In this issue:
- Announcing Our EC Rebrand! by Jeff Gundersen and Lola White
- 100 Most Creative People In Business by Jeff Gundersen and Lola White
- Career Opportunities:
- Manager, Demand Generation – NEW
- Market & Segment Manager – NEW
- Sr. Mgr., Digital Strategy
Announcing Our EC Rebrand!
Because we connect organizations with the future of marketing, we’ve been on the forefront of partnering with CEOs to build global marketing teams with today’s competencies in digital, mobile, and analytics. Our new mobile-friendly website—launching next week—is built around this positioning. It has clear paths to our innovative blended services for clients and candidates and better features our expertise in connecting you with important happenings in the area of marketing leadership.
Because we are adapting to the content consumption needs of our senior executive audience, we are also changing our e-zine format with our next issue. To keep you abreast of the latest news and career opportunities, we will be sending out short executive summaries twice monthly beginning in July. Look for our new Connections Briefing in your inbox soon, and have a Happy Fourth!
Very truly yours,
Jeff Gundersen & Lola White
100 Most Creative People In Business
Creativity and disruptive innovation are the keys to extraordinary value creation in business. But how does this type of game-changing creativity happen? From where do extraordinary innovators come? What are the critical culture ingredients that foster a creative environment?
Kudos to Robert Safian, Fast Company Editor, and his staff for curating this year’s list of 100 Most Creative People in Business (June 2016 Issue). Fast Company’s list highlights the most creative and inspiring leaders in technology, design, media, music, entertainment, market, science, and more.
In his Notes from the Editor, Safian highlights “15 Lessons from Creativity,” and we would like to highlight three of these lessons:
1. The Impossible Happens…. Only If You Try.– Lin-Manuel Miranda (#1), creator and star of Hamilton, was selected as the most creative business person for his hip-hop musical which has become a phenomenon for its fresh spin on the historical impacts of Alexander Hamilton. After winning a Tony in 2008 for his first musical, In The Heights, Miranda was invited to perform at The White House, and having just read a biography of Alexander Hamilton, he was inspired to tell this story in a way that would be relevant to a modern audience. The rest is history, as Hamilton has revitalized Broadway, broken Billboard and online music and video records for downloads and views, and catapulted Miranda to the highest creative rank in Broadway since Andrew Lloyd-Webber. All at the age of 36 years old. What amazing things could happen if you tried something impossible?
2. Dream What Doesn’t Exist – Just like Amazon, Google, and more recently Uber, there are huge benefits from creating a product or industry category which did not previously exist. Nike’s Martin Lotti (#28), Global Category Creative Director, created the first ever line of women’s soccer cleats and sleek uniforms worn by the U.S. women’s 2015 World Cup champions. Nike continues to be innovators in “performance athletics,” using new textured yarn to create a more aerodynamic fabric and a FlyKnit precision knitting technology to make soccer boots that fit like a sock…with studs. According to Lotti, the starting point of Nike’s innovations is listening to the voices of the athletes for the problems they are identifying. What performance problems are your customers telling you about?
3. Impossible Problems Are Addressable– Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway (#92) and Kate Roberts (#93) – SVP at Population Services International (PSI), decided the current model for philanthropy was not working to lift girls out of poverty. They created The Maverick Collective and began recruiting private sector donations of $1M+ from women to fund breakthrough pilot programs. To-date, the founding 14 members, including Melinda Gates, have invested $20M+ of their personal funds in projects spanning 13 countries and have been instrumental in attracting $60M+ of additional resources to support young girls in under-developed countries. In addition to their financial commitments, members of Maverick Collective bring their skills— ranging from research, organization, and communications—to assist in the execution of various program initiatives. Building upon lifetime philanthropy commitments of the Buffett, Gates, Zuckerberg families, and others, many of the world’s most serious problems of abuse, drugs, education, healthcare, and poverty are being addressed and financed by private sector funding and leadership. What areas of philanthropy and giving back call to you?
Summary
One other learning from the Fast Company article caught our attention… Every Community Needs a Muse. We want to give a shout-out to Barry Stowe, CEO of Jackson National Life Insurance, who recently hired Emilio Pardo from AARP as the new muse of the annuities sector to change the conversation regarding the role and importance of annuities as a personal pension plan to supplement social security. Stowe is an experienced and successful life insurance CEO with a 20+-year track record of growing life insurance businesses globally. Especially for the Boomer generation now reaching retirement ages, with the majority not having a company pension, there is a vast and growing need to transfer self-funded IRAs into a distribution vehicle with guaranteed investment returns that provide lifetime income and financial security. Executive Connections placed Pardo at Jackson National, and we are confident he will be just the muse this category so desperately needs. Good luck Emilio, and congratulations Barry on making such a smart decision!
With Summer arriving, this is a great time for everyone to take a mid-year review of how things are going. What’s working, what’s not? What course corrections or adjustments make sense for the second half?
As always, we welcome your comments and input.
Very truly yours,
Jeff Gundersen & Lola White
Career Opportunities
We have career opportunities at a variety of companies.
Take a moment to click on these links (below) for the complete position description:
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