Fast Forward – Anna Bjurstam about GSWS 2014

It was a busy year planning the GSWS together with my co-chair, Neil Jacobs, and chair Susie Ellis and in addition a great team. Morocco is just an amazing destination with so much to offer, and especially Marrakech.

400 executives from 45 countries joined together to shape the future for this year’s theme “Fast Forward”. And what a future we have! We learnt from Paul Price at www.cri.com that spending time on planning new concepts  is passé and from creating, we should go straight into implementation and that is our planning.

That sales are no longer about
The 4/6/8 P’s or
Positioning nor
Reach or
Awareness

No, times have changed and instead it is about
Experiences
Dreams
Context 
Activation

From my country fellow, Kjell A. Nordström, who held the probably most appraised lecture, we learnt that we are just in the beginning of a new global transformation with movements of populations where Africa will grow quicker than any other continent. There seem to be a power shift from men to women, which will become more and more evident and that a university degree will mean nothing.Life as we know it will change. Help!!

Lots of opportunities going forward, if we are able to flow with the new era and its currents. One that has captured that is the Danish architect Bjerke Ingles, who showed us how he is making a garbage plant outside Copenhagen into a ski slope, blowing smoke rings (non toxic)! http://www.big.dk/#projects-arc

Dr. Daniel Friedland taught us that beauty can foster creativity and even help with depression, as it relates to similar and sometimes the same parts of the brain, and that belief in beauty makes us more beautiful.

Are you confused yet? I know that I was and am, and need a couple of days to go over notes and digest it all. The good news is that all will soon be available on the net at www.gsws.org and every session is filmed. How great isn’t that!

And if you have not already, go in and check out my 7 min interview with Dr. Oz and hear what he has to say about wellness.

Love and light,
Anna