Since 1829, Maison Dandoy has passed its craftsmanship down from one generation to the next. Today, the seventh generation is at the helm, with brothers Alexandre and Antoine Helson leading the company. For a family business that has existed for nearly two centuries, the real question is not how to survive until today, but how to still be here 200 years from now.

How do you pass on a legacy without allowing it to become rigid, and how can you rethink it in the light of planetary boundaries? Alexandre Helson, co-CEO of Maison Dandoy, shares his vision of a business guided by resilience and robustness rather than performance alone — an invitation to think about business in the long term.

Europe’s Electrification Action Plan marks a major shift from setting climate ambitions to enabling industrial investment. With an indicative EU electrification target of 46% by 2040, new tax reforms, dedicated financing instruments, industrial heat auctions, and a proposed €100 billion Industrial Decarbonisation Bank, the coming years could become the defining decade for industrial electrification.

But significant questions remain: Will lower electricity costs and fiscal incentives be enough to trigger large-scale industrial investments? How can industries justify electrification projects amid competitiveness concerns? And what role will engineering innovation, industrial leadership, and regional ecosystems play in accelerating deployment?

This panel brings together the key actors of the electrification value chain to discuss how policy is translating into real projects on the ground, with a particular focus on industrial heat pumps, waste heat recovery, flexibility via storage, electrified process heat, and the funding and tax mechanisms that can unlock investment across Europe.

How invisible talent can become the engine of a new economy.
Today, 15% of the working-age population is on the sidelines. Not because there is a lack of talent, but because our systems often fail to recognise it. During this session, you will discover how De Stuyverij has evolved over the past years from a local social innovation initiative into a new economic model in which social costs are transformed into social capital. Through local ecosystems, outcome-based financing and collaboration between businesses, government, investors, insurers and mutual health funds, we are building strong communities and a new business model for societal impact. This is not a story about social assistance, but about unlocking an enormous, untapped capacity.

“The greatest innovation of the next ten years will not come from artificial intelligence, but from human potential that we still fail to see today.”

Why do change initiatives get stuck even when the plans are sound? Because the real resistance runs deeper — but fortunately, it can also be addressed in surprisingly simple ways. In this interactive breakout session, Karen Van der Aa explores the systemic dynamics that cause transformation to stall, and zooms in uncompromisingly on the place nobody likes to look: the leader themselves.

Karen takes you beyond individual resistance and looks at the entire system in which change needs to take root. Drawing on examples from her own company, client cases and her personal leadership experience as an entrepreneur running an SME in crisis, she shows why the most crucial shift starts at the top. She closes with a challenging call to action for leaders and a new perspective that you can immediately put into practice.

Whether you are leading a major transformation or trying to get a small team moving, this session gives you the systemic perspective to recognise patterns — and the one question every leader needs to ask themselves.

Confronting? Maybe.
Necessary to get where you want to go? Absolutely.

Professor Kathleen Vangronsvelt shares the key insights from three years of research into effective employee wellbeing policies, conducted together with bpost, Elia, Baloise and Pidpa. Expect more than a list of individual initiatives: this session offers an evidence-based perspective on what organisations can genuinely do to strengthen employee wellbeing in a sustainable way.

From the work environment and leadership to organisational policy, this session provides concrete tools and insights for anyone looking to create meaningful impact.

A session on regenerative leadership in a time of AI and high pressure

Most leaders think AI will reduce pressure. The reality is that it is amplifying it, accelerating decisions, heightening expectations, and leaving zero tolerance for slowness. Most organizations do not see this yet because they are still framing AI as a productivity solution, rather than what it is actually becoming: a pressure amplifier.

The leadership identity that drove success for decades (expert, decisive, always available) was built for a world of predictable efficiency. It was never designed to handle this kind of compounding load. The leaders feeling this tension most acutely are often the best ones: those who built their credibility on knowing more, moving faster, and pushing through pressure. The problem is that accumulated pressure, left unprocessed, quietly shapes the environment around them. Teams hold back. People stop taking initiative. Results suffer, not from a lack of effort, but from a leadership style that no longer fits the era.

What this moment calls for is a different way of leading entirely: one that converts pressure into clarity rather than passing it on, and that creates the conditions for people and organizations to perform sustainably.

