Secret Genius Conference to Be Held on a Pacific Island

What’s the Latest Development?

A venture capital fund worth $625 million will organize a sort of genius conference this May somewhere in the vast Pacific. Called Founders Fund, partners like Peter Thiel and Sean Parker, both early investors in Facebook, plan to invite the world’s 50 most promising engineers and tech entrepreneurs to design the future of technology. “The event, which has no official name, is intended to be thought-provoking, though thinking for thinking’s sake isn’t the end goal—action is.” The three-days gathering will 95 percent unstructured, say organizers. 

What’s the Big Idea?

Conversations within business environments tend to be too structured to allow truly innovative ideas to emerge. Or at least that is the theory driving the Founders Fund. “The chance to think about things more broadly is extraordinarily rare,” said one of its partners, Bruce Gibney. “It’s basically non-existent.” Gibney likens the event to a combination of TED, Davos, the Nobel Prize and a dorm chat session all in one package. Participants will be whisked away to a ‘5-Star’ location where they will consider how progress will progress next.

Photo credit: shutterstock.com