As president of a leading innovation consultancy, Mark Payne is an expert on making great ideas profitable. He talks about increasing the odds of success by avoiding ‘unicorns,’ ideas that are beautiful but will never work in the real world.

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As co-founder and president of the leading innovation consultancy Fahrenheit 212, Mark Payne has spearheaded innovation projects that have created over $3 billion in revenue for Fortune 500 companies, entrepreneurial emerging businesses, and private equity firms.

As the architect of the firm’s Money + Magic philosophy, its outcome-based business model and its breakthrough Two-Sided Innovation Method of fusing analytical commercial strategy with user-centered creativity, he is both a front line innovator shaping new product pipelines for the world’s great companies, and an industry thought leader. Challenging innovation myths and orthodoxies, driving toward more effective ways to think and work in pursuit of the growth companies rely on innovation to deliver.

Fahrenheit 212 has been described as ‘The Innovator’s Paradise’ by Fortune, a ‘White Hot Idea Factory’ by BusinessWeek, the ‘Epicenter of Innovation’ by Esquire, and ‘Melding the Best of McKinsey & IDEO’ by Fast Company.

Mark’s insights on how innovators from big organizations to startups can transform the odds of success are captured in the book How to Kill a Unicorn (Penguin Random House/Crown Business, October 2014) highlighted with behind the scenes stories from the firm’s work with the likes of The Coca-Cola Company, Samsung, Procter & Gamble, and GE.

A regularly quoted innovation expert, his perspectives have appeared in leading publications including Fast Company, Fortune, BusinessWeek, Investor’s Business Daily, Wired and Crane’s. A provocative speaker on the subjects of innovation methodology, creative thinking, growth strategy and design, his recent speaking engagements have included the Chief Innovation Officers’ Summit (New York, London), Harvard Business School’s xDesign Conference, FT Innovate, the Wharton School of Business, Columbia Business School, Pratt Institute of Design, IFT Wellness, New York University, HEC Paris, Johns Hopkins University, and leadership conferences at many top tier companies.

Mark holds a BA cum laude in economics and psychology from Middlebury College, coaches little league baseball, collects vintage guitars, and is a trustee of the Woodstock Day School.

Healthcare technology company LeanTaaS designs software to optimize the hospital experience for patients and staff. CEO Mohan Giridharadas explains how algorithms can increase efficiency with minimal disruption.

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LeanTaaS is a Silicon-Valley based software company focused on driving healthcare operational performance improvement through analytics. We are able to deliver compelling solutions in one-third the time and at one-third the cost of an equivalent alternative – and can do this due to two underlying reasons. First, we have built a sophisticated analytics platform and a suite of optimization algorithms that helps us improve the utilization of critical assets (people, equipment, rooms, etc,) in a hospital. Second, we have a unique delivery model that combines operational domain expertise with advanced mathematical capabilities and software systems expertise in a way that is minimally invasive to clients.

STORY is a retail space unlike any other, one that has the point of view of a magazine, changes like a gallery and sells things like a store. Founder Rachel Shechtman talks about re-envisioning retail as a media channel.

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Rachel Shechtman is a fourth generation entrepreneur who loves finding the next big thing as much as sharing it with others. In 2003 Rachel launched Cube Ventures, a retail and marketing consultancy whose clients included: Lincoln, TOMS, Kraft Foods, GILT, GAP, and AOL. In December 2011, she launched STORY, a 2000 sq. ft retail concept in Chelsea; STORY is a space that has the point of view of a magazine, changes like a gallery and sells things like a store.

STORY has received Fashion Group International’s 2014 Rising Star Award for Best Retail Concept and was named to Time Out NY’s list of 15 NY Top Shops. STORY’s model of “retail media” has earned attention from the press, and on its behalf Rachel has been profiled by the New York Times, Ad Age, and named to Crain’s NY 40 Under 40 List for 2015, Fortune’s 40 Under 40 List for 2013, and on Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business.

Outside of STORY, Rachel is an active member of the startup community, currently an advisor to Quirky, Birchbox, Bow & Drape, MikMak and SmartyPants Vitamins. She also sits on the Digital Advisory Board of American Express OPEN and on the Marketing & Media Committee of the Cooper Hewitt.

Alan Kelly is a visionary strategist, author, professor, political analyst, and award-winning Silicon Valley entrepreneur. He is Founder and Chief Executive of Playmaker Systems, LLC, a strategy and simulations firm. Based in the Washington D.C. area, the company’s services are based on a breakthrough decision system for communications, social media, marketing, sales and military intelligence professionals. Its clients include Abbott, Bayer, Dell, HP, Intel, Royal Dutch Shell, SAP, the U.S. Department of Defense, and VMware.

Kelly’s work is driven by a simple idea: That influence – like chemistry, biology, language and even music – is underlain by a single system of irreducibly unique elements. In this regard, he envisions a modern lingua franca for managers of reputations, brands and other intangible assets, applicable across industries, governments and cultures.

