MOSCOW, September 28 - Quercus Philosophical Club. From October 8 to 10, the philosophical club Quercus and the European University will hold the second conference “Philosophy in Response” (18+) in Moscow for entrepreneurs, managers and researchers. Experts will discuss how philosophy can help solve business issues - from mission and values to corporate ethics and the impact of AI on companies.
In recent years, Russian business interest in philosophy has been growing. Business clubs hold regular philosophical meetings, business schools develop executive programs, and companies engage philosophers to work on corporate culture.
Philosophers and entrepreneurs will discuss how philosophy is already helping businesses define mission and values, and formulate a code of ethics. It's not about making them up for the company: a philosopher can help owners, managers and teams understand and analyze them.
Among the experts are Alexander Vetushinsky, philosopher, head of the Game Design profile at the B&D Institute of Business and Design; Albert Efimov, Candidate of Philosophy, Vice President of Sberbank; Anton Kuznetsov, Candidate of Philosophy, Associate Professor, Faculty of Philosophy, Moscow State University; Valentin Malykh, head of the center for the development of large language models MWS AI; Victoria Mikhailova, co-founder of Sensemakers, academic director of the Skolkovo Tandemocracy program; Nina Osovitskaya, director of the HeadHunter brand center; Vlad Sitnikov, GRAPE partner, teacher of philosophy and religious studies; Herbert Shopnik, General Director of ANT - Digital Services. The conference will also be attended by philosophers, researchers and practitioners from the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow State University, Higher School of Economics, ITMO and other organizations.
“Philosophy is no longer just an academic discipline—philosophers are already working with the values and mission of brands, participating in the creation of ethical codes, and in some companies a full-time position of corporate philosopher is appearing. With the development of AI, businesses have to answer questions that could previously be postponed: where does the technology that the team creates lead, and what in this process remains the area of human responsibility. At the conference we will discuss where the philosophical approach is already being applied in practice and what specific business problems it helps solve,” says the founder of Philosophical Quercus club and organizer of the “Philosophy in Answer” conference Anna Kolesnikova.
A separate session is devoted to the role of the corporate philosopher in the era of artificial intelligence. Speakers will analyze what problems such a specialist can solve in a company and who is better prepared for this work: a philosopher familiar with business practice, or an entrepreneur and manager with additional philosophical education.
In addition, speakers will examine how philosophy works in advertising, how it differs from psychology in solving business problems, how to maintain independent thinking in the digital environment, and why entrepreneurs unite around common meanings.
On October 8 and 9, in addition to discussions, participants will enjoy open interviews between entrepreneurs and philosophers and networking.
On October 10, the conference will continue at the philosophical club and cafe Quercus. Three workshops will be held there: on how to transform a code of ethics from a document into a decision-making tool, how to practice philosophical thinking, and what future scenarios are possible after capitalism.
The event is intended for entrepreneurs, top managers and HR specialists, researchers and teachers in the humanities. No special philosophical education is required to participate.
The conference “Philosophy in Answer” will be held on October 8–9 at the Center for Contemporary Culture “Malting” (Lva Tolstoy, 23, p. 4) and on October 10 at the Philosophical Club and Cafe Quercus (Ivanovskaya, 16A).
For those who cannot attend in person, an online broadcast of the first two days of the conference is provided.
