COVID-19 and the Future of (Beautiful) Business

As the world slides into recession and many companies have no choice but to tighten their belts or lay off staff, it may seem frivolous to speak of beauty (especially in light of the workers who are putting their lives at risk on the frontline right now).

Should we worry about beautiful business as our society faces both questions of life and death as well as the consequences of economic disaster?

I think the answer here can only be: yes, absolutely!

In fact, we must navigate the brutal realities of this economic crisis with an understanding of the subtle, nuanced, and caring tones that, over the past few years, have expanded the rigidities of business in an effort to make it more humane. We will also need beauty as our north star for a long time as efficiency and optimization will take a front seat for many businesses trying to recover. In a post-corona world, we’ll need to create new alliances of what will be essential — pragmatism and emotion, planning and ambiguity, data and aesthetics, growth and ethics.

Now more than ever, we must uphold the belief that business must and can be beautiful. As the South African futurist Anton Musgrave put it, “If the world hardens rather than softens after this crisis, we are all lost.”

Echoing that sentiment, in her deeply personal reflection, “The Great Funeral,” House Resident Esther Blázquez Blanco writes: “Enough talking about the leaders of the future. Let’s build those of the present and harden them with soft skills.” She hopes that we’ll go back out in the world post-corona “with the secrecy of the tourist who enters a temple.”

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Over the past few weeks, the House of Beautiful Business, the global think tank and community devoted to humanizing business that I co-founded, has sought to make sense of the crisis and its implications on business through articles, conversations, our virtual Living Room Sessions, and research (e.g. an ongoing ethnographic study by House Resident Jonathan Cook).

Below, we have curated a compilation of articles from the Journal of Beautiful Business, by members of our community, as well as outside experts. All of these will feed into a larger publication and research project that we’re currently working on — and we would love your input!

We have prepared a quick four-questions survey for you to share your perspective on COVID-19 and how it will affect business. Please take the survey — we will present the results in a few weeks. Thank you!

Share your perspective on the post-pandemic future of business!

Stories That Keep Our Minds and Bodies Healthy by Teresa O’Connell

When Virtual Becomes Reality by Elaine Kasket

The Survival Series for Working Couples at Home by Jennifer Petriglieri

How to Be Alone with Yourself by Monika Jiang

Practice the Art of Stillness with Pico Iyer

Life, Death, Dinner: a Report of a Restaurant Owner by Brian Murphy

Of Love and Fear with Jonathan Cook and Markus Lehto

Generating New Ideas in a Time of the Plague by Ralph Talmont

The Great Funeral by Esther Blázquez Blanco

The Coronation by Charles Eisenstein

It’s Not About Victory, but Homecoming by Ed Gillespie

How Businesses Need to Sense and Shape by Martin Reeves

Is a Future of Work for All Work(ers) Possible? by Monika Jiang

The Great Reset — What Will (Need to) Change after the Crisis? by Tim Leberecht

Six Hopes for a Post-Corona World by Tim Leberecht

Next Visions Podcast by the House of Beautiful Business and Porsche

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The House of Beautiful Business is a membership-based global think and community with the mission to make humans more human and business more beautiful. We bring together leaders and changemakers who share a common quest: to shape a positive vision for the future of business, technology, and humanity, built on emotions, ethics, and aesthetics instead of efficiency, extraction, and exponentialism.

Through gatherings, media, and partnerships, we create spaces for reinvention on a personal and organizational level, and for our economies and societies at large.The House can be found on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and Instagram, and in Lisbon, Portugal from October 31– November 3, 2020. Please apply for House Residency here.