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Your search for Business Strategy returned 39 results

Dan Ariely
Behavioral Economist; Author of best-selling book Predictably Irrational

Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University and visiting Professor at the MIT Media Lab. A behavioral economist, Ariely’s research has shown that we all succumb to irrationality in situations where rational thought is expected. He is an expert on how people actually act–and why they act–in all kinds of business and economic environments, and what this means for business innovation, strategy, marketing and pricing.

Ariely's forthcoming book Living Irrationally (June 2010) explores fascinating findings from the hundreds of 'experiments' Dan does for his research. He'll dive into personal life (what makes us happy, how we as humans adapt and change, how we date and find mates), work life (what really motivates us, financial vs. non-financial rewards, trust, revenge) and the slippery slope of cheating (how it starts, how it snowballs). He'll pay special attention to the financial and debt crisis, and the post-crash economy and what this means for employers, marketers and public policy. Ariely is also author of the best-selling Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. In this book, Dan presents research findings that provide new insights into human behavior that will help us make better decisions as individuals, as corporations, and as a society.

Ariely received a Ph.D. in marketing from Duke University, a Ph.D. and M.A. in cognitive psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a B.A. in psychology from Tel Aviv University.

He publishes widely in the leading scholarly journals in economics, psychology, and business. His work has been featured in a variety of media including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Business 2.0, Scientific American, Science, CNN, NPR, and he was interviewed for ABC's 20/20.

As a speaker, Ariely has a natural and unique talent for turning his research into vignettes that are fun, relevant and engaging, and for delivering the results in a genuinely charming, original, and often comical way.

Peter Cappelli
Leading Authority on Managing Workplace Talent; Professor of Management, Wharton School

Recognized as one of the world’s most important authorities on human capital, Dr. Peter Cappelli is the George W. Taylor Professor of Management at the Wharton School and Director of Wharton’s Center for Human Resources. His work focuses on human resource practices, talent and performance management, and public policy related to employment. He advises to organizations on the development of managerial and executive talent by helping his clients better understand how careers and career paths have changed, how these changes require companies to think about managing talent from a more strategic perspective, and how individuals should now think about managing their own careers.

Peter's more recent research examines changes in employment relations in the U.S. and their implications. Publications on the subject matter include, The New Deal at Work: Managing the Market-Driven Workforce, which examines the decline in lifetime employment relationships, Talent Management: Managing Talent in an Uncertain Age, which outlines the strategies that employers should consider in developing and managing talent (named a "best business book" for 2008 by Booz-Allen), and his most recent publication, The India Way: How India's Top Business Leaders are Revolutionizing Management, which describes a mission-driven and employee-focused approach to strategy and competitiveness.

Peter was named one of the 25 most influential people in the field of human capital by Vault.com and one of the top 100 people in the field of recruiting by Recruiter.com. Additionally, he was elected to the National Academy of Human Resources, and—in 2004—named editor of the Academy of Management Perspectives. He currently serves on commissions for The Business Roundtable, the World Economic Forum, and the U.S. Department of Labor.

Clayton Christensen
Foremost Authority on Disruptive Innovation; Professor, Harvard Business School

Clayton M. Christensen is the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, with a joint appointment in the Technology & Operations Management and General Management faculty groups. He is the author or coauthor of six books including the New York Times bestsellers The Innovator's Dilemma and The Innovator's Solution. In 2008, he released Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, a groundbreaking examination of America's education system through the lens of disruption. His forthcoming book, The Innovator's Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Health Care, applies the principles of disruption to the nation's broken health care system.

Professor Christensen’s research and teaching interests center on managing innovation and how to create new growth markets. Through co-founding Innosight, a management consulting and training firm based near the Harvard Business School in Watertown, Massachusetts, Professor Christensen and his colleagues sought to make practical the theories of disruption by focusing on problems of strategy, innovation and growth. Professor Christensen’s theories of disruptive innovation are practiced and implemented today through the company’s work with clients ranging from Proctor & Gamble to Johnson & Johnson to Best Buy to Time Warner.

Professor Christensen holds a B.A. with highest honors in economics from Brigham Young University (1975), and an M.Phil. in applied econometrics and the economics of less-developed countries from Oxford University (1977), where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He received an MBA with High Distinction from the Harvard Business School in 1979, graduating as a George F. Baker Scholar. He was awarded his DBA from the Harvard Business School in 1992.

A seasoned entrepreneur, Professor Christensen has founded three successful companies. The first, CPS Corporation, is an advanced materials manufacturing company that he founded in 1984 with several MIT professors. The second, Innosight, was founded by Professor Christensen with the company’s current chairman, Mark Johnson, in 2000. Innosight Capital, the third firm, was launched in 2005. Christensen is also a co-founder of Rose Park Advisors, an investment firm, and Innosight Institute, a non-profit think tank.

From 1979 to 1984, Professor Christensen worked with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In 1982 he was named a White House Fellow, and served as assistant to U.S. Transportation Secretaries Drew Lewis and Elizabeth Dole. He became a faculty member at the Harvard Business School in 1992.

Professor Christensen’s seminal work, The Innovator’s Dilemma received the Global Business Book Award for the best business book published in 1997, and The Innovator's Solution was also a New York Times best seller. His two most recent works – Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, and The Innovator’s Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Health Care – examine the problems of our public education and healthcare systems through the lenses of his theories and show how the problems in these industries can be resolved. He is also the author of Seeing What’s Next and the editor of two case books on innovation: Innovation and the General Manager and Strategic Management of Technology and Innovation.

Professor Christensen's writings have won a number of additional awards, including the Best Dissertation Award from The Institute of Management Sciences; the Production and Operations Management Society's William Abernathy Award for the best paper in the management of technology; the Newcomen Society’s award for the best paper in business history; and the 1995 and 2001 McKinsey Awards for articles published in the Harvard Business Review.

Professor Christensen was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. He worked as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the Republic of Korea from 1971 to 1973 and speaks fluent Korean. He currently serves his church as an Area Authority Seventy, and recently published an essay about his beliefs, entitled “Why I Believe”.

Rob Cross
Expert on Human Networks Within Organizations

Rob Cross is a professor of management at the University of Virginia and Research Director of The Network Roundtable, a consortium of 75 organizations sponsoring research on network applications to critical management issues. His research focuses on how relationships and informal networks in organizations can be analyzed and improved to promote competitive advantage, innovation, customer retention and profitability, leadership effectiveness, talent management and quality of work life.

Rob has worked directly with more than 200 strategically important networks across over 120 well-known organizations in consulting, pharmaceuticals, software, electronics and computer manufacturers, consumer products, financial services, petroleum, heavy equipment manufacturing, chemicals, and government. Ideas emerging from his research have resulted in two books, four book chapters and 23 articles, several of which have won awards. In addition to top scholarly outlets, his work has been repeatedly published in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, California Management Review, Academy of Management Executive and Organizational Dynamics. His most recent book, The Hidden Power of Social Networks: Understanding How Work Really Gets Done in Organizations (Harvard Business School Press), has been featured in venues such as Business Week, Fortune, The Financial Times, Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CIO, Inc and Fast Company.

