Speakers Connect | Asia's Leading Speakers Bureau

Fredrik and Teo Haren’s Twin Seminar!

Speakers Connect — Fri, 18 May 2012 00:26:51 +0000

Every year Fredrik Härén delivers a number of pro-bono speeches for NGOs, students and other non-profit organizations. Last month Fredrik Härén and his brother Teo Härén conducted a “twin-seminar” on the concept of “Ideas for good” for the utility company GodEl. GodEl gives away 100% (!) of its profits to NGOs. As part of the event Fredrik & Teo got the privilege to decide which organization should receive 100.000 SEK (20.000 SGD). They picked: Hand-in-Hand.

Fredrik Haren is a Swedish entrepreneur, publisher and author who now lives in Singapore. He is the founder of a creativity company called interesting.org, and has been invited to speak on creativity in over 1000 sessions to people in more than 30 countries. He was awarded “Speaker of the Year” in Sweden 2007, and was selected as one of “Sweden’s 100 most inspiring persons” by the magazine “Leva” in 2008. In 2009 he was selected one of “Sweden’s most sought after business speakers”. Fredrik has written a total of 7 books, including best seller “The Idea Book, and his new book, “The Developing World” published last year.

Fredrik Härén is a speaker of Speakers Connect and he is now based in Singapore. Want to inspire your team on innovation and creativity? Contact us at info@speakersconnect.com for more information or to book Fredrik for your next event.

Fredrik Haren: The best place in the world to be creative… Singapore

Speakers Connect — Thu, 17 May 2012 00:51:51 +0000

Fredrik Haren, best speaker on innovation and creativity based in Asia, talks about why he thinks Singapore is the best place in the world to be creative… at TodayOnline:

Why would an international best-selling writer on creativity live here? Because while New York may call itself ‘the capital of the world’, Singapore is the world

by Fredrik Haren

I have lost count of the number of times I have been asked: “As an author of creativity books, how on earth can you live in Singapore?”

And when I reply, “Because I think it is the best place in the world to live for a creative person”, most people think I am kidding and everyone asks me to explain.

But no, I am not kidding. And yes, let me explain.

I moved to Beijing from my native Sweden in 2005 because I wanted to be in Asia when Asian countries truly started to embrace creativity.

The defining moment for me was when Hu Jintao gave a speech to the Chinese people in which he said that “China should be an innovative country 15 years from now”.

Since I write books on business creativity, I just had to move to Asia and see this shift happen.

After two years in Beijing, I learnt two things: Firstly, I wanted to leave Beijing, which is a fascinating city, but has too much traffic, too much pollution and too little water for a Swede brought up in the Stockholm archipelago; and secondly, I wanted to remain in Asia.

So I went on a grand journey. While doing research for my book The Developing World, I constantly travelled over a period of more than 10 months.

I went to 20 developing countries and when I came to each new city that I thought had potential to become my new home, I made sure my schedule allowed me to stay a few extra days to get a feel of life there.

I spent two weeks each in Seoul, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Shanghai, Mumbai, New Delhi, Istanbul and Singapore.

Then I made a list of positives and negatives about each city. Obviously, Singapore won in the end.

SINGAPORE VIRTUES

Why? Well, for many reasons.

Such as quality of life – I now drink as much fresh mango juices in Singapore as I did beers in Beijing, weather (no, I do not mind the heat; I love it), security (I love countries where there is a good chance you will get your iPhone back if you left it behind in a restaurant) and convenience (like the fact that Changi Airport has extensive connections to the world, since my work involves a lot of travelling to different countries on a frequent basis).

Those are the usual reasons that attract most people to Singapore.

But the main reason I live in Singapore is because this city-state, to me, is the one place on earth where it is the easiest to have a globally-creative mindset.

Some people say Singapore is “Asia for beginners”. I do not agree. I think Singapore is “globalisation for beginners”, or rather, “globalisation for early adopters”.

