We live in an age of excess everything -an era of overwhelming choice, crippling complexity, and feature overload. Standing out in the age of excess everything demands a singular skill: Subtraction.

The world’s most original innovators all know this: less is best. They know that by removing just the right things in just the right way, they can achieve the maximum effect through minimum means and deliver what everyone wants: a memorable and meaningful experience. Subtraction is the scalpel of value—the method by which the simplest, most elegant solutions will be created, now and in the future. Subtraction is the creative skill needed to win in the age of excess everything.

This talk delivers six simple rules for developing and deploying it:

1. What isn’t there can often trump what is. (Examples: FedEx logo, Scion xB car)
2. The simplest rules create the most effective experience. (Example: urban redesign of London’s Exhibition Road; Netflix vacation policy)
3. Limiting information engages the imagination. (Examples: original iPhone marketing strategy)
4. Creativity thrives under intelligent constraints. (Example: Mars Pathfinder project; Lexus LS400)
5. Break is the important part of breakthrough. (Example: Lockheed’s Skunk Works)
6. Doing something isn’t always better than doing nothing. (Example: Boston Consulting’s mandatory downtime)

As usual, we will start with gourmet dinner, wine and networking at 6:30 pm, this will follow with featured talk and Q&A session.

Gourmet dinner and wine are included.

The Power of Surprise – The Key to Personal & Business Breakthroughs

Most leaders want business breakthroughs, but many struggle with the elusive and “messy” process required for creating them.  Why?  Because we’re taught that uncertainty – and especially surprises – should be avoided at all costs.  Certainty and predictability are good.  Uncertainty, ambiguity and surprises are bad.  But there’s a big disconnect.  In reality, the unexpected is one of the most powerful sources of breakthroughs for people and organizations.  Soren Kaplan reveals why today’s leaders need to do exactly what they’re taught to avoid:  embrace surprise—the key to breakthrough innovation.  Today’s leaders must learn to seek out, recognize and respond to surprising experiences and events in order to create game-changers that leapfrog the expectations of customers, partners, employees, the market, and the competition.

Gourmet dinner and wine are included!

The Likeability Gap

For years we have put belief at the top of the pyramid when it comes to changing minds and attitudes. If we could just get someone to BELIEVE differently, we say, then we might be able to change how they behave. Yet recent science shows us that over and over again people make decisions based on their emotions and not logic. They blindly follow their habits and when asked to describe their actions or behaviours, they consistently fail. What if belief wasn’t everything? What if there was something else guiding our decisions … something more basic? In this talk, award winning marketer and author Rohit Bhargava will share fascinating new science combined with remarkable stories from around the world that prove when it comes to what makes us ultimately decide to act (or not) – personal relationships and the simple metric of likeability trumps everything else.

As usual, we will start with gourmet dinner, wine and networking at 6:30 pm, this will follow with featured talk and Q&A session.

Boiled Fish and Other Economic Miracles

The global economy consists of an evolving and interconnected set of production recipes. Just as in the kitchen, these recipes describe how to turn raw ingredients into things we can use. Standard economics has lots to say about efficiently making things that already exist, using known recipes; however, it has relatively little to say about how to create new recipes or modify existing ones. That’s what this talk is about: how new recipes come about, and what that process tells us about entrepreneurship, innovation, and the trend of history (… which, by the way, is up).

President Bill Clinton, Founder of the William J. Clinton Foundation and 42nd president of the United States:
“Philip Auerswald shows the role that innovators must play if we are to create ‘The Coming Prosperity.’ In this important book, he reminds us that challenging the status quo is the inescapable first step toward building the future of our dreams.”

The Wall Street Journal:
“Auerswald…digs down to show the many ways in which progress depends on creativity, not to mention persistence and luck…a lively writing style, and the analysis is lightened with personal anecdotes and pop-culture references.”

Richard Florida, Director, Martin Prosperity Institute, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Senior Editor at The Atlantic, and author ofThe Rise of the Creative Class:
“If you want to understand where and how the economy will recover, read this book. The Coming Prosperity illuminates our current historical moment and shines a light on the future we can have. Philip Auerswald weaves together a rich tapestry of insights that underpin a desperately needed ‘reset’ in our policies, institutions, economy and society.”

Umair Haque, author of The New Capitalist Manifesto: Building a Disruptively Better Business
“The brilliant book you’re holding isn’t just a chronicle of necessary economic transformation — it’s a field guide to being a builder, an architect, a prime mover of the next global economy. One that’s not just optimized for the industrial age pursuit of more, bigger, faster, cheaper, but for fundamentally better in terms that matter to humans. So if your goal might be summarized thus — ‘Ignore the haters. Listen to what matters. Topple the status quo’ — then fasten your seatbelt, take a deep breath, and get ready to create the future.”

Jacqueline Novogratz, founder and CEO of Acumen Fund:
“The Coming Prosperity is a refreshingly optimistic look at the role of entrepreneurship in building a more just and interconnected world. Auerswald is not only an economist, but also a real storyteller-this book is a relevant and engaging read for all of us interested in creating a more prosperous planet.”

