Speakers

For the BLF 2010 we have chosen speakers to address the question "what will the new normal look like?" We will look at this from a cultural, political, sociological, demographic, philosophical point of view as well as what it means for businesses and business leaders. 

We don’t believe we can address “what to do?” until we have understood the context in which our business and lives will be fused. We will discuss the question “What are the underlying drivers that are going to shape the world that my company and I must survive and thrive in? How can I make myself and my people more flexible and agile to face unknown unknowns?”

Merryck & Co. are pleased to present the 2010 Business Leaders Forum speakers.

Daniel Pink

What really motivates us?

In his provocative and engaging presentation, Daniel Pink, international bestselling author of A Whole New Mind and Drive, will draw on 40 years of behavioural science to answer that question.

Pink will reveal the alarming mismatch between what science knows and what business does. He'll show that carrots and sticks, the motivational techniques at the heart of most businesses, are effective in only a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances - and that for creative, conceptual tasks, they rarely work and often do harm.

Fortunately, Pink says, the science of human motivation offers a smarter and more effective alternative. This new motivational operating system centres not on our biological drive or on our reward-and-punishment drive, but on our third drive – our innate need to direct our lives, master complex skills, and connect to a cause larger than ourselves.  He will show how cutting-edge companies around the world are tapping the hard headed power of autonomy, mastery, and purpose to transform their organizations. And he will offer tools, tips, and exercises to help leaders harness their own genuine motivation.

Pink is a Yale Law School graduate who began his career working in U.S. politics and government. In the 1990s, he was an economic policy staffer in the United States Senate, an aide to U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich, and chief speechwriter to Vice President Al Gore. He now contributes to publications such as the New York Times, the Harvard Business Review, and Wired and his books have been translated into 24 languages. He also advises start up operations and Fortune 100 companies on recruiting and talent and lectures to corporations and universities around the world on economic transformation and the new world of work.

For further details, please visit www.danpink.com

 

Don Sull

Dr. Donald Sull is a Professor of Management Practice in Strategic and International Management, and the Faculty Director of Executive Education at the London Business School.

Sull is a global authority on how companies compete effectively in turbulent markets. He has been identified as a leading management thinker by The Economist, the Financial Times, and Fortune which named him among the ten new management gurus to know. The Economist listed his theory of active inertia among the ideas that shaped business management over the past century.

As a consultant and management educator, Sull has worked with companies including Mars, Oracle, Nokia, Royal Bank of Canada, Standard Chartered Bank, Emirates Airline, Baker & McKenzie, Burberry, and Schneider Electric. He speaks regularly at leading management conferences, such as Microsoft's CEO Summit and the McKinsey Strategy Summit.

Over the past decade, Sull has analyzed more and less successful firms in some of the world's most unforgiving markets, including China, Brazil, European fast fashion, and financial services. His sessions will describe practical steps leaders can take to help their companies not only survive, but thrive in tomorrow's turbulent markets including:

• The upside of turbulence
• Making sense of volatile markets
• Why good companies go bad
• Seven questions every CEO must ask to survive the "new normal"

For further information, please visit www.donsull.com

 

Margaret Heffernan

Entrepreneur and talent expert Margaret Heffernan understands from experience the demands on business' leaders and followers.

The war to attract talent rages on at precisely the moment when the work population is changing. The number of managers the right age for leadership positions will drop by 30% in the next six years. And how many CEOs are confident they have the talent they need to navigate today’s turbulence? 7%.

With more demand and less supply, attracting, developing and retaining talent becomes a key competitive issue. Not an HR issue but a major leadership challenge.

Those companies willing to cater to the needs of a highly creative, energetic, driven working population will win. Those who don't—won't. Margaret Heffernan shows organisations what business models, patterns and processes will attract—and keep—the best people for a corporate culture with a distinct competitive advantage. Heffernan, who has served as CEO of three multinational companies and provides consulting services to several Fortune 100 companies, shows audiences the value of allowing their people to “take their whole selves to work”—and how that transforms the culture of work in the process. An author, her latest book Women on Top: How Women Entrepreneurs Are Rewriting the Rules of Business Success looks at the “soft” strategies women are employing in today’s business environment, and how everyone—male and female—can learn from them.

