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Joel Kurtzman    

Joel Kurtzman is Chairman of the Kurtzman Group, a consulting and advisory firm.

Joel Kurtzman is a noted author and adviser to leading organizations around the world in the areas of leadership, social capital, governance, and assessing and managing global risk. His expertise is highlighted by his long, successful career forecasting global events, from oil-price shocks to the dollar's ups and downs. Joel's vantage point in understanding and relating business implications comes from the fact that he has held both positions of senior strategic business leader and journalist responsible for reporting and translating business issues. Whether presenting to business leaders or government officials, Joel presents his ideas with one overarching concept in mind: provide thought leadership that creates value and sustainable growth.

Joel Kurtzman is a senior fellow, executive director of the Center for a Sustainable Energy Future, and publisher of The Milken Institute Review. Previously, he was global lead partner for Thought Leadership and Innovation at PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he was responsible for developing new, marketable ideas in strategy, technology, the capital markets and business policy. He was also responsible for the firm's Menlo Park Technology Research Centre, its technology forecasting teams and its innovative R&D.

Joel is the former editor of the Harvard Business Review and a former member of the editorial board of Harvard Business School Publishing. He was also business editor and columnist at The New York Times. He was a columnist for Fortune, Chief Executive and the European Business Forum, and was an on-air book reviewer at CNN.

Speech Topics

Unleashing the Second American Century

In this keynote, Joel Kurtzman shows that all the talk about the relative decline of the United States is not only baseless—it’s dead wrong. A widely-held misconception is that “America doesn’t make things anymore.” But the U.S. is by far the world’s dominant manufacturing power—and growing. America also has a stunning level of talent and creativity in the world’s fastest-growing economic sectors, such as biotech, pharmaceutical, computer hardware and software, and telecommunications. Due to shale and gas, America has the world’s largest energy reserves, and is more favorably endowed than even the Middle East. Finally, America has an unprecedented amount of capital now idle—approximately $4.4 trillion, a sum that is about $1 trillion larger than the German economy, the world’s fourth largest. Together, these forces will transform the United States. In this positive, buoyant talk, Kurtzman provides inspiration for the business community and insight for the investors. When we fully grasp the opportunities in the U.S., he says, prosperity will return—and much faster than we now think possible.

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