Rowan Gibson Speaker Biography
Business Strategist, Innovation Expert,
and Best-Selling Author
Rowan Gibson is widely recognized as one of the world’s foremost thought leaders on business innovation. The media have labeled him “Mr. Innovation”, “the Innovation Grandmaster”, “the W. Edwards Deming of innovation” and “a guru among the gurus”.
Books
He is the internationally bestselling author of three major books on business strategy and innovation – Rethinking The Future (1996), Innovation to the Core (2008), and The Four Lenses of Innovation (2015) – which have been published to date in 25 languages. His latest book, The Four Lenses of Innovation (Wiley), explains how to dramatically improve a company’s innovation efforts by using a powerful new set of discovery lenses.
New Markets
Over the last two decades, Gibson’s international clients have included some of the world’s largest and most successful organizations. He teaches them how to seize new growth opportunities, create new markets and even transform entire industries by recalibrating their whole organizational system around the paradigm of innovation.
Popular Speaker
Rowan Gibson is one of the world’s most in-demand public speakers. In just the last four years alone, he has delivered his keynote speeches, innovation masterclasses and public seminars in 60 countries around the world. He has addressed a long list of major organizations, including Accenture, Bayer, British Telecom, Coca-Cola, Credit Suisse, Dow Chemicals, Generali Group, Haier, Heinz, Henkel, IBM, Mars, Microsoft, Motorola, NOKIA, Philips, P&G, Roche, Siemens, Steelcase, Telefonica and Volkswagen. Rowan’s big-picture insights, compelling observations, fresh business thinking and upbeat presentation style have impressed a wide range of audiences all over the world. He mixes insight, inspiration and information in a way that always leaves an audience feeling energized.
Cutting Edge Advice
Rowan Gibson’s keynote speeches, executive sessions and innovation masterclasses are always tailor-made to fit each audience, industry sector and event format. He endeavours, wherever possible, to use business cases and examples that are relevant to the specific audience. Gibson uses very graphic Powerpoint slides – each typically features just one powerful image and a single statement – which makes his presentations extremely dynamic. He is constantly updating his slides with cutting-edge material and up-to-the-minute business news.
Publications
Rowan is also a prolific writer. In addition to his bestselling books, he has authored dozens of business articles, columns and blogs which have been read all around the globe. He has been interviewed frequently on television and radio, as well as online and in the international press. His media appearances include Forbes, CNN, BusinessWeek, Harvard Business Review, and BBC World Service. He has also appeared in several business documentaries.
Innovation Excellence
Rowan Gibson is co-founder of Innovation Excellence – the world’s most popular innovation website. The portal, which builds on an international group of over18,500 members from 175 countries, offers an arsenal of resources from today’s innovation thought leaders and practitioners aimed at helping every company achieve innovation excellence. The site currently serves up more than 1 million pages every month.
About
Gibson has lived and worked in various countries over the last twenty years and speaks three languages fluently. Today, he divides his time between writing, public speaking and consulting.
Rowan Gibson Speaking Topics
Making Innovation Happen!
Innovation is now recognized globally as the core driver of growth, strategic renewal, and long-term competitiveness. It’s literally your company’s only hope for creating new wealth and sustaining business success. But how do you actually make innovation happen? In this keynote presentation, Rowan Gibson looks inside the mind of the innovator to reveal the four key mental perspectives behind all game-changing ideas: 1. CHALLENGING ORTHODOXIES – questioning deeply-held beliefs and conventional assumptions inside a company or an industry 2. HARNESSING TRENDS – using the power of discontinuous change to substantially alter the rules of the game and to drive industry disruption 3. LEVERAGING RESOURCES – repurposing and recombining core competencies and strategic assets in order to stretch into new growth opportunities 4. UNDERSTANDING NEEDS – learning to live inside the customer’s skin, identifying unmet needs and designing solutions from the customer backward Based on his latest book “The Four Lenses of Innovation: A Power Tool for Creative Thinking,” Rowan shows that by deliberately and systematically using these four proven perspectives, literally anyone can unlock their ability to innovate. In a keynote that is tailored to your own strategic issues, Rowan will provide you with a cutting-edge “Power Tool for Creative Thinking” that you and your people can use to systematically generate breakthrough opportunities for profitable growth.
Four Lenses of Innovation™ - Breakout Session
This is where the innovation rhetoric becomes reality. In his breakout sessions with The Four Lenses of Innovation™, Rowan Gibson gives you the opportunity to start working with one of the world’s most powerful tools for systematic idea generation. Usually following his keynotes, Rowan facilitates these exciting sessions using a set of proven techniques to stretch your thinking along new lines and produce a portfolio of new, insight-based opportunities for driving growth and renewal. In an inspiring atmosphere, your people will get a chance to radically rethink your products, services, processes, markets, strategies – and even your business model itself – to create new value for your customers. These practical breakout sessions include Rowan’s special handbook of exercises and are specially tailored to your own strategic issues. They engage all participants in the generation of new strategic insights and growth opportunities for your company, teaching them a methodology they can already start using on Monday morning to address their own business challenges. The breakout sessions can be customized to meet your own requirements and usually require 2 – 3 hours.
Winning in the Innovation Economy
Today’s “Innovation Economy” is driven by hyper-acceleration, hyper-competition and the rapid commoditization of products, services and capabilities. In this difficult environment, the only option for creating new wealth, building new markets and driving future business is innovation. Of course, most organizations understand that, but they still can’t make innovation happen. Why? In this revolutionary keynote speech, Rowan Gibson focuses on how to build an enterprise-wide innovation system that actually works. A system based on new values, new skills, new processes, new metrics, new IT solutions and new management structures. A system that puts the focus on continuous innovation – not just at the product and service level, but at the level of the entire business model. A system that will enable the company to invent new breakthrough strategies for sustaining profitable growth and then turn those strategies into market success stories. Your audience will learn: • how to understand innovation at the level of the entire business system • how to create an enterprise-wide culture that is committed to innovation • how to invent breakthrough strategies for sustaining profitable growth • how to build a management infrastructure that supports innovation • how to make innovation a systemic capability at the organization’s core
Innovation to the Core
Everyone preaches innovation. So why the rhetoric-reality gap? It’s because innovation has to be more than a vague aspiration. It has to a deep, systemic capability in your organization, one that requires completely new management systems – new values, new processes, new tools, new training,and new IT networks. But how exactly do you build a corporate innovation system? How do you recalibrate your corporate culture so that innovation becomes embedded in your DNA?
Rowan Gibson Books
The Four Lenses of Innovation: A Power Tool for Creative Thinking
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Innovation to the Core
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Rethinking the Future
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Rowan Gibson Speaker Testimonials
“Rowan Gibson energized our associates and demystified the process of innovation. We fully intend to accelerate the momentum that has built up, and to put full-time senior resources behind driving the ideas that he shared.”
- | Mars
“Rowan Gibson’s motivation and leadership have changed the dynamics of our organization.”
- | Bayer Healthcare
“Opened the eyes of our executives.”
- | UPM Kymmene
“Rowan got the top score in our evaluations.”
- | The Concours Group
