Events

Zoe Chance graduated from a massively successful corporate career to doing groundbreaking research to teaching a hugely popular elective at Yale called Mastering Influence and Persuasion, aka "Doing Uncomfortable Things That Make You a Better Person.” She's a TED speaker, consults with major companies and has a new book coming out in 2022, "Influence for […]

We think of unusual events as rare - but as my Friday Fireside Chat guest, Jonathan Brill, points out, they may be rare individually, but when they accumulate, the chance of their creating a catastrophic inflection point increases. Indeed, his research finds that most firms in the US have faced four significant calamities every year! […]

John Hagel was seeing around the corners of the business world long ago. He's well known for his work presented in 7 books on business, digitization and what he's learned as the director of the Deloitte Center for the edge. He's moving on from that role, and in this chat we'll be talking about his […]

Sarah Stein Greenberg has been a fixture at Stanford's famous "d.school" since 2010, and is currently its Executive Director. When the design movement swept across the product landscape, led by thinkers such as David M. Kelley, a co-founder of IDEO, the d.school was where many of its most important advocates and evangelists called home. Greenberg […]

Peter Cappelli and I go back a long way and I can't wait to get caught up with him in this Friday Fireside Chat. Cappelli was one of my professors at Wharton and had a huge influence on the way I think about talent and people strategies. He's a high-impact scholar who looks at questions […]

If you could pick someone to lead you through an intelligent conversation about the new world of work, you couldn't do better than to consult with Jennifer Moss. Author of the forthcoming HBR Press book "The Burnout Academic," Jennifer has written a best business book of the year, won awards for her success as an […]

Leading Strategic Growth and Change (Live Online) is a five-day virtual program focused on the process of finding opportunities, launching new ventures, and leading necessary organizational changes to revitalize and transform an organization in times of uncertainty. Participants will learn how to thrive in rapidly changing and highly uncertain environments and will be able to […]

Everybody Wants To Rule the World. When R "Ray" Wang says it, he isn't just channeling a popular musical line, he really means it. In his view, digital giants are pulling further and further ahead of the rest of us and will eventually reshape our economic future into one of extreme capitalism. He anticipates we […]

I promised Harvard Professor and expert on equality and inclusion Robert Livingston that I would read his book "The Conversation" before he joined me for a Friday Fireside Chat. I did, and am ever so glad. He takes us through a journey centered on three questions: What is racism? Why should everyone care? What can […]

Liz Wiseman changed the way we think about high performing organizations with her groundbreaking book "Multipliers." She found that, despite the best of intentions, some leaders diminish the creativity and impact of their teams while others multiply those same attributes. The performance effects are astonishing! Now, she has a new book on the brink. "Impact […]

Ron Adner and I have been intellectual sparring partners and friends for a very long time. He's just come out with a terrific new book, "Winning the Right Game" which tackles head on the strategic challenge executives confront when the ecosystems they compete in are disrupted. The problems start, as Adner explains, when strategists choose […]

Marcus Eriksen made a huge impression on me when I first met him. He is an environmental scientist, educator and author as part of his day job. On the side, he's built rafts out of junk, floated down the Mississippi river for days on said raft, writes books about his adventures and advocates for the […]

Chris Ategeka is an opportunity / talent catalyst, a successful entrepreneur, a TED talker and a Ugandan orphan, among many other things. His accolades go on for pages! He came to my attention for his work on the unintended consequences of technology, which he is addressing through an unusual startup funding model. We'll be talking […]

Anne-Marie Slaughter burst into the public eye with her 2012 article in the Atlantic "Why Women Still Can't Have It All." Since then, she's gone on to run New America Foundation as its CEO (among many other things, including her highly acclaimed book "Unfinished Business"). She has a new book out, "Renewal: From Crisis to […]

Christopher Mims is a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, and writes Keywords, a weekly column on technology. He has a fascinating new book out called "Arriving Today" that is particularly relevant to our pandemic-related supply chain disruptions. It's really eye opening! Before joining the Journal in 2014, he was the lead technology reporter for […]

Sought after author, consultant and speaker, Whitney Johnson, already laid the groundwork for personal and professional development in her previous work on how people can traverse the "S-curves" of learning. It's delightful that she has published an even deeper dive in her new book "Smart Growth: How to Grow Your People to Grow Your Company". […]

