Allianz MiCo Milano Congressi, 18 & 19 November 2026
World Business Forum
Milano 2026
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World Business Forum
Since 2004, the World Business Forum Milan has brought together thousands of senior executives from across the globe to learn directly from the world’s most influential business thinkers.
We focus on the most relevant topics for today’s leaders who face the challenge of leading their teams and organisations.
To thrive in 2026, resilience is no longer enough. Organizations must do more than endure: they must transcend.
Transcend will be the central theme of the 2026 edition: how to build limitless organizations.
World Business Forum Milan 2026 Speakers
Justin Trudeau
Leadership
Prime Minister of Canada from 2015 to 2025
Rita McGrath
Growth Strategy
Leading strategy expert and professor at Columbia Business School
Carl Lewis
High Performance
One of the greatest Olympians of all time
Stephen M.R. Covey
Talent
World’s leading expert on organizational trust
Zack Kass
AI Strategy
Global AI advisor and former Head of Go-To-Market at OpenAI
Paola Antonelli
Creativity
Renowned creative visionary and MoMA’s Senior Curator of Architecture and Design
Chris Barton
Innovation
Founder & Former CEO of Shazam
Gianluigi Buffon
Winning Teams
One of the best goalkeepers of all time
Amy Gallo
Relationship Management
Coach and leading expert in conflict resolution and workplace dynamics
Marcus Collins
Brand Strategy
Award-winning marketer and expert on brand strategy
World Business Forum Milan 2026 Speakers
Justin Trudeau
Leadership
Prime Minister of Canada from 2015 to 2025
Rita McGrath
Growth Strategy
Leading strategy expert and professor at Columbia Business School
Carl Lewis
High Performance
One of the greatest Olympians of all time
Stephen M.R. Covey
Talent
World’s leading expert on organizational trust
Zack Kass
AI Strategy
Global AI advisor and former Head of Go-To-Market at OpenAI
Paola Antonelli
Creativity
Renowned creative visionary and MoMA’s Senior Curator of Architecture and Design
Chris Barton
Innovation
Founder & Former CEO of Shazam
Gianluigi Buffon
Winning Teams
One of the best goalkeepers of all time
Amy Gallo
Relationship Management
Coach and leading expert in conflict resolution and workplace dynamics
Marcus Collins
Brand Strategy
Award-winning marketer and expert on brand strategy
Two Days. Limitless Growth. A Real Impact.
The World Business Forum Milan 2026 is not just an event. It is a strategic offsite for leaders who want to keep up with the times and face the challenge of constant change.
We curate the world’s most disruptive thinkers to cover every critical angle of the business: from AI and innovation to talent, leadership, and culture.
You’ll return home with ideas and tools to develop strategies and guide your organization through uncertainty.
Buy your ticket for the World Business Forum
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1. World Business Forum On Demand
✓ Included in your WOBI Membership
The Milan program is world-class, but it represents only one stage of your learning journey this year. Your subscription includes 30-day on-demand access to all World Business Forums held globally.
If you are interested in exploring any topics more in depth, you’ll find them in the 2026 global program.
2. A year-long access to our Learning Platform
✓ Included in your WOBI Membership
WOBI empowers you all year. Receive a 12-month access to our learning hub, a curated library of 300+ hours of the world’s best management content.
You aren’t just attending a forum; you are joining a continuous learning program, all year round.
3. Expand Your Network.
Join the WOBI Community.
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Real business is built on relationships. Your ticket grants you the opportunity to meet the Italian Business Community.
During the Forum: Connect with other peers in our networking area.
During the Year: Attend exclusive WOBI Members events focused on learning and networking.
Always: Connect with other leaders throughout our WOBI Platform.
Join Thousands of Leaders Who Are Already Ahead of the Curve
“A new way of delivering executive education in Italy — a truly inspiring experience.”
— Ivano Mocetti, Chairman, Costa d’Oro
“The World Business Forum is an important opportunity for leaders who care about their growth — a unique chance to be nourished by ideas and share excellent experiences.”
