Jef Staes

Author 'My Organisation is a Jungle'

As a leading expert in the fields of learning and innovation management, Jef Staes analyses the way in which people resist and even obstruct change processes. And he does not shy away from confrontation! With a vast range of new insights and metaphors, he makes clear why managers and policymakers often reach the wrong decisions. His new vocabulary for a new era will ensure that the reader gains a valuable understanding of the dramatic processes of change and innovation: processes which are essential to any organisation hoping to compete in our rapidly-evolving modern world. Prepare yourself for 2D and 3D organizations, and Red Monkey Innovation Management.

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Theo Jansen

Artist

Theo Jansen is a visual artist who studied science at the University of Delft, Holland. In his first seven years as an artist, he just made paintings. Then he started a project with a big flying saucer, which could really fly. It flew over the town of Delft in 1980 and brought the people into the streets and put the police in commotion. For about 10 years he has been occupied with making a “new nature.” Not pollen or seeds but plastic yellow tubes are used as the basic material of this new nature. Jansen makes skeletons that are able to walk on the wind. Eventually he wants to put these animals out in herds on the beaches, so they will live their own lives.

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David Edwards

Harvard professor of bioengineering and founder Le Laboratoire

David Edwards is a Harvard professor and founder of Le Laboratoire, a new innovation space in downtown Paris, where artists and scientists perform collaborative experiments. The outcomes of these experiments are exhibited to the public in the form of contemporary art and design installations. Since its opening in October 2007, Laboratoire exhibitions have attracted international media attention, with exhibition themes ranging from contemporary art, to industrial design, to humanitarian advocacy. The principal of Le Laboratoire as an artscience catalyst for innovation is described in David's recent book Artscience: Creativity in the post-Google Generation (Harvard 2008), which draws on the experience of many contemporary innovators in Boston and internationally. Among these experiences are David's own as founder of many for profit and not for profits organizations, including the Cloud Foundation, a Boston based foundation that oversees Cloud Place, a dynamic center for urban youth arts, and Medicine in Need, or MEND, a global health not for profit funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Mend is based in Boston, Paris and Pretoria. David has received numerous national and international awards for his work and lives in Boston and Paris with his wife Aurelie and three sons.

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Devon Reid

Poet, Speaker and Storyteller

Originally from Montreal, Canada she has lived and worked in Amsterdam, the Netherlands for the last 10 years. Over the last eight years she has supported and facilitated many men and women and their organizations to develop a greater sense of soul centered leadership. “Poetry has a tendency to transcend the tangible and the intangible. It reaches deep into your core and speaks to that part of you which is often a small voice wanting to be known, often pushed aside by business, by ego, by wanting to fit it. Innovation and creation is about surrendering, surrendering to your deeper will, surrendering to what wants to shape itself through you, surrendering to your own beauty.” Devon has just published a small book in co-creation with American photographer and designer Shayna Schapp on love and innovation called The Edge of Things. Together with the crew at new shoes today she plays her part in transforming personal, social and organizational paradigms to create a more life affirming, sustainable world.

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An De Jonghe

Recruiter, web 2.0 specialist and entrepreneur

An De Jonghe is an accomplished recruitment Entrepreneur with 10 years experience in Human Resources and Information Technology. She started her first company at the age of 24 and today serves as CEO and co-founder of Ulysses Consulting, an executive search firm with an ICT industry emphasis. An has authored two books, “Headhunters: looking for exceptional talent” and “Social networks around the world: How is Web 2.0 changing your daily life”. An also regularly contributes articles on behalf of her recruitment blogs, “World Wide Networking” and “Andejonghe”. On a sentimental note, An De Jonghe is a leading European Social Networking Evangelist, and, in particular, a Linkedin Power Connector with – at the moment of our writing – over 4000 1st degree contacts.

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Alex Steffen

As co-founder and editor of WorldChanging.com, Alex Steffen sees the biggest barriers to building a sustainable planet as political, not technological. He offers an actionable task list of challenges, ideas, products and services to help dematerialize the world. Steffen was an environmental journalist in Seattle when he realized that the tools and methods for improving society's ecological profile by and large already exist -- they just need better PR. WorldChanging.com provides that PR, linking to and posting stories by dozens of contributors around the world on everything from consumer activism and sustainable farming to alternative energy and green building projects, to technology, globalization, and human rights. Steffen was also the editor of Worldchanging's wildly successful first book, Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century World Changing.