, for Lee, for having me and uh being part of this wonderful panel with Lena. So the election results, I think obviously saw a great premium that kept into the equity markets. Markets did well. Uh they did well for banks and financial firms and they did well more broadly. I think there are a couple of reasons. One is clarity is always welcomed by Wall Street. Uh Second is there's a greater clarity. It doesn't matter which side you're on when all the three parts of the legislative and, and, and, and the executive align the President House and Senate. Um and it happened quickly and people were fearing that it would not happen quickly. So I think those three things and then thoughts about what might happen in terms of regulation or might attack the economy all led immediately to the, to the, to the rally in the market, I think uh when you step back and especially if you look at it from abroad. You know, I work at a British Bank. Uh People will start asking themselves deeper questions about what does this mean for trade? What does this mean for defense expenditure? What does this mean for geopolitical realignment? How do the countries, especially the ones in Europe which are having growth challenges fund themselves in what this new world will be? And then ultimately, where does it go into broader social questions of ESG and climate? Well, Adina, you were saying that you see what's happening in the markets the past week or so as a sugar rush, are we gonna come off the high or what? What's your prediction? Well, I actually, II, I would say not specifically a sugar rush but certainly a honeymoon uh associated with everything that the Vin cat just described. Uh and, and what's happening right now is you've got one thing that's very certain, which is with the way that the um the legislative branches and the administrative branches are aligned, there's going to be a tax policy change. There actually has to be a tax uh tax discussion within the next year because the current tax rates, the tax um plan expires. So with knowing that it's aligned um down down the line with the Republicans, I think that there's an expectation that will benefit um you know, the corporate world or at least retain the benefits we already have. And I think that that's obviously seen as a positive in terms of, of Corporates and, and the ability for them to generate profit and retain those profits. I think that's AAA benefit. And then the second thing is uh the notion of, of smart regulation, you know, how do can we get to an era of what I call smart regulation, outcome oriented re regulation as opposed to input oriented regulation, looking at regulations and saying, did we actually achieve its original intent? Are we measuring the those outcomes as opposed to just creating activity traps within the financial industry and others industries that frankly suck capital away from more productive activities? And if that also is kind of, there's a general sense that that's a possibility and that also could create a lift both in terms of, you know, the ability to retain those profits, but also in terms of being able to deploy those profits into growth and into liquidity in the markets. So I think all of that is kind of manifesting themselves, but there are the super questions, there are the longer term impacts. I think those people want to wait to see what actually does come out of um the, you know, kind of the the policy decisions around tariffs and other things to know how that might impact um different sectors over time. I I think that there's still that to be played out. Yeah. Well, drilling down a little bit, I know you love to talk about fixed income. So tell us what's ahead. Well, the bond markets have backed up a little, which means rates have gone up. I think what they're seeing or looking for is that, uh obviously with lower taxes, uh greater spending might be inflationary interest rates will have to be higher for, for longer. Uh We'll, of course, you know, have to look at what the fed does and what central banks around the world do. But stepping back, we're in a place where I think you've had a very soft landing. I sometimes call it a featherbed landing. That's happened certainly in the US and in the UK where if we had asked ourselves two or three years ago, would we have got, had growth come back to be normal, inflation come back to be normal levels and had held on to the very strong levels of employment. Then we would have all thought that, that, you know, we would have welcomed such an outcome and thought it not likely to be possible, right? But here it is. And here we are. So we started that very, very good place. Now, economic issues clearly had an effect on the uh on the election, but that was probably more about inflation than anything else. So I think the bond markets are looking for a period of some calmness but probably with higher levels of inflation. What do you see happening in the equity markets? Well, I I everything that, that Vinca just talked about to um you know, we always say cost of capital matters, right? And right now, we still have a pretty big delta between actual inflation that's occurring in the country and the interest rates that people are paying. And while I do agree with you that the citizens in this country really were impacted by inflation. And that was definitely um a a key element of the election outcome. They're also on the flip side, like on the back side of now, seeing lower prices going up less fast, they're having a much higher cost of capital. So they're kind of been hit with a double whammy. Um And so if we can start to and we're starting to see the fed, you know, taking those slow actions to normalize rates against the inflation rate. I think that's a positive in terms of both from a corporate perspective and from a consumer perspective and that obviously creates a lift in the markets. But I agree with Vinca that they're gonna, you know that right now they've taken, they've taken two actions pretty quickly. The question, do they kind of start to slow, roll it because of the fact that they won't know what this, what, what any sort of policy decisions are with the new administration. But they also do see the fact that the economy at the aggregate level has remained strong and therefore they can take a slower, slower process going forward. But there is an opportunity to continue to bring rates down over the next year. Just depends on how fast. Yeah. Um, well, we all love big predictions. So we're here to talk about the next decade in finance. Uh Could you give us a couple big forces or predictions that you see playing out over the next decade? Then you can go first. Well, look, technology and technological change is very much a part of the financial landscape. And you know, if you look at the period through the up to the financial crisis, it was financial technology, it was the way in which you did what was called financial engineering. I think now it's going to be much more straightforward. It's going to be how do you analyze data? How do you take information and make better decisions, financial decisions and investment decisions which have an impact on the financial system and then how do you continue to manage money? You know, we run a large retail bank uh digitally and make that broadly available to your society and do it with all the trust and the security that people are coming to expect. And that's harder to provide in an age when you know, there are as many bad guys out there trying to get into the system. I mean, I, I think that there's, this is a renaissance period for technology in the industry and it will be for the next decade. Uh I, I think it'll unleash a lot of opportunities for us to continue to globalize capital flows, reduce friction in terms of global payments, make it so that we have more of an opportunity to create more. I would say a a more what we're approaching is because we provide technology to 100 and 30 other markets around the world. In addition to our own, we provide very scale technology around risk management, regulatory reporting and anti fin crime to the banking industry to the extent we can create a more harmonized experience across the capital markets in the world with tech. So absolutely, a domestic market is something that will continue to be a a critical component of every economy. How do we to drive more liquidity into those domestic markets by opening up the capital flows, making there be less friction and and having flows go across the world in addition to and that's a lot of a lot of technology, payment rails will modernize et cetera. Having more of a cloud orientation towards running markets will create more scalability, the ability to manage the data more effectively and will open them up the exchanges and the market participants up to new services. So the next decade and obviously A I plays a huge role in all of that. And then on the on the protection side, I do think it's critically important that the banks and providers like us who provide services to the banks that we are able to leverage the A I capabilities to the best of its ability in order to catch the bad guys. And because you can, as I can assure you, the bad guys are gonna use it to the best of its ability, as fast as they possibly can. And to the extent that A I is a force that can be used for good purpose, which it really is in terms of um finding criminal actors getting them out of the system. It's really important that I think we unleash the power that takes technology for those defensive purposes. And so that's a big part of our, of our mandate. It's a big part of the mandate that banks have and it's something that we're very aligned on with many of the governments around the world. So very excited about what we can do there to advance um the ability to, to manage crime out of the system. Yeah, I'll say if anyone has a question, please put up your hand and one of our Mike Wranglers will find you. I wanted to shift gears for a second. And you know, if we're looking at 10 years, the types of people that you might need to hire, you don't even know what jobs they're going to be doing 10 years from now. So what are you looking for now in the people that you're bringing into your organization and promoting up through your ranks of leaders? Yeah. And I think, you know, it's, it's one of the toughest questions which any large organizational leader faces because it's not just what kind of people you want now, but what will the skills they need to have? 1020 30 years from now? Um As they are then senior people in organizations, I think clearly in the banking industry or in finance, some amount of economics and finance and accounting is important. But the technological skill set and the ability to use it, understand it, deploy it, understand its potential and its risks is absolutely important in all the ways in which Tina said, which is just efficiency, automation protection and, and service delivery and, and and then equally how is it that you understand where your clients are going and how they are going to use the technology and how do you serve them better? So you know, what's the role for bots and customer service? What's the role for digital payments? And then how do you help? Because we reach lots of retail customers. How do you help the people who are slower on adoption? Yeah, that's actually really an interesting point in terms of wealth, there still is very much a role for the human in manage, helping people manage their wealth. But there are a lot of tools that even those humans can use now to augment their, their capabilities. And I think that'll accelerate. But in terms of skills, uh we are a technology company. So and we have about 50% of the people inside of NASDAQ are in the development and engineering organization. And so obviously, as we continue to bring more A I capabilities into our products and embed them into the agile teams. Data science is a critical component of our skill set, um Data engineering as well in addition to traditional engineering um development abilities. But then I also would say there's always going to be relationships that you, you know, the soft skills are still very important as well. And one of the things that we really focus on are kind of having a culture where we have constant curiosity, you know, a growth mindset, which means in humility and in terms of what you know, and what you don't know um as well as curiosity about the world around you and what can change and how you wanna bring that change into the organization, serve our clients team orientation, so low ego. Um and as well as I think a way as well as like hard expertise, whether it's market structure expertise or engineering expertise or, you know, uh governance expertise or other things in terms of the services that we offer. And, and that's a, you know, that's a well rounded person. Yeah. And at the end of the day, we are always, we will always look for well rounded people regardless of the role they're in. But that data science capability is gonna be an increasing part of the skill set that we bring in. If I may just add to what I said, there's something, you know, deeply important there because the only thing we know for certain is there will be change. And so those people who are then adaptable and resilient are the ones who will then thrive. Agree. Agree completely. You're looking for the low ego, people who wanna go work on Wall Street. I think we have um a question up here. Well, now that you put it that way, I thank you all so much for the insightful conversation. Uh My name is Ashton Jackson. I'm a reporter at C NBC. And I feel like with young people, young millennials, Gen Zers, there's kind of this like FOMO about investing and it's leading them to invest in or make speculative investments and things like Cryptocurrency and uh and um uh meme stocks. So my question you is, what advice do you have to give young people when it comes to balancing risk, reward and long term financial planning in such like a fast paced hyper competitive environment? All right. So I have uh two sons who are in their mid, mid to late twenties. And so I'm, I, I, I'm living that OK. And it's really interesting because I learned so much from them. Uh One of my sons the other night was showing me um how he was engaging on an event marketplace. And um and he was calling and he was making a market so he was taking different sides of the trade all night long on like what the temperature of New York was gonna be overnight. Um And it was just fascinating and he was showing me the app and he was showing me how he was laying in his orders and what it was. So and I mean, I'm talking like $10 increments. I just want to be very clear. But what was so cool about it is he was learning market structure. He didn't even realize he was learning market structure, but he was learning market structure. That is awesome. So, of course, my, my first question is always, how much money are you spending? Not? How much money are you investing? How much money are you spending? Because it, you know, if he ends up making money great, but if he ends up losing money, I want him to think about it as I'm spending money on, on enter, you know, to entertain myself, you know, in this particular case, and I might have an opportunity to learn and I might have an opportunity to make money on it. But, but he's not, you know, kind of spending his life on it. He's not and he's, and he's experimenting in it. Uh Now, when it comes to what we see in terms of a very engaged retail investor base, the most important thing that you can do as a retail investor is get educated. Um And in some way of getting educated is just learn by doing. But with small amounts of money, learn by doing with small amounts of money or even on platforms where you don't actually have to use real money because there are platforms like that. Um But at the same time as you get more engaged and more educated, then you can start to take more risk if you feel like you understand the risk reward that you're really, really entering into and, and, and then you get, you know, kind of get more confidence, but you recognize at any point, those strategies can go either way. And so you have to be ready for any outcome and if that's the case then get engaged, you know, and, and one of one of the great things about the US, and I would say we've been looking at this, um you know, it's, it's one thing to kind of take, take some, some of your dollars and investigate and explore and, and experiment and learn. But at the end of the day, it's another thing to make sure you are investing for your future. And with that, be thoughtful, be long term, be fundamentally oriented because that's what's going to make it so that you can uh afford your schools or your children's schools, afford a home and, and afford to travel the world and experience the world. And those are more serious things that you want to make sure that you're having a long term orientation around while you take a little bit of your extra cash and, and, and apply it in some of the short term. And so it's, it's something I care a lot about because we um we're very excited by the fact that, you know, 39% of household income in the United States is invested directly in equities that is the highest in the, in the world. Um But actually Sweden is 36. I just want to point out it was really interesting to, to look at the Sweden as a, as a real marker there. Whereas other parts of Europe and other parts of the world are really in the twenties and below. So that is important because it, it is a foundational element of wealth creation in this country. And so it should remain that while people can experiment on new things. Sorry. Yeah. No, no, I absolutely agree. I think the most important thing for young people is to understand that investing in their future is really one of the biggest decisions they can make that they should start young with that first paycheck, have a really long term view and the equity markets are a really important part of that. And you have to think about building that future and you've got to get interested, right? And the most important problem I see. And I've got three kids, the youngest of whom is 18 is the risk of disengagement. Um And you know, you mentioned equity market participation in the UK. It used to be like the US 30 years ago and now it's just barely into the double digits and part of it is the pension system and so on. But the equity market is a fundamental part of growth and a part of everybody's investment portfolio and I think we have to end it there. Thank you guys so much for such a great conversation. Thank you.

Chris Cocks, Chief Executive Officer, Hasbro
Joanne Crevoiserat, Chief Executive Officer, Tapestry
In conversation with: Matt Heimer, Fortune

