The Tenth Annual Bigelow Forum was held on Thursday, September 21 and Friday, September 22 at the Wentworth by the Sea in New Castle, NH. This year’s theme, A Pivot to the Future, allowed us to embark on a thought-provoking journey to explore our exponentially-changing technological world and the impact it has on us, our businesses, our families, our institutions, and our communities.
Rob MacLeod, Bigelow Managing Director, kicked off Thursday afternoon with a brief reflection on our past 10 years at the Bigelow Forum, highlighting favorite moments, speakers, topics we discussed, and IP we co-created together as a community. Several participants shared their learnings from past Forums. One participant indicated that her experiences at the Bigelow Forum have resulted in “better outcomes, more intelligently delivered.”
Following Rob’s welcome, David Linton, Managing Director, segued into discussing the journey of an EOM. David presented the newly extended Life Arc of an Entrepreneur Owner-Manager with the idea of reinvention and philanthropy creating a Virtuous Cycle of entrepreneurship. He then introduced Bigelow’s new Positive Legacy Film Series and showcased our first two films, the stories and journeys of Irv Robinson (Robbie Manufacturing, Inc.) and Jan Blomstrann (NRG Systems, Inc.).
Jan Blomstrann, former CEO of NRG Systems, joined David live to further discuss her narrative and answer a variety of questions from Forum participants.
We kicked off Friday with our featured speaker, Dr. Peter H. Diamandis. He is the Founder & Executive Chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation and Co-Founder & Executive Chairman of Singularity University. Diamandis gave a lively and eye-opening discussion about exponentially growing technologies, their ability to transform industries, and solve humanity’s grand challenges. In this exponentially-changing world, we learned that it is not enough to do 10% better – we must do 10 times better. How can we, in any aspect of our life, find our 10x motivation and create that change?
Following his speech, Peter Worrell, Managing Director, interviewed Peter Diamandis live. This interview can be heard here: https://soundcloud.com/user-746821761/pete-worrell-interview-with-peter-diamandis-2017-bigelow-forum/s-Q1ABp
Friday concluded with Forum participants engaging in hands-on, live demonstrations of tomorrow’s technology. These technologies included: augmented reality, presented by Create/AR (San Mateo, CA); autonomous vehicles presented by Tesla of Boston; robotics presented through Beam technology by Suitable Technologies (Palo Alto, CA); 3D printing presented by MIT CSAIL; and drones presented by UAV America.