In April 2020 we embarked on a journey to bring more than 150 exhibition industry professionals, organised in 20 groups, covering nearly all global regions, together to discuss the topic how our industry needs to change following the COVID-19 crisis to ensure our business model is fit for the future and provides the best possible service to our target groups.

I think it is fair to say that we indeed had countless skills, ideas, input and inspiration in this crowd intelligence, communication process.

We included feedback from the wider industry through surveys, conducted a large number of think tank sessions and an even larger number of break out sessions. 

In nearly 100 meetings all members discussed what needs to change in our industry, what that change would look like for our target groups and how we can ensure change will happen.

Please read this report as a resource of the combined skills of 150 people from the exhibition industry. The Exhibition Think Tank strongly spotlighted that change in our industry is inevitable and undoubtably needed which put us all on the mission to define the change before this is done by others.

This Exhibitions Think Tank was the first of its kind in an online format and I want to thank all team leaders, all participants, our media partners and all supporting companies for the great contributions, discussions and insights!