House of Beautiful Business

“What remains for humans in the age of AI is complexity, nuance, relationships, art, imagination, and eccentric, counterintuitive thinking,” says House co-founder Tim Leberecht in a recent interview with The Beautiful Truth magazine. “We excel at surprise and being unpredictable,” he insists. “This is the work that will remain uniquely human and beautiful.” Ready to dive deeper? Explore Tim’s insights on #AI, beauty, playing to play (not win), embracing the unmeasurable, and more. Get your copy of The Beautiful Truth at https://lnkd.in/edsPiWxk. Ready to be surprised? Come join us in Tangier for the 2025 House of Beautiful Business festival. Experience a unique mix of inspiration, intimacy, and impact. Secure your Early-Bird Pass at https://lnkd.in/du59UEss.

Attention has value. In English, we pay attention. In French, we make it. In German, we gift it. In Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian, we lend it, as though attention is something that can be used and then duly returned. It’s a broad linguistic trend that begs a couple of questions: Are we using this resource efficiently? Are we paying attention to what we should be? In an era of information overload, our ability to pay attention has been stretched to its limits. Not only are we reading fewer books, but we’ve started to demand transparency when it comes to how long it will take to read an article or sit through a film. A new trend has emerged in response to this onslaught of content: Willful ignorance. People are choosing to turn a blind eye and disconnect. But willful ignorance is a beast that needs constant feeding. If we’re turning away from breaking news and issues of the day, we must satiate ourselves with other content. We must find meaning, significance, and purpose elsewhere. In other words, we need distractions. But when those distractions consume the better part of our time, they become their own form of attention. The distinction between the two concepts begins to blur. Our tendency to think of attention as good and distraction as bad needs to be revisited. They are both value-neutral concepts distinguished by our intentions. Continue reading: https://lnkd.in/dYkn7vYy.

Are you ready to make real-life impact? Tomorrow at 6 p.m. CET (12 p.m. ET), join us for the online kickoff of our newly relaunched House Work initiative! House Work is a collaborative platform that brings together professionals from various industries, backgrounds, and disciplines. Supported and facilitated by the House, the initiative will produce research and thought leadership on the life-centered economy, and help our common goal of making it a reality. Whether you’re looking to dive deep into co-creating projects that matter or simply want to see what the House community is up to, we’re eager to include your voice in the mix. Please mark your calendars and join us on Zoom tomorrow to set the foundation for the Work ahead.

Join us for the House of Beautiful Business festival, the gathering for everyone wanting to build a life-centered economy, from May 15-18, 2025 in Tangier, Morocco. Buy your Early-Bird Pass now and save 200 Euro on the Event Pass and 600 Euro on the Full Immersion Pass https://lnkd.in/du59UEss Not sure what to expect? Here are highlights from our 2024 festival, our first time coming together in Tangier.

What’s the point of another piece of thought leadership in a world overflowing with content? Life is finite, and there are a truly madcap number of books in print (160,000,000 according to Google). Choosing your next read is a zero-sum game; time won for Thomas Picketty is time lost for Marcel Proust. And while we tell ourselves we’ll get to certain seminal works eventually—obviously we have no intention of leaving this world without finishing Ulysses or reading Stephen Hawking or understanding what happened during the Second Punic War— the end has a knack for finding us under-prepared. We all die with gaps in our knowledge. Chasms, actually. There’s no conceivable way to read it all. In this week’s Beauty Shot, our editorial director, Martha Schabas, explains why she’s heartened by our compulsion to keep writing, producing, and publishing, despite the preponderance of material out there. She explores what makes for great writing, why it continues to matter, and challenges some dearly-held wisdom along the way. Is there such a thing as an original idea? Can you ever effectively separate content from form? Are we all just suckers for style? Read the full essay here: https://lnkd.in/esQdBJng And if you have your own thought-leadership project on the go, you might be interested in our new service: The Ghost Lab. The Ghost Lab provides end-to-end ghostwriting for anyone looking to publish their own book (business, memoir, popular nonfiction, and more). Led by our editorial director (award-winning author Martha Schabas), this bespoke thought-leadership offer takes you all the way from concept to agent/publisher submission and release. Get in touch to learn more! #books #thoughtleadership #beautifulbusiness #writing #publishing

