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Sir Mark Allen
Arabist; Foreign Affairs Expert and Advisor
Sir Mark Allen is one of the world’s preeminent Arabists. Sir Mark draws on a 30 year career with the British Foreign Service and many years living in the Middle East, during which he developed a keen appreciation of unique nuances of each of the rich cultures of the region. Upon his recent retirement from public service, Sir Mark became a Special Advisor to BP and a Senior Advisor to the Monitor Group Company, a global consulting and private equity firm.
The Middle East has become the epicenter of international political and military attention, and the effectiveness of relations between the West and the Arab world will in large part set the terms for the hydrocarbon-dependent 21st Century economy. Yet Allen contends that there has been much ignorance of Arab people everywhere. By delving into the individual psychology and world view of Arabs, Sir Mark succeeds in bridging racial, political and religious gaps. In his recent book, Arabs: A New Perspective, Sir Mark draws out four themes that have given the Arabs a sense of being a single people. The first three—Family, Religion and Arabism—set values for which the Arabs have shown they are ready to fight. The fourth, their common experience of Political Power, explains much about the need for reform in the Middle East and why it is so elusive.
Sir Mark contends that success in the relations between the West and the Arab world will depend on the effort to understand what is important there. His forthcoming book will delve more into the particular forms of tribalism that guide political and social cohesion in many parts of the world.
Sir Mark studied Arabic at Oxford and worked in the diplomatic service from 1973 to 2004. He served in the UAE, Egypt and Jordan, and his work took him all over the Middle East. In addition to his corporate advisory work, he is a senior associate member of St. Antony’s College, Oxford. He was made Companion of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George (CMG) in 2002 and knighted in 2005.
David Andelman
Executive Editor, World Policy Journal
David A. Andelman is Executive Editor of the World Policy Journal, a non-partisan source of progressive global policy analysis and thought leadership. In his role, David leads the transformation of the World Policy Institute's flagship quarterly, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary in Fall 2008. He has served as a domestic and foreign correspondent for The New York Times in various posts in New York and Washington, as Southeast Asia bureau chief, based in Bangkok, then East European bureau chief, based in Belgrade. He then moved to CBS News where he served for seven years as Paris Correspondent. He has traveled through, and reported from, more than 50 countries. There followed service as a Washington correspondent for CNBC, news editor of Bloomberg News and Business Editor of the New York Daily News before coming to Forbes. He is the author of three books: The Peacemakers, published by Harper & Row; The Fourth World War, published by William Morrow, which he co-authored with the Count de Marenches, long-time head of French intelligence; and A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today, published in October 2007 by John Wiley & Sons. Mr. Andelman has written for such publications as Harpers, The Atlantic, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, Foreign Policy and Foreign Affairs. He is a graduate of Harvard University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Grolier Club.
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 is the author of the new best-selling book, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, (HarperCollins), currently on the New York Times best-seller list. In this groundbreaking work, Ariely presents often humorous and peculiar 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.
George Ayittey
Recognized Authority on Africa and Economic Development
George Ayittey is a Ghanaian economist and widely recognized authority on political and economic development in Africa. A distinguished economist in residence at American University and president of the Free Africa Foundation, George has championed the idea that “Africa is poor because she is not free.” True freedom never came to much of Africa after independence from colonial rule, says his first book, Africa Betrayed, which won the H.L. Mencken Award for “Best Book in 1992.”
In the analysis of Africa’s woes, George believes that a much greater emphasis should be placed on internal factors—bad leadership, corruption, military vandalism, and exploitation of the African people—rather than the external factors. George stresses "internal solutions" and initiatives that must come from Africa itself. He coined the expression: “African solutions for African problems.” Crying out against the “vampire states” and dysfunctional governments that, he believes, are the bedrock of problems of many troubled Africa states, George speaks passionately about the grassroots enterprises that will enable “Africans to take back Africa – one village at a time.”
His influential book Africa Unchained boldly proposes a program of development—a way forward—for Africa, investigating how Africa can modernize, build, and improve its indigenous institutions. George argues forcefully that Africa’s salvation lies in Africa itself – not inside the corridors of the U.S. Congress or the inner sanctum of the World Bank. Africa’s salvation lies in returning to and building upon its own indigenous institutions and traditions of free village markets and free trade—rather than continuing to use alien and exploitative economic structures. The critically acclaimed book has helped unleash a new wave of activism and optimism about Africa.
His recent efforts have focused on identifying profitable enterprises for “Cheetahs” —a new breed of Africans taking their futures into their own hands instead of waiting for politicians to empower them. His speech “Cheetahs vs. Hippos for Africa's Future: made a powerful impact at the TED Global Conference 2007 in Arusha, Tanzania.
George earned a Ph.D. from the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada; an M.A. University of Western Ontario, London, Canada and a B.Sc. Univ. of Ghana, Legon, Ghana.
Yochai Benkler
Law Professor and Internet Scholar
Yochai Benkler is the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard. Prior to coming to Harvard, he was Joseph M. Field '55 Professor of Law at Yale. He writes about the Internet and the emergence of networked economy and society. Since the 1990s he has been a major theorist of the role of commons and radically decentralized individual action and collaboration in the production of information, knowledge and culture, as well as the organization of infrastructure.
Yochai’s work traverses a wide range of disciplines and sectors. It is taught in schools of law, business, and information sciences, and in departments of communications, media studies, computer science, economics, and political science. In real world applications, his work has been widely discussed in both the business sector and civil society.
His recent book, The Wealth of Networks (2006), and his earlier work, have won him awards from civil rights and social movement organizations, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award for 2007 and Public Knowledge's IP3 Award in 2006, and was called a “reveille for netizens" by The Times of London and “Internet utopianism for grown-ups” by The American Prospect. At the same time, Wealth of Networks has been called “perhaps the best work yet about the fast moving, enthusiast-driven Internet” by the Financial Times, and was named the best business book about the future in 2006 by Strategy and Business. His work has been the subject of reports in The Economist, BusinessWeek, and the Wall Street Journal, as well as general publications like the New York Times and Time magazine, exploring the implications of the emergence of networked information economy.
Alph Bingham
Co-founder, InnoCentive; Open Innovation Expert
Dr. Alph Bingham is a pioneer in the field of open innovation and an advocate of collaborative approaches to research and development. He is co-founder, and former president and chief executive officer of InnoCentive Inc., a Web-based community that matches companies facing R&D challenges with scientists who propose solutions. Through InnoCentive, a platform that leverages the ability to connect to a whole planet of people through the Internet, organizations can access individuals – problem solvers – who might never have been found.
