Employees, teachers, students, and course attendees of LINK edu Alliance had a great opportunity to listen live to one of the most eminent professors in America and have a conversation with him. Professor Đorđija Petkoski was a guest of the Faculty of Contemporary Arts and our professor Dušan Stojaković. The lecture was held within the Creative Entrepreneurship course on Monday, December 5.

The guests had the opportunity to learn a lot about the biggest personal development challenges in today’s world.

Đorđija is a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and is an expert in sustainable development and ESG parameters (Environmental, Social and Governance factors). The topic of his lecture concerns the future in the field of creative entrepreneurship and sustainable development and deals with the ways in which we should prepare for everything that the new chaotic reality and the future bring.

During the lecture, professor Petkoski covered the following topics:

• The impact of global and local trends, how to embrace the chaos and make sense of the new reality?
• The stupidity/limitations of overgeneralization and what is the cost of imposed complexity and unrealistic expectations?
• Are sustainability and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles a good entry point? How will nearly $40 trillion of ESG-targeted investment affect you?
• Does purpose matter? – Self-interest, passion, purpose, incentives, and motivations.
• How to align your personal with your educational journey?
• What can we learn from Entrepreneurs/Intrapreneurs and ESG Executives' Journeys?
• What does this mean for Generation Z and cross-generational responsibilities?
• The role of character and values in long-term career success? How not to end up in jail/prison?
• Quiet quitting – Who is the real loser?
• How to systematically build social and hard skills? – Is Actionable Capacity Development and Multi Framework Thinking an answer?
• How to deal with the hidden biases and emotions in your personal and educational journey?

One of the main messages of professor Petkoski's lecture, whose focus was entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial spirit, was that two key ingredients are necessary for success – personal motivation, that is, passion for work, and being well-informed, that is, having adequate education in the field in which we want to start our business.

Dr Đorđija Petkoski is a consultant to the World Bank and a lecturer at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches a course on corporate responsibility and ethics. He is an internationally recognized lecturer with over 300 lectures at leading universities and international conferences, including the annual meetings of the IMF, the World Bank and the European Parliament. He is the author or co-author of 15 books and over 180 articles and reports. His works have been published in leading journals such as "Harvard Business Review" and "Journal of Business Ethics". He was a Fulbright Scholar and visiting professor at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He obtained his Master's degree at Harvard and has two PhDs – in economics and in electrical engineering.

After the lecture, the experts within the "Smart4Future" project, who helped in the realization of the lecture, through conversation with those present, found out that they really liked the lecture and that the information about tendencies in creative entrepreneurship encouraged them to think about their further steps in that field.