Feb 20 2009
Speakers Interactive
This is the place where you can read the interviews of some of the most influential speakers of our times.
Ray Hammond
Ray Hammond is an internationally known futurologist and commentator on the digital society as well as author, broadcaster and businessman. He wrote the world’s first guide to on-line publishing and the Internet, “The On-Line Handbook”, which was published in 1984 and he is the author of the best-selling “Computers and Your Child”.
1. As Europe’s most experienced futurologist, what do you think about today’s huge commercial potential of the internet and its impacts on tomorrow’s global businesses?
The internet is going to merge with television, radio, cellular networks and wireless technologies to create one global super-medium (for which we do not yet have a name) in which a very large part of business will be conducted. Many businesses will be wholly virtual while many physical businesses (e.g. construction and aviation) will use the new enlarged, multi-media, multi-sensory, always on, always connected, everything to everything, everyone to everyone ”medium” to improve their business processes, their financial trading patterns, their logistics and their customer orientation.
Read the full interview
Go to Ray Hammond’s speaker profile
Watch Ray Hammond’s video presentation
Bruce Sewell
Bruce Sewell is senior vice president and general counsel of Intel Corporation. His management responsibilities include legal, corporate affairs, and Intel’s corporate social responsibility programs. As general counsel, he supervises a team of roughly 600 attorneys and policy professionals located in over 30 countries around the world. Sewell also represents Intel on several professional, legislative and policy boards in the United States and abroad. He was recently profiled in Fortune and is also a regular contributor for the Wall Street Journal.
1. As the senior vice president and general counsel of Intel Corporation, how do you effectively promote a safe and legal digital world? Is this really possible in today’s continuous fight against software piracy?
There are many dimensions to this question. Part of promoting a safe and legal digital world for a company such as Intel involves role modeling the behavior that we would like to see others follow. For this reason we have a certification program to insure that all code used in our products is either original to Intel (i.e., we wrote it), or that we have the appropriate intellectual property rights needed to incorporate that code into our products. Externally, Intel works closely with many international organizations and governments to promote anti-piracy programs and increased respect for intellectual property rights.
Read the full interview
Go to Bruce Sewell’s speaker profile
Mark Fritz is the MD and Founder of Procedor Limited, a company focused on enabling leaders to become even more successful. He is an associate of Ashridge College in the UK, co-teaching Leading Complex Teams; and leads an MBA Seminar on Virtual Leadership at HEC in France. He also leads MBA Workshops on Virtual Leadership at the Instituto de Empresa Business School in Spain.
1. In your vast international experience in leadership roles with Kodak and now mentoring business leaders across the world, what have you discovered to be the one common trend in virtual organisations?
The trend we are seeing that it is constantly growing. We now have a global economy, and large companies are now placing their operations and resources where it makes sense both financially and for the longer-term. Many of these companies have established their virtual organisations, and have basically leveraged existing long-term relationships that they had across the countries in their organisations. However, when people retire or move on, they are finding it difficult to maintain the operations with the new people who don’t have those key relationships in place. These companies have been using these relationships to compensate for the lack of strong processes in place.
To make virtual organisations successful year after year, it is important to always be working on building and growing both the key relationships across organisation and the key processes. Any weaknesses in processes need to be supported by stronger relationships, and vice versa.
Read the full interview
Go to Mark Fritz’s speaker profile
Shaun Smith
Shaun Smith runs his own customer experience consultancy, Shaunsmith and Co, which is firmly routed in the ‘keep it simple’ ethos. He has developed some of the latest thinking and practice around this subject, focusing in particular on how organizations can achieve brand differentiations and long-term customer loyalty through the customer experience.
1. How could the top management of a company inspire and motivate its employees in order to deliver the company’s brand? Could you give us some examples on this regard?
The key to this is a concept that I call ‘loose/tight’. Most organisations exercise a very tight control over what employees should do but a very loose control over why they should do it. In other words they have strict procedures and regulations that employees must abide by even when these do not make sense for the customer. I believe that organisations should reverse this and very be tight in communicating to employees who the target customers are, what they value, what the brand promise is and the kind of experience that they wish customers to have but then to be somewhatt looser about how to deliver this so that employees can use their judgement. One of the most successful fast food brands in the UK is called Pret a Manger. They employee students from all over Europe to work in their sandwich shops for a season. Whilst they have high employee turnover they also have a fabulous reputation for service. They achieve this by having a very clear brand promise ‘ Passionate about food’, employing staff for their personality and fit with the culture – I call this hiring for ‘DNA’ – training them well in the technical aspects of the job but then empowering them to deliver the brand. For example, staff are taught to “say something as the customer approaches, say something when you serve them and say something when you bid them goodbye” It is left up to the good sense of the employee about what to say.