Heffernan graduated from Cambridge University and produced award-winning programmes for the BBC for thirteen years. She then led IPPA, described by the Financial Times as “the most formidable lobbying organization in the UK”. Returning to the US, she developed multimedia products with Tom Peters, Peter Lynch, Intuit, and Standard and Poors. CEO of Infomation Corporation and iCAST, she was named one of the top 25 media executives by the Hollywood Reporter. Heffernan is a Visiting Professor in Entrepreneurship at Simmons College in Boston and at the University of Bath; she is Executive in Residence at Babson College. She writes regularly about business for Real Business and Reader’s Digest magazines and continues to write plays for the BBC. She continues to advise new and established businesses and to lecture corporations and industry groups on diversity, risk and resilience. Her third book, Willful Blindness, will be published in the US and UK in January 2011.

For further information see www.mheffernan.com

 

Herb Meyer

What in the World is Going On? – A Global Intelligence Briefing for CEOs

Herb Meyer served during the Reagan Administration as Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence, and Vice Chairman of the CIA's National Intelligence Council.  In these positions, he managed production of the U.S. National Intelligence Estimates and other top-secret projections for the President and his senior National Security advisers.

Mr. Meyer is widely credited with being the first senior U.S. Government official to forecast the Soviet Union's collapse, which he did in the early 1980s -- to considerable political derision. He later was awarded the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, which is the Intelligence Community's highest honour.

Mr Meyer believes that today more than ever, business leaders need to understand what is going on in the world. The business impact of key global developments in politics, economics and even culture in our communities, careers and even our personal lives has grown so large and so direct.

Herb will discuss the national security, economic and cultural issues we are confronting now and which will shape the 21st century including:

• What lies behind the terrorists' attacks on the US and on other Western nations?
• Where is the war now, and what decisions will President Obama be facing in the coming weeks and months?
• How will the demographic crises in Europe and Japan affect global politics and economics?
• What are the demographic trends in the US, and what impact will these trends have on business?
• What's really going on in China and India, and what will be the future of these countries?
• What lies behind the astounding – and under-reported -- growth of the global economy during the last two decades, which has brought between 50 million and 100 million people out of poverty every year?
• How will this growth affect our own economies – and what kinds of jobs will the emergence of a global middle class create in the coming decades?
  

For further information, please visit http://www.stormkingpress.com

 

John Crowley

John and Aileen Crowley were on top of the world. With a brand-new Harvard Business School degree, three beautiful children, a new house, and a great job, they thought that they had just entered the best years of life. Then doctors diagnosed their two youngest children with Pompe disease, and everything changed. They faced a very "new normal".

Fifteen-month-old Megan and five-month-old Patrick were given only months to live. Pompe disease, the Crowleys were told, was so rare that no company had yet developed a medicine to combat it. There was no cure, no treatment--only the gradual degeneration of muscle so that in the end, afflicted children would be unable to walk, eat, or even breathe on their own. It was a nightmare the Crowleys could hardly comprehend.

But John Crowley refused to accept this death sentence--and in the absence of other options, he chose his own solution. Determined to find scientists who could develop a replacement enzyme that would keep the disease at bay and his children alive, Crowley quit his job as a marketing executive and invested himself and his life savings in a biotechnology start-up company. In just over a year, Novazyme Pharmaceuticals Inc. went from an endowment of $37,000 to $27 million, and was sold to Genzyme Corp. soon thereafter for a news breaking $137.5 million. But the struggle wasn't over yet, and scientific setbacks, accusations of conflict of interest, business troubles, and the children's own worsening condition would test the limits of John and Aileen's minds and hearts as they fought for a cure.

A true life story – that is still ongoing, and will truly help us all understand that anything can be accomplished if we have persistence, determination and a belief in ourselves.

This inspiring story has been transformed for the big screen in an upcoming film entitled Extraordinary Measures, starring Harrison Ford, due for release January 22, 2010.