Diana Kander's All in Startup and the training that she provided my product management team contains the principles that can make a significant impact on our organization's business results. My team really enjoyed the hands on interaction with Diana and the mentoring that she provided. The level of engagement from Diana made it really meaningful and much more personal. Most importantly the training has provided a roadmap for transforming our business into a more entrepreneurial company.
Diana Kander
Foster Curiosity In Your Organization For Exponential Growth
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Diana Kander
Biography
Diana Kander revolutionizes the way businesses look at innovation and curiosity. A New York Times best-selling author, innovation consultant and keynote speaker, she asks some big questions. What kind of culture needs to exist in an organization to ensure innovative ideas and practices? How has Snoop Dogg continued to innovate decade after decade to stay relevant to the next generation? What causes name brands to lose relevance with their customers and go out of business? Can organizational decline be prevented?
Diana has spent her career challenging assumptions and asking thought-provoking questions. A serial entrepreneur who entered the United States as a refugee at the age of 8, she has launched and sold millions of dollars worth of products and services. She outlined her biggest lessons learned for launching new products in her first book, All In Startup, which has been used by over 100 universities in their innovation courses and countless large organizations to help their employees think more like entrepreneurs. A former MBA professor at Mizzou, she has served as an entrepreneur in residence at H&R Block, Commerce Bank and several government agencies.
Diana's second book, The Curiosity Muscle explains why it's harder to stay at the top than it was to get there. The book documents Diana's consulting experience with large organizations and demonstrates why most companies who experience significant success can so easily get comfortable, lose their curiosity and crash into irrelevance. The book walks readers through a methodology to keep curiosity alive and thriving inside of an organization, ultimately, future-proofing the business.
Fun fact about Diana: She likes to use her curiosity methodology to push herself out of her own comfort zone and achieve big personal challenges each year. Despite having never completed a pull-up prior to 2021, she raised over $26,000 for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Kansas City by doing 5,000 pull-ups that year.
Diana lives in Kansas City, Missouri with Jason, her high-school sweetheart and husband, their son, True and daughter, Bella Brave.
Diana Kander
Featured Videos
Current: Go Big or Go Home Keynote
Time 01:18
More Videos From Diana Kander
Diana Kander
Featured Keynote Programs
Unleash the Innovator Within
In today’s ever-changing business climate, your attendees’ roles have evolved far past their job descriptions. They face a volatile external environment - they encounter pressure to stay relevant to customers - they experience challenging workforce issues - and they are being asked to do a lot more with a lot less. All of this is asking them to be innovators. The big question is, are they doing it the hard way or the easy way.
In today’s ever-changing business climate, your attendees’ roles have evolved far past their job descriptions. They face a volatile external environment - they encounter pressure to stay relevant to customers - they experience challenging workforce issues - and they are being asked to do a lot more with a lot less. All of this is asking them to be innovators. The big question is, are they doing it the hard way or the easy way.
Based on her book, The Curiosity Muscle, this keynote helps members of organizations who don't have innovation in their job description to embrace and identity as an innovator. Diana will share the key skills and habits that make innovation easier and a lot more fun. And she'll empower attendees to harness the power of curiosity to unlock new possibilities and drive business growth. Attendees will leave this keynote identifying as innovators and seeking opportunities to use their new skills.
ROI & Key Outcomes:
- How to institutionalize curiosity, asking better questions to stay competitive and
relevant to your customers - How to determine blind spots within your organization and avoid falling into the “expert
trap" - How to create a more innovative culture that leads to results and drives growth
Diana Kander is an innovation nerd - she spent the first decade of her career as an entrepreneur,
launching 10 companies in 10 years, while selling millions of dollars of products and services.
She spent the next decade coaching innovators inside large organizations; at one point she
served as the innovation coach for the executive team of a $100 million dollar project.
Why Curiosity is the Ultimate Competitive Advantage
For All Company Meetings
This keynote explains exactly why most companies reaching the peak of their potential lose their curiosity and crash into irrelevance. From how we develop blind spots about our business, to the pitfalls of feeling like an expert, this thought-provoking, engaging program reveals the smokescreens obscuring imminent threats to long-term viability. It walks you through specific ways to boost innovation, uncover customer needs, solve problems, create new value for customers, and increase employee engagement. Most importantly, Diana demonstrates why curiosity is your greatest asset to drive constant innovation and help your company thrive and compete on more than price alone — ultimately, future-proofing your business.
ROI & Key Outcomes:
• How you can institutionalize curiosity, ask better questions to stay competitive and relevant to your customers and drive growth
• How you can dramatically reduce the risk of new ideas and create a more innovative culture that leads to results
• How to determine pitfalls within your organization and avoid falling into the “expert trap"
Go Big or Go Home
For Executives & Managers
Did you know that once you finish a presentation, your audience will forget 50% of it within an hour and 90% of it within a week? How are they supposed to take action on your idea when they can't remember anything you said?
