Career:  Bestselling author, strategic advisor, innovation activist dubbed “Mr. Creativity” by The Economist; Chairmen & CEO EdgeMakers; Chairman ILSI
Interests: Jazz, Film & Theater (actively!). Unpeeling the onion, reinvention of education, innovation at societal scale.
Hometown: San Francisco, USA

John Kao was born in 1950 to Chinese immigrant parents. An accomplished jazz pianist, he spent the summer of 1969 playing keyboards for Frank Zappa. Kao studied philosophy at Yale College, received an MD from Yale Medical School, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He taught at Harvard Business School from 1982-96, where he specialized in innovation and entrepreneurship and created executive and MBA programs on innovation. He has also held faculty appointments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, Yale College, and the Naval Postgraduate School.

John is a leader in creating and delivering high end innovation leadership executive programs for both public and private sectors. He is chairman of the Institute for Large Scale Innovation, whose i20 group is an association of 30 national ‘Chief Innovation Officers.’  John coined the term “large scale innovation” to refer to innovation as a societal agenda.  He has advised numerous nations and regions on innovation strategy and execution, including Finland, Singapore, the City of San Francisco, Abu Dhabi and elements of the US government as well as the European Union innovation policy team.

His advisory work for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was described in The New York Times as “out of the box”

More:
www.johnkao.com
John Kao on Wikipedia
John on Twitter
www.edgemakers.com

Key publications:
Jamming: The Art and Discipline of Business Creativity (1996; still reprinted and available in 16 languages)
Innovation Nation: How America Is Losing Its Innovation Edge, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do to Get It Back (2007) 

Career: Founder BraveNewTalent
Chair Take Heart India, Young Global Leader WEF
Interests: Social Recruiting & Networks, New Media, Social Media,
Entrepreneurship, Generation Y, India, Youth, Leadership, Innovation
Hometown: London, UK

Lucian Tarnowski has been honoured as Europe’s youngest Young Global Leader (YGL) by World Economic Forum (WEF). He is winner of Global Enterprising Young Brit (2009) and was named as one of Britain’s rising business stars by The Spectator Business. He is on UKTI’s Global Entrepreneur Program with BraveNewTalent being described by UK Government as a “Technology Company of Exceptional Potential”. He plays an active role in UK tech start-up scene and speaks regularly around the world on the way social recruiting is changing the global talent market. In his spare time he runs the no overhead education charity Take Heart India.

Brave New Talent is a game changing Social Recruiting platform with traction, blue chip clients and heading for Global scale. Jobseekers use the site to create a professional profile and follow their target employers thereby allowing the employer to develop a professional talent community. The service is free to access for talent and generates revenue from employers using Talent Words™ to drive targeted people into their communities. The platform brings together all social media content the employer has – jobs, tweets, blogs, news, pictures, videos and more. BraveNewTalent is developing a new model of online education based on employers distributing training and skills to their talent communities in advance of the job. Clients include blue chip brands such as IBM, L’Oreal, Tesco and McAfee.

Take Heart India is a youth run charity focused on practical education projects in India. They are relatively unique in the charity sector for two reasons: They do not employ a single person, which means that 100% of proceeds are directed out to the education projects in India. 2. They run with the leitmotiv ‘Work builds, charity destroys’. Rather than giving money the aim is to empower people through practical education. Since 2004 Take Heart has built an IT school that has provided real job opportunities to thousands of students. The school specialises in training blind students IT skills and has been recognized as one of India’s top 3 IT training facilities for blind students.

More:
www.luciantarnowski.com
Lucian on LinkedIn
Twitter: @LucianT

www.bravenewtalent.com
BraveNewTalent on Facebook
Twitter: @BraveNewTalent

www.takeheartindia.org
Take Heart India on Facebook
Twitter: @TakeHeartIndia

www.oneyoungworld.wayn.com
One Young World on Facebook
Twitter: @OneYoungWorld

Other articles/links/videos:
The Telegraph: Recruitment revolution: A “Facebook for corporates” (11/03)
The Telegraph: Europe is just one player in a global ´digital enlightenment´. (11/01)
Microsoft Europe: Digital Natives – The new way to engage Gen Y. (10/01)

Video: BraveNewTalent quick view
Video: Lucian Tarnowski – Founder & CEO, BraveNewTalent
Video: Lucian Tarnowski, BraveNewTalent (TCTV)

http://blog.bravenewtalent.com/2011/01/reflections-on-the-decade/
http://blog.bravenewtalent.com/2010/10/recruiting-youth/
http://blog.bravenewtalent.com/2010/10/social-learning-and-the-big-society/

