Vineet Nayar is Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of HCL Technologies Ltd. (HCLT), a 4 billion global information technology services company and author of the highly acclaimed management book “Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down” (Harvard Business Press, June 2010). He is also an acknowledged management visionary and a radical thinker who architected the company’s “Employees First, Customers Second (EFCS)” strategy, which transformed HCL’s business, through its inverted organizational structure which has helped create transparency and accountability within the organization and encourage a value-driven culture since its conception in 2005.

Vineet joined HCLT in 1985 after earning his MBA from XLRI, a leading business management school in Asia. In 1993, he founded Comnet, where he incubated the Remote Infrastructure Management (RIM) industry, which is today a multi-billion dollar IT outsourcing segment. It was at Comnet that Vineet developed and implemented many groundbreaking policies and practices, which became core to the EFCS philosophy.

In 2005, Vineet became President of HCL Technologies and during the next five years he led a remarkable turnaround of the company, which saw its employee base expand from 30,000 to in excess of 85,000 whilst also tripling it revenues. Today HCL employs over 85,000 people across the globe and continues to expand in size and scale under Vineet’s leadership, which has only strengthened through his appointment in 2007 as the company’s CEO and most recently its Vice Chairman in November 2010. During this time, HCLT joined companies like Apple and Google, as one of only eight technology companies in the world with revenues above $2.5 billion, achieving a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than twenty five percent.

Under Vineet’s leadership, HCLT has been named “Best Employer” in India and Asia by Hewitt Associates, one of “Britain’s Top Employers” by the CRF Institute, as well as receiving a “Workforce

Management Optimas Award for HR Innovation” in the U.S. In addition to these, Vineet himself has emerged as a global thought leader and has been lauded by governments, business publications and influencers worldwide for his visionary strategy, his ability to create an entrepreneurial culture, and his warm-hearted, straight-talking approach; with his book “Employees First, Customers Second” receiving rich praise from influencers like the late C.K. Prahalad, Tom Peters, Gary Hamel, Ram Charan and Victor Fung. These accolades have led BusinessWeek to name HCLT as “one of the world’s most influential companies” while Fortune recognized HCL as “the world’s most modern management,” praise that has led HCL’s innovative management practices to be presented as case studies at both the Harvard and London Business Schools.

In addition to HCLT’s corporate recognition, Vineet has earned his own personal accolades, having recently been chosen by Fortune Magazine for its first ever, global “Executive Dream Team” which has been described as an “all star leadership” that “could coalesce and dominate in any industry”. This is in addition to his inclusion in the elite “Thinkers 50 List‟ which is a definitive list of the world’s top 50 business thinkers. In light of such notable personal accolades, Vineet represents HCLT at many prestigious national and international forums, which includes being a Governor for the ICT Industry as well undertaking several key roles at the World Economic Forum. These consist of being a member of the Global Advisory Board of Women Leader’s and Gender Parity Program as well as a Community Partner of the Forum of Young Global Leaders. Vineet has also recently served as a “Mentor‟ (Co-Chair) of WEF’s 2011 Annual Meeting of New Champions conference.

This value driven leadership however has not been restricted to the corporate world, with Vineet establishing a non-profit organization called SAMPARK in 2004. SAMPARK, under its vision of “creating a million smiles” is working with ill equipped schools in India to improve the quality of education through the “Teach the Teacher” program; investing in basic infrastructure and creating science labs in schools.

SAMPARK also funds engineering education for students by providing scholarships to meritorious students, thereby increasing the opportunity for young and bright minds to further their education. This commitment has seen Vineet being honored with the “Beacon of Hope” award by the 2009 Asha for Education, NYC/NJ Chapter.

Vineet spends his spare time reading and writing management strategy. He hosts two blogs, a personal one at http://www.vineetnayar.com and another for the Harvard Business Review, which can be found here.

There is a widening gap between what brain science knows and what business does. This is not surprising when you consider that the world of the business person seldom crosses the world of the brain scientist. It is at these crossroads we can see exciting potentials when applying this knowledge to key-aspects of business and management.

The ones who defies conventional thinking by exploring outside their discipline for unconventional knowledge and insight to compliment their existing skills and experience, can also be known as – a corporate rebel.

Jason W Birkevold Liem, holds a Masters of Science in Counseling and Rehabilitation Psychology and helps both individuals and teams to utilize the science of brain-based knowledge to improve their skills at managing themselves and others.

Steve Denning is the author of the award-winning book, “The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management: Re-inventing the Workplace for the 21st Century”. Radical Managementsm is a way of managing organizations that generates at the same time high productivity, continuous innovation, deep job satisfaction and customer delight. Radical Management^sm is fundamentally different from the traditional management prevalent in large organizations today. The principles of Radical Management^sm help business leaders to build valuable organizations in a world of rapid change and intense global competition.

Steve is also an avid storyteller and his book “The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art & Discipline of Business Narrative” is a comprehensive look at the role of storytelling in meeting the most important leadership challenges today, including motivate others to action, build trust in you, build trust in your company (branding), transmit your values, get others working together, share knowledge, tame the grapevine, create and share your vision, solve the paradox of innovation, and use narrative to transform your organization.

Steve works with organizations in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia on leadership, innovation, business narrative and most recently, radical management. His clients have included many organizations, large and small, around the world, including GE, IBM, Microsoft, McKinsey, Shell, Netflix, Bristol Myers Squibb, Deloitte, Lockheed Martin, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Norway) etc.

Steve was born and educated in Sydney, Australia. He studied law and psychology at Sydney University and worked as a lawyer in Sydney for several years. He did a postgraduate degree in law at Oxford University in the U.K. Steve then joined the World Bank where he worked for several decades in many capacities and held various management positions, including Director of the Southern Africa Department from 1990 to 1994 and Director of the Africa Region from 1994 to 1996. From 1996 to 2000, Steve was the Program Director, Knowledge Management at the World Bank.

We are very happy to announce the first 2012 speaker.

Some of Annicken Rød’s passions and beliefs is that everyone can make a difference in this world as long as they have the right intentions, the courage to ask the question “why?” and the guts to follow their instincts. Many corporations struggle with lack of innovation, ability to change and energy, while doing everything “right” in order to prevent it. “If you build fences around people you get sheep” is one of her favorite expressions, as well is  “Culture eats Strategy for Breakfast”.

At TEDx, Annicken will tell her story as a “rebel with a cause” and how she believes we all can create a bit of magic by being true to our beliefs, pursuing our dreams, and using a bit of common sense on the way.

Annicken Rød holds the role as Culture Evangelist in the American IT company Cisco where she is leading a global culture transformation initiative called United Teams of Cisco, with the mission of creating strong “tribal” identities of passionate people, committed to the company’s vision while constantly disrupting  status quo by asking the question “why”.  Before Cisco she was the Chief Cultural Officer of the Norwegian IT-company Tandberg from 2002 till 2010 (Cisco acquired Tandberg in 2010) and before Tandberg Annicken lead various teams within the travel- and retail-industry. She holds a degree in Human Resources and Organizational development from Stockholm University.