Fortune Global Forum 2024: Brands We Love

Joan. Good morning. Thank you so much for joining us. Um A and Alex, thanks for the introduction. Um So Alex mentioned the sort of idea of uh creating brand love and I'm kind of fascinated by that. Um talking about brand loyalty or brand love points to sort of the truth of what's a very um emotional and maybe arguably irrational connection, you know, between customers and the products that they're most uh loyal to. And at the same time you each have at your command, you know, endlessly growing amounts of data that were the kind of modify this irrationality and give you ideas about, you know, how to use it, how to shape those emotional reactions. So I'd love to hear a little bit about how that's playing out for you. What are you uh how are you, what are the kinds of data you're getting? What are they telling you and how are you reacting them to shape the brands? Um Chris, we were just talking about this earlier if you wanna kind of jump into. Oh, yeah, sure. Uh Well, first off, thank you for having me. Um Yeah, so it has where we use data quite extensively, I think is probably everyone in this audience does inside of their firms. Uh I started off at Wizards of the coast, which is a subsidiary of Hasbro. And in my six years there, I think we oct uh our data and insights budgets. I've been CEO now for about 2.5 years and I think we're on our way to tripling our data and insights budgets. So it's foundational for us to fundamentally understand our consumers and where they wanna go and we'll use that on everything from uh you know, what do parents wanna buy for their kids? And what are the hot new trends that uh little boys and little girls are looking for for the holidays to uh large scale digital games uh where we understand what players are, what classes of uh characters, players are choosing, what formats they're choosing um and how we should be affecting design and in a digital format, in some cases, you can tweak those products fairly quickly based on the way the players are using them, for example, with the digital games in the in the portfolio. Oh, yeah, sure. So magic, the gathering is our biggest brand. It's a billion dollar card game. Uh It's rather complex card game. There's over 20,000 unique cards inside of the, the domain of the game every quarter or so. We release another 250 to 300 cards which really shaped the quote unquote meta of the game. And uh digital allows us to understand how those cards are being used in real time. And if we have some power creep inside of one card, we can either uh nerf it and uh make it a little less powerful or help to edge up some other cards to help offset it, which helps drive satisfaction for the game. That's great. Joanne, you're in a very different sector, obviously, you know, tapestry is the parent company of Coach and Kate Spade and Stuart Weitzman. Uh But at the same time getting a big flood of data in and it's how is that shaping marketing decisions, design decisions. Well, it's great to be here and I'm learning new terminology. So I'm gonna use Nerf it going forward. We don't use that in our business, but um we do use data. So uh just to, to build on um that idea as a retailer, we have a lot of data and our focus has been to really harness that data and embed it in our organization. It's not enough to have the data and even to pull an insight out of that data. It has to be in the hands of the people who are really making the decisions every day in our business to have an action that has an effect on the consumer ultimately. And what we talk about at tapestry is this, it, it's a balance of what we call a balance of magic and logic. Our, our business is a lot about bringing creativity and innovation to consumers. But doing that with an understanding of what consumers value and you know, in, in the world today, the consumer moving pretty fast, there are lots of things that are impacting how the consumer feels from day to day, from region to region. Um And I'll give you an example, our tabby bag, which is uh now a a new icon for the business and it's been doubling in volume, uh pretty much every quarter for the last few quarters. Back in 2020 we had, we, we had seen the tabby start to fall off and um we were going through the pandemic and our normal cycle would have said, let's mark it down and bring in the next new thing. And our data said that actually this is a bag that young consumers are gravitating to. In fact, we're acquiring new young customers with this bag. So rather than so that insight informed our creative teams and that insight led to innovation behind the tabby bag, which was the creativity. This is the magic that came in and we developed a pillow tabby, which was, you know, we're in the middle of the pandemic. Everybody wanted, was staying at home, a soft uh brightly colored uh puffy version of the tabby went viral. Um And since then, we've launched uh a quilted tabby, a times square tabby, a square tabby tabby is uh taking on a life of its own. So it's, it's that it's the intersection of the data that informs the creativity when you bring those two together. That's when, that's when the real magic happened. Sure. Sure. Uh again, soft and pillowy, the nerf word comes to mind again, the different context. Um One of the big narratives around um the election that we just had last week was a sense that a lot of consumers felt uh felt cash strapped. You know, they didn't feel like they could splurge on things uh that weren't essentials. They felt like they were having to ramp back on treating themselves well, you know, you're each running companies where your brands uh are not essentials are about the last thing you're gonna throw out the window. How, how did you see that coming through in the data? How uh or did you see it coming through in the data? I should say and how have you responded to that perceived uh price pressure among your customers? So maybe I'll, I'll kick it off. Um uh So when we think about, first of all, as, as I mentioned, the customer is moving very fast and they're reacting to things that are impacting them including in inflation. But as we think about brand building, we think about the value equation with consumers and the value equation is more than just price um as a brand builder, we're focused on creating emotional connections with our consumer and delivering product and experiences that, that consumer values. So the value equation for a consumer is, yes, what does it cost? But what is the function, what is the style, what is the quality of the product and all of those things go into that evaluation of this is worth it. And so as we do a lot of work, understanding consumers and it's not just reading data, it's also going into their homes and talking to consumers and, and understanding the meaning behind the meaning that they might fill out a survey or you might see in the transaction data, it's really understanding what's on their mind and delivering that value equation that works for them. And when we build in the quality that they recognize when we build in styling and innovation, like the tabby bag, I just mentioned, um we understand what the value equation is for the consumer. Our job is to deliver product that they'll value and they'll buy at the price that, that we, that we can sustain. And so that's I think the essence of brand building and the essence of staying close to the consumer. I guess you also, there's an advantage in the sense of durability. It's easier to pay a premium if you think you're gonna have this for 10 years or 12 years, whatever, whatever the product might be, uh a great game or a great uh great bag. Um Chris, you've got a much wider assortment of things that you're selling obviously. But how uh have you seen price pressures um in your customer base? And how's that been playing out? Oh, I mean, absolutely. You know, the toy aisle, the dominant price point is $10 or less. I think it actually is the median price point inside of the aisle. So obviously, we have to deliver a lot of play value for the money. Um But I, I go back to something that Joanne mentioned that I think is a commonality between tapestry and Hasbro and how we think about things like at the end of the day, we're about delivering magical experiences to the consumer. Um You know, there is this combination, there is a very real and palpable sense of emotion in any purchase, whether it's a high end collectible for a 55 year old man or, you know, a birthday gift uh for a five year old neighbor. Um We need to bring magic and we need to bring it at every price point and it has where we deal with price points ranging from free for our digital portfolio of games all the way up to 500 to $1000 for a super high end collectible. I'm liking that there's the magic overlap between what you're doing even in very different fields. Um Just a reminder, uh speaking of magic, if you wanna make some magic by asking a question to either Joanne or Chris, put your hand up and we'll get a microphone over to you uh and don't be shy um flipping back to uh to brands and data for a second, you know, big portfolios for both of you. And you know, Joanne, uh t she's been pursuing an acquisition of uh of capri, which if it works out, which is admitted any question, but if it works out, you've got more brands and presumably more data. Um does that when you have a, when you're bringing data in from across many different products are the ways that it could kind of cross pollinate each other? I mean, you know, can team Mr Potato head learn something from team transformers or, you know, can can team coach, learn from team Stuart Weitzman, I mean, uh d does the data kind of move across the organization that way, I guess? Oh, well, we definitely see that. I mean, I suppose inside of our toy aisle, we share a lot of our designers across uh different brands. Uh There's a lot of commonality between consumers uh in the ages of like 4 to 8. Um And so the same kind of aesthetic that, you know, helps you create a great kind of my little pony experience often can be used to create a great candy land board game experience or a, a super high end action figure experience. Um And you know, the data, you know, parents usually have more than one kid. And so there's like two parts to our equation. It's what does the kid want and what does the parents want. Um and so understanding parent trends, understanding their price pressures, understanding what kids are asking for watching and consuming. Yeah, that has a lot of relevance for us. Makes sense. How about for you, Joan, I think similar in some ways but as I think about um how we build a portfolio of brands and, and the value that tapestry adds, we we have a purpose at tapestry that's to stretch what's possible. And, and that means that we help our brands stretch further than they could stretch on our own with capabilities that we're bringing to bear across the portfolio. So you mentioned one that's, that's data. Uh There are some data and sites that um are relevant across the portfolio. We we learned that one in three consumers this holiday will do most of their holiday shopping online. That's an interesting insight that all of our brands can use. Um But as we think about the platform, we have a platform where we allow our brands to have their own unique DNA. So their own designers, we do not cross pollinate design and merchandizing and marketing teams. The place where we find uh the opportunity to share across our portfolio. It starts with the consumer insights and the data that I just talked about, it includes technology. So reaching consumers today in places where they are increasingly requires a technology infrastructure that allows you to show up in the right way. So all of our brands leverage the same technology infrastructure. They benefit from the ability to harness all the data that we have in similar ways. But they apply it very uniquely to their brand and their brand DNA. We have a supply chain. We haven't talked about the supply chain yet, but I'm sure I'm sure we'll get to that. But we have a globally diversified supply chain that all of our brands can, can leverage. And that has been incredibly critical all through, particularly for the last five years with all the disruptions and supply and demand. And then I would say last is talent. Um We do cross pollinate talent across um brands across regions around the globe and that provides opportunities for our team members to really grow their careers in new and interesting ways and ways that would be hard to do if we were one singular brand. And it provides an unbelievable um trove of, of ready now talent for our brands in different different areas. So a lot of positives that the tapestry platform brings to each of our brands. Uh Glad you brought up global supply chains. Uh The incoming uh the president elect has said that that uh the most beautiful word in the English language is tariffs. Um And uh I was gonna go with elbow but he went with tariffs. That's fine. Um But uh well, but in all seriousness. There's been a tariff regime in place for a while. Uh Trump started one Biden added uh added to it. Uh Trump has said he wants to expand it. Your supply chains truly are global and yet a lot of your customers are here in North America. Um What have you learned from the past few years about how to manage that? And what are some of the challenges you're looking at going forward? Yeah, I mean, if there's one thing, maybe that I disagree with that you said earlier that, that uh some of what we make is nice to have, like, you know, Hasbro is in the business of creating joy and community through the power of play. I, I think that's a staple for most households. And what we've generally found is what's good for the American household is good for Hasbro. And generally speaking, I think our government representatives going back to Hasbro has been around since Milton Bradley in the 18 sixties. So going back to the Lincoln administration, uh we've tended to have a pretty good uh, cohesion between government policy, but the Lincoln Logs probably weren't made in like Malaysia. So there's the, well, no, I mean, but you raised an interesting point which is if it's, and I, thanks for me interrupt, but I mean, if the price doubles is, it's, you know, I think I might still pay for it but some, some of the, some households won't. Well, I mean, we have quite a bit of um elasticity inside of our supply chain. Sure. Um we're making things in North Carolina. We're making things in Massachusetts. We're making things in Belgium. We're making things in Kyoto, Japan and we're making things in Southeast Asia. And so we have tend to have a great deal of flexibility about where we can make things and how we can react to different policies. And I would say to move production for one place to another. And I would say, but generally speaking, you know, what's good for, what's good for Americans tends to be what's good for Hasbro when you're dealing with like things like play and things like toys and things that bring uh wellness to your household. Makes sense, Joanne, how about you? Yeah, I would, I would just say in the topic of supply chains and tariffs uh over the last five years as I alluded to. Um I think the theme is agility is the New Black in fashion. It's something we we like to say. Um it, it is uh so critical with all the disruption and demand around the world. Um We saw really, really big swings, I think unprecedented swings in demand as countries shut down. Um We saw unprecedented swings in supply uh with also disruptions and to supply lanes and ports and container availability. And we have a supply chain that is globally diversified to allow us to navigate all of those challenges and, and we have really focused on being able to uh navigate those challenges and deliver for our consumers. Our supply chain is not reliant on China. Um So, from that perspective, we feel well positioned less than 10% of our finished goods um are produced in China. Uh So we're, we're not beholden to one country or at risk of having one uh tariff regime uh really impact our business. But again, our focus is to make sure that we can deliver for our consumers and that we have the agility, not only to make sure the product gets here, but it gets here with the quality and the value. And that those that shift in our supply chain has been uh one that has taken several decades to build, right? We have to build the capability. Um You know, the handbag business is, is one that's, it's really craftsmanship, its scale, it's uh it requires craftsmen and we, you know, we're focused on bringing that, that incredible value, durable, beautiful product to our consumers. Uh And that's, that's the uh the focus of our supply chain. And I think you've each pointed to something at different points in the conversation, which is if the customer loyalty is there, the challenges can be overcome by that momentum. Um And unfortunately, our time kind of flew. So that's the note I'm gonna end on. But uh Joan Carvo, Ra and Chris Cox, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate it.

Jim Fitterling, Chairman and CEO, Dow
Dr. Jennifer Holmgren, Chairman and CEO, LanzaTech
In conversation with: Alex Wood Morton, Fortune

Fortune Global Forum 2024: Accelerating the Global Energy Transition

Um Before we dive in just uh a housekeeping reminder for everyone in the audience, um We would love to hear questions from you and bring you into the conversation. I'm gonna kick off with a, a quick discussion with our amazing panelists and then we will bring some roving mics to you, Jim. I wanna kick off with you. Um Talk me through the transformation of Dow an incredible fortune 500 company into what you describe as the most innovative customer centric inclusive and sustainable materials company in the world. What what does that mean in practice? Well, the, the drive to be most innovative, I mean, we have a tremendous research and engineering background and so how you put that to use is pretty important. Customer Centricity is key. Um The demands are changing so rapidly for us that we have to be close, not only to our immediate customer, we're typically a B to B uh company, but also with the end users and the brand owners, customers to understand the changes that are coming. So uh customers interested in sustainability and innovation, all three go hand in hand. Um Almost everything that we're doing today for new product growth is driven by sustainability and everything we're doing to transform our footprint to get scope one into emissions to zero is the same. And then inclusion is just about creating the environment for people that allows us to attract and hire the best talent in so that we have the workforce to do that. Because the only way to have an innovative company is to have great people. It's fantastic and, and, and Jennifer, I want to turn to you. Now, you're really at the forefront of a number of practical applications of sustainable technologies. Can you share with us your vision for what many of us call the circular economy? Well, simply put we have a dream that someday everything you use in your daily lives will come from carbon that's already above ground. So that is the circular economy that we no longer throw things away. And that instead we use them to make the next product and the next product. And I understand you, you may have brought a prop with you and I want to hear more about what you're carrying with you. So this is uh so let me just take one second to tell you what we do. So we take carbon emissions and we ferment them to ethanol and then we use ethanol as an intermediate from which to make sustainable aviation fuel, uh polyester, polyethylene, et cetera. And an example of a commercial plant that we have is a steel mill in China that is would normally emit carbon dioxide and particular emissions. We take that we just pump that into our bio reactor and we convert it to ethanol that ethanol is then converted to the monomer that ends up being made into polyester. This is a crag hopper jacket that is under their Co2 Renew label. They have a whole line and basically the polyester in this jacket was going to be pollution and, and that is the circular economy. No pollution products. Hold on. Absolutely fabulous. And, and just so I get this right. This is actually into real world products happening already. Yes. Just go to the Craig Hopper website and type in Co2 Renew and we're there. You can go to the RE I website and just type lands and you'll see polyester jackets, running pants, et cetera. It's fabulous to hear that, you know, we, we talk about these things as being so conceptual and they're here and they're now and you're making it happen. Thank you. Um Jim, I'm gonna send back to you now. We've heard so much over the conversations over the last day or so. It feels like we're entering into a new political era. Um And especially when it comes to the green transition. Um We've seen a lot of successful projects particularly from Dow and from Lanza Tech where you're working in different countries as different countries take a different view on the transition. Describe to me your experience in Canada and how do you get that buy in politically? You know, we have a very interesting first mover project in Canada uh which is to create the world's first net zero scope one into ethylene and derivatives facility. And to give you an idea of the scale, uh we'll build a new 2 million ton ethylene facility. Uh next to an existing 1.5 million ton facility, we will fire the furnaces for those big uh transformative units from hydrogen uh which is made from waste by products from our own process. So typically when you take natural gas, liquid like ethane and you crack it, you get ethylene, which is the product we want to make plastics. Maybe for plastic packaging could be plastics for piping whatever. Um And then we make hydrogen and methane. We'll take that hydrogen and methane waste product, convert that through a process technology that will convert to pure hydrogen and we'll use that pure hydrogen to fire the furnaces, making the whole thing a closed loop and no scope one and two emissions. Um that will be about 25% of our global ethylene and polyethylene capacity. Why is that important? Well, brand owners use our product for, they might use it for the packaging, they might use it in textiles, they might use it in any number of things. They might use it in the ingredients that go on the inside of the package which has a big CO2 footprint for them. So if we can make those ethylene derivatives with zero scope one and two emissions, we help them tremendously reduce their footprint and that demand driver is still there. The other thing I mentioned is all all industries that make basic materials. Um The the products that we were just talking about, the project that I talked about need a tremendous amount of energy. So we have to manage through that energy transition. So we talk about cir circular hydrogen or blue hydrogen. In this case, um We're looking at small modular nuclear reactors to be able to take an existing site and convert from combined cycle natural gas to power and steam from a small modular reactor, take the entire site to zero scope 12 emissions. Um And those two things are very critical because they're 24 7 reliable power, steam and energy for the transition. So that project I mentioned in Canada is there because we're close to our raw materials which we need to be to be low cost. There are tax incentives for in making that hydrogen investment, which is a little bit more expensive but not prohibitively expensive. Um And then we also have access to a carbon capture pipeline that's in existence. So we have a place to sequester the CO2. And uh there are long term policies to be able to support it with a price to car for carbon. They have a market price on carbon in Canada. That price signal is important to drive that next wave of investment. Um We moved to Canada first because they had those policies in place. A lot of that same policy is in the Ira. Um some from the infrastructure bill, some from the IRA that's here in the United States. And actually some of the infrastructure that we need to be able to do those kinds of investments here will be coming. It's, it's under development now. So it, it really sounds like you do need to have that leadership from political leaders and policymakers to start that Jennifer on, on the partnership side of things, I mean, how have you found working with other organizations as a smaller player? And how is that um dynamic played out? Well, we have so many large partners and investors and including we have a collaboration with Dow on making uh low carbon surfactants. Um I actually think that for a small company like ours, it's extremely important to partner with the large players because we don't have the domain knowledge that allows us to be successful, right? We don't want to re invent everything, we just wanna invent the piece that we're inventing. And um so I find that these partnerships are super important in terms of um giving us knowledge. But I would also say for all of you who are in large companies, um Please try to remember that IP is the only thing a small company has and if you're need for exclusivity or certain rights is, is what you've come in to talk about, then it's, it's very difficult for a company like ours, a large company has many sources of revenue. And if the specific project doesn't move forward, that's fine. But for us, if a specific project doesn't move forward, it's life and death. So I think the relationship can work really well if, if everybody understands what the other partner needs and we're very fortunate to have just fantastic. Yeah. And, and so we, we've heard about that partnership element now, I, I have to talk about misinformation for a moment as well because from where I'm sitting in, in Europe, where I'm based, we hear a lot about carbon capture and there are a lot of people out there that are very skeptical about the technology. How do you win the hearts and minds of the skeptics? You don't, you know what? Um I, I always, I always like to say um whenever you have a new technology, it's almost like you're going to the ministry of no, everything is no, there's always a reason why it doesn't work and you know, or why it can't work or why it can't scale or why people won't want it or why it's not perfect. And the perfect being the enemy of the good is, is really the biggest thing we deal with. Um And it's tough for me to make those arguments and win those arguments. And so I think the success comes from allies. It comes from people like all of you sitting in this room who whenever somebody says, well, the Lance Tech technology can't scale. You're the one that jumps in and says, well, but if it does scale where we do submissions and we'll displace fresh fossil carbon. So why don't we give it a chance? And so I need the allies. I need the people that lean in to help us be successful. And Jim from the, the larger company perspective. Yeah, I grew up in Missouri. So show me is the answer for us. I mean, you, you have to build it and you have to show people what it can do and that requires taking some risk. Uh Jennifer's right about IP, you've got to protect your own. Ip, I think that's one of the things that all of us, you know, around the world agree to is you wanna protect your technology, but you also have to take some chances to get out there and make these things work. And um to some extent, people believe what they wanna believe, right? Until they've seen something different, until they've seen a future or they've seen an opportunity that they can't imagine. And so I think the physical, like we get enamored with the show and tell the physical aspects are huge. Fantastic. Um I'm gonna break four questions from the audience in just a moment before we do. I think given the audience of people that we have in the room. Um What lessons would you both share to our audience of business and policy leaders on the green transition? What have you learned? And what can you share as advice for going through that? And Jennifer, I'll start with you. Well, I, I think the biggest thing in terms of policy is we cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We fall in love with these beautiful ideas that are gonna be silver bullets and sometimes those silver bullets prevent progress. And you know, are we going to have hydrogen steel? Yes, when are we going to have it? Not for a while? So why not just capture steel emissions today? And so what tends to happen is we slow ourselves down? These are calls to inaction. What we really need is people to agree, small bits of progress is better than dreaming of the unicorn that's going to show up in 2035. I I would agree. I think um in the US uh on energy, we've, we've often talked about our energy policies and all of the above policy, but all of the above and focused on being a leader in those technologies focused on being low cost in those technologies. And one of the things that Jennifer mentioned, you know, in the pursuit of the perfect, we sometimes forget how expensive it is. So that project I talked about in Canada, which we will, you know, make 3 million tons, 3.5 million tons of capacity with zero scope one and two emissions. That's going to be about a billion dollar project to make the additional hydrogen that we need. It will be the largest hydrogen project that's ever F ID. If I was to do that with green hydrogen, I would need seven gigawatts of electricity and all the electrolyzers to make the green hydrogen, it wouldn't be a billion dollars more expensive. So for me to do it at a price where a brand owner can say I can convert my product line uh means I can't wait for green hydrogen. I have to move now and make that transition now. Fantastic. Um If you could raise your hand in the audience, if we have any questions, I can't see anyone that uh we have one at the front. We've got a mic. Thank you. If you could say your name and company, that would be fantastic. Je uh I'm the founder and president of women in the world, uh sustainability woman in the world. I know Jennifer. Uh Thank you for all your leadership. My question is uh the, the uh you know, I congratulations on moving us from linear to circular model. Um And every, you know, every uh in innovation in, in that, in that transition is, is critically important in, in the era of uh you know, needing the world, needing more collaboration and partnership. You know, we, we are moving to looking at advanced recycling uh chemical recycling in, in context of taking, you know, truly circular uh direction in terms of getting the consumer waste as an input, as a, you know, waste as an input and then, you know, creating that bigger circle circle. Uh So two questions, are you uh are you collaborating with other chemical companies like Eastman, um Dupont and BASF who are looking at that? Uh So that's one question. Second question is, you know, we've seen like new shiny things. I mean, you sell the world's biggest fiber to fiber recycling um 60,000 tons a year, you know, went through truly crisis and chaos. So they're back on their feet and, and you know, on their way to make an impact again, but is, is land the tech, another shiny thing. How do you maintain this momentum? Thank you. Well, on circularity, I, I would say a huge opportunity. All the companies are working some together and some in competition on all forms of technologies. Uh We have a target to have 3 million metric tons of recycled materials. Uh I think the biggest thing is getting the high quality materials back in. So one of the biggest limiting steps on our ability to recycle is getting that waste. We don't want it to go to landfill. We'd rather have it sorted out and brought back uh to the entry point for feedstocks on, on the issue of, are we the next shiny object? That's a great question. Um One comment I would make is I think what we have done as a company is shown that gas fermentation works and scales. We have six commercially operating plans. And what I'm starting to see is a bunch of other companies doing gas fermentation. So I would say gas fermentation is becoming a thing and, and I, I think we've enabled that and is it a shiny object if there is something better that, that can do the things we do? I'm all for it. I, I think the competition is really climate change and not companies versus other companies. So I welcome being obsolete. All right. Thank you so much for your fabulous question. I'm so sorry. I think we are completely tight on time. I wish we could get more, more questions in. I wanna say a huge thank you to both Jim and Jennifer for being fantastic. Thank you.

