by Tim Leberecht
A few weeks ago—during the peak of the World Cup frenzy, remember?—I wrote about the Norwegian Viking Row, describing it as an “MVC,” a Minimum Viable Culture: the smallest unit of behavior that captures the identity of an entire people—something deeply particular yet instantly universal.
And we put out a call for submissions for HoBB’s MVC:
“As we look to grow the HoBB community and create more intimate, recurring gatherings throughout the year and across the globe, what would be the ideal template for gathering 20-25 people in your city—structured enough to create magic, yet loose enough to let it happen?”
Many of you wrote back with ideas. Some had been practiced and refined over several years; others were conceived on the spot in response to our call. We were genuinely blown away—as we so often are—by the passion and thoughtfulness of this community, and we wanted to share some of the most compelling ideas.
Spiraling In: Spiraling Out
For starters, here’s a letter from Sonja Blignaut in South Africa, reprinted with her permission and lightly edited.
“Your piece on the Viking Row made me think of the architect Christopher Alexander. His life’s question was deceptively simple: What makes some things—buildings in particular—alive, and others dead? It turns out to be a surprisingly practical question for ritual.
Alexander would probably say the Viking Row worked because it was a structure-preserving, life-enhancing transformation. Ole Frøystad (editor: known as “Mr. Row Row”) did not invent something new; he intensified a center that was already latent in the culture: Viking identity, held lightly enough to become playful.
That shifts the design question from What format should we create? to What already lives in this community that a small act could intensify?
A few of Alexander’s properties seem to do most of the work at the scale of a gathering. Living rituals have a strong center and clear boundaries: one act at their heart and a recognizable threshold in and out. The Viking Row is a single embodied gesture; a Silent Dinner begins the moment speech stops. They also rely on alternating repetition: a fixed form with living content. Fifteen Toasts is always the same structure and never the same evening twice. And they possess what Alexander called roughness. Formats that require perfect execution depend on skilled facilitation; formats that welcome local variation become owned by the community itself. That seems especially important for your “no mothership” aspiration.
Alexander also left a wonderfully practical way of choosing between alternatives. When faced with two possible designs, he would simply ask people which one made them feel more alive. Their answers converged far more consistently than anyone expected.
The idea I want to offer for an MVC is not another format. It is a ritual that can become the living threshold for every HoBB gathering.
Call it the Spiraling In: Spiraling Out.
It is inspired by Cyclonic Inquiry, a practice originating in the Ridhwan School and further developed by Rafia Morgan and Turiya Hanover, which I have adapted here into a light threshold ritual for collective attunement and connection.
Spiraling In: Spiraling Out is a small group practice that does not require facilitation.
It has two parts: crossing the boundary into your event is Spiraling In.
Six people stand in a loose circle. The group chooses clockwise or counter-clockwise direction and who will start. That person asks the next a single question. The answer is brief, and the respondent immediately asks the same question of the next person. Around it goes, and when it returns to the first person it begins again. The same question. Two or three circuits. Five minutes. No facilitator. No discussion.
The question never changes; the answers do.
A circle returns you to the same point. A spiral returns you to the same point at a different height. By the second or third circuit, people find themselves answering differently because they have been changed by listening to everyone else. The repetition is not functional; it is orienting.
Every gathering then closes by Spiraling Out with a different question.
Spiraling In Question: What beauty has your attention today?
Spiraling Out: What feels most alive now? Or depending on what emerged during the event, this question could have a shedding or composting flavor: What are you letting go of?
What I like about it against your brief is that it competes with nothing. It is not another format; it is a pair of living thresholds that can hold whatever happens in between, from Data Bazaar to a meal with no format at all. It needs no facilitator, no equipment, and almost no explanation. Its roughness allows it to survive being done imperfectly. And because of the repetition, it creates deep connection almost immediately.
Fifty people simply become eight small spirals happening simultaneously. And, like the Viking Row, identity is conferred through participation. You become a HoBBster by spiraling in.”
Beauty Notes
In a similar vein, Chris Lekander, based in the US, proposed Beauty Notes as an MVC—but not before sharing a few notes on beauty in business herself:
“Beauty in business means creating structures that support all of life holistically within the business. It is a business that has put into practice not only the fundamental pillars of running an organization, but also those that enable people to express their highest truths and deepest beauty, both within and beyond the business.
This means:
Establishing a rhythm that supports the sustainability of both people and the broader living world of which we are a part.
Creating space for what animates the human spirit to emerge.
Fostering community—not as a form of tribal identity, but as the social fabric that amplifies individual expression through connection.
Strengthening the bonds between every individual and the communities the business touches.
Recognizing the abundance of resources entrusted to us and putting them into regenerative flow—a cycle of ebb and flow that not only makes the pie sustainably larger and more inclusive, but also enriches the land to produce the most beautiful, flavorful apples in harmony with the ecosystem in which they grow.
Creating room for creative experimentation while knowing when to pursue revolution and when incremental improvement is the wiser path.
Working with the environment in ways that help it thrive—and that, in turn, inspire us to do our best work.
Honoring each individual’s path while maintaining balance with the collective.
Expanding our collective wisdom rather than merely accumulating intellectual property.
Learning to understand what our feelings truly mean and harnessing them to become healthier, happier, and more deeply connected—to one another and to all that is.
All of this reflects a particular understanding of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness—the holy trinity of realness. One cannot have truth or goodness where there is no beauty. The three are inseparable except in analysis.
