Category: Innovation

How to Overcome Your Aversion to Risk and Eliminate the Status Quo

If you want anything other than status quo, the freedom to risk is essential. Executives who lead outside the status quo create new market engagement, valuable innovation, stronger customer relationships and above-industry growth. Conversely, risk aversion can impact the bottom line in striking ways. A Duke University Fuqua School of Business study found that companies spend more to compensate a risk-averse CEO through incentive plans.

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Public Utility Company Exelon Shows Other Sectors and Firms How to Be Innovative

Exelon is a Chicago-based public utility—a traditional, conservative firm. But by some of the moves taking place lately under CEO Christopher Crane—including a new “intrapreneurship” initiative and a flirtation with entrepreneurs known as “Dancing with the Startups”—Exelon seems to be charting a course of reinvention that is unusual for such an old-line concern. And chiefs in other traditional verticals might want to take notice.

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Looking for Innovation? Focus on Your Existing Business First

The “corporate unicorn” of creative disruption has an allure, and there are certainly times when radical change is required. But while dramatic stories of disruption make great headlines, for far more organizations, innovation focused on achieving significant improvement in existing lines of business is a surer—and more profitable—bet for driving actual results.

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4 Ways to Build a More Creative Leadership Team

Successfully growing your business requires that your leadership team be nimble enough to foresee future changes in your market, and smart enough to overcome challenges your business faces in the present. In both cases, having an executive team with a high creativity quotient will enable your organization to be better prepared to deal with these issues. Here are 4 techniques you can use to create and foster a more creative leadership team.

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How to Unlock Positive Change Throughout Your Entire Organization

When Kevin Thompson, Director, North America Marketing – IBM Commerce, Mobile and Social, proposed a corporate Peace Corps at the firm, he was nearly laughed out of the room. The idea of Big Blue giving free consulting services to nonprofits in low-income communities in distant countries seemed so countercultural. Yet now, the Corporate Service Corps (CSC) is beloved within IBM and broadly emulated elsewhere.

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4 Ways to Win the Innovation War

As companies battle it out in today’s hypercompetitive markets, where traditional forms of differentiation are now just commodities, the primary competitive weapon has become an organization’s capacity for radical and continuous innovation. CEOs wishing to lead from the front will need to understand how to dramatically improve this capacity to give their companies a strategic advantage in the new global innovation war.

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upcoming events

Roundtable

Strategic Planning Workshop

1:00 - 5:00 pm

Over 70% of Executives Surveyed Agree: Many Strategic Planning Efforts Lack Systematic Approach Tips for Enhancing Your Strategic Planning Process

Executives expressed frustration with their current strategic planning process. Issues include:

  1. Lack of systematic approach (70%)
  2. Laundry lists without prioritization (68%)
  3. Decisions based on personalities rather than facts and information (65%)

 

Steve Rutan and Denise Harrison have put together an afternoon workshop that will provide the tools you need to address these concerns.  They have worked with hundreds of executives to develop a systematic approach that will enable your team to make better decisions during strategic planning.  Steve and Denise will walk you through exercises for prioritizing your lists and steps that will reset and reinvigorate your process.  This will be a hands-on workshop that will enable you to think about your business as you use the tools that are being presented.  If you are ready for a Strategic Planning tune-up, select this workshop in your registration form.  The additional fee of $695 will be added to your total.

To sign up, select this option in your registration form. Additional fee of $695 will be added to your total.

New York, NY: ​​​Chief Executive's Corporate Citizenship Awards 2017

Women in Leadership Seminar and Peer Discussion

2:00 - 5:00 pm

Female leaders face the same issues all leaders do, but they often face additional challenges too. In this peer session, we will facilitate a discussion of best practices and how to overcome common barriers to help women leaders be more effective within and outside their organizations. 

Limited space available.

To sign up, select this option in your registration form. Additional fee of $495 will be added to your total.

Golf Outing

10:30 - 5:00 pm
General’s Retreat at Hermitage Golf Course
Sponsored by UBS

General’s Retreat, built in 1986 with architect Gary Roger Baird, has been voted the “Best Golf Course in Nashville” and is a “must play” when visiting the Nashville, Tennessee area. With the beautiful setting along the Cumberland River, golfers of all capabilities will thoroughly enjoy the golf, scenery and hospitality.

The golf outing fee includes transportation to and from the hotel, greens/cart fees, use of practice facilities, and boxed lunch. The bus will leave the hotel at 10:30 am for a noon shotgun start and return to the hotel after the cocktail reception following the completion of the round.

To sign up, select this option in your registration form. Additional fee of $295 will be added to your total.