— Francesca Moriani, CEO, Var Group
“One of the things that WOBI does is that it brings some of the best business minds in one place at one time”
— Simon Sinek, Author and inspirational speaker
Secure Your Ticket Now
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Gold Access
- 2-Day Access to World Business Forum Milan 2026
- Networking coffee breaks and lunch
- Simultaneous translation
- Watch all World Business Forums Worldwide On Demand for 30 days after each event
- Unlock 300+ Hours of WOBI's Digital Content
- Year-Round Exclusive Networking Opportunities
- Join an exclusive global community of leaders
- Access to the Forum recordings for 30 days
- Eligible for funding through major Interprofessional Training Funds
Platinum Access
- Everything in Gold Access plus:
- Pass delivery before the event, wherever you prefer
- Access to the Platinum Lounge
- Reserved and numbered seating in the front rows
- Eligible for funding through major Interprofessional Training Funds
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is the agenda for the two days of the Forum?
8:00 AM Registration Opens
9:00 AM Keynote session
10:15 AM Coffee Break
11:00 AM Keynote Session
12:00 PM Keynote Session
1:15 PM Lunch
2:45 PM Keynote Session
3:45 PM Coffee Break
4:15 PM Keynote Session
5:15 PM Networking Cocktail
Thursday 19 November, 2026
9:00 AM Keynote session
10:15 AM Coffee Break
11:00 AM Keynote Session
12:00 PM Keynote Session
1:20 PM Lunch
2:50 PM Keynote Session
3:50 PM Coffee Break
4:20 PM Keynote Session
5:20 PM End of event
*The agenda may be subject to change.
The program features curated keynotes and practical sessions from globally recognised speakers, tackling today’s biggest challenges in strategy, leadership, business transformation, innovation, talent and performance, alongside networking opportunities with other leaders from diverse industries.
Do I need to provide delegate names at the time of purchase?
What are the cancellation policies?
What payment methods are available?
For further information or details of specific payment methods, please contact info.it@wobi.com
Is the World Business Forum only for C-Level executives?
By covering a broad range of management topics, the event helps participants strengthen leadership skills and further develop their potential toward future executive roles.
I don’t work for a large company — is the content still relevant?
I work in a specialized sector. Is the event still relevant?
What does WOBI Membership include?
- In-person access to World Business Forum Milan 2026
- On-demand access to all World Business Forums worldwide
- Year-round access to the best management content
- Networking opportunities and access to the executive community
How do I access my WOBI Membership?
You can access it from any device:
Access the web version via link
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Once logged in, you will find the WOBI Membership icon — enter your credentials and start enjoying your benefits.
If you have any queries, please email us at info.it@wobi.com
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Gianluigi Buffon
One of the best goalkeepers of all time
Gianluigi Buffon is one of the greatest goalkeepers in the history of football and a true symbol of excellence and leadership. Over almost three decades at the highest level, he combined elite technical mastery with an unbreakable will that inspired teammates and nations alike. A 2006 FIFA World Cup winner with Italy, Buffon was named the tournament’s best goalkeeper. During 19 seasons at Juventus, he claimed a record 10 Serie A titles and became the only goalkeeper in history to be named UEFA Club Footballer of the Year (2003). He holds Serie A’s all-time records for appearances and longest clean-sheet streak, and captained the Italian national team a record 176 times. From his early UEFA Cup triumph with Parma to retiring at age 45 as a five-time IFFHS World’s Best Goalkeeper, Buffon is remembered as a leader whose legacy transcends records and generations.
Building Winning Cultures
- Setting direction without control: how leaders shape teams from within
- Trust and cohesion under pressure: creating unity in moments of uncertainty
- Leading across generations: aligning veterans and new talent around a shared mindset
- Shaping team culture through behavior and voice: setting standards and stabilizing the team in key moments
Justin Trudeau
Prime Minister of Canada from 2015 to 2025
An advocate for equity, inclusion, and sustainability, Justin Trudeau served as Canada’s 23rd Prime Minister from 2015 to 2025, becoming the country’s second-youngest Prime Minister. First elected in 2015 and re-elected in 2019 and 2021, he focused on expanding middle-class opportunity, advancing equity and youth opportunity, strengthening public safety, and confronting climate change, while guiding Canada through the pandemic and positioning the country for long-term, low-carbon growth. Before entering politics, he worked as a teacher, and today continues to drive positive change through leadership grounded in empathy, purpose and fairness.