Brooke Shields, Actress, NYT Bestselling Author, and Founder, Commence
In conversation with: Kristin Stoller, Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media

Fortune Global Forum 2024: Brooke Shields on the role misogyny played in the election: “I perpetuated it”

Brooke Shields on the role misogyny played in the election: “I perpetuated it”

Thank you, lie. And thank all of you for being here in Brooke, especially. Thank you for being here and getting miked in the bathroom. I, I live downtown and I, you always forget how long it takes. Yeah. Iii I was born in the city and you'd think I'd learn always the, I guess you so thrilled you're here. You have had quite the year. Um So in 2021 you founded an online community called Beginning is now, um Now that's morphed into commence and you launched a hair care line this year. So tell me about it. Why was launching this line so important to you? So it, it's, we've, you know, like any start up, you sort of have to learn how to pivot and it, when we went through a few different machinations because it started off with it just being a community because I wanted the dialogue to start with women. Um I was really dismayed that at 5455 I'm 59 now, but I was, I started to really come into my own just as a woman and my kids were pretty cooked and they were leaving and, and you know, I sort of come to this sort of revelation that I liked myself and that I had a lot more to do and I felt stronger and prettier and I, I wasn't, I didn't compare myself to other people. There was this sort of just buoyancy that I had. I always said I felt like the Macy's Day parade. Thanksgiving when you're just being, like, blown up and you feel like you're, yeah, that was the way I used to be now. I'm just a good flying, uh, you know, whatever balloon. Um, but there was this feeling of, wow, I'm ready to start my life now because so much of my biological journey had been put in front of me and, and you had deadlines that all of a sudden and I was so dismayed that the marketing, marketing beauty, uh, what I was getting the message I was getting back was you've had a good run, you know, you're, you're good, you're good. And, and so why don't you just take, you know, go, I listen, I wanna learn to play mahjong. I really do. But that was the message I was getting, which was like, why don't you just go, go start a reading club or something? And, and it was this dismissive sort of once your ovaries didn't work, you somehow lost value. And it made me very upset. So I thought, ok, I can't be the only one feeling this way. Why am I not allowed to feel beautiful and sexy and, you know, these are wrinkles but they, they come from smiling, you know. Yeah. I'm gonna do peels and do whatever I can to sort of feel my best. But I'm also gonna work out and eat well, like all those things. And I, so I started this company called, this, uh, community called Beginning is now during COVID and we amassed an audience so quickly of like minded women who, who said they were in this place of confidence in their life, but they weren't being, it wasn't being supported by the beauty industry or by just the way we talk about everything is anti aging. And then we started talking about menopause and everybody thought, oh, that's revelatory. And then we came, we went to, we're just menopause. And so it was, I said, why are we either the hot girl at the bar or we're in pens like, yeah, it's like that are dentures. It's like, I was like, wait a minute, there's a bracket in here that's sexy and beautiful and strong and accomplished and, and, and financially hopefully at least secure um and independent. And we've done, we've worked at companies, we've left jobs, started jobs, raised families and we did, it just grew and very quickly I realized that they did want to buy something. And I kept saying, I don't wanna monetize you or this feeling, right? I want us to stay a community but I wanna understand really what your challenges are. And it started, the conversation started around um hair changes, scalp changes, beauty changes. Um I don't like the word dry and that's the word we keep getting associated with after a certain age. And so I, there were all these little, little things that I said, you know, maybe we do need to go into beauty and I didn't, I resisted it. And then I realized if I was very specific, if the whole company was geared towards keeping the conversation with the community open, we would do these zooms with 50 women all over the the world. And when you saw such a swath of, of women and, and socioeconomically and just the way their lives looked. But the through line was this sentiment about feeling powerful and confident and wanting, but wanting solutions to problems that they were facing without them being anti aging. You know, that makes a lot of sense. And I think one of the things that I find so interesting about you is that you've been the face of products you forever without much input into what's actually no, this is, I hold it fine. I don't know. How does it feel to, to take back that power and how much do you have power over this? I have all the power um which is an amazing thing to say. Um And when you are a smaller company and we work directly with the chemists where you're not bound to the rules that when you're with a huge, huge company, if you're backed by a PNG or something like that, they have minimums that you can use with regards to active um active in their products. So, you know, and too much of a good thing isn't always good. I mean, we saw that with recent companies, especially with hair and so I work very closely with the formulator and for instance, with the instant shampoo and I said also, I don't want to all of a sudden proliferate this, this thought with a million skews like I don't want it to be more complicated. I want it to be streamlined and I use a lot of different things. I, I, you know, I have a one eye cream for this and one eye that and I don't have uh it's a me, it's a mess in my cabinet, but I'm always searching. So I wanted this to be clear and solution based. And so we made sure that all of our actives are, you know, at a three or a four or five perhaps. Whereas a company that very, very big can say, oh put a 0.00000% of Hyaluronic Acid in that product. And we can just put it on the label and it, nobody knows the percentage. So I wanted to start with an instant shampoo because if I get like a good blow out like I just like this. Yeah. Um I wanted to last, I plan not to wash my hair for at least four days. Um And yet I wanna be able to clean my scalp without drying my scalp. So we formulated um an instant shampoo which is a rice powder. All of our products are formula of plant based, but I said you have to have a moisturizing component. Hyaluronic acid is a molecule in and of itself that is too large for your pores on your scalp to absorb your skin can. But so we needed to find and it's impeded by a pair, you know, with the follicle. So we found a way to quadron it and, um, bring it down to its smallest form one that is acceptable to a, to your scalp and we encapsulated it. So I always think of it like little M and MS, but they're like little army. They're doing like an army crawl and they, if they call it, it's so funny in the lab, they call it a smart product because what it does is the rice powder absorbs the extra sem and, and sweat and everything. And then the, um, Hyaluronic acid actually delivers moisture to where your scalp is dry. So that was the first product that we came up with. And I just wanted to do one product. I wanted to do a Hero product and that was it. And that proved a bit difficult with minimum. And and with the lab. So we ended up, started starting with just three products and you clearly researched it a lot. I'm obsessed with this stuff and you go to the lab and all you have to do is be, like, be interested and they love talking to you. Our lab is in New Jersey. We're all entirely in the US. The only thing full disclosure is the packaging is from China. We can't afford to do it here yet. Um And it's all recyclable except for the spring on the pump. There's full disclosure, there's everything you have to be like we we we, you know, they ask you all these are you green? We are as much as possible doing it all the right way. So disclosure later, but also, you know, what's hard is I don't wanna now just be a hair, a hair care company, right? So it's, it's a balance. You can abandon the community. The community is why we're here. The community informs us. Um you know, skin care, I think there's a glut to it. I I think there's so much of it, it terrifies me. I don't know if I'll ever go into it. Um You know, color cosmetics is its own world. I don't, that's not my, where my motivation is, my motivation is eyebrows. Um You know, I've been talked about my eyebrows for my entire life and that is and this hair like so there are certain organic offshoots that we can, the goal is not in my mind when I hear lifestyle II I, it, it has gotten a, it has become a very often used term and I get, I think it's confusing and I don't wanna fall into that trying to be everything to everybody. So it's a, it's a delicate balance. It's much harder, you know, it's easier to be one and then sort of have the other but to start as a community and morph into or not morph into, but grow into um selling anything product, anything you have to be really, really, really careful. So we just brought a new uh board member who was the president um of Victoria's Secret. So he is now left there and he's um on our board. And so I'm bringing in top beauty people, but also top people in, in community building and strategy and marketing. And Brooke, speaking of community, I know there's a lot of powerful women in this room. I know I've chatted with a lot of people who have watched your, your documentary last year. The subject of a two part uh Hulu documentary titled Pretty Baby. Um Looking at how you were treated and, and sexualized as a child in the toxic culture that perpetuates misogyny. Now, a week after the, how are you thinking about misogyny? And how about, I'm sorry, did you? OK. How are you thinking about the role misogyny has played in this political cycle? And what's on your mind now, going into a second Trump term here as women. I mean, listen, you know, I'm also a part of the problem. I perpetuated it, you know, that's how I made a living. I, I was the one in the jeans, I was the one in the, it paid the bills. My mom had, we could pay our rent. It's so I'm in a, it's a slightly precarious place with it And now I'm a mother of two daughters and my whole career gave me a life, you know, and so tho those are the things that I grapple with, you know, in therapy and, and, and all of that. And the only so my personal approach to it is to write books about things like postpartum depression, to stand up for what I, what I believe and I want for my Children. I am really truly slightly terrified and it almost doesn't have, it's, it's almost, it's almost not about politics. It's, you know, it's um I was charming. Um, excuse me. Um It's almost not about, it's, it's, it's this belief, this internal fear that I have for my daughters that they are losing, they are losing their agency. You know, the part of the whole film was about finding your agency about and sex cells, right? OK. It's always going to, how do we, how do we reconcile that? How do we stick up for what we need while still we all want to feel beautiful. We wanna be gazed upon and thought of as attractive. So it's, we're in a difficult position, you know. And I think if we can find a way to do it without anger, it, it's gonna be important, but there's a lot of fear and I fear for my, for my daughters, although they have a stronger voice than I ever did at their age. So, Gen Z is, is really good at that. They are, I think they have to be careful too. I think you can swing so far in one direction that you alienate and you lose sight of how to make actual strong moves and, and that helps, help the, the community and help, help women and help, you know, I mean, it's interesting, I, we have a very, very close um friend of my husband's uh person he works with who is now a trans um woman and the person was a male and six is 78 something. And, and, and she is now getting hate from the trans community because she's not a pretty woman and she's not putting in what other women or other trans are feeling is the right amount of money and time and effort into her appearance. And it's a fascinating conversation that I've had to have with her because I've said, you know, now you kind of understand what, what we've been dealing with and how are you gonna handle it? And so I think we just need to keep the conversation really open and, and empathetic and, and just try to keep all of the, the, the vitriol and the anger out of it because that's not who we are either. It has to come from a place of confidence and pride and resolution that we and faith in, in, in who we are. That makes a lot of sense. And I know we only have a few minutes left. But you have a new book coming. I didn't even answer this one. No, no. And I, and I wanna, I wanna come back to it. So you, you have a new book coming out, Brooke Shields is not allowed to get old. Um As that's been coming, which is a great title, by the way. Um So any advice have for, we have a ton of incredibly powerful women in this room. We have one minute left. Any quick advice you could give to them on how to survive this, this next four years than anything you've learned from your book. Well, the book came from a guy that f he was flirting with me and then he found out my age because I said it as if it's not easy to Google, but he, and he went, oh, you shouldn't have told me that. And I was, and I was like my eyes turned into like w wheels and it, what, what I realized was it ruined a fantasy that he had of something of me in the past and I realized that that's what women are also dealing with. Um, I'm never one to give advice because I'm not an expert in anything. Um, but what I, what I will say is that rooms like this conversations like this real shared information and, and, and coming together and growing like this is gonna be, I believe where our power is because we're formidable alone and we're really formidable together. That's fabulous advice. Well, thank you so much for being here and thank all of you for listening and I appreciate you. Thank you.

Gita Gopinath, First Deputy Managing Director, International Monetary Fund
In conversation with: Clay Chandler, Fortune

