The Peak of Leadership Experiences

The Small Giants Community’s keystone event, our annual summit, is a time for the Community to come together, learn from one another, and strengthen relationships. It’s THE place for people-centered leaders to gather!

The 2026 Small Giants Summit will be held in Detroit, MI
April 28-30, 2026!

Where will your leadership journey take you?

We all know the age-old notion that the journey is just as important as the destination. So, add a stop in your route to our annual summit for meaningful relationships and learnings. Pack a notebook and your curiosity, but leave the business cards at home – it’s a time to make business ideals, not do business deals.

How it all started

Born out of the book Small Giants: Companies that Choose to be Great Instead of Big by Bo Burlingham, the community was co-founded by Bo and Paul Spiegelman to bring the pages’ concepts to life. The Small Giants Community Summit was the first in-person event to be held by and for the community and remains a favorite for established and emerging leaders alike. Over the years, the event has evolved to adapt to feedback and circumstances, but we always enjoy getting to see familiar faces as well as meet new ones, and we like to call Detroit our home base whenever in-person events are possible. 

Small Giants Book by Bo Burlingha

What to expect

Support the magic

We’re always looking for aligned partners to support the magic of the Summit! Our sponsors, like the ones listed here and so many more, help to make the Summit possible. If you’d like to be a part of bringing the experience to life, learn more here and reach out to us!

 

FAQs

Registration for the 2026 Summit is open now! Ticket prices will increase as the event date nears. Register and learn more here! 

Registration will remain open until end of March or when tickets sell out. 

The Small Giants Summit is unique in that we hang out together for a couple of days, learning and connecting during the day + sharing meals in the evening. Therefore, your ticket includes the conference portion, evening receptions, and cool bus rides between sessions!

Of course! If you’re interested in or aligned with Small Giants philosophies, we’d love to have you join us!

We have two tracks and content that caters to two audiences including Founders/CEOs + Next Gen or emerging leaders. Three or more colleagues and you can get a discount. 

Get ready for a friendly, open, and honest experience! Small Giants are incredibly welcoming and authentically vulnerable. Every seat assignment and experience is thoughtfully curated, so you’ll get to meet a lot of people and connect on a deep level. 

We’d love for you to! Please visit this page to learn more about how to share your expertise for the Summit and/or through other channels. 

We are very proud of the wonderful humans that take the stage! The approach for the Summit has always been to engage Small Giants practitioners – people who are leading organizations and initiatives in like-hearted ways –  who are open to authentically and vulnerably share their stories, systems, learnings with our audience. They’re not professional speakers (not that there’s anything wrong with that) but they’re just like you and us – doing the good work every day! Our speakers are generous with their time, and they see value in being on the Summit stage, as well as being in the audience. And we feel like that’s really special. They register, they attend and they speak. Also, they prepare for hours! Our team meets with each the speaker at least 3 times to work through their presentation, which they pour their heart and soul into. And that’s worth celebrating!

We have a variety of experiences and packages that you can sponsor. Check it out here

The 2026 winners will be announced live and inducted into the Small Giants Hall of Fame during the Summit! All Summit attendees will be a part of the celebration of finalists and winners during the evening reception.

Nominations for the Hall of Fame will open in the fall of 2025, and you can learn more about this award and how to nominate a leader for it here.

When we first held the Summit in Detroit, it was because our team was anchored there and we wanted to share the “revitalization” story that was unfolding. Small Giants loved the experience so much that we brought them back again and again!

Over the last few years, we’ve established relationships with small businesses and local organizations who support the Summit in a variety of ways and have given us an incredible foundation to do what we do. And this allows us to do our part in continuing to revitalize a city that has endured so much over the years.

Stay in the know and join the Small Giants Community!

Small Giants Community