Speaking

“The best content, best delivered of all the sessions the only one where totally immersed engagement was the default rather than something that took effort.”

Gartner

Safi has led workshops and delivered keynote presentations at industry conferences, leadership retreats, investor events, medical meetings, federal agencies, national security organizations, and leading academic institutions around the world.

Safi’s workshops teach the three zones of leadership along with ten principles for designing a sustainable innovation operating system, illustrated with surprising insights and detailed examples from Apple, Amazon, Best Buy, Google, Harley-Davidson, Lego, the US military, and more.

Contact: speaking@bahcall.com

 

 

TESTIMONIALS
  • “Safi set the conference alight with his talk … one of the most captivating speakers I have ever heard … gripping style! … Pitch perfect” –Applied Materials
  • “One of the smartest, most innovative, actionable talks I have heard in a long time. The book is also a breakthrough intertwined with some wonderful story telling.” –Verizon
  • “This is the best GTM [talk] we’ve ever had … Everything Safi said resonated with me … I was taking notes the whole time!”  –US Navy
  • “A perfect example of how an opening keynote should impact a meeting and set the tone. Having a message that will resonate with those who came to the event is always key … As a keynote speaker myself, I am hyper critical of events that are not focused on the need of audience. Too often conference keynote slots are just a box check. This session was meaty and worth the price of admission … [I took] 5 pages of notes” –American Society of Association Executives
  • “One of the best keynote speeches I have ever heard … the positive feedback we have received has been overwhelming” –Fortune 500 Insurance Company
  • “I can honestly say you were the best speaker I have listened to in my time at Kraft Heinz”
  • “Safi seamlessly merged best practices in engineering with successful business strategies … I’ve listened to it three times and am still picking up new things … I already hear Safi’s themes echoing in meetings!”  –Applied Materials
  • “The best content, best delivered of all the sessions – the only one where totally immersed engagement was the default rather than something that took effort” –Gartner

In addition to presenting at Fortune 500 companies including Amazon, Google, Goldman Sachs, Johnson + Johnson, Microsoft, Viacom and others, Safi has presented to or advised hypergrowth startups, investment funds, the CIA, the US Air Force, and the US Navy, as well as spoken at business schools and science, mathematics, or medical departments at Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Princeton, UC Berkeley, Caltech, Cornell, Bell Labs, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, the National Institutes of Health, and others.

Safi is a member of the MG100 group of senior executive coaches. In addition to speaking and leading workshops, Safi works 1-1 with a small number of CEOs as well as leaders of government agencies on strategy and innovation.

 

KEYNOTES

1— Five Rules for Innovating in Turbulent Times

Many companies struggle to adapt to rapidly changing markets: the core dominates the new, projects linger too long, and innovation theater proliferates. The apex innovators who avoid these traps and dominate their industry focus on structure not just culture. They build a system to run experiments at pace and scale without sacrificing excellence in their core franchise. Using surprising and entertaining examples from Apple, Amazon, Best Buy, Harley-Davidson, Lego, and the US military, Safi describes five rules you can use to build this system and become the initiator rather than the victim of innovative surprise.

2— The Three Zones of Leadership

Learn how Amazon beat Google, why one retailer thrived while others collapsed, and how the music industry escaped death. See how these examples illustrate the need for leaders to navigate the three zones of leadership. Learn how key leadership skills differ across the three zones, what you can never delegate as a leader, and why failing to understand these principles has caused the collapse of once great companies. Safi offers practical rules for both new and experienced leaders, with detailed examples drawn from his research and work with some of the most innovative organizations in the world.

3— Chasing Anomalies in Science, Business, and Medicine 

The secret to breakthroughs. Email  speaking@bahcall.com  for more info.

 

WORKSHOPS

Building an innovation operating system

Mature organizations often struggle to innovate as the core suffocates or rejects the new, and zombie projects, premature scaling, and innovation theater proliferate. The key to avoiding these traps is building a sustainable, integrated system for running business experiments at pace and scale and learning to navigate the three zones of leadership: core, experiments, and transformation.

In this half-day or full-day workshop, Safi describes the nonobvious causes of innovation failure inside organizations and ten principles behind successful innovation operating systems.  The principles, which are based on the novel ideas in Loonshots and Safi’s work with some of the most innovative organizations in the world, are illustrated with surprising insights and detailed examples drawn from Apple, Amazon, Best Buy, Google, Harley-Davidson, Lego, the US military, and more. Interactive exercises help leadership teams internalize the ideas and apply them to real-time problems.

Workshops are customized based on interviews to understand company-specific pain points and goals.

For additional information please contact speaking@bahcall.com.

 

WHY LOONSHOTS MATTER

With cameos from leaders of Pixar, Apple, and Moderna. Often used by organizers to introduce Safi on stage.

 

 

APPEARANCES

 

ARTICLES

 

 

BRIEF BIO

 

Safi is a former public-company CEO, physicist, award-winning entrepreneur, author of the international bestseller Loonshots, and frequent speaker and advisor on innovation.

Loonshots: Nurture the Crazy Ideas that Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries combines physics, business, and history. It has been translated into 21 languages and was the #1 most recommended book of the year in Bloomberg’s annual survey of CEOs and entrepreneurs. It was selected as a best business book of the year by Bloomberg, Financial Times, Forbes, the Washington Post, and others, and recommended by Bill Gates, Daniel Kahneman, Malcolm Gladwell, Tim Ferriss, Gen. (ret) Stanley McChrystal, and more.

Safi received his BA from Harvard summa cum laude, completed his PhD in physics at Stanford, and served for three years as a consultant at McKinsey and Company. In 2001, he founded a biotechnology company developing new drugs for cancer. He led the company’s IPO and served as its CEO for 13 years. In 2008, he was named E&Y New England Biotechnology Entrepreneur of the Year. In 2011, he worked with President Obama’s council of science advisors (PCAST) on the future of national research. He currently works with CEOs and leadership teams on innovation and strategy, and is completing the research for his next book.

 

ADVISING

Safi is a member of the MG100 group of senior executive coaches. He works 1-1 with a small number of CEOs of pre-IPO and post-IPO hypergrowth companies, as well as leaders of government agencies, on strategy and innovation. Contact: speaking@bahcall.com or reach Safi on linkedin.

 


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