Fortune Global Forum 2024: Global Economics: Risk, Resilience And Recovery

GTA. Good morning and thank you so much for joining us. We're really thrilled to have you. Uh have you with us? Um Let's start just kind of with an outlook of where the world uh is right now in the global economy. Uh Are we in a good place, a bad place and, and kind of maybe start with kind of global inflation outlook. What's your sense of where we are? So Clare, thank you. Thank you for having me the outlook. I mean, the best way for us to describe it is that we have seen a global economy that has been resilient in a way that we haven't seen before. So let me explain. We have had a global economy in the last four years that has been hit by a pandemic and energy crisis. Inflation that shot up and central banks everywhere raise interest rates by a lot. Usually in the past, you have these kinds of knocks, you would see a more prolonged global recession, you would see some sort of an emerging market, sovereign debt crisis and we do not see that. So I think that's the first thing we should recognize is that this is a world that has been resilient and now some parts more than others, the US really does stand out. It is doing extremely well, Europe less. So China still with weak demand, but still again, resilience and resilience doesn't mean that everything is great, resilience is coming along with kind of a weak growth outlook. So growth is expected to be around 3.2% this year. And next settles around 3% 5 years out. That's not a bad number. But if you compare that to, you know, historical averages over the last two decades, it used to be around 3.8%. So it's coming down. So growth is coming down. But you have resilience and in terms of inflation, since you asked about inflation, again, inflation went up almost uniformly in all parts of the world has come down by a lot. And our forecast is for inflation to return to central bank targets by next year in pretty much all the major economies of the world. So we see that coming down and like I said, that has all happened without there being a big hit to economic activity, to labor markets are still strong in many parts of the world. This is not how it was in the 19 seventies when we had the previous episode of very high inflation and inflation came down. Those were marked with deep recessions, big increases in unemployment rates. That's not been the case. This time. That's remarkable. Um So what I hear you saying is that, you know, relative to, uh coming out of crises, historically, that we're, we're actually doing pretty well. And yet that, that seems not necessarily to be reflected, at least in the Democratic company, uh countries and some of the political outcomes that we've, we've seen, which is, which is interesting. Let's talk about that a little bit because that's another thing that uh we found covers very, it follows very closely. Um You've um I think the fund has noted the global public debt levels will exceed 100 trillion, about 93% of global GDP by the end of this year. Is that something we should worry about or is that still something that's an OK ratio? I mean, just to start with the point you previously made about, why is it that people haven't felt this the resilience and strength two reasons, I'm making a comparison to how bad things could have been. And in that sense, things were more resilient. But then the second fact is inflation did go up, which means prices went up by a lot, inflation rates came down, which means prices are continuing to go up but at a slower pace. So if you look over a four year period, you know, uh you have seen households who looked at uh the how much they're paying for their goods that they bought in the past and said, well, everything is a lot more expensive. So it's not surprising, you know, the way people feel versus the way I'm describing how the global economy is in terms of debt. Yes, I think this is uh you know, at the, at the International Monetary Fund, we pay very close attention to debt, build up in different parts of the world. This year, we expect by the end of this year, debt around the world will be about $100 trillion. Very large numbers as a share of global GDP, you know, we're getting close to post world war two uh peaks. Uh So we, we have this is a high debt world. Now, some of this was of course, a reflection of the build up that happened during the pandemic and governments trying to support their populations that build up did come about, but interest rates have also gone up. So what we are seeing uh you know, are two sets of issues. So again, you could ask, you know, does this mean that we're heading for an hour, a debt crisis? Is there going to be a debt crisis? No, we, we don't see that. So if you look at a group of low income countries, it's not as if we're seeing our our projection for many of these countries to see themselves in default, that's not where we are, there are some but not the biggest, not the large number, the bigger concern is more liquidity. So if you take the numbers for low income countries uh next year, this year and next year, they have about $40 billion that they have to refinance. Now, if the market provides that easily at fairly affordable rate, that will be manageable. If it doesn't, then in that case, you could see much more debt distress. Interesting. So again, it's a pretty positive outlook though, a message in terms of where we, where we are relative to where we might have might have been. So I find that quite encouraging, I I want to ask you about something you may not be able to completely answer. But uh there's been a lot of talk here yesterday about um the prospect that the largest economy in the world is about to sort of embark on this program that involves a lot of tariffs, uh whether there are tariffs on China, in particular, whether it's tariffs across the board and all of its trading partners. And I know that the IMF has done a lot of research on the impact of tariffs previously and uh has warned that tariffs are bad for everybody and relative to open trade flows. You know, that's much, much better. Um to what extent do you see sort of the IMF s role in warning people about the implications of another round of tariffs? How much can you say or not say about what the likely consequences of a very expansive tariff program might be? No, unfortunately, I think we all recognize and that's in the data that global economic integration to trade and capital flows has been very helpful for the world in terms of raising hundreds of millions out of poverty, but more generally, uh in having prosperity in many parts of the world. Now, I can't speak to what will come next in terms of what the actual trade policies will be. Because the honest answer is, I don't know At this point, we have to wait once the policy announcements happen, then we will analyze the consequences of that. What I can point to basically looking at the last two or three years is that there has been a shift, a very important shift in the way economies see integration. And there are, there are good reasons for it in the past, you know, countries and businesses were hyper focused on efficiency which is you bought from wherever the cheapest source was. And then you have a pandemic when supply chains broke down. And you have uh you know, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and you know, Germany getting shut out from gas supplies. And so countries are now saying, well, efficiency alone won't do it. You need to be able to have resilience in your supply chains and that's a perfectly legitimate argument to make. In addition to that, of course, countries worry about that. Some of their trading partners have long standing subsidies and have, have provided a lot of support to their industries and that creates an unfair playing field, uh playing field, right? Not a level playing field. So what are we seeing if you look at the data over the last few years? Is that unlike the past? And well, I would say, you know, since the Cold War, we haven't seen patterns of this kind that we are seeing much more of global trade and foreign direct investment that is driven by geopolitical, that is affected by geopolitical factors. So trade between countries that are more geopolitically aligned is holding up much better than trade across countries that are not geopolitically aligned. And so we see the shift, like I said, some of that makes sense, but we have to see what the actual policies are to see, you know, how big of a of a shift this really interesting. So I guess my question to you is if we, if we shift further into this, this world that you're describing, that's more fragmented on, on kind of geopolitical uh lines. And so instead of this open global system where everyone trades with everyone, more or less, we we kind of split apart into these blocks, whether they're regional or whether they're kind of superpower blocks can, can the global economy maintain the relatively stable growth and resilience that you've described that it has right now? Is it able to preserve that or does it put it at risk again without knowing the actual policies, it's hard to speculate on the extent of what the impact would be. But we have of course, uh you know, simulated scenarios in the past about what could happen if you had very deep, you know, breakdowns. And if you have a decoupling in the world and the cost can be quite substantial, it's not one of those minor events, it would be very substantial. On the other hand, if it is done well and it is well managed, the cost could be relatively small so it could be as low as 0.2% of GDP. So again, a lot depends on how, how it is managed. Yeah, interesting. Paul Krugman's got a little audio snippet on the New York Times website this morning where he declares that the Trump package of initiatives is the most inflationary package of proposals that any president in the history of the US has ever put forward, which is quite a statement and he goes through point by point by point. Why? That's so is it, I mean, just as a general rule though, is it correct to conclude that that high tariffs in general tend to be inflationary? So again, we need to know how exactly the tariffs work. But if you take the example of what happened in 2018, 19, uh the tariffs that were put in terms of what the impact was, for example, on the US economy. So yes, it it had it was a cost push in the sense that it made it more expensive for us firms that were buying those inputs. But the pass through of that from there to consumer prices was not that big. So that was not the case. But again, it was, it was the details matter in terms of what goods you, you you put the tariff on how widespread it is, whether there are substitute sources, one way you can get the product. So all of those details matter for what the precise impact is going to be. Ok, let me shift gears a bit and ask you about a topic that came up a lot yesterday. And well, again today and that's a I, um we've heard a lot about how A I can uh improve our productivity where it can accelerate scientific breakthroughs. Many positive promising things will come out of it. Um There's also a concern about what it means though, for jobs and you've made some very interesting observations about how A I may protect, possibly have unexpected interactive effects with the macroeconomic cycle. Can you say a little bit more about that? Because I thought your comments were really fascinating. Sure. So again, you know, going back to where we started in terms of the global economy, I point to the fact that growth while holding up is not, it's not a good number. We would like that growth to be higher. And one of the main factors that can raise that is if we can raise productivity raise productivity growth because that's what slowed over the last two decades. And so in that sense, this new technology generated A I and its new forms of it sounds, it sounds exciting. OK. Well, maybe this is something that can actually raise productivity and we simulated what the effects could be. You know, we, we can see that the five years out growth could be higher by around 10 basis points or 80 basis points. Now, if you're looking at a baseline of growth of 3% if you have an 80 basis point increase, that's a, that's a pretty strong effect. But there's a range and it's not very clear how effective it would be. It depends upon how quickly it is being adopted. So there's a lot of promise that comes with A I, it's going to depend upon how quickly it's adapted. Now, the you pointed to this piece that I put out, which is that there is something very interesting in the way technology affects the business cycle, you know, technology has huge amounts of productivity effects, but also does have an effect on the labor market. Now, the extent to which that happens varies depending on the technology. Our estimates there are about 40% of labor in the world is exposed to A I, that doesn't mean it's a bad thing, but half of those can positively benefit from it. And half of those will be, you know, they could be negatively impacted from it. Now. That is a challenge. And what we have seen in the past is that when you, when do you actually see the effect of new technology on the labor market and what we have seen from previous cycles of technology boom is that it doesn't happen in good times. So when you have good times and companies are making lots of profits, they hold on to workers, they are investing in the technology, but they are holding on to workers. So you see it when the recession strikes, that's when you really see the effect of automation on the labor market. And that's what we saw. For example, after the great financial crisis, if you remember, we, we all talked about jobless recovery for a long time and that jobless recovery was a reflection of finally, companies letting go, letting go of workers fully automating the task and not hiring those workers back. So that's when you see. So the question here is for policy makers, which is to say just because you are not seeing it now where things go. That doesn't mean that you will not have an abrupt shift in a recession. Very interesting. I want to ask you if I can also about, about China second largest economy, uh very important to global trade flows. Um We spoke yesterday on a panel that was all about China uh uh trying to assess uh where China's macroeconomic outlook might be last week. They uh introduced a $1.4 trillion stimulus program. It hasn't seemed to really impress markets too much. What's your assessment of, of China's economy, its prospects and, and particularly what its structural challenges might be? So again, China, the second largest economy of the world, we would expect the growth in China not to be 10%. We would expect it to go down. We have it this year for about 4.8% and going down slightly next year. In the case of China, what you know, the main constraining factor is the domestic demand, especially consumption is is weak. Uh household consumption is weak in China and you have, you know, more deflationary dynamics than in other parts of the world. The property market is is a big issue. It's been a problem for a couple of years. Part of this is the government trying to, you know, moderate the size of the property market, but we haven't seen a positive turnaround. So I think the important thing is the government is moving and putting a lot of measures in place uh for us, you know, for there to be a big effect on growth in China. We see the need for policies that are more directed to households and that is not the case as of now. And a lot of the policies they have announced, but that's what's going to be needed to be able to raise consumption. So they are less dependent on exports to the rest of the world and more dependent on domestic demand. Fascinating. Um Certainly no shortage of things for the IMF to uh keep track of and monitor as we uh as we move forward over the next few years. Kit, I wanna thank you so much for being with us this morning. Thank you. Thank you.

Brian Hooks, Chairman and CEO, Stand Together
Chase Koch, Executive Vice President, Koch; Founder, Koch Disruptive Technologies
In conversation with: Kristin Stoller, Fortune

Fortune Global Forum 2024: Bridging Divides: The Changing Role Of Business And Philanthropy

The Honorable Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (2019-2022), U.K. Foreign Secretary (2016-2018) and Mayor of London (2008-2016)
In conversation with: Geoff Colvin, Fortune

Fortune Global Forum 2024: A Conversation With Boris Johnson

H.E. Fahd bin Abdulmohsan Al-Rasheed, Advisor, General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; Chair, Saudi Conventions and Exhibitions General Authority
In conversation with: Diane Brady, Fortune

Fortune Global Forum 2024: Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 - A Blueprint For Sustainability

Photograph by Rebecca Greenfield for Fortune

H.E. Fahd bin Abdulmohsan Al-Rasheed, Advisor, General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; Chair, Saudi Conventions and Exhibitions General Authority,Diane Brady, Fortune

Hello everyone. Um By the way, your excellency. Thank you for joining us. I have to point out we're both wearing black turtlenecks, which makes us the hippest people all day. So good for us for. Um listen, one of the things I want to start with Matt sort of alluded to it, but I can't think of a country that has transformed itself or a society or an industry with such speed and such scale. And we've gone from no cinema to being a hub for the film industry, post oil economy, more than doubling the participation of women in the workforce in just a few years. So I think of that movie, everything everywhere all at once. You know, can you give us some sense as to why this scale and the speed of change? Well, thank you so much. It's great to be here uh in the greatest city in the world after Riyadh. Sorry Riyadh is number one. No, it's been honestly uh something that I would have never imagined to be part of this vision 2030. And I don't know how much you know about vision. 2030 has been an incredible transformation for the country. It's social, economic, it's KP I driven. Um And it's been eight years. We're halfway. So it was launched in 2016. We have 1064 initiatives right now. So it is everything everywhere at once. Uh Well, we, we track it all, but most importantly, it's about the passion. So you got 30 million people who are part of this. This is mass participation, not just top down and we work seven days a week, 24 hours seven. So we're not taking the four week thing. No, and I can attest that. Well, I have recently been to Riyadh and I think it would be interesting to see a show of hands in the audience who has been to Saudi Arabia or Riyadh because I think so a number of people have been there and, and, and before we get into uh you talk about vision 2030 I want to also talk about before we get into what's next, what's happening right now. So we have conflict in the Middle East. How is that impacting the plans? Look, Saudi Arabia is a very large country. It's the 19th largest country in the world in terms of GDP and in terms of geographic size is the 13th. So there's a lot of challenges right now in the region. Uh But vision 2030 is about sustainability and fiscal policies that allow us to continue and again, leadership and passion of the whole country. So despite all of the challenges, um last year, we got 217 million tourists visiting the country. And that was the target for 2030. Um in terms of the number of multinational corporations that have moved the regional headquarters to Saudi, we've reached 540 most of them this year. Uh And so it's a business hub. Uh It's a regional hub for stability and in the area I work right now, which is the conventions and exhibitions. We have seen increases from last year, 17% increase in the number of events. So it's really been amazing to see the scale of growth and the speed of change that has been taking place and how it's been adopted across the board. Anything you'd want to say about this new administration that's coming in, you've worked obviously with both Biden and Trump in the past in terms of the implications just for the growth in the region. Look, I I the truth is the Kingdom and the United States of America have had this very long established relationships. Seven relation of 70 years or 80 years now. At the government to government level, we always work with all administrations at the business to business level. And in the human perspective, a lot of us have studied here, we understand the language, we understand a lot of the culture. So I think we'll be fine. A Lakers fan, by the way, I should mention we were talking about that in the other room. Um Let me, let me ask a little bit about the different areas of transformation. There's the urban transformation and there's always a lot of attention on neo, you know, with that 1.5 trillion, I think it's 33 times the land mass of New York City at the end. So talk about that urban transformation. But you've also been a pivot, you played a pivotal role in transforming Riyadh. So I think that's something that's often underappreciated. Talk a little bit about that. Well, ultimately, all of the social transformation, all of the economic cross sectoral transformation has to take, take shape spatially and that is where urban transformations take place. So the world needs, you know, 900 new cities over the next 50 years and 900 cities. Yes mega cities uh to to capture both the growth in the population, but more importantly, urbanization. So num is an example of that. So you build new city, how would you build it in the 21st century? But we have existing cities and the city of New York is an incredible city, has been able to transform itself over time and still be a global hub for business and wealth. And the city of Riyadh is also that right. We have um the 44th largest city economy in the world in Riyadh. We have 8.5 million people living in Riyadh and um we're investing again uh in a metro and public transport which will will be open uh soon, we're building a park that is, that's massive in the mid middle of the city. So we've learned a lot from our sister cities if you if you will around the world and uh we're implementing that all of that in the city. I think one of the things that that must be challenging is the social transformation. I mentioned the position of women earlier, we've seen this rapid increase of of labor force participation. I believe it's now 35% women can drive, you know, whereas they couldn't in the past, you know, in addition to you're the kind of the birthplace of Islam, there's obviously parts of the society there where this would be a huge change. How do you bring everybody along with you? The thing I think we did not understand in Saudi was that the the youth of the population and the dynamic that brings into to the country socially, like I said, 65% of the population is under 35 and they were on their phones, they were using their phones, they were global citizens. Um but they were engaging the world through this small machine that we we all now have in our pockets. What's amazing is not just women going from 17% participation to 35% they own now, 45% of uh business. So sme s they're entrepreneurs, they're driving um all of the, the change and they are part of it at boards at the senior level. CEO N minus one. And it's, it doesn't feel like it's new. That's what's mesmerizing. It, it feels like we were just segregating that, that they, that women, women have always worked. So the other day, the other day, I, I had a 200 global um uh business people come into the country. So I called one of my colleague and I said, you know, you have been through this transformation before. If you were successful, you're doing this and you're doing that. Can you tell us about your unique experience? She said, Fahad, this is not unique. All us women in Saudi Arabia were doing things. This was just segregation and that's where I learned the difference. Um And I, and I think it's very much true when you look at our approach to, for example, music, we held a very large electronic dance music festival. How many people came? 907 100,000, 3 days, 700,000, it became the largest in the world and you walk in between people because I was interested who are these people and you walk in between. They just, they're our youth, they know all the music. We just didn't recognize them and didn't give them the entertainment that they needed in the country. So as soon as you did it, it was natural for us So I think the industrial transformation is really interesting and, and I'm conscious of the time, but you just move toward a post oil economy. And, and first of all, talk a little bit about where you are in the energy transition because that, those were some of the statistics that really shocked me the most. Well, let me tell you something because this is deeply personal. I graduated from uh my bachelor's in 1999 when I went back home. And um the choices of career were very simple, oil and gas, petrochem, um banking, uh retail. Now my daughter Lulu, who is 16 and will graduate in 2030 has a choice of doing whatever she wants. She can make a movie, she can go to space. She wants to be a bio marine engineer as opposed to a skateboarder. Like so good for you. That's well done. I'm happy she has the ambition because I don't have to do my job as a parent. She, she, she handles her own responsibility. But it's, it's a, a real transformation that is rooted in where the people in what the people are doing. And again, going to this, people think of Saudi Arabia as an oil rich nation. And that because of that we don't value oil. Just, no, it's a, it's a resource we care about just like water, just like uh air and, and we, we try to minimize its use. So um in, in, in Riyadh, the real sustainability strategy, which is probably one of the most ambitious in the world calls for 50% renewable by 2030 30% of cars electric. So, uh you know, we are able to manage, manage and balance uh the needs of the nation based on what is most optimal, but it's not just energy. So, um when were you were last here in 2019? Is that right? What's the difference you see in terms of the interest of, of industry, the partnerships, this is a room full of CEO s what's your message to them in terms of the types of companies that are coming here? And I mentioned this in the US. You're also working with China, India and many other countries around the world as well. Yeah, sure. We notice that I'm not projecting, we're in a jazz theater. Uh If anybody needs me to rep um repeat that, but they don't wanna hear from me, they wanna hear from you. So honestly, I think from 2019 to this visit, I think the amount of engagement and wanting to come and explore and see and be part of it all is totally different. I feel a different energy, a di a different perception. Um and I love it because what we are doing in Saudi Arabia is about partnership. We can do 1064 initiatives in seven years alone, right? This is we've been able to scale what we're doing not because of the financial resources that we have. Of course, you need that. It's because of our ability to create partnerships and friendships around the world and to work with others. And many of the people who raise their hand and have come to Saudi Arabia, I hope they will tell you that this is one of the fewest countries in the world where you would go and say, I want to do something. And the answer would be how can we make it bigger together on a personal level? Um um before we get to some final thoughts, what is your own dream for your country? Well, I think, I think a lot about um unleashing human potential and I think the best cities, the best countries in the world that have respect and they respect the dignity of a human being and allow them the resources to become the best that they can be are the countries that ultimately will win. And I think the kingdom today is a place where you can literally do anything. I mean, I came into Saudi Arabia after 18 years of living abroad when I was 22 and II, I came from nothing and through education, I got to run two cities. I mean, that's, that's pretty incredible. Um And I've done everything I've set out to do by the time I was 40 you did everything you set out to do by the time you were 40. So now I have to come up with new plans, new plans like vision 2030 plan. Like, you know, I'd be remiss I want to ask quickly, you know, as a journalist, how should I be thinking about, about freedom of the press in Saudi Arabia? II, I don't think that if you are now in Saudi and you want to criticize my work in the city of Riyadh, you could absolutely do it anywhere because honestly, it's not the media, it's not the platform anymore. You could do it on any of the social media outlets with any handle you want, you can say anything you want about anyone anywhere, right? So I, I don't think that is the issue at all. Um I, I probably, I actually think that probably we have like one of the most free media in the world. So in the 48 seconds, we have left any thoughts you want to convey to the audience in terms of what's next for Saudi Arabia. I think Saudi Arabia is a today, a hub for the future, a hub for people who are dreaming and people who want to do something exciting. And um and we welcome everybody. I would love to host you all in Saudi Arabia at some point and share with you the amazing culture and the amazing, amazing hospitality that we like to welcome people with. Well, I had a great time. So thank you very much, come again and I will and thank you very much for your time. Thank you and I look forward to continuing the conversation. Absolutely. Thank you so much.

