Jim Carroll was the featured keynote speaker at the CMA Ontario Winter Conference in early 2009, speaking to management accounting professionals at one of the province’s premier financial leadership events. The conference explored a diverse menu of speakers and programming on the themes of leadership, strategy, and innovation — and Jim’s session on future trends, creativity, and innovation was a centrepiece of the agenda. He challenged CMA Ontario members to think about how rapidly changing business models, technology disruption, and economic transformation would reshape the role of financial leaders in the decade ahead. CMA Ontario’s monthly e-bulletin highlighted Jim’s appearance as a standout moment in the conference’s programming.
Avoiding the idea recession!
Cognos has run an article I’ve writen about the importance of not sliding into an “idea recession.”
Here’s an excerpt:
Given the economic challenges that swirl around us and the rapidity with which the events of the fall of 2008 unfolded, a unique and challenging mindset seemed to quickly envelope many organizations: corporate idea factories were turned off, and innovation paralysis settled in.
The result is that we’re not just in an economic recession – we’re entering another idea recession, similar to what occurred with the last downturn starting in 2001.
Yet in allowing this to happen, many organizations are missing the fact that an economic downturn provides a great opportunity for innovation. After all, companies like Burger King, Microsoft, CNN and FedEx all started up during a recession.
As events continue to unfold and cycnism settles in like a wet blanket, ask yourself this: are you going to focus on the future and opportunities for growth, or are you going to sink yourself by continuing to be immersed in the relentless negativity of current news coverage?
Here’s another key quote from the article:
The greatest mistake that any organization can make right now is to avoid action. Inertia – real or implied – establishes a culture of inaction, and that can lead organizations down another slippery slope.
Challenge yourself on that front. Think GROWTH!
:
- Read the article: Rethinking innovation: Is now the time to forge ahead?
- Innovation and the “Seven Stages of Economic Grief?”
Keynote: PDMA 14th Annual Portfolio Management Conference – Future Trends in Product Development & Innovation
Jim Carroll was a keynote speaker at the Product Development and Management Association’s (PDMA) 14th Annual Portfolio Management Conference in February 2009. PDMA is the world’s leading organization for product development and innovation professionals, and the Portfolio Management Conference brought together practitioners focused on managing innovation pipelines, product portfolios, and development processes. Jim brought a futurist lens to the challenges these professionals were navigating — exploring the trends reshaping how organizations innovate, the accelerating pace of product cycles, and the strategic disciplines that would separate innovation leaders from the rest. His session was designed to challenge product development executives to think bigger about the future of their craft.
Economic keynotes: “7 Things You Need to Do Right Now!”
I was in Louisville, Kentucky yesterday, as the closing speaker for the annual conference of the American Nursery and Landscape Association, This was a repeat booking; they had me in for a management clinic in Vail in 2006. I posted a blog entry, found below, on trends impacting commercial horticulture.
This time, I mostly focused on innovation strategies in a challenged economy. The keynote description pretty well captured the essence of my talk.
They are, in and of themselves, a very fascinating and innovative group. There is a lot of information sharing within the industry on issues of store layout and design; what works in terms of new products and lines; partnership strategies that can help improve yield within the nursery. And they’ve certainly seen a lot of the economic damage that has occurred through the last year. But overall, I found an upbeat, eager-to-keep-focused-on-the-future crowd.
And I was thrilled to have so many nice comments from people on my talk — as we all seemed to end up in the airport departing together!
Here’s the keynote description from the conference brochure:
7 Things You Need to Do Right Now to Focus on the Future!
Innovating at high velocity is vital to turning challenge into opportunity. Jim Carroll believes that organizations that focus on staying ahead of fast paced economic trends can “ride this thing out,” and can position themselves for growth. It’s a fast paced world — and that’s why leading edge organizations are focused on key leadership strategies that provide for a fast paced future.
Innovative organizations succeed by mastering the pace of the new high velocity economy. And in an era of economic challenge, they focus on discovering opportunity!
Customer retention strategies become essential, and operational and service excellence is the way to firm up revenue relationships. Watching for, and adapting to, fast-paced consumer trends is critical in order to discover fast moving retail opportunities. Aligning staff towards a common goal of collaboration and insight becomes a key method of keeping in touch with the pulse of the customer base.
In this closing keynote, noted futurist, trends & innovation expert Jim Carroll will challenge you to focus on the opportunities of today and tomorrow, rather than the challenges of the past. Jim will provide an outline of how the economy will evolve from this point out — and how we should be planning and acting in order to innovate ahead of fast-paced events. He’ll provide us a look at “what comes next, and what we should do about it.”
Jim’s client list includes the BBC, the Walt Disney Corporation, and Readers Digest Food & Entertainment group, the publisher of Everyday with Rachel Ray.
:
Keynote: ANLA Management Clinic, Louisville – Future Trends for the Landscape & Nursery Industry
Jim Carroll was a keynote speaker at the American Nursery and Landscape Association (ANLA) Management Clinic, held February 6–9, 2009, in Louisville, Kentucky. The Management Clinic is ANLA’s flagship leadership event for senior executives in the green industry, bringing together owners and operators of nursery, greenhouse, and landscape businesses to focus on business strategy and management practice. Jim challenged this audience with a forward-looking look at the trends and disruptive forces reshaping retail, consumer behavior, and the broader business environment — and what it would take for green industry leaders to compete and win. His talk was themed around the idea that even in challenging times, those who play to win by embracing innovation come out ahead.
100 Days of Innovation – #5 – Form Fast Teams
Over the last few weeks, I’ve had a variety of conference calls with CEO’s or senior executives for a variety of clients in the retail, food, industrial manufacturing and consumer product industries.
All of these calls have been related to upcoming keynotes. For example, in May, I’ll be the opening keynote speaker for 3,500 people for a massive global food company in Las Vegas.
The sentiment that comes through from many of these calls is that “the organization needs to move faster” in adapting to rapid market, consumer, brand and competitive change. They realize that in order to do that, they need to change how their organization can scale, collaborate, and share insight on trends, opportunities, challenges and threats.
There’s a critical innovation tip there. Innovative organizations EXCEL at forming fast teams. They’ve realized that their future success comes from scaling — scaling means pulling together key skills at an instant to tackle a new issue. Executing scale is critical — indeed, this is likely a critical success factor for all organizations in the future.
There are still many organizations out there who don’t have this capability. They’re based on decades of hierarchical structure; they’ve been slow and ponderous in their ability to deal with a world in which faster is the new fast. Yet they now know, given the speed of change within the last six months, that the concept of corporate agility is critical, and that increasing, agility is defined by the ability to form fast teams.
GET IN TOUCH
Jim's Facebook page
You'll find Jim's latest videos on Youtube
Mastodon. What's on Jim's mind? Check his feed!
LinkedIn - reach out to Jim for a professional connection!
Flickr! Get inspired! A massive archive of all of Jim's daily inspirational quotes!
Instagram - the home for Jim's motivational mind!