Kaihan Krippendorff
Business Strategy Keynote Speaker, Author & Consultant
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Fee Range: Contact Speaker Exchange Agency
- Former McKinsey consultant who has trained over 6,000 executives and entrepreneurs
- Strategic advisor to top corporations including Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, and Citibank
- High-energy speaker who customizes talks on “outthinking” the competition
- Shares tactics for developing new and creative approaches to old problems
*Fee ranges are presented as a guideline only. Speaker fees are subject to change without notice. For an exact quote, please contact your Speaker Exchange Agency representative.
Kaihan Krippendorff is the CEO of Outthinker Networks, a global think-tank of chief strategy officers and intrapreneur executives shaping the future of business. A sought-after keynote speaker, Kaihan is recognized by Global Gurus and Thinkers50 as one of the top 30 global thinkers in strategy and innovation. His work helps organizations generate breakthrough ideas that drive transformation and growth in our accelerated world of change.
A prolific writer, Kaihan has published five books including the bestsellers Outthink the Competition and Driving Innovation from Within. His forthcoming book, Proximity: How Coming Breakthroughs in Just-in-Time Transform Business, Society, and Daily Life, has already been named a “Must-Read” by Adam Grant and Malcolm Gladwell’s Next Big Idea Club.
Leveraging skills and experience from McKinsey and Company with rigorous research of emerging trends, Kaihan designs practical business tools that he delivers through engaging and hands-on experiences. He is an innovation catalyst to business leaders and CXOs of some of the world’s most admired companies. To date, his work has generated over $2.5B in new annual revenue for clients that include Aetna-CVS, JP Morgan, Lockheed Martin, Procter & Gamble, IBM, and Yahoo.
Amidst a dizzying schedule of keynotes, workshops, ongoing research, and writing, Kaihan still finds time to teach for Wharton Executive Education, Florida International University, and New York University; host the Outthinkers podcast; and play an active role on two corporate advisory boards.
He holds a doctorate in strategy and has degrees from the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering, Wharton, Columbia Business School, and London Business School. With a mother from Bangladesh, father from Germany, and wife from Latin America, Kaihan is a global citizen who brings a holistic, diverse, and worldly perspective to everything he does.
He is a passionate cook and lives in Miami, Florida, with his wife, three kids, two cats, and a dog.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad 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 business speakers in the world.
In a world of constant disruption, technological change, and megatrend turbulence, how do we transform the way we lead and work? The answer is Proximity – a simple idea that you can use to turn disruptors like artificial intelligence, renewable energy, virtual reality, 3D printing, and new ways of working into possibilities…chaos into clarity.
Based on his new book, Proximity: How Coming Breakthroughs in Just-in-Time Transform Business, Society, and Daily Life, this keynote will arm leaders with a Proximity Roadmap for their industry and adjacent ones. He will ignite a new mental mindset and give you the practical tools you need to prepare yourself and your business to be bold and shape your future.
- Understand the impact that matters for your business of disruptors like generative AI, 3D printing, precision-agriculture, dark factories, and renewable energy – and how to harness them to drive growth and resiliency
- Build your Proximity roadmap, three steps to winning the future
- Prepare your organization and people with the mindsets needed to lead
- Map out where you need to rethink growth plans, innovation and investments, operations, and customer expectations
*This session can be delivered as a keynote speech or a 3 hour hands-on workshop
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 ideas
Formats: keynote, workshop, organizational/board strategy-sessions
“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 actionable
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:
- The “8Ps” strategic innovation framework: systematically uncover new avenues for growth, innovation, and transformation
- Positioning
- Product/service mix
- Pricing/fees
- Placement/delivery
- Promotion/client acquisition
- Processes/operations
- Physical experience
- People
· 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 roles
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 their strategy, transform, 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 most recent 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’s presentation teaches the audience a tested method for developing actionable growth ideas that unlock growth, increase competitiveness of their business and arm them with the tools needed to excel in today’s digital, agile, and purpose-driven world. In this inspiring keynote you will learn:
- How to use The Outthinker Process® to generate powerful ideas that can drive bottom-line results across all levels of the business
- How to find a “Fourth Option”: the option beyond the obvious choices, the option others will not see or respond to
- The Outthinker playbook: five strategic narratives you want to master now
- A simple approach to avoid killing off “crazy” ideas and instead turn them into winning moves
- How to extract value of internal ideas to drive organic growth
- How to build a culture of Outthinking that celebrates fresh strategic and innovative ideas and thinking
- How to empower and inspire your employees so that they are ready to take action to develop, test and scale innovative growth ideas
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 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:
- The “8Ps” strategic innovation framework: systematically uncover new avenues for growth, innovation and transformation
- 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 roles
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.
