Master of Ceremonies
Verne Harnish, The Growth Guy, CEO Gazelles Inc and author of The Greatest Business Decisions of All Time and Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What you must do to increase the value of your fast growth firm

Built to Sell: Creating a Business that can Thrive Without You.
John Warrillow

Many business owners find themselves trapped in their business. Customers ask to deal with the owner, who is oftentimes the company’s technical expert. The owner then becomes personally involved in serving the customer, reinforcing the customer’s reliance on the owner, and the cycle continues. The ultimate goal of any business should be to enable it to thrive without the owner, and John’s presentation will show how business owners can pull themselves out of the day-to-day running of their business, to create a company that can thrive without them. Attendees will learn: The 3 criteria of a scalable company; The 6 forms of recurring revenue; The secret to erasing cash flow concerns and The biggest mistake business owners make in trying to get their business to run without them.

To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others

Daniel H Pink, author of DRIVE (LIVE via satelitte)

Whether we’re entrepreneurs persuading funders, employees pitching colleagues, or parents and teachers cajoling kids, we spend our days trying to move others. Today, like it or not, we’re all in sales. Or as Daniel H. Pink putsit, everyone is in the “moving business.” In this provocative presentation, Pink offers a fresh look at the art and science of selling. He shows that sales, whether pushing a product or peddling an idea, isn’t what it used to be. Because of powerful economic changes, the glad-handing, truth-bending form of sales isa relic. In its place is a new approach to moving people that involves three very human qualities and four surprising skills.

Business Model Generation: A Framework for Visionaries, Game Changers and Challengers

Alex Osterwalder

In the words of Fast Company magazine in naming Alex’s book one of the Best Books for Business Owners in 2010, “In Business Model Generation, Osterwalder encourages owners to plot out their business model using somethinghe developed called the “business model canvas.” It forces entrepreneurs to communicate their business model visually, which Osterwalder says sharpens their thinking and allows them to get what’s in their head onto a canvas for others to see and contribute to. Once your vision has been exported from your head onto a canvas your employees helped to create, you’ll have a business that can grow without you calling all the shots – which is the essence of a sellable company.This is by far the most innovative book on how to think about putting together a business.”

Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter and More Social
Jay Baer, author of The NOW Revolution

Every customer is a erporter. Every employee is in marketing. And speed matters like never before. With always-on Internet access,we now talk to a real person as a last resort, not as a first step. Thus, companies must win the war of information. What if your marketing was so useful, people would gladly pay for it? If you sell something, you create a customer today. If you help someone, you create a customer for life. In his dynamic presentation, Jay will discuss how to build a culture that empowers social, how to activate your customers and employees, how to listen and respond to real-time opportunities.

How Australia's Best Leaders Lead in Crises
Avril Henry,  widely acclaimed consultant and author who is passionate about diversity, developing collaborative leaders and positive workplaces.

Avril’s extensive research has identified effective and inspiring leadership as the number one motivator for Generations X and Y at work. It is the quality of the leadership that motivates employees to stay with an organisation, and makes all the difference to the bottom line. But what makes an effective and inspiring leader? And what leadership capabilities does an organisation need to succeed in its market, now and in the future? Built upon research gathered from interviews with nearly 100 of Australia’s best leaders, this session explores the what these leaders did to manage their organisations and people in the midst of global financial and political instability. It reveals Australian viewpoints of the characteristics of effective and inspiring leadership, and the value of investing in leadership development.

Culture as a Competitive Advantage
Didier Elzinger, CEO & Founder of Culture Amp

Didier has experienced first-hand the challenges fast growing organisations face when their core business expands faster than its people can adapt to. Drawing upon deep experience in enterprise class technology for some of Australia’s biggest financial and corporate clients, he saw an opportunity for a new type of technology - that amplified learning and drove culture rather than squashing it. That’s why he started Culture Amp: Didier will explian: Why Gen Y Doesn’t Exist: The New World of Work; You Can’t Manage What You Can’t See: How Do You Measure Culture? Now what? He will outline key points for change to make a difference.

John Warrillow

founder of The Sellability Score and author of Built to Sell - How to create a business that can thrive without you 

Throughout his career, John has started and exited four companies and is a sought-after speaker and angel investor. He also contributes regularly to Inc.com and The Globe and Mail. In 2008 John was recognised by BtoB Magazine’s “Who’s Who” list as one of America’s most influential business-to-business marketers.

