2009 Featured Keynote Speakers
Don Tapscott
Author, Grown Up Digital. Chairman, nGenera Innovation Network. Adjunct Professor of Management, University of Toronto
Don Tapscott is an internationally renowned authority on the strategic value and impact of information technology. He consistently identifies and explains the next business imperatives and defines the business models and strategies that the new imperatives require.
Don’s new book, Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing the World, explores how the first generation to grow up with the net is redefining today’s workplace, marketplace, schools, family and government. This is an indispensable message for all organizations that seek to turn the NetGen’s talents and worldview to competitive advantage.
Also based on a multi-million dollar research project, Grown Up Digital carries forward the groundbreaking insights of Don’s previous bestseller Growing Up Digital. Prior to that he authored or coauthored eleven widely read books on technology and business. His book Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything—is an international bestseller, has appeared on the New York Times and BusinessWeek bestseller lists, and has been translated into 19 languages. Based on the largest investigation of strategic IT in business ever conducted (Information Technology and Competitive Advantage), Wikinomics explains how businesses can tap the full potential of the emerging networked economy and its self-organized, mass-participatory communities.
Don is Chairman of nGenera Innovation Network and an Adjunct Professor of Management at the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto.
He currently is heading up four multi-million dollar research programs.
Sponsored by Gaggle.net
The Conference Closing Keynote Address will be a combination of a live presentation by Dr. Horn and virtual presentation with Dr Christensen.
Dr. Clayton M. Christensen
Clayton M. Christensen is the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, with a joint appointment in the Technology & Operations Management and General Management faculty groups. His research and teaching interests center on managing innovation and creating new growth markets.
Professor Christensen holds a B.A. with highest honors in economics from Brigham Young University (1975), and an M.Phil. in applied econometrics and the economics of less-developed countries from Oxford University (1977), where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He received an MBA with High Distinction from the Harvard Business School in 1979, graduating as a George F. Baker Scholar. He was awarded his DBA from the Harvard Business School in 1992.
A seasoned entrepreneur, Christensen has founded several successful companies. The first, CPS Corporation, is an advanced materials manufacturing company that he founded in 1984 with several MIT professors. The second, Innosight, is a consulting and training company focused on problems of strategy, innovation, and growth that Christensen founded with several of his former students in 2000. In 2007, he founded Innosight Institute (http://www.innosightinstitute.org), a non-profit think tank devoted to applying his theories of disruptive innovation to develop, disseminate, and promote solutions to the most vexing problems in the social sector, as well as Rose Park Advisors, an alternative investment management firm focused on companies affected by disruptive innovation. From 1979 to 1984 he worked with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In 1982 Professor Christensen was named a White House Fellow, and served as assistant to U.S. Transportation Secretaries Drew Lewis and Elizabeth Dole.
Professor Christensen became a faculty member at the Harvard Business School in 1992. He is author or co-author of six books: The Innovator's Dilemma (1997), which received the Global Business Book Award for the best business book published in 1997; The Innovator's Solution (2003), also a New York Times best seller; Seeing What's Next (2004), and Disrupting Class (2008). In addition, he has edited two case books on innovation: Innovation and the General Manager (1999) and Strategic Management of Technology and Innovation, 4th edition (2004). He presently is completing another book that examines the problems of the healthcare system through the lenses of his theories.
Professor Christensen's writings have won a number of additional awards, including the Best Dissertation Award from The Institute of Management Sciences; the Production and Operations Management Society's William Abernathy Award for the best paper in the management of technology; the Newcomen Society's award for the best paper in business history; and the 1995 and 2001 McKinsey Awards for articles published in the Harvard Business Review.
Michael Horn
Co-founder and Executive Director, Education of Innosight Institute
Michael B. Horn is the co-founder and Executive Director, Education of Innosight Institute, a non-profit think tank devoted to applying the theories of disruptive innovation to problems in the social sector. He is the coauthor of Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (McGraw-Hill: June 2008) with Harvard Business School Professor and bestselling author Clayton M. Christensen and Curtis W. Johnson, president of the Citistates Group.
The book uses the theories of disruptive innovation to identify the root causes of schools' struggles and suggests a path forward to customize an education for every child in the way she learns. Horn has been featured as a speaker at many education conferences, including the National Evaluation Systems' conference and the Grantmakers for Education conference.
Prior to this, Horn worked at America Online during its aol.com re-launch, and before that he served as David Gergen's research assistant, where he tracked and wrote about politics and public policy. Horn has written articles for numerous publications, including Education Week, Forbes, the Boston Globe, and U.S. News & World Report. In addition, he has contributed research for Charles Ellis' book, Joe Wilson and the Creation of Xerox (Wiley, 2006) and Barbara Kellerman's Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters (Harvard Business School Press, 2004).
Horn earned his MBA from Harvard Business School and an AB from Yale University, where he graduated with distinction in History.