Alph spent more than 25 years with Eli Lilly and Company, and offers deep experience in pharmaceutical research and development, research acquisitions and collaborations, and R&D strategic planning. During his career he was instrumental in creating and developing Eli Lilly's portfolio management process as well as establishing the divisions of Research Acquisitions, the Office of Alliance Management and e.Lilly, a business innovation unit, from which various other ventures that create the advantages of open and networked organizational structures, including: InnoCentive, YourEncore, Inc., Coalesix, Inc., Maaguzi, Inc., Indigo Biosystems, Seriosity, Chorus and Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc.
He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Fast Track Systems, Inc., and Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc.; the advisory boards of the Center for Collective Intelligence (MIT), the Business Innovation Factory, Phase Forward, Inc., YourEncore, Inc. and Coalesix, Inc. and as a member of the board of trustees of the Bankinter Foundation in Madrid.
He has lectured extensively at both national and international events and serves as a Visiting Scholar at the National Center for Supercomputing Application at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. He is also the former chairman of the Board of Editors of the Research Technology Management Journal. Dr. Bingham was the recipient of the Economist's Fourth Annual Innovation Summit "Business Process Award" for InnoCentive. He was also named as one of Project Management Institute's "Power 50" leaders in October 2005.
Dr. Bingham received a B.S. in chemistry from Brigham Young University and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Stanford University.
Jim Bower
Neuroscientist, Education Pioneer, Software Entrepreneur
James Bower is Professor of Computational Neuroscience at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and at the University of Texas, San Antonio.
He is also founder, chairman and CEO of Numedeon Inc., producer of Whyville.net, one of the most popular educational websites for children, with 2.2 million registered users. Whyville is the leading educational virtual world for children ages 8 - 15. It was launched in 1999 by Numedeon, Inc. to apply over 17 years of research in education and cooperative learning to develop an innovative environment for engaging children in constructive and engaging activities on the web.
Aside from Whyville.net, Numedeon’s proprietary software also powers a virtual campus for the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio (UTHSCSA). UTHSCSA-Virtual supports scientists and medical professionals in their collaborations both locally and at a distance.
Bower was a professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) for 17 years. His scientific research focuses on the cerebellum and the mammalian olfactory system and employs a variety of experimental and computational techniques. His laboratory invented the neural-simulation system GENESIS and pioneered techniques in multi-single-unit neuronal recording. He has a longstanding interest and involvement in science education at all levels, having founded several international courses in computational neuroscience and established annual computational neuroscience meetings.
Dr. Bower has also been involved in educational reform efforts since he was President of the Teen League of Rochester (NY) as a high school student from 1970 - 1971. While at Caltech, he founded and directed the Caltech Precollege Science Initiative (CAPSI). He has been a member of numerous national advisory groups on education, including the National Research Council of the National Academy of Science, the National Science Foundation and the Society for Neuroscience.
He has published more than 100 scientific articles and has authored several books. Bower received a Ph.D. in neurophysiology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Stewart Brand
Author, Futurist, Activist and Visionary
Since he emerged in the counter-culture sixties, Stewart Brand has been a force in the world for giving access to the information needed to make the planet a better place.
He is a co-founder and managing director of Global Business Network, a scenario strategy consulting business and part of the Monitor Group, where he works with leading companies and public institutions on their futures.
Mr. Brand is the president of The Long Now Foundation. Brand is well known for founding, editing and publishing the Whole Earth Catalog (1968-85), which received a National Book Award for the 1972 issue. In 1984, he founded The WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link), a computer teleconference system for the San Francisco Bay Area. It now has 11,000 active users worldwide and is considered a bellwether of the genre.
Brand has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the Santa Fe Institute, an interdisciplinary center studying the sciences of complexity, since 1989. He received the Golden Gadfly Lifetime Achievement Award from the Media Alliance, San Francisco in the same year. He was a founding member of the Board of Directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization which supports civil rights and responsibilities in electronic media, and is an acting advisor to Ecotrust, the Portland-based preservers of temperate rain forests from Alaska to San Francisco.
Recently, he has advocated nuclear power as a responsible strategy to address power demand in the face of the stark reality of global warming. His seminal essay on this topic, entitled Environmental Heresies, appeared in the MIT Technology Review in May 2005.
Brand is the author of many pioneering books including The Clock Of The Long Now in 1999, How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built in 1994, The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT in 1987, and Two Cybernetic Frontiers on Gregory Bateson and cutting-edge computer science in 1974. It had the first use of the term "personal computer" in print and was the first book to report on computer hackers.
Larry Brilliant
Pioneering Physician and Philanthropist; President, Skoll Urgent Threats Fund
A self-described social change"addict," Dr. Larry Brilliant is a pioneering physician and global philanthropist. He is currently president of the Skoll Urgent Threats Fund, a new organization within the Skoll Foundation launched to address urgent threats confronting humanity and the planet. The focus of the organization is to identify and support innovative high-impact initiatives to combat climate change, water scarcity, pandemic, nuclear proliferation and Middle East conflict.
Prior to his appointment at The Skoll Foundation, Larry was the first executive director of Google.org, the company's philanthropic arm before becoming chief philanthropy evangelist for Google. An M.D., M.P.H., and board-certified in preventive medicine, epidemiology and public health, Larry was one of a four-person international team that led the successful World Health Organization smallpox eradication program in India and South Asia. He later founded the Seva Foundation of Berkeley, California, which works in dozens of countries around the world to eliminate preventable and curable blindness. Seva's projects have given back sight to nearly 3 million people. Last year, Time magazine named Brilliant one of the 20 most influential scientists and thinkers and one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
In addition to sitting on the board of the Skoll Foundation, Larry was elected to membership in the Council on Foreign Relations in 2009 and sits on the boards of Health Metrics Network and Omidyar Networks Humanity United.
Larry's work has been praised and awarded recognition throughout the last decade. In 2008, Brilliant was given a Global Leadership Award by the United Nations Organization. In 2006, he received the TED Prize. He was named "International Public Health Hero" by the University of California in 2004. He has also received numerous other awards, prizes and two honorary doctorates.
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 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.
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.
Sir Richard Dearlove
Renowned Expert on Global Intelligence and Security
Sir Richard Dearlove has established himself as a scarce but in-demand commentator on the new century’s security threats. Only since his retirement as the Chief of British Intelligence in 2004 has he been able to dispose of his hard-won knowledge and experience for the benefit of private audiences. He still keeps an inquisitive media at arms length and refuses to write about his extraordinary career.
Sir Richard joined British Intelligence as a very young front-line officer in 1966 and worked extensively in Africa, behind the Iron Curtain, and in Europe. He experienced the Cold War at first hand and established his reputation quickly as a skillful spymaster. In his recent book, George Tenet describes him as the "spies spy."