Short intro to BraveNewTalent:

Career: Curator & Host INK Conference (formerly TED India), Founder & CEO Ixoraa Media, Founder Digital Equalizer Program, Partner at Global Catalyst Partners
Interests: Collecting People, Human Spirit, Matching Indo and U.S Business
Hometown: Milpitas (CA), USA; New Delhi, India

Lakshmi Pratury is Founder and CEO of Ixoraa Media whose mission is to strengthen ties between the US and India through corporate, cultural, and media events. As a social entrepreneur, Lakshmi was a leading force at the American India Foundation (AIF), that raised over $30M in five years to channel towards development activities in India. She also started ‘Schools Online India’ (later ‘Digital Equalizer’) where she brought internet access to underprivileged children. Earlier, she was partner at Global Catalyst Partners (GCP) and was the first to turn the VC firm’s attention onto India. Lakshmi was co-host of the first ever TED conference in Asia – the TEDIndia. She continues sharing untold stories with the annual INK Conference, in association with TED.

The Ink Conference is an annual conference that aims to fuel innovation and foster knowledge by bringing together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers from a range of disciplines such as art, architecture, dance, design, music, science, social entrepreneurship, sports and technology. The first INK was in December 2010 in Delhi and will be featured annually.

Ixoraa Media is dedicated to bringing together extraordinary talent across generations and disciplines to focus on shaping the thinking, policy, and progress in the Indo–U.S. corridor. Ixoraa Media bandwidth ranges from technology projects with the private office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to music concerts. Ixora Media was host of TEDIndia, which attracted a global audience and featured thought leaders from India. Currently it is hosting The INK Conference in association with TED.

More:
www.theinkconference.com
www.ted.com
www.ixoraamedia.com

The INK Conference on Facebook
TED on Facebook
Twitter: @TEDTalks

Lakshmi on LinkedIn
Twitter: @LakshmiPratury
Lakshmi on Facebook

Other articles/links/videos:
Videos talks from INK Conference – The INKTalks: www.inktalks.com
Your Story: Lakshmi Pratury on INK conference: “We want to showcase innovation of thought” (10/2010)
Blogadda: Interview with Lakshmi Pratury (2010)

Short intro to The Ink Conference:

Career: Co-Founder and CEO of Foursquare
Interests: Snowboarding, Karaoke, Unemployment
Hometown: from Boston, lives in East Village, NYC, USA

Dennis Crowley is the Co-Founder and CEO of Foursquare, a service that mixes social, locative and gaming elements to encourage people explore the cities. Forusquare had over 4,5 million users worldwide as of 11/2010. Previously, Dennis founded dodgeball.com, one of the first mobile social services in the US, which was acquired by Google in 2005. He has been named “Top 35 Innovators Under 35” by MIT’s Technology Review magazine (2005) and has won the “Fast Money” bonus round on the TV game show Family Feud (2009). His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Time Magazine, Newsweek, MTV, Slashdot and NBC. He is currently an Adjunct Professor at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). The online magazine AskMen.com rated Dennis Crowley No. 19 of the “Top 49 Most Influential Men 2010”.

Foursquare is a location-based social networking website and software for mobile devices. Users check-in at venues using a mobile website, text messaging or a device-specific application. They are then awarded points and sometimes “badges.” The service was created in 2009 by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai. As of 11/2010, the company reported 4.5 million registered users. The World Economic Forum announced the company as a Technology Pioneer for 2011.

More:
www.denniscrowley.com
Twitter: @dens
www.foursquare.com

Other articles/links/videos:
www.teendrama.com
Article: Forbes Nov 2010: Foursqure´s Dennis Crowley talks Facebook
Article: The Telegraph Jul 2010: Dennis Crowling, the new darling of Silicon Valley
Video: YouTube Dennis Crowley about Foursquare

Short intro to Foursquare:

More:
www.jolicloud.com
www.facebook.com/jolicloud
www.twitter.com/jolicloud
Jolicloud on Wikipedia

www.netvibes.com

Tariq on Twitter
Blog: http://www.tariqkrim.com
Tariq’s profile on LinkedIn

Other articles/links/videos:
Techcrunch: Jolicoud’s netbook will launch first in the UK (11/2010)
TechCrunch: Hands-On Review Of Jolicloud, The iPhonesque OS For Netbooks (06/2009)
Zmogo: Jolicloud, A Fantastic OS For Your Netbook (06/2009)
TripTech blog: Nevermind Mac and Windows; It’s a Cloud World Now (07/2009)
ZDNet UK: Jolicloud: The future is HTML 5 (08/2010)

