Leading Organisations of Tomorrow - one-day Symposium

Professor Sir Brian Hoskins

Director, Grantham Institute for Climate Change

Professor Sir Brian Hoskins is a Royal Society Research Professor and member of the new Committee on Climate Change. He shares his time between the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College and Reading University, where he is Professor of Meteorology and was a head of department for six years. Sir Brian is recognised as one of the world's leading weather and climate scientists.

Dr. Goran Carstedt

Goran Carstedt has been leading the formation of the Society for Organizational Learning global network, dedicated to the 'interdependent development of people and their institutions.' Dr. Carstedt is also a consultant and coach to various US and European organisations and serves as Chairman and Board Member in several corporations including The Natural Step.

He is the former head of IKEA Retail Europe and member of the IKEA Group Management Board. He served from 1990-95 as President of IKEA North America. Before joining IKEA, Mr. Carstedt served for many years with Volvo. He joined Volvo in 1974 as Manager of Market Planning at the Car Division in Gothenburg, Sweden. From 1977-82, he was Manager of Corporate Planning Office at Volvo headquarters, and from 1982-85 he was President of the Car Division at Volvo France SA in Paris. From 1985-90 he served as President of Volvo SvenskaBilAB, the Swedish Volvo sales organisation for cars, trucks, buses, spare parts, financial and computer services and car rentals. During this time he was also a member of the Volvo Group Management Committee.

David L. Cooperrider, Ph.D.

David L. Cooperrider is the Fairmount Minerals Professor of Social Entrepreneurship at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Cooperrider is past Chair of the National Academy of Management’s OD Division and has lectured and taught at Harvard, Stanford, University of Chicago, Katholieke University in Belgium, MIT, University of Michigan, Cambridge and others. Dr. Cooperrider is founder and Chair of the Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit. The center’s core proposition is that sustainability is the business opportunity of the 21^st century, indeed that every social and global issue of our day is an opportunity to ignite industry leading eco-innovation, social entrepreneurship and new sources of value.

Dr. Cooperrider created Appreciative Inquiry, a revolutionary methodology for achieving sustainable, desired, strength-based change, in collaboration with Dr. Ronald Fry, over twenty years ago. He has brought the Appreciative Inquiry methodology in to advance initiatives to a wide variety of organisations including the Boeing Corporation, Fairmount Minerals, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, McKinsey, Parker, Sherwin Williams and Wal-Mart as well as American Red Cross, American Hospital Association, Cleveland Clinic, World Vision and United Way of America.

Will Hutton

Will Hutton is a columnist at the Guardian and Observer newspapers. In addition he has made a number of Panorama programmes for the BBC and various radio and television series (The City, Radio 4, 1996; The Venturers, BBC2, 1987). His day job for the last six years has been as chief executive of the Work Foundation, an independent, not for dividend research-based consultancy that is one of the most influential voices on work, workplace and employment issues in Britain.

He began his career as a stockbroker and investment analyst, before working in BBC TV and radio as a producer and reporter. He was economics editor of BBC Newsnight from 1983-88 and editor in chief of the satellite European Business Channel from 1988-90. He then joined the Guardian as economics editor in 1990, before moving to the Observer as editor in 1996 and later editor-in-chief.

Will has written several bestselling economic books, including The World We're In (2002) (launched in the US as A Declaration of Interdependence), The State We're In (1996), The State to Come (1997), The Stakeholding Society (1999), On The Edge (ed with Anthony Giddens) (2000) and The Revolution That Never Was (1987). His new book on China and the west, The Writing on the Wall will be published in January 2007. In addition, he won the Political Journalist of the Year award in 1993.