Read the full interview
Go to Shaun Smith’s speaker profile
Watch Shaun Smith’s video presentation
Nicola Horlick
Nicola Horlick is a senior fund manager and the CEO of Bramdean Asset Management LLP. Nicola has worked in the fund management industry for over twenty-five years and has participated in the growth of some of the UK’s premier asset management businesses.
1.What small things do you think make a big difference to organizational success?
Leadership is absolutely key to organizational success. In my view, strong leadership is the only thing that matters. A good leader must have a vision for the organization and he or she must make sure that the key people in the organization share that vision.
Read the full interview
Go to Nicola Horlick’s speaker profile
Watch Nicola Horlick’s video presentation
Dr. Jonas Ridderstrale
Dr Jonas Ridderstråle is at the forefront of the new generation of European-based business gurus. He cuts through the madness and hyperbole surrounding the global economy and his appeal is truly global. Jonas has attained tremendous media coverage throughout the world. The 2005 Thinkers 50, the bi-annual global ranking of management thinkers, ranked him (and his colleague Nordström) at number nine internationally and as the leading European business guru.
1. You are ranked as number 9 among management thinkers of the world and number 1 in Europe together with your co-author Kjell A. Nordström. As you are the number ones in Europe the question is quite obvious: are there only a few real thinkers in this continent or are you that good at management to be ranked on the first place?
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There are many great European management thinkers – from Charles Handy to Fons Trompenhaars. I think I’ve been successful, because the ideas that I present are solid enough to stand the test of time, but also because my books and gigs provide people not only with intellectual content. In all probability, that stuff is necessary but not sufficient if you want to make it in my industry. I also give people hope, confidence and optimism. Boosting the psychological capital of people is at least as important as adding to their intellectual capital.
Read the full interview
Go to Dr. Jonas Ridderstrale’s speaker profile
Watch Dr. Jonas Ridderstrale’s video presentation
John Thackara
John Thackara is a former design journalist and publisher, tireless educator and event producer. He is in the business of driving social change with design. A self-described “symposiarch” – someone who designs collaborative events, projects and organizations, John founded the international conference and design futures network Doors of Perception, which now has offices in Amsterdam and Bangalore. He is also program director of Dott 07, an ambitious, year-long genuine collaboration and invention initiative to establish a sustainable region in cities throughout the northeast of England.
1. Could you please explain in more detail which businesses are or could become a subject for design? In what way?
Many of the troubling situations in our world are the result of design decisions. Too many of them were bad design decisions, it is true—but we are not the victims of blind chance.
The parlous condition of the planet, our only home, is a good example. Eighty percent of the environmental impact of the products, services, and infrastructures around us is determined at the design stage.
Design decisions shape the processes behind the products we use, the materials and energy required to make them, the ways we operate them on a daily basis, and what happens to them when we no longer need them.
We may not have meant to do so, and we may regret the way things have turned out, but we designed our way into the situations that face us today. Many businesses are experts on the “how” of their market – for example with a technology or distribution asset. But few companies are any good at asking the “why?” questions. Design is a “why are we doing this?” process.
Read the full interview
Go to John Thackara’s speaker profile
Watch John Thackara’’s video presentation
Larry Hochman
Larry spent 10 years as a Director of British Airways and the loyalty management company, Air Miles, in both New York and London. His roles included Director of Customer Service and Director of People and Culture (he being the first person in Britain to hold this title). He is not just a theorist, but has turned his ideas into tangible business triumphs on both sides of the Atlantic.
1. You were selected as “The European Business Speaker of the Year“ and your portfolio counts nearly 400 speeches. What is the source of your inspiration for all these speeches: could it be the experience of the ten years you spent at British Airways, where you held the position of Director of Customer Service?
My inspiration for speeches everywhere in the world (in 2006 I did speeches on every continent) is a deeply held belief in a future that is positive. Even though I am often identified as a futurist, I never try to predict the future. What I try to do is to prepare people for the future by identifying trends already underway that I believe will impact both their businesses and their careers. Individuals can then decide what personal actions are necessary to build the foundations for success. We live in truly remarkable times of unlimited opportunity for many. People must open their eyes and minds and as Leonardo Da Vinci once said, “Know How To See”. I hope that my speeches help people better understand the world they live in and therefore are better able to take advantage of every opportunity in the unique globalised world where we all now reside.
Read the full interview
Go to Larry Hochman’s speaker profile
Watch Larry Hochman’s video presentation
Comments Off
You are just one click away from subscribing to the CSA Celebrity Speakers complimentary Newsletter and most requested speakers’ updates
