Kaihan's groundbreaking work on strategy development changes the game for organizations facing an increasingly competitive environment.
Kaihan Krippendorff is the CEO of Outthinker Networks, a global think-tank of chief strategy officers and intrapreneur executives shaping the future of business. A sought-after keynote speaker, Kaihan is recognized by Global Gurus and Thinkers50 as one of the top 30 global thinkers in strategy and innovation. His work helps organizations generate breakthrough ideas that drive transformation and growth in our accelerated world of change.
A prolific writer, Kaihan has published five books including the bestsellers Outthink the Competition and Driving Innovation from Within. His forthcoming book, Proximity: How Coming Breakthroughs in Just-in-Time Transform Business, Society, and Daily Life, has already been named a “Must Read” by Adam Grant and Malcolm Gladwell’s Next Big Idea Club.
Leveraging skills and experience from McKinsey and Company with rigorous research of emerging trends, Kaihan designs practical business tools that he delivers through engaging and hands-on experiences. He is an innovation catalyst to business leaders and CXOs of some of the world’s most admired companies. To date, his work has generated over $2.5B in new annual revenue for clients that include Aetna-CVS, JP Morgan, Lockheed Martin, Procter & Gamble, IBM, and Yahoo.
Amidst a dizzying schedule of keynotes, workshops, ongoing research, and writing, Kaihan still finds time to teach for Wharton Executive Education, Florida International University, and New York University; host the Outthinkers podcast; and play an active role on two corporate advisory boards.
He holds a doctorate in strategy and has degrees from the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering, Wharton, Columbia Business School, and London Business School. With a mother from Bangladesh, father from Germany, and wife from Latin America, Kaihan is a global citizen who brings a holistic, diverse, and worldly perspective to everything he does.
He is a passionate cook and lives in Miami, Florida, with his wife, three kids, two cats, and a dog.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus has said, "Kaihan shows that with a compelling idea anyone can change the world" and that message has made Kaihan one of the most sought- after business speakers in the world.
In a world of constant disruption, technological change, and megatrend turbulence, how do we transform the way we lead and work? The answer is Proximity – a simple idea that you can use to turn disruptors like artificial intelligence, renewable energy, virtual reality, 3D printing, and new ways of working into possibilities...chaos into clarity.
Based on his new book, Proximity: How Coming Breakthroughs in Just-in-Time Transform Business, Society, and Daily Life, this keynote will arm leaders with a Proximity Roadmap for their industry and adjacent ones. He will ignite a new mental mindset and give you the practical tools you need to prepare yourself and your business to be bold and shape your future.
*This session can be delivered as a keynote speech or a 3 hour hands-on workshop
We live in an accelerated age of technology, disruption, volatility, and uncertainty. It demands that we lead our teams and organizations in radically new ways. We need to leverage creative problem-solving to innovate and do more with less.
Globally ranked management thinker Kaihan Krippendorff has studied and analyzed the strategies of thousands of companies to uncover how they were able to beat competitors to lead across industries and markets. In this entertaining, interactive, and practical keynote, Kaihan will teach you the creative secrets of companies that outperform. He will guide you through his 4th Option® IDEAS Framework, a learnable and repeatable process for generating strategic breakthrough ideas, innovations, and business models to drive growth and keep you relevant in the future.
Detailed in his best-selling book, Outthink the Competition, Kaihan’s 4th Option® IDEAS Framework and tools have been used in hundreds of companies ranging from high-growth startups to industry-leading public and private global corporations.
Ninety-five percent of leadership teams that have enlisted Kaihan’s guidance through IDEAS report having at least one transformative idea to take action on and to date have generated in excess of $2.5B in new annual recurring revenue.
In this keynote, Kaihan will entertain and engage your audience members with stories and cases customized for your company. They’ll walk away with rigorously researched practical tools they can apply to find their 4th Option®.
The audience will leave with:
A program for leaders & teams who want to:
In our accelerated world of technology and disruption, the benefits of turning employees into Intrapreneurs are well documented. Companies that treat their people as Intrapreneurs have innovation infused into their DNA. Transformation becomes a toned muscle and capability that can be exercised repeatedly as needed. Best-selling author and globally ranked innovation expert Kaihan Krippendorff’s research shows companies with active Intrapreneur networks are 3X more likely to be in the top quintile of financial performance and enjoy a 2.5X advantage in their ability to recruit and retain top talent.
The IN-OVATE framework provides a specific and practical approach to turn your employees into Intrapreneurs, and build capacity for enterprise-wide transformation and smart innovation.
In this inspiring, timely, and high-impact keynote, Kaihan shows how organizations can unlock the power of Intrapreneurship, and how you, the individual Intrapreneur, can navigate barriers, overcome resistance, and take the initiative to drive transformation across your organization.
The audience will leave with:
A program for leaders & teams who want to:
When we say “innovation” we almost always mean “product innovation”. We talk about R&D and possible new solutions to fulfill unmet needs. This is a one-dimensional and incomplete approach to innovation. Dissect the highest performing and 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 product innovations.
In this practical, high-impact keynote, globally recognized innovation expert Kaihan Krippendorff will share entertaining and engaging examples from your industry and beyond that breakdown how companies that outperform their competition seek disruptive innovation across eight dimensions known as the “8Ps”. The "8Ps" is a proven framework that enables organizations to move beyond “business as usual” to explore and uncover new competitive advantages, innovations, and business models.
The audience will leave with:
A program for leaders & teams who are:
Positions, Promotion, Placement, Process, Product, Pricing, People and Physical Experience.
What if you could have whatever you want, produced and provided immediately and affordably no matter how customized―with minimal environmental impact? Products, services, and experiences on demand. Just-in-time anything, anywhere, anytime. This radical change is underway, as digital technologies push the production and provision of value ever closer to the moment of demand.
Robert C. Wolcott and Kaihan Krippendorff provide an indispensable guide to the Proximity revolution, showing how it’s transforming every industry―and our lives. Offering unparalleled foresight for leaders and innovators, they reveal how pervasive this trend will be. Proximity represents an entirely new way to serve customers, with critical implications for corporate strategy, investing, public policy, supply chain resilience, and sustainability. Incremental changes to existing business models won’t suffice.
Through interviews and compelling examples, Proximity shares stories of the people and companies leading the way. The book places rapidly advancing technologies―from generative AI and 3D printing to lab-grown meats, renewable energy, and virtual reality―in context and explores the factors accelerating the transformation.
Proximity offers a playbook for business leaders, investors, and entrepreneurs to win this rapidly emerging game―and for each of us to consider the implications for our careers, families, communities, and lives.