16Jan2017
Talking at the first Nordic Business Forum event to be held in Sweden, NBF co-founder Hans-Peter Siefen outlined his goal and vision for the conference series as the Stockholm audience prepared to hear its final speaker, Andre Agassi, today.
“I don’t think we had a vision of growing this far when we conceived NBF in September 2009,” he said. “But the goal of making the event the most significant business conference in the world was set in 2012 when a professor challenged us to set it as a possible and meaningful goal.
“I attended my own first business conference when I was 19, and it was about sales goals and goal setting. I started reading books about conferences and training sessions, and attended events. It became a dream for me to start something in this field of personal growth, training and coaching. I didn’t know what it would be. Then I became a sales distributor for a company and met my business partner Jyri Lindén and we started brainstorming together. Soon after that I suffered an accident and this gave me time to think about my dream of business training. And we started thinking about how to build it up. It’s been a wonderful journey.”
International growth from the original Helsinki ‘parent’ event was the only way to go, and this growth is measured by means of actual attendance, comparisons with other events elsewhere in the world, the live stream audience, social media and press coverage. “You have to build it up to something more than a one-country event. We have had other smaller events in Estonia in 2013, for example, and about 1,000 people travel from Estonia for the Helsinki event. We’ve had smaller events in St Petersburg in Russia.”
In addition to a second event in Sweden in January 2018, Siefen hinted at further expansion in the Nordic countries being planned. Meanwhile, he was excited at the speakers confirmed already for 2017 in Helsinki and 2018 in Stockholm, when the theme is ‘Lead Lean’.
“We have tried to get Eric Ries, author of The Lean Start-up, as a speaker for many years, and he seldom speaks in Europe. Now we have him coming to Stockholm in January 2018. His message is so important, about nimble, agile disrupting industries. His idea of the Minimal Viable Product is one of the most significant business concepts of our time.”
