Dubai forum

“The Biology of Business—Learning from Nature to Understand Business” was the title of Geoffrey West’s talk last November at the fifth annual Leaders in Dubai Business Forum. West, a physicist and the president of the Santa Fe Institute, was the first scientist to be invited to participate in the forum.

West was asked to attend, according to a Leaders in Dubai spokesperson, because his “scientific theories are directly related to the business world” and because the forum last year wanted to “provoke new ways of thinking and see a new viewpoint on why businesses and organizations behave the way they do.” What caught the organizers’ attention, says West, “was work I’ve done showing why the pace of life increases, and why we have to be innovating at an accelerated rate.”

In Dubai, West shared the stage with the likes of Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency; Rudolph Giuliani, former mayor of New York City; and James Wolfensohn, former World Bank president. The forum was attended by some 1500 business leaders from across the Middle East.