Imperial College Business School goes global with new lecture series

Exploring the challenges facing businesses in a global economy will be the focus of an international lecture series, announced today.

Imperial College Business School is taking its lecture series around the world, inviting prominent business leaders to give talks in their home towns about the latest trends and challenges facing businesses today. 

The Global Business Vision International Event Series will explore the latest thinking about how finance, innovation, entrepreneurship, healthcare, sustainable energy and climate all impact on business.

Commenting on the launch of the Imperial Global Business Vision lectures, Professor G. ‘Anand’ Anandalingam, Dean of the Business School, said:

“The global economy affects every nation and every individual. It is the story behind the coffee you drink in the morning, the technology you use in the day and the car that gets you home. We’re taking our pioneering business vision to our friends and partners around the world. We warmly invite them to come and explore with us the most pressing questions in today’s global economy.”

The aim of the series is to share ideas, and encourage informed debate. Two lectures will be held in Singapore and China in January 2014, with more lectures held later in the year in cities in North and South America, South Africa and India. The lectures will be open to all and free to attend.

The first lecture, entitled “Singapore – a magnet for entrepreneurs?, will be given on Wednesday 8 January 2014 in Asian city state, Singapore, by Imperial alumnus Eddie Chau. He will explain how and why Singapore has become the ideal environment for establishing a new business, following news that the World Bank has ranked Singapore as the number one place for start-ups in the world this year.

Mr Chau has founded and sold two start-ups and is now co-founder and chairman of his third company V-Key, which specialises in mobile phone security.

“The future of trade between China and the rest of the world,” the second lecture in the series,will be delivered in Shanghai on Tuesday 14 January 2014 by Egidio Zarrella, Global Clients and Innovation Partner at KPMG. 

He will be discussing the opportunities and challenges of China’s trade patterns, this is a measure used to assess the goods and services a country trades, with whom, and in what direction. Mr Zarrella will also be exploring China’s economic trends at a local and global level. The lectures will be chaired by senior academics at the Business School.  In the lead up to each lecture, they will be blogging about the some of the key issues to encourage and stimulate further discussion.