"“When Josh speaks, business improves.”"
"“Josh, as always you are amazing. It is quite obvious that you took the time to prepare to bring everything you have. Thank you for your coaching and support throughout. I am sending you so much gratitude. You amaze me...always!”"
"“A journey that will lead to better ideas and breakthrough thinking.”"
Josh Linkner – who started his career as a jazz guitarist - has been the founder and CEO of five tech companies, which sold for a combined value of over $200 million. He is also a deeply experienced business leader, venture capitalist, top-rated keynote speaker, and author of four books, the New York Times bestsellers: Disciplined Dreaming and The Road to Reinvention, as well as his latest book, Hacking Innovation. And yes, he still plays a mean jazz guitar. For more, visit JoshLinkner.com.
Innovation | Creativity, Business | Management | Strategy, Leadership, Technology, Facilitators | Presenters | Moderators
Innovators | Visionairs, Business Leaders, Entrepreneurs, Authors
Associations, Csuite/ Executives, Diverse, Managers/ Supervisors, Young Professionals/ Young Talent, Sales, Medical/ Healthcare, Adults, Academics
United States
English
from $35000 up to $75000
A spark. A flash of creative brilliance. A new beginning. The energy to forge ahead when things get tough. What if we could cultivate and deploy this white-hot, mighty force? What if we injected sparks of innovation, competitive advantage, and sustainable growth into our organizations? Whether it’s mustering the courage to take that first step, or harnessing the creative soul of your team to ignite wide-sweeping transformation, it’s time to create sparks so powerful they can’t be ignored. The long-awaited breakthrough idea. The inspiration to drive change. The unexpected solution to a burdensome problem. The beginning of unstoppable momentum. In this inspiring and actionable keynote, famed tech entrepreneur and New York Times bestselling author provides a memorable performance to help you cultivate those powerful, combustible forces. Through real-world examples, hysterically funny stories, and practical takeaways, Josh will help you and your organization find your spark.
As a five-time successful tech entrepreneur and investor in dozens of startups, Josh Linkner has seen thousands of companies loaded with creative buzz and big ideas. How is it that some harness their imagination to create game-changing drivers of growth and innovation while others miss the mark? The answer: The best companies have a systematic process to focus their team’s creativity into practical outputs—something Linkner discovered by founding and building companies that sold collectively for over $200 million. As a professional jazz guitarist, Linkner blends the improvisational qualities of a jazz ensemble with bleeding-edge business savvy to bring a completely fresh perspective on unleashing creativity in the organization. His inspiring presentation delivers practical tools that can be used immediately to increase creative output and deliver bottom-line results. You’ll learn to: • Use specific techniques to harness your most powerful ideas • Apply creativity on a daily basis across all business activities and roles • Break free from the three biggest blockers of creativity • Apply best practices from the world’s most innovative companies • Avoid the five biggest creativity killers • Master the three most powerful brainstorming techniques that you’ve never heard • Build a culture that celebrates fresh thinking and embraces new ideas
With disruptive forces assaulting business from every direction, creativity has been labeled the single most important business attribute. To succeed, leaders must be focused on creating a resilient culture where everyone’s engaged; a torrent of innovative ideas needs to flow from every level of the organization. Top leaders then employ a secret weapon: a systematic approach to selecting and launching the ideas that will best drive growth and innovation. Josh Linkner weighs in with a fresh perspective on this critical leadership challenge. A highly successful serial entrepreneur and now a tech investor, Linkner shows leaders how to employ his simple but effective framework to ramp up the creativity and identify/launch ideas that will break through and defy gravity. This presentation will help leaders: • Challenge assumptions and conventional wisdom • Build courage to foster responsible risk-taking • Authentically express your own creativity and tap into the hidden creativity of your team members • Develop “everyday creativity” to attack business problems of all sizes • Deploy creativity beyond R&D to reimagine processes, drive efficiency and improve operations • Uncover fresh approaches for reinvention and growth
Entrepreneurs look at the world differently. We celebrate them for their bold vision and courage—they drive game-changing innovation that creates enormous economic success while making a profound impact on the world. What is it about the entrepreneurial mindset that helps these mavericks seize opportunity that others miss? A five-time successful tech entrepreneur, Josh Linkner shows leaders and organizations how to embrace the creativity, grit and vision of a startup and then channel this approach to drive growth, innovation, efficiency and customer delight. Linkner decodes the entrepreneurial DNA to help leaders of any size company in any industry or profession: • Understand how an entrepreneur would attack their organization with the specific goal of dislodging it • Reimagine their role through the lens of an entrepreneur • Harness the ferocity of entrepreneurial thinking • Embrace “startup speed” to increase velocity in your own organization • Learn the five best approaches used by startups to create disruption • Avoid the weaknesses that plague entrepreneurs by exposing the four biggest startup death traps
With intense competitive pressures and mind-numbing speed, leaders seek fresh approaches for growth and innovation. As old methods become commoditized, new creative problem solving techniques are needed more than ever. Drawing inspiration from the unlikely world of hackers, New York Times bestselling author and five-time tech entrepreneur Josh Linkner has discovered a new and powerful model for leadership and organizational success. The underworld of cybercriminals contains some of the most creative people on the planet, despite their illicit motives. In this thrilling and provocative talk, Linkner takes the audience on a mind-opening journey, showing how hacking techniques can be deployed to drive legitimate business outcomes. Learning how hackers would solve your most pressing challenges using unorthodox approaches will give you a new framework for creative problem solving, growth and innovation. • Specific tools and techniques from the Five Core Mindsets and Ten Primary Tactics of Hackers • Fresh approaches to complex problem solving • How a hacker would approach your work if he or she had your job • Why unorthodox moves can lead to the best business outcomes • How to protect yourself and your company from innovation hackers of all sizes and types