With a diverse mix of races, religions and nationalities, Singapore not only represents the cross-section of the world, it is also a time capsule of what the world will look like in the future.

And I love that.

New York may call itself ‘the capital of the world’ but Singapore is the world. Unlike New York, which is a global city in the United States, Singapore is a global city – a global city-state. Singapore is a city in the world, not a city in a country in the world.

And this makes it easier to have a global outlook here since nationalistic barriers do not block the view as much.

A BEAUTIFUL MIX

A positive side-effect of this is that Singapore is one of the least racist countries in the world.

Now, that does not mean that there is no racism in Singapore, but I have worked in more than 40 countries, and I have never experienced less racism than I do in Singapore.

That is important to me. Not only because we are a mixed-race family – I am from Sweden, my wife from the Philippines and my son a happy mix of Stockholm, Manila and Singapore.

As an European, I am ashamed and disappointed when European leaders recently proclaim that “the multi-cultural society does not work”. I just wish they would come to Singapore.

To live in a place that is celebrating “Western New Year” and “Chinese New Year” is not only twice as fun, it also gives you the feeling that there is more than one way of doing things.

On a recent New Year’s Eve party, we realised our group consisted of 10 people with 10 different passports.

A friend told me how they had had an after-work beer at his company and 14 people – from 14 different countries – showed up.

At our wedding, we had 40 guests from eight countries, comprising at least four religions and four races, and, at the time, no one was counting.

It all just felt as if it was the most natural thing in the world. The point, of course, is that it is not the most natural thing in the world. Unfortunately, in most places in the world, it would be rare, strange and exotic to have such a natural mix of backgrounds.

For people living in Singapore, it is so natural you do not grasp how unnaturally natural it is, and how valuable.

OF ROOTS AND BRANCHES

Now, do not get me wrong. I am not saying that knowledge of your own culture and background is not important. It is.

It is often said that a person without roots is fickle, doesn’t know how to connect to who he is and can be easily manipulated, because there are no basic values keeping him grounded. Roots are important.

But if one is going to use a metaphor (in this case, of likening a human being to a tree), one has to use the whole metaphor. Because it is equally true that a tree without branches also perishes.

A tree that does not spread its branches out in all directions to gather as much sunlight and energy as possible might have deep and strong roots, but it will eventually still wither and die.

In other words, to be rootless is dangerous, but so is being branchless.

And if your own culture is the roots, the cultures of the rest of the world is the energy that your branches need to reach out to, so that you can get new ideas and ways of doing things by learning from others, be inspired to try new foods, acquire new habits and try new customs.

It will make you curious of other ways of doing things, be inspired by different ideas and energised by alternate points of views. And that is what creates creativity.

And nowhere in the world is it easier to let your branches spread out than in Singapore.

Want some exposure to American influence? Watch American Idol the day after it airs in the US.

What about a dose of Indian culture? Join in the Deepavali celebrations together with thousands of Indians in Little India.

Want to practice your Chinese language? Go and order frog in Geylang.

HEIMSKUR MEANS ‘MORON’

The Icelandic Vikings, who lived a thousand years ago, had a word for people who never left their farms on Iceland and never ventured outside. The word was heimskur. It means moron.

As they saw it, a person who did not open up to the world to find new ideas from other cultures was a moron. I think the Vikings would have loved Singapore. I sure know that I do. It is the one place with the fewest heimskurs that I have found .

Too many people limit their potential, their creativity – and in the end – their lives, because they are not embracing the whole human spectrum of creativity.

They are not taking full advantage of the potential of the world, because they are not living in the world. They are stuck in their own corner, looking inwards, seeing whatever that is different as “foreign”.

And I think that answers the question of why I am living in Singapore – because Singapore makes me more human by making me more a part of the world, a part of humanity. And by being part of the world, I have a bigger chance to be inspired and have new ideas.

Ideas that will benefit us all.