This sad statistic doesn't have to be your fate. Diana's Go Big or Go Home keynote will show you how to significantly increase the amount of your presentation that an audience will retain and create that "gut feeling" that compels them to take action as soon as you're done. Based on Diana's newest book, this talk will offer five concrete tools you can use to emotionally connect with prospects, customers, and employees, and help them remember and act on what you said!
And Diana won't just educate you about these principles. What fun would that be? She'll take you on an interactive roller coaster, carefully weaving in each practice into the talk itself! (Note: Due to the audience participation level of this presentation, it is exclusively available through an in-person format).
ROI & Key Outcomes:
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How to create trust with your audience at lightning speed
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How to make your presentation memorable and worth telling others about
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How to do research that no one else will do to get meetings that no one else will get
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How to add surprises into your presentation that will keep the audience laser focussed on what you're saying
Increasing the Speed of Innovation
For Executives & Managers
The pace of change in today’s economy requires innovative, value-adding ideas to come from all parts of your organization – whether they are internal improvements or new sources of revenue. The way managers were traditionally trained stifles innovation and forces out-of-the-box thinkers out of the company. This interactive presentation outlines the must-have skill sets to effectively lead your employees. Diana will provide the framework for how your organization – and the people within it – can flourish in this hyper-competitive world.
ROI & Key Outcomes:
• Learn new skill sets required of the innovative leader
• Avoid common pitfalls of innovative leadership
• Create an internal culture of innovation so that every employee is a resource to the effort
Diana Kander
Featured Books
Go Big or Go Home: 5 Ways to Create a Customer Experience That Will Close the Deal
by Diana Kander
All in Startup
by Diana Kander
If Owen Chase can't find a way to turn his company around in the next nine days, he'll be forced to shut it down and lay off all of his employees. He has incurred substantial debt and his marriage is on shaky ground.
Through pure happenstance, Owen finds himself pondering this problem while advancing steadily as a contestant at the World Series of Poker. His Las Vegas path quickly introduces him to Samantha, a beautiful and mysterious mentor with a revolutionary approach to entrepreneurship. Sam is a fountain of knowledge that may save his company, but her sexual advances might prove too much for Owen's struggling marriage.
All In Startup is more than just a novel about eschewing temptation and fighting to save a company. It is a lifeline for entrepreneurs who are thinking about launching a new idea or for those who have already started but can't seem to generate the traction they were expecting.
Entrepreneurs who achieve success in the new economy do so using a new "scientific method" of innovation. All In Startup demonstrates why four counterintuitive principles separate successful entrepreneurs from the wanna-preneurs who bounce from idea to idea, unable to generate real revenue.
You will likely get only one opportunity in your life to go "all in" in on an idea: to quit your job, talk your spouse into letting you drain the savings account, and follow your dream. All In Startup will prepare you for that "all in" moment and make sure that you push your chips into the middle only when the odds are in your favor. This book holds the keys to significantly de-risking your idea so that your success appears almost lucky.
Join Owen and Sam for this one-of-a-kind journey that will set you on the right path for when it's your turn to put everything on the line.
Through pure happenstance, Owen finds himself pondering this problem while advancing steadily as a contestant at the World Series of Poker. His Las Vegas path quickly introduces him to Samantha, a beautiful and mysterious mentor with a revolutionary approach to entrepreneurship. Sam is a fountain of knowledge that may save his company, but her sexual advances might prove too much for Owen's struggling marriage.
All In Startup is more than just a novel about eschewing temptation and fighting to save a company. It is a lifeline for entrepreneurs who are thinking about launching a new idea or for those who have already started but can't seem to generate the traction they were expecting.
Entrepreneurs who achieve success in the new economy do so using a new "scientific method" of innovation. All In Startup demonstrates why four counterintuitive principles separate successful entrepreneurs from the wanna-preneurs who bounce from idea to idea, unable to generate real revenue.
You will likely get only one opportunity in your life to go "all in" in on an idea: to quit your job, talk your spouse into letting you drain the savings account, and follow your dream. All In Startup will prepare you for that "all in" moment and make sure that you push your chips into the middle only when the odds are in your favor. This book holds the keys to significantly de-risking your idea so that your success appears almost lucky.
Join Owen and Sam for this one-of-a-kind journey that will set you on the right path for when it's your turn to put everything on the line.
The Curiosity Muscle
by Diana Kander
Diana Kander
Featured Reviews
Diana Kander
Featured Articles & Resources
Your Customers Are Lying to You- Here’s What You Can Do About It
(Note: This is the second installment of a multipart series on conducting customer interviews and discovering true migraine problems. And check out the first article in the...
If You Want Potential Customers to Be Honest, Ask Open-Ended Questions
Three years ago, I was coaching a successful company that was very confused about the failure of a recent product launch. When I was first hired, they told me they were...
Experiments: Innovation Risk Management
No innovator fails because they couldn’t build their product. They fail because no one found value in what they built.
Here’s what usually happens when someone gets a new...