Stan Davis
Visionary Business Thinker

Stan Davis is a prominent author, consultant, and speaker on the future of business. For more than 40 years, he has researched and documented the big shifts in science, technology, markets, and organization as they play out on business strategy and implementation. He has 13 books under his belt, with collective sales of more than 1 million copies in 15 languages. He coined the term “mass customization” in the 1980s in his bestseller, Future Perfect (recipient of Tom Peters's "Book of the Decade" Award). Other books include the bestselling Blur (with Chris Meyer), as well as 2020 Vision (will Bill Davidson), Future Wealth (with Chris Meyer), It’s Alive: The Convergence of Information, Biology, and Business (with Chris Meyer), and The Art of Business. His early career as an academic was spent primarily at the Harvard Business School. Stan is active with corporations and institutions as an advisor, educator, and guest presenter, having worked with Apple, AT&T, Bank of America, Citibank, Ernst & Young, Ford, JPMorgan Chase, Mercedes-Benz, and Sun Microsystems. He is longtime advisor to the board of the Massachusetts Medical Society, which publishes the New England Journal of Medicine, the world's most prestigious medical journal.

Tamara Erickson
Award-winning Author; Expert on Organizations, the Changing Workforce, and Generations at Work

Tamara J. Erickson is a McKinsey Award-winning author and widely respected expert on collaboration and innovation–on building talent and enhancing productivity–and on the nature of work in the intelligent economy. Her work is based on extensive research on the changing workforce and employee values and, most recently, on how successful organizations innovate through collaboration. Tammy has authored or co-authored numerous Harvard Business Review articles, including “It’s Time to Retire Retirement,” winner of the McKinsey Award, an MIT Sloan Management Review article, and the book Workforce Crisis: How to Beat the Coming Shortage of Skills and Talent. She recently completed a trilogy of books on how individuals in specific generations can excel in today’s workplace. Retire Retirement: Career Strategies for the Boomer Generation, What’s Next, Gen X? Keeping Up, Moving Ahead and Getting the Career You Want and Plugged In: The Generation Y Guide to Thriving at Work.

An interactive, engaging keynote presenter, Tammy consistently earns high praise. In fact, she was the #1-rated speaker at SHRM's 2006 Annual Conference Master Series. Tammy offers a fundamentally optimistic point of view, along with fascinating trends and actionable counsel. Perhaps more importantly, she will build-to-suit, depending on your learning objectives. Her blog, Across the Ages, appears on the Harvard Business School Publishing site where it is the highest-rated blog. Her entries address how the talent shortage and shifting employee values will create opportunities for individuals—and challenges for corporations that aren't prepared! Tammy's article "Leading Across the Ages" was one of Harvard Business Review's Breakthrough Ideas of 2008. HarvardBusiness.org created a Best of 2007, a collection of the editors' favorite content from the entire year. Three of the 19 selections are based on Tammy's work.

Joe Fuller
Organization and Strategy Expert; Founder, Monitor Group

Joseph Fuller is a co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Monitor Group, a leading global consultancy. He joined Monitor at its inception and currently oversees the firm’s consulting operations in 27 offices globally. In this capacity, he works with clients in a wide variety of industries, especially those with a heavy reliance on technology. He has particularly deep experience in two of the world’s most dynamic sectors, life sciences and telecommunications, and has advised leading companies and important regulatory bodies in both industries. Some of Joe's areas of functional expertise include corporate strategy—including M&A strategy and integration—corporate governance, and organizational dynamics.

Joe's interest in research began during his collaboration with Professor Michael Porter of Harvard Business School on the development of the concepts presented in Porter’s book, Competitive Advantage. In recent years, Joe has focused his attention on the interaction of the capital markets and companies’ decision-making processes with a particular focus on the role of boards of directors.

Ben Gomes-Casseres
Strategy and Alliance Expert

Ben Gomes-Casseres is an expert on global strategy, with a focus on business combinations. Ben consults, teaches, and speaks worldwide on international business, alliance strategy, and acquisition strategy. He has researched this topic for 20 years, taught it to MBAs and executives, and consulted with major companies in the United States and abroad. He is best known for his writings and consulting on alliance strategy, but he has also worked on international management, competitive strategy, technology policy, mergers and acquisitions, and organizational development.

Ben is currently a Professor at Brandeis International Business School, where he directs the MBA Program and the Asper Center for Global Entrepreneurship. Previously, he was a professor at the Harvard Business School and an economist at the World Bank. He is principal and owner of Alliance Strategy Consulting.

He has written or edited four books; his latest, Mastering Alliance Strategy: A Comprehensive Guide to Design, Management, and Organization, gives practical advice on how to use alliances as part of corporate strategy. His book The Alliance Revolution: The New Shape of Business Rivalry was one of the first in-depth studies of today’s high-tech alliances, and introduced the idea of competition among alliance “constellations.” His articles have appeared in Harvard Business Review, Financial Times, Strategy & Business, Sloan Management Review, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Financial Economics, and elsewhere. His work has been cited widely, including in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Harvard Management Update. He has also written numerous cases at Harvard Business School; his case on the development of Fuji Xerox in Japan is an HBS bestseller.

He holds a BA in History and Economics from Brandeis, an MPA in Economic Development from Princeton, and a DBA in International Business from Harvard. Born and raised in Curaçao (Netherlands Antilles), he speaks four languages (English, Dutch, Spanish, and Papiamentu), and is a dual citizen of the United States and the Netherlands.

Rebecca Henderson
Business and Technology Strategist, Educator, Researcher

Rebecca Henderson is the Senator John Heinz Professor of Environmental Management at Harvard Business School. Previously, she held the position of Eastman Kodak Professor of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School. Her focus is harnessing technology to support corporate strategy that creates value for business enterprises. An award-winning educator, she works with management teams in workshops and learning programs to transfer her groundbreaking ideas to the next generation of technology and business leaders. In 2001, she was named Sloan’s “Teacher of the Year.” She speaks frequently on a variety of topics, including Doing Strategy Right, Getting More Mileage from Your Innovation Resources, and Worse Before Better: Unjamming the R&D Project Queue. Her corporate clientele include Fortune 100 organizations and emerging technology-based enterprises. “With her colleague Nelson Repenning she is currently working on her first book‚ which highlights the role of overload in keeping organizations that are attempting to do significantly new things trapped in a recurrent cycle of stress and sub par performance.” Rebecca was most recently appointed to the Amgen Board of Directors where she will serve as a member of the Corporate Responsibility and Compliance and Governance and Nominating Committees of the Board.

John Hogan
Strategic Pricing Expert

Pricing strategy is not simply about raising prices! It's about building a foundation for profitable growth. John Hogan, co-author of The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing 4th ed., is a recognized thought leader on the topic of strategic pricing and building pricing capabilities within the firm. As a partner at Monitor Group and leader in the strategic pricing practice, John has worked with clients to develop more effective pricing strategies in technology, software, distribution, manufacturing, financial and professional services, and pharmaceutical sectors.

In addition to his client service responsibilities, John is responsible for managing the development of solutions to emerging pricing challenges. This effort has led to several pricing innovations such as using decision and risk analysis techniques to develop pricing strategies and a comprehensive approach to help organizations measure, diagnose and systematically build sustainable pricing capabilities. These efforts are driving the development agenda for the next generation of pricing frameworks and tools to help firms elevate pricing from a tactical function to a strategic lever to drive profitable growth.

John promotes his pricing strategy ideas in a variety of speaking settings, including major conferences, workshops and smaller executive briefing sessions. John is on the editorial board of the Journal of Service Research, where he recently won an award for the best article on service marketing

Prior to joining Monitor, John worked as a Vice President at Strategic Pricing Group and as a Marketing Professor at Boston College where he conducted award winning research into the valuation and pricing of marketing assets. He began his career as a corporate pricing manager at General Motors headquarters in Detroit. He grew up amidst the cornfields of Indiana, received his B.S. from Auburn University in Electrical Engineering, his M.B.A. from Indiana University, and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina.

