His talk was right on point, but the delivery was a bit slow and he went over the alotted time, even with time cues.
Geoff Colvin
Senior Editor-at-Large, Fortune and Bestselling Author, Arming Leaders to Confront Disruptive Change and Win
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Fee Range
$30,500Travels From
Connecticut, US
Geoff Colvin
Biography
In four decades at Fortune, Geoff Colvin has established himself as one of business journalism’s most respected minds on trends driving business change. He reports on AI and the infotech revolution, leadership, business strategy, global business, government regulation, competition, the economy, worker/workforce issues, and related topics. With close ties to top business leaders, Geoff reveals what they’re thinking, seeing, and doing to transform their companies and win in spite of relentless change. “Winning companies and leaders confront reality faster than the competition,” he says. “They stop protecting the past and invest in inventing the future.” Geoff’s insights reveal a clearer path for an uncertain future. His columns and cover stories for Fortune have earned him millions of loyal fans. He’s also heard on the CBS Radio Network, where he reaches seven million listeners each week. Geoff’s bestselling books include The Upside of the Downturn, Talent is Overrated, and Humans are Underrated. A keynote speaker with compelling content, Geoff is also a brilliant panel moderator and interviewer.
In addition to writing for Fortune and his regular CBS Radio Network segments (he’s done over 15,000 since 1995), Geoff has appeared on Today, Good Morning America, Squawk Box, CBS This Morning, ABC's World News Tonight, CNN, PBS's Nightly Business Report, and dozens of other programs. He also served as anchor of Wall $treet Week with Fortune on PBS.
In addition to speaking, Geoff is also a brilliant panel moderator, emcee, and interviewer whose subjects have included Madeleine Albright, Ben Bernanke, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Bill Gates, Timothy Geithner, Alan Greenspan, Henry Kissinger, Henry M. Paulson, Colin Powell, Robert Reich, Condoleezza Rice, Desmond Tutu, H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, Jack Welch, Janet Yellen and many others.
Geoff is a respected author whose groundbreaking international bestseller, Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else, has been published in a dozen languages. The Upside of the Downturn: Management Strategies for Difficult Times was named “Best Management Book of the Year” by Strategy + Business magazine. Geoff’s latest book is Humans are Underrated: What High Achievers Know That Brilliant Machines Never Will. It’s based on the idea in his wildly popular Fortune article “In the Future Will There Be Any Work Left for People to Do?” It looks at the trend of advancing technology performing ever more tasks better than people perform them, and the ways humans will create value for their organizations and their careers in the changing economy. The ideas he shares have profound implications for every business and industry.
A native of Vermillion, South Dakota, Geoff Colvin is an honors graduate of Harvard with a degree in economics and has an M.B.A. from New York University’s Stern School of Business.
Geoff Colvin
Featured Videos
Current: Speaker Reel 2024
Time 04:17
More Videos From Geoff Colvin
Geoff Colvin
Featured Keynote Programs
3 KEYS TO WINNING IN AN AI ECONOMY
In an uncertain and fast-changing world, it’s tempting to hold on to the familiar. It’s also hazardous to the business. In this presentation, Geoff Colvin inspires audiences to stop protecting the past and invent the future by focusing on three interconnected priorities: how to find advantage in an environment of AI and automation; how business models and strategies must change to create value in new ways; and the future of workers and the role of people. In an upbeat and optimistic view of what’s ahead, Geoff draws on his relationships with CEOs across industries to arm audiences with insights and examples of what top leaders and their companies are thinking, seeing, and doing right now to win. In this presentation, Geoff shows leaders a path to making important change happen in their companies.
HUMANS ARE (STILL) UNDERRATED
Head-spinning technological change is transforming work, leaving leaders and workers wondering how people fit in. Geoff Colvin has been foreseeing the future on this topic since before his groundbreaking book Humans are Underrated was released in 2015. He’s made the case, correctly, that empathy, collaboration, creativity, communication, storytelling, and creating relationships would be increasingly prized skills in this environment. Formerly called “soft skills”, they’re now referred to as “durable skills” because the skills of human interaction are eternal. Geoff comes before audiences with insights and hard data examples from the biggest private equity firms and preeminent executive search firms showing how organizations that make these skills a priority produce the best financial results. Geoff reveals what the best leaders and companies are doing now to prioritize them. In an AI world, the most valued skills and traits for people are changing fast. You can’t afford to be left behind.