Presenter: Salome Agbaroji, U.S. National Youth Poet Laureate (2023); Student, Harvard University

Fortune Global Forum 2024: A Voice From The Future

So world leaders today are gathering at COP 29 in Azerbaijan to take on the challenges of climate change. And alongside them are scores of young people who consider our changing climate. One of the most urgent issues of their generation, millions have rallied around the globe to press for action and hundreds are attending cops. So as they meet in Baku, we have a remarkable voice of the future with us. Here. Today, we have Harvard University student Salome Agbai and she served as a 2023 national youth poet, laureate of the United States. She is joining us to share her poem Oasis. It's a powerful vision of paradise where nature and humanity exist in perfect harmony where despite a challenging path, the poem suggests that we strive toward this ideal. Please welcome Salome to the stage. Have you heard of that place over the horizon that no one has seen? But everyone wants to go that place. They call oasis where the water runs clear, glittering bodies of endless blue trickling tributaries and springs, sustainers of life above and below it. Where the hawksbill turtles, Wade and the bluefin tuna swim without plastic nets around their necks. Have you heard of the oasis? Where the oaks and timbers grow green and lush from fertile black beading soil branches extending far beyond the imagination bearing full ripe fruit. Far as the eyes can see the oasis powered by its greens and streams and sunbeams. And at the end of day you see a million stars in the obsidian sky, ozone, unobstructed by carbon clouds. Nothing but crisp air inhalation and inexplicable Peace. Haven't you seen the kids beaming and full bellied boys and girls basking in equal opportunity and health plucking fruit from the foliage and laughing for its sweetness and abundance and innocence. Haven't you seen the people satisfied and sustained harvesting all of what they need but never anymore. Solidarity is the only language they speak. And in this language, there are no words for war, pillage and steel only. Thank you and peace and prosperity. If you heard of such a place, wouldn't you want to go? Even if the past was paved with uncertainty, tribulations, bottle caps and mishaps. And if I told you, you were just halfway there, would you fall to your knees amidst the deserted battleground, the wilting wilderness, the incinerated pages and piles of plastics, but definitely hot weathered rock, etching extinction into your waving white flag? No, we must go for every tree that must grow for every child that needs books, for every problem that needs a solution for every woman that deserves a quality. We must gear up and make it to that beautiful place that no one has seen. But everyone wants to go in our lives on our earth, that place we call oasis.

Carme Artigas, Co-Chair, U.N. AI Advisory Body; Senior Fellow, Belfer Center, Harvard University
Elizabeth Kelly, Director, U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute
In conversation with: Ellie Austin, Deputy Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media

Fortune Global Forum 2024: The Governance of AI

Carme Artigas, Co-Chair, Belfer Center, Harvard University
Elizabeth Kelly, U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute
Ellie Austin, Fortune Live Media

Rob Manfred, Commissioner, Major League Baseball  
Adam Silver, Commissioner, National Basketball Association  
In conversation with: Matt Heimer, Fortune

Fortune Global Forum 2024: Growing the Game

Kate Johnson, President and CEO, Lumen Technologies
Vimal Kapur, Chairman and CEO, Honeywell
In conversation with: Andrew Nusca, Fortune

Fortune Global Forum 2024: AI At Work - From Promise to Productivity

AI At Work: From Promise to Productivity

So artificial intelligence, I'm just going to stop there. No, I'm just kidding. We've not seen things like this before. Things that grow this fast that usher in change this dramatic. And I have this theory that for the last couple of years, we've been looking at A I as the thing to solve all of our problems. But right now, this is the time where the rubber hits the road. This is the time when things get messy. And to me the most interesting. So what I'd like to know first from you, Kate is what are you concerned about vis A vis the constraints to all that growth from here on it. So I, I think it's a multi variable equation, right? We're, we're networking company. Uh We run a big portion of the world's internet traffic on our, on our fiber. And uh A I needs data, data, needs data centers, data centers need to be connected, right? And so, you know GP U SI just spoke with a uh C level at, at one of the hypercars. And he said, you know, Kate, we used to measure margin return on every extra engineer we deploy, that's not how we think about it anymore. We measure the return on every GP U that we put in place. So the actual data center compute required for A I. And uh you know, there's, there's constraint around that um building out these data centers, there's constraints around power space uh and water for cooling. Um You know, we, we are connecting those data centers and uh we are not the long pole in the tent, but I think the real long pull in this in this build out is really uh human adoption, right? How do I use this? There's a lot of fear in the system. Um You know, there's, there's a lot of confusion as to what great looks like. It's a great uncertain, you know, terrain ahead. And so I think there are a couple of different things that are making us all think a little bit harder than usual. I would say that for sure. Maybe A I can think for us. OK, Vimo, what are you concerned about with this big, great big build out? I think I'm gonna pick up from what Kate said the adoption. But when I think from a industrial company perspective, so honey will serve three big segment, aerospace energy and buildings. I'm representing those customers. I think three things got thrown at them over the last five years, uh five G cloud and now A I and you can throw a lot of technology. But the question is what do you want to do with that? And I think for the last one year, it's clear that these three comes together trifecta and build a path of autonomy for these industrial sector. And what autonomy means is really solving the two fundamental issues which these companies are facing. First is a skill shortage, they don't have people to run their operations. Uh And second is how to maximize asset utilization, which is need for every industrial asset. For example, I always give is think of a plane. So the problem they would like to solve is can I have one pilot instead of two, forget the FAA certification for a minute. But ideal speaking, pilot shortage is a real issue plan in the whole world. And then of course, can I run plane as long as I want? So those are the two issues to solve the combination of A I, the data availability through five G and ability to do analytics over the cloud. When they all come together the trifecta of it, it becomes pathway to autonomy for an aerospace company, for an industrial plant, for a building. And that's what is really exciting thing about it that how do you unlock the capability of these technologies and the use? Will people use it? Will they adopt it? Are they going to worry about it? But the good news is that these issues are real and in context of industrial, these are revenue maximization strategies. These are not cost savings. And so I think people are excited and they want to proceed with that. You know, I'm, I'm glad you said that because look, the things you are both talking about are very concrete things we like that. Business likes certainty, right? But A I has been so open ended. It's been difficult to justify. There's a general feeling that we need to have it. Uh uh but to at what cost really? And we've seen the stocks of the big tech companies recently get traded down quite a bit because of extraordinary investments in all things. A I and maybe some concern that uh that it will never pay off. And so then what do you think of all that? You've just outlined a bunch of things that sound like just easily justified? But is it tough? I would say the, every time when you uh relate to us a tangible solution, then the adoption always go high. The, the, you know, I've been working for almost four decades now, when technology is chasing to solve a problem without knowing what the problem is, it doesn't scale. But when you invert it to say we are going to solve this problem and technology happens to be a means and not the end, then the adoption happens better. So I think we all have learned from our old uh uh you know, experiences and I'll give an example of cloud and we, uh you know, we started in 10 years back to say that we'll adopt cloud to do engineering for our complex projects. They're very global. People are spread all over the world. In 2015, there was not many customers who are willing to say it's a good idea. So what is this cloud thing? And what's this virtualization? And we said we'll adopt it ourselves because Honeywell is a scale and we demonstrated that it creates value and then everybody came together. So I think it's always where is the value and when the value comes in adoption always happens. I I'd like to add to that. There's there's this notion of start ups, right? And if there is just a new technology company, fill in the blank, any technology, any name of the company, we would allow that technology company to go through AJ curve, spend some money to eventually get the return. We're kind of skipping that step here. And I don't necessarily think that's the right thing to do because I think there are a couple of things at play. The first is that uh the the hyper scalar cloud companies, you know, social platforms, the developer of these models, they are seeing this enormous capability and opportunity and they're building out critical infrastructure ahead, you know, at the beginning of the J curve, that's what's happening right now. Why did they do that? Because they're seeing the enormous impact that large language models can have on uh the acceleration of productivity certainly at the individual level. And so the hype cycle is kind of around the the productivity boost that, that a worker or a human gets from an A I model in everyday tasks and activities. I think the return really comes when large corporations start to really understand how to change process and business outcomes. But that takes time and it takes focus and it takes intention. Uh and I think that's where we are right now. So I, I, before the naysayers get too excited, I would just go back to the history books and say fastest diffusion of any technology in the history of mankind mini J curve coming our way. So what would you offer the executives in this room who are searching and hunting for that? Roy who are under the gun from their CFO S and all, you know, maybe we attach it to certain clear use cases and you know, what's the best way forward here? Keep the timeline short. And I, I think it's really about intentionality. So the first thing and I don't know about everybody in the audience, but I got pretty excited about A I and let everybody play and then I looked at my bill and I said, ok, let's maybe not play so much. And let's be intentional about the, you know, 5 to 7 things that we know can really make a difference. That's individual worker. I think the next step is functional, how can I improve sales productivity? How can I improve uh the customer experience in in support and service? Those are, those are no brainer places to deploy this kind of technology for instantaneous return. I think when you put all of those you know, functions of the future finance of the future operation of the future sales of the future together, you you have a a new construct of a company and that's probably where the thinking should be. But from the perspective of I need an A I strategy, it needs to be intentional and I need the infrastructure like like a new network to support it. That's the work that needs to begin today. I think what I'm going to add to Kate's point is that uh the collaboration between the ecosystem is critical, we should not repeat and learn what others have already figured out. For example, Honeywell knows the domain of its customer but not necessarily best in class and large language model. So why should we try to be expert in that and let it be left to tech companies like Google or Amazon or Microsoft. But we know what we know and similarly take it to the customers who can adopt it. So one of the critical success factor is if we want to be success, be successful faster, we have to collaborate, which hasn't happened in the past because failure was more passed on to somebody else. Like you take the risk, I'm not going to take the risk. So if you want to have a high return, the risk has to be shared. It means co creation has to be done. We have to take a risk of sharing our capability with somebody else. The risk of maybe losing it and customers have to take a risk of adopting it to a certain degree if there's a trust on that. Now you said a word that I'm gonna ask a question about in a second. But I just wanna remind the audience we are going to have room for audience questions. So start thinking about it and I'll come to you in a minute. Failure. Uh We love that word in technology, don't we? Um You know, a I there's concerns for individuals, for employees are writing so very high about artificial intelligence. The surveys are out there. The anxieties are real. I think everybody has different anxieties about it in different directions, but it's all anxiety is my point. No one's calm, certainly not the CFO. So um how do you manage failure? You don't want to give a I a bad name, right? But you clearly have to try some things to fail. Let them play as you said, right? So changes in today's word if you're not willing to change, I think you're living literally in the past. Uh The adoption of the new technology is uh is a, is a new normal if you resist it, I'm sure it's gonna come and get you sooner or later. And A I is just one of it. I mean, I'll remind people there was robotic process automation five years back and you go five years back, there was virtualization. So this is, this is gonna keep coming. And the trick is companies have to grow so that we need more resources, but that gets offset by productivity which is going to create. So I think that's a virtuous cycle. One has to think about it. If you are scared, it's a doomsday for everybody. It's not create innovation. We just keep scared about it and nothing is gonna happen. I, I think your point is spot on. Uh and I, I think to your, to your point, Phil, it's um more than ever you have to create a culture that embraces this change that in, that is vulnerable and agile and oriented around growth and learning very different than traditional, but more important than ever because I think A I introduces an uncertainty like we've never seen into the workplace onto the global stage. And uh you just have to be prepared for anything and that's terrifying unless you have the comrades, you know, going into it with you. And I think that's, that's certainly the culture that we're building and we're seeing companies that are most successful in this trial period are, are the ones that have that kind of culture. And I can't say that we've seen it um to the degree that the technology itself, what we're gonna get from it is so uncertain, let alone all of the dynamics around that. All right, let's go to the audience for questions. We've got one right over here. If you could just wait for the microphone, please. Thank you, your name and who you're with when you get it. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Ashton Jackson. I'm a reporter at C NBC. Uh My question for you is in such a fast evolving field. What skills or qualities do you believe employees should develop to work effectively on alongside A I technologies? Especially now when people are so worried about job displacement, I mean, from my perspective, it's this notion of trying to get it right? Um Instead of being right, you know, a lot of people are focusing on having A I answer the question for them rather than figuring out. OK, what can I have this do for? And with me and that shift in mindset is it's, it's probably the number one thing is I'm not gonna show up every, every day to try and be right. I'm gonna show up and build an engine to get it right. And if I'm a customer obsessed, that's a very powerful combination. I would say, I mean, I look at it that we all have to think about elevating our capability to one level up. Everybody has to think how to be a manager because you don't need a lot of work, which was done. The front line is gonna get automated or is getting automated. So how to manage work has to be a skill you have to learn because you may not get the opportunity to do that with your own hand. And that's a different paradigm because we were lucky to do a lot of work with our hand as we grew up and probably the current next generation may not get it. But it doesn't mean they don't have work opportunity, they have to do it just differently and adopting that skill and thinking about it is I think is key to their success. Yeah, that was a great question. Let's see. Is there any other? Forgive me? The light is quite bright. Oh, yes. Right here in the front, please. Thank you. I'm a Attorney general of Financial. I had a question for both of you. How your companies are dealing with the integration potentially of public data, large language models in your internal data and how you see those working together, either the good or the bad from that. I mean, we were, we were fairly uh conservative in our deployment uh using enterprise models so that we can, you know, keep the learning on the inside and we're looking on the horizon thinking about what that means for our customers moving forward and, and how to keep pace with it. So I think it's still something we're trying to get right for, for a company like ours, it's less of an issue because we always work on a model of protecting our customer data. We make money by solving problem and not by selling data. So it works on ND A with pretty much everything we do even today for the last forever. So it's uh but at the same time, uh have to be very conscious on the whole art aspect of the data privacy. You cannot just uh rub it off and always actively working to use the tools which are there. And what legislation is coming ahead, always concern tends to be that any Broad Bush legislation should not put it all together for different sectors because industrial sector has different set of opportunities and different set of issues versus consumers which have a legitimate issues on misuse of A I. But that's probably not gonna occur in context or industrial. So how do we separate the domains and make sure that we do the right thing? So for sure, I think one of the things to consider though is the pace of learning when you just have it focused on the inside versus what you gain from the outside and how to balance the two. But obviously, customer data protection is of paramount importance period. That's a great question, Tom. Thank you. Oh, yes, we have one right here. Uh Hi, my name is Sebastian Picardo. I'm CEO of Whole Room for a lecture retailer in Canada. Um I wanted to ask if you could share two or three examples of things that are a company that is relatively early uh at early stage in, in the A I journey, what are two or three examples that companies could test and learn and see some uh productivity gains? I I think the the easiest and the most advanced is probably in sales. What does this customer need at this point in our life cycle? Tell me everything I should know about them and what products and services are, are the least or most likely to, you know, uh hit a nerve with them in terms of delivering their business outcomes. We're using that today. It's drawing, you know, efficiency uh and productivity with our people so they can get more done and spend less time researching. The same is true in, in customer service. Obviously, you know, we, we've all bounced into uh you know, a I bought land in, in the customer service. The question is how can you take all of their service history when you're, when you're a technology company, for example, and they have a real service issue that's technical based and waste zero time in terms of getting to diagnosis and to fix and then how can you inherit that fix into the support system forever? A I has been um a game changer in terms of our productivity curve there. I would say I would, I always think in 22 dimensions. First is the segments your skills are hard to acquire. How do you make A I A for people to use A I tools? Example I always give is I can drive in New York with Google Maps with but not without it. I will be, I'll be doing rounds of this block forever. But the tool is helping me to go on to those tools which make a a lower skilled people. Higher skilled person is a great use, use cases. That's one and second is I think one thing which is underestimated is how to reduce cycle of a capital project. Everybody builds something right? You build assets, building plants, you can heavily automate the whole capital engineering process because you can observe images, data pictures, you can also observe the engineering drawings, engineering processes and heavily automate them. That's something which is under discussed today. But I'm a firm believer that's going to be a huge advantage to anybody who builds capital assets because the design and engineering takes like forever because engineers have to redo it every time. But A I will naturally using LLM uh it can dramatically reduce cycle time. So it's more on a capital cycle efficiency versus skid efficiency. One more you got technology debt. Um And you're worried about aging workforce with respect to caring and feeding those systems. A I can be very effective in terms of understanding the code learning and being able to patch and fix as well. Very good question. Thank you very much to finish us out here. Lightning round. Um What is, do you feel each of you that the ambitions, the great ambitions of A I that I outlined at the very beginning are finally coming into alignment with what is possible right now. I, I it's, it's too early to, to tell. I think we're at the very beginning of it. Obviously, I'm, I'm uh I'm pro a I, I think it's important for the competitiveness of the country, innovation, health care, education. Um but it's super, yeah, swing super super early in, in the cycle, I would say using it in the sole context of autonomy. We're trying to give it a North Star to say use A I to solve a problem of skills and asset management, asset maximization. And I remain very optimistic that because we have a North Star, it's gonna, it's gonna scale very quickly in the industrial segment. Fabulous. Thank you so much. Give them a round of applause. Thank you. Thank you.