Leading Change
- Navigating uncertainty: A practical approach for leading and making hard decisions in times of crisis
- Purpose-driven leadership: Harnessing the power of purpose to inspire meaningful change in society
- Building a more equitable world: What governments and business can do
- The next-gen advantage: Why elevating younger leaders strengthens team performance and business results
Stephen M.R. Covey
World’s leading expert on organizational trust
Stephen M. R. Covey is the New York Times and #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Speed of Trust and Trust and Inspire: How Truly Great Leaders Unleash Greatness in Others. He is the former CEO of Covey Leadership Center, which, under his stewardship, became the largest leadership development company in the world, nearly doubling revenues while multiplying profits twelvefold during a global expansion into over 40 countries. Covey personally led the strategy that propelled his father’s book, Dr. Stephen R. Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, to become one of the two most influential business books of the 20th Century, according to CEO Magazine.
Trust and Inspire: Unleashing Greatness in Others
- Why the old rules of leadership no longer apply and fail to unleash human potential
- A comprehensive framework for shifting from ‘Command and Control’ to a ‘Trust and Inspire’ leadership style
- How trust and collaboration are and will be the foundation of the future of work
- Creating the conditions that turn potential into performance, where people flourish and grow
Rita McGrath
Leading strategy expert and professor at Columbia Business School
Rita McGrath, professor at Columbia Business School, is widely recognized as a global authority on leading innovation and growth during times of uncertainty. As a consultant to CEOs, her work has had a lasting impact on the strategy and growth programs of Fortune 500 companies worldwide. She is the author of five books including the best-selling The End of Competitive Advantage and Discovery Driven Growth, cited by Clayton Christensen as creating “one of the most important management ideas ever developed”. She is currently writing her next book on how companies can become more adaptive by pushing decision-making closer to the information—and has announced it is scheduled for release in October 2026. McGrath is also the founder of Valize, an innovation platform whose mission is to help organizations build lasting innovation capability as the basis for long-term shared prosperity.
The New Strategy Playbook for Competing in a Tech-Shift Era
- Tech shifts, new rules: Rethink how you organize, build business models, and compete for the next wave of growth
- Breaking barriers: align teams, foster collaboration, and accelerate execution
- Empower growth at scale: Enable teams across the organization, not just decisions at the top
- Get ahead of technological disruption: Recognize repeat patterns of change—and act earlier
Carl Lewis
One of the greatest Olympians of all time
Recognized as one of the most successful athletes in history, Carl Lewis is a track and field legend, world-record breaker, and ten-time Olympic medalist (with nine golds and one silver). Named Sportsman of the Century by the International Olympic Committee in 1999, Lewis redefined consistency and longevity by sustaining peak performance over many years, competing in five Olympic Games. An eight-time world champion, he set the then–world record in the 100m at the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo at the age of 30 – an age considered past prime for sprinters and long jumpers. Beyond his sports career, he founded The Carl Lewis Foundation in 1984 to support disadvantaged youth and continues to dedicate his influence to business, education and social impact initiatives.
The “I Can Do That” Mindset
- Talent is just the start: What it takes to develop a champion mindset, overcome the odds and sustain success over the long term
- The “I Can Do That” Mindset: Developing the mental strength to give you the edge when the pressure is on
- Staying motivated: How to maintain the desire to keep setting the bar higher year after year
- Don’t focus on being at the top, but on being better: Lessons from an Olympic champion in driving continuous improvement
Paola Antonelli
Renowned creative visionary and MoMA’s Senior Curator of Architecture and Design
One of the most influential voices in design and creativity, Paola Antonelli is the Senior Curator of Architecture and Design and founding Director of Research and Development at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Through her work, she has redefined how design shapes culture, business, and society, with the purpose of deepening the public’s understanding of design until its positive influence on the world is universally recognized.
Recognized by TIME magazine as one of the 25 most incisive design visionaries, she has received prestigious honors including the Smithsonian Institution’s National Design Award for Design Mind. Beyond MoMA, she has curated numerous exhibitions and collaborated with institutions around the world such as the Triennale di Milano and the Biennale di Venezia. A consultant for Fortune 500 companies, she is also the author of several books, including her latest, Design Emergency: Building a Better Future.
