David Nour

CEO of The Nour Group, Inc., Senior Management Advisor, International Speaker, and Best-Selling Author
David Nour
  • Consulted for top, global companies Disney, Cisco, Deloitte, and Hilton
  • Columnist for the Huffington Post, featured in the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times
  • Global speaker on relationship economics- combining art and science to help audiences quantify and foster lasting relationships
  • Actionable insights on turning business connections into assets that directly improve your bottom line

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David Nour is a growth strategist, thought leader, and global keynote speaker on the ground-breaking concept of Relationship Economics®, the art and science of strategically investing in people to meet goals and get extraordinary returns. Through his best-selling books, compelling speeches, and valuable consulting across the last 20 years, Nour has taught companies of every size how to choose and nurture key relationships that will take their perception and business to the next level, and he has pioneered the phenomenon that relationships are the greatest off-balance sheet asset any organizations possess, large and small, public and private.

Building on over two decades of experience as a senior leadership/board advisor, best-selling author, and executive coach, David founded The Nour Group, Inc.,  a consulting firm that advises top global leaders and boards of corporations, associations and academic forums on disruptive innovations to fuel their growth, in 2002. His vision? To help his global audience see business relationships as not simply a “nice to have,” a “convenience,” and “of course, they’re important,” but instead their intentional, strategic, and thus quantifiable value. In a global economy that is becoming increasingly disconnected, The Nour Group, Inc., has worked with leading global companies and well-known clients, such as Disney, Cisco Systems, Deloitte Consulting, Hilton Worldwide, HP, IBM, ThyssenKrupp, KPMG, and over 100 other marquee organizations in driving profitable growth through unique return on their strategic relationships. Nour shows clients how to capitalize their business relationships via both interpersonal relationships and social media networking.

As an internationally-renowned thought leader, business expert, and keynote speaker, David annually delivers 50 global keynotes explaining business relationships, social and mobile disruptive technologies, and adaptive innovation at corporate meetings, leading industry association conferences, and academic forums. In the last decade, he has given more than 500 total presentations to groups as small as a dozen senior execs at a board retreat, to as large as 25,000 international attendees at a Fortune 100 global kick-off meeting. His keynotes have been heard at top industry summit, such as Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit, and Marriott Annual GM Conference, among others, and he’s worked with hundreds of global organization meeting professionals, speaking coordinators, and event production teams. David has been named to the Georgia Trend's "40 Under 40", Atlanta Business Chronicle's "Up and Coming" and the coveted Turnkett Leadership Character Awards. Entertaining, informational, and interactive, David's highly-acclaimed presentations provide a systematic approach to building, nurturing, and quantifying the key relationships that produce extraordinary results.

After hundreds of speeches and being asked countless times for a book, David wrote his first, Relationship Economics, back in 2008. To date, more than 50,000 copies of that first book have been purchased or gifted by individuals or their organizations, and it remains David’s iconic work and his best-selling book to date. In it, he outlined his Relationship Currency™ Roadmap, the sustainable differentiation in Reputation Capital™, and the strategic value of one’s Professional Net Worth™. The goal was then as it is now to elevate his audiences’ mindset, help create a roadmap, and provide a toolset to think of relationships as more than transactional networking, and one of truly transformational relationships.

In 2016, he launched the Relationship Economics quiz, amassing a research database of over 20,000 respondents on how individuals think about their business relationships, further quantifying the six relationship-development archetypes, from Start to Star across 28 different industries, from manufacturing to professional services. Continuing on that journey to better understand how people think, feel, and behave around their business relationships, this time with a particular emphasis on collaboration and reinvention of business and revenue models, he launched the Co-Create quiz, Canvas, and Workbook.

David’s unique perspective on business relationships as well as social and mobile innovation and his independent insights on driving growth through unique return on strategic relationships have been featured in a variety of prominent blogs and publications, including The Wall Street JournalThe New York TimesFast CompanyThe Huffington Post BusinessMedium, Mashable, CNBC, Knowledge@Wharton, and Associations Now, as well as Entrepreneur and Success magazines. He also writes a regular column for The Huffington Post. Nour is also the author of several other acclaimed books, which have been translated into eight different languages, including ConnectAbility (McGraw-Hill), The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Raising Capital, (Praeger), Return on Impact, (ASAE), which was called a “resource-rich book … provoking us to become more customer-centric in an age where empowered customers have far greater access to real-time information, connections and company advocates,” by Fast Company, as well as his newly-released book, CO-CREATE: How Your Business Will Profit from Innovative and Strategic Collaboration, (St. Martin’s Press), which is an essential guide showing C-level leaders how to optimize relationships, create market gravity, and greatly increase revenue. 

In addition to his speaking, writing, and consulting, Nour has guest lectured at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University and Georgia Tech’s College of Management. He serves as the lead independent director on the board of introNetworks, a privately held intelligent community technology firm based in Santa Barbara, California. An Eagle Scout, Nour is passionate about youth with his foundation’s support of the World Scout Jamboree and he's involved with the Centennial Scouting movement, Junior Achievement, One Voice—aiming to create peace in the Middle East—and the High Tech Ministries. He is currently an active member of the FBI Citizens’ Academy, Association for Corporate Growth (ACG) and the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD), where he has earned the Governance Fellow accreditation.

Born to middle-class educators in Iran, David learned at a very young age the incredible power and promise of identifying, building, and nurturing strategic relationships. As he wrote in his first book, Relationship Economics® – Transform Your Most Valuable Business Contacts Into Personal and Professional Success, he certainty didn’t get it then, but walking through the bazaars of Iran at a young age with his father on Friday errands, he understands now that his dad got things done through relationships. Whether they needed a plumber at the house that afternoon or access to an influential politician, the rest of the world is dramatically more proactive with its portfolio of relationships.

