John Kao

Reimagining For Results: How to Grow, Transform and Sharpen Your Competitive Edge through Innovation

Get ready for a super-charged session where innovation is defined not only as a brainstorm-to-blueprint process, but also a resulting end product or prototype! John Kao, aka "Mr. Creativity" and "the innovation Sherpa" is known the world over for his practical and pragmatic approach to "getting innovation done." He will challenge you with a five-point perspective on innovation – his "five Ds" to fire up your efforts and help you capitalize on options other than "better, faster, cheaper." Chairman of the World Economic Forum's Global Advisory Council on Innovation, Kao is the Bestselling Author of Jamming: The Art and Discipline of Business Creativity and Innovation Nation. While on the faculty at Harvard Business School, he taught courses on innovation and entrepreneurship and developed the school’s "Enhancing Corporate Creativity" executive program.

Jamming: The Art of Getting Innovation Done (interactive presentation with music)

John Kao gets the joint jumping and brings the idea of innovation to life with his keynote presentation by  mixing speech, music, and audience input. Known internationally as "Mr. Creativity" Kao is world famous for his practical and pragmatic approach to "getting innovation done." Kao is also a first class musician. Using a piano to illustrate how jazz is a guiding metaphor for business, Kao "jams" on stage with Yamaha Artists while sharing the keys to innovation that he taught at Harvard.

What do you learn? Here are a few highlights from his speech at the World Economic Forum:

• Discover How Great Companies, Like Great Musicians, Creatively Improvise And Innovate To Create Great Products With Unique Value View Video…
• Find Out How To Make Innovation Happen View Video…
• Understand How Improvisation Is Key To Innovation View Video…
• Learn How to Manage an Innovative Organization View Video…

Additional Speech Topics

Click here for an additional list of topics.

John Kao’s life and career are a study in innovation: he focused on philosophy and social science at Yale where he earned his BA; he spent a summer as a keyboard player with Frank Zappa (he’s an accomplished jazz pianist); and he graduated Yale Medical School with a specialty in psychiatry. He did his residency at Harvard, where he then earned his MBA and stayed on for 14 years to teach as a Harvard Business School professor. His elective, "Entrepreneurship, Creativity and Organizations" drew some 2,000 MBA students, and the executive program he developed and taught, "Enhancing Corporate Creativity," attracted top executives from companies such as Merck, Merrill Lynch, and Saudi Aramco. He is this year's Chair of the World Economic Forum's (Davos) Global Advisory Council on Innovation.

It is the eclectic quality of Kao’s knowledge and experience that make his insights so useful and unique.

John Kao has inspired audiences around the world and communicates in clear and compelling ways about what creativity and innovation are, why they matter, and how to make them real. He is a compelling communicator who has given hundreds of presentations and designed memorable experiences to instill the spirit of creativity and the “how to” of innovation.

Currently Kao serves as director of the Bay Area Science and Innovation Consortium, founding member of Cisco System’s Innovation Commission, and chairman of the Global Advisory Council on Innovation of the World Economic Forum. He is contributing editor to The Daily Beast’s innovation channel. He is also a director of TwoFour54, a Mubadala company and Phylotech, a company that bridges cleantech and life sciences.

Kao has been described by The Economist as a “serial innovator.” He has long been an angel investor in emerging technology companies. His venture “BioSurface Technology” was sold to Genzyme and is now “Genzyme BioTissue Repair.” He is a Tony-nominated producer of film (sex, lies and videotape, Mr. Baseball) and stage (Golden Child, Flower Drum Song).