Brett King – Innovator of the Year Cover Story

Speakers Connect — Wed, 16 May 2012 01:16:48 +0000

Brett King, Author of Best Seller Bank 2.0 and Founder of Movenbank voted “Innovator of the Year 2012″. There is a cover story from New York:

Brett King_Innovator of the Year 2012

Brett King

Brett King is the Author of the Bestselling book Bank 2.0 and strategic advisor to the global financial services sector. He is an International Judge for the Asian Banker Retail Excellence Awards and for the Middle-East Business Achievement Awards.

A keynote speaker at leading global events for financial services and innovation, King is an acknowledged expert on innovation, customer experience and channel distribution strategy. He publishes regularly in his role as industry advisor on Huffington Post, Internet Evolution, FinExtra and his own personal blog Banking4Tomorrow.com.

King also runs User Strategy, a boutique consultancy focused on improving customer interaction for leading financial services companies and businesses. King previously led the Asia division for Modem Media/Digitas (part of the Publicis group) and the E-Business service line for Deloitte (Financial Institutions Industry focus). His clients include HSBC, Citigroup, UBS, Standard Chartered, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, EmiratesNBD, BNP Paribas and many more.

Contact us at Speakers Connect at info@speakersconnect.com or +852 21654126 if you would like to engage Brettfor your next event, or viist us for more top-notch International Speakers from us.

Dr. Alan Watkins – Being Brilliant Every Single Day

Speakers Connect — Tue, 15 May 2012 00:59:54 +0000

Dr Alan Watkins is the founder and CEO of Complete Coherence Ltd. He is recognised as an international expert on leadership and human performance. He has researched and published widely on both subjects for over 18 years. He is currently an Honorary Senior Lecturer in Neuroscience and Psychological Medicine at Imperial College, London as well as an Affiliate Professor of Leadership at the European School of Management, London. He originally qualified as a physician, has a first class degree in psychology and a PhD in immunology.

In the video below Alan talks about how we can be brilliant every single day:

Executives attending past engagements by Alan have described the experience as “one of the best I ever attended,” as well as “a cornerstone piece for me,” and having “made a permanent positive difference.” If you would like Alan to make a “permanent positive difference” within your organization (and within your life) then commission him for a speech by contacting info@speakersconnect.com.

Dr Chris Chan – TVB Pearl Money Magazine Interview

Speakers Connect — Sun, 13 May 2012 04:52:43 +0000

Professor Chris WH Chan 陳維康 is Professor of Accounting at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration and Dean of the Cornell-Nanyang Institute of Hospitality Management (CNI). Stationed in Singapore with Pan-Asian responsibilities, Professor Chan provides academic, intellectual, strategic, and administrative leadership to the institute with the mission to further elevate the Cornell brand in Asia.

Professor Chan was previously Associate Professor of Accounting as well as Assistant Dean and Director of MBA programs at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), where he was responsible for brand development, marketing and admissions, financial and program management, academic and student affairs, and corporate and media relations.

Below is an media interview of Dr Chris Chan by TVB Pearl:

Brett King Talks about the Future of Banking…

Speakers Connect — Wed, 09 May 2012 00:54:53 +0000

Brett King, our sought-after banking expert and speaker, and founder of the Movenbank talks about the future of banking – all started from Internet banking, which freed customers from the physical locations of banks.

The next wave? Mobile, social media, gamification and geo-location would be the drivers…

Brett King

Brett King is the Author of the Bestselling book Bank 2.0and strategic advisor to the global financial services sector. He is an International Judge for the Asian Banker Retail Excellence Awards and for the Middle-East Business Achievement Awards.

He has been featured on Bloomberg TV, BBC, CNBC, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Economist, The Asian Banker Journal, SBC (Greece), etc.

Contact us at Speakers Connect at info@speakersconnect.com or +852 21654126 if you would like to engage Brett for your next event, or viist us for more top-notch International Speakers from us.

