House of Beautiful Business

I admire the optimistic, forward-looking, community-oriented work by Dr. Angel Acosta, Maria Tan, and the whole team at the Acosta Institute, and I’m delighted to contribute to their 2024 International Healing-Centered Education Conference, this year with the theme "Capacity-Building in Times of Change," a virtual event taking place on December 7-8, 2024. The conference will bring together educators, leaders, and practitioners dedicated to creating resilient, inclusive learning environments and explore actionable strategies for navigating today’s complex social, political, technological, and environmental shifts. And boy, there are many. Healing-centered cultures have never been more important, and I'm looking forward to hearing a wide range of perspectives from speakers such as Amy Elizabeth Fox, Maggie Jackson, Sará King, M.A., Ph.D., Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, Renee Lertzman, PhD, Wakanyi Hoffman and Anu Gupta, among many others. You can learn more and sign up for the conference here. https://lnkd.in/e3yDgHyB #community #education #events #change #leadership

When #GenerativeAI became widely available in 2022, efficiency gains were top of mind across the business world. Many CEOs looked on the new #technology as a cost-cutting dream come true, allowing for an impossible sleight of managerial strategy: they could reduce staff while increasing productivity.  At first glance, focusing on efficiency gains may seem like a prudent response to technology that has yet to prove itself up to more ambitious tasks. It isn’t. By solely focusing on efficiency as a guiding principle for #AI strategy, brands limit themselves from participating in an unprecedented revolution. In partnership with Hotwire, the House of Beautiful Business has developed the Beyond Efficiency Framework designed to help marketing and communication executives gain cachet in a market that is transforming before our eyes. Informed by perspectives from John C. Havens, Ute Hildebrandt, Wakanyi Hoffman, Monika Jiang, Niels Van Quaquebeke, Pete Pachal, David Rowan, Sims Witherspoon, Evoléna de Wilde d'Estmael, and David Wu, the Framework will soon be presented in Munich, Milan, New York, and beyond. Ready to go beyond efficiency and get closer to your customers in a new, creative way? Learn more and download our free report here: https://lnkd.in/giCcwEuq.

Hope is more than a feeling—it’s a narrative we create. This week, we hosted The Hopeful Dinner in partnership with the DUBAI FUTURE FOUNDATION and the Jameel Arts Centre. Set against the backdrop of the world’s largest gathering of futurists, the #Dubai Future Forum, this wasn’t your typical dinner party; it was a curated listening experience. Over three courses and three audio acts, we traversed the landscape of hope—from hopeful beginnings, through mid-life contemplations, to visions of a future marked by transhumanism, #AI, Mars, and more. We curated a diverse array of voices—philosophers, scientists, artists, activists—through poems, speeches, interviews, movies, and songs, culminating in a live composition of hope co-created by our attendees and brought to life by Mark Aanderud, the musical director of the House. #Listening together, with our eyes closed, offered a profound departure from your typical chatter. It reminded us that we need to listen more—to those we’ve overlooked and those with whom we may disagree. Listening connects us to the world in a way that transcends the need to control; it fosters understanding through undivided attention. Thank you to the Dubai Future Foundation and Jameel Arts Centre for helping turn this vision into a resonant reality, and to our guests for joining us!

Make no mistake, beauty is political. Whenever there’s an attack on our humanity—our decency as human beings, our human rights—on the thin and fragile mantle of civilization, beauty is among the first targets. The little extra, the care, the love, the finesse, the meticulousness—they are all anathema to movements designed to dehumanize. If hope dies last, as the saying goes, beauty dies first. With the House of Beautiful Business, we are determined to oppose systemic ugliness, in business and beyond. We will promote moral imagination as the antidote to transactionalism and nihilism. We will promote femininity as the antidote to hyper-masculinity. We will promote intimacy as the antidote to the tech-enabled “loneliness machine.” The only way to beat populists is to become more popular than them. We must create a new story, an alternative reality. We must move beyond enlightenment, beyond the idea of an objective truth, beyond the notion that democracies are held together by educated elites, reason, and facts. We must create the more extravagant fantasies, the more enchanting fictions, the more persuasive delusions. We have no choice but to win the information wars. We must have the better propaganda and the smarter algorithms to spread it. We’re at the end of a cycle. A new one is beginning. At least the light we produce next won’t cast shadows for a while. For more, read our co-founder Tim Leberecht’s latest essay about Yves Saint Laurent, the U.S. election, ugliness, and beauty: https://lnkd.in/gyiK2NJv.

