Dave Robertson is an accomplished, and engaging speaker whose speeches on innovation have entertained audiences on every continent around the world. His talks are interactive, tailored to each audience, based on real-world examples, and end with clear calls for action.
Each talk is filled with market-changing insights and the specific skills leaders need to discover new sources for growth and profit among existing customers.
David gave what NPR’s Joe Palca called “The best speech at PopTech.” Click on the video to see an excerpt.
Human-Centered Design systems such as Design Thinking have swept the global business world and helped many companies improve their ability to innovate. Yet the way Design Thinking is often implemented focuses on individual desires and needs but can underestimate the powerful influence that our communities have on our behavior.
In this talk, Dave Robertson takes us to the next step of innovation, moving beyond understanding the individuals needs but to understanding hopes, dreams, and wants of the communities we serve and offers an integrated set of competencies that takes leaders from idea generation to execution and helps them move forward on their hardest innovation challenges.
In 2003, LEGO almost went bankrupt. LEGO’s managers had followed the advice of experts – “head for blue ocean”, “practice disruptive innovation”, “open innovation”, “develop the full spectrum of innovation” – and that advice almost led them to ruin.
In one of the most successful turnarounds in modern business history, LEGO restructured its innovation management system and saved the company. Today, LEGO is the most profitable and fastest growing company in the toy industry, growing sales at 24% and profits at 45% per year every year for the past four years. The goal of this session is to tell the LEGO story and the lessons to be learned about how to lead and govern innovation across a large company.
Much of the business press focuses on big, world-changing innovations—innovations that will “disrupt” industries, lead companies to “blue oceans,” and revolutionize markets. But CarMax, LEGO, ING Direct, and others show that there’s a different, lower-risk path to innovation success.
Instead of betting big on risky, unproven ideas, these companies put together portfolios of tightly coordinated complementary innovations. Individually, each innovation is low risk and (often) low cost. But if done well they add up to a significant and sustainable competitive advantage. In this talk, Robertson will show how leading companies use this powerful innovation strategy and share the techniques and disciplines that any company can adopt to boost their innovation success.