Kaihan Krippendorff
Strategy and innovation expert, founder of Outthinker, former McKinsey consultant, author of four business strategy books and sought after keynote speaker
Kaihan Krippendorff: Biography highlights
Kaihan Krippendorff is the founder of Outthinker, a former McKinsey consultant and the author of four business strategy books including his most recent “Driving Innovation From Within”.
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Full biography of Kaihan Krippendorff
Kaihan Krippendorff’s background
Kaihan Krippendorff is committed to helping organizations and individuals thrive in today’s era of fast-paced disruptive technological change. Kaihan is known for his ability to turn difficult concepts into easy-to-understand ideas that drive meaningful outcomes and actions. He is an internationally recognized thought-leader, battle-tested consultant, and sought-after keynote speaker on the topics of business strategy, growth, transformation, and innovation.
Kaihan began his career as a strategy consultant with McKinsey & Company before founding the growth strategy and innovation consulting firm Outthinker. Growth strategies and innovations created through Outthinker have energized countless organizations, teams, and individuals all while generating over $2.5B in revenue for many of the world’s most recognizable Fortune 500 companies.
An accomplished author, Kaihan has written four books on business strategy, growth, and transformation, most recently Outthink the Competition (John Wiley & Sons). For his forthcoming book, The Employee Innovator: Driving Innovation From Within (Columbia University Press, 2019), Kaihan deeply researched and interviewed more than 150 internal innovators and leaders in nearly every conceivable industry.
Kaihan is a member of the prestigious Thinkers50 Class of 2019 Radar group – A global selection of the top 30 management thinkers to follow and hear from in the coming year. The group has been described as a “dream team of researchers, advisers, entrepreneurs, and organizational leaders” that will “intrigue, inspire, and guide” people and organizations with their ideas. He is also one of eight people under consideration for the Thinkers50 2019 Distinguished Achievement Award in the category of Innovation – awarded to the person in the world that has contributed the most to our understanding of innovation in the past two years.
Kaihan founded The Outthinker Network – a group of high-level strategists and innovators for large global organizations. Quarterly roundtables are a unique opportunity for senior executives to take part in an intimate, candid, and forward-looking conversation with a network of peer professionals and the world’s most sought-after disruptive thinkers, including Rita Gunther McGrath, John Hagel, and George Day, among others. Quarterly meetings facilitated by Kaihan connect him with both thought-leaders and organizational leaders, providing insights as to what issues are most relevant and how companies can approach and conquer threats of disruption.
Amidst his dizzying schedule of keynotes, consulting projects, ongoing research and writing, Kaihan still finds time to be a consultant with Wharton Executive Education, faculty member of Florida International University and lecturer at business schools throughout the US and internationally. He is regularly featured in key business media outlets, including BusinessWeek, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Time, Fox Business, Fast Company, PBS, and Bloomberg Radio.
Kaihan is an advisory board member for a blockchain-powered transportation platform, an international food processing/exporting company, and a B-corporation focused on sustainable products and lifestyle.
He earned a Master of Business Administration at Columbia Business School and London Business School, a Bachelor of Science in finance from Wharton Business School, and a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and he holds a Doctorate of Science in economics.
With a mother from Bangladesh and a father from Germany, Kaihan brings a holistic, diverse, and global perspective to everything he does. His work has brought him to 58 countries all over the world. He speaks three languages and has lived or spent significant periods of time in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and the Pacific. He lives in Greenwich, Conn., with his wife and three children.
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Watch Kaihan in action
Microsoft
Society for Human Resource Management
“Kaihan has the unique ability to frame questions in such a way that energizes a diverse group of leaders in strategic business planning. Through his guidance we were able to look at strategic issues for our board in unique ways that will have immediate application. He was quick to understand our issues and our mission and was an immense help in developing our strategy.”
Gazelles Inc.
“We’ve exposed thousands of executives of growth firms around the world to Kaihan Krippendorff’s concrete and practical stratagems for dealing with competitive threats and he’s been universally well received by our tough and discerning audiences.”
“Kaihan shows that with a bold idea, anyone can change the world.”
VITAS Healthcare Corporation
“Kaihan has an innate ability to captivate his audience. He brings a fresh, unique and passionate perspective on strategy and leadership, his style is brilliant and engaging and he is clearly a rising star.”
IMEX Group
“We have had outstanding feedback from Kaihan’s sessions [at IMEX Frankfurt] and it was an honour to have him take part.”
Donnelley Financial Solutions
Kaihan Really Understood the Key Messages We Were Trying to Get Across to Our Senior Leadership Team. He Incorporated Those Key Messages Around Strategy and Innovation Into His Speech, Which Was Energizing, Practical and Impactful.
Wal-Mart
“Kaihan is very good at understanding the underlying patterns of strategy, then he trains the group to start recognizing these patterns, with time the strategic level of the group starts rising, generating breakthrough ideas that unleash untapped value.”
L’Oreal USA (now Managing Director, Google)
“Kaihan provides practical methods to systematically analyze and intelligently manage the competition. This does not mean copying or even responding to the competition. It means precisely the opposite.”
