RECONVERGE:G2 Agenda 2018

Failure, the Best Teacher

Dan Brewer is the second-generation head of Intangible Assets at Brewer Science, a microelectronics materials technology innovator that has maintained its independence as a private company for more than 37 years. Independence – at Brewer Science’s size and scale – is such a rarity in modern business life that we asked Dan to tell us how they do it. As he will explain, it has not been painless. When Brewer Science tried to grow beyond its original core business, the company struggled, ultimately failing to get traction … four times. The company needed an attitude adjustment. Only when Brewer Science learned how to couple rigorous situational awareness of market opportunities with operational excellence could they exploit the new market growth potential that had earlier eluded them. More than tell the Brewer Science story, Dan will guide us through their process of evaluating opportunities and aligning operations to exploit them – a lesson that will resonate with any organization hoping to expand beyond their core.

About Dan Brewer

After completing his graduate work in entomology, biology, and biochemistry, Dan joined Brewer Science in 1996. He currently serves as Executive Director of Intangible Assets, which includes overseeing intellectual property, new market development, corporate branding, strategic relationships, and competitive intelligence. The most exceptional part of Brewer Science, according to Dan, is “a culture of creativity that supports our mission to lead the industry through being a company of the people, by the technology, for the customer.”

Imagining the Perfect Race

It is more work than you might expect to be even slightly better than the competitor next to you. But tiny margins of error (or effort) make all the difference between winning and losing on the athletic field – or in the business world. IBM Watson’s Doug Barton is the type of person who races IRONMAN for fun. Doug will tell us the story of the “Internet of Dave” (Haase) and how his team exploited effort and biometric data, behavioral analytics, and weather conditions, to keep their racer safe and help him race his perfect race. Their objective: to outperform competitors in the Race Across America or RAAM, a 3,000-mile coast-to-coast non-stop cycling ultramarathon often described as the toughest race on earth. Dave, Doug and their team amplified athletic performance by answering two key questions: what can we do now – this moment – to maximize the likelihood of a safe crossing — and how can we create our own luck by knowing precisely when to rest to make progress in the best conditions. Learn how we cascaded that into data, insight, optimization, and better decisions. Doug will show us what opportunities might exist in our own businesses by looking at familiar problems and everyday data and combining them in new ways to generate supranatural competitive advantage.

About Doug Barton

Doug is worldwide Director of Marketing responsible for cognitive solutions in IBM’s Industry Platforms group. Industry Platforms is a new IBM business created in late 2016 to build a range of strategic business and technology capabilities designed as cloud platforms and solutions by industry. This new business has launched Watson Financial Services with responsibility for strategy, cognitive solutions and operational performance in IBM’s largest industry segment and the company-wide mission for blockchain solutions. Doug is a graduate of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and is a Certified Public Accountant. He completed his undergraduate work at the University of Wisconsin. He’s held senior positions at large and innovative software startups alike. He began his career as a CPA with Price Waterhouse in Chicago. Finally, Doug is also a husband, a father to two terrific daughters, and an Ironman-distance triathlete.

Fear Not

What would it mean to you to overcome your fears? The fear of failure? The fear of success? The fear of uncertainty? As humans, we were not born with those fears, we learn them. Ask any child what she wants to be she grows up and she will aim for the stars (quite literally, sometimes, hoping to become an astronaut)! Ask an adult, and he simply hopes to make it through the day. What happened? As we grow older and experience life’s disappointments, judgments and challenges, we lose our childlike sense of wonder. We fall into the trap of limited expectations, are taught to beware of strangers and learn to scorn the unfamiliar. The challenge is that while fear serves a biological purpose (avoiding danger), it can be difficult to distinguish that from its damaging psychological impacts. In other words, we are scared of the wrong things. And that fear is poisoning our relationships, our careers and our organizations. How can we surrender our more basic fears of appearing weak or feeling vulnerable and, instead, embrace the surprises life promises with greater confidence? Jeff and Amy Meyer, founders of Sardis Collective, will teach us in their opening keynote how to overcome these fears, dream big and execute in service to those around us.

About Jeff and Amy Meyer

Jeff and Amy Meyer founded Sardis Collective to ignite missional intelligence in communities of faith everywhere. Amy is a sought after speaker and coach and, in addition to consulting and coaching leaders and their organizations, Jeff is Lead Pastor to a local Lutheran church in Madison where he has served since 1998. In all of their work the Meyers are devoted to sparking restless leaders to dream boldly and freely pursue their NEXT.

Intelligent Humility

Intelligence professionals are, by definition, often expected to be the smartest people in the room. Their credibility and expertise should be the very reason they’re called upon for advice. However, these strengths can also limit their effectiveness to the organizations they serve, as well as limit their own careers. The balancing act an intelligence leader or analyst must model for their colleagues is intelligent, professional humility. This humility manifests itself many ways but can be tested by answering a simple question: “When delivering my analysis, am I open to challenging opinions and even open criticism to my process and conclusions?” If not, you have unintentionally degraded your effectiveness. By opening yourself to broader thinking and opposing ideas, you will be able to surrender tightly held – and often flawed – assumptions in your process and products. Andrew Chernack and Jim Payne of Deloitte will guide us through real life examples they’ve encountered in the professional services industry where they have justifiably been challenged on their conclusions. And they will challenge us to test our own intelligent humility and teach us to elevate our clients, our careers and produce results that drive the competitiveness of the organizations we serve.

