Concrete Love is the theme of this year’s main event of the House of Beautiful Business, the global think tank and community for leaders who are looking to reinvent their organizations and themselves while creating positive visions for the future.

Every year, we host a signature gathering to bring together the most passionate members of our community. Our first annual event took place in an old guild house in Barcelona’s gothic quarter in February 2017, and later that year we moved to Lisbon for a second gathering. In 2018 and 2019, we returned to Lisbon for Next Startup Humanity and The Battle for Beautiful Business respectively. In light of the COVID crisis, we produced last year’s event, The Great Wave, as a hybrid festival. We could not be more excited to return in person to Lisbon for Concrete Love this fall.

As we slowly emerge from the pandemic, we believe Concrete Love is what the world needs: untethered imagination and radical ideas, paired with genuine care and concrete action. On the eve of COP26, with 300+ attendees in person (following strict COVID-safety guidelines) in Lisbon, local events in cities around the world, and multichannel online programming, we will bring together thousands of participants from business, technology, science, politics, and art to shape the new foundations, structures, and workplaces of the (post-)pandemic age. During five days of inspiration, learning, and connection, we will celebrate gathering in person as if it were the first time, while integrating online and Lisbon audiences in new and truly hybrid ways.

Immersive, whimsical, playful, and yet practical, Concrete Love will be all about the making of beautiful business: extremely personal, extremely business, extremely concrete.

Concrete Love will be a five-day experience. We will kick off on Thursday, October 28, with "Make Sense" and an invitation to both Virtual and Lisbon Pass holders to engage in "Irrelevant Business Conversations" before we formally open Concrete Love in style with a welcome reception and concerts in Lisbon and online. After the reception, we will stage our first main stage session, "Omission."

The theme for day two, Friday, will be “Make Us.” Main-stage sessions two and three will take place at our main venue in Lisbon and will be (more than just) livestreamed to viewers online. In the evening, attendees in Lisbon will be invited to small dinners across town, hosted by local partners and friends.

On day three, Saturday, we will “Make Worlds” with three additional main-stage sessions from Lisbon that we’ll extend into the virtual realm. In the evening, Lisbon attendees can schedule their own private dinners or join the “Small Worlds” session that will take place exclusively online.

On day four, Sunday, we will leave our main Lisbon venue and “Make Out”—that is, we will embark on "Beautiful Business Trips" in the form of workshops, masterclasses, in-depth conversations, and walking tours. The virtual program, too, will then break into a number of parallel sessions for attendees to choose from. Day four will end with the “Loud & Love Fest,” the definitive party and most fun liminal space you can imagine.

Concrete Love will continue on Monday with a farewell brunch. Then, all Concrete Love participants will reconvene for the “Final Assembly” and be prompted to make decisions—about their businesses and their lives. We will close with a plenary session that reunites the Lisbon and virtual audiences and helps us all “to begin.”

The House of Beautiful Business is not your typical business community, and our annual gathering is not your typical conference. This is particularly true for this year’s event. Concrete Love will be both an experiment in and celebration of gathering in (post-)pandemic times—a full-body, wholehearted immersive experience that engages you not just intellectually, but also emotionally. Take a look at some impressions from our 2019 gathering in Lisbon.

Past attendees of our annual gathering have called it “the most non-conference conference I’ve ever attended,” bringing together “the world’s most un-like-minded community.”

Here are some other comments:

“Imagine the best house party in the world where everyone is phenomenally interesting as well as interested in talking to you, where diversity of thought and background are beautifully represented, and where you come away from a week of intense thinking, extraordinarily energized.” —Sophie Devonshire, CEO, The Marketing Society; Author of Superfast: Lead at Speed

“In my 35 years on this planet it was the most meaningful conference I have ever attended. It spoke to all senses, to the mind and soul.” —Anne Kjaer Riechert, co-founder and CEO, ReDi School of Digital Integration

“An experience that I wish my entire life could be like.” —Joe Fletcher, managing director, argodesign

“I have rarely had such a good time at not-a-conference.” —Mathieu Lefevre, CEO and co-founder, More in Common

“A wonderful and soul-nourishing experience.” —Courtney Hohne, chief storyteller, X - The Moonshot Factory

“The House feels like a home where you can wrestle with the biggest ideas and the most difficult challenges we face, but in a way that is safe and loving.” —Ed Gillespie, board member, Greenpeace UK

“We were all positively surprised to be lifted out of our comfort zone and thrown into the ocean of intimacy.” —Steven Braekeveldt, CEO, Grupo Ageas

After hosting more than 50 online Living Room Sessions since January 2020 and a virtual festival last fall (The Great Wave), we can’t wait to bring what we've learned about virtual gatherings to the real world.

At Concrete Love, IRL and virtual will augment one another, and while both the Lisbon and online program will have discrete features, formats, and speakers, they will be closely interlinked. In fact, Lisbon attendees can tune in to sessions online to deepen the conversation, and online attendees will play an active role in what is happening on the Lisbon stage.

If you attend online, it will not just be remote viewing as usual. Yes, there will be Zoom, but rather than relying on one central platform, we will combine various channels and technologies, and invite you to follow the live proceedings via outdoor audio walks and in-person local meetups. Our Chambers of Beautiful Business will also host smaller events in select cities.

In addition, there will be dedicated online programming as well as opportunities to extend the conversation with speakers and performers from Lisbon, and likewise, while all main sessions will be livestreamed online, some of the Sunday afternoon programming, in particular field trips, workshops, and walking tours, will be offered only for Lisbon Pass holders.

