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Crazy is a Compliment: The Rewards of Creating Your Own Path
Every entrepreneur at one point in time has had a “crazy moment”—a time when almost everyone bets against them. What separates successful entrepreneurs from the rest is the ability to face down naysayers, embrace and manage risk, harness chaos, tolerate failure, and muster the courage to be contrarian. The best entrepreneurs zig when everyone else zags. Linda Rottenberg has spent her career helping innovators think big and get over their own fears. Blending inspirational stories with practical tips, she will help you hone your entrepreneurial personality, take smart risks, and adapt the tenets of leadership 3.0. As Linda says, “If people aren’t calling you crazy, then you’re not thinking big enough.”
Think Like An Entrepreneur: Lessons From the World’s Most Successful Innovators
Twenty-five years ago “entrepreneurship” was a rarely used French term that applied to a handful of individuals that were mostly in tech, mostly in California, and mostly go it alone. Today, entrepreneurship is better viewed as a distinct set of skills and a way of approaching the world. Top corporations have taken note and are seeking ways to disrupt themselves before others beat them to it. For 18 years, Linda Rottenberg has guided 1,000 “high-impact” innovators around the world, helping them scale from promising startups to global multinationals. Now she shares cutting-edge strategies for success and compelling—and occasionally irreverent—business lessons. Managers will come away with practical tips for adopting an entrepreneurial mindset essential to success in the new global economy.
De-Risking Risk: Survival Strategies for the 21st Century Economy
Stability is dead. Economic crises, technological disruption and nimbler competition mean that more than ever, individuals and corporations must adapt or perish. If you think risk-taking is risky, being risk-averse is often riskier. But how do you know which risks to take? This is Linda Rottenberg’s expertise. The backer of 1,000 top entrepreneurs and author of Crazy Is a Compliment: The Power of Zigging When Everyone Else Zags, Linda is a leading champion of challengers to the status quo. In this talk, she discusses strategies to stop planning and start doing, mitigate risk, embrace chaos, win backers (including your boss), and take your idea to market. Above all, she will help you realize that nowadays you need to be agile and daring, and maybe a little bit crazy, or risk being left behind. “If you’re not being called crazy,” says Rottenberg, “you’re probably not thinking big enough.”
Skunks in the Workplace: Intrapreneurship as the Edge to Success
Have you lost your edge? Job security and your secured position at the head of the pack are relics of the past. Caught between increased competition and economic fluctuations, corporations are struggling to stay dominant. Research shows that even top companies are losing their leadership position faster than ever. You must adapt from within, or you’ll be forced to adapt from without. In this context, survival depends on tapping into the creativity of your employees and giving them the freedom to pursue their ideas. Forget top-down corporate strategy—the key to success is intrapreneurship. Linda Rottenberg offers proven strategies to unleash the entrepreneurial spirit in your organization by encouraging risk-taking, embracing failure, dismantling silos, and creating a skunk work-like environment where ideas can percolate from the bottom up.
About Linda Rottenberg:
Named one of “America’s Best Leaders” by U.S. News and one of TIME’s 100 “Innovators for the 21st century,” Linda Rottenberg is considered among the world’s most dynamic experts on entrepreneurship, innovation, and leadership. A frequent lecturer at Fortune 500 companies, Rottenberg is the subject of four case studies by Harvard Business School and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Her pioneering work also earned her a host of nicknames: ABC and NPR declared her “the entrepreneur whisperer,” Tom Friedman dubbed her the world’s “mentor capitalist,” Business Insider named her “Ms. Davos,” and for years she was known as “la chica loca” (the crazy girl) for insisting that entrepreneurs existed not only in Silicon Valley but also in emerging markets around the world.
Ms. Rottenberg is Co-founder and CEO of Endeavor, the world’s leading organization supporting high-impact entrepreneurs. Headquartered in New York with 50 offices across the globe, Endeavor identifies, mentors, and co-invests in individuals with the biggest ideas, the likeliest potential to build companies that matter, and the greatest ability to inspire others. Since 1997, Rottenberg’s network has screened 40,000 candidates, handpicked 1,000 Endeavor Entrepreneurs, and helped them grow to provide 400,000 jobs and generate $7 billion annually. After spawning entrepreneurship ecosystems around the world, in 2013 Endeavor brought its proven scaleup model to the U.S.
Ms. Rottenberg is also author of the New York Times bestseller, CRAZY IS A COMPLIMENT: The Power of Zigging When Everyone Else Zags, published in 2014. In her book, she argues that entrepreneurship isn’t just for young techies in hoodies. Whether you work at a Fortune 500 company, a non-profit, a mom-and-pop, or a startup, everybody needs the mindset to think and act like a change-maker. We all need to be nimble, adaptive, daring, and maybe even a little crazy, or risk being left behind.
Ms. Rottenberg serves on the board of Zayo Group, a global provider of bandwidth infrastructure (NYSE: ZAYO). Ms. Rottenberg has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Economist, Financial Times, USA Today, Strategy + Business, People, Glamour, and MORE, and has appeared on GMA, The Today Show, Morning Joe, Nightline, NPR, CNBC, CNN, Fox News, Fox Business, and Bloomberg News. Dell featured her in its “Take Your Own Path” ad campaign and Veuve Clicquot named her Businesswoman of the Year.