Paul Horn
Distinguished Scientist in Residence, NYU; former Director of IBM Research

Dr. Paul M. Horn was named NYU Distinguished Scientist in Residence and NYU Stern Executive in Residence in September of 2007. Prior to his NYU position he was Senior Vice President of the IBM Corporation and Executive Director of Research. In this job he directed IBM’s worldwide Research program with 3200 technical employees in eight sites in five countries around the world, and helped guide IBM’s overall technical strategy. Dr. Horn transformed IBM’s research and development model into an engine of innovation and growth. Under his watch, IBM created the Deep Blue and Blue Gene supercomputers, pioneered the use of copper and "self-assembly" in chip manufacturing, and created new disciplines in autonomic computing and services science. Dr. Horn was a champion for translating technology based research into marketplace opportunities. Trained as a solid state physicist he has held, key management positions in science, semiconductors, and storage; successfully applying these disciplines to solving real world technology problems. Dr. Horn’s top priority as head of IBM’s Research Division was to stimulate innovation and innovative business model and quickly bring those innovations into the marketplace to sustain and grow IBM’s businesses, and to create the new businesses of IBM’s future.

Born in New York, Dr. Horn graduated from Clarkson College of Technology and received his doctoral degree in physics from the University of Rochester in 1973. Prior to joining IBM in 1979, Dr. Horn was a professor of physics in the James Franck Institute and the Physics Department and at the University of Chicago. Dr. Horn is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and was an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow from 1974-1978. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a former Associate Editor of Physical Review Letters and has published over 85 scientific and technical papers.

Dr. Horn has received numerous awards including the 1988 Bertram Eugene Warren award from the American Crystallographic Association, the 2000 Distinguished Leadership award from the New York Hall of Science, the 2002 Hutchison Medal from the University of Rochester, and the 2002 Pake Prize from the American Physical Society. In 2003 Dr. Horn was named as one of the top computing business leaders in the US by Scientific American magazine. He is also a member of numerous professional committees including three in Washington: the GAO (General Accountability Office) board of advisors, the Gallaudet University Advisory Board, and the board of trustees of the Committee for Economic Development. He is also on the Clarkson University and the New York Polytechnic Board of Trustees, the UC Berkeley Industrial Advisory Board, and is a trustee of the New York Hall of Science.

Larry Keeley
Innovation Master

Larry Keeley is a business advisor and speaker who has worked to develop more effective growth strategies and innovation methods for over 27 years. He is president and co-founder of Doblin Inc., a Monitor Group company and a partner in the Monitor Group. By applying proprietary, comprehensive innovation systems, Doblin has consistently and materially improved its clients’ innovation success rates.

BusinessWeek named Keeley one of seven Innovation Gurus who are changing the field, and specifically cited Doblin for having many of the most sophisticated tools for delivering innovation effectiveness.

Since 1979, Keeley has worked on innovation effectiveness at companies including Aetna, American Express, Amoco, Apple, BP, Citigroup, Coca-Cola, Diageo, Ford, GE, Hallmark, McDonald’s, Monsanto, Motorola, Novartis, Pfizer, Shell, SKT, Steelcase, Target, Texas Instruments, WellPoint, Whirlpool, and Zurich Financial Services. He lectures frequently and publishes regularly on strategic aspects of innovation.

Larry teaches graduate innovation strategy classes at the Institute of Design in Chicago, the first design school in the U.S. with a Ph.D. program, where he is also a board member. He lectures at executive education programs at Kellogg Graduate School of Management and in their Masters of Manufacturing Management program, and at business schools around the world. Keeley was a Senior Fellow of the Center for Business Innovation, in Boston. He is also a board member for Chicago Public Radio, where he has charted strategy for what has become the most innovative station in the public radio network in the U.S.

Eamonn Kelly
Futurist, Change Agent, and Strategic Thought Partner

Eamonn Kelly sits at the forefront of exploring the emergence of a new economic, social, and geopolitical order and its far-reaching consequences for organizations and indviduals.

A partner at Monitor Group, Eamonn leads the firm's network, thought leadership and marketing initiatives. For 10 years previously, he served as CEO and president of Global Business Network (GBN), the renowned futures network and scenario strategy consultancy. He has developed insights, tools, and methodologies for mastering uncertainty and has consulted to dozens of the world’s leading corporations in many sectors and global and national public agencies. Prior to joining GBN, Eamonn was head of strategy at Scottish Enterprise, one of the world's most respected development agencies, where he led the creation of effective strategies for economic and social development in a new era. In his highly acclaimed book, Powerful Times: Rising to the Challenge of Our Uncertain World, Eamonn weaves together seven powerful “dynamic tensions” that will fundamentally reshape human life in the coming decades. He offers breakthrough insights into how these tensions will conflict and interact to create huge waves of change beyond anything society has experienced previously.

Josh Klein
Technologist; Fervent Hacker of All Things

"Josh Klein is the quintessential hacker— someone who takes his greatest joy from combining the unexpected and seeing the result work in new and better ways."

Josh has practiced and was trained, both formally and informally, in hacking—social systems, computer networks, institutions, consumer hardware, animal behavior, and, most recently, the publishing industry. When he's not taking things apart or putting them back together again, he speaks, writes, and consults on new and emerging technologies that improve people's lives—and has tremendous fun doing it.

Most of Josh's time is spent speaking to companies and at conferences such as Gadgetoff, TED, SICS, LA-IP, BIF, and Serious Play, and he has appeared on the Sundance Channel, Nova, and other programs. He also spends a significant amount of time consulting to companies large and small, such as Microsoft, Oracle, Frog Design, Nokia, Johns Hopkins, Bankinter, The United States Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and others.

But really what Josh does is this: he examines systems, he takes them apart, and he puts different pieces together to produce something new and more effective. He hacks. Everything.

Joel Kurtzman
Author, Advisor on Global Competitiveness
and Risk

Joel Kurtzman is a noted author and advisor to leading organizations around the world in the areas of social capital, governance, and assessing and managing global risk. His expertise is highlighted by his long, successful career forecasting global events, from oil-price shocks to the dollar’s ups and downs. Joel’s vantage point in understanding and relating business implications comes from the fact that he has held both positions of senior strategic business leader and journalist responsible for reporting and translating business issues. Whether presenting to business leaders or government officials, Joel presents his ideas with one overarching concept in mind: provide thought leadership that creates value and sustainable growth.

Donald Laurie
Strategist, Venture Capitalist, and Leadership Innovator

Don Laurie is an expert on institutionalizing business innovation and developing processes and capabilities for achieving new platform growth. In his role as Managing Partner of Oyster International LLC, he works with chief executives and senior management teams to develop their leadership agenda and define their role and value added in these value creating activities.

In addition, Don manages spinouts that have been developed within large, global corporations and guides investments in venture opportunities that serve the strategic, portfolio and growth ambitions of his clientele.

Don is author of The Real Work of Leaders and Venture Catalyst: The Five Strategies for Explosive Corporate Growth, as well as co-author of The Work of Leadership, a Harvard Business Review classic. During 2003, he led the Harvard Business Review, INSEAD and Oyster International research: The CEO Agenda and Growth. He is a frequent speaker at corporate management conferences, Michael Hammer Conferences, BusinessWeek roundtables, and such high–profile venues as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Don is an investor in and advisor to a number of venture-backed companies in Boston. During his tenure at Arthur D. Little, Inc., he worked on the development and implementation of strategies for technology–based businesses. Prior to joining Arthur D. Little, he was managing director of a Merrill Lynch subsidiary and, over the course of ten years with Xerox Corporation, he held a number of line and staff positions. Don earned an MBA from Columbia University.

Edward Lawler
Human Resource & Organizational Effectiveness Expert

Edward E. Lawler III is Distinguished Professor of Business at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business and founder and director of the University's Center for Effective Organizations (CEO). CEO has been recognized by Fortune and other publications as one of the country's leading management research organizations.

