Club of Amsterdam
Supporter
Increasing complexity, uncertainty and disruptive change is provoking a surge of interest in longer-term thinking, better tools and early and broader warning systems. Dr. Mike Jackson will share his extensive knowledge of the changes being made to strategy and planning systems by forward-thinking organisations and how leading edge suppliers are delivering new capabilities to make the processes quicker, all-encompassing and collaborative. |
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Patrick Crehan
The Death of A Strategist
A context of complexity, uncertainty and rapid change for both private enterprise and public life will lead to a steady increase in the delegation of responsibility for decision-making away from traditional centers of control. This will create the need for organisations to continuously re-visit, re-vise and re-envision their plans and strategic positions. Decisions large and small will be made using participatory approaches. They will incorporate the latest information available. This will create a burden of work for which existing tools are inadequate. It will lead to a re-distribution of responsibilities for which most organisations are ill-prepared. Patrick Crehan looks at how the nature of decision-making is changing and how it will continue to change in the future. He looks at associated changes in the burden of work, shifts in the location of responsibility that this implies and the challenges that decision support systems of the future will need to address. He provides a vision of the future of decision-making in both private enterprise and public life.
Related Reading: 
‘The Wisdom of Crowds’ by James Surowiecki. The subtitle of this book is ‘Why the Many are Smarter than the Few’ and ‘How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations’. The final chapter is especially interesting in that it considers the future of democracy as a form of collaborative decision-making.
George Pór
The New Wave of Futuring:
Co-Sensing –> Co-Presencing –> Co-Creating
This will be an experiential introduction to the “U model” featured in Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future, co-authored by Peter Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski and Betty Sue Flowers.
Suggested Reading:
Introduction to THEORY U: Leading from the Emerging Future
Presencing as Social Technology of Freedom
by 
C. Otto Scharmer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
www.ottoscharmer.com
16:30
Welcome by our Moderator 
Bert van Lamoen, Dean, EBBS International Business School
16:45
Part I:
Michael Jackson, Chairman, Shaping Tomorrow:
Business Futures in a Digital Age
Patrick Crehan, CEO and Founder, Crehan, Kusano & Associates, Director, Club of Amsterdam:
The Death of A Strategist
George Pór, Founder, CommunityIntelligence Ltd.:
The New Wave of Futuring: Co-Sensing –> Co-Presencing –> Co-Creating
17:45
Coffee break with drinks and snacks.
18:15
Part II: Panel with the Speakers
and our Moderator 
Bert van Lamoen
The panel is followed by an open discussion.
Michael Jackson
Chairman, Shaping Tomorrow
Mike is a Founder Member and Chairman of Shaping Tomorrow a unique web based futures, strategy and change management portal for corporate innovation and risk management. His specific area of research is sustainable business futures.
He is known on conference platforms speaking on business subjects including futures, sustainability, customer loyalty and retention, business process re-engineering, change management, building strategic visions and values and people motivation and communications, ethics, alliances and corporate governance: he has many published articles and book contributions on these subjects.
With over 30 years’ experience in Business Management in the UK, North America and Europe, he has significant exposure to corporate banking and consumer finance and, latterly, futuring.
Mike was Chief Executive of Birmingham Midshires Building Society between 1990 and 1998, then the UK’s 4th largest. As Chief Executive of Birmingham Midshires he achieved a dramatic change for the better in the Society’s fortunes moving from near oblivion to a highly profitable, customer led and multiple-award winning business in just eight years.
He was previously a Senior Vice President with Bank of America who he joined in 1986. He held several positions at the Bank which included Head of Europe, Middle East and Africa operations, based in London, Head of Consumer Loans Services and Chief Financial Officer for consumer markets, based in North America (San Francisco). After spells with Hawker Siddeley, the Electricity Boards and the Post Office he began his financial services career in 1973 with Citibank NA as its first overseas process engineer, based in London. He then transferred to Italy, with subsidiary Citifin Finanziara as Chief Financial Officer and Vice President, later moving back to the UK with Citibank Savings as Vice President and Customer Services Director, and subsequently Consumer Banking Director.
He studied at Salford University, Manchester, and holds a Bachelor of Science in Electronics and a U.S. accredited MBA in Operations Research. He was conferred an Honorary Doctorate in Business Administration by the University of Wolverhampton in 1997. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, the Chartered Institutes of Bankers and Marketing and the Institutes of Directors and Management Services, as well as a Companion of the Institute of Management. He is a full member of the Strategic Planning Society, the Association of Professional Futurists and the World Future Society.
