Jeff Leitner

Jeff Leitner is a social innovation pioneer and the foremost expert on unwritten rules, the hidden social norms that shape behavior and determine whether change efforts succeed or fail. His groundbreaking work has helped organizations from the United Nations to Starbucks to the U.S. Department of State unlock new approaches to their most complex challenges.

Unlocking the Hidden Code of Human Behavior

As the inaugural Innovator in Residence at the University of Southern California, Leitner developed the nation’s first doctorate in social innovation. As a Fellow at New America, he partnered with the OECD to create the first-ever sequence for solving all United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. As founder of Insight Labs, the first philanthropic think tank, he engaged over seven hundred scientists, artists, executives, and academics in designing strategies for more than forty governments, institutions, and corporations.

From Insight to Impact

Leitner’s presentations at venues including Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, Stanford’s d.school, and the World Government Summit in Dubai combine social science, real-world experience, and humor to deliver breakthrough insights audiences can apply immediately. He is the co-author of See Think Solve: A Simple Way to Tackle Tough Problems, and his work has been featured in Fast Company, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and Inc.

Leitner’s keynotes provide leaders with a powerful new lens for understanding why change fails and what they can do to make innovation, strategy, and transformation actually work.

The Rules That Matter Most

You will see what shapes people’s behavior and beliefs, and will be provided a set of tools to tackle your most important challenges. This talk is ideal for audiences seeking impactful change, profitable growth, disruptive innovation, and the ability to solve the nearly unsolvable issues.

Jeff Leitner provides a rare insight into how people and organizations really work — namely that they’re complying with hundreds of unwritten, unspoken rules. Armed with social science, real-world experience, and humor, he tells leaders how these rules work, about the relationship between unwritten rules and official policies, and how to leverage these mysterious rules to greatly improve outcomes and change behavior in companies, markets, and society.

• The Rules That Matter Most for Change and Innovation – Jeff Leitner turns the tables on the dismal success rate of organizational change and market innovation, explaining the all-important role that unwritten rules play in crippling our best efforts. Then he walks the audience through what they can do immediately to begin to shift conditions and set themselves up for success.
• The Rules that Matter Most for Social Impact – Explore the biggest obstacle to real social impact: unwritten, unspoken rules that shape our behavior and doom our best efforts to solve big problems. Jeff Leitner will guide the audience through new insights — the foundation of the nation’s first doctorate in social innovation, which he designed — that will prepare them to make significant and lasting impact.

Moderator / Facilitator / Idea Engineer

Jeff Leitner has led groups in unpacking and solving difficult challenges around the world — both on and off stage. Asked about his moderating style, he said: “I try to push beyond what people usually say to help find new, more productive ground that even they didn’t know about before. If there’s a panel, I look to produce big, new ideas where everybody’s work overlaps. In short, I want the kind of combustion that comes when expertise meets expertise.”

Leitner was the founder of Insight Labs, the first-ever philanthropic think tank. There, he engaged more than 700 scientists, artists, executives, and academics in designing original strategies to help more than 40 governments, institutions, and corporations. He was also founder of UX for Good, the first international initiative to engage user experience design in solving big problems. He is at home on stage or in boardrooms with big thinkers seeking to explore new ideas.