Almost three decades ago, the Tällberg Foundation organized its first  Tällberg Workshop. Over the years, the Foundation’s gatherings evolved into an important ongoing open conversation on the wider issues facing business and society. This conversation has been at the forefront of international debate.

The Foundation’s activities have evolved through three phases. The first phase (1981-2003) involved smaller workshops gathering up to 100 participants. Tällberg Foundation started out on topics related to the strategic agendas of large corporations. At the time, deregulation, technological innovation and changing values were pushing business into a new global context. The role of business was an important theme for the Tällberg gatherings, but in the early 1990’s the conversations focused increasingly on understanding the wider effects of the ever-increasing pace of global integration, not only on corporations but also on governance, public policy making and society at large.

In the mid-1990’s, a series of Tällberg Workshops on the role and behaviour of business in a global interdependent world led, among other things, to the UN corporate citizenship initiative – the Global Compact. A workshop in 2003 entitled “The futures we want: Can they be reconciled?” sharpened the focus of the Foundation’s agenda. This workshop made it clear that nations and cultures were approaching their futures with deeply conflicting visions and strategies, still not recognizing how interdependent the systems of human activities had become. It was also clear that growth ambitions would not stay compatible with the boundary conditions of nature.

The second phase of the Foundation’s activities (2005-2007) was in response to this analysis. Beginning in 2005, the yearly gatherings took the form of the Tällberg Forum, with over 450 participants addressing the over-arching question “How on earth can we live together?” These award-winning events have been widely acknowledged as important inspiration for hundreds of leaders from multiple disciplines and from more than 70 countries. The Tällberg Forum successfully integrates intellectual conversations of the highest calibre with world-class cultural and artistic experiences, and adds powerful experiences in the beautiful natural setting.

The Foundation is now further expanding its activities when it from 2007 moved into the third phase of its development.

Going forward

The Tällberg Foundation has now embarked on the third phase in its development. It is expanding into new fields of activities that go beyond the yearly Tällberg Forum and beyond the sole ambition to convene conversations and help leaders grow, and aims at becoming a “re-think tank”.