Kaihan Krippendorff

Kaihan Krippendorff has made a commitment to helping organizations and individuals thrive in today’s era of fast-paced disruptive technological change.

He began his career with McKinsey & Company before founding the growth strategy and innovation consulting firm Outthinker. His growth strategies and innovations have generated over $2.5B in revenue for many of the world’s most recognizable companies including BNY Mellon, Citibank, L’Oréal, Microsoft, and Viacom.A best-selling author of five books, most recently the Edison Award nominated,  Driving Innovation From Within: A Guide for Internal Entrepreneurs.

He is a member of the prestigious Thinkers50 radar group – A global selection of the top 30 management thinkers in the world to look out for. Thinkers50 also recognized Kaihan as one of the 8 most influential innovation thought leaders in the world considering him for a Distinguished Achievement Award in Innovation – given to the person in the world that has contributed the most to the world’s understanding of innovation in the past two years. Kaihan is currently ranked the Thinkers360 #1 Global Innovation Thought Leader and the Thinkers360 #1 Global Business Strategy Thought Leader in 2019.

Kaihan also founded The Outthinker Strategy Network, a community comprised of strategy executives from the world’s top Fortune 500 and private companies that keeps him ahead of the pace of disruption and up to date on trends, threats, and opportunities across industries.

Amidst his dizzying schedule of keynote speeches, consulting projects, ongoing research and writing, Kaihan still finds time to teach at business schools throughout the US and internationally (including NYU, FIU, and Universidad Americana). Regularly featured in major business media outlets Kaihan is an advisory board member for a blockchain-powered transportation platform, an international food processing/exporting company, and a B-corporation focused on sustainable products and lifestyle.

He holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering, Wharton, Columbia, and London Business Schools and a doctorate in strategy. With a mother from Bangladesh and a father from Germany, Kaihan brings a holistic, diverse, and global perspective to everything he does. His work has brought him to 58 countries all over the world. He speaks three languages and has lived or spent significant periods of time in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and the Pacific. He lives in Greenwich, Conn., with his wife and three children.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohammad Yunus has said, “Kaihan shows that with a compelling idea anyone can change the world” and that message has made Kaihan one of the most sought-after speakers on the topics of business strategy, growth and innovation.

Outthink The Competition: Excelling In A Digital, Agile, Purpose-Driven Future

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 are able to 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 most recent book, Outthink the Competition, Kaihan 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 together first-hand stories of inspiring business and social innovators, from Elon Musk to Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, Kaihan’s presentation teaches the audience 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 you 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 your employees so that they are ready to take action to develop, test and scale innovative growth ideas

Outthinking Covid: Embracing Agile Mindset To Reinvent And Build Business Models For The Post-Covid Era

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated business trends that would have taken a decade or more to be fully realized, to a matter of months. Times of rapid change separate the disrupted from the disruptors … the thinkers from the “Outthinkers.” Outthinkers quickly orient themselves to the changes under-way and adapt their business models for the future. Pivoting your business and driving transformation in these times of unprecedented change is a daunting task for any company or organization (it is already an outright challenge in “normal times”). The task of exploring new models, pivoting a business and driving that transformation (a difficult task even in “normal times”) is even more critical to survival than ever before.

In response to COVID, Kaihan Krippendorff has taken The Outthinker Process and created a modified version specifically designed for companies to use in the COVID world. The Outthinker Process is a strategic process that helps business leaders step outside of conventional thinking to redesign their business models and strategies. It has created more than $2.5B in new revenue for some of the world’s most well-known organizations across industries (Microsoft, CVS Health, Disney, L’Oreal).

