Technology Revolution: The Future of Now

Social entrepreneurship. Yes, good things do come in small packages. The experts speak. Alexandra van der Ploeg: "Donating money is easy, volunteering in the traditional sense is easy, but is it effective? Corporate social responsibility should not be about philanthropy, but about leveraging capital, technology or talent to truly create an impact in the communities we work in." Anne B. Evans: "Social entrepreneurship is love and respect in action." Patrick Furlong: "I believe in the importance of data and statistics…but it is the connection we feel to one another that moves us most strongly to act and make a positive and lasting difference in our communities." Rob Henning: "Get your team and strategy right, so you, as the entrepreneur, can focus on thinking about how to grow your business and have a business plan. Without the right team and a clear understanding of the market, most people will take a pass on financing your business." Join us for Social Entrepreneurship: The Power of Small

Banks and big data. Risky business, according to our experts. Simon Paris: "As reported more or less daily, banks continue to face multiple risk and compliance challenges – are they not willing or not able to do proper risk and compliance management?" Ralph Silva: "Banks have to find some humility and realise that retailers, auto companies and grocery chains are far better at managing and mining data than they are. Steal it if you can." Jane Griffin: "It's understanding the risks in the market and how I respond to those risks or any other components that might jeopardize my success." Craig Rich: "The price of light is less than the cost of darkness -- A.C. Nielsen. "Too often organizations are challenged with creating a business case for improving their data and analytical capabilities. In today's competitive landscape, it is not whether you can afford to invest in analytics but whether you can afford not to." Join us for Banks' Big Data Risks: Analytics to the Rescue

Corporate banking. If your treasury department is in a stranglehold with your bank, you're not alone. Richard Walker: "For commercial banks, the imperative is on improving customer experience and becoming easier to do business with through ease of integration, data and process transparency..." Olli Kähkönen: "When you walk through a storm, hold your chin up high...At the end of the storm is a golden sky... (Lyrics: You'll Never Walk Alone) Robert Grimes: "With everything from supermarket chains (e.g. Tesco, Sainsbury, Walmart) to technology giants (e.g. Google, Paypal/eBay) entering the financial services sector, banks have a new challenge to not only compete with their own kind but also with completely new players." Tom McAllister: "Demand for new revenue sources driven by capital needs, and mitigation of short- to mid-term geographic risk, is causing many banks to look beyond their borders for other sources of capital." Join us for Corporate Banking: Show Me the Money.

UI (user interface) is king. Why? If software UI is not beautiful, easy, intuitive – and fun – even the most brilliant engineers and designers will fail to please their intended business or consumer end-user audience. The experts speak. Bill Newman: "Over-burdened knowledge workers are tasked with doing more with less. With the economy picking up, particularly in the US market, these 'technocrats' demand access to necessary, complex information in easy to use, engaging means." Anders Raft: "The art of teaching kids to gamble is that there is no teaching needed. Ella Morgulis: "Easy, fun, user-friendly WORK experience at work is no longer an oxymoron; it is a requirement today. The 'iron curtain' between work and consumer experience have fallen." Mariano Kristensen: "As far as the customer is concerned, the interface is the product." - Jef Raskin (1943-2005), human-computer interface expert at Apple, 1970s Join us for more insights on All About the UI: Technology without the gory details.

Charge! If you're a greenie eying an EV (electric vehicle) as your next car, there's a lot to consider: battery pack size, driving range of plug-in hybrids like C-Max Energi or Volt vs. all-electric Leaf, power grid impacts, ongoing costs and more. The experts speak: Christine Hertzog: "A consumer-centric EV market maturity model could help accelerate EV adoption. Alaa Owaineh: "The world is increasingly urban, and cities are an important part of any strategy to build smarter, more sustainable energy systems." Sam Jaffe: "Teach your mouth to say 'I don't know' and then progress will be made.--Maimonides Maurizio Cattaneo: "In the more densely populated areas of the world, electric vehicles will soon make up 10-15% of the vehicles on the road. They may not sound like many, but if all would charge at the same time, today's electricity grid would not be able to cope and blackouts would be almost inevitable." Join us for more insights on Charge! Driving Global Electro-mobility.