Dearlove served as the British Intelligence representative in Washington during the presidency of George H.W. Bush, moving on to fill all of the key senior management roles in MI6, before his appointment in 1999 as ‘C’ (as the Chief of MI6 is known in British Government circles). He sensed early the changing nature of Intelligence work in the post-Cold War world and was radical in his approach to its restructuring, particularly in countering the growing terrorist threat.
At the center of the infamous leaked ‘Downing Street Memo,’ Sir Richard has had an insider’s view of key events and developments – 9/11, the continuing threat from Al Qaeda, Iraq, Afghanistan, the disarmament of Libya, the Iranian nuclear program—and he was of course an interlocutor of some of the leading players. His 38 years in Intelligence, and more than a decade in a leadership role, have given him a unique perspective on this closed and misinterpreted world.
Sir Richard is currently the Master of Pembroke College Cambridge, founded in 1347, one of Cambridge University’s leading teaching and research Colleges. He advises widely on risk and national security. He is a member of the International Advisory Board of AIG, senior advisor to the Monitor Group and Chairman of Ascot Underwriting at Lloyd’s of London. He was knighted by the Queen in 2001.
Cory Doctorow
Technology Activist, Journalist and Science Fiction Writer
Cory Doctorow is a science fiction novelist, blogger and technology activist. He is the co-editor of the popular weblog Boing Boing (boingboing.net), and a contributor to Wired, Popular Science, Make, The New York Times, and many other newspapers, magazines and websites. He was formerly Director of European Affairs for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org), a non-profit civil liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards and treaties. In 2007, he served as the Fulbright Chair at the Annenberg Center for Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California.
Cory co-founded the open source peer-to-peer software company OpenCola, sold to OpenText, Inc. in 2003, and presently serves on the boards and advisory boards of the Participatory Culture Foundation, the MetaBrainz Foundation, Technorati, Inc., the Organization for Transformative Works, Areae, the Annenberg Center for the Study of Online Communities, and Onion Networks, Inc.
His novels are published and simultaneously released on the Internet under Creative Commons licenses that encourage their re-use and sharing, a move that increases his sales by enlisting his readers to help promote his work. He has won the Locus and Sunburst Awards, and been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and British Science Fiction Awards. His latest novel, The New York Times Bestseller Little Brother, was published in May 2008, and his latest short story collection is Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present. In 2008, Tachyon Books published a collection of his essays, called Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright and the Future of the Future (with an introduction by John Perry Barlow) and IDW published a collection of comic books inspired by his short fiction called Cory Doctorow's Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now. His next novel is Makers, due in October, 2009. Cory is presently working on a new young adult novel, For the Win which is about union organizing in video games.
In 2007, Entertainment Weekly called him, "The William Gibson of his generation." He was also named one of Forbes Magazine's 2007/8 Web Celebrities, and one of the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leaders for 2007.
Joshua Epstein
Behavioral Scientist; Founder, Center on Social and Economic Dynamics, Brookings Institution
Josh Epstein is the Director of the Center on Social and Economic Dynamics at The Brookings Institution, and the author of Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science from the Bottom Up. He is a pioneer in the field of agent-based modeling approaches and has applied them to the front-burner problems facing Americans: War, Terrorism, Health, Disaster Preparedness, Immigration, the Future of Cities.
Josh is a natural teacher and a great entertainer. Using computer-generated simulations, he lucidly explains why the bottom-up approach to explaining social phenomena gives better results and why these tools are so powerful and broadly applicable. It’s as if Newton were explaining the power of his newly discovered Calculus to uncover the secrets of the physical world, but applied to societal systems like business organizations, cities, or political decision makers. Epstein illustrates this power with compelling discussions of a wide range of examples, chosen for relevance to the audience.
Princeton University Press recently published Josh’s Generative Social Science, a volume bringing together work ranging from organizational behavior in business to the rise and fall of the ancient Anasazi in the Southwest.
Tamara Erickson
Award-winning Author; Expert on Organizations, the Changing Workforce, and Generations at Work
Tamara Erickson is a McKinsey Award-winning author and widely respected expert on organizations and the changing workforce—on the shifting relationships between individuals and corporations—and on enhancing innovation and workforce productivity. Her work is based on extensive research on changing demographics and employee values and, most recently, on how successful organizations innovate through collaboration. Tammy offers a fundamentally optimistic point of view, along with fascinating trends and actionable counsel.
A popular and engaging storyteller. Tammy creates custom sessions for your group that are interactive and fun. She is skilled at keynotes, workshops, and innovative multi-day executive sessions.
Tammy co-authored four Harvard Business Review articles (the first, "It’s Time to Retire Retirement,” earned her the McKinsey Award), one MIT Sloan Management Review article, and the book Workforce Crisis: How to Beat the Coming Shortage of Skills and Talent a guide for corporations. Her weekly blog “Across the Ages” is on HBSP Online. Tammy is currently writing a series of books, one for each generation, including the recently released Retire Retirement: Career Strategies for the Boomer Generation.
A respected authority on technology and its implications for business, Tammy also co-authored Third Generation R&D: Managing the Link to Corporate Strategy. The book is a widely accepted guide to making technology investments and managing innovative organizations.
Dean Esserman
Highly Acclaimed Police Chief
He’s not a typical police chief. By promoting novel approaches like “social justice” and community policing, Dean Esserman transformed the once-corrupt Providence, RI police department and—along the way—earned national recognition modeling leadership in his profession. He has attracted the attention of business leaders intrigued by his innovative, invigorating management style and his ability to affect large-scale change. All of this from a former pre-med student.
Dean’s journey to his current role as the Providence Chief of Police began unconventionally during his sophomore year at Dartmouth College. He was studying history and pre-med when he accepted an off-term internship through Dartmouth’s Medical School to help design and establish a medical rescue unit for the New York Transit Police. The experience changed Dean, who became fascinated by the unexpected responsibilities required by cops in their daily work. As America’s first responders, police are called to handle myriad social situations—women in labor, landlord disputes, even malfunctioning heating systems in tenement buildings. Dean realized that—through a career in law enforcement—he could make a real, measurable impact on his community. Dean decided to forego a degree in medicine and pursue law school instead, and so began his lifelong passion and commitment to public service.
After graduating from NYU Law School, he served as Assistant District Attorney in Brooklyn and then General Counsel to the New York Transit Police. During his tenure in New York, he found a mentor in Chief William Bratton, one of the nation’s most visible, successful police chiefs. Dean remains Bratton’s protégé today. “I could see from the start he was just this very bright individual with a New York background and someone with one of the most extensive collections of books about police and crime I’d ever seen,” recalls Bratton, the current chief of the LAPD.
Dean left his New York post to serve as the Assistant Chief of Police for New Haven, CT. There, he implemented the city's first community policing plan and the state's first federally-funded drug gang task force, and he cut crime city-wide.