TODAY’S ECONOMY
NAVIGATING WHAT YOU CAN’T CONTROL
Economic, regulatory, and political risk have an outsized impact on every business and industry. Geoff Colvin brings his experience at Fortune to show the interconnectedness of these factors, empowering audiences with information they can use to anticipate and strategize effectively. Geoff’s approach is strictly non-partisan, and it’s not just a barrage of statistics. He presents the current economy as a story and urges leaders to confront reality as it is – not as they wish it would be. He weaves in real-world examples of how companies are responding successfully to the current environment with an eye for opportunities, not just dwelling on problems. Audiences benefit from Geoff’s experience as he takes two steps back and offers a long-view vision of a future which he believes is full of promise. Geoff’s insights help business leaders not only weather storms but also capitalize on emerging opportunities in today’s volatile environments.
PANEL MODERATOR, DISCUSSION LEADER, EMCEE/HOST
Geoff Colvin’s unique gift is his ability to brilliantly moderate panels, lead onstage interviews, and host/emcee. He’s played these roles for more than three decades at Fortune conferences worldwide. Top companies and associations regularly utilize Geoff because he gets the most out of participants; he asks the right questions, listens intently to what’s being said on stage, and responds to that. He also connects ideas and insights across sessions, transforming a multi-part program into a satisfying, unified whole. He always keeps the discussion relevant and the energy high.
Geoff Colvin
Featured Books
Humans Are Underrated
by Geoff Colvin
It's easy to imagine a nightmare scenario in which computers simply take over most of the tasks that people now get paid to do. The unavoidable question—will millions of people lose out, unable to best the machine?—is increasingly dominating business, education, economics, and policy.
The bestselling author of Talent Is Overrated explains how the skills and economy values are changing in historic ways and offers a guide to what's next for all workers. Mastering technical skills that have historically been in demand no longer differentiates us as it used to. Instead, our greatest advantage lies in our deepest, most essentially human abilities—empathy, creativity, social sensitivity, storytelling, humor, relationship building, and expressing ourselves with greater power than logic can ever achieve.
These high-value skills craete tremendous competitive advantage—more devoted customers, stronger cultures, breakthrough ideas, and more effective teams. And while many of us regard these abilities as innate traits, it turns out they can all be developed. As Colvin shows, they're already being developed in a range of farsighted organizations, including the Cleveland Clinic, the U.S. Army, and Stanford Business School.
Angel Customers and Demon Customers: Discover Which is Which and Turbo-Charge Your Stock
by Geoff Colvin
One of the oldest myths in business is that every customer is a valuable customer. Even in the age of high-tech data collection, many businesses don't realize that some of their customers are deeply unprofitable, and that simply doing business with them is costing them money. In many places, it's typical that the top 20 percent of customers are generating almost all the profit while the bottom 20 percent are actually destroying value. Managers are missing tremendous opportunities if they are not aware which of their customers are truly profitable and which are not.
According to Larry Selden and Geoff Colvin, there is a way to fix this problem: manage your business not as a collection of products and services but as a customer portfolio. Selden and Colvin show readers how to analyze customer data to understand how you can get the most out of your most critical customer segments. The authors reveal how some companies (such as Best Buy and Fidelity Investments) have already moved in this direction, and what customer-centric strategies are likely to become widespread in the coming years.
For corporate leaders, middle managers, or small business owners, this book offers a breakthrough plan to delight their best customers and drive shareowner value.
Talent Is Overrated
by Geoff Colvin
Asked to explain why a few people truly excel, most people offer one of two answers. The first is hard work. Yet we all know plenty of hard workers who have been doing the same job for years or decades without becoming great. The other possibility is that the elite possess an innate talent for excelling in their field. We assume that Mozart was born with an astounding gift for music, and Warren Buffett carries a gene for brilliant investing. The trouble is, scientific evidence doesn't support the notion that specific natural talents make great performers.
According to distinguished journalist Geoff Colvin, both the hard work and natural talent camps are wrong. What really makes the difference is a highly specific kind of effort-"deliberate practice"-that few of us pursue when we're practicing golf or piano or stockpicking. Based on scientific research, Talent is Overrated shares the secrets of extraordinary performance and shows how to apply these principles. It features the stories of people who achieved world-class greatness through deliberate practice-including Benjamin Franklin, comedian Chris Rock, football star Jerry Rice, and top CEOs Jeffrey Immelt and Steven Ballmer.
Geoff Colvin
Featured Review
Geoff Colvin
Featured Articles & Resources
The 98th percentile isn't good enough--and 3 other lessons leaders can learn from the Olympics
Sports clarify the truths—especially the competitive truths—of being human. That’s why the Olympics are irresistible. In microcosm, within bounded place and time, people do what...
Topics:
Olympics
Keys to a More Successful Event [VIDEO]
Biography:
Geoff Colvin is an award-winning thinker, author, broadcaster, and speaker on today's most significant trends in business. As FORTUNE’s Senior...
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