Brian Cornell, Chairman and CEO, Target Corp.
Steven Williams, Chief Executive Officer, PepsiCo Foods North America
In conversation with: Diane Brady, Fortune

Fortune Global Forum 2024: Connecting Culture and Performance

Stedman Graham, Business Advisor, Chairman, and CEO, S. Graham & Associates
In conversation with: Ruth Umoh, Editor, Next to Lead, Fortune

Fortune Global Forum 2024: Leadership In the Age of Identity

Stedman Graham, Business Advisor, Chairman, and CEO, S. Graham & Associates
In conversation with: Ruth Umoh, Editor, Next to Lead, Fortune


Good afternoon, everyone. Stedman. I am delighted to be joined in conversation with you. Thank you so much for joining us here at the Fortune Global Forum. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. Absolutely. Before you delve into the conversation at hand, a quick reminder, we will be taking some audience questions now that we have Stedman here with us. So do keep that in mind as we kick off this conversation, Stedman, I have your book here with us and we'll soon be you really, really delving into it. You are a steadfast proponent of what you have coined identity leadership and you've aus about the role it plays in mobilizing teams and mobilizing workforces and helping organizations reach their maximum potential, define the theory for us and its significance. Well, identity leadership. Thank you so much for that. Identity leadership is self leadership uh based on the philosophy that you can't lead anybody else until you first lead yourself. So I've kind of dedicated my life to help people figure out how to work on themselves, how to organize themselves, uh change the learning system around. Uh So they learn how to learn uh and then self actualize their potential as a human being. And there's a process for that. Uh And so I've been looking for this kind of all of my life to try to fill that hole up in my heart based on my background and stuff, I've had to go through uh with my family and all of that. So the ability to be able to again uh maximize your potential based on who you are. To me is one of the most important things in the 21st century. You use this phrase repeatedly. Self leadership. What do you mean by that? What does that look like in practice? Well, self leadership is, is learn how to take information, education, make it relevant to who you are as a person, your talents, your abilities, your skills uh and to be able to um organize content and take this iphone, which is one of the greatest tools in the world and make that relevant to you to your growth and empowerment. Most of us can't do that. Uh You got 8 billion people who basically they wake up in the morning, they wash their face, they brush their teeth, they get something to eat, they get the kids off to school, work all day, come home in the afternoon, they spend time with the family, they watch TV, they go to bed, maybe they dream this Monday and they repeat that same cycle over and over every single day. So if you did the same thing you did yesterday as you would do to today as you will do tomorrow, would that be done? The answer would probably be the same thing which is nothing. And then everything we learned in school, we get to memorize, take tests, repeat the information back, get labeled with a grade two weeks later, if I asked you what you learn what you would probably say I forgot or nothing. So nothing from nothing. There's nothing. So the most important question is, do you know who you are? And can you source information and make that relevant to your talents, your your abilities, your skills so that you can constantly grow beyond your circumstances? Do you know who you are answering? That question requires self-awareness. That is certainly key to identity, leadership. Uh certainly key to being an efficacious leader. That's easier said than done. How do leaders develop this muscle? How do they, you know, augment their ability to be introspective? Um and, and have that level and that deep level of self awareness? And yeah, I mean most you, you you won't get in school for the most part. So it's, it really kind of, it is a privilege to be able to organize content and apply that you develop my life changed when I learned how to learn because before I was just reading and not applying information to my talents and to my ability. And this thing called love, it's kind of the center of everything. It's your core base. So, I mean, II I teach in schools and uh I have curriculum in schools and colleges and all of that. And the first thing I do is I get people to write down everything they love in their life, their passion, their purpose, what they care about their interests and to be able to organize information, education and apply that to your development so that you can define your own existence, which is what we're looking for today as self directed learners, lifelong learners, and this room is full of talent. So the question is, is how can you leverage that talent to be the best person you could possibly be and create as much value uh as you were, as you were born to create based on your potential. As a person, you said your life changed when you learned how to learn. I mean, we have luminaries in the room, we have ceos, we have world leaders who arguably believe that they know how to learn. What do you mean by that? You learned how to learn? It was a bit more mind expansive, well, learning how to learn. It means you focus on the internal foundation of what you're good at. Uh You focus on what you're passionate about. You focus on your purpose in life and then you're able to grow and organize yourself in a way that you're, you can create a sustainable process. To be really great at what you do. And now we have access to content and information around the world to be able to apply all of that leverage into the global marketplace. To create more value to me is uh learning how to learn, you know, and everything you read, everything you learn, everything you experience should be able to take those experiences and all of that and make that relevant to your empowerment. This ideology around identity, leadership can feel a bit nebulous uh daunting. Where does one begin? Well, one begins with uh writing down and being conscious of everything that you want to achieve in your life. Everything you're passionate about again, love is like there's only two emotions that either love or hate go to good or bad will or wont can and can't looking at the glass half empty or half full. So to be able to choose man, what you're good at what you care about, what you want to do, what makes you happy and then to build from that and then to be able to apply information to that so that you can constantly improve your life and get out of that routine is what is how you begin to, to create a maximum potential. Give us a personal anecdote. Have you applied that in your life? Well, you know, coming from a small town, you know, kind of having a race based consciousness growing up with two special need, brothers in my family was very difficult for me. I grew up with low self esteem and lack of confidence in myself being defined by my relationship with Oprah, of course, and, and being put into a box. Um I didn't know how to define myself and I was looking to figure out how do I uh create kind of equality in my own life and how do I define myself? And I realized that it's not an outside job, it's an inside job. So we're often defined by house and car and money and title and all those external things. And when I realized that I first had to focus internally to build my own existence, to define my own potential. That's when I realized, oh, you're, you're going the wrong way and that most people in the world are focused on the outside world is the way to define their existence and build value. Uh So when I changed that perspective and that started to taking information and education and make it irrelevant to my own personal professional development, that's when I started to grow. And I realized it's not who you are. It's not where you start, it's who you can become. And we live in the greatest country in the world, which is America. So to be able to live in this country and utilize all the systems and all of the possibilities to make that relevant to our personal professional development. That's pretty much a uh uh a gift for us and an opportunity turn into the audience. Any questions, if you have one do raise your hand on my hand, I will come to you any questions? Well, that makes my life easier because I have many more questions for you. Uh So we were talking about identity, we just had uh you know, a pivotal election. Uh Identity certainly played a, you know, a central role. Uh The world has become far more interconnected business has become increasingly global and the leader's role has become, you know, much more complex. They face a slew of challenges and setbacks on a daily basis. What role does self leadership play in keeping one motivated and grounded? Well, I think you, the key is to be able to invest in yourself today. Um We want folks to be self directed, lifelong learners. Uh You have a global marketplace today, which is great. You couldn't have a better opportunity than, than to be in to be living in this era today because you have access to so much information and to be able to source that information and make that relevant again to your gifts uh to what you do. Well, to me is the opportunity. Uh We've never had uh a so much access to information before in our lives. So to be able to apply that information to who we are every day uh is a, is an opportunity. And when you say self directed in your estimation is that creating a purpose, a mission and executing on it. That's, that's really being excited about learning, being excited about reading and developing and building and creating and designing your own future because you can, and uh we talk about production and performance, we want people to perform. We want people to build value. The value that you give yourself is the value the world gives you, the world sees you as you see yourself. So how do I get you to perform at the highest possible level based on what's possible for you? Utilizing all those tools that could be relevant to your development personally and professionally. It perfect. Because I go to my next question because you've outlined in your book here uh about identity leadership about nine steps or so to understanding um and discovering who one is uh some of the steps you list include, you know, outlining your vision and creating a support network and leaving your comfort zone and facing your fears out of those nine. Where do most leaders stumble and face the most internal resistance? Yeah. Most people stumble with the first step of knowing who they are right from the outset. Yeah, because they're so they're taught so much to focus on the outside world as a way to define their existence. And so they lose control. For the most part, they have no control to, to develop, build, define, create or design their future. And so they get stuck being in the world is constantly changing all the time. So they have to keep adjusting and you have to keep adjusting, you know, based on, um you know, how, how the world, you know, what, what's happening currently in, in, in, in your environment and where you are today. So, so that's the, that's the foundational piece that you have to go back to the core of who you are all the time. And that's very difficult and a change in environment out of those nine steps, I'm sure you're going to say, look, you know, they're all your favorites, but which would you say is the most catalytic as one thinks about how they maximize their potential and certainly the potential of their companies. I think, you know, once you find out who you are, vision is very important, you know, what can you create, what's possible for you uh who you want to become uh developing a uh setting goals, developing a travel plan around uh again, where you're going uh being able to master the rules of the road, your guiding principles. What are your principles that you want to uh live by uh building relationships, all those things that are relevant to, again, building value. Uh You really quickly, you noted at the top of the conversation, you said, you know, a challenge has been being identified by your relationship with Owen for Oprah Winfrey. Uh that said he's been a long time friend and confidant of the media mogul. So I would be remiss if I didn't ask you, you know, how her leadership style differs from or potentially aligns with um this ethos around identity leadership that you've said. Well, well, number one, she's authentic. She believes in what she does. She's a extraordinary uh learner. She's reading all the time. Here's a person that reads about five books a week. Uh She is able to apply the information to her development. Uh She direct takes charge of her own social economic opportunities. She utilizes the the free enterprise system as a way to enhance her value. So all of those things are relevant to uh the nines step success process. The process of success is the same for everybody. The difference is some people know it. Some people don't. Fantastic. Uh That's all we would take no time. All right. Well, with that being said, thank you so much for your time. This is such a great conversation. Thank you such a pleasure.

Alex Chriss, President and CEO, PayPal
Paul Hudson, Chief Executive Officer, Sanofi
In conversation with: Kristin Stoller, Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media

Fortune Global Forum 2024: Competing In the Global Marketplace - Strategies For Growth

Hello, everyone. All right, Alex Paul. Thank you so much for being with me here today. So you both come from two vastly different industries but have kind of parallel stories. I think. So you both lead decades old brands. Um but are relatively new, Ceo S Paul. You've been at snowy five years, Alex. You uh just had your one year anniversary. Congratulations. Um And you both, you made some giant pivots in your very short but very productive time. So, Alex, let's start with you. Um You've called yourself an underdog in the past. Uh You took over at a time when paypal stock was struggling a bit. So what would you say has been the biggest pivot you've made in the past year? Yeah. Well, first, thank you for having me here. It's been fantastic to be with you all. Um You know, paypal 25 year old company, uh one of the most well known brands in the world. Uh We also have the Venmo product, which again is a top brand, so incredible products uh serving hundreds of millions of consumers and tens of millions of merchants. Um but a product and uh uh a company that I think had lost its way a little bit uh from an innovation standpoint. And so coming in, uh what I really wanted to do was get the innovation muscle back and open up the addressable market that we could go after. So go after. So one of the things I've really focused on in this past year is changing the mindset of the company and the mindset of the external world from being just a payments company, which is what we were all known for uh to really focusing on commerce and commerce, you know, spans so many other things from the moment a consumer tries to find something all the way through to, you know, post purchase. And with the data that we have with the technology that we have and with the talent that we have, uh that's an opportunity for us to uh to expand and really become a commerce company. And Paul, you've had a bit of an easy last week. Um You uh your company prepared to sell a steak in your consumer health. You know, Paula, can you tell us about what this means for your overall business strategy? And if it's a bigger pivot for you, well, we um I'm five years as you know, so if you produce almost a billion dollars of a billion doses of vaccines and medicines every year were absolutely focused on miracles and breakthroughs for patients, but it wasn't always that way. And five years ago, we decided to double down on being best in class or first in class, doing things that companies, drug companies had never done before to try and treat unmet need, take more risk. But in areas where we were strong and we had great capability and we stepped back, in fact, from quite a lot of the areas where we thought we couldn't offer real radical breakthrough for patients to step change in efficacy or safety. And so, uh part of that streamlining and taking us towards a pure play by a farmer was to exit our consumer business and you reference it, uh we're gonna uh exit about 50% through private equity to CD. Nr uh who we think will create even more value for patients and those that go into the pharmacy in a trusted way to get what they need and, and we'll focus on chasing miracles, which is really what we're supposed to do and what we're designed for. And I think what we're best at and we're, we're well underway in achieving that. Excellent. And I know we talked about this a lot today already. Um but have the results of the election last week, I impacted how you're looking at your 2025 strategy at all, especially Paul for you with health care. And is there anything top of mind? Well, the first question we ask ourselves with any administration, of course, governments are changing in most major markets. The vast majority of the world going to vote at some point over the last 12 months and coming 12 months. And um it's really about what will it do in terms of changing access to health care, access to medicines? That's what we ask. And you know, we hope the democracies choose the right leaders. But beyond that, um we want to know what will it mean for out of pocket here in the US. What will it mean for making sure innovation is rewarded that scientific jobs are encouraged and they can proliferate even more and we can do incredible things. So we come at it almost entirely from uh you know, a health care innovation angle and, and that never changes. We're always iterating and I think most big businesses look at it through some lenses, Alex, any, any thoughts for you, you know, very similar. You know, we start first and foremost, working customer back. And so we focus on our customer, nothing based on the election changes, how we serve our customers. Um But six months ago, you know, we took the leadership team aside and said we need two playbooks and, you know, post election, we'll pull one of the playbooks out and throw the other one away. And so, um you know, we'll, we'll run with the playbook that we have now. But, you know, otherwise our focus is really on the customer makes sense and I want to come to the audience scene for questions. So think of any you have and feel free to raise your hand. Um But first, Alex, I want to talk to you about acquisitions because you've said publicly that paypal had done too many acquisitions. Then of course, a big one for millennials like me. Um But how you approaching acquisitions over the next few years, is that something you want to keep doing inorganic growth is, is gonna be an essential part of uh of our long term strategy. But at the same time, I feel like you have to earn the right to be able to, to get into the market and, and find the right acquisitions and coming in new, really taking a look at, at, you know, a number of acquisitions that the company had done over over the previous, you know, four or five years. I wanted to make sure that we were on stable footing. And so we're working really hard internally right now, uh focused on our organic growth focused on ensuring what's core uh and what's context uh delivering on our strategy and then we'll look into the market and, and figure out how we grow in organically, Paul, what about you? Well, I'm just thinking about Venmo actually, I mean, I have paypal but my, my kids are a bit older like, hey dad, I'll Venmo, you um knowing, I don't, knowing I don't have it, which means I never get it right. But I think that's uh I think that's, they, they know that I'm never on the receiving end. Um um, but, but the, um, you know, for us, uh we really doubled down in October last year. We declared that we were going to invest uh 700 million more a year in our own R and D. And we've spent five years uh improving our probability of success. How sophisticated our machinery is to make the right decisions on which medicines to double down on. We've built out our desire to be the world's leading immunology player and we stay very open minded to acquisitions. We typically guide that when the 2 to 5 billion range where we can to do things. Um because, you know, buying uh science early for those that don't really follow the healthcare sector in phase one when you've got about 789 years to go um to uh you have a 90% chance of failure. And typically you want to buy a really great phase one asset given the 500 million to 2 billion range depending on how exciting it is with a 90% chance of failure. And so we have tried to use A I and other things to improve our probability of success. Set a high bar comparing external opportunities with our own science internally to say just simply does it make sense. And um so we're picking off the areas where we think we can do something really revolutionary for patients and that's the exciting thing now. So, like everybody, we look to see what could be the next great thing and stay open minded about that. Tell me more about that. I'd love to talk about A I um especially I feel like in health care, how are you incorporating it ethically and into your, both your decisions and your, the research that you're doing? Well? I, I think um first of all, you have to have rules of the game. We have an ethical A I uh review board. So almost all of our projects go through that. But I think we need to uh be a bit more sophisticated in how we calibrate the A I initiative. First of all, I think there's a lot of A I washing a lot of CEO S we were talking about there is doing A I projects to say they're doing it. Most ceos I that I've met talk more about A I as cyber risk and perhaps a little too much Terminator Two and Skynet. And perhaps not enough actually, really understanding what the opportunity could be. And we break A I down to a couple of components, what we call expert A I that could revolutionize a structural biology to be able to target an ruggle disease by designing a molecule that can tax to receptor. You don't need to understand, you just need to, it's bloody difficult. So that's A I can really help us with that. And then we have, and we're very careful about how many people get access to that. What it means a lot of intellectual property around that. On the other side, we have snack. A I, which I, I phrase a coin just because, you know, a lot of a I is like people using ways or people getting an informed decision. Should I turn left or right at the end of the street? Sometimes I think I know better than ways. I don't frankly. And so it's just I got to get in the car, drive it, but I'd love to get the nudge about whether it's better to turn left or right. And so we have about 18,000 people using A I every day in sackable format to make better decisions. We call decision intelligence, democratized data to unleash the resources of the company. That's actually more fun than people realize. And I have the whole company on my phone leave with this little nugget on it, which is every morning I wake up and I get like Instagram notifications and it's in our business, which is a sort of €45 billion business. You know, it, it tells me where I should look to create more value where I should look to pull back and it's processing the entire data set for the entire company real time. And that's useful for me to be able to have data real time. The other right through all the levels of the organization cured for me and my interest much like say Instagram, but in a business context and that's giving us a competitive advantage I believe versus the naysayers on A I last comment would be A I is a huge opportunity and we can't sort of be deniers. Uh but we do have to manage the risk, but we really have to go for the opportunity. Yeah, that makes sense. And if you have an Instagram, I think you also need a Venmo. So we'll come back to that in a bit. I'll tell you. Yeah. Um and Alex, you made uh some big announcements at paypal. Um You have talked about smart receipts, fasting, tell us about this, the new, the new interesting things you're doing over at paypal. Yeah, so tremendous uh focus on uh on innovation and really again, delivering for the customers. I wanna, I wanna comment on A I um and how we think about it as well because it, it, it moves to some of our, our innovations. So we've been using A I for, you know, a decade as you can imagine uh when it comes to risk and fraud and ensuring that we've got the data to make the right payment decisions for people. Um But one of the things that, that we think a lot about now is with 40 million small business merchants that use our platform to be able to accept payments around the world. Um There's really two paths that A I can, can lead us down. Um in order to be successful with A I, you need a tremendous amount of data and need a tremendous amount of really good data scientists. Well, those are two things that small businesses don't have. So there is one path where the largest merchants in the world just get really, really good at personalization, really, really good at ads, really good to make sure that that Instagram feed is personalized to you. And the small businesses are left behind. We see that as our opportunity and our responsibility to be honest, to be able to say, look, let's build a platform where we can leverage the scale that we have the data that we have and give to our small business merchants. The opportunity to be able to personalize their uh their data, find the right customer at the right time price. It in the right way, ensure that the purchase is done and then have the follow up with a smart receipt that says, hey, you're a new user how but I'd like to bring you back and maybe give you a discount so that we can have a follow up. And so all of the innovations that we're putting out our customer back and customer focused, but leveraging A I and trying to democratize the data that we have, the data scientists that we have the scale that we have and put it in the hands of, you know, the small businesses around the world that that really need it. Mi maybe that's this brilliant uh uh point really the the snack initiatives that we run, we deliberately decided to keep them open. So other comp every time we innovate other companies that are now on the same platform can use because even our data set as huge as it is, isn't enough. And we want everybody to benefit a bit of a sort of all boats rise. Uh I didn't realize you could do it like you're doing it to the individual retail. I think it's so important. Otherwise you just left behind and even in big companies, it can still apply to. And so we, there's an open nature that I think, and I think historically, maybe perhaps more in health care, people like to innovate and then keep things very much to themselves, perhaps even as a competitive advantage. And if you, if you join healthcare because you want to do good and you wanna make people better, the all boats rise has to be part of the phenomenon. And A I is maybe our first moment in health care to be able to do that. That makes a lot of sense. Um I wanna go to the audience. Any, any questions we have out there. So he went down here, Alex Jink in silico medicine. Uh My question is to Paul Hudson. Uh Paul, you are the first CEO who openly stated that they are going all in on A I. Uh and you did it just on the right time. Uh when generative A I started uh truly producing miracles. So how do you assess the productivity uh increases that uh you see at Sanofi and also the shareholders recognize the value of what you are doing and give you credit for that. Well, I think it's gonna take a while for shareholders to give us any uh bump in sentiment based on the fact that we're doing it. I think the proof of the pudding will come in our success rate to your uh first part of your question. Um If, if our, if our probability of failure is 90% in phase one and we can drop that to 80% with A I, you know, over the next three years, that is a log change in ability to reinvest more in chasing miracles. And so what we're hoping for is those probabilities of success get stacked uh cumulative into the positive for us. And so there's one point just doing better, what we do today, more informed, more reliably with more predictive capability. The other part is doing things we've never done before and, you know, we've met before and I've seen some of the work, for example, you do it in silico. And I understand, um you know, uh being one of the first companies to bring a medicine through which I think is one of your objectives that was rooted in discovery in A I, you know, it has never been done before and you may be the first we will see, but we have to then go on and do that ourselves because that's the next great battleground to do something incredible for patients to anyone else going down here. Thank you, Alex and Paul. Uh great insights and perspective. Thank you. I have a question and we, Jeff, I'm a founder and president of sustainability woman in the world. It's a nonprofit. And so my question is around sustainability. I want to congratulate both of you for setting net zero by 2040 for paypal and 2045 for so no fee and access to funding for uh small to mid size businesses. I think it's like over 2 billion and also access to 30 medicines um to 40 more of poorest countries around the world in the Trump era. And you talked about uh Alex, the, the two playbook under the Trump Trump playbook. How would uh sustainability strategy and roadmap in context of innovation? A I would, would, you know, how, how would you uh you know, what does that look like in terms of continuing to do uh great, making great progress in, in paypal and similarly for, for you to uh Paul in, in context of, you know, the Anti VX uh discussions that are going on on the Trump era. What, what, what are some of the strategies under that playbook that you can share with us. Thank you. Yeah, I guess I, I hit it just, um, you know, sort of for us, regardless of, of administrations, we have a mission for the company and we follow uh where our customers are and when I go around the world and meet with small businesses, sustainability is top of mind for them. And so when we talk to our end use c end user customers, when we talk to our small businesses, when it's important to us, and it's important to our customers. Um We have a strategy we will continue to execute on that strategy. And you know, obviously, whether it's, you know, I mean, when you're a global company, uh you deal with different regulatory issues in every part of the world. And so you find a way through uh when you have a clear strategy and you're serving your customers, so nothing I think is gonna change for us, we will just continue to, to march forward. And so I know we're running out of time here. But if you could give me just a few things that the, the, the the backs Antiva discussion is really about um data and facts. And I just implore everybody always just to go to uh you know, trusted sources for the data because the data supports uh the use of vaccination um on uh just to give you some sense of perspective, 95% of the carbon um negative in healthcare is is actually uh scope three. So it's a real challenge for us is the partners we work with and we have to work in together to try and address that because that's a lot right. We work, we will be at net zero. Long before the date that you suggested though, you're very well informed by the way, but long before those dates, um it's about them moving our partners at the right speed with the right level of accountability. Just a couple of things for you to realize the delivery of health care is 5% of global emissions and more than airlines. But 95% of that is not making medicines. It is somebody driving needlessly to a hospital, driving around and around it, looking for a parking space for a non-essential visit that could have been done remotely in a hospital that's overheated or over cooled. And then perhaps somebody that is prediabetic who will create about 16 tons of carbon in their lifetime who becomes diabetic because they weren't coached properly, didn't make the right life choices and create 48 tons of carbon. So I passionately lead with King Charles and others, a project on decarbonizing the delivery of health care because that delivery is going to be critical. We're chasing the miracles that an O now we've got to work on the rest of it to make sure when the patients get access to those medicines it can really change the impact on the environment because ultimately, there's a convergence between climate and health and that's the next big battle grade battleground. After that, we'll do our best like everybody else. Amazing. Thank you both so much. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Musicians:
Abdias Armenteros (Tenor Saxophone)
Domo Branch (Drums)
Philip Norris (Bass)

