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Technology & Innovation — September 11, 2009

Big Think Sits Down With Nestle’s Chairman

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Tucked away on the north shore of Switzerland’s Lake Geneva is a town called Vevey. It’s home to Nestle’s headquarters, as well as its former CEO and now Chairman Peter Brabeck. We were lucky enough to catch up with him a couple weeks ago. The story of how Brabeck came to spend 40 years at Nestle is a peculiar one. For a while, he didn’t even realize he was employed by the food giant- he thought he was just selling ice cream! For someone who started skiing at age two and hasn’t stopped, life has been full of adventures. Perhaps most interestingly, we had a chance to delve into Brabeck’s true passion, one that rarely comes up at your average American dinner table: the water crisis. He’s convinced we’ll run out of it before we run out of oil. His idea for a remedy? Water simply cannot be free.

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