Jérôme Barthélemy Keynote Speaker

• Where do great business strategies come from?

The challenge with strategy frameworks—such as SWOT analysis, Porter’s Five Forces, or Blue Ocean Strategy—is that while they help evaluate the attractiveness of an opportunity or the viability of a strategy, they offer little guidance in identifying opportunities or formulating strategies in the first place. As renowned strategy expert Gary Hamel aptly stated, 'The dirty little secret of the strategy industry is that it doesn’t have any theory of strategy creation.'

• Dispelling the myths of strategy

Strategy is messy, requires hard graft and is difficult to get right. And yet the world of strategy is dominated by management consultants and business gurus making sweeping generalizations, oversimplifying business thinking and peddling their own unfounded ideas. But do these methods actually work? The reality is that there are no magic recipes for business success. If there were, every organization would use them, and no single company would be better than the rest.

• Achieving success in an unpredictable world

In today’s world, success is increasingly unpredictable. Counterintuitively, relying on logic to determine the path to success can actually reduce the chances of achieving it. If a strategy follows a purely logical path, it becomes easily discoverable—and any advantage it creates quickly disappears. True success comes from pursuing a strategy that is both unique and unexpected.

• Doing well by doing good

A long-standing debate is whether making a positive impact on the world enhances or diminishes profitability. This debate will never be settled because it is framed incorrectly. Instead of asking, 'Does sustainability pay?' we should be asking, 'When does sustainability pay?'

• Anticipating disasters: lessons from the fire at Notre Dame

When disasters strike, we often blame frontline workers. However, their root causes typically run much deeper. We also tend to view disasters as entirely unforeseen events. This is rarely the case.