Josh Linkner

Josh Linkner is a Creative Troublemaker. He passionately believes that all human beings have incredible creative capacity, and he’s on a mission to unlock inventive thinking and creative problem solving to help leaders, individuals, and communities soar.

Linkner founded many companies, most famously ePrize. Josh has been the founder and CEO of five tech companies, which sold for a combined value of over $200 million, and is the author of four books, including two New York Times Bestsellers. He has invested in and mentored over 100 startups and is the Founding Partner of Detroit Venture Partners. At Detroit Venture Partners, Linkner worked with basketball star Magic Johnson. Linkner is a New York Times bestselling author for Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity, The Road to Reinvention: How to Drive Disruption and Accelerate Transformation, and Hacking Innovation: The New Growth Model from the Sinister World of Hackers. 

Today, Josh serves as Chairman and co-founder of Platypus Labs, an innovation research, training, and consulting firm. He has twice been named the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year and is the recipient of the United States Presidential Champion of Change Award. Josh is also a passionate Detroiter, the father of four is a professional-level jazz guitarist, and has a slightly odd obsession for greasy pizza.

Speaking Topics - 

Find A Way
 

The Big Idea:
Every problem can be solved and every opportunity can be seized. Through a proven innovative framework, you'll discover new paths to explosive growth, competitive advantage, and sustainable results. Expand organization-wide capability for creative problem-solving and inventive thinking.

Keynote Description:
As we enter a new era of business, 50% of leaders in the United States have lost confidence in their ability to make decisions in the face of uncertainty. The level of disruption, technology threats, and uncertainty can be paralyzing. We are in a leadership crisis and must embrace a new model to meet the day's challenges.

Prolific entrepreneur, venture capital investor, and innovation expert Josh Linkner helps you Find A Way™ through his proven 5-step framework for cultivating full-organization ingenuity. Whatever outcomes you crave the most— from sales growth to competitive advantage to employee engagement— you'll walk away with specific tools to drive sustainable success.

The Find a Way™ framework prioritizes agility over brute force, creativity over hustle, and improvisation over perfect planning. Leaders who embrace the model are inspired and better equipped. They feel confident to move forward into the darkness and have a newfound capacity to win consistently, no matter the circumstances.

This Keynote Serves Leaders & Teams Who Are:

• Facing uncertainty and volatility.
• Seeking better ways to drive the outcomes they crave the most.
• Struggling to keep up with the pace of change.

The Audience Will Leave With:

• A proven model for harnessing ingenuity to solve any problem and seize any opportunity.
• Innovative strategies to drive better results every day.
• The confidence to walk into the unknown.

Big Little Breakthroughs
 

The Big Idea:
Instead of high-risk moonshots, the most innovative leaders cultivate a high volume of ‘micro-innovations’ and build a culture of everyday innovation. Gain the tools to become an everyday innovator.

Keynote Description:

The pressure to generate big ideas can feel overwhelming. We know that bold innovations are critical in these disruptive and competitive times, but when it comes to breakthrough thinking, we often freeze up.

Instead of shooting for a $10 billion IPO or a Nobel Prize, the most prolific innovators focus on Big Little Breakthroughs – small, creative acts that unlock massive rewards over time.

The Big Little Breakthroughs framework provides a specific and practical approach to unlocking dormant creative capacity. Instead of wild, risky, and expensive moonshots, participants learn to unleash small, daily creative acts to drive gigantic results over time.

In this inspiring, timely, and high-impact keynote, New York Times bestselling author and globally recognized innovation expert Josh Linkner shows us how to de-risk the creative process, build the capacity to unlock breakthrough transformations, and gain the creative confidence to take responsible risks.

This Keynote Serves Leaders & Teams Who Are:

• Aware of the need to innovate but having a hard time getting started.
• Responsible for creating a culture of innovation.
• Feeling pressure to generate breakthroughs but struggling to deliver them.
   

The Audience Will Leave With:

• A proven framework to cultivate a high volume of innovations without the typical risk.
• Inspiring and memorable stories that show how ingenuity, creative problem-solving, and inventive thinking can lead to breakthrough results.
• The mindsets, habits, and tactics of the world’s most prolific artists, business titans, and entrepreneurs.

