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David Butler      

VP Innovation and Entrepreneurship, The Coca-Cola Company

David Butler first joined Coca-Cola to revolutionize the company’s approach to design—not just how things look, but a holistic, systems-based approach to create growth across the business. It’s the subject of his new book, Design to Grow. In his talks, Butler reveals the secrets of Coke’s ongoing success and how his new startup-focused venture platform is poised to change the way large organizations innovate.

David Butler is a designer, entrepreneur, educator, and leader on a mission to make it easier for starters to scale and scalers to start. His new book Design to Grow: How Coca-Cola Learned to Combine Scale and Agility (and How You Can Too), co-authored with Linda Tischler, explores the relationship between design, startup culture, and corporate growth. It is the first book written by a current employee at Coca-Cola.

In his role as Vice President, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at The Coca-Cola Company, Butler leads a new venturing platform—Coca-Cola Founders—designed to create seed-stage startups by opening up Coca-Cola’s assets to a global network of rock-star founders. He joined Coca-Cola in 2004 as the Company’s first VP, Global Design. He established a cross-functional, systems-based approach to design across more than 200 countries. Prior to Coca-Cola, David founded Process1234.com; consulted Gucci, United, and Caterpillar; taught systems theory; and designed large-scale systems for UPS, Delta, CNN, and the 1996 Olympic Games.

Along the way, Butler was named “Master of Design” by Fast Company and to Forbes’ “Executive Dream Team.” In 2012 he was asked to co-chair the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Design and Innovation. He has given keynotes around the world including Design Indaba in Capetown, the Web Summit in Dublin, The CEO Summit in Auckland, The Economist’s “Big Rethink” in London, and Hong Kong’s Design Week.

Speech Topics

Disruptive Innovation: How Can Any Company Learn How to Innovate Like a "Tech" Company?

In today’s world, “game-changing” products, technologies, and business models tend to come from startups or “tech” companies like Google, Apple, or Amazon. Big, established “non-tech” companies are very challenged when it comes to disruptive innovation. But they don’t have to be. In his talk, David Butler shares a repeatable and scalable model one of the world’s largest “non-tech” companies is using to create new solutions for some of its “billion-dollar” challenges. This keynote is a must-hear for executives inside large, established companies desiring to unleash exponential growth through disruptive innovation.

· What is disruptive innovation and how does it differ from incremental innovation (in plain language that everyone can understand)?

· How are startups attacking every industry and what can big, established companies learn from Kodak in avoiding their own “Kodak Moment?”

· How do tech companies like Google, Apple, and Amazon almost effortlessly enter entirely new categories and industries?

· How can non-tech companies begin to leverage their assets (relationships, resources, and reach) in new ways to drive massive, sustainable growth?

Design to Grow: How Can Any Company Learn to Use Design as a Growth Strategy?

Tomorrow’s business winners—regardless of size or industry—will be the ones that know how to use design to combine scale with agility. In his talk, David Butler shares both the successes and failures of one of the world’s largest companies on its journey in leveraging the full power of design across its business to become a “design-driven” company. He shares a simple yet powerful framework and case studies from around the world to demonstrate Coca-Cola’s transformation.

· What is design and how does it create value for companies (in plain language that any business manager can understand)?

· How can a systems-based approach to design help any size company in any industry become a “design-driven” company?

· How can “non-designers” quickly learn how to leverage the full power of design across their team, function, or business unit?

News

Coke’s David Butler on building a program for ‘exponential growth’
Our latest Innovation Leader Live call featured David Butler, VP of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Coca-Cola Company. Butler is the co-author of a book being published this month, “Design to Grow: How Coca-Cola Learned to Combine Scale and Agility (and How You Can Too).”He talked about:
Coca-Cola’s Innovation Guru Will Talk Startup Agility at R3 Gala
Butler has been named a “Master of Design” by Fast Company and a part of Fortune’s 2013 “Executive Fantasy League.” He will be speaking at NBIF’s R3 Gala tomorrow, which celebrates the work of three of the province’s top applied researchers.
How David Butler solved Coca-Cola’s design problem
As The Coca-Cola Company’s VP of Innovation, David talks about how he uses design thinking to create the systems, processes and relationships necessary for Coca-Cola to produce as much value as possible, through innovation and entrepreneurship.

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