Shanghai, 4 August 2026. At the opening ceremony of the 2026 Frost & Sullivan GIL Summit, David Frigstad, Global Chairman and CEO of Frost & Sullivan, delivered his opening address. From the Agricultural Revolution to the Intelligence Revolution, from quarterly board meetings to real-time decision-making, from bits and bytes to customer experience — what signals of transformational growth did this global leader, returning to China after a decade, send to Chinese CEOs?
2026年8月4日，上海。在2026沙利文峰会开幕式现场，沙利文全球董事局主席兼首席执行官富大为（David Frigstad）发表开场致辞。从农业革命到智能革命，从季度董事会到实时决策，从比特字节到客户体验——这位时隔10年再度探访中国的全球领袖，向中国CEO们传递了怎样的转型增长信号？
沙利文全球董事局主席兼首席执行官 富大为
David Frigstad, Global Chairman and CEO, Frost & Sullivan
以下为富大为先生（David Frigstad）致辞要点：
Hello everybody, and welcome. Can't tell you how excited I am to see all the people here today. I wanted to express my gratitude for you all being here, because what this means to me and to Frost & Sullivan and the team in China — nowhere on the planet is there a better community, a more vibrant community, a more switched-on community than right here in Shanghai, China. Nowhere do we see the DNA of growth, innovation, leadership, and ultimately transformation than what we see in this room in Shanghai and what's going on in China. So I'm incredibly grateful to be here, and thank you for being here.
大家好，欢迎各位。今天看到这么多人到场，我的激动之情难以言表。首先，我要衷心感谢各位的到来，因为这场盛会对我、对弗若斯特沙利文、对我们中国团队意义非凡——放眼全球，没有哪里比得上中国上海这样出色、有活力、敏锐前沿的社群。增长、创新、领导力乃至转型的基因，最集中地体现在上海这间会场、体现在中国正在发生的一切之中。能来到这里，我无比感激，也再次感谢各位的到来。
I would also say that we're very blessed to be on the planet at this time. Throughout the entire human history, there's no time where the journey has been more exciting — and the things that we're working on, where our lives are improving, the journey's exciting, so much change happens. When I talk to students around the world, I like to look at it as three economic development chapters. The first chapter was the Agricultural Revolution. It was twelve thousand years ago. If you were born in the Agricultural Revolution, the day you were born and the day you died, you probably saw no change in human life. The Industrial Revolution, which took a hundred and fifty years — my grandmother was born in that era. She saw the first plane fly and she saw the first man on the moon, which is an unbelievable change in technology and human experience. And the chapter that we're in now is the Intelligence Revolution. And it's going to happen in ten or fifteen years, and every day things are changing.
我还要说，我们何其有幸，生活在这个时代。纵观整个人类历史，没有哪段旅程比当下更令人振奋——我们所从事的事业让生活不断改善，旅程激动人心，变化无处不在。与世界各地的学生交流时，我习惯把经济发展分为三个篇章。第一篇章是农业革命，始于一万两千年前。如果你生在农业革命时代，从出生到离世，几乎看不到人类生活有任何变化。第二篇章工业革命历时一百五十年，我的祖母就生在那个年代。她见证了第一架飞机升空，也见证了人类首次登月，那是科技与人类体验难以置信的巨变。而我们当下所处的篇章，是智能革命。它将在十到十五年内完成，每天都在发生变化。
When I walk around the exhibit hall and the hotel in Shanghai, you can see it every single thing. The first time I came to Shanghai and this time — it's such a remarkable difference in terms of infrastructure, energy, hygiene, cleanliness. I heard this morning about the great environmental fifteen-year project on the river here in Shanghai, and these are just so inspiring to me and to what we're doing on the planet. So this is really an incredible period of time that we experience the Intelligence Revolution together. We work together making the planet a better place, our careers a better place, our countries a better place, and our companies a better place.
走在上海的展馆和酒店里，处处都能感受到这种变化。与我初次到访相比，如今上海在基础设施、能源、卫生、整洁程度上的变化令人惊叹。今早我听闻上海有一项长达十五年的河流环保治理工程，这些都深深鼓舞着我，也鼓舞着我们在这颗星球上所做的事业。我们正共同亲历智能革命，这是一个不可思议的时代。我们携手努力，让地球、让我们的事业、国家与企业都变得更美好。
So what I'm personally focused on is how the role of the CEO and the leadership is going to change during the Intelligence Revolution. And the first thing that we see is that there needs to be a connected CEO. Things are changing so fast that a quarterly board meeting or an annual business plan is too long. You need to be connected to every hour, every yuan, every dollar, every person, every client, every project, every employee, every second of the day. This isn't what it is today, right? We have quarterly board meetings — it's almost obsolete. So we need to create the systems and the infrastructure, the databases, the process mapping, and the skills, because it's going to be coming in so fast to us that a CEO will be augmented by the AI engine, but the decisions will be real-time.
我个人关注的焦点是：智能革命中，CEO与领导层的角色将如何转变。首先，新时代需要一位“互联型CEO”。变化太快，季度董事会、年度经营计划的节奏都太慢了。你必须实时连接每一小时、每一元钱、每一个人、每一位客户、每一个项目、每一位员工、每一秒。但现实并非如此，对吗？季度董事会的模式几乎已经过时。因此，我们必须搭建系统、基础设施、数据库、流程图谱和相应能力，因为信息将高速涌来，CEO将由AI引擎增强，而决策将是实时的。
The second thing we need to look at is having a prioritized pipeline of what we're working on. All over the world I talk to CEOs and we all have one thing in common — our day is chaos. The projects are random. It's from one emergency to the next emergency to the next. What we need to do is see it all organized. One of the things, by the way, I love about the Chinese language is the character for crisis — the "ji" in "wei-ji" — also means opportunity. That's really powerful. It is a much healthier way to look at life — not through all the things that are going wrong, what we call a "Negative Nancy" — but seeing opportunities every place you go. So having a prioritized pipeline of how you organize your day is going to be crucial to a CEO.