Dan Pink

 Best selling author, DRIVE

Daniel H. Pink is the author of four provocative books about the changing world of work – including the long-running New York Times bestseller, A Whole New Mind, and the #1 New York Times bestseller, Drive. His books have been translated into 32 languages. In 2011, Harvard Business Review and Thinkers 50 named him one of the top 50 business thinkers in the world.

Alexander Osterwalder 

Author, Business Model Generation

Alexander Osterwalder is an entrepreneur, speaker and business model innovator. Together with Professor Yves Pigneur he co-authored Business Model Generation, a global bestseller on the topic of business model innovation. His Business Model Canvas, a tool to visualise, challenge and (re-) invent business models, is used by leading organisations around the world, including GE, P&G, Ericsson, and 3M.

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Jay Baer

Author of The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter and More Social

Jay Baer is a tequila-loving, hype-free social media strategy consultant, speaker, and author that works with major corporations and PR firms to harness the power of the social web. As one of America’s Top 3 Social Media Consultants, his consulting firm Convince & Convert provides social media strategic planning and counsel to some of America’s largest companies. Jay has been a digital marketing consultant since 1994,and has worked with 29 of the Fortune 500.

Avril Henry

Widely acclaimed keynote speaker and author on How Australia's Best Leaders Lead in Crises.

Avril Henry is a Fellow of CPA Australia, a Senior Associate of the Australian Institute of Banking & Finance, an Associate Fellow of the Australian Institute of Management, a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and Australian Human Resources Institute. Her clients include IBM, BHP, Department of Defence, ATO, Leighton Contractors, NSW Health, Westpac, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, University of Western Sydney, CPA Australia, Telstra, Australian Superannuation Funds Association, and various organisations and government departments across Asia. In April she was invited to attend a global Leadership Best Practices program at Harvard Business School in the USA, and was voted by her class mates as one of the top 3 students on the program.

Joe Pulizzi

Leading author, speaker and strategist for Content Marketing.

Joe is first and foremost a content marketing evangelist, and founded the Content Marketing Institute and Chief Content Officer magazine. Joe is also CEO of SocialTract, the leading blogging service for service professionals. He was awarded “Custom Media Innovator of the Year” by American Business Media, and recognised as the Most Influential Content Strategist via Lavacon, Joe travels around North America and Europe talking to marketers and business owners about how they are indeed publishers, and what they need to do about it.

Didier Elzinga

CEO and founder of Culture Amp.

Didier Elzinga founded Culture Amp - a rapidly growing software startup building employee survey and analytics tools for a global client base. He is a non-executive director at Tourism Australia, The Alfred Foundation, The Atlassian Foundation and the Slingsby Theatre Company. He speaks regularly for organisations such as TEC (the executive connection), The Australian Institute of Training & Development and several private companies on culture, creativity and innovation. In an earlier life he spent 13 years in Hollywood rising to the role of CEO of global Visual Effects company Rising Sun Pictures and co-founded technical AcademyAward winning Rising Sun Research – whose tools are now used by pretty much every director in Hollywood..

Verne Harnish

aka the "Growth Guy" - CEO of Gazelles, Inc. Founder of  Entrepreneurs Organization (EO), author of Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Fast Growth Firm

Verne is the founder of two world-renowned entrepreneurship organisations, the Young Entrepreneurs’ Organization (YEO) and the Association of Collegiate Entrepreneurs (ACE), Verne is presently founder and CEO of Gazelles, Inc., which serves as an outsourced corporate university for mid-size firms. The “Growth Guy” columnist for several publications and a contributing editor for Fortune Small Business magazine, Verne is the author of Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Fast-Growth Firm, which has been translated into Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Named one of the “Top 10 Minds in Small Business” by Fortune Small Business Magazine, he appeared on the cover of the December/January 2002 issue of the magazine.

Verne chaired the renowned “Birthing of Giants” entrepreneurship leadership program at MIT for 15 years and the MIT/WEO “Advanced Business Program”. He also chaired for several years the leadership program for the Canada’s prestigious “Top 40 Under 40” program and is going into his seventh year leading an executive program in Malaysia entitled “Taipan, the Making of Asian Giants.” He has helped to launch similar programmes in Australia, Ireland, and India.