Publicis Worldwide
“Instant information, immediate price comparison, and an expanding breadth of customer choice are thrusting business leaders into a new era of competition. Kaihan’s fresh message opens minds and motivates strategic change in an era that demands change.”
GE
“We invited Kaihan to address a global body of our top talent. He delivers cutting edge business concepts with his own unique tools in a way that inspires leaders to think differently. His professional approach, innovative concepts and deep knowledge of strategy holds up against the most sophisticated and experienced audiences.”
Brand USA
“Kaihan’s speech for the Professional Convention Management Association left us inspired and wanting to change the world.”
Kaihan Krippendorff Breaks Down the Complex Into Relevant, Practical, and Actionable Insights That Engage, Entertain, and Inspire Your Audience.
Nuveen Private Investments
Kaihan Is a Uniquely Engaging Speaker; He Energizes and Inspires. He Uses Cutting-edge Business Examples to Make Complex Subjects Simple and Offers the Right Balance of Entertainment and Deep Insight
Kaihan's speaking topics
Outthink the Competition: Excelling in a Digital, Agile, Purpose-driven Future
As a successful entrepreneur, author, consultant and CEO, Kaihan Krippendorff has worked with and studied thousands of companies and the different approaches they take to drive growth, foster innovation and set themselves apart from the competition. How is it that some companies are able to continually pivot their strategy, transform, and pursue new growth ideas? The answer is they have a repeatable process and common language that can be learned and taught. Based on his most recent book, Outthink the Competition, Kaihan delivers a systematic process and set of proven business strategy tools he has used with more than 300 clients in almost every industry to create innovative strategies and growth ideas that have generated more than $2.5B in revenue. Blending together first-hand stories of inspiring business and social innovators, from Elon Musk to Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, Kaihan’s presentation teaches the audience a tested method for developing actionable growth ideas that unlock growth, increase competitiveness of their business and arm them with the tools needed to excel in today’s digital, agile, and purpose-driven world. In this inspiring keynote you will learn:
- How to use The Outthinker Process® to generate powerful ideas that can drive bottom-line results across all levels of the business
- How to find a “Fourth Option”: the option beyond the obvious choices, the options others will not see or respond to
- The Outthinker playbook: five strategic narratives you want to master now
- A simple approach to avoid killing off “crazy” ideas and instead turn them into winning moves
- How to extract the value of internal ideas to drive organic growth
- How to build a culture of Outthinking that celebrates fresh strategic and innovative ideas and thinking
- How to empower and inspire your employees so that they are ready to take action to develop, test and scale innovative growth ideas
Unleashing Agile: Activate the Power of an Entrepreneurial Mindset to Drive Growth
In a world marked by accelerated change and innovation, mental agility has proven to be a critical driver of success in sports, warfare, business, career, and life. Yet few agree on what exactly “mental agility” is or know how to develop it. Companies that fail to move on quickly enough from their linear organization will not succeed. In this presentation, successful entrepreneur, author, consultant and CEO Kaihan Krippendorff shares insights from his work with top-level corporate entrepreneurs and the study of more than 200 successful innovators into what sets them apart from the rest of the competitive pack. Kaihan will share the key practices that distinguish those with high mental agility and arm the audience with tools and frameworks they can immediately apply to their own work.
Audience members will learn to:
- Connect the unconnected – pulling together seemingly unrelated pieces of information to rapidly form a mental image of the situation or opportunity.
- Uncover unexpected causes – drilling down into the system to see the cause others overlook.
- Shift your frame – shifting your frame on the problem to reveal solutions others dismiss.
- Question the impossible – understanding why we fall into mental “traps” of false beliefs that prevent us from seeing what is possible and, more importantly, how to dig out of the trap that is keeping you from seizing the solution.
Attendees will leave with a boost of confidence, tools, and energy to increase the velocity and agility level of their organization on a daily basis.
Blockchain
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Driving Innovation From Within: Harness the Power of the Entrepreneurial Mindset, Drive Growth, Jumpstart Transformation and become the Organization of the Future
“Innovation” brings to our mind the maverick entrepreneur who quits their job, at unimaginable odds, to build a business on their own. But this entrepreneurial story is a myth. As a successful entrepreneur, author, consultant and CEO, Kaihan Krippendorff argues that intrapreneurs – employees who incubate new businesses within corporations – have had a far greater impact on the world. Nearly all of the most transformative innovations over the past three decades, from e-mail and the Internet to DNA sequencing and MRI scans, were introduced by employees who did not quit their jobs but instead took the challenge of innovating from within.
Drawing on five years of in-depth research of hundreds of successful innovators and Intrapreneurial Intensity, as well as insights from thought leaders, C-suite leaders, business unit leaders, and front-line employees, Kaihan shares exclusive insights from his next book, The Employee Innovator: Driving Innovation from Within (Columbia University Press, 2019). Kaihan unveils the most common innovation barriers and shares specific tools, frameworks and techniques used by successful innovators to manage and unlock the value of employees’ ideas to drive corporate innovation levels and deliver bottom-line results. Audience members will leave feeling inspired and empowered with the actionable next steps for testing and scaling ideas that generate value and growth.