Following his position in New Haven, Dean assumed the Chief of Police role for the M.T.A. Metro North Police Department, where he led an agency-wide terrorism threat-assessment study and implemented a multi-million dollar security upgrade at Grand Central station. In 1998, he was appointed Chief of Police in Stamford, Connecticut, where his philosophy of community-oriented policing contributed to a 50% reduction in the city’s crime rate.
In January 2003, when new Providence Mayor David Cicilline took office, the police department had been accused of favoritism and corruption. Cicilline’s predecessor, Vincent A. “Buddy” Cianci, had created a criminal enterprise riddled with corruption, and crime was ever-escalating. One of the mayor’s first orders of business was to turn the police force around, and he called on Dean Esserman to do it. Since then, Chief Esserman has revamped the city’s crime-fighting force and replaced the department’s traditional methods with a community policing concept. The results? An inspired command staff, a double digit drop in Providence’s overall crime rate for three years running, and a transformed city.
Dean is a graduate Dartmouth College (B.A.) and New York University School of Law (J.D.). He holds a faculty appointment at the Yale University Child Study Center. He is a member of the New York and Massachusetts Bar and currently serves as the Senior Law Enforcement Executive-in-Residence at the Roger Williams University Justice System Training and Research Institute.
Laura Fitton
Prominent "Micro-Blogger" and Social Media Consultant
Laura "@Pistachio" Fitton is leading the charge of sussing out intelligent and productive business uses of emergent technologies like Twitter, where she is read by thousands of community members. The first to publish a white paper on "Enterprise Microsharing" (popularly called "Internal Twitter"), she also writes for and runs the TouchBase blog and is an early beta tester of Seesmic and Qik. She re-launched Pistachio Consulting in September 2008 to connect businesses to new ideas and innovations using all the tools of microsharing. Pistachio comprises the TouchBase blog (covering business use of microsharing), the TouchBase Link Blog (stream of Twitter and microsharing articles for businesspeople, wherever they are published), serves clients like Ford Motor Corporation, PeopleBrowsr, The Sister Project, Transplant-1 and CommuNteligence, and is writing Twitter for Dummies for Wiley publishing, due July 2009.
Laura's innovative use of social media has gotten the attention of the top minds in technology, as profiled by Naked Conversations author Shel Israel for his Global Survey. Her work is featured in five books published in 2008 including Seth Godin's Tribes, Liz Lynch's Smart Networking, Paul Gillin's Secrets of Social Media Marketing, and Julio Ojeda's Twitter Means Business. Laura has also been quoted in The New York Times Magazine, BusinessWeek, The New York Times, The LA Times, Entrepreneur Magazine, Newsweek.com, Inc.com, FastCompany.com, The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, CIO Magazine, CNET, ZDNet, ComputerWorld and many other magazines, publications, web shows and blogs. She speaks on business use of microsharing for private clients and at technology conferences. She has guest lectured at Bentley College, Clemson and Emerson.
Laura is a magna cum laude graduate of Cornell University's eclectic College Scholar program. In "past lives" she studied science writing with Carl Sagan, rock climbed, sailed on a schooner, raised a niece, ran a hobby farm, traveled and lived abroad.
Today she lives in Boston with two toddler daughters and a giant Leonberger. She practices Ashtanga yoga and plays ice hockey in her "spare" time, and is a stroke survivor dedicated to raising awareness.
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.
Julie Gilbert
Founder and CEO, WOLF Means Business
A proven entrepreneur, Julie Gilbert has spent her career building industry-changing businesses. She is the founder and CEO of WOLF Means Business, a consulting firm that helps clients grow customer marketshare through a visionary expansion process—WOLF—that Julie created and scaled while working as a senior vice president at Best Buy. Julie built WOLF more than five years ago to engage Best Buy employees, consumers, and partners as part of the organization's broad innovation and reinvention initiatives. Today, through WOLF Means Business, Julie implements the WOLF model within companies in all industries to help executives achieve sizable revenue growth.
Through WOLF, Best Buy grew female revenue by more than $4.4 billion in less than five years. WOLF also helped Best Buy reduce female employee turnover by more than 5% each year and increase the number of women at all levels of the company by more than 18%.
Before launching WOLF Means Business, Julie spent more than 16 years building new capabilities and revenue streams for her employers. In a retail role at Best Buy, she led the enormously successful Magnolia Home Theatre and U.S. Virgin Mobile launches. Previously, Julie spent eight years at Deloitte & Touche, where she developed new businesses within the organization.
A motivational speaker and teacher, Julie has presented to more than 100,000 people internationally. Her areas of expertise include creating innovation networks, reinventing business models to achieve growth, customer and employee engagement, authentic leadership, and female and ethnic minority business leadership. She has consulted with many Fortune 100 companies around these topics and others. Her offices are located in New York City and Minneapolis.
She has been profiled in the Harvard Business Review, Business Week, ABC News, USA Today, Global Pulse, among other media outlets. Additionally, she has taught classes at the IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland, New York University, and University of Minnesota Carlson School of Business.
The White House Project honored Julie with the EPIC “Circle of 10 Award” and the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal named her one of Minnesota’s Women to Watch. She was recently named one of the Top 15 Women in Business by PINK magazine. Julie authors a monthly blog for PINK magazine and the Harvard Business School. She serves on the boards of the Women's Leadership Board at Harvard's Kennedy School and the White House Project.
Julie has a Masters in Business in strategy and marketing and an undergraduate degree in accounting, both from the University of Minnesota. She is a certified public accountant in the state of MN. She is has a passion for fitness, dancing, and her family, and she resides in New York City.
Dan Gillmor
Expert on Citizen Media and the Internet
Dan Gillmor is a leading authority on the phenomenon of media literacy and citizen journalism. In January 2008, he was appointed director of a new Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. In that capacity, he is leading the effort to help create a culture of innovation and risk-taking in journalism education, and in the wider media world. Dan also serves as the school's Kauffman Professor of digital media entrepreneurship.
Additionally, Dan is founder and director of the Center for Citizen Media, a project to enhance and expand grassroots media and its reach. The center is an affiliate of ASU and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University Law School.
One of the preeminent thinkers on the topic of new media, Dan brings deep knowledge of the collision of media and technology and its impact. He is author of We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People, a book that explains the rise of citizens' media and why it matters.
Dan spent more than 25 years in the newspaper industry as a reporter, writer, and editor and remains a highly-respected journalist. For more than a decade, he was a columnist at the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper, and wrote a weblog for SiliconValley.com. He joined the San Jose Mercury News after six years with the Detroit Free Press. Before that, he was with the Kansas City Times and several newspapers in Vermont. He has won or shared in several regional and national journalism awards.
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.