Brett King Named as One of the Innovators of the Year!

Speakers Connect — Mon, 07 May 2012 07:09:34 +0000

Contratulatoins to Brett King for being named one of the Innovators of the Year for his launch of the Moven Bank.

Please see the news as follows:

Brett King
Movenbank
Author and company founder
Latest breakthrough: The author and bank critic’s financial services startup has developed a new scoring product called CRED, which uses social media as part of its credit and other pricing decisions.

Much like the 19th-century railroad developers who built in uninhabited regions in anticipation of boom towns that had yet to arrive, Brett King’s Movenbank is a mobile-heavy financial services startup that’s still waiting on the technology and marketplace to catch up to its vision. That market evolution is not guaranteed, making Movenbank and its future performance one of the most compelling stories in retail finance over the next year.

King, a frequent lecturer, bank critic and author of the bank-skewering book, “Bank 2.0,” is not only happy with the mobile technology lag, it’s his new company’s ace in the hole. “We’re a little bit ahead of the curve and will be waiting for the mainstream and public to adopt contactless (near-field communication smartphone) transactions,” King says. “If we wait until contactless is mass-marketed to everyone, we’ve missed out on our opportunity.”

As Movenbank moves closer to launch later this year, it’s being closely watched by at least three different industries – banking, mobile commerce and payments – even though it’s not a bank, telecom or card company. What’s put Movenbank in the spotlight is its fully digital model. Movenbank is an online and mobile-only company whose motto is “no paper, no plastic, no hidden fees.” It is using social media and expanded data to build its own scores that will help inform credit and pricing decisions.

King hopes the company’s mobile banking interface will put it in frequent touch with customers for relationship management, and will allow the startup to charge lower fees than banks because Movenbank won’t have a national branch network to maintain. King contends 50,000 customers doing a few transactions per week – its goal for early 2013 – will allow Movenbank to break even while being more nimble than traditional banks. “What’s happened with Borders, Blockbuster and other retail businesses that have been disrupted by tech will happen here,” King says.

Much like Simple (the former BankSimple), Movenbank, of New York, will control the front end of the customer relationship and will store deposits with banks. Movenbank has signed a deal with Bancorp Bank in Delaware and is in talks with additional banks. And much like Simple, that deposit relationship with banks isn’t stopping King from criticizing traditional banks’ service capabilities.

“The role of the banker is to give you advice. The reality is banks don’t advise customers these days,” he says. “The primary goal of Movenbank is to give consumers advice on a daily basis, to help them understand the impact of their spending in making daily decisions.”

Movenbank this summer will release its banking application, which uses NFC-enabled phones or phones with an NFC sticker, for closed-loop testing, with a broader public release to follow the tests. Movenbank eventually hopes to offer its service internationally. NFC-enabled phones are still thought to be a year or so away from wide availability, and while mobile payments are starting to catch on, they’re still fairly new and have volumes that are far below credit and debit card payments. King is betting on that changing as NFC phones become widespread and mobile payments become mainstream.

“We’re heavily relying on our mobile platform. There are going to be some consumers that don’t necessarily feel comfortable with that early one. But this will be a short-term problem. In two or three years, the tech will catch up,” he says.

What’s also drawing attention is Movenbank’s alternative approach to scoring. Called CRED, it combines traditional scoring elements and a person’s standing on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks to help determine a consumer’s track record in paying bills and engaging in other healthy financial activity as well as to gauge their ability to help sign up friends for the company – all elements that can inform credit decisions and pricing of financial products.

Movenbank, which develops most of its technology in-house and partners with Geezeo to provide some personal financial management capabilities, will track transactions and ask customers questions on how they save and spend on a daily basis. All of this information will build a profile that the company will use for credit decisions, pricing and know your customer efforts as well as a means to help customers manage risky financial behavior.

