World record-breaking balloonist and pilot of Solar Impulse Bertrand Piccard challenged risk managers to consider the alternative

Ballonist

Risk managers were challenged to embrace unconventional approaches to managing risk by world record-breaking balloonist and Solar Impulse pilot Bertrand Piccard.

He told delegates at the Ferma Forum: “If we only commit to one way of doing something, then we will only go in one line of direction, but if we consider the opposite we will have thousands of other directions in front of us.”

Piccard shared his story of building a successful zero-fuel airplane in which he used to travel the world – drawing comparisons between managing a solar-powered air balloon in flight and managing risk in general.

He said: “The technology used to make the first planes could have been used thousands of years ago; they just needed to drop the ballast of their beliefs to be explorers at that time. The first people who climbed Mount Everest used technology that could have made it possible thousands of years ago.”

He added: “Risk management, creativity, exploration, innovation, entrepreneurship: all of these words mean the same thing, you are able to move up and down, to explore every possible way of thinking to find the direction we want to go in.”