Kelly’s development of a periodic table of influence in 2004 is testament to his vision for a comprehensive standard in the industries of influence – notably management, strategy, marketing, sales, advertising, public relations, public affairs, and information warfare. It is a system that names, describes and prescribes the work of influence strategists (i.e., playmakers) everywhere, catalogued in his landmark book, The Elements of Influence: The New Essential System for Managing Competition, Reputation, Brand, and Buzz (Penguin Books 2006). Kelly holds a U.S. patent for this work and has published numerous opinion-editorials and peer review papers, including the 2013 publication of Dancing with the Giant, a challenge to communications scholars and practitioners, published in the International Journal of Communication.

Since 2008, Kelly has been a regular contributor to Sirius XM satellite radio, P.O.T.U.S. 124, in the weekly segments Plays of the Week and Plays for the Presidency. He is a frequent contributor to The Huffington Post and Politix. From 2011 to 2014, Kelly served as an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Political Management at the The George Washington University, teaching a frontier graduate course entitled, Political Strategy and Simulation. In 2008, at the USC Annenberg School of Communication, he helped pioneer virtual teaching by way of his first graduate course, Strategies of Influence.

In technology and marketing, Kelly is known for his founding and leadership of Applied Communications Group, a San Francisco-based public relations and research firm that earned distinction for its quantitative grounding and unique philosophy of competitive communications. From its formation in 1992 to the sale of its assets in 2003, the firm garnered numerous best-in-class recognitions for its work with Oracle, Hewlett–Packard, Cisco, Sun Microsystems, Genentech, VeriSign, PayPal, Veritas Software, BEA Systems, TechNet and Informatica, among others.

Kelly, 57, holds a Master’s Degree in Communication Research from Stanford University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Public Relations from the University of Southern California. He lives with his wife and two children in Maryland and enjoys racing his Etchells one-design sailboat, Playmaker.

Scott Morrison is Senior Vice President and a Distinguished Engineer at CA Technologies. He joined CA as part of its acquisition of Layer 7 Technologies, where he was CTO. Scott was a part of Layer 7 at its inception and led the company to develop the industry’s leading security infrastructure for mobile systems, cloud computing and APIs. An architect and developer of highly scalable, enterprise systems for over 25 years, Scott has deep experience across industry sectors as diverse as health care, travel and transportation, and financial services. He has been a Director of Architecture and Technology at Infowave Software, a leading maker of wireless security and acceleration software for mobile devices, and was a senior architect at IBM. Before moving to the private sector, Scott was a member of the world-renowned medical research program of the University of British Columbia, studying neurodegenerative disorders using medical imaging technology.

Scott is a passionate, entertaining and highly sought-after speaker. His quotes appear regularly across media, appearing in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and CNN, among many others. Scott has published over 75 book chapters, magazine articles, and papers in medical, physics, and engineering journals. His work has been acknowledged in the New England Journal of Medicine, and he has published in journals as diverse as the IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, the Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow, and Neurology. His articles have appeared in Forbes and CNN-Money. He is the co-author of the graduate text Cloud Computing, Principles, Systems and Applications published by Springer, and is on the founding editorial board of Springer’s new Journal of Cloud Computing Advances, Systems and Applications (JoCCASA). He co-authored both Java Web Services Unleashed and Professional JMS. Scott is an editor of the WS-I Basic Security Profile (BSP), and is co-author of the originalWS-Federation specification. He is a recent co-author of the Cloud Security Alliance’s Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing, and an author of that organization’s Top Threats to Cloud Computing research. Scott was recently a featured speaker for the Privacy Commission of Canada’s public consultation into the privacy implications of cloud computing. He has even has lent his expertise to the film and television industry, consulting on a number of features including the X-Files. Scott’s current interests are in cloud computing, API security and secure mobile computing—and of course, his wife and two great kids.

Jake Barton uses architecture, technology and storytelling to create experiences where visitors learn by doing. He talks about innovation in museum design and retailing, and the challenge of designing a design museum.

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The firm he founded, Local Projects, has created landmark media design projects like the 9/11 Memorial Museum, the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, and Gallery One at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Local Projects has won every top design award including the National Design Award, a Clio, and was named second of the top ten most innovative design firms by Fast Company Magazine for its redefinition of emotional storytelling. Local Projects has expanded its clients to include corporate innovation centers, public memorials, retail environments, libraries, and attractions. Clients include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eisenhower Memorial with Frank Gehry, StoryCorps, GE, Johnson & Johnson, AMNH, Tech Museum, and Microsoft.

Based in China since 1985, Dr. Jonathan Woetzel has been instrumental in building McKinsey & Company’s China office. He talked with Dave about how the major forces of urbanization, demographics, technology, and globalization are disrupting the business world.