- 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.
We are experiencing a historic acceleration in the pace of change in our world. Artificial intelligence, digitization, robotics, 3D printing, social shifts, and the rise of purpose-driven enterprises are reconfiguring how every conceivable industry operates.
These changes divide us into two camps: the “Disruptors” and the “Disrupted”.
Successful entrepreneur, author, consultant and CEO Kaihan Krippendorff has spent over a decade studying the patterns of disruption. What makes some companies thrive and what makes others fall behind? What gives some the power to shape the future and makes others struggle to keep up? Kaihan has applied his cutting-edge findings to create more than $2.5B in new value and help hundreds of businesses lean into change and thrive in tomorrow’s fast-paced, digital, purpose-driven world. In this talk, Kaihan breaks down the underlying patterns of disruption and with compelling stories of successes, failures, and yet-unknown innovations, teaches practical tools to help you take action and become a Disruptor. Learnings and outcomes include:
- The emerging trends – from AI to digitization – that are driving us into an era of disruption and how these will likely shape the future
- How to use The Outthinker Process® to generate powerful ideas that can drive bottom-line results across all levels of the business
- The strategic patterns and best practices that the world’s most strategic and innovative companies use to thrive during the ongoing shift of global business structures and thinking
- A systematic process you can use to overcome the “innovator’s dilemma” and create breakthrough growth ideas that will disrupt your market without disrupting your organization
- How to empower and inspire employees so that they’re ready to take action to develop, test and scale innovative growth ideas
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 from
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 industry
The retail and apparel industries today are undergoing a rapid, historic transformation. A successful entrepreneur, author, consultant and CEO that has created more than $2.5B in revenue for his clients, Kaihan Krippendorff works at the cutting edge of the disruption, helping many of the world’s leading retail and apparel brands navigate a future being shaped by radically shorter times to market, AI, robotics, augmented reality, hyper-personalization, data-driven decision making, and broad shifts in consumer behavior (environmentally friendly lifestyles, focus on health, nutrition, etc.). Drawing from the latest industry developments from Amazon to QVC and stories of yet-under-appreciated new attackers, Kaihan uses in this keynote first-hand experience and actionable insights to present a compelling vision of the future world of retail and leaves the audience with tools and an approach to develop a strategy to succeed in the shifting retail landscape of the 21st century tech-driven and digital economy.
“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 shows that intrapreneurs – employees who incubate new businesses within corporations – have had a far greater impact on the world (e-mail, internet, DNA sequencing, MRI scans, were all conceived and driven by employees).
Drawing on five years of in-depth research of hundreds of successful corporate innovators Kaihan will share insights from his Edison-Award nominated book, Driving Innovation From Within: A Guide for Internal Entrepreneurs (Columbia University Press, 2019). Recognized by one of the top innovation experts in 2019 by Thinkers50, Kaihan will unveil the critical areas a company must focus on to make innovation an everyday activity – a part of the company’s DNA. Learn how successful companies manage and unlock the value of employees’ ideas to drive growth, create value, and deliver bottom-line results. The audience will leave feeling inspired and empowered, ready to take on the future.
- Learn the IN-OVATE Framework
- Identify 7 barriers of internal innovation and how to overcome them
- Encourage 6 characteristics of Internal Innovators
- Master 7 steps to build an agile innovation team to rapidly (and inexpensively) experiment, test and scale ideas
- Shift your organizational mindset and culture to embrace the “startup mentality” and make innovation a part of your DNA
- Build a wave of internal support for growth, innovation and creativity by reinforcing the idea that innovation is possible, attainable, and ultimately actionable
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