Lisbon and the online experience will dance with each other, if you will, taking turns in terms of who leads and who follows, sometimes mirroring, sometimes complementing, and sometimes ignoring each other. The experiences will converge at certain moments and yet be entirely different. Both will be rich in their own ways.

We expect 300+ attendees in Lisbon and thousands online. The attendees are from more than 40 countries and diverse in terms of gender, age, culture, and professional background. Our audience ranges from CEOs, artists, academics, and technologists to freelancers, entrepreneurs, and students.

Many members of our community find themselves at inflection points in their careers or lives, and are looking for new inspiration and orientation. Some use the House of Beautiful Business to meet new interesting people and hear fresh ideas. Others consider the House a place to access original thinking, next-generation technologies, and novel practices to spur the innovation efforts in their organization. What all of our members (House Residents) have in common is an insatiable curiosity, an inquisitive mind, a big heart, and desire for real, honest connections.

Simply put, people come to the House searching for a community that offers them four things: inspiration, intelligence, intimacy, and impact.

At Concrete Love, you will meet people from organizations including Accenture, Ageas, Airbnb, Airbus, Amazon, Bayer, BCG, Beiersdorf, BMW, BPI, Capital One, CARE, Cap Gemini, Daimler, Deloitte, Deutsche Telekom, European Commission, Facebook, Farfetch, Fjord, Frog Design, Galp, Google, IBM, IEEE, IKEA, INSEAD, Korn Ferry, LinkedIn, Lufthansa, Magnum Photos, McKinsey, Microsoft, MIT Media Lab, Nestlé, Netflix, Novo Banco, Otto Group, Pfizer, Phillips, Porsche, PwC, Salesforce.com, SAP, Sennheiser, Shenzhen Open Innovation Lab, Siemens, Sky, SYPartners, TED Conferences, Uber, UBS, Union Square Ventures, Volkswagen, Wikimedia, and the UN, among many others.

Yes, we offer special passes for teams and organizations, as well as partnership opportunities. Email us to learn more.

Yes. However, while you may attend all six main-stage sessions as well as the “Final Assembly” and the closing plenary (“How to Begin”), our programming includes some parallel arcs. During certain times of the day, and during some asynchronous activities, it will be virtually impossible to take part in all the action live, and you will have to make choices. The good news is: (almost) everything is being recorded. After a session premieres you will be able to access it as a recording via our House Library online.

While we are optimistic about our ability to convene 300+ people for Concrete Love in Lisbon, we are of course developing a concept to maximize the health and safety of everyone involved. Our venue will allow for ample space for physical distancing if necessary. With guidance from experts and following local safety protocols, we’re planning additional protective measures and testing to ensure the health and safety of all attendees, staff, our vendors, and the local community.

If we decide that it’s not safe to hold the event and we cancel it, you will receive a full refund.

It's awesome, but we don't want to share it yet. But rest assured that it will meet all health and safety requirements including physical distancing if needed.

Once you register for the event, we will provide you with the names of conveniently located hotels and guesthouses we partner with.

For students and nonprofits, we offer a 50% discount for House Residency, our 12-month membership program, and select fellowships for seats at the Lisbon event. Email us to learn more.

The House of Beautiful Business is a global think tank and community. We connect business leaders, technologists, scientists, philosophers, policy makers, creatives, and artists who share a common interest: to make humans more human and business more beautiful. Through events, a multichannel media platform, and a membership program for individuals and corporate partners, we create an imaginative and playful space for transformation on a personal and organizational level, and for our societies and economies at large. Together with our community and partners, we are working to set a new cultural, social, and economic agenda, leading the shift from business-as-usual to business that is beautiful.

The House of Beautiful Business was founded in 2017, and since then our community has grown to tens of thousands of engaged members around the world.

In January this year, we introduced House Residency. House Residency is an all-year membership program that connects our members (Residents) to a bespoke group of international leaders and influencers, and offers them the chance to partake in a variety of virtual experience formats—including monthly Living Room Sessions, Resident Circles, a House Work program, and our annual main event. In addition, Residents can access exclusive intelligence and insights and collaborate on transformative projects. You can learn more about the specific features included in the House Residency here.

The House of Beautiful Business is a membership-based organization. Since we founded the House in 2017 we have evolved from running one big event per year to becoming a global community with the mission to change the language, frameworks, and practices of business. We therefore are keen to engage members of our community more closely and consistently throughout the year through ongoing programming and social activities.

You can lean back and simply enjoy live and on-demand content, or you can more actively take part in the House community and take advantage of the full benefits of our membership program, House Residency, connecting with changemakers and leaders from across the globe, attending online lectures, applying practical insights to your organization and life, and collaborating on projects.

Specifically, House Residency includes:

• Access to the full virtual experience of Concrete Love, the 2021 flagship event of the House from October 28 through November 1, 2021, with 50+ speakers and performers

• Eligibility to buy a pass for the exclusive in-person Lisbon edition of Concrete Love

• Living Room Sessions: monthly 60–90-minute inspirational online events that gather the House community worldwide and feature a variety of speakers, performers, and experiences on a wide range of topics

• Resident Circles: facilitated monthly social forums for exchange with other House Residents as well as mutual coaching and mentoring programs

• House Library: exclusive on-demand access to all new and archived House content (video, audio, books, and reports)

• Masterclasses and workshops: curated online learning programs taught by House speakers and domain experts on select topics

• Beauty Shots: weekly online newsletter with commentary on current events and beautiful business practices

• House Work: community-led projects and co-creation initiatives

You can also learn more here.