Speaking

An enthralling and inspiring orator, Don is often described by customers as the most effective speaker they have ever had. He is an internationally renowned authority on the strategic impact of information technology on innovation, marketing and talent. He consistently identifies and explains the next business imperatives and defines the business models and strategies required for success. These imperatives include:

  • a bold and creative response for growth in the global economic crisis: how new media, the new economy and a new generation of digital natives are driving change and opening opportunity, even in the face of the current recession;
  • the social and business impact of the Net Generation: how the first generation to grow up with the Internet is transforming the workplace, the marketplace, schools, family and government, and how business can turn the NetGeners’ talents and worldview into competitive advantage;
  • the strategic value of information technology: how wikinomics, mass collaboration and business 2.0 are the future for innovation and growth.

Speech themes

Rebuilding the World

How the current economic crisis is transforming society, business and markets, and where the opportunities are for thriving in the face of the downturn.

The global economic crisis is a wakeup call to the world: we need to rethink and rebuild many of the organizations and institutions that have served us well for decades, but now have come to the end of their life cycle. The financial services industry, for example, does not just need fresh infusion of capital or some new regulations; it needs a whole new operating model — one based on transparency, sharing of intellectual property and global governance.

As the crisis has spread to other sectors in the economy and even other sectors of society, it is exposing structural weaknesses and modes of operation that no longer nurture social and economic growth. The recent collapse of many newspapers is just one storm-warning of more to come: conventional wisdom isn’t going to cut it for success in this century. We need to reinvent our institutions.

The most compelling issue: We face no challenge today that is more important than creating a green energy grid and reindustrializing the planet for sustainability. And for the first time in human history, the peoples of the world are building a global movement to solve this problem — a movement in which everyone is on the same side.

So while the burning of the global economic platform is propelling change, simultaneously the digital revolution is driving new opportunities and a new generation of digital natives is entering the workforce, people who think differently and bring a new and much-needed set of skills to our problems.

Don Tapscott has unique insight and bold proposals for how to transform these institutions to meet the challenges posed in the new century by new media, a new generation and a new economy.

Grown Up Digital

The impact and value for business, society and democracy of the generation that grew up with the Internet.

Don reveals how digital technologies created a generation that thinks, plays, and relates to their environment in radically different ways from their parents—the first generation in the history of humanity to know more than their parents about the essential technologies of their world. In this fascinating follow-up to his seminal work, Grown Up Digital revisits the Net Generation as its oldest members turn 30, as they enter the workforce and marketplace and establish their roles as life-long learners and contributors to society.

Using research from a $4 million research project he led, Don describes how this dynamic generation is redefining today’s workplace and marketplace, our schools and families and governments. It reveals how they learn, how they work, and how their power and influence affects business and society.

Wikinomics

Tap the full potential of the emerging networked economy and its self-organized, mass-participatory communities.

Wikinomics is the first book to truly come to grips with the most profound change in corporate architecture, strategy and management in a century. The knowledge, resources, and computing power of billions of people are self-organizing into a massive collective force. Interconnected and orchestrated through blogs, Wikis, chat rooms, peer-to-peer networks, and personal broadcasting, the Web is being reinvented to provide the first global platform for collaboration in history. Firms that know how to engage this dynamic, self-organizing ecosystem of partners will co-create and peer-produce value for customers in ways that companies relying on internal capabilities and tightly-coupled partnerships will not be able to match.

Wikinomics and the presentations based on the book offer the key findings and insights from one of the largest investigations of strategy and management to date, entitled Information Technology and Competitive Advantage. Twenty-two large corporations invested $4.2 million to understand the changing nature of the corporation and competition in the emerging networked economy.

Adapted from the LeighBureau.com

Videos of Don Speaking

An enthralling and inspiring orator, Don is often described by customers as the most effective speaker they have ever had.