Be prepared to be amazed. Josh Linkner, a jazz guitarist since age 13, credits a musical background for giving him a different way of looking at business. In this stunning interactive presentation, a live jazz performance by Linkner and his band is woven with stimulating dialogue. You’ll actually hear, through their music, fresh ways to unleash your organization’s creative mojo. In jazz, 99% of the notes are improvised and created in real time. Yet it’s the structure of a jazz combo—not the inherent talent of individual musicians—that allows for such breathtaking creative expression. In today’s business landscape of dizzying speed, exponential complexity and ruthless competition, we can no longer just play the notes on the written page. You will learn powerful lessons inspired by jazz musicians (aka “real-time innovators”) to help you: • Develop your own ability to improvise, no matter what job title you hold • Establish team dynamics that foster creative thinking and risk-taking • Uncover fresh approaches to previously unchallenged assumptions • Break free from traditional thinking and uncover vast new possibilities • Learn five secret techniques used by jazz musicians to foster creativity, which can easily be adapted to your own organization
Hackers are a global fascination, with cybercrime representing the single biggest threat to national security. But putting their sinister motives aside, the dark underworld of hackers contains some of the most creative minds on the planet. What if hacking approaches could be redirected for productive means? How can we harness the positive attributes of hacking to drive meaningful outcomes in our companies, careers, and communities? New York Times Bestselling Author Josh Linkner has ‘cracked the code’ in his latest book, Hacking Innovation, providing a new framework for innovation, reinvention, and transformation. Linkner reveals the Five Core Mindsets and Ten Primary Tactics of hackers as the new model for complex problem solving, innovation, and growth. These fresh approaches enable leaders at all levels to topple their competition with stunning efficiency. Hacking Innovation translates the complex hacker philosophy into a simple, yet effective system for modern business success. To uncover these secrets, Linkner immersed himself into the dangerous and clandestine world of hackers. Insights from ex-cons, secretive hacking societies, the FBI, and cyber-security giants deliver drama and suspense. He also penetrates the caffeine-driven world of tech startups, revealing the stealthy practices that have launched tech founders into the rarified billionaires club. All told, Linkner delivers the definitive work to propel the next generation of leaders and innovators.
Companies, communities, and individuals fail for many reasons, but one of the most common—and easily avoidable—is the failure to reinvent. When people and organizations rest on prior successes rather than drive purposeful transformation, they discover too late that they have lost their market position altogether to competitors and external forces. The most successful companies, brands, and individuals make reinvention a regular part of their business strategies. Transformation demands an ongoing process of discovery and imagination, and The Road to Reinvention lays out a systematic approach for continually challenging and reinventing yourself and your business. Venture capitalist and serial entrepreneur Josh Linkner identifies six elements in any business that are ripe for reinvention and shares examples, methods, and step-by-step techniques for creating deliberate, productive disruption. Throughout The Road to Reinvention, Linkner also explores the history—the great rise, unprecedented fall, and now rebirth—of his beloved hometown, Detroit. First rising to greatness as the result of breathtaking innovation, Detroit had generations of booming growth before succumbing to apathy, atrophy, and finally bankruptcy. Now, the city is rising from the ashes and driving sustainable success through an intense focus on reinvention. Linkner brings an insider’s view of this incredible story of grit, determination, and creativity, sharing his perspective on Detroit’s successes and setbacks as a profound example of large-scale organizational and personal transformation. Change is inevitable. You need to decide: Will you drive that change, or be driven away by it? Will you disrupt or be disrupted? By choosing to deliberately reimagine your own status quo, you can secure a strong future for both your company and your career.
Disciplined Dreaming is a 5-part process that will transform your organization – or your career – into a non-stop creativity juggernaut. Disciplined Dreaming will give you a creative skill set in an age in which creativity represents the only sustainable competitive advantage. The methodology is simple, backed by proven results and demonstrated through stories and examples. Disciplined Dreaming: Turns the mystery of creativity into a simple-to-use process Empowers individuals, teams, and organizations to meet creative challenges posed by the marketplace Shows how creativity can be used for everything from innovative, game-shifting breakthroughs to incremental advances and daily improvements, to business processes Offers dozens of practical exercises, thought-starters, and workouts to grow “creative muscles” and case studies Disciplined Dreaming shows even the stuffiest corporate bureaucracies how to cultivate creativity in order to become more competitive in today’s shifting marketplace. Disciplined Dreaming has been published in 11 languages and is available wherever books are sold.
“When Josh speaks, business improves.”
“Josh, as always you are amazing. It is quite obvious that you took the time to prepare to bring everything you have. Thank you for your coaching and support throughout. I am sending you so much gratitude. You amaze me...always!”
“A journey that will lead to better ideas and breakthrough thinking.”