WORLDBLU LIVE 2005
REWRITING THE RULES OF BUSINESS FOR A DEMOCRATIC AGE

OCTOBER 26-29, 2005
THE MANDARIN ORIENTAL HOTEL
WASHINGTON, DC

Welcome to the next generation of business.

WorldBlu LIVE (formerly the WorldBlu Forum) pairs highly successful CEOs, best-selling authors, high-stakes revolutionaries, technology gurus, and emerging leaders with the next generation of business thought-leaders. WorldBlu LIVE invites attendees to use organizational democracy to rewrite the rules of business for a democratic age, providing a unique catalyst for accelerating this inevitable evolution in business design and leadership.

After three-and-a-half days of interactive knowledge sharing and networking, WorldBlu LIVE participants left equipped with cutting-edge ideas and tangible best practices they could leverage to get out in front of this business shift, tap into its bottom-line benefits, utilize its unique competitive advantage, and reinvent their own piece of the world. WorldBlu Live's dynamic content, interactive discussions, and innovative ideas illustrated why freedom-centered leadership matters, how organizational democracy can recharge a company, and how these ideas could help participants outsmart their competition. The on-going goal of WorldBlu LIVE is to inspire the building of 1000 democratic companies around the globe by 2020, and we invited WorldBlu LIVE participants to join WorldBlu in achieving this goal.

WHAT PARTICIPANTS LEARNED

WorldBlu LIVE 2005 explored three major themes:

DESIGN
To thrive in a democratic age, businesses have to be designed and operated in a new way. The next generation of business is increasingly designed on the principles of collaboration, participation, transparency, decentralization, and individual voice. In a word, it’s about democracy in business, and it was time to have a significant dialogue about the makeover happening inside companies like GE/Durham, Great Harvest Bread Company, Melia Azul, Motek, and other organizations around the world. Organizational democracy is inevitable (declared many WorldBlu LIVE speakers), and the companies that embrace this changing design of business will lead their industries and ultimately build a more democratic world.

LEADERSHIP
Leaders in democratically designed companies cultivate an environment that inspires, enhances, and develops leadership abilities in others, at every level of the organization. Goodbye command-and-control; freedom-centered leadership is fast becoming the new normal. Forum participants learned how business champions Bill Taylor, Mart Laar, and Rita Bailey used freedom-centered leadership to create or reinvent some of the most successful, profitable, and sustainable companies and countries in the world.

STYLE
What are the skills and tools required to design and lead companies democratically? How about beginning with a clear sense of individual purpose? Sandy Wilder showed participants how to discover their purpose. What about cultivating ongoing innovation in your company, or learning how to institutionalize openness and transparency in your office, or tapping into the power of deep dialogue to achieve fast results? World-class thought-leaders like Myrna Lewis, Stephen Shapiro, and Donna Coppock equipped participants with the tools and skills needed to develop their own style to lead with skill, savvy, and panache.

WHY ATTEND WORLDBLU LIVE 2005?

WorldBlue LIVE 2005:

1. INTRODUCED participants to organizational democracy and freedom-centered leadership - a cutting-edge strategy and leadership style that increasing numbers of companies around the world are using to enhance their workplace culture and improve their financial performance.

2. CHANGED the way participants thought about how to solve problems at their company, how to organize for innovation, how to attract and retain top talent, and how to motivate through meaning.

3. EXPOSED participants to best practices and fresh thinking in organizational democracy and freedom-centered leadership they can now apply to improve their career and world or work.

4. EXPANDED their network of contacts with thought-leaders shaping the next generation of business around the world.

Participants listened and learned from more than 30 world-class speakers, each sharing a unique perspective on how to be a freedom-centered leader and how to design companies in sync with an increasingly democratic world. Participants shared their own innovative ideas in the interactive sessions provided each day.

WHO ATTENDED?

WorldBlu LIVE was attended by the pioneers, leaders, influencers, entrepreneurs, and mavericks shaping the next generation of business. The conference brought together thought-leaders from all over the world, from different industries and sectors, private and public, to initiate a significant and groundbreaking dialogue. Individuals came from countries such as China, South Africa, Denmark, Mexico, the Bahamas, Slovakia, France, and England from the for-profit, non-profit, government, military and NGO sectors. It was a gathering of people stirred by the possibilities of freedom in the workplace, the power of tapping individual potential to achieve extraordinary results, and the competitive advantage of getting out in front of and accelerating the inevitable evolution of business toward more just, sustainable and meaningful design.

There will be another WorldBlu LIVE in 2008; the location will be announced in early 2008. Click here to stay informed about the next WorldBlu LIVE event.