We are told that human beings make decisions on the basis of data and facts. Not so fast, suggests my Friday Fireside Chat guest, author, speaker and Columbia faculty member Frank Rose. We are instead hard-wired to respond to stories. His new book, "The Sea We Swim In" is a masterful exposition on storytelling, including […]

The dopamine hit - that delicious feeling your brain delivers to you as a reward, and part of our evolutionary programming - is addictive. And that's a problem, observes Anna Lembke, Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and author of the New York Times best-selling book "Dopamine Nation." We have as a […]

Michael Sikorsky is an entrepreneurs' entrepreneur! He's been named an EY Entrepreneur of the Year, has started and sold several businesses (one of which grew 2,300% in one year!) and is going to be joining me by the fireside! We're going to talk about his new venture, Copia Wealth Studios, which uses beautiful software to […]

Roger Martin has been many things - a top-ranked management thinker, author of best-selling books, advisor to business leaders and the Dean of a Business school. I'm delighted that he will be joining me by the fireside to share insights from his latest fascinating book (created in partnership with our mutual friend David Champion over […]

Sure, we're all Olympic athletes and Nobel prize winners in our own minds, but have you ever wondered what makes them different than you and I? My Fireside chat guest has a great new book out that encapsulates the answer, synthesized from hundreds of hours of interviews with hugely successful people. "The Success Factor," Ruth […]

Women’s Health Tech Wednesdays are designed to engage and inspire innovation within the healthcare community. All are welcome to participate in the weekly event, which will consist of a brief interview, followed by a live Q&A. We aim to facilitate connections and inspire change within the women's healthcare industry.

Big capital projects - hydroelectric facilities, subway systems, massive ERP installations - have in common that they are often built in a monolithic and customized way. Huge upfront investment, and no benefit until the thing is complete. It doesn't have to be that way, according to research conducted by my guest Bent Flyvbjerg. Even with […]

Michael Bungay Stanier (or "MBS" as those who know him affectionately call him has written books that have sold over a million copies, rebelled against a traditional path that would have been his fate after his Rhodes scholarship and developed an approach to coaching that "un-weirds" it. His latest book is "The Advice Trap: Be […]

Sharon Price John, the CEO of Build-a-Bear workshop, has had a fabled career that includes losing (even though you won), taking big risks and having them pay off, the mom thing and more recently the turnaround and transformation of the beloved brand. She's written about her experiences in a great book called "Stories & Heart" […]

Everyone knows that agile ways of working depend on effective teamwork. What is less obvious is how effective teamwork fits into the capability creation process. In this talk, we will explore the four elements that signal that a team is working effectively, debunk pervasive myths (for instance that satisfaction on a team is highly correlated […]

Dick Rumelt has often been described as a strategists' strategist, someone who can reduce the most complex problems to their essence and use strategic choices to make the most significant difference in the outcome. He has a new book out, "The Crux" in which he debunks a lot of the activity that unfortunately takes the […]

Keith Ferrazzi is a consummate networker, an iconic influencer, and a #1 New York Times bestselling author. His new book "Competing in the New World of Work" is an eye-opening tour of the new skills that are going to separate winners from losers in the post-pandemic competitive environment. He'll be joining me by the fireside […]

Winner of the 2022 New York EY Entrepreneur of the Year award, ExecOnLine co-founder Stephen Bailey has been revolutionizing access to high-quality executive development. One of the first to recognize how valuable on-line learning could be to anyone, he also emphasizes how important it can be to the career prospects of diverse talents. He's also […]

Matt Richtel is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist with the New York Times, a prolific writer and author of the new book "Inspired: Understanding Creativity, A Journey Through Art, Science and the Soul." He's uniquely qualified to write this particular book, which gets at the essence of human creativity through the lenses of biology, neurology […]

Leaders today are facing challenges unlike any other era. Business and workforce disruptions have reached epic proportions, competitors are appearing from new and unexpected places, and the return to normal has been replaced by a new constant – change. How do we make sense of this new business environment, and help workforce leaders adapt and […]

In 2018, Goldman Sachs reported that Google paid Apple $9 billion to be the default search engine on the iPhone; by 2022 that number is reportedly $20 billion. Why is a position that a user could easily change with just a few clicks so valuable? The answer, according to my Friday Fireside Chat guest, Eric […]

Join us for the launch of the CBS Alumni Club of HK’s Women's Committee, featuring a hybrid panel discussion on Mindful Leadership: Why It Matters Now with our distinguished panelists from the CBS community.