Fortune Global Forum 2024: Special Performance - Jazz At Lincoln Center All-Stars

Welcome back. We're going to start off with something incredibly special and in perfect harmony with our setting, a performance by members of the jazz at Lincoln Center. All stars. Let's have them join me now on stage. Gentlemen. Come on up a round of applause, please. Hello, gentlemen, good to see you. Alright. Playing for us today. A Dias Armenteros on the tenor saxophone. Damo Branch on drums and Philip Norris on base. They're all recent grads of Juilliard and the Manhattan School of Music and regularly perform with that guy Winton Marsalis. Yeah, they're going to give us a glimpse into the future of jazz with a performance of an original song by Domo Branch entitled Blues for the World. Please enjoy. Mhm. Mhm. Um. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Ok. Oh. Mhm. Ok. Thank. Thank you all so much. A Dias Arm and Taros Philip Norris. My name is Domo Branch. That was blues for the people. We truly appreciate. How fantastic was that? Give them another round of applause.

Dr. Fred Hu, Founder, Chairman and CEO, Primavera Capital Group
Dr. Zongyuan Zoe Liu, Maurice R. Greenberg Fellow for China Studies, Council on Foreign Relations
Jing Ulrich, Managing Director and Vice Chairman of Investment Banking, JPMorgan Chase
Jörg Wuttke, Partner, DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group
In conversation with: Clay Chandler, Fortune

Fortune Global Forum 2024: China Outlook - Adapting to New Realities

Dr. Fred Hu, Founder, Primavera Capital Group
Dr. Zongyuan Zoe Liu, Council on Foreign Relations
Jing Ulrich, JPMorgan Chase
Jörg Wuttke, DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group
In conversation with: Clay Chandler, Fortune

Dr. Fred Hu, Founder, Primavera Capital Group
Dr. Zongyuan Zoe Liu, Council on Foreign Relations
Jing Ulrich, JPMorgan Chase
Jörg Wuttke, DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group
Clay Chandler, Fortune

Eric Kutcher, Senior Partner and North America Chair, McKinsey & Company, Zig Serafin, Chief Executive Officer, Qualtrics
In conversation with: Diane Brady, Fortune

Fortune Global Forum 2024: Powering the AI Revolution

Eric Kutcher, Senior Partner and North America Chair, McKinsey & Company
Zig Serafin, Chief Executive Officer, Qualtrics
In conversation with: Diane Brady, Fortune

Thank you very much, everybody. So we're gonna be talking about um infrastructure and so much more. Nice to see you both. Uh By the way, um Zig is a former musician, so accordion and Saxe just to kind of level set here we are here, we are, right. So, you know, I wanna start actually, you get into rooms, we don't get to go talking to CEO. So before we get into the, the deeper dives on what it takes to get, you know, to the next stage of the A I of revolution. Um What are CEO S talking about? Where are we right now? And, and, you know, give us some sense of just where we are in this evolution, us and globally, I'm gonna start with you 60 seconds or less. I think CEO S woke up 18 months ago to, this is real, they woke up to 18 months ago. This is real. At the same time, I think they're extraordinarily frustrated by the lack of return on investment. They've gotten so far. But I think they're starting to see these autonomous agents as a mechanism to begin to rewire and rethink and reimagine their business. So the business model transformation as opposed to some of the productivity gains and such. Yeah, I think it'll be both. I mean, I think, I think what you're gonna see right now is the opportunity to completely reimagine the way customer service is done, right? Or, I mean, we can go through examples but you only give me 60 seconds. So, so, so I, I think they're starting to say, wait a minute, there is entire bits of what I do today that I can do completely differently with a much better experience. I'm gonna pull on that thread. So, you know, I get the, the privilege to be able to work with CEO S CMO S coo sc hr OS all around the world, different industries, many of which many of you here representing and uh there's a new framework that's underway for um getting out of the boxes that we've been living in. If you think about the app based boxes that we live in today, we're the ones that are providing the input. We're the ones that are actually the producers of the output that takes place, you know. And so they've been neatly built as CRM applications, website, applications in the future will be one where that entire framework goes away. And there's a new framework where you will have an agent based world where the speed at which you actually end up leveraging an autonomous engine to get something completed will make things very different. And so this isn't just about adding windows dressing to the, to the, to the existing applications that we have today, right? It's not about adding an A I feature to the world that we live in today. It's really stepping back and saying over the next 234 years, how will someone engage with my airline? How do you understand that customer better? How do you actually create a faster way of enabling them in a more personal way as a result of that? That's a huge theme. Now, along with that is responsible A I is a major theme just like we have measures in most companies and organizations today where you have security controls and, and, and and a policy around how you run security. You will do the same thing for how A I uses the data, how you actually create trust. How do you actually engage with people in an honest way, get permission to be able to create increasingly closer personal connections at scale across the way that your business shows up working with the customers and employees that ultimately end up enabling your business. Can I pick up you, you talked about kind of this? I I said re imagine, you know, you talked a bit about the way people are gonna think through customer experience. You made a huge announcement earlier in the year that I that I happened to to get to see a little bit, which if you think about introducing a new product, I, I'm not promoting, I'm just, it really, it just really threw it really, it was really quite, quite remarkable because today, if you're going to, you, you would go do a whole bunch of customer research, right? Unless you're, you know, unless you're Steve jobs, you would go do a bunch of customer research. You figure out what now you literally can type into your A I engine. And because you have this incredible history of every interaction point, you know, what individual customers that very micro segments. And so that information was never existed before. Yeah. Yeah. So that, that capability essentially is called edge and it actually helps companies to be able to tap into knowledge about what's happening in their industry, cost industry uh and get instant answers to some of the biggest questions that might be on people's minds. Uh but also be able to get instant answers to the micro questions and decisions have to be made at a store level. Let's say that your KFC um brands, for example, and you're operating in a far region, we have KFC here in the audience um or if you're in the restaurant industry, uh what is it that your store manager needs to know about that took place yesterday across your competition and what customers care about in order to be able to inform the way that you end up showing up even the next day and of course at a bigger picture level is what trends do I need to pay attention to? And so being able to synthesize that type of data prior to the emergence of where A I is taking things would have been very expensive and very time consumptive, right? And now you're moving into a world where the speed of getting that type of decision making improves and accelerates. So I think what we want to achieve in this panel and I'm glad we're addressing that because we will take a question or two is, is both the potential of A I and the limitations. And of course, one of the potential limitations is that infrastructure problem or issue. So let's let's let's just sort of do a bit of a lightning round here because I'd I like to know how you'd prioritize addressing these challenges. Let's talk about the powering part, the infrastructure data centers. How big an issue is that it's a huge issue, right? If you actually look at the amount of you heard the number from us before you look at all the growth in the data centers around A I, you don't actually have two issues. One is you got to build the data centers or actually don't have enough people to build them. Second, you got to power the data centers, we don't have enough power. I actually think the power will come from frankly the big hyper scalers and others making massive investments. Um But that still takes time. It'll, it'll be surmountable town. How about you? How, how do you think about it? I think about it in terms of 222 major lenses. Number one is you have the hyper scalar, uh you know, A G I, the people that are building these massive models that will require an immense amount of compute power. They have to be close to the energy sources. They've got to find new forms of sources of energy. And then there is task specific A I where you actually start to build fine tune models. Uh ones that, you know, probably half of you in this audience will end up building and, and, and, and enriching and using a variety of techniques to be able to say it's purpose built, it's specific to this particular task. Uh and that will be highly efficient, it'll be focused on a data set that is specific to what you do in your business. Uh And it would be cost effective as well. And so there's idea of actually building sustainable scalable A I is really a combination of those two major lenses and we have the possibility of a trade war. I know we just had the China panel and obviously that's going to impact what happens with A I. Let's talk about the regulatory front since we're at a global event. Obviously, we've got what's going to happen on the US front with regulation, which we've got some indication of, and then globally, how much is that going to determine what this next stage looks like? Look, the, um, I think every, every geography is gonna do it differently. I, I actually think the US will be much more about a framework for which to operate on and I'll actually put more of the responsibility back on the companies themselves. And I actually think that is not a bad model. I think Europe runs the risk frankly, of over regulating. Um and if they over regulate, will they ST you know, will they ST me the innovation? If you sign the innovation, what happens from the economic benefits? What do you anticipate in terms of policy or regulation? Two things? Um Number one is, um I think in the background, we have to really realize that we are entering into a golden age of A I. OK. Um You know, the, the nature of where A I is headed is probably one of the most um amazing technology innovation moments on the history, you know, of, of, of humanity, you know, and, and if you over regulate it, if you over um policies it to begin with, uh you'll end up stymie the innovation opportunity. So it's more important, Eric and I were talking about this earlier uh that you create frameworks guiding points, right? But ones that are aimed towards uh catalyzing the innovation that can take place, right? And the second thing that's interesting is in that same time frame, I think around the world, we're seeing uh a time where governments are looking to get closer to understanding what's truly on the minds of the citizens and the residents that actually are part of the communities that they live in. Right? And we're seeing this at the micro level in the United States most recently, if you look at the county level statistics that that came about in the most recent election. Um And so what we're finding is that experience is essentially the currency of trust. And if you want to build trust, you have to get closer and closer to the people that you serve, this is happening in the private sector, right? If you think about the companies or the brands that you love and the ones you get closest to that, you feel understood, you feel like you trust them, they're consistent. The same is true for governments. And so A I actually creates an opportunity to use the technology to actually be able to at speed understand how to get much closer to the people that are looking to participate in different programs. Are those programs showing up in the way that you want them to show up. Uh once you deploy the funding, right? So, so I'm gonna ask you if you have any questions and just raise your hand. We've got mic runners here and I'm not sure if we do have any questions, but as we um before I turn to that. I want to ask you who the net beneficiaries are going to be. We've seen the big tech companies obviously do. Well, you are a tech player and a lot of people want are concerned about the, the start up ecosystem and how that innovation flows from here. What do you see? I, I think we will be, I think individuals will be the great beneficiary. I just again, one of the big opportunities is gonna be around customer experience. And if you think about things that are miserable experiences today, we can completely solve that going forward. I mentioned earlier, this sales force announced that at their big conference, this, you know how many we've all this age board, but we all go to the experience where you dial a customer service number and it goes through 18 different ways to make sure you never get an answer. And now what they have is a voice at the other end, that's completely done through agents and it walks you through to get you, you know what you need in a matter of seconds. And I just think that this is early days of this, but you start to go through all these friction points that I don't think will be friction points. 18 months from now, two years from now. What do you think, you know a couple of things. One, the analogy that comes to mind is, is the interaction that we have today. With maps, you pull out your phone, you pull up a map, you want to go to a location, we're still responsible for the interpretation of that, right, and make sure the inputs right in the near future. Um You know, the map will be there in the background because the, the, the, the car, the device is actually taking over and it autonomously gets you to, you know, where you need to go from point A to point B. That is the magnitude of, of, of opportunity and change that's underway across every single industry um that, that will take place. And so you reimagine the way that we've done things right as a result. Now, that said, we also don't see a world where there's going to be just a few behemoths that ultimately end up creating these systems. And in fact, what we envision is an ecosystem where um um people will innovate, they'll build fine tune models, they'll build agents that are specific for a certain set of business tasks or outcomes. Uh And, and that will create a whole new world of opportunity that will take place, you know, much like what took place in the industrial revolution. We'll see a similar effect. I see a question from Bob Nardelli here if you could just go in the middle. Um Thanks, Di thanks Diane. Uh This is a great panel. Let, let me ask you a question. Uh Do you see any similarities between a I and electric vehicles because there was the same excitement and euphoria about EVs the mandate that came down. It was range anxiety and it ended up turning charging anxiety, right? No infrastructure. And you mentioned the point, we gotta build a lot of data centers and then we got to be able to supply energy to that. Now in Atlanta, you know, we just built the last nuclear plant, Vogel years over overdue and billions of dollars. So I didn't hear any of you mention about small mobile nuclear reactors where you actually control your own destiny at the data center. I know some of Microsoft and some of the other are, are still out looking for a place to plant a data center. Uh How do you, how do you generally think about is, is energy gonna gonna throttle the rate with which you introduce A I former Ceo of Chrysler I should mention, by the way, I'll, I'll respond real quick and then, and you can talk specifically to nuclear and get what you're what you're seeing. I the, the the old saying that says we often end up uh overestimating what happens in the short run and we end up significantly underestimating what happens in the long run I think is extremely true here. I think that the capacity and level of innovation that A I will bring, it will take a long time for what those new scenarios can be, start to come alive. And if you look back at the industrial revolution, back to the 18 fifties, 18 sixties, when you know the Bessemer steel process was invented and how long it took for people to realize that steel could now actually help you build skyscrapers, took many, many decades later, right? It was initially used in railroads. And I think we are in a very similar stage at this point where people will see, see A I improve substantially, but the timelines will be significant compressed. You go from five year inflection points to three year inflection points. What do you think? So, I agree with that. I mean, in some ways, the internet was, was a very real example of this, right, the first internet boom, you know, happened but didn't really ever deliver the promise and then it took time until we got there. I think we're in that. But I don't think it'll take as long just by virtue of what we can do today and the availability, this question of power is a very real issue. Like it's a very real issue. The question of nuclear, the reality is we can't build even the small nuclear reactors fast enough, right? It's going to take. So I do think that is part of the solution, but I don't think that's part of the solution in the next 5 to 7 years. I think we've got to think about alternatives and frankly, I think that means we are going to end up with kind of more natural gas and more solar and more, you're gonna have more of the available technologies that are out there today that we're gonna have to use as we start building out these data centers, you know, in the near term. But it also presses the need for more efficient ways of using A I and how you end up innovating that. So building smaller models specific to specific tasks, if you don't need all that data, you can be a little more depending upon what you're trying to do. And that's already happening. I think that it's starting to happen. I see we're at the two minute point and I want to give each of you a chance to give some closing thoughts in terms of um rus in the moment, but also give us a sense of both what's exciting concerning, I mean, help us see around the corner bit as to what we'll be talking about this time next year. I'm going to start with you Z Sure. Um I think first off, uh we're at a stage where um companies broadly is not one ceo I've met with over the last year who hasn't said I want to use A I to get closer to my customers and to be able to scale the rate at which we end up differentiating ourselves and being, becoming more personal, more connected, more convenient in time, right? And that's a major theme that said um half of you here in this audience are probably building some kind of an A I capability one way or the other half of you will be consumers and you'll be using it right with that. And in most recent research that we had is, is only about 20 to 25% of consumers that actually trust the companies that are building the A I to actually make the A I perform as it's actually being promised or, and, or you'd be able to trust with how the A I is being used to be able to facilitate them, right? So being able to approach uh the problem with um building trust where experience is the new currency that actually ends up driving how people will engage with your company and your application is going to be core, you know, a core essence in this. And, and I think that is in the context of the fact that a lot of people are just wary of all the hype. A lot of there'll be a big hype cycle that will take place and that we're in the midst of it, right? Lots of claims promises the timing for that. What that horizon actually looks like. I wanna give also a chance for you to give some, I think you're down to a Haiku or a limerick. At this point. We discussed this, I'm just not that talented. I I don't, I think the technology will not surprise us or disappoint us. I think we're gonna see the technology continue. I think the thing that most organizations are gonna struggle with is talent. I mean, this is gonna be the biggest change that talent has to begin to understand and think about how they do their jobs differently each and every day and to reskill generations of individuals. I think that's the challenge we're gonna face. Please join me in thanking our panels. I know we'll discuss today. Thank you again.

