Kaihan Krippendorff

Speaking topics

Presentations listed below include in-person and virtual keynotes, as well as workshops, fireside chats, and other presentation formats.

• Leading Beyond Disruption: The Proximity Revolution

  In a world of constant disruption, technological change, and megatrend turbulence, how do we transform the way we lead and work? The answer is proximity — a simple idea that can turn disruptors like artificial intelligence, renewable energy, virtual reality, 3D printing, and new ways of working into possibilities, chaos into clarity.

  Based on Kaihan Krippendorff’s new book, Proximity: How Coming Breakthroughs in Just-in-Time Transform Business, Society, and Daily Life, this keynote will arm leaders with a proximity roadmap for their industry and adjacent ones. Krippendorff will ignite a new mental mindset and give audiences the practical tools needed to prepare themselves and their businesses to be bold and shape their future.

  Key takeaways include:

  • Understand the impact of disruptors that matters for your business like generative AI, 3D printing, precision-agriculture, dark factories, and renewable energy — and how to harness them to drive growth and resiliency.
  • Build your proximity roadmap: Three steps to winning the future.
  • Prepare your organization and people with the mindsets needed to lead.
  • Map out where you need to rethink growth plans, innovation and investments, operations, and customer expectations.

• Outthink the Competition: A Proven Framework for Designing Breakthrough Growth Strategies

  As a successful entrepreneur, author, consultant and CEO, Kaihan Krippendorff has worked with and studied thousands of companies and the different approaches they take to drive growth, foster innovation, and set themselves apart from the competition. How is it that some companies can continually pivot their strategy, transform, and pursue new growth ideas? The answer is they have a repeatable process and common language that can be learned and taught.

  Based on his book, Outthink the Competition, Krippendorff delivers a systematic process and set of proven business strategy tools he has used with more than 300 clients in almost every industry to create innovative strategies and growth ideas that have generated more than $2.5B in revenue. Blending first-hand stories of inspiring business and social innovators, from Elon Musk to Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, this presentation teaches audiences a tested method for developing actionable growth ideas that unlock growth, increase competitiveness of their business, and arm them with the tools needed to excel in today’s digital, agile, and purpose-driven world.

  In this inspiring keynote, audiences will learn:

  • How to use The Outthinker Process® to generate powerful ideas that can drive bottom-line results across all levels of the business.
  • How to find a “Fourth Option”: The option beyond the obvious choices, the option others will not see or respond to.
  • The Outthinker playbook: Five strategic narratives you want to master now.
  • A simple approach to avoid killing off “crazy” ideas and instead turn them into winning moves.
  • How to extract value of internal ideas to drive organic growth.
  • How to build a culture of Outthinking that celebrates fresh strategic and innovative ideas and thinking.
  • How to empower and inspire employees so that they are ready to take action to develop, test and scale innovative growth ideas.

• Driving Innovation from Within: Turn Employees into Intrapreneurs and Accelerate Transformation

  In our accelerated world of technology and disruption, the benefits of turning employees into intrapreneurs are well documented. Companies that treat their people as intrapreneurs have innovation infused into their DNA. Transformation becomes a toned muscle and capability that can be exercised repeatedly as needed. Bestselling author and globally ranked innovation expert Kaihan Krippendorff’s research shows companies with active intrapreneur networks are 3X more likely to be in the top quintile of financial performance and enjoy a 2.5X advantage in their ability to recruit and retain top talent.

  The IN-OVATE framework provides a specific and practical approach to turn your employees into intrapreneurs, and build capacity for enterprise-wide transformation and smart innovation.

  In this inspiring, timely, and high-impact keynote, Krippendorff shows how organizations can unlock the power of intrapreneurship, and how you, the individual Intrapreneur, can navigate barriers, overcome resistance, and take the initiative to drive transformation across your organization.

  Audiences will leave with:

  • A framework to identify and overcome the seven blockers of innovation.
  • The six characteristics, mindsets, and habits of successful intrapreneurs.
  • Appreciation and understanding of the human side of innovation and how to spread intrapreneurship across the organization.
  • Inspiring and memorable stories to fuel their intrapreneurial journey.

  This is a program for leaders and teams who want to:

  • Motivate people to be more innovative.
  • Move from a culture of permission-seeking to a culture of proactivity.
  • Transform employees into intrapreneurs
  • Spark creativity and innovation.
  • Gain traction on or accelerate transformation.

• Unleashing Agile: A Proven Framework to Shift Mindset, Adapt, and Thrive During Change

  In a world marked by accelerated change and innovation, mental agility has proven to be a critical driver of success in sports, warfare, business, career, and life. Yet few agree on what exactly “mental agility” is or know how to develop it. Companies that fail to move quickly enough from their linear organization will not succeed.

  In this presentation, successful entrepreneur, author, consultant, and CEO Kaihan Krippendorff shares insights from his work with top-level corporate entrepreneurs and the study of more than 200 successful innovators into what sets them apart from the rest of the competitive pack. Krippendorff will share the key practices that distinguish those with high mental agility and arm the audience with tools and frameworks they can immediately apply to their own work.

  Audiences will learn how to:

  • Connect the unconnected: Pulling together seemingly unrelated pieces of information to rapidly form a mental image of the situation or opportunity.
  • Uncover unexpected causes: Drilling down into the system to see the cause others overlook.
  • Shift your frame: Shifting your frame on the problem to reveal solutions others dismiss.
  • Question the impossible: Understand why we fall into mental “traps” of false beliefs that prevent us from seeing what is possible and, more importantly, how to dig out of the trap that is keeping you from seizing the solution.

  Attendees will leave with a boost of confidence, tools, and energy to increase the velocity and agility level of their organization on a daily basis.

• Be the Disruptor: A Proven Framework for Innovation and Business Model Design to Stay Ahead

  We are experiencing a historic acceleration in the pace of change in our world. Artificial intelligence, digitization, robotics, 3D printing, social shifts, and the rise of purpose-driven enterprises are reconfiguring how every conceivable industry operates. These changes divide us into two camps: the “disruptors” and the “disrupted”.

  Successful entrepreneur, author, consultant, and CEO Kaihan Krippendorff has spent over a decade studying the patterns of disruption. What makes some companies thrive and what makes others fall behind? What gives some the power to shape the future and makes others struggle to keep up?

  Krippendorff has applied his cutting-edge findings to create more than $2.5B in new value and help hundreds of businesses lean into change and thrive in tomorrow’s fast-paced, digital, purpose-driven world. In this talk, he breaks down the underlying patterns of disruption and, with compelling stories of successes, failures, and yet-unknown innovations, teaches practical tools to help audiences take action and become disruptors.

  Learnings and outcomes include:

  • The emerging trends — from AI to digitization — that are driving us into an era of disruption and how these will likely shape the future.
  • How to use The Outthinker Process® to generate powerful ideas that can drive bottom-line results across all levels of the business.
  • The strategic patterns and best practices that the world’s most strategic and innovative companies use to thrive during the ongoing shift of global business structures and thinking.
  • A systematic process you can use to overcome the “innovator’s dilemma” and create breakthrough growth ideas that will disrupt your market without disrupting your organization.
  • How to empower and inspire employees so that they’re ready to take action to develop, test and scale innovative growth ideas.