Sam Gosling
Psychologist, Author, Expert on Human Perception
Sam Gosling is an author and associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a nationally regarded researcher and innovator in the field of personality and social psychology. His work has been widely covered in the media, including The New York Times, Psychology Today, NPR, and "Good Morning America," and his research is featured in Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. Gosling is the recipient of the American Psychological Association's Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution.
Gosling’s recently published book, Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You, is a provocative and witty look at how our private spaces—from boardroom to bedroom—reveal our personalities, whether we know it or not! Does what's on your desk reveal what's on your mind? Do those pictures on your walls tell true tales about you? For the last ten years Gosling has been studying how people project (and protect) their inner selves. By exploring our private worlds, he explores not only how we showcase our personalities in unexpected—and unplanned—ways, but also how we create personality in the first place, communicate it others, and interpret the world around us.
Rebecca Henderson
Business and Technology Strategist, Educator, Researcher
Rebecca Henderson is the 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.”
Andrew Heyward
Media Maven and Commentator
Andrew Heyward is a nationally recognized media expert whose particular area of expertise is the rapidly shifting media landscape.
Andrew is a senior advisor to Marketspace LLC, a subsidiary of Monitor Group that specializes in helping companies use digital technology to drive growth and revenue by enhancing customer interactions. He works with clients to create and strengthen original online content, make more effective use of broadband video, deepen engagement through online communities, and develop new business models for the digital era.
Heyward was President, CBS News, from January 1996-November 2005.
During that time, CBS News programming grew significantly in audience, regularly scheduled hours and profitability. Under Heyward’s leadership, CBS News’s tradition of journalistic quality and integrity was recognized with an extraordinary number of broadcast journalism’s most prestigious awards: 57 News and Documentary Emmys, 13 Peabody, 13 Alfred I. DuPont/Columbia University, six Overseas Press Club and 46 RTNDA/Edward R. Murrow Awards. The list of Murrows includes seven for Overall Excellence: four for television—including 2003, 2004 and 2005—and three on the radio side.
Heyward also spearheaded CBS News’s move into new media. Its award-winning website, CBSNews.com, became increasingly competitive and was a leader in providing free, advertiser-supported broadband video. Heyward also was a key force in the establishment of the leading financial news website, CBS MarketWatch, and served on its board of directors from its founding in 1997 to its acquisition by Dow Jones in January 2005.
Before his tenure as President, Heyward was executive producer, CBS Evening News, and Vice President, CBS News (October 1994-January 1996). Heyward was also responsible for developing and launching 48 Hours, the primetime CBS News hour that premiered in January 1988. He has won 12 national Emmy Awards.
Heyward was born in New York. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with a B.A. in history and literature.
Peter Hirshberg
Chairman, Technorati; Marketing Innovator and Serial Entrepreneur
Peter Hirshberg is at the epicenter of the noisy, connected world of online conversation. He is changing our thinking about marketing, branding and customer relationships. A Silicon Valley executive with several high profile marketing and branding related ventures, Peter has led emerging media and technology companies at the center of disruptive change for more than 20 years. He is chairman of the executive committee of Technorati, the leading aggregator of user generated content in the world, tracking over 100 million Weblogs and 70,000 posts per hour. He is also co-founder and chairman of The Conversation Group, a fast growing agency helping brands with strategy and marketing in a world of empowered and connected audiences and customers.
Previously Hirshberg served as president and CEO of Gloss.com, the online prestige beauty business co-owned by Estee Lauder Companies, Chanel and Clarins; he was Chairman of Interpacket Networks, the global leader in Internet-by-satellite (sold to American Tower in 2000), and was founder and CEO of Elemental Software (sold to Macromedia in 1999).
During a nine-year tenure at Apple Computer, Hirshberg headed Enterprise Marketing, where he grew Apple's large business and government revenue to $1 billion annually and helped lead the company’s entry into the online service arena. After leaving Apple, Hirshberg's new-media strategy firm served clients including America Online, Microsoft, NBC Television Network, Estee Lauder, Pacific Bell and Silicon Graphics.
Hirshberg is a founder of Goodmail Systems, a board member of ICTV, and serves on the advisory boards of start-ups Ideeli and Aniboom. He is a Trustee of The Computer History Museum and a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute. Peter earned his bachelor's degree at Dartmouth College and his MBA at Wharton.
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.
Yukon Huang
Senior Advisor and Former Director, World Bank China Program
Yukon Huang is a noted expert on financial and development issues for emerging markets, with a focus on East Asia (China in particular) as well as the Former Soviet Union. He is currently a consultant and senior advisor to the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, various governments and private companies.
He was the World Bank’s first field based Country Director for China from 1997-2004 and from 1992-97 Director for Russia and Central Asia. As Director, he was responsible for the Bank’s two largest lending programs, which included developing, negotiating and supervising investment loans totaling over $20 billion. These involved some 100 projects ranging from major power systems, to financial restructuring and basic education. He also supervised a program of research and policy studies covering economic and financial issues for these countries.
From 2004 to 2006, as the Senior Advisor to the East Asia Vice-President, he managed a broad range of financial and development issues for East Asia.
In previous World Bank assignments he was responsible for overseeing the Bank’s overall lending and risk assessment policies and also served as Lead Economist and Country Operations Chief for Asia.
Prior to joining the Bank, Dr. Huang worked at the US Treasury on international economic issues and taught and conducted research at various universities in the United States, Asia and Africa.
His publications have included in-depth studies on a number of key emerging markets in Asia, Europe and Africa as well as fiscal and financial policies for developing countries more generally. His recent work includes a volume of country studies on how location and spatial factors have affected growth in East Asia (Reshaping Economic Geography in East Asia) and an edited collection of papers by noted specialists on the future of East Asia (East Asia Visions: Perspectives on Economic Development).
Dr. Huang received his B.A. in Economics from Yale University. His Masters and Ph.D. in Economics are from Princeton University.
Jeff Jarvis
Noted Blogger, Digital Journalist, Author
Jeff Jarvis is one of the most provocative and optimistic voices weighing in on the future of media, technology and business today. At the forefront of the media world for over 2 decades, Jeff is author of What Would Google Do?. He writes about media, technology and business on his blog, Buzzmachine.com. He also writes a new media column for The Guardian and is host of its Media Talk USA podcast. Jeff is associate professor and director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York’s new Graduate School of Journalism. He is consulting editor and a partner at Daylife, a news startup. Until 2005, he was president and creative director of Advance.net, the online arm of Advance Publications. Prior to that, Jarvis was creator and founding editor of Entertainment Weekly; Sunday editor and associate publisher of the New York Daily News; TV critic for TV Guide and People; a columnist on the San Francisco Examiner; assistant city editor and reporter for the Chicago Tribune; reporter for Chicago Today.
