Jim Carroll

CEO & CxO Leadership Events

In the post-pandemic economy, CEO/CxO’s are managing multiple priorities: business model disruption; the rapid emergence of new competitors; products that are almost out of date by the time they are brought to market; the digitization of everything; and the acceleration of industries. The transformation of everything is around them.

All of these trends — and more — require that organizations pick up the pace when it comes to their strategies, actions, and innovation efforts. Many CEO/CxO’s are finding it necessary to bring their leadership teams together for a corporate offsite event in order to discuss, strategize and align to a faster, transformative future.

In an increasing number of these events, the CEO/CxO or other senior executive has selected Jim Carroll to open or participate in such a meeting with an in-depth, customized leadership-oriented keynote that sets the tone from the start. They have selected Jim for his proven global track record of providing a keynote that is based on extensive consultation, customized research, and very detailed, specific insight. Keynotes have included looking at the big future, disruption and transformation, accelerating creativity, the fast future, and many more topics. Clients who have arranged for Jim at these sessions have included Disney, Chemours, Dupont, Rich Foods, NASA, Mercedes Benz, New York Life, Volvo, Nestle, Black & Veach, and many more.

Learn why Jim is your valuable, trusted partner in aligning your organization to a faster, transformative future!

Client & Customer-Oriented Events

Mindshare matters. In a complex and fast competitive landscape, positioning your product or service offerings to your customer or client has become more of a challenge than ever before.

That’s why organizations continue to invest in large-scale or intimate customer-client events. It’s an opportunity to tell your story, position your products, put in perspective your value proposition, and build relationships.

Countless numbers of organizations, including hi-tech firms, professional services firms, financial and legal organizations, telecom companies, and manufacturing organizations have engaged Jim to provide an opening keynote message for their event that is carefully aligned with their key message.

Companies like Microsoft, SAP, Cisco, Oracle, Toshiba, and many more have had Jim provide his insight on the future and disruption with a highly customized keynote that aligns to their overall customer event message.  Professional service firms like KPMG, Ernst Young, and Baker McKenzie have arranged for Jim to speak at critical client events on topics ranging from the acceleration of business to the emergence of new legal risk issues. Zurich Insurance recently arranged for Jim to share his thoughts on the future of risk at a global risk management summit in Switzerland. Schneider Electric engaged Jim to open a user group conference, with a message focused on the future of manufacturing including the impact of the Industrial Internet of Things.

Whatever your message and however specific your topics, Futurist Jim Carroll has proven to be a reliable event partner with a keynote message that is based on customized research, extensive consultation, and detailed trends insight backed by a compelling stage presence.

The Acceleration of Artificial Intelligence and the Rise of the Robots — Promise and Peril in the Next Technological Transformation

The sudden and dramatic arrival of ChatGPT has caught the imagination of the world as we sense the arrival of new opportunities, at the same time that it has fueled a sense of concern and worry. We are now firmly in the era of the acceleration of artificial intelligence (“AI”) as seen with generative text such as ChatGPT and image technologies like Stable Diffusion. But our complex new future is not just happening with AI – we are seeing the ‘rise of the robots,’ the maturity of industrial autonomous technologies, machine intelligence, and vision systems, digital twin and augmented reality technologies, the impact of ‘sensorworld,’ drones and more – it’s a brand new and fast-moving world

There are a lot of fast-moving technologies – but making sense of what’s real and cutting through the hype to discover real opportunities within the trends is one of the most important things you can do!

There are significant implications to the sudden arrival of artificial intelligence and other trends, from very real business model disruption to unique legal and copyright issues, education, knowledge, and workforce skills challenges, as well as the emergence of disruptive new industry competitors and accelerated new product development and innovation opportunities. The scope of what these technologies represent is increasing because the pace of their evolution is now moving faster than fast.

In this keynote, Jim will help you understand:

• the challenges and opportunities behind these trends within your industry and organization
• the disruptive impact on your business and operations, and the strategies you should be thinking about to align with the new realities they present
• key strategic action plans designed to get your team moving forward with certainty to align with the opportunities of the trend as well as the timing of how it will unfold.

Futurist Jim Carroll will help you cut through the noise and the hype to understand what is really happening, and the critical nature of the important trends that you must pay attention to!

The BIG Future: The Mega-Trends that Define Transformative Opportunities and Demand Bold Thinking!

The future demands that you think BIG, be bold, and pursue opportunities.

The only way to do this is to understand the “megatrends” that are defining our future, the disruptive opportunities they present, and the industry, skills, and business model opportunities they provide.

We are now seeing so much change that our new reality is this: companies that do not yet exist will build products not yet conceived, with materials not yet in existence, using methodologies not yet developed – and these will be sold to consumers who do not yet know that these new products and services will become a critical part of their life! 

Are you ready to pursue a BIG future? Do you understand what comes next and what you need to do about it? Based on his BIG Trends series featured on his Web site, Jim takes you into a dramatic new future involving accelerating scientific discovery, rapid knowledge sharing, accelerated methodologies, and dramatic industry transformations.

