T-HT conference titled Growing through Knowledge is guided by the notion of knowledge being important for the development of both the individual and society in general
16.9.2009
For the second year in a row T-Hrvatski Telekom (T-HT) is organizing a conference titled Growing through Knowledge. This year the conference will host two of the world's well-known and prominent speakers – Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of the Grameen Bank, Professor Muhammad Yunus, and renowned behavioral economist and expert in the field of human behavior, Professor Dan Ariely. The conference, which will take place on October 1 in Zagreb, will be attended by a number of representatives of the country's economic, intellectual and political life, as well as by students and T-HT employees.
Professor Yunus is an inspirational speaker and visionary. At the conference he intends to talk about the realization of human potentials, the influence that we have on each other, and fight against poverty. He is going to share his knowledge, ideas and thoughts by presenting his own experience with the Grameen model and the so-called social businesses, whose aim is to accomplish social good rather than make profit. The other speaker, Professor Dan Ariely, is going to show in a rather interesting way, through personal experience as well as interesting surveys and experiments, how numerous factors oftentimes result in wrong decisions, with which then we get ourselves into difficulties, not only on a personal level but also on a wider, social and economic level.
"This year, when the world has been hit by a harsh economic crisis, two exceptional speakers and world renowned experts are going to share with us their own thoughts, ideas and accomplishments, hopefully inspiring us into action to try and make the world a better place and better understand the human nature. Today, more than ever, it is important to speak about the opportunities that lie ahead of us, share and spread the knowledge and new insights as the foundations of the future based on new values. These principles, which T-HT is trying to adhere to, are the goals of this conference," President of T-HT's Management Board Ivica Mudrinić said on the occasion of the upcoming conference.
T-HT conference, whose motto is Growing through Knowledge, focuses on the importance of knowledge for both individual and social growth. Moreover, it hosts renowned and inspirational individuals, experts and speakers who contribute to and help the human kind, as well as spur others into thinking or action, all in a rather recognizable way, through their actions, ideas, projects and knowledge, on both local and global level. With this year's conference T-HT will also mark the second anniversary of its IPO, which had officially begun on October 5, 2007.
Professor Muhammad Yunus is a 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of the Grameen bank. This renowned Bangladeshi economist and banker has helped a number of poor families and jumpstarted Bangladeshi economy when, as an economics professor, he used a simple solution, microcredits, to help entrepreneurs who had been too poor to turn to traditional banks for assistance. The success of the Grameen model has inspired similar efforts in a number of developing countries and even in industrialized nations. Moreover, the Grameen model of financing has been applied in 23 countries in the world. Besides the Grameen Bank, Professor Yunus has founded a number of Bangladesh-based companies focusing on different poverty- and development-related issues, including Grameen Communications, Grameen Fund, Grameen Trust, Grameen Telecom and Grameen Healthcare Services. Today Professor Yunus is an active advocate of sustainable social business, that is, a company whose goal is not making profit but achieving the social good and helping the vulnerable members of the society. Professor Yunus is the first Nobel Prize winner from Bangladesh. He is also the recipient of numerous international awards and has been awarded more than 40 honorary doctorate degrees. He is the author of Banker to the Poor (1998) and Creating a World without Poverty (2008).
Dan Ariely is a professor at the American Duke University and holds an appointment at the most esteemed American technological institute MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). He is also the head of the Center for Advanced Hindsight. Professor Ariely is the leading expert on how people act and why in all kinds of business, economic and private environments, and what this means for business innovation, strategy and marketing. At the core of his scientific research is the desire to find out how and why people make certain decisions, and his experiments are consistently interesting, fun and informative. He has published numerous studies in leading psychology, economics, marketing and management research journals, as well as the popular press such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Scientific American and Science. He has even made a guest appearance on CNN. He is the author of Predictably Irrational (2008), in which he explains why and how expectations, emotions, social norms and other invisible forces influence on biased comprehension and making of (un)reasonable decisions. The author discloses, in an amusing way, that not only do we make tiny mistakes, but we make the same type of mistakes repeatedly.