Jeff consults and has spoken for a number of media companies – including the Guardian, News Corp., USA Today, VH1, Sky.com, The New York Times, Burda, Advance Publications, Hearst–and major brands–including GM, Nike, Avaya, Chrysler, Estée Lauder, Starcom, and Edelman.
John Kao
Innovation Strategist and Practitioner, Transformation Catalyst
John Kao is an authority on the intersecting subjects of corporate innovation and transformation, design, and the future of business. Dubbed a “serial innovator” and “Mr. Creativity” by The Economist, he has made a career out of helping organizations go from “getting” the importance of innovation to “getting innovation done.” John has worked with a wide range of Fortune 500 companies, startups, and government agencies around practical issues of strategic innovation and organizational transformation. Other nicknames he acquired from his clients include “the Innovation Sherpa” and “the Innovation Guru.”
In addition to his other accomplishments, John is an entrepreneur, best-selling author, Tony-nominated producer, and business pioneer. For 14 years, he taught at Harvard Business School, where he developed courses, lectures, and executive seminars that addressed the topics of entrepreneurship, venture management, innovation, leadership, and organizational change. He has also been a visiting professor at the MIT Media Lab as well as Distinguished Visiting Professor of Innovation at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey.
John's most recent book on the global dynamics of innovation is called Innovation Nation: How America Is Losing Its Innovation Edge, Why It Matters and How We Can Get It Back. It pays particular attention to what America’s innovation posture needs to be in a world in which many countries are racing for the innovation high ground, such as Singapore, Denmark, Dubai, China, and Brazil.
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 recently 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. His forthcoming book on innovation effectiveness, The Taming of the New, is expected next year.
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.
Kevin Kelly
Technology Visionary
Kevin Kelly has been a participant of, and reporter on, the information technology revolution for the past 20 years. Based in his studio in Pacifica, California, he immerses himself in the long-term trends of technology, tools, new media, and cultural behavior. He writes about the ripple effects and social consequences surrounding the culture of technology. Kevin Kelly is currently Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He helped launch Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor until January 1999. During Kelly’s tenure as editor at Wired, the magazine won two National Magazine Awards (the industry’s equivalent of two Oscars). He is also currently editor and publisher of the Cool Tools website, which gets 1 million visitors per month. From 1984-1990, Kevin was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review, a journal of unorthodox technical news. He co-founded the ongoing Hackers’ Conference, and was involved with the launch of the WELL, a pioneering online service started in 1985. He authored the best-selling New Rules for the New Economy, and the classic book on decentralized emergent systems, Out of Control (called “required reading for all executives” by Fortune). In addition, he writes for prominent publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Time, Harpers, Science, GQ, and Esquire. Earlier in life, Kevin was a photographer in remote parts of Asia (instead of going to college), publishing his photographs in national magazines and recently in the photo art book Asia Grace.
Steve Kerr
Senior Advisor, Goldman Sachs; Expert on Leadership Development
Steve Kerr is a Senior Advisor at Goldman Sachs. As the former Chief Learning Officer (CLO), Steve's work has helped foster the firm’s values; namely, putting clients’ interests first and creating a culture that emphasizes integrity, excellence, innovation, and teamwork. He helps the executives he trains develop leadership skills and professional expertise in an environment that encourages mobility.
A pioneer in his field, Steve was one of the first corporate educators to hold the CLO title, which he assumed during his tenure at General Electric (GE). He spent more than seven years at GE as CLO and vice president of leadership development, where he reported to Jack Welch and was responsible for GE's renowned leadership education center at Crotonville.
He joined Goldman Sachs in March 2001 and immediately began working to expand the distinctive Goldman Sachs culture at Pine Street, the learning arm of the company that touches some 2,500 of Goldman Sachs’ 20,000 global and domestic employees.
Previously, Dr. Kerr served on the faculties of Ohio State University, the University of Southern California, and the University of Michigan. He was dean of the faculty of the USC business school from 1985 to 1989.
Dr. Kerr is a past-president of the Academy of Management, the world's largest association of academicians in management. He is an acknowledged author, editor, and speaker, and he has contributed to many academic and popular publications on management and organizational behavior. His well-known publications are The Boundaryless Organization (Jossey-Bass, 1995; co-author); Ultimate Rewards (Harvard Business School Press, 1997; editor); and a FORTUNE article titled "Risky Business: The New Pay Game" (July 22, 1996). Dr. Kerr earned a Ph.D. in management and organizational psychology from the City University of New York.
Vanessa Kirsch
Social Entrepreneur; President and Founder of New Profit Inc.
Vanessa Kirsch is the President and Founder of New Profit Inc. With more than 17 years of experience in developing innovative solutions to social problems, Vanessa is widely recognized as a leading social entrepreneur. Her experience, combined with a trip around the world in 1995 when she met with other social entrepreneurs, citizen leaders, philanthropists, and political officials, led her to start New Profit.
New Profit is a national venture philanthropy fund that unites engaged philanthropists with visionary social entrepreneurs to grow their social innovations to scale. Partnering with social entrepreneurs who are focused on a range of issues from early childhood literacy to college access for low-income youth, New Profit provides performance-based grants, strategic guidance, coaching, and performance management techniques for nonprofit organizations to maximize the impact of their work to create long-term social change. New Profit is funded by a community of passionate, social change investors who are eager to identify, support, and grow high-impact nonprofits.
Prior to launching New Profit, Vanessa founded and led two nonprofit organizations, Public Allies and the Women's Information Network. Public Allies, a national youth service organization, grew to six cities under Vanessa's leadership and was named by the Bush Administration as one of eight model national service programs in America, and by the Clinton Administration as an official AmeriCorps national service model. The Woman's Information Network (WIN), an organization that provides support, training, and political access to young women, grew to a membership of 2,000. Prior to launching these entrepreneurial organizations, Vanessa worked with Peter Hart of Peter D. Hart Research Associates, a polling firm, and played a key role in several projects including a study on young people's civic attitudes. This study, combined with her experience as a convention manager and field coordinator for the Dukakis presidential campaign, led her to start Public Allies.
Vanessa has received numerous public service awards and recognition for her work. In 2007, she received the Boston History & Innovation Collaborative’s History & Innovation Award for Social Innovation. In 2005, Ernst & Young named Vanessa “Entrepreneur of the Year” in the category of Social Entrepreneurship, an award that recognizes the innovation, vision, and tenacity of New England’s top entrepreneurs. Vanessa also has been recognized by both Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report as a leader of her generation; by Forbes as one of 15 innovators who will reinvent the future; by Harper’s Bazaar as one of 30 young women to be leaders in the 21st century; by Fast Company as "Who’s Fast 2000"; and by the Boston Business Journal’s “40 Under 40” as one of the most promising leaders in Boston. Additionally, she was selected as one of the World Economic Forum’s Global Leaders for Tomorrow (GLT) for the year 2003. Currently, Vanessa serves on the Board of Overseers to Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, and on the Board of College Summit.