Professor Lawler has been honored as a major contributor to theory, research, and practice in the fields of human resources management, compensation, organizational development, and organizational effectiveness.

BusinessWeek has proclaimed Lawler one of the top six gurus in the field of management, and Human Resource Executive called him one of HR's most influential people. Workforce magazine identified him as one of the 25 visionaries who have shaped today's workplace over the past century. National television appearances include The Today Show, CNN, MSNBC, and CNBC.

Professor Lawler is the author and co-author of 36 books. His most recent work, Built to Change: How to Achieve Sustained Organizational Effectiveness, co-authored with Christopher G. Worley, is a groundbreaking book that shows how organizations can be "built to change" so they can last and succeed in today's global economy.

Professor Lawler is the recipient of many awards including SHRM's Michael R. Losey award for which he was the first recipient. He is also a consultant to many governments and corporations including the majority of the Fortune 100.

Charlene Li
Expert on Social Media and Marketing; Author of Best-selling Book Groundswell

Charlene Li is an influential thought leader and guide on emerging technologies, with a specific focus on social technologies, interactive media, and marketing. The co-author of the business best-seller, Groundswell: Winning In A World Transformed By Social Technologies, Charlene is about to release her newest book, Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead (May 2010). Open Leadership will addresses the challenges facing leadership of the modern organization–given the dramatic adoption and impact social technologies have had on customer, partner, and employee relationships, how can companies not only manage but thrive in this new open, transparent, authentic world? Named "One of the Most Influential Women in Technology" by Fast Company magazine, Charlene is the founder of Altimeter Group which provides speaking and consulting services to organizations looking to understand and thrive in a new economy driven by social media tools and techniques. You can also read insights from Charlene on her blog, "The Altimeter."

Charlene is one of the most frequently-quoted industry analysts and has appeared on 60 Minutes, The McNeil NewsHour, ABC News, CNN, and CNBC. She is also frequently quoted by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, Reuters, and The Associated Press. She is a much-sought after public speaker and has presented frequently at top technology conferences such as Web 2.0 Expo-where she now serves on their Advisory Board, SXSW, and adTech.

Most recently, Charlene was a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research. She joined Forrester in 1999, after spending five years in online and newspaper publishing with the San Jose Mercury News and Community Newspaper Company.

She is a graduate of Harvard Business School and received a magna cum laude degree from Harvard College.

Chris Luebkeman
Architect, Engineer, Designer of the Built Environment

Dr. Chris Luebkeman is a bridge builder of many kinds. He is a third generation educator, formally trained as a geologist, structural engineer and architect, who believes that successful design cannot be separated from breadth of knowledge and steadfast inquiry. Chris speaks widely to the issues of sustainability and thoughtful design. He applies the lessons learned in the design of the built environment to businesses of all kinds. His keynotes, workshops, and strategy sessions are created for executives seeking better design sensibility for their products, services, and processes. Through his unique user-centric methods, Chris helps clients better understand the needs and desires of consumers, customers, and citizens.

Chris runs the Global Foresight + Innovation initiative at Arup, a global design and engineering firm and a leading creative force behind many of the world's most innovative projects and structures. In his role, he conceives new ways of building—recyclable buildings, reusable offices, and furniture that can decompose—and works with some of the world’s largest companies to develop what he calls ‘plausible futures’ to better understand the opportunities that change is creating for them in the built environment.

In his book, Drivers of Change 2009, Chris and the Foresight team at Arup look at 50 important factors that will affect our world, arranged in a framework known as STEEP (social, technological, economic, environmental and political). Designed as a collection of notecards, the book provides a tool for developing business strategy, brainstorming, education, or simply to think creatively and holistically. The cards are designed to encourage deeper consideration of the forces driving global change and the role that individuals can play in creating a more sustainable future.

Marc Mathieu
Marketing and Branding Authority; Former Global Brand Head, Coca-Cola

Marc Mathieu, the former head of Global Brand Marketing at Coca-Cola, is leading the development of a new enterprise at the intersection of human and business interests.

After working for many years with large, international corporations and global brands, such as Coca-Cola, Marc realized–and experienced firsthand–the power of brands to change people's behaviors. Seeing the growing urgency for scale within the socio-environmental movement, Marc decided to apply his vision, expertise, and relationships to the creation of BeDo. A branded social elevation platform directed at accelerating behavioral change around social and environmental challenges, BeDo has a mission to inspire and free the good within all of us, individually and collectively.

BeDo started from a belief that there is good in all human beings, but our society, culture, and world make it difficult for us to tap into our innate nature. Pushed by a growing pressure for change, which was dictated by our environmental, economic, and societal challenges, a group of (reasonably unreasonable) people gathered.

They came from five continents, a dozen countries, and as many cities, representing different cultures, tribes, and horizons. This extraordinary group envisioned an enterprise that would help small businesses, companies, institutions, employees, moms, and students bridge the gap between the people we aspire to be and the people who we really are.

Together, they created BeDo.

Prior to founding BeDo, Marc was with the Coca-Cola Company from 1996 to 2008. Most recently in Coca-Cola's World Headquarters as Senior Vice President of Global Brand Marketing, Marc's work continuously broke new ground. Whether crafting the Manifesto for the Revival of an Icon, which drove the business turnaround of Coca-Cola's 120 year-old brand; conceptualizing and championing Live Positively, Coke's sustainability platform; or creating the Coca-Cola DNA, a redefinition of Coca-Cola's way of marketing as a fusion of art and science, Marc's contributions helped to redefine the company and shape it's culture.

Acknowledging the intersection between human and business needs, Marc showed businesses across Coca-Cola how to incorporate social and cultural importance into brands and everyday business practices, while including diverse, cross-functional, and talented teams in the journey.

Before coming to Atlanta to lead the revival effort around Coca-Cola's Trademark and eventually Coca-Cola's Global Brand Portfolio, Marc held multiple general management positions within the company's operations. He started in the Philippines, then moved to Southeast and West Asia, and finally, led Coca-Cola's operations in France and the Benelux.

Prior to joining Coca-Cola, Marc spent 13 years with the Danone Group, the international food and beverage leader, where he worked in marketing, sales, and general management throughout Europe, Asia, and North America.

A native of France, Marc has traveled the world, interacted with multiple cultures, and speaks five languages. Marc holds a degree from École Supérieure de Commerce de Paris.

Nell Merlino
Leading Advocate for Women’s Role in the Economy; Creator of Take Our Daughters to Work Day

Throughout her career, Nell Merlino has been inspiring millions of people to take action. Nell is founder, president, and CEO of Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence, the leading national not-for-profit provider of resources for women to grow their micro businesses into million dollar enterprises through its signature program, Make Mine a Million $ Business. She is the creative force behind Take Our Daughters to Work Day, which moved more than 71 million Americans to participate in a day dedicated to giving girls the opportunity to dream bigger about their futures. Nell has worked on campaigns for the YWCA, The Week Without Violence, The United Nations’ Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, and in two state governments. She was an advance woman in presidential campaigns, a union organizer, and a Fulbright Scholar, and has received numerous awards, including the Fulbright Award for Outstanding Achievement, The Forbes Trailblazer Award, and the Matrix Award for Achievement in Communications.

Christopher Meyer
Author and Advisor on the Future of Business

Christopher Meyer is a founder of Monitor Talent. Chris's mission is to anticipate and shape the future of business. He has pursued this goal as entrepreneur, author, leader of a think tank, consultant, and executive. He writes and speaks about the trends shaping business and economic developments. His most recent book is It's Alive: The Coming Convergence of Information, Biology, and Business. He has also co-authored Blur: The Speed of Change in the Connected Economy and Future Wealth with Stan Davis, and contributed to publications such as Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Fast Company, TIME, The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, and Business 2.0.