Mike’s interests include being Managing Director of a Legal Financial Services Processing Business for an International Firm of Lawyers and a strategic board member of the Customer Service Network. He is a member of the advisory board of European Futurists and sits on the Board of the Society of Genealogists in the UK.
www.shapingtomorrow.com
Patrick Crehan
CEO and Founder, Crehan, Kusano & Associates
Director, Club of Amsterdam
In 1996, after a career as a mathematical physicist in Europe and Japan, Patrick Crehan left academia to work at the European Commission Directorate General for Industry. Working in international collaboration on research in Information and Communication Technologies, he traveled extensively in countries of the Mediterranean basin, Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe using international research collaboration as a policy tool for industrial and economic development. In 1998 he left the Commission to work as an independent consultant in international RTD, industrial and economic development policy. In 1999 he founded CKA – Crehan, Kusano & Associates. CKA is inspired by the conviction that the most important source of competitive advantage today is an ability to organize and manage knowledge-intensive activities such as research, innovation, learning & communication. CKA designs and manages processes that support complex-creative tasks in industry, society and government administration. It develops and adapts technologies to support these processes. It conducts research on management-as-work, on technologies to support organization-and-management tasks, as well as on the nature and organization of work in an age of constant change.
George Pór
Founder, CommunityIntelligence Ltd.
Former Senior Research Fellow at INSEAD
George is an executive coach/mentor and facilitator of transformation in human and organisational capabilities to evolve. A sociologist by education and master learner by passion, he has been designing and guiding virtual communities in business for more than 20 years. During that time, he has been discovering and inventing many ways to accelerate the emergence of collective intelligence in groups and organizations. He is a learning partner to leaders in business and government in matters of innovation, change management and value-creation with communities of practice and knowledge networks.
George’s signature projects include: the launch of the first online course on communities of practice, co-taught with Etienne Wenger in 1998; the web-based Knowledge Ecology Fair where 400 knowledge managers from around the world participated in virtual workshops and online café conversations exploring organic and grassroots alternatives to KM. After serving as Senior Research Fellow at INSEAD (2001-2002), he moved to the Complexity Research Group at London School of Economics. George is Chairman and Founder of CommunityIntelligence Ltd. He is the author of “Liberating the Innovation Value of Communities of Practice” in the forthcoming textbook on “Knowledge Economics: Emerging Principles, Practices and Policies.”
His past clients include: Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, EDS, European Foundation for Management Development, Gulf Canada, Hewlett Packard, INSEAD, Intel, Procter & Gamble, Siemens, Sun Microsystems, Swiss Re, and Unilever.
www.community-intelligence.com
Bert van Lamoen
Dean, EBBS International Business School
Expert, Club of Amsterdam
Bert studied science of communication (Utrecht) and comparative culture in Switzerland (Zurich/Lugano) with specialization : corporate culture. He holds a Master Degree (M.A. summa cum laude).
Post graduate studies: futurology (Prof. Polak, Galtung), psychology prof. R. Hauben (Menninger Foundation, USA), P. Vroon (Utrecht), pedagogy/education prof. M.Langeveld (Utrecht), economics (prof. A. Heertje, Uni. Amsterdam).
Comparative culture: prof. M. Buber, D. Flusser , S. Safrai (Uni.Jerusalem), prof. E. Levinas, prof. Ranganathananda (Delhi), Prof. A. Takizawi (Japan), Prof. Liu (Beijng),
On dialogue: prof. M. Buber, E. Levinas, D. Bohm (U.K).
And studied/worked with paradigm changers such as H. van Praag, I. Prigogine, F.A. Popp and E. Jantsch.
He is a born generalist with some specialization in creating/facilitating network organizations, the Knowledge Economy and CSR (Corporate Social Accountability).
For 20 years he has been teaching at universities and business schools all over the world, he was e.g. visiting professor at: IIB (Institute of International Business) Stockholm School of Economics (Sweden), University of Basel (Switzerland), Free University Brussels (Belgium), University Delhi (India), Nijenrode Business School (the Netherlands), IBS (International Business School) Nanjing University (China), IBS (International Business School), ESAMI (East and South Africa Management Institute), MsM (Maastricht School of Management), University of Amsterdam, Business School.
He worked for organizations like the Shell (scenario planning and futurology), Pandata/Gap Gemini, the Dutch Ministery of Health (WVC), the European Commission (Brussels), Interbrew, Homeoropa/Steigerwald, MSD, Byk, Dolisos, Biotics, TS products, Boehringer, PTT Telecom, Serono-the Ares Group, Green Foods Corporation, Reisemus & de Frel, the ING Bank and the Ordina Institute for Research and Innovation (ICT).
He (co-) authored 6 books and 40 articles and was editor in chief for Ankh Hermes (NL) and Haug Verlag (D). And was/is actively part of think-and-do-tanks like the European Edge (Denmark).
As entrepreneur he managed three companies of his own – most successfully a publishing firm. He sees himself first and foremost as an entrepreneur, innovator, teacher and personal coach. Bert is married and has a son and a daughter; his favourite sport: snowboarding.
His latest endeavour: dean of EBBS International Business School – one of the first change agent business schools in the world and a global entrepreneurial and educational network with focus on modern, value based entrepreneurship.
www.ebbs.eu
I don’t think the title of your article matches the content lol. Just kidding, mainly because I had some doubts after reading the article.