You will come away with new strategic leadership insight that will help you see disruptive trends, focus on opportunities, unlock creativity, enhance your speed, accelerate innovation and deliver on growth opportunities!

Think Big, Start Small, Scale Fast: Aligning Yourself for the Era of Acceleration

We live in a time of massive challenge, and yet one of massive opportunity. We’re faced with deep and complex issues involving the environment, health care, water, and food. At the same time, every industry is faced with upheaval and disruption.

In this context, every industry is being redefined at blinding speed by technology, globalization, the rapid emergence of new competitors, new forms of collaborative global R&D, and countless other challenges! The speed with which these changes occur is now running up against the traditional culture, organizational structure, and leadership methodologies that once worked well in the past – but don’t align with today’s fast-moving realities.

Most organizations are bound up in tradition, process, and certain defined ways of doing things — rules — that have helped them succeed in the past. Over time, they have developed a corporate culture that might have worked in the slower-paced world of the past — but now has them on the sick bed, suffering from organizational sclerosis that clogs up their ability to try to do anything new. Those very things which worked for them in the past might be the anchors that could now hold them back as the future rushes at them with ever-increasing speed. They are being challenged in a fundamental way by those who think big, and by some really big, transformative trends.

You need to align yourself to the big opportunities of today through bold, transformative thinking; take the small-scale steps today to align yourself to this future, and focus on a culture of speed and agility that can help you to get there at the right time! You need to think about transformation, not just innovation!

In this keynote, Jim outlines his simple but transformative structure with deep insight into what it takes to master the new, complex volatile world, by embracing the chaos, thinking transformation, not innovation, mastering the timing of trends, and accelerating forward-oriented growth opportunities. The new model for going forward in the era of accelerating change: Think big, start small, and scale fast!

Innovating For the Upturn: How to Accelerate Opportunity and Achieve Growth in an Era of Volatility

New ideas, transformative innovations, and bold thinking don’t die in periods of economic volatility – in fact, a downturn is often the starting point for big ideas and a big upturn! Companies such as Burger King, Microsoft, CNN, and FedEx all started up during economic downturns because they remained firmly focused on growth opportunities, the future, and trends.

Conventional wisdom would suggest we’d better hunker down, scale back, slow down, take it easy, be cautious, reduce spending, defer our actions, wait it out, take things slow, and put things on pause. But history tells us that doesn’t work – because those who choose to relentlessly focus on growth are those who win.

How do you do this? It’s by understanding that the winners that emerge are those who battle aggressive indecision, challenge organizational sclerosis, and recommit to growth despite volatility. History teaches us that those who win are those who doubled down on innovation and transformation, and refocused on the long-term view! During the 2008-09 global economic meltdown, ‘winners’ grew at a 17% compound annual growth rate during the downturn compared to 0% among the ‘losers.’ And those ‘winners’ locked in gains of 13% CAGR in the years after the downturn compared to the ‘losers’ stalling at 1%. That’s a powerful growth lesson right there!

These winners chose to opt out of the common narrative – it’s a recession, cut back, hunker down and make sure you ride it out – and by choosing instead to go into the future full throttle, they emerged much better positioned for that future.

Futurist and innovation expert Jim Carroll shares these and other critical lessons, along with specific strategic guidance on how to double down on growth during times of volatility. It’s battle-tested, stage-proven insight developed through previous periods of economic volatility. You will come away with clear leadership insight on the growth-oriented insight you need to pursue.

Accelerating Creativity: Discovering Opportunity With an Innovation Reboot

We will see more change in every industry in the next 10 years than we have seen in the last 100 as transformation and disruption sweeps the world.

Every company is faced with the rapid emergence of new competitors, significant new business models, more challenging consumers, the acceleration of science, and a transition to the speed of innovation that will define its future.

How do you manage this complex new world and get ahead? By turning on your innovation engine, firing your creativity thrusters, and strapping in for a rocket ride into your faster future. You need to accelerate your ability to generate radically new ideas and transformative concepts. You need innovation and creativity!

In this keynote, futurist and innovation expert Jim Carroll shares the innovation and creativity insight that he has gained through three decades of a relentless focus on what turns organizations into high-velocity innovation and creativity heroes. None other than NASA has invited Jim in – twice – to share his insight on innovation strategies. Disney – a creativity superhero – invited him in for a keynote on the opportunities that come from rethinking creativity. The World Bank engaged him for a talk that linked fast-moving future trends to the need for accelerated innovation and fast thinking.

Jim’s keynote will share with you the key elements of his imaginary but powerful “Masters in Business Imagination” curriculum – a structure of 10 key leadership strategies, actions, and structures that will help you envision opportunity, think differently, and act quickly.

Launch yourself into the faster future with this unique, high energy creativity-focused keynote from global futurist, trends & innovation expert Jim Carroll!