London Business School’s Global Leadership Summit (theme: Leadership in Challenging Times) is taking place today. Stefan Stern is tweeting from the conference but I made it part of the morning session, including an impressive keynote address by Jeff Immelt, chief executive of GE, and a panel discussion chaired by my colleague Martin Wolf, that included Ian Davis of McKinsey, Paul Walsh of Diageo and Kishore Mahbubani.

Here are a few highlights from Immelt’s presentation on “The way forward for business in a reset economy”:

• Capitalism isn’t dead but it is going through a very rough patch. Every 10 years or so, we have a cyclical downturn. This one is bad but we will come out of it.
• Opportunities are out there and companies need to find of way of taking advantage of them but also positioning themselves for the future - companies need to be thinking about where their business should be in 5-10 years
• Circumstances are changing for business, particularly the growing role of the state. “The government has moved in next door and they are not going away”
• Perhaps his best quote was reserved for the media. While Davis said business leaders often don’t speak up in public because of the media’s overbearing cynicism towards business, Immelt was less bothered: “To hell with it! I’m not going to let the business media define us!”

June 29, 2009 2:03pm in Management | Comment