Movenbank also uses elements of gamification, such as badges, rewards and incentives. For example, if the goal of Movenbank is to get a consumer to keep a certain balance in his or her account, it’s easier to encourage that behavior by representing it visually or incorporating elements of an online game to help guide the person.

“We’re creating a system to help you understand your financial help,” King says. “It’s a ‘Weight Watchers’ score for financial services. The object is to help understand financial behavior over time.”

Ron Shevlin, a senior analyst at Aite, says what makes the Movenbank model interesting is that as the CRED score improves, consumers will earn the right to move from an entry-level prepaid account up to a checking account with overdraft protections. “Movenbank reinvents the bank account structure in concept to make it simpler, transparent and fluid between accounts,” he says.

King’s move to start a new finance company follows up on his book, “Bank 2.0,” which says that the financial crisis is just beginning for retail companies. In the book, he writes that the use of the Web, automated teller machines and smartphones are accelerating among consumers, but banks are not keeping up with commenserate applications, and still classify digital venues as alternative channels as branch banking dominates strategy. King writes that mobility, social networking and new mobile apps will dilute the impact of checking and branch transactions and will allow mobile phones to replace wallets within the next 10 years. Movenbank is the manifestation of King’s argument that mobility will drive the future delivery of financial products, and that innovation will come from outside the banking industry.

“Over the next three to five years, many of the innovations that we see in banking won’t be done by banks at all,” King says. “In payments we see Square, PayPal and the Google Wallet, for example. We will find a new layer of technology or business coming into the customer experience area. There will be a fragmentation of banking. You’ll have manufacturers of bank services, but more fragmentation in the way that consumers interact with banks.”

One of the challenges for banks in the new mobile tech environment is their lack of control over the delivery channel, King says. “The primary driver will be the mobile phone. And banks don’t own the networks, apps, devices or operating systems.”

Movenbank is also launching at a time of popularity of PFM sites such as Geezeo, Mint and other firms that are helping consumers manage spending and debt in a tough economy. Movenbank’s CRED is an attempt to link PFM to real-time decisions that consumers make on purchases or saving.

“Today’s consumers are more aware of impacts from credit scores; they are looking for new ways to manage money to avoid paying overdraft fees,” Shevlin says.

Rob Lilwall – Walking Home from Mongolia Real Time Map

Speakers Connect — Fri, 04 May 2012 00:04:32 +0000

Rob Lilwall has been on the road for more than six months now for his Walking Home from Mongolia expedition.

We are all so excited that he will be home on 30 May. Before that, check out this real time map on his whereabout…

Graeme Cordrington: “Leading in a Changing World” Keynote

Speakers Connect — Thu, 03 May 2012 03:54:33 +0000

To meet the needs of corporations from around the world to lead in a changing world, our renowned keynote speaker, Graeme Cordington is launching his new keynote:

Leading in a Changing World

The keys to world class leadership in the new world of work

To be successful in the turbulent decade that lies ahead – leaders and all the people they lead – need to learn to deal with complexity, uncertainty constant change. To do this effectively, the most important starting point is to understand context and be confident in identifying, anticipating and responding to the change drivers that will disrupt the future world of work.

Leading in a Changing World paints a vivid context for leadership in a changing world of work by identifying the three key drivers of change, namely, a changing world, a changing workforce and a changing workplace. From this platform three leadership imperatives emerge: The need for engagement or collaboration; the need for transparency and the need for agility. Finally, three essential skills are elaborated on for leading in the new world of work: adaptive intelligence, knowing how to gain a balcony perspective and conversations.

The changing world is being driven by shifts and advances in technology, demography, globalisation and social values, amongst others. Depending on how much time we have available, we vary how deep a look we can take at these and other drivers of change.

The changing workforce picks up the theme of demographic shifts and values, and looks at how a new generation of employees is arriving in the world of work with a different set of expectations and values (views of what is ‘normal’, right and good) at just the same time that the oldest working generation is deciding to extend their stay in the workplace (or, to put it another way, the Boomers are deciding not to retire).

