(FORTUNE Magazine) – For a couple of days this summer FORTUNE brought together 178 CEOs, scientists, teachers, politicians, think-tankers, activists, investors, former Presidents, and nobility of various gradations to the basement of a hotel in Aspen, Colo.

Yes, a windowless basement, in Aspen. Is that perverse or what?

The occasion was the second annual Brainstorm conference, an event staged not to make money or headlines (which is what our CEO summits and other conferences are for), but to give us ideas. At least, that was the plan.

Last year in Aspen, all of us FORTUNE staffers ran around frantically trying to interview every last participant for possible articles. We even hired novelist Rick Moody to write an account of the event. This time we took a more relaxed approach, in hopes that in the really-big-dinner-party atmosphere of the conference, ideas would come to us.

That they did: The pieces that follow--a graphic demonstration of the fizzling of the population bomb, an exploration of whether selling things to the world's poor is in fact good business, a set of profiles of unconventional business thinkers, and a forward-looking view of backward-looking accounting--all involve concepts we heard about or people we got to know in Aspen. Other Aspen-inspired articles are still to come.

But what actually happened up there in the Rockies? The photos on the preceding pages ought to give you some idea: People gave speeches, and they had conversations. Happily, some of those conversations took place outside the basement of the St. Regis, most spectacularly in a mountainside mansion formerly owned (and decorated in appropriately garish style) by international man of financial mystery Victor Kozeny; Priceline.com CEO and Brainstorm participant Richard Braddock recently bought the house. It was at a cocktail party there that I got to ask NBA commissioner David Stern whether there was any hope for my Golden State Warriors. I'm afraid I promised his response would remain confidential.

Other conference participants had more serious matters on their minds. Interestingly, last summer's topic A--the seemingly never-ending parade of corporate scandals and the accompanying stock market meltdown--didn't seem to be foremost among them. This is very much a personal impression, but most of the people in Aspen appeared to believe that things were working themselves out, that naughty behavior was being punished, and that, after some more pain and suffering, the U.S. economy would right itself. There was also a small but vocal minority convinced that U.S.-style capitalism is leading the world to ruin. But that didn't make for much of a debate.

The only really impassioned words I heard on the subject were from venture capitalist John Doerr. During one question-and-answer session, he brandished his copy of the then-current issue of FORTUNE, which contained an article (by me) arguing that expensing stock options was the crucial first step to righting corporate America's wrongs. Doerr's concern, which he elaborated on several pages of my notebook after someone told us to shush, was that expensing options would have no impact on the kind of "scumbags" (his word) who ruined WorldCom and Enron, but would make it much harder to build the next Sun Microsystems or Microsoft or Intel.

As for what did capture the imaginations of our Brainstormers, there are scores of answers. Topics discussed ranged from energy policy to architecture to modern childhood. But when a few FORTUNE editors got together to rehash the event a few weeks later, we settled on three biggies: genomics, globalization, and girls.

The genomics line of discussion was straightforward (and is outlined in more detail in the profile of Juan Enriquez in "Big Ideas for Hire"): The ability to decode and tweak DNA is a Really Big Deal. It hasn't delivered immediately on all its hype, and, as neuroscientist Susan Greenfield pointed out in a fascinating little discourse (excerpted on a previous page), genes don't determine all. But advances in gene science should mean people will stop dying of heart disease and cancer. "It is a real coin toss as to whether those of us in this room are going to be saved from those (diseases) by this technological revolution," said former Microsoft research chief (and current biotech investor) Nathan Myhrvold. "Our kids have an excellent chance."

That's straightforward. Talk of globalization never is, beyond the observation that we all live on the same earth and are affected by the actions of other earthlings. At Aspen the globalization talk went in many directions and was, as always, maddeningly inconclusive. But that didn't mean it wasn't interesting.

The biggest point, as expressed by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, was perhaps this: "The United States, at this stage, is more powerful than any country in the history of the world. But the paradox is that at the same time that we have all this power, I don't think that the American people have ever felt so vulnerable, except maybe during the Cuban missile crisis or the War of 1812."

In that context, there was much pondering of how the Middle East became a breeding ground for the terrorists who have left Americans feeling so vulnerable. Despite the presence of Jordan's King Abdullah, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, and former would-be peacemaker Bill Clinton, no great breakthroughs were made or problems solved. Sometimes the talk of Israeli-Palestinian tensions and threats of war with Iraq was enough to flood our Aspen basement with a fog of pessimism. But there did seem to be a hope, expressed by both Peres and King Abdullah, that things have gotten so bad as to allow room for progress.

But not all the news from the rest of the world is grim. As former Dominican Republic President Leonel Fernandez noted, many crucial indicators of global living standards--from infant mortality to educational opportunities to poverty rates--actually showed improvement over the past decade. Most of that betterment came from two countries, China and India. So not surprisingly, there was much talk of what they are doing right. Since China's rise as a manufacturing power has been to a certain extent government-planned, while India's software boom has been an utterly unplanned surprise, it was hard to settle on prescriptions, other than that the best ideas will probably come from Ugandan farmers rather than World Bank bureaucrats (at least, that's what former World Bank bureaucrat Dennis Whittle said).

There was more agreement about what the U.S. and other rich countries should do to help: Stop making it so hard for poor countries to sell us their textiles and farm products. And Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore's ambassador to the United Nations, was one of several conference participants who urged the Americans on hand to interpret their national interests less narrowly.

Another theme kept popping up in the discussions: If women played a larger political and economic role, maybe the world's problems would seem less daunting. Former Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell addressed this head-on in a speech, excerpted above. But she was far from alone. Shimon Peres argued that the liberation of women was the greatest achievement of the 20th century. University of Michigan business professor C.K. Prahalad said women were key to the success of most development projects in poor countries. And after a plea for help from Afghan Minister of Women's Affairs Habiba Sarabi, conference participants pledged to fund several Afghan "women's development centers" at $250,000 a pop.

None of those pledges has actually been paid up yet. Something similar can be said of most of the bold ideas expressed at Brainstorm 2002--or any high-minded conference like it. Still, we got our story ideas. And venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson left Aspen so excited by what he'd heard about sustainable energy that he invested in a company with plans to deposit solar cells on rolls of plastic. The cells could provide cheap electricity to villages way off the grid in the developing world--and could be on the market in as little as two years.

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REPORTER ASSOCIATE Julie Schlosser