Chris’ recent research and consulting have focused on the development of the Adaptive Enterprise, helping companies create the capacity to sense, respond, and adapt to changes in their business environments.

From 2004 to 2009 he was the Chief Executive of Monitor Networks, a Monitor Group company. Prior to joining Monitor Group, Chris was the Director of the Center for Business Innovation at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, from 1995 until its closing in December 2002. The Center fostered the conversation of leading issues among the business community, developed public conferences, established new services and businesses, and shared what it learned with business practitioners. At the CBI, he founded and served on the Board of the Bios Group, a venture that invested in applications of complexity theory to business.

Before joining Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, he was a Vice President and Group Head at Mercer Management Consulting, where from 1984 to 1995 he founded and built the firm’s practice in the information industries, comprising telecommunications, hardware, software, and information services and media.

Chris holds a B.A. in both Mathematics and Economics from Brandeis University and a M.B.A. (with Distinction) from The Harvard Business School. In addition, he held a University Predoctoral Fellowship in Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.

He serves on the Board of Icosystem, the Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange, the Mass Nanotech Exchange, the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation, and the advisory Boards of LaunchCyte and Corey McPherson Nash.

Robert H. Miles
Authority on Corporate Transformation and Renewal

Renowned thought and practice leader in the fields of corporate transformation, organizational effectiveness, culture change, and executive leadership, Bob Miles is a gifted business advisor, process architect, and executive speaker. Bob pioneered the Accelerated Corporate Transformation (ACT) methodology, a powerful approach for accelerating and achieving breakthrough results across a variety of corporate transformation challenges. By applying the ACT methodology, CEOs are able to greatly compress and accelerate the process for launching an organization’s new direction or executing a new set of initiatives.

Bob is the President of Corporate Transformation Resources and Senior Advisor on corporate transformation to Monitor. He also is a co-founder and Chairman of Galloway Consulting Group, a healthcare transformation consulting firm.

Frequently serving as a Senior Advisor to executive teams as they plan, launch and refocus corporate transformation efforts, Bob has been intensely involved in shaping some of the world’s most important business transformations for companies such as General Electric, IBM Global Services, National Semiconductor, Office Depot, the PGA TOUR, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Rockwell International, Southern Company and Symantec, as well as a number of emerging high-tech companies.

He has authored many books on corporate transformation and organizational effectiveness, including most recently Corporate Comeback: The Story of Renewal and Transformation at National Semiconductor, Leading Corporate Transformation: A Blueprint for Business Renewal, and Big Ideas to Big Results. He recently had a lead article in the Harvard Business Review, titled "Don't Lose Your Nerve—Accelerating Corporate Transformations," in which he shared the major insights from his quarter-century of work in support of major corporate transformations. He is a frequent speaker on these topics to senior executive audiences.

Bob has served on the Yale School of Management and the Harvard Business School faculties, teaching in the MBA, doctoral, and executive programs. At Harvard he was Faculty Chairman of the intensive Managing Organizational Effectiveness executive program, which helped CEOs, business presidents and their teams plan major transformation efforts. He was Dean of the Faculty and the Isaac Stiles Hopkins Professor at the Goizueta Business School of Emory University, where he also held the rank of University Distinguished Professor. Bob has served for over a decade as a member of the Stanford Executive Institute faculty at Stanford University and on the Advisory Boards of the U.S. Department of Energy and the Organizational Effectiveness Division of The Conference Board, and several leading business schools.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter
Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

Named among the 50 most powerful women in the world (Times of London) and the 50 most influential business thinkers in the world (Accenture and Thinker 50), Rosabeth Moss Kanter is a renowned social scientist and writer whose work focuses on the dynamics of organizational leadership, change and confidence. She is an exceptionally gifted orator and one of the world’s leading scholars in business management.

Professor Kanter’s themes, particularly those on leadership of turnarounds and mastering change in turbulent times, are particularly relevant in today’s economic environment.

Professor Kanter holds the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professorship at Harvard Business School, where she specializes in strategy, innovation, and leadership for change. Her strategic and practical insights have guided leaders of large and small organizations worldwide for over 25 years, through teaching, writing, and direct consultation to major corporations and governments. Former Editor of Harvard Business Review (1989-1992), Professor Kanter received the Academy of Management’s Distinguished Career Award for her scholarly contributions to management knowledge in 2001, and in 2002 was named “Intelligent Community Visionary of the Year” by the World Teleport Association.

A prolific writer, she has authored or co-authored 17 books, which have been translated into 17 languages. Her literary achievements include:

• Her recent work, Confidence: How Winning Streaks & Losing Streaks Begin & End (a New York Times business and #1 BusinessWeek bestseller), which describes the culture and dynamics of high-performance organizations as compared with those in decline, and shows how to lead turnarounds, whether in businesses, hospitals, schools, sports teams, community organizations, or countries.

• Her 18th book, which will appear in August 2009, under the title, SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Opportunities, Profits, Growth, and Social Good. It elaborates on her recent Harvard Business Review articles, Transforming Giants and Innovation: The Classic Traps.

• The prizewinning classic, Men & Women of the Corporation (which won the C. Wright Mills award for the year’s best book on social issues), that offered insight into corporate careers and the individual, as well as organizational factors that promote success. A spin-off video, “A Tale of ‘O’: On Being Different,” is among the world’s most widely-used diversity tools, and a related book, Work & Family in the United States, set a policy agenda. In 2001, a coalition of university centers created the Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award in her honor for the best research on work/family issues.

• The award-winning book When Giants Learn to Dance, which showed how to master the new terms of competition at the dawn of the global information age.

• World Class: Thriving Locally in the Global Economy, which identified the rise of new business networks and analyzed dilemmas of globalization.

• America the Principled: 6 Opportunities for Becoming a Can-Do Nation Once Again, which provides a new direction for the United States on the cusp of the Presidential election.

• The Change Masters, which was named one of the most influential business books of the 20th century (Financial Times).

Professor Kanter has received 23 honorary doctoral degrees, as well as numerous leadership awards and prizes for her books and articles. Through Goodmeasure Inc., the consulting group she co-founded, she partnered with IBM to apply her leadership tools to non-business sectors. She is also a Senior Advisor for IBM’s Global Citizenship portfolio.

Professor Kanter advises CEOs of large and small companies, has served on numerous business and non-profit boards, and participates in national commissions including the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors. She speaks widely, often sharing the platform with Presidents, Prime Ministers, and CEOs at national and international events, such as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Before joining the Harvard Business School faculty, she held tenured professorships at Yale University and Brandeis University and was a Fellow at Harvard Law School, simultaneously holding a Guggenheim Fellowship.

She also chairs a Harvard University group that is creating an innovative initiative on advanced leadership to help successful leaders at the top of their professions address national and global problems.

Nitin Nohria
Scholar, Transformation and Leadership; Professor, Harvard Business School

A prolific author and noted expert on leadership and sustainable corporate performance, Nitin Nohria is considered to be a renaissance business man by both his audiences and peers. Nitin is the Richard P. Chapman Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is the author of more than 10 books and over 100 journal articles, book chapters, cases, working papers, and notes.