About Andrew Chernack

Bio Coming Soon.

About Jim Payne
Senior Manager
Competitive Intelligence, Strategy Development

Professional Background:

Jim joined Deloitte in 2003 as part of the Competitive Intelligence team, a role which informed the internal strategy of the US firm, focusing on the competitive environment. In 2012, he transferred from the firm’s commercial practice to the Federal practice where he managed the Competitive & Market Intelligence team. From 2014 to 2017, Jim worked in the US and India in Deloitte’s Market Development Research and Analytics group providing quantitative insights on the value of marketing and communications efforts. Jim has recently moved back to the newly organized Competitive Intelligence / Strategy Development group. Prior to Deloitte, Jim worked as a Vice President with ACE/INA USA and Crescent Bank & Trust where he was responsible for the sale and acquisition of mortgage servicing portfolios. Prior to his work in private industry he was with the Central Intelligence Agency and is a veteran of the U.S. Army.

Education:

Auburn University, BS – Finance
University of Georgia, MBA – Real Estate Finance

The Creation Interface

Would you call yourself “creative”? Is your organization “innovative”? Whatever qualifiers you might add to your specific answers to these questions, the real answer stings a little: we’re not nearly creative enough. No matter how creative or innovative you believe you or your team is, it will not be enough to sustain your organization in the coming technological and cultural disruption. Rob Shook and Bill Kirst will guide us through the process of accepting that truth and beginning on the path toward addressing it. Bill focuses on the individual leadership training and skill development required, while Rob explores the macro cultural view throughout the organization. Both perspectives are critical to creating lasting change. Together, they will show us how you can harness the individual and collective efforts of your entire organization to push through the creative frontier.

About Bill Kirst
Organizational Change Management Leader
West Monroe Partners

Bill Kirst is a senior manager in West Monroe Partners’ Operations Excellence practice, focused on organizational change management for technology-driven change. He has more than 15 years of experience that spans culture and talent management, implementation of new technology, and people development. Bill delivers change-management expertise and strategy for clients undergoing technology-driven transformation in a digital world. Bill is a frequent author and speaker on strategies for increasing engagement, social business leadership, and diversity and inclusion. He also serves as a mentor to student veterans. Bill earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Studies from Johns Hopkins University and a Master of Arts degree in Communication, Culture & Technology from Georgetown University.

About Rob Shook
Program Director, IBM Training & Skills

Rob thrives on building bridges, finding new connections and synergy between people and ideas, and identifying and creating common foundations where none may have existed before. He is known for being able to make technical information accessible to both technical and non-technical audiences. Rob’s career with IBM over 30 years has provided a wide range of experiences – from living in Sydney, Australia where he led a sales team in the Asia/Pacific markets, to living in London as Consulting Manager for Large Account Software Sales in Europe and Africa (excelling at opportunity identification and managing customer engagements). He led the expansion of IBM’s sales to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) market in Asia/Pacific. He was a project executive for IBM on the US Navy’s DD(x) next-generation naval destroyer program. Outside of work, Rob has raised eight puppies for the Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind. He is president of the alumni board at Wabash College. and serves on boards at Miami University and the University of Texas at Austin. He speaks at colleges and universities around the country.

Designing for Customer Empathy

Design thinking is a common buzzword in industry today. But what is it? And how do you use it? This session will help you understand design thinking through an experiential learning exercise based on the health industry. Today, “health” care is actually ”sick” care. For the past 50 years in the United States, the overriding economic incentive has been to treat illness, not keep people healthy. And while the medical system has delivered countless innovations over the past century to treat evolving conditions, it has not delivered on the promise of lifelong wellness. How could we better design a system that supports ongoing health? Kathy Henrich, a technology sales and partnership executive, and Kim Rosengren, a healthcare marketing expert, will facilitate a design thinking exercise to tackle the big challenge of improving health and creating a better future for us all. The goal will be to help you practice the fundamentals of design thinking so that you can use it to approach your next “big challenge.”

About Kim Rosengren

In healthcare, change often comes from disrupting the status quo. Kim Rosengren has used marketing as a platform to change healthcare for more than 15 years. Working for a leading healthcare IT company when the first healthcare reform bill was passed in 2010, Kim led a client advisory board that prioritized and identified the best way to tackle the mandates. She launched one of the first social networking and gaming platforms for healthcare to engage patients in healthier behaviors in 2012. And, in 2015, she identified the capabilities that payers, providers and patients needed to analyze, engage with and manage healthcare together. Today, Kim is tackling the role data will play in transforming healthcare from a sick care model to a sustainable, health care model that engages people in managing their care long before they become patients. Most recently, Kim was head of healthcare marketing for the North American division of $13B IT leader Atos. She has a combined MBA and Masters in Technology Management from the University of Phoenix, a BA in cognitive psychology from the University of Colorado and is a graduate of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Executive Program.

About Kathy Henrich

Bio coming soon.