Jay Walker

The Power of Imagination in Innovation

Imagination is not only the source of all art and culture; in business it is also the source of most competitive advantages. Imagination is what powers creativity and innovation. Few people have mastered the imaginative faculty as well as Jay Walker, one of the world’s ten most prolific inventors. In addition to inventing and founding priceline.com, Jay holds over 300 patents in 22 countries across 15 industries. He is also curator of the world’s only Library of the History of Human Imagination.

In this talk, Jay takes audiences on a magic-carpet-ride tour of imagination...  from primitive early man to Leonardo da Vinci, and through the worlds of medicine, spaceflight and quantum physics...but with down-to-earth tips and surprising tools and techniques that cultivate imagination as fuel for business success.

Takeaways include:

• Ten “innovation action steps” that translate imaginative insights into practical products and services, while transforming customer relationships.

• Innovation and imagination strategies for small businesses and big companies with limited innovation budgets.

• How leveraging imagination can help you achieve “impossible” goals

Innovating the Future

If you want to understand successful innovation, ask someone who thinks, breathes and lives it. Best known as the creator of priceline.com, Jay Walker has created and launched three groundbreaking, billion-dollar enterprises, each of which serves 50 million customers worldwide. Jay’s innovations have also been licensed across dozens of industries by some of the world’s leading brand-name companies. In this eye-opening talk, Jay explains why successful innovation starts with the right “mental model” of the business environment, and leverages diverse talents that don’t ordinarily work together.

Takeaways include:

• The timeless strategy that made Thomas Edison America’s greatest innovator ...and how your company can deploy a 21st century version of Edison’s strategy.

• The surprising factor that could make 90% of innovations more successful...but is typically overlooked.

• How “disruptive change” can be smoothly integrated into your corporate culture...while making you the envy of competitors.

The Future of Health and Medicine

Jay Walker is chairman and curator of TEDMED, the annual 4-day TED event focused on the future of health and medicine. The TED conference is famous for its online talks, 1 billion of which have been downloaded worldwide -- including 3 million downloads of Jay’s talks. As TEDMED’s curator, Jay has an extraordinary front-row seat for tomorrow’s revolutionary social, scientific, technological and business trends and discoveries that will revolutionize our lives, our health and our businesses on an everyday basis. What’s more, as the Internet pioneer behind such giant business successes as Priceline, Jay has a phenomenal track record for helping create the future.

Takeaways from Jay’s TED-style talk include:

• The “5-Stage Cycle of Change”: how it is revolutionizing health and medicine -- and how these cycles will transform how we live, think, play and work.

• How imagination drives business and personal success in the “science-and-technology ecosystem,” which changes every day.

• Why some of the most exciting innovations in health and medicine will come from outside health and medicine.

Jay Walker is the curator of TEDMED, an annual gathering focusing on the future of medicine and healthcare as well as work on philanthropic efforts. He is also President of Walker Digital. He was the founder of Priceline.com, the groundbreaking "name-your-own-price" company. Mr. Walker also co-founded Synapse, which revolutionized the magazine subscription industry and was sold to Time Warner for $600 million. Mr. Target Communications can also claim him as a cofounder - that conference and publishing company was sold to Primedia in 2000. Mr. Walker's inventions and innovations have been widely recognized. He has twice been named by the editors of TIME magazine as one of the 50 most influential business leaders in the digital age and Forbes called him the “New Age Edison.” Business Week selected him as one of its 25 Internet pioneers most responsible for "changing the competitive landscape of almost every industry in the world." Newsweek cited him as one of three executives at the forefront of the Internet commerce revolution. He holds a B.S. degree in Industrial Relations from Cornell University.