The Ultimate Innovation Speaker List
Many of Leading Authorities’ clients request speakers on innovation, but innovation can mean many things to different people. Below are great innovation speaker options divided based on their specific category of expertise. Whether you’re looking to sharpen your creative-thinking skills or prepare your organization for changes caused by advancements in technology, we’ve got fantastic speakers who have proven themselves on stage, in the board room, and in industries across the country.
Creating A Culture That Embraces Change & Adapts Rapidly
Seth Goldman is the current CEO of Honest Tea and a best-selling author. He looks at what it means to be a mission-driven innovator and how values-based leadership, passion, and sound economic theory combine to create a culture that is constantly asking, “What is the next step?”
Doug Rauch is the former president of Trader Joe’s. With the mantra “innovate or die,” he shows organizations how to consistently push for new and better ways to perform and offers ways to create a self-sustaining culture of innovation that embraces failure while learning from it.
Brian Solis is a best-selling author, digital analyst, business strategist, and new media expert. He shows audiences how to lead the next generation customer experience, to engage a more connected and sophisticated workforce, and to survive Digital Darwinism.
Capitalizing On Disruptive Technology
Peter Diamandis is the CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation and a best-selling author. He addresses the impact and opportunity that exponential technology—artificial intelligence, robotics, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and more—has on companies, governments, and the world.
Daniel Kraft is a repeat TED speaker and the head of the medicine track at Singularity University (whose founders hail from X Prize and Google). He shares how disruptive technology is reinventing the future of health and medicine while demoing the industry’s most revolutionary new gadgets.
Salim Ismail is a technology strategist, the executive director of Singularity University, and a best-selling author. He has ties to Yahoo! and Google and looks at the future of technology, its social impact, and how organizations should be thinking about positioning themselves for future growth.
Suneel Gupta is an entrepreneur who builds hugely-popular products from scratch. He helped grow Groupon from a tiny start-up into a multi-billion dollar company and shares insights on how to spark innovation, manage growth, and capitalize on disruptions to build a digital product from scratch.
Leroy Chiao is a renowned NASA astronaut and commercial spaceflight pioneer. He shares stories and photos about space as he addresses how out-of-this-world thinking can impact organizations and how understanding where innovation is driving technology is key to planning for the future.
Steve Wozniak is the co-founder of Apple and has been a Silicon Valley icon and philanthropist for more than 30 years. He single-handedly designed the Apple I and Apple II computers and shares insights on how today’s science fiction becomes reality and what organizations can do to stay ahead.
Scott Klososky was the CEO of three successful start-ups. He shares insights on how changes in technology will impact society and business. Fast paced and engaging, his speeches inspire audiences to step outside their comfort zones and capitalize on the opportunities that technology creates.
Jack Uldrich is a global futurist and best-selling author. He shares the eight emerging trends in technology, how nanotechnology will change the future of business, and the eight concrete strategies that will kick start innovation and help organizations create a new future.
HOW TO FIND Methods For Creative & Outside-the-Box Thinking
Lisa Bodell is a best-selling author who helps audiences eliminate needless complexity with simple, inspiring ways to make innovation happen now. She shares tools and resources and poses the question: “If you could change the rules that get in the way of doing your job, what would they be?”
Kaihan Krippendorff is a popular author and Fast Company blogger who uses his insider knowledge of the world’s top businesses to teach audiences how to think differently and create “fourth options” for themselves—the strategic advantages their competitors don’t expect.
Peter Sheahan is an international best-selling author who is renowned for inspiring innovative business thinking and creating lasting behavior change. He looks at how to turn challenges into opportunities and offers counter-intuitive strategies for finding and exploiting new markets.
Warren Berger is a repeat best-selling author. Delving into businesses like Google, Netflix, and Airbnb, he looks at how the world’s top innovators, designers, and creative thinkers solve problems and create new possibilities by becoming expert questioners, challenging audiences to ask, “Why?”
Gurpreet Dhaliwal, MD studies how doctors think. One of the US’s best diagnosticians, he shares insights on what affects the quality of our decision-making—from the facts we ignored/included to shortcuts and biases—and how technology affects the process (and what this means for innovation).
Technology & Change Strategy SPEAKERS
Rita McGrath is a Thinker50 award-winning growth strategy expert and acclaimed author. She shares the five ways to tell if your innovation process is dysfunctional, how to choose between competing innovation projects, and how to constructively disengage from a project.
Peter Sims is a best-selling author and entrepreneur. He looks at how the kind of linear problem-solving and fear of failure we were conditioned to embrace actively thwarts creativity. He shares insights on how to use small, experimental steps to lead to extraordinary breakthroughs.
Ori Brafman is a New York Times best-selling author. His expertise has been embraced by Microsoft, Google, and the US Army, and he shows executives how to bring knowledge in from the edge of their networks, change the culture to spur innovation, and produce best-of-class decision-making.
Kate Ancketill is the brains behind GDR Creative Intelligence. She discusses how fast-moving brands are creating the future advancements from their imaginations and shares insights on how tweaking a discarded idea can turn it into world-leading innovation.
Barry Nalebuff is the co-founder of Honest Tea. He uses game theory and four central, idea-generating tools to shows audiences how to think creatively and create new, effective strategies for their own organizations that go beyond the old rules of competition and cooperation.
Practical Inventors & Industry Revolutionizers
Peter Diamandis is an internationally-renowned pioneer in innovation, incentive competitions, and commercial spaceflight. He is the CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation and the co-founder of Singularity University and shares how exponential technology can create radical breakthroughs for humanity.
Steve Wozniak is the co-founder of Apple and has been a Silicon Valley icon and philanthropist for more than 30 years. He single-handedly designed the Apple I and Apple II computers and shares insights on how today’s science fiction becomes reality and what organizations can do to stay ahead.
Terry Jones is the founder of Travelocity, the first website that allowed consumers to access fares and book tickets without the help of a travel agent. He addresses the effect of technology and innovation on business and how to capitalize on an organization’s digital relationships.
Jim McCann is the CEO of 1-800-FLOWERS, one of the first retailers to establish a web presence and a pioneer in popularizing toll-free numbers and websites to sell goods and services directly to consumers. He shares insights on creating a entrepreneurial culture and embracing technology.
John Grotzinger heads the most visible mission in the history of robotic space exploration—the Mars Curiosity rover mission. He shares cutting-edge stories about what audiences can learn from his time designing the most complex spacecraft to land and operate on the surface of another planet.
Bob Ballard is the explorer who discovered the Titanic and life at the bottom of the sea. He shares incredible pictures and stories about the treasures of the ocean and how new discoveries could solve the world’s toughest problems related to energy, medicine, and natural resources.
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