Vanessa is a graduate of Tufts University where she served as a TCU Senator and student member on the Board of Trustees and currently serves on the Alumni Council.
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.
Ruth Lande
Expert on Middle East and Foreign Policy
Ruth Lande is the Foreign Affairs and World Jewish Affairs' Advisor to the President of the State of Israel, Mr. Shimon Peres. Her personal history, education, and impressive professional experience make her uniquely qualified to advise governments, corporations, and NGOs on Middle East-related issues.
The focus of Ruth’s work spans a broad spectrum including Arab-Israeli relations, US-Israeli strategic alliances, cross-cultural negotiation, and counterterrorism and nonproliferation. She is also passionate about the role women must play in the quest for peace in the Middle East. A born diplomat, Ruth is committed to closing the gaps in the global religious and cultural divide. Her thoughtful approach helps others better understand the myriad of interconnected issues that impact business, economics, culture, and politics in the region.
Ruth was born in Israel and raised in Cape Town, South Africa. She returned to Israel as a teenager and graduated, Cum Laude, from Bar Ilan University with a degree in International Relations and Communications. After completing her studies, she served as a political analyst in the Israeli Defense Force intelligence, rising to the rank of Captain.
Following military service, Ruth joined the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where she served as the desk officer for the UK, Ireland, and Scandinavia. She was promoted to Advisor to the Deputy Director General for Strategic Affairs in the Foreign Ministry, dealing with counter-terrorism and counter-proliferation issues. During this time, she earned a Master of Arts (Cum Laude) in International Relations from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She received the “Simcha Pratt Prize” for excellence on a paper analyzing the Oslo Negotiations, and her reputation led to a three-year appointment as the political and economic advisor in the Israeli embassy in Cairo. She completed her service there as the Deputy Chief of Mission.
In 2006, Ruth w as awarded a Wexner Fellowship to study at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where she earned another master’s degree before assuming her current position with President Peres’s office.
Ruth speaks fluent Hebrew, English, Russian, and Arabic, as well as conversational French.
Ruth with the President of the State of Israel, Mr. Shimon Peres
Ruth with the President of the United States, Mr. Barack Obama
Jaron Lanier
Computer Scientist, Composer, Visual Artist, and Commentator on All Things Digital
Jaron Lanier is a musician, writer, and technological visionary. He came on the scene with his work in Virtual Reality (VR), a term he coined. In the early 1980s, he founded VPL Research—the first company to sell VR products—and, since then, he has remained one of the world’s most respected digerati.
Jaron has collaborated broadly with researchers in machine vision, computational neuroscience, cell biology modeling, and other disciplines defining the border between human cognition and the rest of the world. He also is working with physicists on “digital” approaches to fundamental theories.
He writes and speaks on numerous topics, including high-technology business, the social impact of technological practices, the philosophy of consciousness and information, Internet politics, and the future of humanism.
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.
Mats Lederhausen
Investor and Advisor to Purpose-Driven Enterprises
After a long career both as a Joint Venture Partner and as a senior executive of McDonald’s Corporation, Mats Lederhausen formed his own company in early 2007. The company focuses on building businesses with a purpose bigger than their product. This focus comes from a strong belief that purpose is paramount in today's marketplace. Companies with stronger conviction can attract energy and loyalty both from consumers and employees. The primary mission of BE-CAUSE is to invest in companies that need to scale an already tested and promising aspiration. Mats will use his experience from building thousands of units in many international markets for several concepts. Mats will also continue to do selective consulting projects for companies in the areas of CSR, Corporate Reputation, Innovation and Strategy. Mats currently serves as a senior advisor to the McDonald’s Management team on both asset management and Brand Trust.
Prior to forming BE-CAUSE, Mats served as Managing Director of McDonald’s Ventures. McDonald’s Ventures managed the investments McDonald’s held in future oriented growth initiatives including Chipotle Mexican Grill, Boston Market, RedBox DVD and Pret A Manger. As a director, Chairman and finally lead director of Chipotle from 2000-2006 Mats helped shape the strategy that ultimately led to one of the most successful restaurant IPOs of all times. Mats continues to serve on the boards of Pret A Manger, RedBox and Donatos Pizzeria.
Mats joined McDonald’s Corporation in 1999 as head of global strategy. During the next 4 years he had the responsibility for global strategy and business development. As President of Business Development Mats later assumed responsibility for worldwide menu, worldwide real estate and restaurant R&D. During these years Mats played a key role in shaping the agenda that later has helped McDonald’s complete one of the most successful corporate turnarounds in recent history.
Born in Stockholm, Sweden, Mats began his career with McDonald's in 1979 as a part time crew member in Sweden. In 1983, he participated in the McDonald's Management Development Program and worked as a store manager from 1984 to 1985. Lederhausen worked for The Boston Consulting Group in London from 1988 to 1990. In 1990, he returned to McDonald's and in 1993 became the Managing Director and Joint Venture Partner for McDonald's Sweden. Under his leadership, the company grew from 40 restaurants to nearly 170 restaurants.
Mats was named one of Crain’s Chicago Business’ “40 under 40” to watch in 1999 and the World Economic Forum honored him as a “Global Leader of Tomorrow” in 2000. Mats serves as Chairman of the board for the not-for-profit Business for Social Responsibility and serves on the board of trustees of Ronald McDonald House Charities. Mats received a Master’s degree from Stockholm School of Economics in 1988. Mats lives in Chicago with his wife, Dr. Jessica Lederhausen and their 4 children.
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. She is the co-author of the business best-seller, Groundswell: Winning In A World Transformed By Social Technologies, published by Harvard Business Press in May 2008. 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.
Alaina Love
Author and Expert on the Purpose Linked Organization
Alaina Love is president of Purpose Linked Consulting (PLC), an international leadership and organization consulting firm. Through her extensive research and experiences as a practitioner, she knows first-hand that when employees are passionate about their jobs, organizations and individuals benefit from what passion ignites: job satisfaction and increased morale, retention, productivity, and results.
In June 2009, Alaina and co-author Marc Cugnon released The Purpose Linked Organization: How Passionate Leaders Inspire Winning Teams and Great Results. The highly-acclaimed book identifies 10 “Passion Profile Archetypes” and details the strengths, vulnerabilities, and proper care and feeding of all. According to the authors' research, leaders who operate at the intersect of their skills, values, and passions (The Performance Nexus) capitalize on a performance triad that provides a powerful platform for achieving great results. The Purpose Linked Organization offers tangible ways to channel the power of employees' passions in a positive, purposeful direction. It further describes how to link skills, values, and passions to performance and enables readers to confidently assess their personal purpose and passions to help ensure that their roles will be as engaging, fulfilling, and productive as possible.