Creativity as a Competitive Advantage
- Why creativity is now a core business strategy for solving new challenges, thinking differently, and staying curious in the face of constant change
- What art can teach business: bold lessons on innovation, resilience, and pushing boundaries
- Where design, technology, and humanity meet: imagining a better future for business
- Building resilient, innovative teams through diverse thinking and continuous learning
Zack Kass
Global AI advisor and former Head of Go-To-Market at OpenAI
Zack Kass has over a decade in AI leadership, most recently as Head of Go-To-Market at OpenAI where he spearheaded sales and partnerships, turning research into deployable business solutions. An expert in the transformative possibilities that Artificial Intelligence brings, Zack Kass is a futuristic leader who helps organizations including Coca-Cola, Morgan Stanley, and Samsung, navigate the evolving landscape of this technology in the business world. He has also served as an advisor and VP of Revenue at Lilt, as well as VP of Sales and Customer Success at Figure Eight.
AI Strategy Simplified
- AI Strategy Simplified: Demystifying AI’s complexity with an actionable roadmap for its implementation
- Redefining Intelligence: Preparing for a world where intelligence is unmetered–and rethinking what it means to be human in the process
- Beyond the hype: Turning AI’s ethical and societal dilemmas into strategic value
- A world of opportunities: A pragmatic guide to future-proofing your business by fostering resilience, adaptability, and innovation
Marcus Collins
Award-winning marketer and expert on brand strategy
As the Chief Strategy Officer at Wieden+Kennedy New York, and a marketing Professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, Marcus Collins bridges the academic-practitioner gap for blue-chip brands and startups alike. His acclaimed book For The Culture: The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do, and Who We Want to Be examines the influence of culture on consumption and unpacks how everyone from marketers to activists can leverage culture to get people to take action. He is a recipient of Advertising Age’s 40 Under 40 award, and a recent inductee into the American Advertising Federation’s Advertising Hall of Achievement. In addition, he led iTunes + Nike sports music initiatives at Apple, the McDonald’s cultural resurgence and Google’s “Real Tone” technology launch, plus he served as Head of Digital Strategy for Beyoncé.
The Future of Brand
- Why culture is the most powerful vehicle for influencing behavior and what this means for brands
- The six levels of brand power, from simple awareness to ideology, and how brands evolve through them
- How empathy enables leaders to understand customers beyond data and influence behavior authentically
- From Beyonce to the Fortune 500: Practical lessons from the field on why the strongest brands don’t just follow culture – they lead it
Amy Gallo
Coach and leading expert in conflict resolution and workplace dynamics
An authority on relationship management, healthy disagreements, and gender dynamics, Amy Gallo’s work is focused on teaching leaders evidence-based frameworks that improve high performance and drive excellence at work. A Contributing Editor at the Harvard Business Review, where she has written hundreds of articles, she is also the author of Getting Along: How to Work with Anyone (Even Difficult People). Gallo also co-hosted HBR’s popular Women at Work podcast, and has taught at Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania.
Managing Difficult Workplace Relationships
- How to manage conflict and change in ways that spark innovation, collaboration, trust, and engagement
- Why healthy disagreements are essential for high-performing teams – and how to foster them effectively
- A four-step framework for conflict resolution: key strategies to turn friction into fuel for growth
- How to build psychological safety through care, consistency, and candor, creating a space where everyone feels safe to speak up and learn
Chris Barton
Founder & Former CEO of Shazam
Chris Barton is the founder of Shazam, the groundbreaking music recognition app that changed how people discover music, and was acquired by Apple in 2018 for around $400 million. A passionate innovator who believes technology can achieve the impossible, Barton spent eight years at Google, where he was the first employee focused on mobile, creating from scratch the carrier partnership framework for Search and Android. He then joined Dropbox as one of its first employees, helping to build their mobile business and expand the platform globally. Barton is also an active investor and adviser in various startups, holding 12 patents for inventions developed at Shazam, Google, and Dropbox. He is now the founder of Guard, a venture using AI to make digital experiences safer and smarter.
Starting from Zero: The Shazam’s Journey to Transform Ideas into Innovation
- The Start from Zero framework: Discover four unconventional ways of thinking used by history’s greatest innovators like Steve Jobs, Henry Ford, and Leonardo da Vinci – to systematically disrupt industries and challenge the status quo
- Bring “impossible” ideas to life: Harness technology to imagine the future, challenge conventional limits, and turn bold, ahead-of-its-time ideas into reality
- Turning obstacles into breakthroughs: Eliminating friction and prioritizing effectively to drive bold innovations that impact billions and enhance customer interactions
- The mindset to create the next great companies: How to convert bold visions into game-changing products that redefine industries, inspired by Shazam
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