Nour quickly realized the quantifiable value of relationships when he immigrated from Iran to the US in 1981 with just a suitcase, $100, limited family ties and few connections, as well as as no fluency in English and very limited English skills. He lived with an aunt and uncle he had never met and grew up in the suburbs of Atlanta. He earned his Eagle Scout, graduated from high school and enrolled in an undergraduate engineering program, before graduating from Georgia State University with a bachelor’s degree in business management. Nour then went on to earn an Executive Master’s of Business Administration from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. His ability to develop strong relationships relevant to his goals propelled him forward into a fulfilling business career. His early career in sales and sales management at various technology firms reinforced the value of internal and external relationships. In 2002, he launched the Nour Group, and since then has taught hundreds of organizations how to capitalize their business relationships.

Nour currently resides with his family in Atlanta, Georgia,.

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Speaker Video

David Nour: Relationship Economics

Return On Impact—How Will You Lead Differently. Based on David Nour’s most recent book, Return on Impact—Leadership Strategies for the Age of Connected Relationships, this session focuses on how disruptive technologies such as social and mobile have helped swing the power pendulum to members and customers while many industries and organizations continue to get eliminated. Return on Impact isn’t about Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. It’s about socially enabling the organization to listen louder and think faster, so it can respond in real-time to changing market dynamics while also adapting new revenue models, reinventing itself, and growing its bottom line, top talent, and deep relationships.

Relationship Economics—The Art & Science Of Relationships. David Nour’s most acclaimed keynote based on the best-selling book, Relationship Economics® Updated & Revised, has been delivered to over 500 corporate, association, and academic forums, to date. This dynamic session focuses on the quantifiable value of business relationships and a systematic process to identify, build, nurture, and leverage personal, functional, and strategic relationships. This session offers exceptional value to most audiences are the battle-tested best practices in bridging relationship creation with relationship capitalization.

Adaptive Innovation—Adaptable Business Models For Changing Market Demands. How do you create greater market value than your competitors? How do you help your channel partners differentiate your products or services? Simple—disrupt your value chain! Adaptive innovation, by definition, is destructive in its character, open to a broad base of business models, and must be driven by high-performing teams, focused on maximizing the current and future capabilities of their respective organizations. In order to create sustainable competitive advantage, companies must develop a relationship-centric culture with the courage to fail and learn from those failures. Audience members leave this session with the game plan they need to think and lead differently in a way that moves business forward.

#NewNorm—8 Strategies To Elevate Yourself Above The Market Noise. When an estimated 75% of your target market doesn’t believe your advertising and marketing, how do you get their attention, influence their thinking, and issue a call-to-action? This session is focused on eight strategies to elevate your brand, team, or efforts above the market noise. From becoming an object of interest to provoking your relationships and gaining conceptual agreement on objectives, measures, and value (OMV), the content is practical, pragmatic, and applicable to a multitude of roles and desired outcomes.

Enterprise Evangelism—The Economic Value Of Exceptional Experiences, Every Time. Exceptional experiences: We all know it when we have one, and seldom return to places where we don’t. Beyond customer service, exceptional relationship experiences have become the expected norm by members, customers, patients, and employees. What will the same consumers ho stay at brand-name hotels, purchase personally-delivered cars and otherwise favor high-touch, high-care shopping, on or off-line, expect from their experiences with your brand? Join us for this fascinating view of the Customer Experience Journey.

Sharing Economy—The Disruptive Nature Of Collaborative Consumption. What do Airbnb, Lending Club, and City CarShare have in common? They’re examples of disruptive innovation in peer-to-peer business models, empowered by real-time insights, highly personalized sharing, global distribution, and reuse of excess capacity in goods and services. All fundamentally increase the value of those goods and services for individuals, businesses, and communities based on a set of attributes including extreme trust, transparency, economic empowerment, creative expression, authenticity, community resilience, and human connection. Will your industry be next? And what will you do about it?

THE CO-CREATE EFFECT—How To Listen Louder & Use The Power Of Strategic Relationships For Business Success. Strategic relationships are any company’s single biggest off-balance-sheet asset. Do you know how to leverage them? For the first time ever, audiences will get a sneak peak at the model David Nour has spent two decades building to equip leaders to master the quantifiable value of business relationships. Based on his highly anticipated 2017 release, CO-CREATE: Listen Louder and Use the Power of Strategic Relationships for Business Success (St. Martin’s Press), this keynote draws on examples of companies who have mastered The Co-Create Effect, including Warby Parker in retail and Stripe in payments, as well as industry veterans such as IBM, Toyota, and L’Oreal, to show how to discover the hidden asset that allows you to shift perspective and create market PULL or gravity, elevating yourself above your competitive peers.

Presentation Delivery Options:

  • Keynote — 60 minutes in duration including copies of David’s books for each attendee
  • Keynote + Breakout Session(s) — Above option expanded to 2-3 hour mini-workshop, further helping the attendees internalize the key messages
  • Keynote, Breakout(s), and Follow Through Webinars — Above option plus a series of follow through webinars to both reinforce the key messages as well as take practical, pragmatic advice back to the field
  • Facilitated Interview / Panel Roundtable — Poignant, well-prepared yet naturally-delivered professionally-facilitated interview of senior executives, customer, or partner panels with key messages as bookends of the discussions.

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