History of Thought Leaders

Inspiration from the world’s leading business thinkers

At Implement, we want to be inspired by leading figures in the business world on our core competence: change. Therefore, we started Thought Leaders, where we explore both academic and practical perspectives, inviting leading business management experts to inspire and provoke us to learn how we can adapt and continuously improve businesses to create sustainable growth and long-term impact.

In 2009, we decided to branch out and expand Thought Leaders from being just an internal Implement event to something for our wider network, by inviting our community to be part of it too. Since then, we have been provoked and enlightened by John Kotter, Donald Sull, Roger Martin, Gary Hamel, Clayton Christensen, Daniel H. Pink, Jim Hagemann Snabe, Herminia Ibarra and Eric Ries.

2019: Agile organisations for real

- with Eric Ries

At Thought Leaders 2019, Eric Ries led us in a live exploration of the mindsets that need changing and the actions that need taking in order to create agile organisations for real. The international best-selling author and leader of the global Lean Startup movement also challenged our reservations about organisational agility head-on, provoking us towards breaking new ground.

2017: From fragile to agile

- with Gary Hamel, Herminia Ibarra and Jim Hagemann Snabe

Organisations need to make the shift from being fragile to agile, and three leading figures in business management revealed key insights on how we can achieve organisational agility in today’s turbulent world. As a leading expert on business strategy, Gary Hamel presented his ideas on how to challenge our deepest assumptions about leading, managing and organising, while Herminia Ibarra, a leading global authority on leadership development, shared her perspective on leadership’s need to rebel against bureaucracy and embrace experimentation. We also heard top industrialist Jim Hagemann Snabe’s take on creating agility in organisations and the importance of leadership that creates followership over management.

2015: Moonshots for change

- with Daniel H. Pink and Roger Martin

How can we create more human-oriented organisations to successfully drive change? Two renowned business management experts provided complementary perspectives on this question. Best-selling author and leading business and behaviour thinker Daniel H. Pink shared his insight on how we can rethink leadership to increase employee engagement and motivate people, alongside influential business professor Roger Martin who explored how we can strategise differently to fuel successful change. 

2014: Thriving on disruption

- with Clayton Christensen

The architect of disruptive innovation Clayton Christensen discussed the paradigm shift businesses need in terms of how we talk about innovation and measure success. This will fundamentally question our traditional outlook on strategy and innovation, and unearth new ways of cultivating organisations designed to survive in a world of disruption.

2013: Moonshots for management 2.0

- with Gary Hamel

How do we bring management and leadership into the 21st century? Gary Hamel, one of the world’s most sought-after management speakers, shared his insights on how we can meet the new requirements and realities that have made our existing management tools obsolete. As the challenges and conditions have changed so drastically, Gary Hamel advocates for a fundamental mindset change in order to succeed in the business environment of the future – the development of “management 2.0”.

2011: The execution trap

- with Roger Martin

One of the top management thinkers in the world Roger Martin – who coined the term “execution trap” – revealed how we can transform leadership by using the cascade model to avoid great ideas failing in the execution stage. By delving into the idea of creating organisations and leadership structures that simultaneously support both strategy development and strategy execution, Roger Martin led us in uncovering new ways of ensuring a flow of grassroots innovation from the bottom to the top of the organisation.

2010: The upside of turbulence

- with Donald Sull

A global expert on strategy execution, Donald Sull shared his perspective on the rise of turbulence and how to strategise in a business world where the only thing that remains unchanged is change itself. Together, we uncovered how to seize opportunity in turbulent times and how volatility can in fact create an environment where organisations thrive even better.

2009: Leading change in tough conditions

- with John Kotter

Drawing on topics from his book, “A Sense of Urgency”, award-winning business and management thought leader and best-selling author John Kotter shared his insight on how to work with change management in tough times. Together, we discussed how we can lead change even under the most difficult circumstances and turn crisis into opportunity.