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, NY Times bestselling author and 5-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.

As a four-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 collectively sold for over $200 million. As a professional-level 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 even heard of
• 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 fresh, creative 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, 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. Josh 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

Be prepared to be amazed. Josh Linkner, a jazz guitarist since age 14, credits a musical background for giving him a different way of looking at business. In this stunning interactive presentation, a live jazz performance by Josh 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; 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 (a/k/a “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 5 secret techniques used by jazz musicians to foster creativity, which can easily be adapted to your own organization
• Expand your ability to deal with ambiguity and recover from setbacks

Detroit’s fight back from the brink is an inspiring tale of resilience told first-hand by Josh Linkner whose grit and passion are playing a critical role in the city’s revitalization. Linkner is a driving force in Detroit’s comeback; among his many honors  — “Detroit Executive of the Year”, the region’s “CEO of the Year” and “Michiganian of the Year.” As the CEO of Detroit Venture Partners, he is helping the city he loves rise from the ashes and reconnect to its entrepreneurial and technological roots. Linkner’s heartfelt talk energizes audiences with the power of possibility. It’s also a cautionary tale of how Detroit, once a birthplace of innovation and a vibrant city, succumbed to the evil forces of protectionism, blame, and bureaucracy. The lessons in this powerful comeback story  — still in progress  — help you:

• Understand the 4 most common reasons organizations decay
• Connect the dots between urban renewal and business reinvention, and learn how to apply the same approaches to your own organization
• Embrace the 5 unexpected lessons of underdogs and learn to fight out of seemingly impossible situations
• Gain inside perspective from the passionate leaders who are leading Detroit’s courageous turnaround
• Uncover best practices from ‘streetfigher’ mentality — on scrappiness, determination, resilience and conquering adversity

The pressure to generate big ideas can feel overwhelming. We know that bold innovations are critical in these disruptive and competitive times, but when it comes to breakthrough thinking, we often freeze up. Instead of shooting for a $10 billion IPO or a Nobel Prize, the most prolific innovators focus instead on Big Little Breakthroughs – small, creative acts that unlock massive rewards over time. By building a daily habit of creativity, leaders and organizations not only enjoy a high volume of small wins, but also the daily practice of micro-innovations — the fastest route to discover the massive breakthroughs we seek. How did a convicted drug dealer use a Big Little Breakthrough to launch and scale a massively successful fitness company? Why was a nurse practitioner able to use daily micro-innovations to solve healthcare problems that the biggest corporations couldn’t crack? How did a tattoo lead to a 30% boost in performance for a publicly traded restaurant company? Big Little Breakthroughs isn’t just for propeller-head inventors, fancy pants CEOs, or hoodie-donning tech billionaires. Rather, it is a simple yet effective method for all of us to cultivate the power of human creativity. Focusing on a simple and deliberate approach to daily practice, the system enables people from all backgrounds, training, and walks of life to expand their creative skillset and mindset. It helps everyday individuals and leaders unlock inventive thinking and harness innovation to tackle tough challenges and seize bold opportunities. The Big Little Breakthroughs framework provides a specific and practical approach to unlocking dormant creative capacity. Instead of wild, risky and expensive moonshots, participants learn to unleash small, daily creative acts to drive gigantic results over time. In fact, cultivating high volumes of micro-innovations not only de-risks the creative process, it builds the much-needed skills that lead to colossal transformations...and the creative confidence to take responsible risks.

In these uncertain times, we can no longer rely on the models of the past and expect the same results. How can we confront the new realities of the COVID-19 era and emerge stronger and better equipped? Creative problem solving has long been the core ingredient in overcoming adversity and seizing new opportunities. In this inspiring keynote, famed tech entrepreneur and New York Times bestselling author Josh Linkner explores the realities, challenges, and opportunities created by COVID-19 and delivers an inspiring path forward. Participants will learn specific techniques and leave both energized and better equipped to conquer challenges and seize possibilities. How can leaders bounce back and recover after facing painful setbacks? How can creative resilience be harnessed to conquer adversity? How can we rewrite the rules after a massive sea change like the coronavirus? In this high-energy session, participants will see how creative problem solving can become their most powerful resource. They’ll uncover practical tools to unlock inventive thinking and win even against daunting odds and unprecedented challenges.

