The first webcast for the new 21st Century Business Forum, presented by BizTimes Media, was presented this week, featuring Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief of Forbes Media and a former presidential candidate.
Click here to see the webcast with Forbes, free on demand.
The 21st Century Business Forum is an opportunity for viewers to learn from successful top executives, experts and global thought leaders. Held on the second Wednesday of each month, the Business Forum is hosted by best-selling author Jon Gordon, who interviews guests in a Q & A format.
Gordon asked Forbes what he thinks are the major trends heading into 2021. Forbes said getting through the COVID-19 pandemic is the most pressing issue.
“The new year is going to be a challenge in terms of getting these (COVID-19) vaccines out,” Forbes said. “It’s very exciting what’s happening there and in therapeutics. As we do that and people become confident as spring rolls around that indeed the economy can get back to full-throated commerce. It will take awhile to overcome the adverse impacts of COVID-19, but at least we can see that coming to an end, or at least under real control instead of these fears of lockdowns and states doing things that hurt commerce and end up doing more harm than good in terms of fighting the disease.”
Gordon also asked Forbes if he expected the government to provide more stimulus to help the economy.
“I think there will probably be one more stimulus package,” Forbes said. “(But) they should be called relief packages. They are not really a stimulus the way a big tax cut would be or removing barriers to people doing business with each other would be. This is really dealing with a disaster. We all know after a natural disaster, like a hurricane, you pour resources in to try to rebuild. That’s what the final package should be, it’s a relief package. When you have a disease or a disaster like this that literally costs trillions of dollars of economic activity, a big spending program by the federal government is absolutely in order, as if you were fighting a major war.”
The next guest, for the February 21st Century Business Forum webcast, will be best-selling author and leadership expert John Maxwell.
In March, Gordon will interview Renee Mauborgne, author of best-sellers Blue Ocean Strategy and Blue Ocean Shift. In 2019, Mauborgne and her co-author, Chan Kim, were honored by Thinkers50 as the No. 1 management thinkers in the world.
Future 21st Century Business Forum guests will include University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban, one of the most successful coaches in college football history, on team-building; entrepreneur and author Josh Linkner; and Brian Solis, author and global innovation evangelist for Salesforce.
The genesis for the forum is to provide insight, ideas and inspiration from top businesspeople and thought leaders in America to entrepreneurs, business owners and leaders and corporate executives as they face unprecedented change in the marketplace in 2021.
Husch Blackwell and Johnson Financial Group are the sponsors of the 21st Century Business Forum, presented by BizTimes Media.
Registration for the 21st Century Business Forum is free; sign up at biztimes.com/businessforum.