Anne-Marie Slaughter, Bert G. Kerstetter ’66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University:
“Philip Auerswald has given us a tonic for troubled times, one carefully calibrated to meet every skeptic’s objection. His message is one of entrepreneurship, collaboration, and connection, unlocking the creative talent of billions all over the world. The Coming Prosperity is a compelling read.”

We are hosting a community potluck on May 19!

Please bring healthy foods to share: appetizers, main courses, deserts. Make sure your dish can be shared with other people. Each dish needs to have an info card with all ingredients listed (some people have food allergies – this will help them to avid foods they are allergic to).

Among our speakers:

• Charlie Ayers
• Larry Bain
• Ari Cohen
• Jeremy Kuempel
• Matthew Guelke

Net proceeds from this event will go towards Jamie’s foundation projects in the UK, US and Australia

Thanks to our host: Hult International Business School.

WHAT IS FOOD REVOLUTION DAY?

Food Revolution Day on 19 May is a chance for people who love food to come together to share information, talents and resources; to pass on their knowledge and highlight the world’s food issues. All around the globe, people will work together to make a difference. Food Revolution Day is about connecting with your community through events at schools, restaurants, local businesses, dinner parties and farmers’ markets. We want to inspire change in people’s food habits and to promote the mission for better food and education for everyone.

WHO IS TAKING PART?

Schools, businesses, chefs, restaurants and food lovers all over the world will take part, and we’d love you to get involved too. Food Revolution Day is open to anyone in the world who wants to take the steps towards a healthier lifestyle and better education. You can raise awareness and fundraise for food education programs by hosting or attending Food Revolution Day events, which will focus on locally sourced, fresh food and promote the need for better food education.

WHY HAVE A DAY OF ACTION?

Worldwide, obesity has more than doubled since 1980. For the first time in history, being overweight is killing more people than being underweight, and at least 2.8 million adults around the world die each year as a result of being overweight or obese. This has to change, and it’s down to us. We need to get back to basics and start thinking about where our food comes from. We need to become a conscious community and understand the food choices we make on a daily basis. We can do this by improving food education.
Encouraging people to cook from scratch at home is at the heart of this. We all have family and friends who could make better food choices. On Food Revolution Day we can work together to empower people with the skills to improve their diet. Making simple changes to our food choices will improve our quality of life and our children’s. Forty-two million children under five are already obese and we need to reverse this. Let’s make some noise, raise our voices together and have a lasting and positive impact on their lives and ours. Food Revolution Day is our opportunity to get the world to focus on food issues and rally our efforts to bring food education back into schools.

WHERE IS IT HAPPENING?

On 19 May, Food Revolution Day will happen in kitchens, homes and communities around the world. On village greens and in dining rooms, in restaurants and gardens, it will spark conversations about real food and inspire people to take steps towards a healthier lifestyle.

The Science of Willpower

Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonigal will describe the biggest myths of willpower and how rethinking self-control can help you reach your goals and make difficult changes.

How to Make Serendipity Work For You and Your Business

Regardless of our best-laid plans, it’s often the ideas and events that we least expect that end up mattering to us most. This has never been truer than in today’s chaotic, highly uncertain world. Serendipity—looking for one thing and finding another—is consequentially the root of much discovery in business, science, and the arts. Harnessing serendipity means being willing to follow unplanned paths when they emerge, yet by succumbing to opportunism we risk undermining all the work that got us to that point. This challenging paradox — how can we stay the course and also take new directions at the same time? — paralyzes most organizations as they grow beyond the nimble startup stage.

The solution, as demonstrated by businesses as diverse as Foursquare, In-N-Out Burger and the TED conference, is to stop seeing these contrasting skills Nof divergence and commitment as opposites, and instead marry them together. Being rooted to an overriding purpose is the only meaningful way we to decide which of our many possible paths are the right ones to take. The interaction between these seeming opposing approaches leads directly to the best kind of luck: When we are fully committed to something we serendipitously run into new directions that fall along our path, and recognize opportunities uniquely suited to us, even as others miss them completely.

Inside Apple: How Apple’s way of doing business violates everything you learned in business school.

It has been said about Apple that its business practices are like a bumble bee: It shouldn’t fly, but it does. And how well it does. Apple is the first or second most valuable company in the world, and it got that way by doing business differently from how it is taught in Harvard Business School. The whole world loves Apple products, but even sophisticated business people don’t understand how Apple does what it does. Lashinsky discusses in detail Apple’s approach to leadership, personnel, secrecy, design, product development, marketing, public relations, and other seemingly mundane but extraordinarily unique approaches to business. The topics make for a particularly lively Q&A session: Everyone has an opinion about Apple (How much did Steve Jobs matter? Can my company be as secretive as Apple? What happens when an Apple product flops?). What’s more, the contemporary case study is playing out before the audience’s eyes. Each week’s news brings fresh discussion points.