Reflections on the 1st Summit of GCBR – Global Council for Business Resilience
A shared ambition became a reality on 3 November 2026, when we brought the first “Paris Resilience Summit” to life at “École des Ponts Business School”.
As a Board Advisor to the Global Council for Business Resilience (GCBR), I am proud to organise a day dedicated to the risks that business leaders can no longer afford to consider separately: through keynotes, panel debates, executive roundtables and networking, the programme connected business, institutional and academic perspectives around a demanding question: what does resilience require when the systems we depend on are increasingly interconnected?
Our ambition was not simply to create another conference, it was to make space for conversations that cross professional boundaries and connect risks with decisions, responsibilities and action. This cross-sector approach sits at the heart of the Summit’s purpose.
Beyond risk management: a leadership responsibility
The opening session, “The Unaddressed Issues: What Business Resilience Requires Now,” brought together Alon Rozen, Marina Peikova and Martin Calnan to frame the day.
For me, its central question provides a useful starting point: where does responsibility sit when a risk extends beyond the boundaries of any one department?
A technology decision can affect customer trust; a sourcing decision can change exposure to geopolitical disruption; an efficiency program can strengthen short-term performance while reducing the flexibility needed to absorb a shock.
My perspective is that resilience must therefore be considered alongside growth, profitability and transformation, not addressed only after strategic decisions have been made; and the Summit’s integrated program was designed to connect precisely these technological, economic, human and operational dimensions.
Digital resilience: understanding dependency, not just adopting technology
The morning program examined digital sovereignty, AI-enabled cybersecurity and the relationship between risk, compliance and security.
The digital sovereignty panel, chaired by Sarah Pauli with Katryna Dow and Jo Caudron, raised the question: “Who Controls the Systems We Depend On?” , Manuel Bissey’s interactive session explored cyber resilience in the age of AI, while Sylvie Mallet’s keynote addressed the governance gap between risk, compliance and security.
Read together, these programs themes invite a broader leadership discussion: adopting technology is one decision; understanding the dependencies, authority and accountability that accompany it is another, and for executives, the practical questions are not only about technological capability. They concern who can challenge a recommendation, who validates the evidence, what happens when a critical service fails and who remains responsible for the consequences.
The Summit’s stated agenda places these issues within a wider concern: ensuring that governance keeps pace with technological change.
Trust and resources: looking beyond organizational boundaries
Philippe Lesoing’s keynote placed trust and the normalization of corruption on the agenda. The subsequent panel on critical materials, water and energy brought together Giorgos Demetriou, David Rubens, James Hermanson and Emmanuel Arrey Mbianyo.
These sessions connected 2 questions that organizations may otherwise address separately: can we trust the systems through which we operate, and can we continue to access the resources on which we depend?
For a business leader, this means looking beyond immediate suppliers or contractual assurances, it means examining the wider conditions that make delivery possible and the points at which disruption could travel through the network.
That perspective is particularly relevant to consumer businesses: product availability, pricing, customer promises and brand reputation all depend on decisions and infrastructure far beyond the point of sale.
Infrastructure, food systems and SMEs: resilience across the ecosystem
The afternoon executive roundtables focused on three areas: infrastructure adaptation, food-system resilience and SMEs.
Held in a Chatham House-style format, these discussions were designed to support candid exchange.
Rather than attributing views from those conversations, I want to highlight the questions set out in the program.
Infrastructure: protect or redesign?
The infrastructure agenda asked participants to look beyond defending existing assets and consider how systems should adapt to future conditions.
This is an important distinction. Maintaining an asset and ensuring that it remains fit for purpose are not necessarily the same task; and the program connected physical infrastructure with digital controls, supply chains and cascading disruption.
Food systems: what makes production dependable?
The food-system agenda connected climate pressure, fertilizer dependency, farming models, pricing and governance.
Its significance extends beyond agriculture, it asks how resilience can be made practical and economically viable for the businesses and communities on which supply depends. These issues are also identified in the Summit’s planned Food System Resilience Brief.
SMEs: whose capacity are we relying on?
The SME roundtable placed smaller businesses at the center of the resilience conversation.
For larger organizations, this raises a practical question: are we asking suppliers and partners to meet resilience expectations without helping them develop the finance, skills or continuity capabilities to do so?
The Summit’s intended SME follow-up focuses on preparedness, continuity and recovery – an acknowledgement that resilience frameworks must be usable, not merely comprehensive.
Climate, people and insurance: the limits of business as usual
The later sessions brought climate risk, human resilience and insurance into the discussion.
The climate panel examined implications for strategy, continuity and long-term value, and the human resilience panel asked how people can remain resilient as technology changes how they think, work and decide, while the insurance discussion explored who bears risk when traditional safety nets become unavailable.
For me, these themes lead to three essential distinctions:
- Recognizing exposure is not the same as changing an investment decision.
- Introducing technology is not the same as strengthening human capability.
- Transferring some risk is not the same as removing responsibility for it.
These are leadership questions as much as specialist ones and they connect capital allocation, organizational design, customer commitments and the conditions under which a business can continue to perform.
What this means for Retail and consumer businesses
My experience across retail, luxury and commercial transformation shapes how I read this agenda.
A customer experiences a brand as a whole, not as a collection of departments: product availability, digital reliability, service quality and trust converge in a single relationship, yet the decisions behind that relationship are often distributed across functions, markets and partners.
My takeaway is that resilience should become a test of how those decisions work together:
- Does inventory optimization preserve enough flexibility to absorb disruption?
- Does digital acceleration strengthen capability without creating poorly understood dependencies?
- Do store and customer-service teams have the authority and support to respond when normal processes fail?
- Are critical suppliers and smaller partners part of continuity planning?
- Are customer promises aligned with what the organization can reliably deliver?
The objective is not to eliminate every vulnerability, it is to understand the trade-offs, make responsibilities explicit and build the capacity to adapt.
From a shared vision to continued work
Bringing this first Summit to life was a collective achievement and the next step matters.
The Summit’s stated ambitions include a Paris Resilience Statement, roundtable briefs and opportunities for follow-up collaboration. These are intended outputs—not outcomes to claim prematurely—and their value will depend on how the dialogue translates into practice.
A dream became a reality on 3 November 2026, the responsibility now is to build on it.
Resilience is not simply the ability to withstand disruption, it is the discipline of connecting people, decisions and systems before disruption reveals the gaps.
And as Board Advisor at GCBR, I feel this responsibility and engagement.
