Oprah Winfrey in Romania 💜

Business, at the end of the day, is not rocket science. And under current conditions there's a tendency — and it's really our resources — to move from long-term innovation and creation to basically only innovative recycling or adaptation, which is... Look at what's among the businesses.

What makes us human? Is it intelligence? Creativity? AI can now make pictures, music, even speeches. So what is left for us? I think I know. We care. We see someone cry and something inside us hurts too. Please build us an incredible future. Build the technology. Build the companies. Change the world. But while you're doing it, show us how to stay human. Show us that kindness is strength. That saying 'I love you' is more important than saying 'I am busy.'

I came to talk about golf. Can we agree that golf is the worst spectator sport ever? Nothing good ever happens, and when really good does happen, it's impossible to anticipate the perfect. And we are living right now in a moment of revolution. Revolutions are everywhere we look. And what revolutions do is they destroy the perfect — the things we think of as normal — and then they enable something impossible.

Chocolate is produced by some of the poorest, hardest-working farmers in the world. And big chocolate companies like Mars, Nestlé and Cadbury have instituted a system of cheap chocolate. Cheap chocolate that we give to kids. Cheap chocolate that's trying to be as inexpensive and commodity-based as possible. Cheap chocolate that causes every person in the system to suffer.

Well, a guy named Tony in Amsterdam saw this and said, 'I'm going to fix this problem.' Not everywhere, but somewhere. And Tony's now accounts for a third of all the chocolate sold in the Netherlands. Not only because it's better chocolate, but because the story of chocolate was enough to get humans to show up and do something different. This is a toaster, coffee maker, pressure cooker, etc. This is the opposite of that. Nobody wants this. It might say it's for everyone and everything. It's not. So how do we divide people up? We divide them into three groups: pioneers, the crowd, and laggards. The pioneers, like Little Richard, want to play music that no one's heard. People in the middle, the crowd — Elvis, he wants to make hits. And the people on the right, Pat Boone, they only want to change when they have no choice.

And so if I look at the adoption curve, at the beginning almost no one wants it, but the idea spreads over time. How many of you have a smartphone? Yeah, everybody. How many of you bought the smartphone the first day Apple had it on sale? No one. I was there. You were not. You waited because you're smart. Your job wasn't to take a big chance; your job was, let's see if it's proven — it's safe now. People like us do things like this. 'People like us' is easily seen in hats. If you're a farmer, you're wearing one of these hats or one of these jackets.

She's a global media leader, producer, philanthropist, actress, and bestselling author. But perhaps her greatest impact comes from her ability to turn personal struggle into strength. She turns individual stories into lessons that move humanity forward. And today she will share what it means to lead through adversity: how you rise when things test you, how you remain anchored in who you are, and transform difficult experiences into purposeful impact. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to Bucharest and the Grand Stage, Oprah Winfrey.