Short intro to Jolicloud and Jolibook:

Career: Scientist and Entrepreneur (Technology Pioneer 2010 by WEF), Founder and CEO Aura Biosciences
Interests: Art, Music, Travel, Languages, Photography, Innovation, Giving Back
Hometown: Barcelona, Spain; Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Elisabet de los Pinos is Founder and CEO of Aura Biosciences, a next-generation biotechnology company seeking to greatly improve the efficacy of cancer treatment. Her career spans oncology and translational research in both biotech and large pharmaceutical settings, including Lilly Pharmaceuticals. Elisabet received a magna cum laude doctorate in Molecular Biology at the University of Barcelona. She completed part of her training at Mount Sinai School of Medicine Institute of Molecular Medicine (NY-USA) and at Georgetown School of Medicine (Washington DC). Following that, she worked as a post-doctoral Fellow at the Institute of Cancer Research in London (UK). She has a Master degree in Business Administration from European IE Business School and is a graduate of the Entrepreneurship Development Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Aura Biosciences, is a next-generation biotech company developing the Nanosmart(tm) platform for the delivery of nano-enabled drugs. Nanosmart solves critical issues in drug delivery by encapsulating therapies within protein nanoparticles engineered for precise targeting, immune system evasion, and efficient cellular uptake. Aura is applying Nanosmart to two important areas, the well-studied area of chemotherapeutics and the emerging field of RNAi. With an initial focus on cancer, Aura’s goal is to increase patient survival rates by making chemotherapy better tolerated and more efficacious. The company was recognized in 2009 as a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum and is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

More:
www.aurobiosciences.com

Other articles/links/videos:
Time Magazine: Tech Pioneers Who Will Change Your Life
Bloomberg Businessweek: Aura Biosciences Targets a New Era of Cancer Drugs (2009/12)
YouTube by WEF / Technology Pioneer 2010: Delivering the Next Generation of Nano-embeded Drugs

Short intro to Aura Biosciences:

Career: CEO and Founding Member of Grameen Creative Lab
Interests: Social Business, Politics, Dance
Hometowns: Frankfurt, Germany

Saskia Bruysten is CEO and Strategic Director of The Grameen Creative Lab GmbH (GCL). She was one of the founding members of the GCL, along with Nobel Peace Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus. Previously she worked at The Boston Consulting Group as a senior consultant (Munich and New York). She completed her Bachelor and MBA at the European Business School (ebs), and went on to graduate with a distinction, MSc in Theory and History of International Relations from the London School of Economics. Saskia comes from a German / Canadian background, and has studied in the USA and Argentina.

The Grameen Creative Lab (GCL) was founded at the end of 2008 by Nobel Peace Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus. Its goal is to fight poverty through the spread of the model of social business. A social business is a non-loss, non-dividend company aimed at achieving a social goal. As such, it exists only for the purpose of solving a social problem, such as hunger, disease, etc. It addresses this issue very much like a conventional business would. However, the social business can make money, but investors don’t take money out of it. Profits get reinvested to further the social goal. The GCL undertakes two main activities; 1. Creating awareness to social business through events; 2. Providing consulting services to companies, entrepreneurs and organizations interested in founding a social business.

The GCL has consulted or is in the process of consulting and partnering with the following companies, universities, governments and organisations: BASF, Otto Group, SAP, adidas Group; EBS University, Kyushu University, McGill University, Istituto Europeo di Design, Finance University of Moscow; Government of Caldas, Colombia, Government of Albania, City of Wiesbaden; World Economic Forum, Clinton Global Initiative, Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs, Sing for Hope, Erste Stiftung. Additionally, the Grameen Creative Lab has initiated the setup of social business funds in Mumbai and Haiti.