I just love a scrappy entrepreneurial story, and my Friday Fireside Chat guest, Ryan Close, has a great one. A former bartender, he noticed that people would love to enjoy cocktails, but didn't have the ingredients, the skill or the time to make them up. He started to play around with the concept that would […]

The Innovator's Handbook is published every year as the "bible" for everyone leading and doing innovation in large organizations, summarizing best practices and sharing how-to advise on everything innovation management. The launch for the 2023 edition is on December 6th The overall theme for the launch event is "Innovation Management in 2023", to inform the […]

Rita Kakati-Shah, an award-winning gender inclusion strategist, is the author of "The Goddess of Go-Getting," a fun guide to making your way in the world when you are not in the majority group. Rita’s spin on diversity, equity and inclusion is that most people get it wrong and, as a result, the outcomes are causing […]

Richard Rumelt has been described by no less than McKinsey as a "giant in the field of strategy." He's also a dear friend and an enormously influential thought leader. We're going to chat about his latest book, "The Crux" in which he illustrates the principles of challenge-based strategy. The idea is that strategists need to […]

Bob Sutton is a rarity - a talented academic who knows how to translate serious research into practical use. He has more books to his name than we'll have time to talk about but some of my fave's are "The No A**hole Rule" and "The Knowing-Doing Gap." He's got a new one coming out with […]

Hiding in the Bathroom: How to Get Out There When You’d Rather Stay Home - Is this a great title, or what?? My Friday fireside chat guest is Morra Aarons-Mele, a globally recognized speaker, podcast host and author of the new book "The Anxious Achiever." She's on a mission to get people to understand that […]

Bent Flyvbjerg, a Professor at Saïd Business School of the University of Oxford and IT University of Copenhagen, is a leading world scholar on project and program management. His new book, How Big Things Get Done, was described by The Wall Street Journal as a "seminal work on big projects." Professor Flyvbjerg's research has led him to formulate an innovative approach to building […]

We all know about the big things that cause us to feel burned out. Toxic bosses. Obnoxious colleagues. Too much work. Impossible deadlines. The list goes on. But, did you know that sometimes your feeling of burnout isn't the result of one big thing - its the accumulation of tons of little things - Microstressors […]

It's easy to despair at high levels of inequality and lack of access to capital and resources that still face entrepreneurs who aren't white, male or well-connected. Freada Kapor Klein's career is a beacon of hope for those of us looking for real, practical solutions. The Fund, Kapor Capital, which she co-founded puts its money […]

Do you see employees as units of cost? Do you think that offering "market based" pay, few opportunities for advancement and obsolete tools is a solid path to business success? Then please join me and MIT professor Zeynep Ton for a session that could prove life-changing. Zeynep's research shows that well paid workers, trained, with […]

Tiffani Bova, author and Customer Growth and Innovation Evangelist at Salesforce is herself a force of nature! While everybody sort of gets it that there is a relationship between the work experience of your people and the service experience received by your customers, they don't understand the real nature of the connection. In her forthcoming […]

Jeremy Utley is a major presence at the Stanford Design School, author of the recent popular book "Ideaflow" and a serial entrepreneur to boot! In what will prove to be an exciting conversation, he and I will be talking about how you can train yourself to generate a continual flow of good ideas and how […]

You have doubtless at some point been asked to fill in a "Mad Libs" style positioning statement. Product ___ offers ___ benefits to ___ target customer, allowing them to ____. Typical. My guest this week, April Dunford, thoroughly debunked this nonsensical approach to positioning in her previous book "Obviously awesome" which is an amazing guide […]

Aside from being one of my dearest colleagues at Columbia, and someone I love to casually say I last saw at Davos, Sheena Iyengar is one of the worlds' foremost authorities on choice and choosing. She has a wonderful new book out on how we can find great solutions to truly difficult problems, with lots […]