Yorkshire ‘can do’ business – with help of John Cleese

The award-winning comedian and actor John Cleese is leading the line-up of speakers at this year’s Yorkshire International Business Convention (YIBC).

Unbeknown to many, as well as his famous roles in Fawlty Towers and Monty Python, Mr Cleese is also a successful business entrepreneur, having founded and developed his own internationally successful business – the Video Arts Training Film Company. He is also visiting Professor of Business Psychology at Cornell University.

Mr Cleese will take centre stage at the annual YIBC in Harrogate on Friday 5 June – which has this year been branded a “can do” business event with the aim of bucking the economic doom and gloom.

Convention chief executive Mike Firth denied cynics 14 years ago when he successfully persuaded the former American Secretary of State Dr Henry Kissinger to come to Yorkshire to provide the keynote speech at the first YIBC.

Speaking about this year’s event, Mike said: “The Convention has always been about getting inspirational people who are going to inspire as well as entertain and inform our delegates and if ever we needed to inspire our business leaders it’s now.

“So this year we are branding the whole event the Yorkshire International “Can Do” Business Convention and we’re providing a group of speakers whose international business success is down to precisely that sort of creativity and positive thinking.”

As well as John Cleese, the speaker line-up includes Tim Smit, who was responsible for turning a derelict Cornish clay pit into The Eden Project which has become one of the country’s leading tourist attractions; business guru and author Tim Sanders, who formerly led the “Blue Sky Think Tank” at the company with one of the biggest global brands – Yahoo; and Tracey Edwards MBE, who skippered the first all female crew to take part in the Round the World Yacht Race and then fought back from business bankruptcy.

Completing the line-up is Dave Stewart, perhaps best-known as one half of the Eurythmics, but also now a remarkable business innovator and adviser to some of the biggest global business brands, as well as continuing his highly successful music business; and Matthew Pritchett, aka “Matt”, the award-winning cartoonist who combines humour, biting satire and social comment in the Daily and Sunday Telegraph.

Mike added: “This is going to be a Yorkshire International Business Convention with a difference.

“We’ve always aimed for the very best and from that point of view this year will be no different, but this is the first time we’ve put together a group of speakers with a common aim and theme – to show how you “can do” even in the most difficult times. On stage will probably be some of the most creative minds around today and if that doesn’t get the audience buzzing, then I don’t know what will.

“It’s what the Convention has been doing for the past 14 years and it’s why every year we have managed to attract some of the most powerful and influential people in the world to come to Yorkshire and speak at the Convention. When other people tell me I can’t do that then it just makes me more determined to show I can. Exceptional times challenge us all to do some rethinking.”

Previous speakers at the event have included Bill Clinton, Colin Powell, Sir Bob Geldof and George Bush Sr.

This year’s “can do” approach adopted by the YIBC has received enthusiastic backing from the Convention’s two major sponsors: Yorkshire Forward and Business Link.

Tom Riordan, chief executive of Yorkshire Forward said: “It is great to see such a mainstay of our region’s business calendar embodying the ‘can do’ attitude of our region’s business community, which will bring Yorkshire and Humber through this recession and out fighting on the other side. 

“I believe this year’s YIBC will be a real show of strength by our regional businesses and a demonstration that ‘Team Yorkshire and Humber’ will work together to overcome any challenge that we face.”

The YIBC will take place at the Yorkshire Event Centre in Harrogate on Friday 5 June. For further information please visit www.yibc.biz.