第二点，是要为手头的工作建立排好优先级的管线。我与全球CEO交流，发现大家有一个共同点：每天乱成一团。项目杂乱无章，从一次救火到下一次救火。我们需要做的，是让一切井然有序。顺带一提，我很欣赏中文里“危机”一词——“危机”的“机”也意味着机遇。这非常有力量。这是一种更健康的看待人生的方式——不做总盯着问题、怨天尤人的人，而是走到哪里都能看到机遇。因此，建立排好优先级的管线来规划每一天，对CEO至关重要。
Steve Jobs was incredibly good at prioritizing his day — what did he need to do today to make Apple great in the next ten years? He's been a remarkable leader, because of all the leaders I've ever seen, I've never seen one that after they're dead, their leadership continues — because of the way they were looking at life and the way he prioritized what was important for the customers first.
史蒂夫·乔布斯极其擅长安排每一天的优先级——今天该做什么，才能让苹果在未来十年持续伟大？他是非凡的领导者，因为我见过的所有领导者中，没有人在离世之后领导力仍在延续——这源于他看待世界的方式，源于他始终把对客户最重要的事排在第一。
The other thing I wanted to talk about was the CEO's role in telling the story. Perhaps the number one responsibility for CEOs now is telling your story. And you see the really great CEOs that I've been exposed to — which is Steve Jobs and Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos — they're in the news every day telling the story. Not telling the story about the financial results, or what happened, or who we hired, or who we acquired — those aren't very interesting. The CEO going forward in the Intelligence Revolution has to tell the company's story about the value proposition, about the vision, about the story of the people and the customers and all of the stakeholders. All of the stakeholders need to be inspired, right? The stakeholders are the board of directors, the investors, customers, the employees, the partners and the suppliers. They have to be inspired behind your story.
我想谈的另一点，是CEO“讲故事”的角色。讲好企业故事，或许是当今CEO的第一责任。你看我接触过的伟大CEO——乔布斯、马斯克、贝佐斯——他们每天都在新闻里讲故事。他们讲的不是财报、不是发生了什么、不是招了谁、收购了谁——那些并不吸引人。智能革命时代，CEO要讲的是企业的价值主张、发展愿景，以及员工、客户和所有利益相关方的故事。所有利益相关方都需要被感召，对吗？他们是董事会、投资者、客户、员工、合作伙伴和供应商。他们必须被你的故事打动。
And I'll again talk about Steve Jobs, because nobody on the planet have I ever seen inspire the stakeholders like Steve did. People wanted to be part of the Apple experience. They'd line up to buy the next piece of stuff, right? I've never seen that in my life where a CEO is on the news every day. They didn't actually even need to use the normal marketing channels. But he didn't talk about what was new in terms of bits and bytes — he talked about what was new for the customer experience. And so that, I think, is a really important thing for us to do — is tell the story, not just about the company, but through this perspective of technology, maybe it's a perspective of new business development, or it's a perspective of new business models. But telling the story through a variety of different ways to inspire those stakeholders.
我再说乔布斯，因为我从未见过谁能像他那样感召利益相关方。人们渴望成为苹果体验的一部分，排队抢购新品，不是吗？我平生未见哪位CEO能天天上新闻，他们甚至不需要常规营销渠道。他从不谈比特字节的新参数，只谈客户体验的新改变。我认为这对我们至关重要：讲故事不只讲公司本身，而是从科技革新、新业务拓展、新商业模式等视角切入。用丰富多元的方式讲故事，感召所有利益相关方。
So that's what we're looking at at Frost & Sullivan — is helping the CEO become more connected and helping the CEO tell a more powerful story. And if we can figure that out, I think that's the next big opportunity for Chinese companies — is to get really good at telling the story, not just in China but all over the world — not being a Chinese company, but being a global company.
这正是沙利文致力的方向：帮助CEO更紧密互联，讲出更有力量的故事。如果我们能做到，我认为这就是中国企业的下一个重大机遇——把故事讲得足够好，不只在中国讲，更要讲给全世界——不做一家中国公司，而做一家全球公司。
And you don't have to be a TV personality to tell the story. You have to have passion. You have to have connection to your heart and your soul, right? And I think that is so true here in China to begin with. So I'd encourage you all to look at telling your story, investigate how to be a connected CEO.
讲故事不需要你是电视明星。你需要的是热忱，是发自内心与灵魂的真挚，对吗？而这份赤诚，在中国本就格外真切。因此，我鼓励大家修炼讲故事的能力，探索如何成为互联型CEO。
And by the way, I'm really, really happy to be here, because this is the Year of the Horse. Neil told me I'm a horse, so very auspicious for me. So thank you very much. Welcome to the event, and I hope you have a very inspiring time. Thank you very much.
另外，我特别高兴来到这里，因为今年是马年。王昕告诉我，我属马，这对我非常吉利。非常感谢。欢迎各位参会，祝愿大家收获满满启发。谢谢各位。