Alaina brings 26 years of corporate executive and consulting experience to large Fortune 500 firms as well as small, independent companies and hospitals. Prior to founding PLC, she spent more than 12 years at Merck & Co., Inc., where she was executive director of human resources, a research scientist, and a clinical researcher. Today, she advises and speaks to organizations about how to make purpose and passion the centerpiece of the leadership agenda. She has developed a broad range of comprehensive HR and organization development tools, including The Passion Profiler™, which assesses one's purpose and work-related passions.
Alaina is a graduate of the University of Michigan Business School’s Change Leadership Program, studied human resources at Rutgers University and medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine and holds an undergraduate degree in medical technology from Monmouth University. Alaina has been awarded the distinction of Senior Professional in Human Resources by the Society of Human Resource Management. Her work has taken her to Asia, Europe, Canada and Latin America.
Chris Luebkeman
Architect, Engineer, Designer of the Built Environment
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 and 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 hoistically. 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.
Kevin Maney
Acclaimed Author and Award-Winning Journalist
Acclaimed author and award-winning journalist Kevin Many has interviewed many of the biggest names in business. He was recruited by Condé Nast Portfolio magazine prior to its launch in 2007, and he was a contributing editor there until its demise in April 2009. His primary work focused on technology, and he was responsible for covering the industry's leading characters, its game-changing emerging technology, and its big ideas. Kevin has a reputation as an industry insider; he has been scanning the technology scene as it happens—every day—for 25 years, in a relentless pursuit to identify and follow the trends that matter.
Before joining Condé Nast Portfolio, Kevin was a senior technology writer and columnist for USA Today. With access to a broad range of leaders and innovators in technology and communications, he has visited thousands of companies and interviewed virtually every important player in technology. His expertise is not limited to the technology sector, however. He is well-versed on management and leadership issues and how great companies get built. He wrote The Maverick and His Machine: Thomas Watson Sr. and the Creation of IBM. Named one of BusinessWeek’s 10 best books in 2003, the chronicle follows and analyzes how Watson built IBM from its inception in 1914 to 1956. Kevin also wrote the bestselling Megamedia Shakehout: The Inside Story of the Leaders and the Losers In the Exploding Communications Industry, which tracks the revolution in communications and its technologies. His next book, Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don't, will be released in September 2009. The book will show how the conflicting forces between fidelity (the consumer's experience) and convenience (the ease of getting and paying for a product) determine the success, or failure, of new products and services.
With a seasoned ability to combine sharp content and a colorful personality, Kevin has made dozens of television and radio appearances including spots on CNN, CNBC, C-SPAN, BBC, and Fox News. Furthermore, he has contributed to ABC News Now, Wired, PBS This Week, NPR, BBC radio, and Tech TV Silicon Spin.
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 interest.
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 a branded social elevation platform directed at accelerating behavioral change around social and environmental challenges–inspiring and freeing the good within all of us, individually and collectively.
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. Whether with the manifesto for the revival of an icon, which drove the business turnaround of Coca-Cola's 120 year-old brand, Live Positively, Coke's sustainability platform, or the Coca-Cola DNA, a redefinition of Coca-Cola's way of marketing as a fusion of art and science, Marc's work always broke new ground.
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 five years ago 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.
Christopher Meyer
Author and Advisor on the Future of Business
Chris Meyer is chief executive of Monitor Networks, a unit of the Monitor Group focused on fostering business innovation through designing, growing, and learning from human networks. Chris 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 (co-authored with Stan Davis). He also co-authored the best-selling Blur: The Speed of Change in the Connected Economy and Future Wealth with Stan Davis, and he has contributed to the Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Fast Company, Time, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Business 2.0. Chris’s recent research and consulting have focused on the development of the Adaptive Enterprise, helping companies create the capacity to sense, respond to, and adapt to changes in their business environments.
Robert Miles
Authority on Corporate Transformation and Renewal
Renowned thought and practice leader in the fields of business transformation, organizational effectiveness, culture change, and executive leadership, Bob Miles is a gifted business advisor and process architect. 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 the Chairman of both Oakland-based Dissero Partners and Atlanta-based Galloway Consulting Group. He also serves as Special Advisor on Execution and Corporate Transformation to Julius Baer, the Swiss Investment Bank.
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 Big Ideas to Big Results, Corporate Comeback: The Story of Renewal and Transformation at National Semiconductor, and Leading Corporate Transformation: A Blueprint for Business Renewal. He is also 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 as a member of the Stanford Executive Institute faculty at Stanford University and on the Advisory Board of the U.S. Department of Energy and the Organizational Effectiveness Division of The Conference Board, and at 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.
Betsy Myers
Leadership Expert and Former COO and Senior Advisor, Obama for America
Betsy Myers most recently served as a senior advisor to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. She joined the campaign in January 2007 as the chief operating officer, and she is known for instilling the campaign with a business operational model and customer service mentality. Betsy also represented the campaign as Chair of Women for Obama. She traveled extensively in 2008 speaking to undecided voters and concentrating on women’s outreach. These efforts included a working partnership with Women for Obama and the DNC’s Women’s Leadership Forum. She also spent significant time working on unity efforts—meeting with Clinton supporters across the country to hear their concerns and invite them to join the Obama efforts.
Prior to this appointment, Betsy was the executive director of the Center for Public Leadership (CPL) at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. She came to CPL in 2003, bringing with her a proven track record of building, growing, funding, and strategically realigning organizations. Motivated by her strong belief that the hardest person we will ever manage is ourselves, Betsy was known for bringing a focus to the Center's teaching and research around personal leadership and the fully integrated person. She also increased the Center’s efforts around women and leadership and worked closely with the Harvard’s Women’s Leadership Board (2000-2007).
A senior official in the Clinton Administration, she was the President's senior advisor on women's issues. As deputy assistant to the President, she was the first director of the White House Office for Women’s Initiatives and Outreach (1995–1997). In this capacity, she helped ensure that such issues as domestic violence, reproductive choice, breast cancer, and women in business figured prominently on the Administration's legislative agenda.
Betsy worked in the U.S. Small Business Administration, first as director of the Office of Women’s Business Ownership (1993-1995) and later as associate deputy administrator for Entrepreneurial Development (1997-1999). She was responsible for the agency’s technical assistance, management, and distance learning program as well as implementing the agencies national requirements under President Clinton’s welfare to work initiative.
Prior to joining the Clinton Administration, Besty spent six years building Myers Insurance and Financial Services based in Los Angeles. She specialized in the small business and women’s market providing insurance and retirement planning.
A public service fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School, she graduated with a masters in public administration in 2000, and then served as the school’s director of Alumni Programs and External Relations.
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. Chapm