We need to stay connected. Collaborating throughout the year in both formal and informal ways enriches our work, our community, and our sense of purpose. There is a wealth of creativity, wisdom, insight, and skill among us, and when our talents synthesize, we’re capable of so much. With this in mind, we’ve decided to re-activate House Work, an initiative that creates opportunities for community members to work together on innovative and meaningful projects. From designing post-pandemic work cultures to pioneering climate actions, these self-organized House Work groups have tackled critical issues through research, publications, experiments, and experiences. Previously, one group evolved into a startup company, while another published a book (10 Moral Questions: How to design tech & AI responsibly, pictured here and unveiled alongside us in Davos). We couldn’t be more excited to create new groups and see the fruits of their collaboration. Interested in learning more, supporting an existing House Work group, or launching your own? Take three minutes to fill out this form: https://lnkd.in/dVurz_Ty.

Great news! We’ve extended our Super-Early Bird discount for the 2025 House festival in Tangier. You can take advantage of this offer until Sunday, June 9. Our annual festivals are one-of-a-kind experiences and the core of our raison d'être. They provide thrilling opportunities to connect, create, and bring our vision to life. Open our front door and step way beyond the foyer. Secure your discounted festival pass before the offer ends: https://lnkd.in/du59UEss.

Anyone who derives pleasure from pointing out others’ mistakes should remember that manners matter and rules change. But when an error offends logic, reason, and good taste, even the most forgiving grammarian can completely lose his mind. Take the word “resonate.” We all know the verb’s literal meaning: To make a loud, clear, deep, and continuing sound. And we’ve all admired its figurative use: We hear something (an idea, story, concept, joke) that speaks to us so personally and lucidly that it has the effect of a loud, clear, deep, and continuing sound. A lovely metaphor, right? And so easy to visualize. The sound resonates in space, just as the idea resonates in our minds. “I can’t help but think of the I-resonate-with trend as a cry for help dressed up in terrible grammar,” House co-founder Tim Leberecht writes. “As the anthropocene gives way to the life-centered economy, we humans feel thrust from our thrones. We want to return to being the subject of the sentence, the active voice, the element in command. When something resonates with us, we are relegated to the object, the receiver of the action, the element whose destiny is shaped by another force.” The singer/songwriter Nick Cave believes that the key to overcoming writer’s block is to acknowledge that the issue may not be the musician’s ability to write the song, but their inability to receive it when it arrives. Is it possible that we must be passive to experience resonance? Do we only hear those loud, clear, deep, and continuing sounds—perhaps the heartbeat of the universe—when we forfeit control and let the wind blow us where it may? Does our grammar know more about the world than we do—does it embody wisdom that eludes the modern mind? Read the full issue of our Beauty Shot newsletter on resonance: https://lnkd.in/dHDrFfqs.

Imagine a business event that leaves you hopeful for the future. A gathering where deep and diverse thinking blends seamlessly with exhilarating experiences. An invigorating meeting of minds, hearts, worlds. Welcome to the House of Beautiful Business. The ninth edition of our annual festival will take us back to Tangier, the gateway city between seas, continents, and cultures. Bringing together business leaders, scientists, creatives, policy-makers, activists, and educators from across the globe with local entrepreneurs, changemakers, and artists, we will continue to write a new story for business. Come join us in Tangier to experience a unique mix of inspiration, intimacy, and impact. Be part of the world’s most vibrant business community. Help create an economy that honors all life.

We are still busy reflecting on highlights and memories from our festival in Tangier, and all of the ideas and insights from the House community. Whether you were with us or not, we’d love your input on what’s to come. Join us next Tuesday, June 4, for an online Open House session hosted by our founders, Till Grusche and Tim Leberecht. We’ll discuss the key takeaways from 2024 and our plans for 2025. Don’t forget to sign up, and we’ll see you on Zoom!