Kaihan Krippendorff
Kaihan Krippendorff began his career with McKinsey & Company before founding growth strategy and innovation consulting firm Outthinker. Recognized by Thinkers50 as one of the top 8 innovation thought leaders in the world, he is the author of five best-sellers, most recently the Edison Award nominated, Driving Innovation from Within: A Guide for Internal Entrepreneurs. Amidst a dizzying schedule of keynote speeches, consulting projects, and ongoing research, Kaihan finds time to teach at business schools globally (including NYU and FIU), write regularly for Fast Company and other major media outlets, and play an active role on four corporate advisory boards.
He began his career with McKinsey & Company before founding the growth strategy and innovation consulting firm Outthinker. His growth strategies and innovations have generated over $2.5B in revenue for many of the world’s most recognizable companies including JP Morgan Chase, L’Oreal, Microsoft, Raytheon, and Yahoo!. He is a best-selling author of five books, most recently the Edison Award nominated, Driving Innovation From Within: A Guide for Internal Entrepreneurs.
A sought-after strategic advisor, Kaihan was ranked by Global Gurus as a Top 30 Management Professional of 2022 and a Thinkers50 Innovation award finalist for his work on unlocking corporate growth and innovation through employees.
Kaihan founded the Outthinker Strategy Network, an exclusive network of Chief Strategy Officers from large organizations with over $1B in revenue. A trusted advisor to these Fortune 500 Strategy Executives, Kaihan is known for facilitating powerful conversations that create strategic clarity and yield actionable and impactful ideas for this diverse cross-industry group.
Amidst his dizzying schedule of keynote speeches, consulting projects, ongoing research and writing, Kaihan still finds time to host the Outthinkers Podcast and teach at business schools throughout the US and internationally (including NYU, FIU, and Wharton Executive Education). A regular contributor to Fast Company and other major business media outlets, Kaihan is an advisory board member for high growth startups in the spaces of IoT-human-machine collaboration, blockchain-powered transportation, international food processing/exporting, and sustainability focuse products and lifestyle B-Corporations.
He holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering, Wharton, Columbia, and London Business Schools and a doctorate in strategy. With a mother from Bangladesh and a father from Germany, Kaihan brings a holistic, diverse, and global perspective to everything he does. His work has brought him to 58 countries all over the world. He speaks three languages and has lived or spent significant periods of time in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and the Pacific. He lives in Greenwich, Conn., with his wife and three children.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohammad Yunus has said, "Kaihan shows that with a compelling idea anyone can change the world" and that message has made Kaihan one of the most sought-after speakers on the topics of business strategy, growth and innovation.
Driving Innovation From Within: A Guide for Employees and Organizational Leaders
“Innovation” brings to our mind the maverick entrepreneur who quits their job, at unimaginable odds, to build a business on their own. But this entrepreneurial story is a myth. As a successful entrepreneur, author, consultant and CEO, Kaihan Krippendorff argues that intrapreneurs – employees who incubate new businesses within corporations – have had a far greater impact on the world. Nearly all of the most transformative innovations over the past three decades, from e-mail and the Internet to DNA sequencing and MRI scans, were introduced by employees who did not quit their jobs but instead took the challenge of innovating from within.
Drawing on five years of in-depth research of hundreds of successful innovators and Intrapreneurial Intensity, as well as insights from thought leaders, C-suite leaders, business unit leaders, and front-line employees, Kaihan will share exclusive insights from his next book, Driving Innovation From Within: A Guide for Internal Entrepreneurs (Columbia University Press, 2019). Kaihan will unveil the most critical internal focus areas for driving innovation and moving your organization forward into the future. He will share specific tools, frameworks and techniques used by successful innovators to manage and unlock the value of employees’ ideas to increase corporate innovation levels and deliver bottom-line results. Audience members will have actionable next steps to transform their organization by testing and scaling fresh ideas that generate value and growth. They will leave feeling inspired and empowered, ready to take on the future.