Nitin's books on leadership include Paths to Power: How Insiders and Outsiders Shaped American Business Leadership, which chronicles how leaders from different backgrounds rose to power in American business. This book is a companion to In Their Time, which draws lessons from some of the greatest American business leaders of the 20th century. The Arc of Ambition: Defining the Leadership Journey examines the role of ambition in the making and unmaking of leaders. And Beyond the Hype: Rediscovering the Essence of Management looks beyond the silver bullet ideas that leaders are constantly being exhorted to adopt and uncovers the long-lived fundamentals of leadership. One of these fundamentals is a deep understanding of human motivation, which is explored in greater depth in Driven: How Human Nature Shapes our Choices.

On the topic of corporate performance, he has written What Really Works: The 4+2 Formula for Sustained Business Success, a systematic large-scale study of management practices that distinguish companies that deliver superior performance over a 10-year period. Changing Fortunes: Remaking the Industrial Corporation examines the decline of industrial firms during the last quarter of the 20th century and discusses what can be learned from this experience. And Breaking the Code of Change is a compilation of ideas on how companies can master the trade-offs that must be navigated as they attempt to change.

He has served as an advisor and consultant to several large and small companies across the world. He has been interviewed by ABC, CNN, and NPR, and cited frequently in BusinessWeek, Economist, Financial Times, Fortune, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

He teaches courses on leadership and corporate effectiveness across Harvard Business School's MBA, Ph.D., and Executive Education programs. He has served in various leadership roles at Harvard Business School including Unit Head, Director of the Division of Research, and Senior Associate Dean of Faculty Development. He also served as a visiting faculty member at the London Business School in 1996.

Prior to joining the Harvard Business School faculty in July 1988, Professor Nohria received his Ph.D. in Management from the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a B. Tech. in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (which honored him as a Distinguished Alumnus in 2007).

Michael Porter
Seminal Authority on Competitive Strategy

Michael E. Porter is indisputably the foremost authority on modern competitive strategy.

Generally recognized as the father of the modern strategy field, Professor Porter has been identified in a variety of rankings and surveys as the world’s most influential thinker on management and competitiveness. His expertise spans competitive strategy, the competitiveness and economic development of nations, states, and regions, and the application of competitive principles to social problems such as health care, the environment, and corporate responsibility.

He is the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor, based at Harvard Business School. A University professorship is the highest professional recognition that can be awarded to a Harvard faculty member. In 2001, Harvard Business School and Harvard University jointly created the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness, dedicated to furthering Professor Porter’s work.

He is the author of 17 books and over 125 articles, including his seminal works: “The Competitive Advantage of Nations,” which has guided economic policy in countless nations and regions; and “Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors,” in its 63rd printing and which has been translated into 19 languages. His book "Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-Based Competition on Results" (2006; Harvard Business Press) is influencing thinking and practice not only in the United States but numerous other countries. "On Competition" (Harvard Business Press) was re-issued with new and expanded content in October 2008. Professor Porter has received six McKinsey Awards for the best Harvard Business Review article of the year, including an unprecedented four first-place awards.

Professor Porter has served as a strategy advisor to top management in numerous leading U.S. and international companies, among them Caterpillar, DuPont, Procter & Gamble, Royal Dutch Shell, Scotts Miracle-Gro, SYSCO, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. He currently serves on the board of directors of Thermo Fisher Scientific Corporation and Parametric Technology Corporation, and is senior strategy advisor to the Boston Red Sox.

He is actively involved in assisting governments and advising national leaders in the U.S. and abroad, including Armenia, Ireland, India, Kazakhstan, Libya, Nicaragua, Portugal, Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand.
The Latin American Center for Competitiveness and Sustainable Development is based on his thinking about economic development for groups of neighboring countries.

Extending his work on competitiveness to states, provinces, and other sub-national regions, Professor Porter led the Clusters of Innovation project, which developed a framework for economic policy in U.S. regions. In addition, he is dedicated to addressing the relationship between competition and important social issues such as poverty, health care delivery and the natural environment. He has devoted growing attention toward economically distressed communities and poor and developing countries.

Professor Porter founded three major non-profit organizations: The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC), the Center for Effective Philanthropy, and FSG-Social Impact Advisors. He also currently serves on the Princeton University Board of Trustees.

He received a B.S.E. with high honors in aerospace and mechanical engineering from Princeton University in 1969, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi. He received an M.B.A. with high distinction in 1971 from the Harvard Business School, where he was a George F. Baker Scholar, and a Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard University in 1973.

Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Professor Porter lived and traveled throughout the world as the son of a career Army officer. At Princeton, he played intercollegiate golf and was the New England champion. He was named to the 1968 NCAA Golf All-American Team. After graduating from college, Professor Porter served through the rank of captain in the U.S. Army Reserve. He maintains a long-time interest in the esthetics and business of music and art, having worked on the problems of strategy with arts organizations and aspiring musicians. Professor Porter has two daughters and resides in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Deborah Schultz
Social and Open Web Advocate

Deborah Schultz is a Partner with Altimeter Group and leads it’s Innovation and Best Practices business focused on bringing together the ecosystem of emerging technologies including investors, start-ups, businesses, end users, service providers, and thought leaders for experimentation, active learning and real-world application. Most recently, she architected the Procter & Gamble Social Media Lab to study the impact of the social web on customer relationships and the business benefits of “open innovation.” She continues as a member of P&G’s Digital Advisory Board. Deborah is an internet industry veteran and early social and open web advocate focused on the adoption and impact of the social web on culture, society & business. She has worked with and advised startups, Fortune 50s and VC’s on technology adoption.

Peter Schwartz
World-Renowned Futurist and Strategist

Peter Schwartz is co-founder and current chairman of the Global Business Network (GBN), the world’s preeminent member organization focused on scenario thinking and planning, where he leads programs for corporations, governments, and non-profit institutions. His current research and scenario work encompasses energy resources and the environment, technology, life sciences, telecommunications, media and entertainment, aerospace, and national security. A prolific author, Peter’s most recent book, Inevitable Surprises, offers a provocative look at the complex forces at play in the world today and their implications for business and society. His first book, The Art of the Long View, is considered a seminal publication on scenario planning and has been translated into multiple languages. Peter addresses many different audiences in corporate board rooms, at conferences on issues such as global warming and human life extension, and at the World Economic Forum. He led the scenario team at Royal Dutch/Shell in the 1980s, where many of the scenario tools were pioneered. He has even lent his futurist skills to Hollywood as a script consultant on such films as The Minority Report, Deep Impact, Sneakers, and War Games.

Clay Shirky
Writer, Consultant, and Teacher on New Media and the Internet

Clay Shirky is a writer, educator, and consultant on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. He is an adjunct professor at New York University (NYU) in their graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program, where he teaches courses on the interrelationships of social and technological networks, particularly how they shape culture and vice-versa. He consults to a variety of organizations on network technologies, and is an acknowledged expert on collaboration tools, social networks, peer-to-peer sharing, collaborative filtering, and Open Source development. Clay has spoken and written extensively on the Internet since 1996, with regular columns in Business 2.0, FEED, OpenP2P.com and his own shirky.com blogsite. He has appeared in The New York Times, Time, The Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review, and others. In his new book, "Here Comes Everybody", Clay explores how organizations and industries are being upended by open networks, collaboration, and user appropriation of content production and dissemination.

Steven Spear
Authority on Innovation and Operational Excellence

Well known for seminal Harvard Business Review articles, "Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System" and "Fixing Healthcare from the Inside Today," McKinsey Award and five-time Shingo Prize winner Steven Spear shows how 'high velocity organizations' outrace their rivals even in the most hyper competitive industries in his award winning and critically acclaimed book, Chasing the Rabbit: How Market Leaders Outdistance the Competition (McGraw Hill 2009).