Now for the idea: Beauty Notes. Striking a note—our drumbeat, our shared vibration of beauty—as we gather. It is a simple acknowledgment of something beautiful in the space, in our lives, or in our businesses, shared with one another as the ritual that opens any HoBB gathering, large or small. Perhaps it begins with the strike of a small pair of finger cymbals—or a great big one.”
Objects of Belief and Tenets of the House
André Cramer in Germany sent us an entire publication outlining his idea of Objects of Belief—and it’s well worth reading. As he puts it: “People rarely reject beauty or meaning at work. They just stopped expecting it. This format gives them permission to remember.”
Gerhard Remlein, also from Germany, suggested that we embrace the evergreen HoBB principles—The Tenets of Beautiful Business—themselves as our MVCs. And in case you don’t know them—or simply need a reminder—they have served us well over the past ten years. So here they are again:
It takes a village, it starts with a House.
Enter.
Begin with mystery.
Beauty is something that may or may not exist. You decide.
Change the world by creating a new one. Even just for a few hours.
Create a space where people can get lost without losing.
Show up when it’s showtime.
Don’t waste time with efficiency.
The most exponential technology is relationships.
If AI is eating the world, we might as well have a glass of wine with it.
Put on your own oxygen mask first.
We are one. But not the same.
We are ugly, but we have the music.
Whatever happens in the House should not stay in the House.
End in silence.
Leave the door open on your way out.
Maria Boscarato proposed Joy Cafés—a gathering format she has been hosting in Rome: about two hours of collage, mood boarding, journaling, working with images, and self-reflection. Offline. No phones. Entirely devoted to joy.
***
These are just some of the ideas you shared—thank you! May one of them initiate your next local HoBB meetup. Or at least make you reflect on beautiful business, as these responses did.
Perhaps, if there is one universal prompt that could define any HoBB gathering—the HoBB MVC—it is this:
What can you bring to the beautiful economy?
It is, in any case, a question that will guide us from now until our next main gathering. (And yes—we’ll have some exciting news to share in September).
***
House Work
The House of Beautiful Business is both a community and a consultancy. We take pride in partnering with organizations of all sizes and across sectors to make business more beautiful—sometimes as a Trojan horse (or, as Steven D’Souza would say, as Trojan Mouse), sometimes in the spotlight on the main stage, and sometimes in the boardroom. One of the greatest pleasures of this work is doing it alongside our community, often assembling teams of HoBB members and other experts from our network.
After our brief August summer break, we’ll be diving into a number of exciting projects this fall:
We have partnered with sustainable personal care company TAKK to refine its “non-brand” brand strategy and create a series of digital and in-person experiences that challenge conventional notions of beauty among consumers and investors alike. These include Beauty Bilaterals, an interactive pop-up installation designed to spark new conversations in public spaces. Over the next six months, we will continue supporting founder and CEO Pinar Akiskalioglu and her team on a range of brand strategy and community-building initiatives.
The municipality of Eskişehir, Türkiye, invited us to develop the brand narrative, visual identity, and name for a permanent civic space dedicated to coworking, cultural programming, and community engagement. Designed to foster the intersection of sustainability, regeneration, and well-being, the pavilion is scheduled to open this fall.
We have partnered with the Pennsylvania Educator Diversity Consortium (PEDC) to sharpen its messaging and visual identity through an intensive vision and brand sprint. Together, we developed a strengthened narrative around the importance of educator diversity for students, teachers, administrators, policymakers, and corporate partners. The engagement spanned strategy through execution, including the creation of the brand story, visual identity, core brand assets, and keynote presentations for PEDC representatives. This fall, we will help redesign and relaunch the organization’s website.
Thanks to a kind referral from HoBBster Felix Rundel, we are helping the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) curate the programming, experience, and spatial design for its annual congress, taking place November 8–11 in Panama City. ICCA is the global community and knowledge hub for the international association meetings industry. Over its 60-year history, it has grown into the sector’s leading organization, with more than 1,000 members across 100 countries and territories. Its annual congress attracts approximately 1,500 participants from more than 60 countries.
As part of our long-term strategic partnership focused on thought leadership, Pullman Hotels & Resorts and HoBB will create, curate, design, and host the third edition of the Pullman xChange series. Following events in Dubai (Build What Outlasts You, last November) and Paris (The Source Code, this June), the next gathering will take us to Latin America this December.
Community Updates
Our friends Dave and Helen Edwards from the Artificiality Institute will once again host the Artificiality Summit this fall, from October 22-24 in Bend, Oregon—arguably one of the finest gatherings for anyone interested in exploring the relationship between humans and AI alongside world-class thinkers and practitioners. They have kindly offered a discounted rate for HoBB members. Reply to this email if you’d like to attend.
Speaking of AI, Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s former digital minister, has written a brilliant essay on AI, democracy, and optimization for The Humanist Review of AI. He contends that “A society that prizes only optimization will eventually pathologize everything that protects reflective life. It will treat silence as underutilization, ritual as inefficiency, privacy as opacity and delay as failure. Yet these are precisely the spaces where judgment matures.” Read the full essay here.
Futurist monk Shoukei Matsumoto has published two beautiful essays inspired by his time at the World Beautiful Business Forum this May: Sweeping Is Reading and A Provisional Circle.
Juliana N. Pereira and Luis R. Baptista have co-authored Pivot-Quest—”a practical, human, and inspiring guide to navigating career change in an age defined by uncertainty and acceleration.” Having collectively managed thirteen (!) career transitions, they know what they’re writing about. You can pre-order the book here.
Fantastic ideas - the HoBB community at its creative best!