In this inspiring keynote you will learn:
- What Intrapreneurial Intensity (II) is and how it impacts growth rates and shareholder value
- How to use the IN-OVATE Framework
- Simple tools, frameworks and techniques to navigate organizational barriers to increase II and deploy new and disruptive ideas that generate value in your company
- How to shift your organizational mindset and culture to challenge the outdated status-quo
- How to increase engagement and empower employees to “be the change” and drive innovation inside of your company
- How to extract the value of internal ideas to drive organic growth
- How to break free from traditional thinking and operations to embrace transformative new possibilities
How to build a wave of support for growth, innovation and creativity by reinforcing the idea that innovation is possible, attainable, and ultimately actionable.
Be the Disruptor, Not the Disrupted
We are experiencing a historic acceleration in the pace of change in our world. Artificial intelligence, digitization, robotics, 3D printing, social shifts, and the rise of purpose-driven enterprises are reconfiguring how every conceivable industry operates.
These changes divide us into two camps: the “Disruptors” and the “Disrupted”.
Successful entrepreneur, author, consultant and CEO Kaihan Krippendorff has spent over a decade studying the patterns of disruption. What makes some companies thrive and what makes others fall behind? What gives some the power to shape the future and makes others struggle to keep up? Kaihan has applied his cutting-edge findings to create more than $2.5B in new value and help hundreds of businesses lean into change and thrive in tomorrow’s fast-paced, digital, purpose-driven world. In this talk, Kaihan breaks down the underlying patterns of disruption and with compelling stories of successes, failures, and yet-unknown innovations teaches practical tools to help you take action and become a Disruptor.
Learnings and outcomes include:
- The emerging trends – from AI to digitization – that are driving us into an era of disruption and how these will likely shape the future
- How to use The Outthinker Process® to generate powerful ideas that can drive bottom-line results across all levels of the business
- The strategic patterns and best practices that the world’s most strategic and innovative companies use to thrive during the ongoing shift of global business structures and thinking
- A systematic process you can use to overcome the “innovator’s dilemma” and create breakthrough growth ideas that will disrupt your market without disrupting your organization
- How to empower and inspire employees so that they’re ready to take action to develop, test and scale innovative growth ideas
Innovating Beyond the R&D Lab: Realising Trapped Value Across the Eight Dimensions of Innovation
When we say “innovation” we almost always mean “product innovation.” We talk about research & development and possible new solutions to meet unmet needs. This is a one-dimensional and incomplete approach to innovation. Dissect the most innovative companies of the last decade and you will see that great innovators disrupt their markets by reaching beyond the product. Oftentimes their success rests on choices that have little to do with new products.
In this presentation, successful entrepreneur, author, consultant and CEO Kaihan Krippendorff will take you through engaging examples from a broad array of industries such as Urban Outfitters in apparel, IKEA in furniture, VMware in technology, SpaceX in space launch vehicles, Mastercard in payments, and Vistaprint in printing services, showing how companies that outperform their competition seek disruptive innovation across eight dimensions (8Ps). The “8Ps” framework has proven to be a powerful structure to engage high-level marketers, business strategists and sales staff in an exploration of where competitive advantages lie, where to strengthen them, and where they are being underutilized.
Learnings from this session include:
- The “8Ps” strategic innovation framework: systematically uncover new avenues for growth, innovation and transformation
- How to construct a disruptive business model or strategy that leverages an underutilized 8P strength
- Identifying opportunities beyond the R&D lab: identify and reconstruct processes and operations to drive efficiency
- Driving organic growth leveraging the value of unrealized ideas
- How to build real confidence to apply new strategies every day across all business units and roles
The Purpose Path: Building a Mission-oriented Organisation That Harnesses the Power of CSR and a Do-good Strategy
Historically, we were taught corporations existed for one purpose: to maximize shareholder value. But companies are waking up to the realization that such a focus destroys shareholder value over the long term because it creates resistance to your growth.
Successful entrepreneur, author, consultant and CEO Kaihan Krippendorff draws on years of proprietary research to show that today’s most successful companies more often speak of the strategic power of appealing to all stakeholders. If you design a strategy that benefits shareholders by also benefiting employees, the community, the country, and the environment, you have designed the ultimate strategy. When everyone wants you to win, you remove all competition. This idea goes beyond social responsibility. It points us toward removing the idea that doing good and making profit are inconsistent. You do not have to choose.
By pulling together inspiring stories from organizations ranging from lesser-known jewels like Best Doctors, BrightFarms, and Holstee to leading socially directed corporations like IKEA, Mastercard, and Target, Kaihan will inspire and motivate the audience to rethink their role and how they interact with stakeholders, not just shareholders.
The audience will learn:
- The three primary goals of a “be good” socially minded strategy
- Simple yet effective tools and frameworks to apply and create your own “Do Good” strategy that complements your current organizational strengths and strategy
- The next evolution of corporate social responsibility and how to embrace the shift toward a future where CSR is the norm
- How to empower and inspire employees so that they’re ready to take action to develop ideas, strategies, products, and programs that everyone benefits from
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“Kaihan’s groundbreaking work on strategy development changes the game for organizations facing an increasingly competitive environment.”