A masterful storyteller and performer (both live and virtually), Kaihan customizes every talk he gives and will use entertaining, colorful stories and share distilled insights and advice from personal interviews with some of today’s foremost strategic thought leaders – Renee Mauborgne, Rita McGrath, Efosa Ojomo, Bharat Anand, Alex Osterwalder, and Scott Anthony. Participants will learn a succinct process to make sense of the future and design a strategy to help your business thrive through the crisis. His presentation teaches the audience a tested method for developing actionable ideas and arming the audience with the tools and know-how to start driving change as soon as his talk is over. In this inspiring keynote you will learn:

In this inspiring keynote you will learn to:

• Use The Outthinker Process to generate powerful ideas and business models that can drive bottom-line results across all levels of the business
• Identify your “Fourth Option”: the option beyond the obvious choices, the option others will not see or respond to
• Five strategic narratives to master in the COVID era – The COVID Outthinker’s Playbook
• Create hope and inspire your people that they have the tools needed to prevail
• Grow and strengthen a culture of Outthinking that celebrates fresh strategic and innovative ideas and thinking
• Empower and inspire your employees so that they are ready to take action to develop, test and scale innovative growth ideas, business models, and revenue streams

Be the Agile Innovator: Drive Growth and Transformation Through Employee-Led Innovation

“Innovation” brings to our mind the maverick entrepreneur who quits their job, at unimaginable odds, to build a business on their own. But this entrepreneurial story is a myth. As a successful entrepreneur, author, consultant and CEO, Kaihan Krippendorff argues that intrapreneurs – employees who incubate new businesses within corporations – have had a far greater impact on the world (e-mail, internet, DNA sequencing, MRI scans, were all conceived and driven by employees).

Drawing on five years of in-depth research of hundreds of successful corporate innovators as well as insights from thought leaders, other C-suite leaders, business unit leaders, and front-line employees, Kaihan will share insights from his Edison-Award nominated book, Driving Innovation From Within: A Guide for Internal Entrepreneurs (Columbia University Press, 2019). Recognized by one of the top innovation experts in 2019 by Thinkers50, Kaihan will unveil the most critical internal focus areas for driving innovation and moving your organization forward into the future. He will share specific tools, frameworks and techniques used by successful innovators to manage and unlock the value of employees’ ideas to increase corporate innovation levels and deliver bottom-line results. Audience members will have actionable next steps to transform their organization by testing and scaling fresh ideas that generate value and growth.  They will leave feeling inspired and empowered, ready to take on the future.

In this inspiring keynote you will learn:

• The IN-OVATE Framework
• 7 barriers of internal innovation and how to overcome them
• 6 characteristics of Internal Innovators
• 7 steps to build an agile innovation team
• How to disrupt your competition without disrupting your business
• What it takes to lead an innovative organization and drive transformation
• Shift your organizational mindset and culture
• Build a wave of internal support for growth, innovation and creativity by reinforcing the idea that innovation is possible, attainable, and ultimately actionable

Innovating Beyond The R&D Lab: Realizing Trapped Value Across The Eight Dimensions Of Innovation

When we say “innovation” we almost always mean “product innovation.” We talk about research & development and possible new solutions to meet unmet needs. This is a one-dimensional and incomplete approach to innovation. Dissect the most innovative companies of the last decade and you will see that great innovators disrupt their markets by reaching beyond the product. Oftentimes their success rests on choices that have little to do with new products.

In this presentation, successful entrepreneur, author, consultant and CEO Kaihan Krippendorff will take you through engaging examples from a broad array of industries such as Urban Outfitters in apparel, IKEA in furniture, VMware in technology, SpaceX in space launch vehicles, Mastercard in payments, and Vistaprint in printing services, showing how companies that outperform their competition seek disruptive innovation across eight dimensions (8Ps). The “8Ps” framework has proven to be a powerful structure to engage high-level marketers, business strategists and sales staff in an exploration of where competitive advantages lie, where to strengthen them, and where they are being underutilized. Learnings from this session include:

• The “8Ps” strategic innovation framework: systematically uncover new avenues for growth, innovation and transformation
• How to construct a disruptive business model or strategy that leverages an underutilized 8P strength
• Identifying opportunities beyond the R&D lab: identify and reconstruct processes and operations to drive efficiency
• Driving organic growth leveraging the value of unrealized ideas
• How to build real confidence to apply new strategies everyday across all business units and roles

Unleashing Agile: Activate The Power Of An Entrepreneurial Mindset To Drive Growth

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 on 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. Kaihan 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. Audience members will learn 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 – understanding 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, Not The Disrupted

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? Kaihan 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, Kaihan breaks down the underlying patterns of disruption and with compelling stories of successes, failures, and yet-unknown innovations, teaches practical tools to help you take action and become a Disruptor. Learnings and outcomes include:

• The emerging trends – from AI, millennials, 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

The Purpose Path: Building A Mission-Oriented Organization That Harnesses The Power Of CSR And A Do-Good Strategy

Historically, we were taught corporations existed for one purpose: to maximize shareholder value. But companies are waking up to the realization that such a focus destroys shareholder value over the long term because it creates resistance to your growth.