Having interviewed hundreds of top innovators, leaders and organizations around the world, New York Times bestselling author and tech entrepreneur Josh Linkner uncovered the five most powerful mindsets that are the building blocks for jawdropping innovation. In this high-energy keynote, your audience will learn to embrace these powerful approaches in order to conquer adversity and fuel growth. How did an oddball idea save the cattle industry over $1 billion? How did a large hotel chain create a new revenue stream and drive competitive differentiation without investing a penny? How did the leaders of a small organization stave off a near-certain extinction, even when they were overwhelmingly outmatched by a powerful enemy? Each mindset is reinforced through surprising, real-world examples, laugh out loud moments, and practical takeaways. The five mindsets are portable and can be applied immediately to any role, job function, or industry. This memorable session will leave your audience inspired, moved, and better equipped.

Live jazz is an art form that equates to real-time innovation. To even navigate through a single song, jazz musicians must collaborate, adapt to rapidly changing circumstances, and make decisions in the face of ambiguity. As the baton of leadership gets passed from one musician to the next, individual contributors are constantly course correcting, inventing, and creatively solving problems. Sounds just like your organization, doesn’t it? In this unique and memorable keynote, jazz guitarist and tech entrepreneur Josh Linkner uses a live musical performance as a metaphor for modern, innovative collaboration. Josh and his fellow musicians lead the audience on a musical journey, sharing an insider’s look at this stunning art form. Through the lens of a jazz musician, participants will gain a fresh perspective and new techniques for creative problem solving, improved collaboration, and real-time agility. This mesmerizing session’s finale features live audience participation. After helping to ”compose” a new jazz song, three audience members join the band and perform their new composition live in front of their peers (no musical experience necessary). Participants are given handheld percussion instruments - along with some fun props and costumes - and together with Josh and his fellow musicians, the group performs for the audience. This live performance brings the key learning principles to life, always ending in a cheering crowd and terrific pictures for social media.

On a regular basis, we upgrade our cars, software, and wardrobe. But when was the last time you upgraded your imagination? Isn’t it about time to give your team a boost of inventive thinking, creative problem solving, and everyday innovation to drive better outcomes?

From your upgrade, you will:

1. Learn and understand the mindsets of innovators
2. Grasp the need for – and urgency – of change
3. Become inspired to take action and forge a new path
4. Acquire specific techniques for creative problem solving
5. Leverage human imagination to outpunch the competition
6. Understand how and where to use inventive thinking to fuel growth
7. Discover fresh possibilities with heightened level of creative awareness
8. Recognize that we are all creative, and that everyday innovation is accessible for every role and job function
9. Demystify the creative process
10. Emerge with specific tools to close the Creativity Gap to achieve full potential
11. Launch a new version of you – as a powerful creative force

In this inspiring keynote, Josh will help your team grow, as both business leaders and as people. Your audience will learn to solve problems in creative, nontraditional ways and expand their creative capacity to drive growth and sustainable success. Your group will laugh hysterically, feel thoroughly energized, get deeply inspired, and leave better equipped. Now that’s an upgrade that’s simply irresistible.

Have you ever wondered how Oprah and Bill Gates think and act behind the scenes? How do the entrepreneurs we revere invent bold ideas, do more with less, and change the world as a result? What would happen if the founder of Snapchat or Zoom joined your organization?

Tech startups aren’t the only ones who can think differently. We can all use this same creative thinking in our own careers, companies, and communities.

In this energizing and surprising keynote, five-time tech entrepreneur and venture capital investor Josh Linkner demystifies startup thinking and shares a specific methodology that we can put into practice immediately. Audience members will learn to embrace the creativity, grit, and vision of a startup and then channel this approach to drive growth, innovation, efficiency, and customer delight. Participants get an insider’s look as Josh Linkner decodes startup thinking 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 their own organizations
• 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