Stephen Wunker

Stephen Wunker Speaking Topics

• Embrace the Octopus: How a Remarkable Creature Provides the Model for the AI-Enabled Organization

  How will AI impact the way managers manage? How will it change the way that organizations function?

  From pushing decision-making toward customer-facing staff, to breaking down traditional silos, to enabling new webs of collaboration, AI is starting to make possible a radical re-think of organizations.

  The new model for AI-enabled management comes from a surprising creature

  • the octopus. With two-thirds of its neurons located outside its central brain, the octopus is a model of distributed intelligence and the remarkable benefits it creates. Hear more about how the octopus has evolved an alien-seeming structure that serves as a remarkable analogy for what AI both unlocks and requires.

  Noted innovation authority Steve Wunker has been at the frontlines of AI for a dozen years. He has seen it already transform the way that business is done. Now, he’s at the forefront of determining how AI changes the nature of management.

  Drawing from Wunker’s forthcoming book, this speech provides a fascinating and provocative look ahead at how AI will transform organizations, and it gives concrete advice on what managers can do today to prepare. ​ Are you ready for the AI revolution?

• No Genuis Required: An Innovative Leader's Playbook of Future Management

  What makes a leader innovative? How do they enable their organizations to innovate and be agile in the midst of uncertainty and disruption?

  The answer doesn’t require having remarkable capabilities. Rather it’s an approach that anyone can follow – whether they’re a leader today or simply want to help make their organization into an innovative powerhouse.

  Steve Wunker, a leading authority on innovation, has interviewed innovative leaders in organizations both giant and small. Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella, Levi’s CEO Chip Bergh, and Princess Cruises’ President Jan Swartz are some of the 50 top innovators who shared their insights with him for his newest book, The Innovative Leader: Step-by-Step Lessons from Top Innovators for You and Your Organization.

  In a speech packed with engagement and surprise, Wunker shows with clarity how the path to innovative leadership can be straightforward and surefire. ​ Are you ready to lead into the future?

Jobs To Be Done: Revelations From Understanding Customers

Successful innovation doesn’t begin with a brainstorming session – it starts with the customer. So, in an age of virtually unlimited data, why do well over half of new products fail to meet expectations? The truth is that we need to stop asking customers what they know they want . . . and start examining what they really need.

Jobs to be Done is a way to understand what actually drives customers. It uncovers what leads people or companies to purchase products and services, rather than looking at traditional industry definitions. Consumers don’t buy ice cream, for example, but a way to accomplish celebration, bonding, and indulgence. ​ The concept is so simple (and can remake how companies approach their markets)

• yet seldom practiced. Innovation authority Steve Wunker guides you through the process, building on his bestselling book Jobs to be Done: A Roadmap for Customer-Centric Innovation.

Through stories, interaction, and simple principles, Wunker shows audiences how to totally change their perspective on their business. ​ Do you define your business by what you sell, or by what Jobs your customers are trying to get done?

Costovation: Discover How to Build Low-Cost Businesses That Customers Love

Cut costs – it’s a common corporate refrain. But if you constantly slash spending, what happens to innovation? How can you stay competitive and satisfy customers?

Taking a Costovation approach solves the dilemma of how to spend less and innovate more. Through product and business model innovation, let go of assumptions, take a fresh look at the market, and relentlessly focus on what customers really want. Innovation and cost control don’t need to be opposites; when done right, they can work together and delight customers too.

Innovation authority Steve Wunker delivers a speech full of enlightening anecdotes and principles. Building on his popular book Costovation, he explores cost innovation strategies that work for both large and small companies. ​ Audiences will learn how to build low-cost businesses that customers love.