Wynton Marsalis, Managing and Artistic Director, Jazz at Lincoln Center
In conversation with: Andrew Nusca, Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media

Fortune Global Forum 2024: Jazz, Leadership And The Future Of Democracy 

Winston. Thank you for having us in your house today. OK. It's a pleasure being here. We need some better walk on music. So look, I want, we're gonna play a AAA one round game. All right. It's complete the sentence. It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing is democracy swinging right now. Um Yeah, I think so. Why? And it actually might help the room if you tell the room what swing means to you because that is the jazz term. Swing means the constant reconciliation of opposites. So across time, maybe you have eight years swings, 10 years. Wings is the constant attempt to find a balance of opposing forces. Uh So you have to have opposition in the swing rhythm. The drums are in six. The Cymbal is the highest pitch and it has forced to play on every beat with the bass that is in four and the drums, the loudest instrument and the bass is the softest. So all night they're looking at each other. Negotiating man. You're playing too loud, you're not in time, you're not swinging, you're not playing good. And that's, that's the, the, the central kind of idea of our music. How do we share space with people that we don't necessarily agree with? So you think things are going well in that regard? Democracy is, in fact swinging. I think, I think that what I'm describing is a momentum and the momentum goes well or not. Well, based on your perspective for some people, it is going well for others. It's not a very loud drummer thinks things are going great. A bass player with an AMP would turn that amp up to 10 and think, man, this sounds great. All I hear is bass. But we have to realize when we're talking about momentum, you, you're inside of the ocean. You asked me how is a wave doing? It's a wave. Right. Right. So you draw a lot of, and that's a great parallel I have played in live music settings as you have. You and nobody wants the, the, the loudness wars, certainly not the audience. Um Tell me a little bit about draw draw some more connections for me. You know, jazz has a very clear set of elements of fundamentals. So does democracy. There are some parallels for me between those because clearly we're all playing in the same band. Well, the the fundamental, the fundamental of democracy is no king, right? OK. And because you don't have a king, then you have to figure out how to negotiate space. So in jazz, you can be the leader of a band, but if you solo all night. Uh One thing I mentioned, democracy has the element of choice. You can choose to expend as much of your energy as you can expend on the rights of others. Or you can expend it all on yourself. And what you think jazz is the same way one person could solo for 15 or 20 minutes and there could be nine other people lined up waiting to play and the rhythm section which is piano bass and drums, they tend to when you solo too long, they do a thing that we call. Breathe at the top of a cycle. We play on forms that are like a clock has a certain number of bars. When you play too long, the rhythm section goes and you can choose them to play through that. So the element of choice, the fact that we do not have a king and, and the fact that the more global your understanding is, the more you can perceive what other people are doing, the more successful you can be as a player in a group, but you may not be more successful as an individual. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love that term. Breathe by the way, that's one of my favorite. Um So look, you, you gave a lecture in September Thurgood Marshall lecture and you talked about jazz and how it helped you see things differently in your life. And there's a line toward the end of that, that, that I'd like to repeat for the audience here because I think it's right on as to what we're talking about. If the democracy is to be accountable to itself and be what it says it is, we must be whatever it takes to make it be its truest self. You were distilling a lot of knowledge there. Right. Talk to me about that. What that means for our moment right now in this democracy. Well, it's a matter of each person's person with integrity because when you, when you lose your integrity, you have to remember that the loss of integrity is what is celebrated, your leadership becomes corrupted. A cycle is repeated over and over again. Your elites are intellectually corrupt, morally bankrupt and they're no longer accountable to any larger group only to themselves. It's a kind of companies who are only accountable to their board or their stockholders was the time when you had a baseball team, you could go to a company, they put your name on your, on the, on the Little League form or even coming from Canada, Louisiana. We had a company, let us play and segregated Louisiana. We put their name on our uniforms that they also gave us the uniforms and we played at the point at which you are no longer accountable to any community of people except those who you are fiscally responsible to. Then you lose a sense of responsibility and morality. You can no longer define who is the US, who is we and uh integrity is difficult. It has been difficult in jazz. Most of our festivals have the name jazz, but the music has nothing to do with jazz. The top three selling headliners of any jazz festival in the world is people who have never played the music at all. And it seems quite natural and normal because that's how corruption sets into things it sits on. I used to, I had a piece I wrote and I said, you see an eagle sitting on a crow's nest. His mind is in the east, but his head is in the west. He's lost his understanding and you get tired of being preached to because corruption has its own, its own momentum and the leadership lacks discipline, it lacks courage and mostly it lacks imagination then to have something that you're trying to lead people into, this is what we are going to do as a community. This is the direction we're going in. You then sink down into attacking other people because there's always a momentum to negativity and to violence and stupidity and uh to have the, the uh the acuity to understand those things. It's very difficult. We think it's easy but it's not. And then if you do have the acuity, they have the courage to stand against your own people who will be against you. It took Genghis Khan 20 years to defeat his own people. You know. So it's, it's very fundamental and simple. It's been repeated over and over again in the world. But there's always the masses of the universe know everything they went to schools and got degrees, they should have stayed home and been in the community and deal with stuff very fundamentally because we all live very fundamental lives no matter who we are. And you said the word repeat humanitarian, right? You were telling me backstage about something called the importance of repetitive form, symbolic repetition, symbolic, talking about it as a music term but clearly on that. Can you tell us what that means? Let's all think about because we seem like we're old enough to remember this. Let's all look back to our civics classes where we learned about the ci the city government. You go down to city hall and you would look at the council chambers and you would maybe you knew what was going on, but you was just happy to be out of school for a day. There was a form to that where these two houses, these, this is the such and such board. This is the, this, this is the mayor, this is what the mayor does. Then you were lucky enough to travel to another city in Louisiana, Baton Rouge. And we would go to the State Capitol and we would find this is where Huey P Long was shot. But this is what we do here. Then you say, wow this is a lot like the city government. Then when you get the federal government, you say this is like the city government is like the state government is like the federal government. That repetition of form allows you to understand how to function in the largest environment. And if you really think about it, the, the United States Federal Constitution is much shorter than any state constitution. So it's a when you repeat those forms as you're a kid, you start to understand what your power is. You know, Einstein said in 1949 that what what happens in democracy is that the people who have the most resources invest in communication and then they just flood people with propaganda and the people are no longer able to make intelligent choices that actually affect them. So he was talking about them. But we see that today because we use terms that are far too imprecise to communicate, like we say global. When you said I've been in 60 countries, you know what I realized in those 60 countries, global is a heart is a big word. But the one thing I do know is that people are doing the same thing in all of those countries. They have their families, they have their kids, they experience loss grief, they want the best for their people. Some are doing corrupt things. People will treat you to a good meal and if you have good manners and you know how to be polite and keep your mouth closed at the right time, you will be treated relatively well. And if you sense hostility and you act out of a sense of very common and normal fear, you'll avoid trouble. But ultimately, across the world, people want to love each other. It's not the fear that we have of everybody. When you get down on the ground floor, people want to love you. They want to do that. You know, you touch on this in a piece that you wrote. I don't know if you wrote it in 2018, but that's when it was first staged. Yeah. Yeah, I wrote it in 27. Um The ever funky low down ever called. And is it, is it an opera? What do we call it for? Piece of art? Um in it, you have a principal character named Mr Game, um explains how capitalism feasts on. The unfortunate. You talk about political malaise, you talk about cultural decay in America and how to rise above. You talked about global, you talked about a lot of different countries, but you have been one of the sharpest voices about this country. This is the only country I can come in. That's right for sure. I don't know other countries and not say anything except thank you. What should this room take away from that piece? Your integrity is personal back to you have to fight for when you, when you we have to step out on that windy precipice every day. We have thousands of decisions we have to make concerning others. One of the biggest mistakes we make in our country over and over again is we lack, we lack the, the fortitude to defend victories. North had a great victory over the South in the civil war. 10 years, they've given that victory back 12. If you see the end of reconstruction, that's all right. We lost 800,000 people. Don't worry about that. Let's go back to what we were, civil rights movement. A lot of great victories and possibilities. By 1980 we were saying, how can we pull this back and go away from this? Now we go around, hey, you want to know what with these parties are fighting over? I don't know what they're fighting over. I travel up and out in America. You want to be segregated. It is, you want the education to be unfair. It is. You want the job place to not be integrated. Don't worry, it's not. What are we fighting over? We just fighting over how we want to feel about it. We had a bunch of administrations. They all came to the same conclusion. We want this to be like this and we all have personal decisions that we can make and we never lose that ability to stand. I would always notice when I was growing up. If I would be in a tight situation, I grew up really in clubs sometimes late at night, ignorant things would happen. There was almost always a person who would say man, let's not do that. So this is not the right thing to do. I remember one time growing up, some, some younger kids started to attack a man who was looking at water meters and there was a guy in our neighborhood who was who, who had mental challenges and we were all kids. So we were just standing there looking at it and we knew something wrong was going on. And the person with mental challenges said out loud, this is wrong man. And he said it was so much feeling that it allowed us to kind of create a little clamor to let the man get away. We have to be willing to stand up to our own failures, our own lack of integrity, not looking at other people. And we have to always strive to do better. And that's why it's important for us every day to make those decisions and those choices. I have another question for you, but I would like to open it to the audience. If there's any questions for me or Winton, I'm being serious. I'm more serious, I think because we talk a lot of time. If you ask me a question, I would be nice. I'm looking here we go right up here in the front. Hey, Nathan, nice to see you, Nathan Rosenberg from insignia first of all your music, what a gift to the world. So, thank you for that. And what you've done here at Lincoln. Thank you. Thank you so much. OK. When you think about the platform that you have being an artist, um I'm not a politician. How do talking about integrity? How do you, how do you maintain the integrity of your word and the integrity of your art? Talking about things that are outside your everyday world. If it's not my expertise, I always say, I don't really know, but I think I'm not an expert in this. But if you ask my opinion, I will give it. I think this when I'm in other people's countries and I do interviews and I always tell them I'm not here to try to talk about your country. I don't understand. But, but if you put me in a position where I have to talk about mine, I will talk about yours is just good manners. And I go to many countries that the United States are not allies with and, and by and large people have respect that. And uh because I'm an artist, I don't have a military, I'm not trying to take stuff from people. So and I also am not accountable to people in, in any way, but to play good enough music for, don't want to continue to come in here and if they don't want to hear it, they just don't check it out or they don't come. So, uh I'm a public servant and that I have a responsibility to my craft and the seriousness and the, you know, I'm a person who II, I like people. So I will stand every night and sign every person's autograph. And for 45 years I've done that and I've learned more doing that almost and I learned playing and I learned that people just really want to know that it's OK to be themselves and they want to feel something that has a warmth to it. And uh when you're not naive and you're not, we are the world in it and you can just talk to people and say, hey, there are realities out here. People, people even the toughest people will embrace you. Sometimes, sometimes you have the other kind, you got to deal with that too. But our music is a tough music. You know, jazz is not a, is not a, a naive, naive music. We've had many great flo this month, Duke Ellington list goes Louis Armstrong. These are people who were very, very wise and uh and tough people. I have one more question for you and excuse me, it's related to that. You know, we're in a tribal moment. We are, but we've been in that moment. We have, we have not no different from that. We've been in that moment for a long time. We have, but you have a very clear view about the word community finding it. Who is it? Talk to me about that? Well, because after all this division, we need to pull together. Right. That depends on how expensive your view of the world is. Sure when a kid comes to me for a trumpet lesson, if it's in China or if it's in the suburbs of America or if it's in the hood, am I teaching them different things based on who they are? The feeling? I'm going to give them different? Well, it depends on my concept of the world. If I love them. If I hug them, if I teach them trumpet, like my trumpet, teachers taught me if I touch the universality in our instrument and I give them a feeling like, hey, now I, I, because I'm over 60. Now I tell my young people you're gonna have to change this. We messed it up. But that love that I'm giving them is not changing. I remember my father saw me once I was, I was in the hood in the school and I didn't, I dressed down, my father called me. He's a great musician and teacher. He said, man, I noticed you, you didn't have your suit on. I said, man, I'm in the hood, man. He told me, don't put this and that on. He said, when you get in the hood not up twice. And he's not a guy who dressed up like that, but he was a community worker. So I saw him growing up struggling the community with very few people setting out chairs and community centers teaching everybody's kids. Something about the music being hopeful when you would look at him and think, man, this is such a waste of time. But I still, now he's passed away. But I reflect on that call when you're in the hood, not a twice come for real come. Correct all the time. And I think, uh you know, it's, it's your sense of personal integrity is uh that's when you, when you deal with people, you, we are just in China, kids will come to me and say this is a picture of me and you in 1990. And you gave me a trumpet lesson. We played with the Shanghai symphony and the first trumpeter I had given him a lesson and musicians we listen to each other's albums. So no matter where I go in the world, I see people saying, here's your record. I checked out two cats from Uganda. I saw them on the street maybe 20 years ago. We have a program for high school students called essentially Ellington. And I saw him right out here on 66th street and they had pieces of music from essentially Ellington. And they said, oh brother, you know this music, this music. And I said, man, where did you get this music? Oh, a man brought it to us in Uganda. I said, man, you want to come to B and get something to drink with. I pour some coffee for them, sat down and talk to me were telling me how they encounter the music, music and ideas travel. So I feel like uh my, one of my heroes in the world is Muhammad Yunus. I love the fact that he understood that wealth means everybody is, is doing good when we all are doing good. We're doing good. I'm not gonna sound good with a bass player that mad because they never play. Even I played basketball growing up. You gotta give your, your big man. Even though they can't shoot, you gotta know how to give them a couple of shots in the game, man. OK. Here's some junk time shots for you to feel good about what these two misses you're gonna have. Oh, you know what I mean? But your point is good. The ideas flow, the music flows and hopefully the good feeling flows to pull society back together. Well, you got to be aggressive about it, right? Ladies and gentlemen, please give Wynton Marsalis a round of applause. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. It all together. You saying? Oh, of course.

Abby Joseph Cohen, Professor of Business, Columbia University Graduate School of Business
Gary Cohn, Vice Chairman, IBM; Former Director, U.S. National Economic Council
Lynn Martin, President, NYSE Group
In conversation with: Diane Brady, Executive Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media and Co-Chair Fortune Global Forum

Fortune Global Forum 2024: Business at the Speed Of Change

Abby Joseph Cohen, Columbia University Graduate School of Business
Gary Cohn, U.S. National Economic Council
Lynn Martin, NYSE Group
Diane Brady, Fortune Live Media and Co-Chair Fortune Global Forum

Fortune Global Forum 2024

Fortune Global Forum 2024: Trust And Teamwork - A CEO Playbook

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