Drawing on Spear's expertise in process excellence, organizational learning and innovation, competitiveness, and health care delivery, Chasing the Rabbit demonstrates how the leaders of any organization can generate and sustain high speed, broad based improvement, innovation, and invention based on how they design complex systems of work, solve problems, share knowledge, and develop others to do the same. The universality of these approaches is reinforced with examples spanning high tech and heavy industry, new product design and production, software services, health care, and the military.

The ideas in Chasing the Rabbit are well tested in practice. Spear helped develop the Alcoa Business System, which recorded hundreds of millions of dollars in annual operating savings, and he was integral to creating the 'Perfecting Patient Care' system for the Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative. PRHI hospitals reduced and eliminated scourges like central line associated infections, surgical site infections, and patient falls. This cut unnecessary suffering, raised quality, and reduced overburden on staff.
Beyond this, Spear has worked with clients as diverse as Lockheed Martin, Intuit, and leading teaching hospitals, has published in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Annals of Internal Medicine, and Academic Medicine, and he has spoken to audiences ranging from the Association for Manufacturing Excellence to the Institute of Medicine.

Spear is a Senior Lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. He has a doctorate from Harvard Business School, masters in engineering and in management from MIT, and a bachelors degree in economics from Princeton. He was previously employed by Prudential-Bache, the US Congress Office of Technology Assessment, the University of Tokyo, and Harvard Business School.

Itay Talgam
Prominent Israeli Orchestra Conductor

Conductor Itay Talgam is one of the leading figures in the Israeli music scene and is a champion of contemporary music. His outstanding achievements have been acknowledged by audiences, critics, as well as by Israel’s Composers Association, which awarded him an honorary prize for his personal contribution in performing and promoting Israeli music.

As Music Director of the Tel-Aviv Symphony Orchestra and of Musica Nova Consort, Talgam won the prestigious prize for “Best Performance of the Year” for Israeli orchestral music awarded by the National Council for the Arts.

Itay’s international debut took place in 1987, when he was chosen by Leonard Bernstein to perform in a special concert with the Orchestre de Paris, with the great Maestro himself conducting the second half of the same concert. Since that highly successful performance, Itay has conducted many orchestras around the globe - being the first Israeli conductor to perform with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra and with the Leipzig Opera House.

A native of Tel-Aviv, Itay received his Artist Diploma in Conducting from the Jerusalem Rubin Academy in 1987, being awarded scholarships from the America-Israel cultural foundation. He then studied in the Accademia Chigiana, Siena, with Maestri Franco Ferrara and Guenady Rozhdestvensky and in Tanglewood, under Maestri Seiji Osawa, Leon Fleisher and Lenny Bernstein. In addition, he studied General Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, winning his degree “Cum Laude”.

Itay Talgam has taught orchestral conducting at the Rubin Academy for music, Tel-Aviv University, and the Academy for Music and Dance in Jerusalem. In addition to his current conducting activities, he is intensely involved in many educational projects, both as a Fellow of the Mandel School for Educational Leadership in Jerusalem, and as the creator of the unique ‘Maestro’ leadership programs. He is also a member of the Israeli National Council for the Arts music section.

Leo Tilman
Advisor to CEOs, Financial Market Strategist, Authority on Risk Management

Called "The Man Who Predicted This Crisis" by CNN International, Leo Tilman is a widely recognized authority on financial markets and risk management. Leo is the President of L.M. Tilman & Co., a strategic advisory firm that serves governments, financial institutions, corporations, and institutional investors worldwide. L.M. Tilman & Co. helps its clients create real and lasting economic value in finance. Prior to founding the firm, Mr. Tilman held senior positions with BlackRock as well as Bear Stearns, where he was Chief Institutional Strategist and Senior Managing Director.

Mr. Tilman teaches finance at Columbia University—his graduate as well as undergraduate alma mater. He is the author of Financial Darwinism: Create Value or Self-Destruct in a World of Risk, co-author of The Risk Paradigm (forthcoming 2009), co-author of Risk Management, and editor of Asset/Liability Management of Financial Institutions.

Mr. Tilman is a contributing editor of The Journal of Risk Finance and a frequent speaker at leading business schools and conferences worldwide. He serves on the advisory board of the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University and on the board of directors of Atlantic Partnership. Mr. Tilman was honored by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader, joining a select group of executives, public figures and intellectuals recognized for “their professional accomplishments, commitment to society and potential to contribute to shaping the future of the world.”

Ray Wang
Enterprise Strategist and Disruptive Technologies Expert

A highly sought after thought leader focused on enterprise strategy and disruptive technologies, R “Ray” Wang has advised organizations and spoken to audiences around the world. His dynamic presentation style brings life and energy to technology and business topics such as business process transformation, next generation software, SaaS/Cloud solutions, social CRM, analytics, and ERP. He is the author of the popular enterprise software blog “A Software Insider’s Point of View.” With viewership in the millions of page views a year, his blog provides insight into how disruptive technologies and business models impact the CXO, enterprise apps strategy, and emerging business and technology trends.

Ray works with organizations to provide strategic guidance in a variety of business scenarios including designing go-to-market strategies; reviewing and designing software licensing, pricing, support, and maintenance policies; delivering competitive assessments; evaluating software partner ecosystems, and researching business processes such as the perfect order and continuous customer management for the enterprise and SMB markets.

News outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Fortune, Inc., CIO Magazine, Information Week, ComputerWorld, Financial Times, eWeek, IDG News, ZDNet, and CNBC frequently seek his point of view.

Ray is currently at Partner for Enterprise Strategy at Altimeter Group. Prior to joining Altimeter, he was VP and Principal Analyst at Forrester, where he was recognized in both 2008 and 2009 by the prestigious Institute of Industry Analyst Relations (IIAR) as the Analyst of the Year and in 2009 he was recognized as one of the most important analysts for Enterprise, SMB, and Software.

Steve Weber
Political Economist and Critically Acclaimed Author

Steve Weber is professor of political science at UC Berkeley, where he directs the multi-disciplinary Institute of International Studies. His research and consulting work consistently breaks new ground in areas as diverse as health care telecommunications, U.S. foreign and intelligence policy, software markets, and the emerging geopolitical issues of the 21st century, particularly around Sino-American relations. His advisory work has benefited organizations as diverse as IBM, the CIA, The Ford Foundation, Chiron, and the Library of Congress. His most recent book, The Success of Open Source, is an internationally acclaimed study of the political economy of the open source software community (2004 Winner of the Professional/Scholarly Publishing Annual Award Competition, Computer and Information Science).

Andreas Weigend
Leading Behavioral Marketing Expert; Former Chief Scientist, Amazon.com

Andreas Weigend is the former Chief Scientist at Amazon.com and an expert in data mining and computational marketing. He currently teaches the graduate course Data Mining and Electronic Commerce at Stanford University, and the executive course Technology, Information and Innovation in Shanghai. As an independent consultant, he now helps data-intensive organizations make strategic decisions based on analytics and metrics. His applied research is in fields including behavioral economics, time series analysis, and computational finance. His career as a scientist, data strategist and quantitative methods innovator gives him a unique ability to bridge the gap between industry and academia.

He served as Amazon.com's Chief Scientist until January 2004, where he developed data mining techniques including session-based marketing, and designed applications ranging from heuristic cross-selling to customer network and lifecycle analysis. Previously, in 1999, he co-founded MoodLogic, voted "best music organizer" by C|NET. He was also the Chief Scientist of ShockMarket, creating information products and trading models based on real-time data from online brokerages, leveraging principles of behavioral finance.

Andreas has published more than one hundred scientific papers and co-authored six books. He has also served as a full-time faculty member at New York University's Stern School of Business, and at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He received an IBM Partnership Award and a National Science Foundation Career Award. Andreas studied electrical engineering, physics, and philosophy at Karlsruhe, Cambridge (Trinity College), and Bonn University. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in physics in 1991, and was a researcher at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) and at the Santa Fe Institute.

