Welcome to the October 2026 edition of the Leader’s Digest, your monthly guide to business leadership. This time we provide you with a thorough overview of Nordic Business Forum 2026!
Content
- Executive Summary of NBF 2026
- NBF 2026 Event Highlights
- Full keynote by Michael Beckley on Geopolitics
- Discussion on Climate, AI, and Grids with Paul Polman and Ville Voipio
- NBF 2027 Is Out and Over 6,000 Tickets Sold
- Inspirational Quote by Oprah Winfrey
New Leadership Insights
Executive Summary of Nordic Business Forum 2026
— Written summaries of all Main Stage sessions
A few weeks have passed since Nordic Business Forum 2026, and we compiled written summaries of all the Main Stage sessions into one PDF!
This Executive Summary includes the summaries of the following sessions:
- Oprah Winfrey: Leading with Connection
- Steven Bartlett: Failure Is Feedback. Failure Is Knowledge. Failure Is Power.
- Angela Duckworth: Finding People and Places That Bring Out Your Best
- Patty McCord: A Team, Not a Family
…and many more!
NBF 2026 Event Highlights
— Quotes, insights, photos, and more!
“The cost isn’t being wrong. The cost, as all of you will know, is the corporate procrastination where you waste nine months getting to the yes.” – Steven Bartlett
Our 15th event in Finland focused on the theme The Human Edge. We gathered some of the highlights from Nordic Business Forum 2026 into one place. Take a look at quick quotes, key insights, visual summaries, and photos from the NBF 2026 event highlights page!
Full Keynote by Michael Beckley on Geopolitics
— The End of Easy Growth
“Reorganizing our entire economy around AI is going to take time. And until that happens, our extraordinary AI is going to keep running into ordinary bottlenecks.”
At Nordic Business Forum 2026, we heard from geopolitical expert, author, and professor Michael Beckley about the challenges leaders face in today’s geopolitical and macroeconomic environment. His talk laid out why the era of easy growth has ended, how economic slowdowns spark geopolitical friction, and what business executives can do to build resilience in a more fragmented world.
His keynote is now available on our YouTube channel, so make the most of it! 💡
Discussion on Climate, AI, and Grids with Paul Polman and Ville Voipio
— Full conversation hosted at NBF 2026 by our partner Vaisala
At Nordic Business Forum 2026, Vaisala’s Chair of the Board Ville Voipio sat down with Unilever’s former CEO Paul Polman to explore what it takes to turn climate ambition into measurable progress. Their discussion covered grid bottlenecks slowing the energy transition, the surging power demand from AI and data centers, and why that’s pulling us back toward fossil fuels and the trust gap facing carbon markets.
At the heart of it all is a simple idea: what gets measured can be understood, verified, and acted on 🤝
You can now watch the full discussion on Vaisala’s YouTube channel!
-> Watch Full Discussion
NBF Spotlight
NBF 2027 Is Out and Already Over 6,000 Tickets Sold!
A few weeks ago, we announced the dates, theme, and first speakers for next year. The first 5,000 tickets were sold within the first few hours, and now well over 6,000 senior decision-makers have secured their seats 🙌
The theme for NBF 2027 is Clarity, which we will explore especially through the perspectives of Trust, Focus, and Execution. Our insightful speaker lineup includes experts and leaders such as Esther Perel, Trevor Noah, Jacinda Ardern, Cal Newport, Rachel Botsman, and more. Also, a few speakers will still be announced closer to the event.
We’re so grateful to see so much excitement from our community for next year already – a year in advance. Thank you! We hope to see you with us on 22-23 September in 2027 🧡
Stop and Think
“The real of your life and of my life begins with working on yourself. You cannot lead other people unless you have done the work on yourself.”
Oprah Winfrey
