Jake Knapp

How to Accelerate Innovation

It’s hard to innovate. Some new projects start fast, but take a wrong turn and end up with a product nobody cares about. Others are plagued by endless debate that turns bold visions into watered-down oatmeal. And many ideas fizzle and shut down before anything happens at all. How can we start strong and deliver something new that is great for customers?

In this talk, Jake will introduce a five-step process for kicking off new projects and accelerating innovation, based on his New York Times best-seller Sprint. Drawing on his experience at Google, where he helped build Gmail and co-founded Google Meet, and as an investor in startups like Slack, Uber, and One Medical, this keynote features fascinating behind-the-scenes stories — and shows how Jake translated those real-world lessons into a practical recipe any team can use.

Audience members will walk away with simple tricks for getting the best ideas from every person on the team, making smart decisions without groupthink, validating ideas before wasting time, and creating a strategy customers will love. It’s hard to innovate, but it doesn’t have to be.

The Intuition Secret

Many teams who want to be innovative look to Google and Apple for inspiration. Everyone knows that Google is driven by customer data. And everyone knows Steve Jobs ignored customers and used his superhuman intuition to build products. So which approach is right? Should you lead with your brain and your spreadsheet, or your heart and your gut? 

In this talk, Jake will show why the conventional wisdom on data and intuition is all wrong. He’ll take the audience inside Google, where he co-founded Google Meet, share surprising lessons from a decade of investing in successful startups, illustrate unconventional approaches from his New York Times best-seller Sprint, and offer a brand new take on Steve Jobs and his magical intuition. 

Audience members will leave with a practical toolkit for improving their own intuition and — no matter their role — acting more like a startup founder to connect with customers and deliver fantastic products.

Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just 5 Days

In this talk, Jake will introduce the Design Sprint, a method he invented while working at Google that is now adopted by innovative organizations around the world including LEGO, Harvard, MIT, Airbnb, and pretty much every major tech company. 

Through case studies from inside Google and startups, Jake will share the techniques outlined in his New York Times best-seller Sprint. Audience members will leave with a strong understanding of the 5-day Design Sprint process as well as a fresh look at their biggest business challenges.

How to Make Time for What Matters

Nobody ever looked at an empty calendar and said, “The best way to spend this time is by cramming it full of random meetings” or woke up in the morning and thought, “Today I’ll spend hours wasting time on unnecessary email and social media.” Yet, in the modern world, that’s often exactly what happens. How can we break the cycle of busyness and distraction and make time for the people and projects that are most important? 

In this talk, Jake will introduce a four-step framework for building energy and focusing on what matters most in work and life. Based on his best-selling books Make Time and Sprint, the presentation offers a proven, guilt-free, user-friendly approach to building new habits. Audience members will leave inspired to reclaim control of their attention and equipped with specific techniques for mastering technology, asserting ownership of their calendars, and resetting how they think about time.