In this inspiring keynote you will learn:
· The IN-OVATE Framework: seven barriers of internal innovation and how to overcome them
· The six characteristics of Internal Innovators
· Steps to building an agile innovation team
· How to shift your organizational mindset and culture
· What it takes to lead an innovative organization and drive transformation
· How to build a wave of internal support for growth, innovation and creativity by reinforcing the idea that innovation is possible, attainable, and ultimately actionableWinning the Future of Finance
The financial services industry – from banking to payments to insurance – is undergoing a rapid and historic transformation. The shifting regulatory landscape, changing consumer/investor behavior, an endless stream of agile newcomers armed with disruptive fintech tools, and platforms powered by Blockchain and AI are mounting an attack on incumbent institutions and business models. Kaihan Krippendorff works with many of the world's leading financial institutions, helping them make sense of this uncertain future – understanding key future trends and technologies, designing fresh strategies and agile teams ready to face disruption head on so their organization can be ready to transform, compete, and win the future of finance. A successful entrepreneur, author, consultant and CEO that has created more than $2.5B in revenue for clients, Kaihan uses first-hand experience and actionable insights to present a compelling vision of the future world of financial services, arming the audience with a framework and tools that they can use to succeed in the tech-driven digital economy of the 21st century. You will learn:
· The key trends shaping the financial services industry – Blockchain, AI, regulatory environment, unbundling/bundling, millennial investors, fintech, financial inclusion and beyond
· What financial services will look like in the near and distant future
· Five key strategies today's most successful firms are adopting to adapt to, and lead, tomorrow
· How to transform into a more agile, inspiring, disruptive competitor, built for success in the digital economy
· Tools and a process for developing concrete ideas and strategic approaches that could disrupt the industryThe Purpose Path: Building a Mission-Oriented Organization that Harnesses the Power of CSR and a Do-Good Strategy
Historically, we were taught corporations existed for one purpose: to maximize shareholder value. But companies are waking up to the realization that such a focus destroys shareholder value over the long term because it creates resistance to your growth.
Successful entrepreneur, author, consultant and CEO Kaihan Krippendorff draws on years of proprietary research to show that today’s most successful companies more often speak of the strategic power of appealing to all stakeholders. If you design a strategy that benefits shareholders by also benefiting employees, the community, the country, and the environment, you have designed the ultimate strategy. When everyone wants you to win, you remove all competition. This idea goes beyond social responsibility. It points us toward removing the idea that doing good and making profit are inconsistent. You do not have to choose.
By pulling together inspiring stories from organizations ranging from lesser-known jewels like Best Doctors, BrightFarms, and Holstee to leading socially directed corporations like IKEA, Mastercard, and Target, Kaihan will inspire and motivate the audience to rethink their role and how they interact with stakeholders, not just shareholders.
The audience will learn:
• The three primary goals of a “be good” socially minded strategy
• Simple yet effective tools and frameworks to apply and create your own “Do Good” strategy that complements your current organizational strengths and strategy
• The next evolution of corporate social responsibility and how to embrace the shift toward a future where CSR is the norm
• How to empower and inspire employees so that they're ready to take action to develop ideas, strategies, products, and programs that everyone benefits fromUnleashing Agile: Activate the Power of an Entrepreneurial Mindset to Drive Growth
In a world marked by accelerated change and innovation, mental agility has proven to be a critical driver of success in sports, warfare, business, career, and life. Yet few agree on what exactly “mental agility” is or know how to develop it. Companies that fail to move on quickly enough from their linear organization will not succeed. In this presentation, successful entrepreneur, author, consultant and CEO Kaihan Krippendorff shares insights from his work with top-level corporate entrepreneurs and the study of more than 200 successful innovators into what sets them apart from the rest of the competitive pack. Kaihan will share the key practices that distinguish those with high mental agility and arm the audience with tools and frameworks they can immediately apply to their own work. Audience members will learn to:
• Connect the unconnected – pulling together seemingly unrelated pieces of information to rapidly form a mental image of the situation or opportunity.
• Uncover unexpected causes – drilling down into the system to see the cause others overlook.
• Shift your frame – shifting your frame on the problem to reveal solutions others dismiss.
• Empower and inspire your employees so that they are ready to take action to develop, test and scale innovative growth ideas
• Question the impossible – understanding why we fall into mental “traps” of false beliefs that prevent us from seeing what is possible and, more importantly, how to dig out of the trap that is keeping you from seizing the solution.Attendees will leave with a boost of confidence, tools, and energy to increase the velocity and agility level of their organization on a daily basis.
