About The Fifth Conference
The Fifth Conference is an innovation platform. Our goal is to stimulate innovation and entrepreneurship around the world. We interview innovators, publish a journal, organise events and make this website.
The inspiration
This photo was taken during the fifth Solvay Conference Physics on Electrons and Photons, held in Brussels in October 1927, where the world’s leading physicists debated the newly formulated quantum theory. It was a conference that brought together great ideas and the people behind those ideas. The photo is part of the scientific heritage of the International Solvay Institutes, which is still active today in the organisation of top conferences in physics and chemistry, and is headquartered at Rooseveltlaan 50, Brussels.
What we do
In our editorial work we tackle the innovations that are shaping our future. Think ten, twenty, even fifty years ahead and try to imagine how we will live and work. What will this world look like? How will we have solved the economic, social and environmental challenges that we confront today?
To answer those questions we interview the individuals who are in the driving seat of the innovations that are transforming (or will transform) our world. We bring you their entrepreneurial story and their perspective on where their sector is going. We look for new ideas, technologies and emerging business opportunities. And we look for vision that has the power to inspire. The result of this work we deliver to you, in print as a collectable, in-person at our events, and online via short articles and to-the-point briefings.
The Fifth Conference is also a conference. We organise focused events with the goal of stimulating new ideas, exploring synergies across disciplines and most importantly, creating new projects and companies.
The Fifth Conference exists in three mediums—print, online and live—exploiting the strengths of each, but the concept is consistent: an innovation platform, for people who like to think. There are some tremendously powerful ideas out there about how we can make our world a better place. They deserve to be known, understood and discussed. Our hope is that The Fifth Conference will stimulate more vigorous debate about our future; that it will inspire people to take action; that it will lead to new policies, projects and companies. A better world is possible.
The company
The Fifth Conference is based in Brussels, Belgium. We were founded in 2007 by Frank Boermeester and Koen Christiaens, who still lead the company today. The Fifth Conference is an independent media company. We are not aligned with any political or ideological movement and we are not part of a larger media group.