More:
www.grameencreativelab.com
GCL Facebook
GCL on Twitter
GCL on Vimeo

Twitter: @saskiabruysten

Wikipedia: Social Business
Wikipedia: Muhammad Yunus
Yunus Center
Grameen Bank

Other articles/links/videos:
TruthDive.com: Mohammad Yunus and Social Business. Poor people are more socially conscious and honest.
Fora.tv: Muhammad Yunus – The Social Business Model
YouTube: Microfinance pioneer Muhammad Yunus speaks at the University of Virginia
Book by Muhammad Yunus: Building Social Business: The New Kind of Capitalism that Serves Humanity’s Most Pressing Needs
Book by Muhammad Yunus: Creating a world without poverty

Short intro to Grameen Creative Lab:

Career: Founder and CEO Cognitive Match, Serial Entrepreneur, Experimental Psychologist
Interests: Martial Arts, Sculpture, Travel
Hometown: * Nairobi, Kenia; raised in Vienna, Austria; London, UK

Alex Kelleher is Founder and CEO of Cognitive Match, which creates world class targeting software, using techniques from psychology, artificial intelligence and machine learning. Alex was previously Founder and CEO of Vivid Edge, a leading London-based web design agency with clients ranging from Shell and Unilever to Lastminute.com and BuildOnline.  Vivid Edge was sold in 2000 to Framfab (now LBI).  Alex then became Co-Founder and Commercial Director of Touch Clarity, a personalisation and reporting/analytics provider to the top UK banks, global car companies and technology providers including Microsoft. Touch Clarity was sold in 2007 to Omniture (now Adobe). Alex is a graduate of Oxford University in Experimental Psychology.

Cognitive Match creates software that increases response and revenue online. The solution uses a combination of math and psychology to match individuals with content. Founded by Alex Kelleher (previously co-founder of Touch Clarity, acquired by Omniture), the company boasts an Advisory Panel including Esther Dyson (Board Director, WPP) and Anthony Rhind (CEO, Havas Digital) – and an Academic Panel of leading professors in machine learning.

More:
www.cognitivematch.com

Alex on
Blog: Alex Kelleher
Twitter @alexkelleher
LinkedIn

Other articles/links/videos:
Younoodle: Profile – Alex Kelleher
DCPTV: DLD women 2010 / Interview (2010/06)

Short intro to Cognitive Match:

Career: Journalist and Editor TechCrunch Europe / TechHub London
Interests: Technology, Family
Hometown: London, UK

TechHub is the physical hub for the technology start-up community. It’s launching first in London in the Shoreditch/Old St area and will consist of desk spaces, co-working space, meeting rooms and an event space. It will will be swiftly followed by others around the world. While it will be a place for tech entrepreneurs to touch down, work, plug their laptops in and use the fast wifi, what really differentiates it is the mostly product-oriented tech community. TechHub will be helping to facilitate networking, collaboration, knowledge-sharing via events, introductions and the website – plus that delightful ‘just bumped into someone’ factor.

Mike Butcher pitching TechCrunch:

TechCrunch was founded in 2005, as a weblog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies. In addition to covering new companies, TechCrunch profiles existing companies that are making an impact (commercial and/or cultural) on the new web space. TechCrunch has now grown into a network of technology focused sites offering a wide range of content and new media. TechCrunch Europe is part of the TechCrunch Network, which includes country-specific blogs for France and Japan.

Mike Butcher is currently Editor of TechCrunch Europe. In addition he is involved in a project to bring European technology entrepreneurs and investors together in a club environment called TechHub (@TechHub), in London initially. A long time journalist, Mike has written for UK national newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The New Statesman. He is a former editor of New Media Age magazine, the leading new media weekly in the UK, and the European edition of The Industry Standard magazine.
Since 1996 he has launched or re-launched numerous media web sites and in 2000 he was nominated as NetMedia’s European Internet Journalist of the Year. In 2004 he was voted ‘One of the 100 Innovators of the UK Internet Decade’ by GfK NOP, the fourth-largest custom research business in the world. In July 2008 he was put at No. 47 out of the Top 100 people in London’s creative industry by The Independent newspaper and The Hospital Club.
In August 2008 TechCrunch Europe was awarded the best “Web 2.0 and business blog” in the UK, by the readers of Computer Weekly magazine. In 2009 it was named as one of the Top 10 blogs out of the UK. Also in 2009 he was named one of the Top 10 bloggers on Twitter in the UK. In October 2009 he was named one of the Top 50 most influential Britons in technology by The Daily Telegraph. In April 2010 he was named as one of Britain’s Top 100 “digital power-brokers” by Wired UK magazine. Mike is a regular commentator on the technology business, appearing on BBC News, Sky News, Channel 4 and Bloomberg. Mike’s personal blog is mbites, while he Twitters as @mikebutcher.

More:

Mike on
Mike’s Blog: http://mbites.com
Mike on Twitter: mikebutcher
Mike on LinkedIn

www.eu.techcrunch.com

www.techcrunch.com
www.facebook.com/techcrunch
Techcrunch on Wikipedia

www.techhub.com