John Rossman

John Rossman Speaking Topics

Keynotes for Leadership on Digital Transformation

• Lessons from the Launch of the Amazon Marketplace Business – How You Become a Big Bet Legend in Your Industry • Think Like Amazon – What’s the Future of Your Industry and Ecosystem? • Reinventing Healthcare & Insurance Through Customer Centricity, Innovation & Leadership — The Amazon Way

Keynotes for Leadership on Artificial Intelligence and Innovation

• Winning with Artificial Intelligence – Innovation and Execution in the Hyper-Digital Era • Leadership and Culture for Innovation and Bold Moves – The Amazon Way • Leadership to become an AI-First Organization

Keynotes for Leadership for High-Performance Teams and Cultures

• Motivating for Excellence: 10x Your Leadership Impact & Team Performance • Championship Habits – Team Culture and Tactics for High-Performing Teams • Winning in the Hyper-Digital Era – Deliver Results Today and Win Tomorrow in the Age of AI John Rossman delivers the perfect tailored keynote for your conference, team meeting, or company event. He has delivered over 280 keynotes and workshops across every industry and company type. Whether it's a large conference or a small team event, John customizes and provides an actionable, motivational, and energetic playbook that challenges the status quo of traditional management thinking.

Lessons from the Launch of the Amazon Marketplace Business – How You Become a Big Bet Legend in Your Industry

In 2002, Amazon was being referred to as “Amazon.org”, “Amazon.org” and “Amazon.toast”. The stock hit a low of five dollars. Ninety percent of Amazon’s business was books, CD music sales and VHS video unit sales. But Jeff Bezos had an ambitious vision to become “the everything store”. He just needed the right model and team. Amazon hired John Rossman to play a key role in leading and scaling the Amazon marketplace, which accounts for 60% of all units sold at Amazon today. This keynote is the story of creating the Amazon Marketplace business and what business leaders can learn and apply to their businesses today. Combining The Amazon Way, Think Like Amazon, and Big Bet Leadership, Rossman will take your audience through an entertaining and provocative discussion that will impact the way you think, the way you lead, and the culture of your organization. If you are undergoing a transformation, repositioning, or growth strategy, you can’t afford not to study and learn from the business that changed retail, logistics, and so many other industries—from the Amazon leader who captured the story, John Rossman. This keynote starts with an entertaining video framing the situation and challenging circumstances that Amazon faced in 2002. It then delivers the proven leadership principles and tactics to deliver transformational change in your organization. Learn about true customer obsession, how to spot friction, why “metrics” need to be a verb, the secret to Amazon’s innovation process, how to deliver results despite setbacks, and much more. Leaving Your Audience with… • Visionary Leadership Insight: Learn how Amazon transformed from a struggling bookseller to "the everything store” and the most interesting company of the digital era. • Scaling Innovation: Discover strategies for scaling the Amazon Marketplace • Change Frameworks: Apply frameworks from "The Amazon Way," "Think Like Amazon," and "Big Bet Leadership" to lead organizational transformations. • Durable Leadership Principles: Understand the resilient leadership principles and tactics that navigated Amazon through its early challenges to industry dominance. • Cultural Impact: Explore how Amazon’s culture of customer centricity, innovation and accountability can be replicated to drive success in your own organization.

Think Like Amazon – What’s the Future of Your Industry and Ecosystem?

This presentation is tailored to business leaders and investors interested in forecasting and creating the future of their industry. Drawing from his extensive experience at Amazon, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, T-Mobile, and dozens of client strategy engagements, Rossman explores critical components and mega-forces leading to change. Attendees gain exclusive insights into applying these methodologies to their strategies, accelerating growth and enhancing competitiveness in an increasingly competitive and dynamic marketplace. Rossman’s discussion extends beyond replicating tactics; he encourages a paradigm shift in thinking. Attendees will explore the 'thinking in outcomes' approach, outlining practical steps for conducting scenario planning. This keynote segment is designed to provoke thought, spur innovation, and drive home the importance of a customer-centric approach coupled with robust thought experiments. Concluding with a forward-looking perspective, Rossman guides the audience through scenario planning exercises to predict and react to future industry trends and challenges. This proactive approach prepares leaders to navigate their businesses through potential disruptions and equips them to play a pivotal role in shaping their respective ecosystems. Participants will leave with a clear set of principles and techniques that, when implemented, can transform their organizations into agile, forward thinking competitors ready to thrive in the future digital landscape. Leaving Your Audience with… • Adopt Amazon's Strategic Mindset: Embrace continuous innovation and customer obsession to redefine industry standards and enhance business growth. • Practical Innovation Strategies: Understand how to “think in bets” by solving wicked problems. • Future-Proof Your Business: Utilize scenario planning to anticipate and effectively respond to dynamic market changes. • Cultural Transformation: Foster a culture that supports customer centricity, agility, resilience, and constant learning to thrive in the digital era.