The Music of Business

The Big Idea:
What business leaders can learn about agility, collaboration, creativity, and performance under pressure from the mysterious world of jazz. Inject artistry and agility into your business.

Keynote Description:

The mysterious and dangerous world of jazz is a cauldron of spontaneous creativity. And in times of radical change and uncertainty, it serves as the perfect model for modern leadership.

Professional jazz guitarist and prolific entrepreneur Josh Linkner connects the dots between jazz and business, helping to unlock the secrets of some of the world’s most creative geniuses. Using live jazz as a metaphor for collaborative innovation, this session is entertaining, inspiring, and directly applicable to the daily challenges we face in business.

A fusion of live musical performance and keynote presentation, the session’s finale includes audience members “joining the band” to compose and perform a song in real time to the delight of the audience. Cameras will flash as the entire group is dazzled by their colleagues' improvisation and spontaneous invention.

This Keynote Serves Leaders & Teams Who Are:

• Looking for an elevated experience beyond a typical keynote.
• Craving deeper collaboration, creativity, and performance.
• Seeking a way to stand out from the pack and lead in a fresh, creative manner.

The Audience Will Leave With:

• The mindset and perspective of a jazz musician serving as a creative new model for business growth and results.
• A deeper understanding of collaborative creativity and specific tools to harness inventive thinking and artistic expression.
• A memorable and inspiring sense of what’s possible and how to push boundaries and barriers to achieve remarkable outcomes.
• The creative confidence to pursue our highest calling and never let the music inside us die.

The Innovative Leader
 

The Big Idea:
Become an unstoppable force by unlocking ingenuity in yourself and your team, gaining confidence and boosting results in times of dramatic uncertainty and disruption. Elevate your capacity to lead and win in volatile times.

Keynote Description:
The business you're running today isn't the business you'll be running next year. In this moment of volatility and uncertainty, we are being called to lead in a radically different way… more decisive, creative, and adaptable. So how can we use this defining moment to ensure relevancy, sustainability, and success in the future?

In this inspiring and practical keynote, battle-tested CEO, venture capital investor, and leadership expert Josh Linkner delivers a modern and accessible framework to help leaders thrive in the face of uncertainty and leverage their skills to move into uncharted territory with confidence.

You’ll learn how to unlock inventive thinking, creative problem-solving, and ingenuity in every box of the org chart. The most successful leaders today help everyday people become "everyday innovators." They make sure that innovation is an everyday business.

This can’t-miss session goes way beyond the future of work. This is the future of growth, the future of relevancy, the future of leadership, and the future of success.

This Keynote Serves Leaders & Teams Who Are:

•  
• Being called to lead in a bold, new way.
• Overwhelmed with the demands of modern leadership.
• Craving a more innovative approach to drive explosive growth, gain competitive advantage, and get more from their teams.
   

The Audience Will Leave With:

• A modern framework for innovative leadership.
• Insights from some of the world’s most prolific leaders.
• A behind-the-scenes view of legendary business disruption.
• Strategies to drive growth, engagement, and success amid change and uncertainty.

Disciplined Dreaming
 

The Big Idea:
A proven system to drive breakthrough creativity. Learn how to balance raw imagination with business rigor to drive profound and predictable results. Boost creativity and rigor simultaneously to drive better outcomes.

Keynote Description:
In our modern AI-driven world, creativity has become the currency of success. It’s the one thing that can’t be outsourced or automated; the indisputable competitive advantage. We are all hard-wired to be creative, yet most of us have underdeveloped creative skills. And today, more than ever before, creative problem-solving and inventive thinking are crucial to overcoming obstacles and seizing opportunities.

Based on the breakaway New York Times bestselling book published in 19 languages and globally recognized by over 2 million readers as the definitive work on applied creativity, author and creativity expert Josh Linkner takes the audience on a journey to unlock their dormant creative capacity. Inspiring stories, surprising truths, and instantly-applicable solutions make this keynote both energizing and actionable.

