Vertex is a mind-shaking event that gathers international and national leaders that foresee the future in a non-conventional way.

Richard Thaler

Richard H. Thaler is the 2017 recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to behavioral economics. In its Nobel prize announcement, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said that his "contributions have built a bridge between the economic and psychological analyses of individual decision-making. His empirical findings and theoretical insights have been instrumental in creating the new and rapidly expanding field of behavioral economics."

Thaler studies behavioral economics and finance as well as the psychology of decision-making which lies in the gap between economics and psychology. He investigates the implications of relaxing the standard economic assumption that everyone in the economy is rational and selfish, instead entertaining the possibility that some of the agents in the economy are sometimes human.

Thaler is the director of the Center for Decision Research, and is the co-director (with Robert Shiller) of the Behavioral Economics Project at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American Finance Association and the Econometrics Society, and in 2015 served as the President of the American Economic Association.

April Rinne

April Rinne is a thought leader and advisor in the sharing economy. She works as an advisor for companies such as AirBnB and Nike and organisations like World Economic Forum or The World Bank.

She builds strategy, guides conversations and tackles the key questions with a wide range of stakeholders. Her goal is to help others discover how the sharing economy can create a more efficient, sustainable and happy future—and figure out what to do when faced with uncertainty, or when everyone's goals can’t be met.

She has advised Fortune 500 companies on business model innovation, local and national governments on policy reform, and investors on portfolio strategy and execution.
April has visited 100 countries and counting. Her work has taken her to almost every corner of the world. Her goal: seeing how the rest of the world lived. These experiences continue to influence and inspire her today. “I consider myself a global citizen.”

April is a Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum where she leads the Sharing Economy Working Group and is a member of the Global Futures Council for the Future of Mobility and the Urbanization Advisory Group.

Mitch Lowe

Mitch Lowe invested in and became CEO of MoviePass, Inc. in June 2016. MoviePass is a Movie Theater subscription service and is headquartered in New York City.

Mitch was a founding Executive at Netflix, Inc., serving as Netflix’s Entertainment Domain Expert and as Vice President of Business Development & Strategic Alliances from 1998 to 2003.

In 2003 Mitch joined the investment group at McDonald’s to co-lead as COO and then as President, at Redbox, a DVD vending machine rental service, that under his leadership grew to 35k kiosks across the US with revenue growing from less than $1m in 2003 to $1.5B in revenue in 2011 with over $325m in free cash flow.

Since then Mitch has made many personal investments in start-ups primarily in the entertainment, blockchain and social space. Mitch is passionate about the success and business fulfillment of people in large businesses as well as first-time entrepreneurs.

Mitch sits on the board of Canteloupe Systems, Booxby, and Vidbox

Jean-François Manzoni

Jean-François Manzoni is the President (Dean) of IMD (the International Institute for Management Development, in Lausanne, Switzerland), where he also serves as the Nestlé Professor.

Professor Manzoni’s research, teaching, and consulting activities are focused on leadership, the development of high-performance organizations and corporate governance.

At the organisational level, he studies the content of change (including the use of levers such as strategy, structure and systems), the management of the change process and the role of leaders therein. His work in this area has appeared in several books, articles and over 30 cases, four of which received Case of the Year Awards from the European Foundation for Management Development or the European Case Clearing House. He also acted as content expert in the development of a ground-breaking computer-based change management simulation, the Change Pro Simulation®.

At the individual level, Professor Manzoni studies how leaders can create a high-performance work environment and what they can do to modify their leadership style in that direction.

Speakers