Lawrence Wilkinson
Executive, Advisor, and Commentator on the Future of Media and the Consumer

Lawrence Wilkinson provides strategic counsel and venture design services through the firm Heminge & Condell, based in San Francisco. He has been an active entrepreneur and advisor in the media and related businesses for more than 30 years. He helped create such diverse companies as Oxygen Media, Global Business Network (GBN), Ealing Studios, and Design Within Reach. Today, Lawrence continues to serve as Vice Chairman of Oxygen Media, Inc., which he co-founded with partners Geraldine Laybourne, Oprah Winfrey, Carsey-Werner-Mandabach, and Disney. Oxygen currently provides a cable television service reaching more than 40 million households in the U.S. (contracted to grow to a minimum of 60 million by the end of 2008) and award-winning web services. Lawrence continues to keep his hand in the film production world, serving as a director and advisor to Ealing Studios, Ltd.

Irving Wladawsky-Berger
Technical Strategy and Innovation Expert

For over 30 years Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger influenced and shaped IBM’s innovation and technical strategy. During his tenure he was responsible for identifying emerging technologies and marketplace developments critical to the future of the IT industry, and organizing appropriate activities in and outside of IBM in order to capitalize on them. He led a number of successful companywide initiatives including the Internet and e-business, supercomputing, Linux, Grid computing and, in October 2002, IBM's On Demand Business initiative. Retired in 2007, Irving continues to consult for IBM on major new market strategies like Cloud Computing and Smart Planet.

A widely sought after expert in the fields of innovation, technology and transformation, Irving was appointed Strategic Advisor in March 2008 at Citigroup to assist with innovation and technology initiatives across the company. He is helping to formulate Citigroup initiatives related the future of global banking, including mobile banking, Internet-based financial services, and financial systems modeling and analysis. He was a member of President Obama's Technology, Innovation and Government Reform transition team. The goal of this initiative was to developed a set of policy proposals to make government more open and transparent, leverage high-technology to grow the economy and create jobs, and use social networking tools to involve citizens in government transformation through their collective energy and expertise.

Irving is Visiting Lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and Engineering Systems Division, Adjunct Professor in the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at the Imperial College Business School, and Senior Fellow at the Levin Institute of the State University of New York. In addition, he is a member of several boards including the InnoCentive Advisory Board, the Spencer Trask Collaborative Innovations Board, the Board of Directors of the Federation of American Scientists, and the Visiting Committee for the Physical Sciences Division at the University of Chicago.

He was co-chair of the President Bill Clinton’s Information Technology Advisory Committee, as well as a founding member of the Computer Sciences and Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council. He is a former member of the University of Chicago Board of Governors for Argonne National Laboratories, of the Board of Overseers for Fermilab and of BP’s Technology Advisory Council. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A native of Cuba, he was named the 2001 Hispanic Engineer of the Year.

Dr. Wladawsky-Berger received an M.S. and a Ph. D. in physics from the University of Chicago.

Terry F. Yosie
Thought Leader on Sustainable Business Practice

Terry Yosie joined the World Environment Center in October 2006 as the President & CEO. In this capacity, he develops and implements strategies to achieve this global non-profit organization’s mission to implement sustainable development through the business strategies and operations of global companies in partnership with government agencies, non-governmental organizations, universities and other stakeholders. WEC’s principal areas of focus have included climate change and energy efficiency, enterprise development, greening the supply chain and technological innovation. Dr. Yosie leads WEC’s global initiatives and frequently meets with business, government and other leaders to develop solutions to a variety of environmental, economic and social issues.

Dr. Yosie has held senior-level management positions in government, corporate and consulting organizations. He served as Vice President at the American Chemistry Council from 1999-2005, providing leadership to upgrade the chemical industry’s environmental, health, safety and security performance. He managed a global CEO Task Force in 2004-2005 to develop the Responsible Care Global Charter to improve chemical industry performance in 52 countries. He represented the industry as a delegate to the 2002 U.N. World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.

As the Executive Vice President of Ruder Finn Washington from 1992-1999, Dr. Yosie led the environmental management and communications practices of the firm for a wide range of clients such as BASF, British Petroleum, Pfizer, and Philips Electronics. At BP, he advised the company on climate change issues that led to a new strategy announced in 1997 by the CEO John Browne.

Dr. Yosie served as Vice President for Health and Environment at the American Petroleum Institute from 1988-1992. In this capacity, he successfully led the industry’s effort to negotiate cleaner fuel standards with EPA, state and local agencies and environmental organizations that impacted over $40 billion dollars in refining investments.

From 1978-1988, Dr. Yosie was employed at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board where he also served as Director from 1981-1988, In this role, he advised EPA Administrators and the U.S. Congress on the scientific basis of public health and environmental decisions, and he instituted policies and procedures to improve the technical basis for EPA-wide policy decisions and risk assessments. He was a member of the U.S. delegation for the bilateral environmental program with the Soviet Union and negotiated diverse agreements with that country.

Dr. Yosie has recently served as a member of the National Research Council Committee that published a major study, Science and Decisions (December 2008). He is the author of more than sixty professional publications and co-editor of a book entitled, Sustainable Environmental Management. He received his doctorate degree in Humanities and Social Sciences from Carnegie Mellon University in 1981 and has been designated by the University as one of its Most Notable Alumni.

Shoshana Zuboff
Leading Thinker on Capitalism and the Consumer

Shoshana Zuboff is the Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School (retired), where she joined the faculty in 1981. One of the first tenured women at the Harvard Business School, she earned her Ph.D. in social psychology from Harvard University and her B.A. in philosophy from the University of Chicago.

Author of the celebrated classic, In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power (1988), Professor Zuboff has been called “the true prophet of the information age”. In the Age of the Smart Machine won instant critical acclaim in both the academic and trade press—including the front page review in the New York Times Book Review—and has long been considered the definitive study of information technology in the workplace.

In 1993, Professor Zuboff founded the executive education program “ODYSSEY: School for the Second Half of Life” at the Harvard Business School. The program addressed the issues of transformation and career renewal at midlife. During 12 years of her teaching and leadership, ODYSSEY became known as the best program of its kind in the world. She is currently completing a new book that will make the ODYSSEY program available to a wide audience.

In 2006, strategy+business named Professor Zuboff among the 11 most original business thinkers in the world. She was featured in 2004 as a “Creative Mind” in strategy+business, described as “a maverick management guru…one of the sharpest most unorthodox thinkers today.” From 2003 to 2005, Zuboff shared her ideas on the future of business and society in her monthly column “Evolving,” in the magazine Fast Company. Professor Zuboff has also been featured on CNBC, Reuters International, and the Today Show as well as in Fortune, Inc., BusinessWeek, U.S. News & World Report, CIO, The New York Times, The Financial Times, and many other news outlets. Boston Magazine voted her one of the “Five Smartest People in Boston.” She has been heard on more than 200 radio shows, including top coverage on NPR’s Marketplace, TechNation, Sound Money, Morning Edition, BBC, and BBC World Service.

Professor Zuboff has published dozens of articles, essays, book reviews, and cases on the subject of information technology in the workplace, as well as on the history and future of work and management. Her scholarly monograph “Work in the United States in the Twentieth Century,” appears in the Encyclopedia of the United States in the Twentieth Century (1996). Her lectures on “The Information Society” are featured in the Smithsonian’s permanent exhibition on “The Information Age.” She has served on editorial boards including the Harvard Business Review, the American Prospect, and Organization. She has been awarded research grants from the National Institute of Mental Health.

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