This Keynote Serves Leaders & Teams Who Are:

• Facing increasing challenges and competitive threats.
• Craving a new approach to harness their full creative potential.
• Struggling to keep up with the pace of innovation.
   

The Audience Will Leave With:

• A proven model for harnessing and applying human creativity.
• An understanding of how the most innovative and disruptive leaders think and act.
• Practical techniques to generate more high-quality ideas at any time and for any challenge.

Rethink. Reboot. Reinvent.
 

The Big Idea:
The business you’ll be running in five years will be dramatically different than today. Unlock the definitive playbook on reinvention, relevancy, and sustainable success. Gain the confidence to venture into the unknown and thrive, no matter what the future brings.

Keynote Description:
We’re living in a rate of change like none other in history. The hard truth is that we can no longer rely on the models of the past and expect the same results.

In this energizing and actionable keynote, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of rapid change and how to respond confidently and intentionally. New York Times bestselling author and lifetime disruptor Josh Linkner shares a proven model for you to take control and reinvent your own future.

This Keynote Serves Leaders & Teams Who Are:

• Struggling to keep up with the rate of change.
• Overwhelmed with competitive threats, technology advancements, and shifting disruptive market forces.
• Recognizing the need for reinvention but struggling to gain traction.
   

The Audience Will Leave With:

• A proven framework to lead reinvention efforts of all shapes and sizes.
• The confidence to walk into the unknown and realize they can now navigate whatever challenges or opportunities emerge.
• Mindsets and tactics to ensure relevance, adaptability, and sustainable success.
• The ability to rethink old approaches and discover new ones.

Innovation in the Age of AI
 

The Big Idea:
With the most significant technology revolution in decades fully underway, the route to growth, competitive advantage, and enterprise value has fundamentally changed. The path forward involves integrating human creativity with artificial intelligence to thrive amidst uncertainty, rapid change, and disruption.

Keynote Description:
In an era where artificial intelligence is not just a tool but a transformative force, Josh Linkner invites you on a thought-provoking journey into unlocking the synergies between AI and human potential for next-gen engagement, growth, and profitability.

Josh Linkner, a prolific tech CEO, venture capital investor, and innovation expert, has been a technology pioneer for over 30 years. He founded, launched, and sold five groundbreaking tech businesses that leveraged cutting-edge innovation to gain a competitive advantage. Today, Josh remains at the forefront of tech transformation, running a venture capital firm and innovation studio focusing on the next generation of AI disruption.

In this mind-opening keynote, Josh shows leaders a new model where human creativity and AI fuse together to win during relentless waves of disruption and change. Through groundbreaking research, compelling stories, and unexpected insights, this keynote illuminates the path forward as AI reshapes nearly every dimension of business and life.

What you’ll discover:

• The Human Edge. Learn about the unique human skills that AI cannot replicate – creativity, empathy, and intuition - and how cultivating these skills can give you an irreplaceable edge in the AI-driven world.
• Creative Disruption. Learn how to use AI as a springboard for creative disruption, turning challenges into opportunities and ideas into revolutions.
• The Power of Unconventional Thinking. Discover new techniques to foster nontraditional thinking and break free from established and new digital competitors.
• Ethical Imagination. Explore the ethical dimensions of AI innovation and the responsibility of creators to imagine and steer technology toward outcomes that uplift humanity and protect our values.
• The Myths of Creativity in the AI Era. Uncover the common myths surrounding creativity and AI and explore how rethinking these myths can lead to breakthrough innovations.

This Keynote Serves Leaders & Teams Who Are:

• Seeking a new synergistic way where AI and human potential.
• Feeling overwhelmed and unprepared by the rapid change from AI-powered transformation.
• Looking for a playbook that mitigates risk and maximizes opportunities in this new wave of disruption.
   

The Audience Will Leave With:

• An elevated understanding of the changes AI will bring and what to do right now to adapt and prepare. 
• A leadership model to embrace the AI revolution instead of fearing it.
• Strategies to fuse human creativity with AI to gain competitive advantage and drive profitable growth.
• Mindsets and tactics to boost relevance, agility, and adaptability.