#Trump won. Let’s talk. Join us on Tuesday, November 12, for an online Open House session where we’ll unpack the implications of the election results—from the future of business and media to climate action and the very fabric of our societies. The 90-minute session will feature: • Nayeema Raza, journalist, filmmaker, and co-host of SEMAFOR’s Mixed Signals podcast, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, the New York Magazine, and the Tribeca Film Festival; • Omayra Issa, changemaker, author, and anchor at CPAC (Cable Public Affairs Channel / Chaîne d'affaires publiques par câble), previously ranked one of Canada’s Top 100 Black Women to Watch; • Mathieu Lefevre, co-founder and CEO of More in Common, a nonprofit organization that builds resilience to the threats of polarization and social division. Don’t miss out on this conversation. To claim your spot, sign up for free here: https://lnkd.in/gpjV_Knd.

What will today’s presidential election in the U.S. mean for business—and the world at large? Join us next Tuesday, November 12, for an online Open House session where we’ll unpack the implications of the election results and map out the path forward, together with journalist, filmmaker, and co-host of SEMAFOR’s Mixed Signals podcast Nayeema Raza, co-founder and CEO of More in Common Mathieu Lefevre, our co-founder and co-CEO Tim Leberecht, our editorial director Martha Schabas, and others. Free signup: https://lnkd.in/gpjV_Knd.

Last week, we hosted an online Open House with Anu Gupta, author of the bestselling new book Breaking Bias, who has spent more than a decade studying systemic racism. Born in India, Any immigrated to the U.S. when he was 10 years old and had trouble fitting into his Brooklyn community. “Because I’m brown, some were calling me a terrorist. Because I’m queer, I was perceived as less worthy. No one could ever pronounce my name. People weren’t truly seeing me. They were seeing ideas of me,” Anu told us. “Whenever I would share experiences that I had had with bias—homophobia, Islamophobia, racism—I would be told that I was exaggerating, that these things don’t really happen. This lit a match of self-loathing.” Feeling as if there was something wrong with his very being, Anu found himself on the ledge of his 18th-floor window. Then, in what he describes as a moment of grace, instead of falling forward, Anu fell back. “I immediately called a friend. She showed up in my apartment, talked to me for hours and hours,” he said. “I began to see that there are all these ideas, these biases about what I represent in the world. That’s not who I am, actually. I began to see that bias is a learned habit that distorts how we perceive and reason. And this is what was happening to me. People were perceiving me a certain way and making decisions about me without my consent.” Continue reading: https://lnkd.in/dfzquGAV. Sign up for our next Open House on November 12: https://lnkd.in/d5CqFCy2.

Sorry, we didn’t mean to scare you. Or did we? Happy Halloween from the House!

“Whenever I hear the phrase ‘Africa Rising,’ I’m like: Our continent isn’t made of dough. It’s not just going to keep rising. We’ve done it. We’ve risen,” says storyteller Taiye S. in conversation with designer Fri Forjindam. Both African expats and self-identified Afropolitans, Fri and Taiye met during the 2024 House gathering in Tangier, Morocco. In a recent Fast Company article, they discuss the potential of Africa’s new economy—and the narratives that can shape its future. To explore what it will take to support the continent’s next creative boom, read the full piece at https://lnkd.in/d7jVFTn8. To help build a more hopeful vision for business that transcends borders, secure your spot at our 2025 festival in Tangier at https://lnkd.in/du59UEss.

“Bias is the building block of most challenges we face individually, locally, and globally. It shows up in our interactions with co-workers, family members, and strangers. It impairs the services we provide in our professional lives, such as health care, education, or policing. It compromises the products we design, such as apps, clothing, and the code for artificial intelligence. It limits the cultural narratives we construct in film, theater, and the arts. It hinders the success of policy solutions we recommend for issues like climate change, disinformation, mass incarceration, and public health crises. Most likely, it shows up in how we treat ourselves and one another.” The good news is: “We are not born with bias,” Anu Gupta, a social scientist, lawyer, and educator, says: “Bias is a learned habit of thought, and because it’s learned, it can be unlearned." The passage above is from his new book, BREAKING BIAS, which boasts rave reviews and a foreword by the Dalai Lama. A gay brown immigrant with Buddhist, Christian, and Hindu roots, Anu has spent two decades researching where conscious and unconscious biases come from and how to unravel them. In BREAKING BIAS, he presents the results of his work and lays out practical tools for overcoming bias and strengthening our innate capacity for compassion. We're thrilled to feature Anu as our guest at the Open House next Thursday, October 24, noon-1 pm ET / 6-7 pm CET, on Zoom, hosted by our co-founder Tim Leberecht and our editorial director Martha Schabas. Sign up for free here https://lnkd.in/eVhNpSaT Check out BREAKING BIAS https://lnkd.in/gyPJ_Teh #bias #socialscience #psychology #impact #workplace #beautifulbusiness