Josh Linkner Five-time Tech Entrepreneur; Bestselling Author; Professional Jazz Guitarist

Entrepreneurs look at the world differently. We celebrate them for their bold vision and
courage—they drive game-changing innovation that creates enormous economic
success while making a profound impact on the world. What is it about the
entrepreneurial mindset that helps these mavericks seize opportunity that others
miss? A five-time successful tech entrepreneur, Josh Linkner shows leaders and
organizations how to embrace the creativity, grit and vision of a startup and then
channel this approach to drive growth, innovation, efficiency and customer delight.
Linkner decodes the entrepreneurial DNA to help leaders of any size company in any
industry or profession:

• Understand how an entrepreneur would attack their organization with the
specific goal of dislodging it
• Reimagine their role through the lens of an entrepreneur
• Harness the ferocity of entrepreneurial thinking
• Embrace “startup speed” to increase velocity in your own organization
• Learn the five best approaches used by startups to create disruption
• Avoid the weaknesses that plague entrepreneurs by exposing the four biggest
startup death traps

A spark. A flash of creative brilliance. A new beginning. The energy to forge ahead when
things get tough.

What if we could cultivate and deploy this white-hot, mighty force? What if we injected
sparks of innovation, competitive advantage, and sustainable growth into our
organizations? Whether it’s mustering the courage to take that first step, or harnessing
the creative soul of your team to ignite wide-sweeping transformation, it’s time to
create sparks so powerful they can’t be ignored.

The long-awaited breakthrough idea. The inspiration to drive change. The unexpected
solution to a burdensome problem. The beginning of unstoppable momentum.
In this inspiring and actionable keynote, famed tech entrepreneur and New York Times
bestselling author provides a memorable performance to help you cultivate those
powerful, combustible forces. Through real-world examples, hysterically funny stories,
and practical takeaways, Josh will help you and your organization find your spark.

With intense competitive pressures and mind-numbing speed, leaders seek fresh
approaches for growth and innovation. As old methods become commoditized, new
creative problem solving techniques are needed more than ever. Drawing inspiration
from the unlikely world of hackers, New York Times bestselling author and five-time
tech entrepreneur Josh Linkner has discovered a new and powerful model for leadership
and organizational success. The underworld of cybercriminals contains some of the most
creative people on the planet, despite their illicit motives. In this thrilling and
provocative talk, Linkner takes the audience on a mind-opening journey, showing how
hacking techniques can be deployed to drive legitimate business outcomes. Learning
how hackers would solve your most pressing challenges using unorthodox approaches
will give you a new framework for creative problem solving, growth and innovation.

• Specific tools and techniques from the Five Core Mindsets and Ten Primary
Tactics of Hackers
• Fresh approaches to complex problem solving
• How a hacker would approach your work if he or she had your job
• Why unorthodox moves can lead to the best business outcomes
• How to protect yourself and your company from innovation hackers of all
sizes and types

As a five-time successful tech entrepreneur and investor in dozens of startups, Josh
Linkner has seen thousands of companies loaded with creative buzz and big ideas. How
is it that some harness their imagination to create game-changing drivers of growth and
innovation while others miss the mark? The answer: The best companies have a
systematic process to focus their team’s creativity into practical outputs—something
Linkner discovered by founding and building companies that sold collectively for over
$200 million. As a professional jazz guitarist, Linkner blends the improvisational qualities
of a jazz ensemble with bleeding-edge business savvy to bring a completely fresh
perspective on unleashing creativity in the organization. His inspiring presentation
delivers practical tools that can be used immediately to increase creative output and
deliver bottom-line results. You’ll learn to:

• Use specific techniques to harness your most powerful ideas
• Apply creativity on a daily basis across all business activities and roles
• Break free from the three biggest blockers of creativity
• Apply best practices from the world’s most innovative companies
• Avoid the five biggest creativity killers
• Master the three most powerful brainstorming techniques that you’ve never
heard of
• Build a culture that celebrates fresh thinking and embraces new ideas

In your next brainstorm session, start every idea with "if there was no way we could fail...." This simple disclaimer before every idea will push you creatively since it will absolve you of any execution risk or responsibility. These quick seven words before each idea will geometrically grow your creative output. 

If you and your team come up with 100 ideas and 99 of them stink, what do you have left? You guessed it, a great idea. The best ones often come as a direct result of a high volume of lousy ones.  Push quantity to boost quality.

Imagine a magazine cover five years from now, talking about your company's breakthrough innovations that drove record-setting growth. What three areas do you think the feature story would focus on when describing your incredible and unprecedented success?

With disruptive forces assaulting business from every direction, creativity has been
labeled the single most important business attribute. To succeed, leaders must be
focused on creating a resilient culture where everyone’s engaged; a torrent of
innovative ideas needs to flow from every level of the organization. Top leaders then
employ a secret weapon: a systematic approach to selecting and launching the ideas
that will best drive growth and innovation. Josh Linkner weighs in with a fresh
perspective on this critical leadership challenge. A highly successful serial entrepreneur
and now a tech investor, Linkner shows leaders how to employ his simple but effective
framework to ramp up the creativity and identify/launch ideas that will break through
and defy gravity. This presentation will help leaders:

• Challenge assumptions and conventional wisdom
• Build courage to foster responsible risk-taking
• Authentically express your own creativity and tap into the hidden creativity of
your team members
• Develop “everyday creativity” to attack business problems of all sizes
• Deploy creativity beyond R&D to reimagine processes, drive efficiency and
improve operations
• Uncover fresh approaches for reinvention and growth

In jazz, 99% of the notes are improvised, played off the cuff in real-time. Yet, it’s the structure of a jazz combo – not the inherent talent of individual musicians – that allows for such breathtaking creative expression. In today’s business landscape of dizzying speed, exponential complexity, and ruthless competition, we can no longer just play the notes on the written page. Audiences will learn powerful lessons inspired by jazz musicians (a.k.a “real-time innovators”)!

In a hugely interactive and stunning presentation, Josh Linkner weaves live jazz with stimulating dialogue. Through music, you'll actually hear fresh ways to unleash an organization’s creative mojo. 

Be prepared to be amazed. Josh Linkner, a jazz guitarist since age 13, credits a musical
background for giving him a different way of looking at business. In this stunning
interactive presentation, a live jazz performance by Linkner and his band is woven with
stimulating dialogue. You’ll actually hear, through their music, fresh ways to unleash
your organization’s creative mojo. In jazz, 99% of the notes are improvised and created
in real time. Yet it’s the structure of a jazz combo—not the inherent talent of individual
musicians—that allows for such breathtaking creative expression. In today’s business
landscape of dizzying speed, exponential complexity and ruthless competition, we can
no longer just play the notes on the written page. You will learn powerful lessons
inspired by jazz musicians (aka “real-time innovators”) to help you:

• Develop your own ability to improvise, no matter what job title you hold
• Establish team dynamics that foster creative thinking and risk-taking
• Uncover fresh approaches to previously unchallenged assumptions
• Break free from traditional thinking and uncover vast new possibilities
• Learn five secret techniques used by jazz musicians to foster creativity, which can
easily be adapted to your own organization
• Expand your ability to deal with ambiguity and recover from setbacks