Selling. Today's savvy salesperson must combine many skills: a gatherer-analyst of customer and competitor data; social business guru; collaboration champion; and much more. Our experts speak. Barry Trailer: "There is work to do in every sale. Imagine holding your hands two feet apart. The more work you do 'selling' – identifying key buying influences, needs and personal wins, establishing and elevating relationships, etc. – the less 'negotiating' you need to do. So, if you do 18" of selling, you have 6" of negotiating ahead…4" of selling, 20" of negotiating. Simply stated, there are no shortcuts." Anneke Seley: "The business of sales is changing; whether your business changes with it will determine your long-term success." Ross Wainwright: "The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will." (Vince Lombardi) Join us for more insights on Selling: Art or Science, Negotiation or Persuasion?

What's in a name? Plenty, for today's CIO. Why? The role is changing so much, so often that it's hard to know what the "I" means at any time. The experts speak. Steve Romero: "Calls for the 'new CIO' are not new at all. CIO Magazine's State of the CIO '07 survey resulted in the identification of four distinct CIO archetypes: Business Leader, Innovation Agent, Operational Expert, Turnaround Artist. In 2011, its 4 Personas of the Next Generation CIO were Chief Infrastructure Officer…Integration Officer…Intelligence Officer…Innovation Officer." Nigel Fenwick: Marketing is the biggest opportunity for IT since the Internet. Martin Heisig: "To go boldly where no one has gone before. This is what today's IT leaders have to do. Consumerization of IT is the new innovation driver. I have to make my end users a core part of my IT design processes. I have to know what consumers want next because they will want it soon in the enterprise." Join us for the Changing Role of the CIO: The I's Have It.

Education. How do we equip our kids to succeed in a tech-driven world? Kim Jones/ Curriki: Textbooks are becoming as obsolete as the rotary dial phone Kim Saxe/Nueva School: "The Internet and technology (such as Skype) supports the teaching of more open-ended and complex projects than ever before." Curtis Johnson/"Disrupting Class" author: "The role of teachers will see profound changes – all good… from a qualified source of knowledge dispensing information to largely passive students (in rows of desks) to planners, facilitators, and coaches in the learning process." Neeru Khosla/CK-12 Foundation: "We no longer need textbooks." John Mayerhofer/SAP: "Technology will enable schools and other institutions, essentially experience providers, to cost-effectively facilitate personalized student-centered learning for today's learners and an additional 3 billion new minds." Join us for Future of Education: Teaching Kids to Think

Subsidiaries. Straight path to market expansion or potentially tangled ecosystem? The experts speak. Steve King/Emergent Research: "For the first time in modern history, the developing world, not the developed world, is the global engine driving economic growth. This, coupled with the rapidly increasing use of social technologies, is fundamentally changing the relationship between companies and their foreign subsidiaries. Erich Joachimsthaler/Vivaldi Partners: "As internet analyst Mary Meeker said in her State of the Internet address this year: 'We are merely in spring training.' This creates a new reality for companies of how to manage the global organization and how to achieve competitive advantage and profit from it." Mike Morel/SAP: "Companies are squandering their investments in subsidiaries. They need to share more, implement governance, compliance, and regulation, and manage subsidiary independence." Join us for Subsidiaries: Curing Chaos at the Family Dinner Table.

Today's buzz term: "BI" – business intelligence. Oxymoron? Or game-changer that can make your company smarter, more agile, able to leap over tall competitors in a single bound? Continuing our Apr. 4 and May 9 discussions, we'll revisit why even the best intelligence needs a strategy, and look at big data, analytics, cloud, single version of the truth and more. The experts say: Brian Sommer / Techventive: "Detectives have hypotheses and working theories they try to prove or disprove. Why shouldn't BI initiatives use the same rigor to uncover huge insights into business?" Josh Greenbaum / EAC: "There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact." (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1999-03-01), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes) Colin Dover / SAP: "Responding to the seemingly simple business requests of providing a consolidated view of a global corporation is enough to send an IT department into a collective cold sweat." Pour a cup and join us for How Smart Is BI without a Strategy? - Part 3