Erik Wahl
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Erik Wahl

The Art of Vision

An internationally recognized artist, TED speaker, and bestselling author, Erik Wahl’s keynote experience creates a dynamic, multi-dimensional metaphor for how to systematically embrace innovation and risk. His message is that disruption is the new normal and businesses must embrace creativity in a wholesale fashion, or risk being left behind. Wahl leaves audiences and organizations inspired to be increasingly agile and outlines how to use disruption as a competitive advantage.

Wahl discovered early on in his corporate career that organizations that encouraged the mental discipline of creativity did exponentially better than those that did not prioritize innovation. Today, he challenges companies to change their way of thinking to become the disruptor instead of the disrupted. His extensive client list includes top organizations such as AT&T, Disney, London School of Business, Microsoft, FedEx, Exxon Mobil, Ernst & Young, and XPrize.

A #1 bestselling author, Wahl’s new book, The Spark and the Grind, activates the essential components of translating ideas into action. His previous book, Unthink, was hailed by Forbes as “the blueprint to actionable creativity”, and by Fast Company as “provocative with a purpose”.

Wahl is also an acclaimed graffiti artist who uses his art to raise money for charity.

The Art of Vision

The best sustainable edge in business is the ability to differentiate yourself from your competition. Through this entertaining and highly practical program, Erik Wahl will uncover new ways to make your organization more creative, innovative, and profitable, and help your employees see the need to become better storytellers for your company and industry.

By embracing innovative strategies, professionals at all levels can achieve superior levels of performance by creatively and visibly differentiating themselves from the competition. No matter what kind of organization you have — from a small company to a large corporation — employees at all levels will be better able to embrace the future by becoming more innovative, more productive, and ultimately more profitable.

The Art of Leadership

Today’s leaders face a pressure to innovate or perish, unlike any other time in history.  Advances in social, mobile, and cloud technology coupled with fierce global competition has made the business landscape nearly unrecognizable from what it was a mere 10 years ago.

Erik Wahl’s entertaining and invigorating presentation paints a compelling new portrait for what the successful leaders of tomorrow will look like. He inspires audiences to shed old ways of thinking and “business as usual” processes that are outdated, inefficient, and detrimental to productivity. Audience members learn new ways to build an emotional connection to drive future employee engagement. Wahl’s presentation stretches traditional assumptions on leadership. The end results include:

  • Innovative solutions to further your organization.
  • Attracting and engaging quality employees.
  • New efficiencies and the end of detrimental redundancies.

Growth and comfort cannot co-exist. When leaders come from a place of authenticity, curiosity, exploration, and purpose, this leads to more meaningful connections among team members and with clients and customers, and ultimately, a more profitable organization. An engaged employee equals an engaged customer.

UNthink

Somehow, we’ve come to believe that creativity is reserved for the chosen few: the poets, the painters, the writers. The truth is bigger and better than that. Creativity is in all of us. We simply need to rediscover the keys that will unlock our potential. “UNthink” is the keynote experience that will push members of your organization beyond their traditional thought patterns and habitual levels of performance. It will inspire audiences to realize they are capable of so much more than they have been led to believe.

The “UNthink” program helps reframe your organization’s thinking so that new creative actions become possible. Learning how to UNthink will inject your daily grind with new passion, allowing employees to see how the organization wants and needs all of their talents and energies, not just the ones they’ve been using so far. You’ll begin the process of rethinking your life as a blank canvas of limitless opportunity on which to create your masterpiece.

This program will allow your organization to:

  1. Step outside convention to discover new and unexpected solutions to business challenges.
  2. Challenge pre-conceived notions about what’s possible.
  3. UNthink your way to increased creativity, productivity, and passion.

The Spark and the Grind: The Discipline of Creativity

It’s one thing to understand the importance of creativity to the success of your business, but what most people don’t understand is to how to put a structure in place so that innovation can find its way. The paradox of creativity is that structure creates freedom. Even the wildest minds require extreme orderliness and attention to detail so that they have the space and discipline to create.

Consider:

  • Beethoven sat down everyday at daybreak, regardless of season, and composed until 3:00pm.
  • Kafka started writing at 11:30pm each night.
  • Mozart taught lessons by day and composed only in the evenings.
  • Picasso ate lunch each day with his family in silence and only allowed visitors one day per week.
  • Mark Twain awoke at 5:30am, ate a hearty breakfast, and wrote until 5:00pm.

This program will allow your organization to:

  1. Deconstruct the discipline of the creative process to ignite ideas to action.
  2. Explore the psychology of success and the science of innovation to achieve superior levels of performance.
  3. Harness the mental toughness required to navigate ambiguity and master complexity in a rapidly changing business environment.
  4. Accept that disruption is the new normal and determine if you are creating or reacting.