In this session, Murielle Machiels, former CEO, Academic Director at Solvay Brussels School, and pioneer of regenerative leadership, reveals what the research shows and what most AI strategies leave out: the inner shift that separates leaders who thrive in this era from those who quietly struggle with it.
Practical, interactive, and grounded in 10 years of working with senior leaders across Europe.
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This is not woke capitalism, it’s the future of business,” Patagonia declared when it transitioned to Steward Ownership.

Peter Depauw explores why a company’s ownership structure matters and introduces a new paradigm: Steward Ownership. This model enables companies to remain independent and impact-driven, even at the most critical moments. At the same time, it offers a promising solution for business succession.

Steward Ownership ensures that control of a company remains in the hands of the people who are most capable and committed — even beyond the founders. It also offers a way for companies to resist the gravitational pull of financial priorities — “the only business of business is business” — and keep impact at the heart of what they do.

The concept is rapidly gaining traction worldwide, with pioneers in Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Within the EU, Steward Ownership is increasingly seen as a way to keep highly innovative and impact-driven companies on course for the long term.

Be inspired by compelling examples such as Ecosia, Sharetribe, Signal, Sumthing and Patagonia.

In Belgium, an estimated €108-132 billion, i.e. around 14% of total assets under management in Belgium, is directed toward investments with positive measurable social and environmental returns. But impact investing is harder than it sounds. How do you identify projects that are both financially solid and genuinely transformative? And how do social entrepreneurs hold on to their vision while making the numbers add up?
Pierre Harkay, CEO of Impact Finance Belgium, will open the session with an overview of where the sector stands today, before moderating a conversation between an investor and an entrepreneur who are already working together. Lou Garagnani founded Le Monde d’Ayden to create inclusive, sensory-rich spaces for children with neurodevelopmental differences and Gaetan Herinckx, who manages Phitrust Belgium, an impact fund which invested in Lou’s project. Their discussion offers a rare, concrete look at what an impact investment relationship actually looks like from both sides of the table.
In Belgium, an estimated €108-132 billion, i.e. around 14% of total assets under management in Belgium, is directed toward investments with positive measurable social and environmental returns. But impact investing is harder than it sounds. How do you identify projects that are both financially solid and genuinely transformative? And how do social entrepreneurs hold on to their vision while making the numbers add up?
Pierre Harkay, CEO of Impact Finance Belgium, will open the session with an overview of where the sector stands today, before moderating a conversation between an investor and an entrepreneur who are already working together. Lou Garagnani founded Le Monde d’Ayden to create inclusive, sensory-rich spaces for children with neurodevelopmental differences and Gaetan Herinckx, who manages Phitrust Belgium, an impact fund which invested in Lou’s project. Their discussion offers a rare, concrete look at what an impact investment relationship actually looks like from both sides of the table.

Insights from practice and a forward-looking perspective with Vincent Truyens, Managing Director Corporate ReGeneration and CSR & Ethics Lecturer at Louvain School of Management. He has helped establish and serves on numerous advisory and boards of directors, where he works to pragmatically integrate the voice of often-silent external stakeholders, such as nature and future generations.

A new voice and a new pathway to strengthen corporate governance and help directors and shareholders embrace, in a systemic way, the many societal challenges their organisations face — while safeguarding their own long-term sustainability.

The road to failure is paved with good intentions & wicked habits
Collaboration is essential to tackling today’s social, ecological and geo-economic challenges—but good intentions do not guarantee impact. Promising partnerships often become trapped in familiar assumptions, conflicting interests and established ways of working. In this interactive keynote, Prof. Dr. Wouter Van Bockhaven exposes the “wicked habits” that quietly undermine collaboration—and shows how recognising and disrupting them can turn shared ambitions into meaningful change.

Why do promising innovations and ambitious collaborations so often fail to create lasting impact? The greatest barriers are rarely technical. More often, they are the deeply embedded assumptions, incentives and patterns of interaction that pull us back towards business as usual. In this interactive keynote, Prof. Dr. Wouter Van Bockhaven reveals these “wicked habits”—and shows how recognising and disrupting them can unlock meaningful, sustainable change.