“POLITICAL CHAOS AND YOUR BUSINESS”

The political pros have been wrong about almost everything in the election cycle so far. How can business people even hope to make sense of it – or make plans for their businesses and themselves?

Geoff Colvin has answers, explaining what’s at stake in terms you won’t hear elsewhere. This election may profoundly alter the factors and forces that business people really care about. Economic growth, consumer demand, interest rates, taxes, employment costs – cable news doesn’t spend much time on those issues, but all of them could be affected by the election’s outcome, transforming the business environment in important ways.

That’s why business people must keep the most significant issues in mind, even if candidates don’t want to talk about them. In the era of the gig economy, the Uberization of everything, advancing technology, and a large-scale global labor market, Washington is still in the 20th century on business policy. In addition, business people need to remember that three giant, long-term issues – entitlement reform, comprehensive tax reform, and immigration reform – are the real keys to how Washington can turbocharge or hinder the overall U.S. economy in the years ahead. Those issues often get lost in the daily coverage of candidates’ latest tweets.

Geoff explains why partisanship won’t decrease, regardless of the election results. So one thing most business people want from government – policy stability – will remain a dream. Yet we can’t afford to be paralyzed, and Geoff shows how the most successful business people are competing and winning in this uncertain environment. Calling on his deep relationships in the worlds of Washington and corporate America, Geoff brings a message of optimism as we look past the rough and tumble of an election cycle unlike anything we’ve seen before.

The 21st Century Corporation - Winning in a Friction - Free World

Imagine an economy without friction – a new world in which labor, information, and money move easily, cheaply, and almost instantly. Psst – it’s here. Is your company ready?

The most successful companies today are forming starkly new, more fluid relationships with customers, workers, and owners. They’re rethinking the role of capital (as traditionally defined) and finding they can thrive while owning less and less of it. They are creating value in new ways as they reinvent R&D and marketing. And finally, they’re measuring their performance by new metrics because traditional gauges no longer capture what counts. These companies aren’t all glamorous Silicon Valley startups. They can be of any age and in any industry. Every company will have to become one, creating value in innovative ways, or lose out to competitors that do so. Geoff Colvin’s presentation is optimistic and energizing showing that opportunity is more widely available than ever – and how to seize it.

What Makes You Better Than a Computer

Every day, technology is doing something else better than humans, and the trend is picking up speed. For the first time in 200 years, mainstream economists are seriously considering whether technology is pushing unemployment up and wages down. Where does that leave growing numbers of NEWLY insecure workers, from taxi drivers to lawyers? What will be the high-value skills that will raise living standards for us and our children? Answers are becoming clear, and they involve elements of our deepest humanity –empathy, emotion, narrative, creativity. For the individuals, companies, and whole economies that can master them, these will be the counter intuitive keys to competitive advantage.

Becoming Radically Customer-Centric: The New Opportunity

All companies like to claim they’re customer-centric, but few truly are. Most don’t deeply understand the varied wants and needs of their different customers, or craft different customer value propositions to meet those customers’ wants and needs—nor do they know how much money they actually make (or lose) with each customer or customer segment. Such companies are guaranteed to be wasting resources and losing customers to savvier competitors. There’s no excuse for that to happen. Big Data and powerful new analytic tools are changing the game, but they’re of no use unless companies know how to use them. Colvin, co-author of the groundbreaking book Angel Customers and Demon Customers, explains how smart companies are taking customer-centricity to undreamed-of heights—and how doing so turbocharges profits.

The Power of One: Aligning Your Organization’s Incredible Strengths

It’s one of the most striking trends in business today: companies feeling frustrated that the tremendous abilities inside their organizations—the knowledge, creativity, and innovation— aren’t being combined as one to deliver knockout products and services that leave competitors wondering what hit them. For most businesses it’s a huge missed opportunity. Yet a growing number of companies, as varied as Ford, Apple, Lego, Amazon, and Hershey, have cracked the code and are achieving extraordinary success as a result. Colvin explains how they do it and how your organization can too—before your competitors beat you to it.

The Economic Outlook

It’s what everybody wants to know. Today’s economic environment is more volatile and uncertain than at any time in memory: The BRICs are slowing, America’s growing, Europe’s a question mark; technology is upending whole industries; surging demographic changes are creating new challenges and opportunities; governments are playing a larger role than they have in decades. And it all changes by the day. Colvin uses his relationships with top leaders to get ahead of official statistics and explain the latest trends and what they mean. Engaging, energetic, and topical, he helps his audience put it all together to make better decisions.