Innovating Beyond the R&D Lab: Realizing Trapped Value Across the Eight Dimensions of Innovation
When we say “innovation” we almost always mean “product innovation.” We talk about research & development and possible new solutions to meet unmet needs. This is a one-dimensional and incomplete approach to innovation. Dissect the most innovative companies of the last decade and you will see that great innovators disrupt their markets by reaching beyond the product. Oftentimes their success rests on choices that have little to do with new products.
In this presentation, successful entrepreneur, author, consultant, and CEO Kaihan Krippendorff will take you through engaging examples from a broad array of industries (as well as your own) such as Urban Outfitters in apparel, IKEA in furniture, VMware in technology, SpaceX in space launch vehicles, Mastercard in payments, and Vistaprint in printing services, showing how companies that outperform their competition seek disruptive innovation across eight dimensions (8Ps). The "8Ps" framework has proven to be a powerful structure to engage high-level marketers, business strategists and sales staff in an exploration of where competitive advantages lie, where to strengthen them, and where they are being underutilized.
Learnings from this session include:
• How to construct a disruptive business model or strategy that leverages an underutilized 8P strength
• Identifying opportunities beyond the R&D lab: identify and reconstruct processes and operations to drive efficiency
• Driving organic growth leveraging the value of unrealized ideas
• How to build real confidence to apply new strategies everyday across all business units and rolesThe "8Ps" strategic innovation framework: systematically uncover new avenues for growth, innovation, and transformation
1. Positioning
2. Product/service mix
3. Pricing/fees
4. Placement/delivery
5. Promotion/client acquisition
6. Processes/operations
7. Physical experience
8. People- Conquering Innovation and Creativity Killers: Driving Innovation From Within
“Innovation” brings to our mind the maverick entrepreneur who quits their job, at unimaginable odds, to build a business on their own. But this entrepreneurial story is a myth. As a successful entrepreneur, author, consultant and CEO, Kaihan Krippendorff argues that intrapreneurs – employees who incubate new businesses within corporations – have had a far greater impact on the world. Nearly all of the most transformative innovations over the past three decades, from e-mail and the Internet to DNA sequencing and MRI scans, were introduced by employees who did not quit their jobs but instead took the challenge of innovating from within.
Drawing on five years of in-depth research of hundreds of successful innovators and Intrapreneurial Intensity, as well as insights from thought leaders, C-suite leaders, business unit leaders, and front-line employees, Kaihan shares exclusive insights from his next book, The Employee Innovator: Driving Innovation from Within (Columbia University Press, 2019). Kaihan unveils the most common innovation barriers and shares specific tools, frameworks and techniques used by successful innovators to manage and unlock the value of employees’ ideas to drive corporate innovation levels and deliver bottom-line results. Audience members will leave feeling inspired and empowered with the actionable next steps for testing and scaling ideas that generate value and growth. Outthink the Competition: Excelling in a Digital, Agile, Purpose-Driven World
As a successful entrepreneur, author, consultant and CEO, Kaihan Krippendorff has worked with and studied thousands of companies and the different approaches they take to drive growth, foster innovation, and set themselves apart from the competition. How is it that some companies are able to continually pivot, clarify and refine strategy, transform their business, and pursue new growth ideas?
The answer is they have a repeatable process and common language that can be learned and taught. Based on his book,
Outthink the Competition, Kaihan delivers a systematic process and set of proven business strategy tools he has used with more than 300 clients in almost every industry to create innovative strategies and growth ideas that have generated more than $2.5B in revenue. Blending together first-hand stories of inspiring business and social innovators, from Elon Musk to Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, Kaihan breaks down a tested method for developing actionable strategic growth ideas that increase competitiveness of your business and arms you with the tools needed to excel in today’s digital, agile, and purpose-driven world:• Learn the Outthinker Process (IDEAS) and generate a portfolio of ideas to drive bottom-line results across all levels of the business
• Identify a “Fourth Option”: the option beyond the obvious choices that can transform your business
• Learn the five best strategic narratives to master now – The Outthinker Playbook
• Master a simple approach to avoid killing off “crazy” (valuable) ideas and instead turn them into winning moves
• Build a culture of Outthinking that celebrates fresh strategic and innovative ideas and thinking
• Empower and inspire your employees so that they are ready to take action to develop, test and scale innovative growth ideasFormats: keynote, workshop, organizational/board strategy-sessions
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