Education

Keynotes

The Medici Effect: Our Opportunities in the New World of Work

Sponsored by World Wide Specialty Programs

Building market share. Leading the competition. Driving innovation. Whether your business is based in Boston or Brussels, you know that executives face greater challenges and more competition than ever before. To break away from the pack, you need to look for new ideas where others don't. To out-innovate your competition, you need to find new markets, create new services, and develop new strategies.

In his keynote, international business consultant and best-selling author Frans Johansson will teach you how to create breakthrough innovation in your company by applying the "Medici effect"—the practice of the cross-fertilization of ideas named after the 15th-century banking family that ignited the Renaissance. You will learn how to think differently about innovation, the execution of ideas, and risk-taking.

From case studies, Johansson found that the most successful companies—whether large or small—strategically create intersections where people with different backgrounds, cultures, and perspectives come together to challenge assumptions and explore new ways of doing things. The result is an exponential increase in creativity and innovation. This has profound implications for staffing firms, both for internal operations and for their role in providing human resource services and solutions to clients.

Johansson is managing director of Medici Capital Management. The Washington Post said his business bestseller, The Medici Effect, was "the book that dozens of business school professors meant to write but couldn't." The Medici Effect was named one of the best innovational books of the year by Business Week, ManyWorlds.com, and InnovationTools.com.

The Medici Executive: Driving Innovation

In The Medici Effect, Frans Johansson identifies "the movement of people" as one of the most significant drivers of innovation. As labor markets have become more flexible and talent shortages become more acute, more than ever before people are moving between companies, cultures, and countries. According to 2004 census estimates, 12% of the U.S. population is foreign born—more than a 75% increase since 1990. This intermingling and influx of diverse roots will foster a host of groundbreaking opportunities for the staffing industry world-wide.

After his keynote, Johansson will lead a discussion with the chief executive officers of some of the world's largest staffing companies about what the staffing industry can do to take advantage of new opportunities. What are staffing firms doing right? What do staffing firms need to do better to enhance public perception, client demand, work force penetration rates, and profitability? And what will the next couple of years look like for the staffing industry?

Dieter Scheiff of Adecco Worldwide; Carl Camden of Kelly Services; Ben Noteboom of Randstad; and Ron Icke of USG People will challenge and expand your understanding of the opportunities and threats staffing firms face in an increasingly competitive global economy. They will examine the staffing industry's role and track record in the area of corporate social responsibility. And they will how every staffing firm can become an employer of choice. Johansson will lead them in a discussion that will foster Medici-style thinking by addressing key issues that will most directly affect your business and your bottom line.

Funky Business—Talent Makes Capital Dance

Keynote speaker Kjell Nordström is not your typical conservative business guru in a suit—he's an unconventional thinker who believes that now is the future for companies and their leaders.

Sharing insights from his books Funky Business: Talent Makes Capital Dance and Funky Business Forever: How To Enjoy Capitalism (both written with co-author Jonas Ridderståle), Nordström explains the effect the new world of work will have on the staffing industry. Today, the only thing that makes capital dance is talent. "Only talent will allow you to be unique, to escape business as usual," Nordström writes. "In this world we need business as unusual." Competitive advantage comes from being different, and increasingly, being different results from the way people think rather than from what organizations make. The revolutionary reality is that 1.3 kilograms of brain hold the key to all our futures.

Technology, institutions, and values are the interlinked drivers of change, transforming each other and creating a global village of turbulence, tribes, and fusion. According to Nordström, these drivers are shaping a weird world by changing the way society operates. Surplus and excess are becoming a way of life and of business, creating an abundance of choices. Only those businesses with a unique recipe will survive among the breadth of choices offered by their competitors. Nordström shows you what staffing firms need to do today and tomorrow to thrive in the new world.

The 2005 Thinkers 50—a biennial global ranking of management thinkers—ranked Nordström No. 9 internationally and No. 1 in Europe. He has a doctorate from the Stockholm School of Economics and is assistant professor at its Institute of International Business, focusing on research, consulting, and management training.

"The keynote speakers were riveting and very inspiring. Staffing World was professional development at its best. I could have used an additional suitcase to get all the information home!" —Jennifer Miller, United Personnel Services, Easthampton, MA

Clientbonding—Maximize Your Success Through Values

Welcome to the Age of Discontinuity, where continuous surprises, sudden interruptions, and frequent fractures of our equilibrium are the norm. The transition from boom to bust, abundance to scarcity, and control to commotion seems to be happening overnight.

In times of such extreme uncertainty, people look for the security and connection offered by others who empathize with their values. They want more than just a relationship, they want a bond. Those of us who can bond instantly and deeply with our clients will thrive in the continuing chaos. In this keynote, author, motivator, and persuasion coach Mike Lipkin will show you how to dramatically increase your sales and enhance your client relationships through clientbonding—the process of understanding and leveraging values to build instant, intimate, mutually rewarding relationships that grow stronger over time. With today's market conditions, excellence is not good enough—you have to be brilliant. Drawing from his latest book One Life One Meeting: How to Build Preeminence One Conversation at a Time, Lipkin will show you how to build personal pre-eminence in every encounter and how to expand your capacity to produce remarkable results with others.

You'll also learn how to enhance your confidence by building a powerful personal brand, how to leverage your clients' values with integrity, and how to strengthen relationships by building emotional momentum and redefining the role you play in your clients' lives.

Lipkin is president of Environics / Lipkin, the motivation and sales empowerment practice of Environics Research Group. He has invested the last 10 years exploring personal excellence and is the author of Keeper of the Flame: How to Inspire Others on the Cusp of Change and On Fire! The Art of Personal Consistency.

The Power of Ethical and Inspirational Leadership

How do you attract and retain the kind of people who will dedicate their hearts and minds to your business? How do you inspire them to do their best? Today's employees want more than just salary, benefits, and bonuses. Powerful things can happen to your business when people find passion and heroism in their work. One way staffing professionals can succeed in this new world of work is to motivate people internally—and one way to do that is by managing business processes to have a positive effect on society and the environment. You can energize employees by practicing corporate social responsibility.

Leadership now requires the ability to think and lead others in new ways. Join colleagues for this rousing keynote, where you can learn how to manage change, which will prepare you to embrace social responsibility. You'll be inspired to move forward with innovative strategies and practical guidelines for excelling in rapidly changing, competitive times.

Keynote speaker Janet Lapp—a psychologist, change consultant, and author of Positive Spin, Dancing With Tigers, and Plant Your Feet Firmly in Mid-Air: Guidance Through Turbulent Change—will share new trends in ethical leadership and help you discover opportunities and see the positives of change. You'll come away with the courage to make positive changes, the drive to develop personal and team accountability, and a refreshed commitment to what you do every day.

"The keynote speakers were brilliant. We left with a notepad filled with great ideas. See you next year!" —Sheila Musgrove, TAG Recruitment Group, Calgary, Alberta

Register by June 13 and save up to $300.