Successful entrepreneur, author, consultant and CEO Kaihan Krippendorff draws on years of proprietary research to show that today’s most successful companies more often speak of the strategic power of appealing to all stakeholders. If you design a strategy that benefits shareholders by also benefiting employees, the community, the country, and the environment, you have designed the ultimate strategy. When everyone wants you to win, you remove all competition. This idea goes beyond social responsibility. It points us toward removing the idea that doing good and making profit are inconsistent. You do not have to choose.

By pulling together inspiring stories from organizations ranging from lesser-known jewels like Best Doctors, BrightFarms, and Holstee to leading socially directed corporations like IKEA, Mastercard, and Target, Kaihan will inspire and motivate the audience to rethink their role and how they interact with stakeholders, not just shareholders. The audience will learn:

• The three primary goals of a “be good” socially minded strategy
• Simple yet effective tools and frameworks to apply and create your own “Do Good” strategy that complements your current organizational strengths and strategy
• The next evolution of corporate social responsibility and how to embrace the shift toward a future where CSR is the norm
• How to empower and inspire employees so that they’re ready to take action to develop ideas, strategies, products, and programs that everyone benefits from

Winning The Future Of Finance

The financial services industry – from banking to payments to insurance – is undergoing a rapid and historic transformation. The shifting regulatory landscape, changing consumer/investor behavior, an endless stream of agile newcomers armed with disruptive fintech tools, and platforms powered by Blockchain and AI are mounting an attack on incumbent institutions and business models. Kaihan Krippendorff works with many of the world’s leading financial institutions, helping them make sense of this uncertain future – understanding key future trends and technologies, designing fresh strategies and agile teams ready to face disruption head on so their organization can be ready to transform, compete, and win the future of finance. A successful entrepreneur, author, consultant and CEO that has created more than $2.5B in revenue for clients, Kaihan uses first-hand experience and actionable insights to present a compelling vision of the future world of financial services, arming the audience with a framework and tools that they can use to succeed in the tech-driven digital economy of the 21st century.

You will learn:

• The key trends shaping the financial services industry – Blockchain, AI, regulatory environment, unbundling/bundling, millennial investors, fintech, financial inclusion and beyond
• What financial services will look like in the near and distant future
• Five key strategies today’s most successful firms are adopting to adapt to, and lead, tomorrow
• How to transform into a more agile, inspiring, disruptive competitor, built for success in the digital economy
• Tools and a process for developing concrete ideas and strategic approaches that could disrupt the industry

Disrupting Retail

The retail and apparel industries today are undergoing a rapid, historic transformation. A successful entrepreneur, author, consultant and CEO that has created more than $2.5B in revenue for his clients, Kaihan Krippendorff works at the cutting edge of the disruption, helping many of the world’s leading retail and apparel brands navigate a future being shaped by radically shorter times to market, AI, robotics, augmented reality, hyper-personalization, data-driven decision making, and broad shifts in consumer behavior (environmentally friendly lifestyles, focus on health, nutrition, etc.). Drawing from the latest industry developments from Amazon to QVC and stories of yet-under-appreciated new attackers, Kaihan uses in this keynote first-hand experience and actionable insights to present a compelling vision of the future world of retail and leaves the audience with tools and an approach to develop a strategy to succeed in the shifting retail landscape of the 21st century tech-driven and digital economy.

You will learn:

• The key macro-trends that will shape the apparel and retail industries
• An overview of what retail will look like in the near and distant future
• Five key strategies today’s most successful retail and apparel players are adopting to prepare for tomorrow
• How to evolve into a more agile and disruptive competitor
• Tools and a process for developing concrete ideas for a strategy and approaches that could disrupt the industry