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In addition to his work helping Chinese and other Asian businesses prepare for global growth, Jonathan is a director of the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), McKinsey’s business and economics research arm. He also leads McKinsey’s Cities Special Initiative and is responsible for convening McKinsey’s work with city, regional, and national authorities in more than 40 geographies around the world. He is a co-chair of the non-profit think tank, the Urban China Initiative—a joint venture of Columbia University, Tsinghua University, and McKinsey—that aims to develop and implement solutions to China’s urbanization challenges.

Jonathan has led numerous research efforts on global economic trends, including growth and productivity, urbanization, affordable housing, energy and sustainability, e-commerce, and the economic impact of the Internet, as well as on productivity growth and economic development in China and Asia.

Jonathan’s public sector work is extensive. He has advised national governments in Asia on improving the environment for foreign investors, national energy policy, and economic development strategies. He also leads work with local government authorities, having conducted more than 60 projects throughout China to support local economic development and transformation. This includes working extensively in real estate—specifically, on commercial revitalization—and advising on energy investment strategies and energy productivity and transparency, among other topics.

Jonathan works in the private sector as well, most often on topics related to corporate strategy, operations, and organization. He has served clients in industries such as energy, metals and mining, health care, telecommunications, and transportation. He supported the largest company in China in a fundamental restructuring that led to the then-largest foreign listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

Jonathan actively participates in a number of international forums and lectures at the Guanghua School of Business and the China-Europe International Business School, and is also an honorary lecturer at Jiaotong University’s Antai Business School.

Published widely in both Chinese and international publications, Jonathan has written five books on China, including Capitalist China: Strategies for a Revolutionized Economy (Wiley & Sons, 2003), Operation China: From Strategy to Execution (Harvard Business Press, 2007), and One Hour China (Towson Press, 2013). He has also co-authored, with Richard Dobbs and James Manyika, No Ordinary Disruption: The Four Global Forces Breaking All the Trends (PublicAffairs, May 2015).

A US citizen, Jonathan is proficient in Mandarin, Spanish, and German.

How did two people who knew nothing about wine start the world’s largest winery? Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey share the entrepreneurial strategies they used to transform the wine industry.

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Starting with no money and no knowledge of their business, Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey relied on entrepreneurial culture to overcome formidable obstacles in the highly competitive and controlled wine industry. Barefoot Wine is now the world’s largest wine brand. Internationally, it has become the Levi Strauss of American Wine. But it represents more than just a wine label, it represents the success of a small start-up that began in a laundry room and wound up in the boardroom of the world’s largest wine company.

Their New York Times bestselling business book, The Barefoot Spirit, How Hardship, Hustle, and Heart Built America’s #1 Wine Brand, chronicles their journey from humble beginnings to nationwide blockbuster. Barefoot is now the #1 wine brand in the world.

Michael and Bonnie are sought after international speakers and corporate trainers. They are regular guests on radio and television. They have shared their principles with more than 30 schools of entrepreneurship such as Syracuse, Cornell, Pepperdine and MIT Executive Forum. They are Fox Radio News Network’s Workplace Culture Experts, and they have written hundreds of articles for national and international business and professional publications such as Forbes, Inc., and Investor’s Daily.

They recently released a companion book to their New York Times Bestseller entitled, The Entrepreneurial Culture, 23 Ways to Engage and Empower Your People.

The author of Fifty Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do), Gever talks about the lack of authenticity in many children’s activities, the importance of risk-taking for development – and how this applies to innovation in business.

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Gever founded Tinkering School in 2005 in order to learn how children become competent and to explore the notion that kids can build anything, and through building, learn anything. In 2009 he established a non-profit to manage Tinkering School and its various project: the Institute for Applied Tinkering. In 2010, as a project of the IAT, he co-founded Brightworks – a K-12 school where he is the Education Architect and “everything is interesting.” A self-taught computer scientist with no formal education, Gever’s expertise is really in… thinking. Gever has taught workshops and made presentations to both kids and adults around the world. He has spoken at TED,twice, written articles for MAKE:, and authored the book Fifty Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do).

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Mark Schwartz is the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), a component of the Department of Homeland Security. One of his key goals there is to increase the IT organization’s responsiveness to mission needs by reducing time from concept to deployment for new capabilities. To support this goal, Mr. Schwartz has introduced such practices as agile and lean development, continuous delivery, and DevOps. He also leads efforts across DHS to introduce agile IT approaches.

Prior to this position, Mr. Schwartz was the CIO of Intrax Cultural Exchange, where his innovative Family Room application drove dramatic market share, revenue, and profit growth. This accomplishment was recognized by CIO Magazine with a CIO 100 award in 2006. In 2010 Mr. Schwartz was named one of the Premier 100 IT Leaders by Computerworld Magazine.

Mr. Schwartz holds a B.S. degree in Computer Science from Yale University, an M.A. in Philosophy from Yale University, and an M.B.A. from Wharton.