Leadership and Culture for Innovation and Bold Moves – The Amazon Way

John Rossman offers a dynamic exploration of leadership and cultural frameworks cementing Amazon as a paragon of innovation, grit, and audacious corporate strategies. This popular presentation synthesizes lessons from Rossman's books to deliver a comprehensive guide for cultivating a culture that embraces innovation and drives it at every level. Rossman begins by dissecting the foundational elements of Amazon’s leadership philosophy as detailed in "The Amazon Way." He explains how Amazon's leadership principles are designed to foster a culture of high standards, ownership, and relentless focus on customer outcomes. These principles are not just theories but practical tools that Amazon leaders use daily to make decisions and inspire teams. The audience will learn to apply these principles to create a leadership environment that encourages bold thinking and meticulous execution. Building on this foundation, Rossman delves into "Think Like Amazon: 50 1/2 Ideas to Become a Digital Leader," providing actionable strategies for embedding innovation into an organization's DNA. He highlights how continuous innovation cycles and a willingness to experiment can be instituted across various business functions to disrupt industry norms and redefine service delivery. Through engaging anecdotes and empirical evidence, Rossman illustrates the transformative power of adopting a digitalfirst approach and leveraging technology to scale solutions and optimize operations. The keynote culminates with insights from "Big Bet Leadership," where Rossman articulates the criticality of making and managing big bets to pivot an organization toward future growth opportunities. He discusses the strategic imperatives of such decisions, the risk management involved, and how to foster a culture that supports and champions bold moves. Audience members will leave with a clear understanding of how to meld leadership, culture, and innovation practices to participate in their industries and lead them boldly into the future. Leaving the audience with … • Understand Amazon’s Leadership Principles: Learn from Amazon's core leadership principles to enhance decision-making and cultivate a high-performing team culture. • Cultivate a Culture of Innovation: Adopt strategies to embed a continuous innovation cycle within your organization, driving efficiency and competitiveness. • Customer-First Mindset: Use a customer-centric approach to transform business processes, enabling scalability and improved customer satisfaction and loyalty. • Risk Management in Bold Decisions: Understand how to strategically manage and mitigate risks when making and implementing big bets. • Championing Bold Leadership: Develop a leadership style that encourages bold thinking and decisive action to navigate and lead through industry disruptions.

John Rossman Videos

John Rossman Articles

• Top Ten Leadership Speakers in 2024 at Speakers.com
• Big Bet Leadership – New Book Out From John Rossman

John Rossman Speaker Testimonials

"John is perhaps one of the foremost experts on Amazon and corporate cultures that focus on innovation. His recent book on the Amazon Way is a testament to the core insights John has been able to surface. Recently, John was invited to do a forum at Xerox PARC. We were not only oversubscribed for the forum, but the audience itself gave John and his presentation the highest rank of all the seminars this past year. I highly recommend John as a speaker to all audiences interested in corporate innovation, company cultures, and the impact of emerging technology on new business models.”

- | Xerox

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"It was a privilege to have John Rossman speak at our March 25th, 2015, Georgia Technology Summit. Our Summit is one of the largest tech events in the SE, with over 1,300 attendees participating. This year's Summit theme was "Disruptive Innovation - The Power to Inspire". John's remarks were right on target. Combining key points in his Book, the Amazon Way, with his broader knowledge base, made for a quality presentation. One participant sent me an unsolicited note comparing John's presentation to a high-level Ted Talk. I would recommend John for speaking opportunities for an event of any size when the topic revolves around innovation and/or disruption. He was also a pleasure to work with, which is a sometimes overlooked aspect when it comes to speaker selection, yet of critical importance."

- | TAG - Technology Association of Georgia

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"We needed an expert to speak at our corporate leadership event—someone who was able to speak at length on adopting different corporate cultures and looking at business from a different perspective than our own. While people may not think of Amazon and AAA Washington as having much in common, finding ways to make a business more efficient and keeping the customer in focus is a basis for all organizations. His personal history at Amazon gave us a unique view of an incredibly successful company and what it takes to innovate, lead, and sometimes disrupt the status quo."

- | AAA

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"In planning our 2015 product organization kickoff, we looked for a speaker who could both inspire and offer practical insights on execution. We were lucky to have John Rossman present to the team. John introduced us to the key leadership principles he observed during his time at Amazon, which are also described in his excellent (and accessible) book, The Amazon Way."

- | CIPP