On 28 September, over 350 of the most formidable L&D minds representing some of the world’s leading brands and businesses attended Thrive Live at the iconic Science Museum in London. We were joined by the likes of British Airways, AO, the Financial Times, John Lewis, Ted Baker and McClaren, to name a few.

With a focus on innovation, we were lucky to be joined by World Economist, Author, Geopolitics and AI expert Dr Pippa Malgrem; Global keynote speaker and best-selling author Henry Coutinho-Mason; and the inspirational Baroness Karren Brady of Knightsbridge CBE, CEO of West Ham United FC, and mentor and advisor on BBC One's The Apprentice.

Thrive customers were treated to exclusive news and releases, including the unveiling of our new brand, developments on our content and content suite tailored for specific industries, plus a sneak peek at some of the exciting platform innovations we are launching in the coming months.  

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The future of workplace AI
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First up, Dr Pippa Malgrem spoke about the power of AI and how to harness the power of innovation to enable us to release our opportunities as humans, to free up our time to do the things that we love and make us more creative and unique. Pippa shared some great illustrations and examples to help us how to unlock the potential of ourselves and others around us:
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“Most people have the idea that AI is going to replace my job, but think about it as a way to unleash incredible creativity. A world where all of your wildest dreams can come true”.

During the audience Q&A, Dr Pippa answered questions from L&D professionals around how AI can help to optimise how we work, and where some of its shortcomings lie including shortlisting candidates for recruitment, or trying to tackle DEI within the workplace. Sometimes, although technology can create fabulous opportunities, we still need the power of our experts to add context to be really useful.
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See the full keynote from Dr Pippa here:
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The evolution of Thrive

Next up, we met some of Thrive’s experts with some exciting and exclusive launches for the business including:
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• Latest UI and accessibility updates to our platform, including the ability to enable dark-mode, and how this aligns to the future plans and ambitions across the industry
• Upcoming developments including how we’ll be introducing AI and our ambitions for Coaching and Mentoring. More information on that here.
• New brand and visual identity which reflects the company we are; becoming more mature and established within our space and coincides with the launch of our brand new website
• Developments within our suites of Content, including the introduction of our core content and six new sector specific suites. More information available here.
• Our roadmap and future plans for innovation, and the importance of our customer input and testing. More on that available here.

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During the lunchtime session, everyone was invited to see more around our new product launches and developments, meet our content experts and see more on our new sector specific suites, and also take part in a live episode of the Diary of a CLO podcast hosted by our Chief Learning Officer, Helen Marshall.

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Leading the way for women in business

Following the lunchtime session, we were introduced to Baroness Karren Brady CBE, one of the most influential, high-profile, and respected female business leaders in the world. She shared her journey of breaking glass ceilings as the youngest and first woman to run a football club, as well as her insights on leadership, teamwork, and going against the grain to drive real success in the sports and business industry.

Baroness Brady CBE also hosted a live audience Q&A where she was quizzed on a range of topics from her biggest personal and professional challenges, through to the modern interpretation of women in football on Ted Lasso!

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The Future Normal - Henry Coutinho-Mason

Henry kicked off his session with some perspective, highlighting no fewer than 8 updates from the last week from the likes of Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Spotify. Things are moving fast, and it can feel impossible to keep up. As L&D professionals, how do we keep up with all this social, economic, technological change and make sure that we are harnessing this change for good?
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Three ideas to develop a people first AI strategy:

1. Stealth Leaning - the power of crowd accelerated learning and social platforms to enable quality learning at speed.

A key question from Henry: “can you make learning immersive, personal-yet-social, and ultimately fun?”

Speak to us to see how Thrive can help - we know a thing or two about user generated content and social learning, and will be able to help you to achieve your goals!

2. Virtual Companionship - Henry gave some great and interesting examples of the boom in virtual companionship across platforms like Snapchat, but also gave some great suggestions as to how we could implement this within our own organisations.

3. Fairness and inclusivity - thinking about how AI learns, we can unfortunately see some huge biases that span the whole DEI agenda. AI can unlock some real efficiencies in the way we work; the challenge is how we can use AI to reduce discrimination rather than perpetuate it.

See Henry’s session here:
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Ending the day on a huge high, the audience were treated to a hilarious stand up performance from Live at the Apollo comedian and ventriloquist Nina Conti who - with some support from some of our willing partners at Bally’s and Homebase - raised the roof with her hilarious puppet master sketch.

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