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Rod Collins      

Digital Strategist, Futurist & Author

Rod Collins is an author, keynote speaker, and leadership coach. For over four decades, Collins has been a catalyst for positive change in building highly collaborative and innovative organizations from the ground up. A leading expert and thought leader on the future of business transformation, Collins’ speeches inspire through their use of storytelling and leading-edge ideas.

Collins keeps a pulse on the developments and shifts in technology to help industry leaders understand how technological innovations will reshape their product models and use this knowledge to not only improve their current operations but, more importantly, to be leaders rather than victims of digital transformation.

With extensive experience in management, sustained financial success and market growth, Collins has questioned the way organizations operate throughout his tenure, driving companies and their people to the understand the why and the how. Under his leadership as the Chief Operating Executive of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Federal Employee Program, one of the nation's largest and most successful business alliances, the company experienced its greatest five-year growth period in its 60 year history.

Collins holds a master’s degree in business management from George Washington University and has earned the certificate in the foundations of design thinking from IDEO. He is a highly skilled facilitator and the creator of the Collective Intelligence Workshop, an innovative interactive forum that gathers a diverse group of 30 – 50 participants from all levels and all areas within an organization to think holistically about new and different ways to achieve better results, solve critical business issues, or identify new strategic opportunities. The workshop is a cutting-edge tool for tapping into the extraordinary power of an organization’s collective intelligence to rapidly discover the business insights necessary for solving a company’s most pressing problems.

Much in demand for his insights on the next wave of the digital revolution, Collins has appeared before thousands of people around the world. His keynote talks on how emerging technologies such as blockchain, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence will dramatically transform business and management models have captivated people from a wide range of companies among multiple industries.

As an author, Collins is continuously focused on pushing businesses to rethink the way they work, collaborate and remain competitive in today’s marketplace. He has a regular column on Substack where he writes about how the technology revolution is transforming the business of business, and is an award winning author on management innovation. His books include Wiki Management, which highlights the innovative tools and practices of a revolutionary new management model, and Leadership in a Wiki World, which illustrates how leaders can leverage the power of collective intelligence to sustain extraordinary performance in rapidly changing markets. His upcoming book, Nobody Is Smarter Than Everybody spotlights three companies who grew from starts-ups to market leaders by building organizations where no one is a boss and everyone is a leader.

Collins’ most recent research centers around how the exponential growth of the Internet of Things, developments in blockchain technology, and advances in artificial intelligence will merge together into an integrated network that will become the platform for a human-machine symbiosis that enables an extraordinary leap in human intelligence and the transformation of all human institutions.

Speech Topics


Is Blockchain the Future of IT?

Blockchain is the world's leading software platform for digital assets. Best known as the framework for Bitcoin, this game-changing systems architecture has caught the attention of systems builders who recognize that Blockchain could very well revolutionize the way we build IT systems. Given the recent dramatic increase in security breaches and the gnawing realization that no centralized IT system is hack-proof in a hyper-connected world, the distributed network structure of Blockchain may be the answer for how we may successfully eradicate most hacking and fraud activity. While Blockchain is clearly in its infancy and has many bugs to be worked out as further applications are developed, the network-based architecture of this innovative technology promises to go a long way in making sure activity in the digital world is safe and secure.

Rod Collins explains to business leaders how Blockchain works, why it may be the best solution for IT security, and how it can bolster consumer trust in the power of your brand.

What Is It Digital Transformation and Why Does It Matter?

In the next decade, we will experience the rapid emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT), which will allow every person and thing to communicate with each other by connecting the sensors in every machine, business, residence, vehicle—and, yes, every person—within a single comprehensive operating system. As these sensors proliferate, they will accelerate the digital transformation of business as the IoT becomes a platform for highly sophisticated artificial intelligence systems that are able to process the universe of sensor information at the speed of Google searches. Using the technologies of machine learning, the IoT will create a new era in commerce where the potential for new business models will be endless.

Rod Collins shows business leaders why digital transformation is the most important game-changing event since the invention of mass production and how they can leverage the innovative and unprecedented capacities of this powerful phenomenon to succeed in a new age of competition.

The Future of Management Has Already Arrived!

Conventional management thought assumes that command-and-control is the most effective way to organize the efforts of large numbers of people, but rapid change and increasing complexity have rendered that model obsolete. As a result, most managers today lack the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in world where new technologies have made collaborative networks smarter and faster than top-down hierarchies. Designing organizations to succeed in a time of great change demands a new and very different model for our increasingly hyper-connected world—Wiki Management.

Rod Collins shares his research and experience with this revolutionary new management model where leaders are enablers and facilitators rather than bosses, workers are highly engaged in shaping strategic thinking and operational practices, and business processes are designed around what’s most important to customers. Learn how a new breed of innovative business leaders have completely overhauled the ways we build organizations and why, despite being hidden in plain sight, the future of management has already arrived!

Are You Ready For the Second Wave of the Digital Revolution?

In the brief time since the new millennium began, we have experienced the transformative power of the first wave of the Digital Revolution as the Internet has literally changed all the rules for how the world works. Now we find ourselves on the threshold of a second wave that will be fueled by not one, but two engines, resulting in more change in the next decade than we have seen in the past twenty-five years. Discover how the Internet of Things and Blockchain technology will produce new capabilities for improving the quality of life by expanding social collaboration, preventing illness and accidents, spawning new business and product models, generating new ways to create and distribute wealth, and ending the threats of hacking and fraud.

Rod Collins shows business leaders how they can ready themselves to leverage the powerful new capabilities of the second wave of the digital revolution to lead organizations that can change as fast as the world around them.

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