A new workforce in a new world are changing how we work, and will continue to put pressure on traditional notions of the workplace. Important themes in the future will continue to be flexibility in workplace conditions, remote and virtual teams, and all forms of contract working, diversity, complexity, speed and creativity.

The programme concludes with an inspiring challenge to become a new type of leader for a new world of work, and shows that the organisations that will be successful in this new world of work are those that exhibit this type of leadership at all levels, and not just “at the top”.

The programme incorporates the best of TomorrowToday’s thinking and extensive global experience in order to provide a robust and insightful context in which to explore leadership into the future. It is designed to stimulate thinking and offer practical insights into leading in the new world of work, and developing the leaders who “know what to do when no-one knows what to do”. It provides a mix of well-researched insights, case studies from a variety of industries and contexts, and plenty of opportunities for interaction and practical learning.

In it’s simplest version, we can deliver this framework as a keynote presentation (or as a series of three presentations). But the real value comes as our clients use it in their leadership development programmes. We work with our clients to customise this for their unique requirements. This involves a discovery phase in which we interview key leaders within the organisation. We then develop a version of this programme to match their specific requirements, delivering this content in a format from 2 days to 10 days spread over a few weeks or months.

Formats

This session can be delivered as a keynote presentation or strategic input, lasting between 60 and 90 minutes – this provides an overview of the content. We use full multimedia, laced with humour and relevant case studies.

Ideally, this is offered as a multi-day leadership development programme. This can be between 2 and 10 days in length, depending on your requirements.

Take Home Value

By the end of the session, participants will:

Understand the changing world of work
Be confident in your analysis of the forces disrupting industry, and be prepared for change
Identify the new requirements for 21st century leaders
Measure yourself against the best leadership models for the new world of work, and create a developmental plan for your growth as a leader
Discover exciting new leadership development approaches, and take away some practical tips and tools for developing new types of leaders at all levels of your organisation
Be inspired to a higher level of leadership excellence

“Most people prefer stability to chaos, clarity to confusion, and orderliness to conflict. But to practice leadership you need to accept that you are in the business of generating chaos, confusion and conflict, for yourself and others around you,” writes Ron Heifitz in his book ‘The Practice of Adaptive Leadership‘. This represents the polar opposite of what often is considered ‘good leadership’ and certainly his statement, and the thought it represents, demands serious consideration from those in leadership. Exercising authentic leadership in which adaptive intelligence is required demands that you be willing and competent at stepping into the unknown and stirring things up. These are skills that can be learnt.

Contact us at Speakers Connect to engage Graeme to inspire your team at your next event.

Asia Keynote Speakers

Speakers Connect — Wed, 02 May 2012 10:38:26 +0000

Looking for an inspiring and high-energey keynote speaker to open or close your upcoming conference in Asia? We at Speakers Connect has some great speaker choices for you:

Speakers Connect | Asia's Leading Speakers Bureau

Fredrik and Teo Haren’s Twin Seminar!

Fredrik Haren: The best place in the world to be creative… Singapore

Brett King – Innovator of the Year Cover Story

Dr. Alan Watkins – Being Brilliant Every Single Day

Dr Chris Chan – TVB Pearl Money Magazine Interview

Brett King Talks about the Future of Banking…

Brett King Named as One of the Innovators of the Year!

Rob Lilwall – Walking Home from Mongolia Real Time Map

Graeme Cordrington: “Leading in a Changing World” Keynote

The keys to world class leadership in the new world of work

Formats

Take Home Value

Contact us at Speakers Connect to engage Graeme to inspire your team at your next event.

Asia Keynote Speakers

Mike Walsh

Anders Sorman-Nilsson

Frank-Jürgen Richter

Michael McQueen

Chris Helder

Jack Perkowski

Robin Speculand

Graeme Codrington

Andrew Grant

Fredrik Haren

John Shackleton

Darryl Lovegrove