Meet the Innovators & Thoughts Leaders at Adobe Summit

It’s just one more week until the biggest Euro­pean Adobe Sum­mit we have held to date (it’s already a sell-out) and I am par­tic­u­lar­ly excit­ed about the incred­i­ble Inno­va­tions & Thought Lead­ers Track we’ve been work­ing tire­less­ly to put togeth­er. We’ve drawn togeth­er a group of ver­i­ta­ble thought lead­ers – from busi­ness lead­ers to mar­ket­ing prac­ti­tion­ers, indus­try com­men­ta­tors to inspi­ra­tional speak­ers – all of whom are rein­vent­ing their own, and our, day jobs.

Last year, the Mar­ket­ing Inno­va­tions Track was one of the most pop­u­lar, but what you said was that you want­ed more. And that’s what we’re deliv­er­ing – more ses­sions (16 across the two days) so you can max­imise the num­ber you attend, all in bite size chunks (20 minute TEDTalk-style) but still long enough to inspire and ignite inno­va­tion, cre­ativ­i­ty and busi­ness improvement.

Below are just a selec­tion of ses­sions to whet your appetite.

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David Edel­man, Prin­ci­pal of McK­in­sey & Company

Some big names include David Edel­man, Prin­ci­pal of McK­in­sey & Com­pa­ny and lead­ing thinker in dig­i­tal who will share insights on how to man­age the strat­e­gy, organ­i­sa­tion, and infra­struc­ture trans­for­ma­tions required to dri­ve dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion while mak­ing sure the cus­tomer is always at the heart of your busi­ness: ‘Restruc­tur­ing your organ­i­sa­tion for the dig­i­tal age’- May 14th- CS Room 11 — 1.55pm‑2.15pm.

Fresh from SXSW, Minter Dial, Pres­i­dent and Founder of The Myn­d­set Com­pa­ny and Net­ex­p­lo will be show­ing us some of the most excit­ing tech inno­va­tions in the mar­ket now as well as giv­ing us a sneak peek into the next wave of break­throughs. All of these are not just indus­try-chang­ing, but will have major soci­etal impact, and busi­ness­es will need to think dif­fer­ent­ly to make these trends work for them. ‘New tech inno­va­tions and trends world­wide impact­ing soci­ety (drawn from Net­ex­p­lo and SXSW)’- May 15th- N20/3- 11.45am- 12.05pm.

This will be fol­lowed lat­er on by Pete Black­shaw, Glob­al Head of Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing and Social Media for Nestlé who will be speak­ing about his work in rein­vent­ing the brand and cus­tomer con­ver­sa­tion the Nes­tle way. Pete shared some thoughts with us recent­ly on our CMO blog, click through for a flavour of his ses­sion. He will be speak­ing at 3.30pm in CS Room 8 on day two.

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Will Hay­ward, Vice Pres­i­dent Europe, BuzzFeed

There will be a large focus on mar­ket­ing brav­ery at Sum­mit as Will Hay­ward, vice pres­i­dent of adver­tis­ing for Buz­zFeed takes to the stage to explore social shar­ing and why now, more than ever, con­ver­gence of social and mobile must lead the way: _“We think about social cur­ren­cy quite often. Why do peo­ple share? What is it about the bits of con­tent that they share that makes them want to do so? And how can brands cre­ate some­thing of val­ue that would encour­age their tar­get audi­ence to repost the con­tent?” _‘Social shar­ing- the new cur­ren­cy for the social web’- May 14th - CS ROOM 11- 1:30pm — 1:50pm

Dr David Cox, chief med­ical offi­cer at Head­space will be help­ing us to unlock our cre­ativ­i­ty through mind­ful­ness and med­i­ta­tion. Dur­ing this track, audi­ences can expect to be tak­en through med­i­ta­tion exer­cis­es which aim to encour­age dig­i­tal mar­keters to embrace the con­cept of mind­ful­ness in their approach to busi­ness: _“Mind­ful­ness is incred­i­ble in its broad applic­a­bil­i­ty. In essence it teach­es greater aware­ness, of your­self and of oth­ers. Huge ben­e­fits fol­low, both in terms of health – less stress, depres­sion, anx­i­ety, bad habits, and so on – and also in terms of rela­tion­ships and per­for­mance – greater focus, atten­tion, empa­thy, cre­ativ­i­ty” ‘_Plug in to unplug’- May 15th - N20/1 — 2.40pm- 3pm.

What’s real­ly excit­ing is that more often than not, tech­nol­o­gy seems to get the big focus at events like this. Grant­ed, the tech­nol­o­gy part is excit­ing, and is undoubt­ed­ly a cat­a­lyst to change soci­eties, busi­ness­es and indi­vid­ual lives, but how do mar­keters man­age the peo­ple and process for this change? So this year we’ve decid­ed to focus on peo­ple and process and in par­tic­u­lar, how we can encour­age and inspire dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. Hope­ful­ly the great minds we’re bring­ing togeth­er for the mar­ket­ing inno­va­tions track will chal­lenge audi­ences to think dif­fer­ent­ly and to be brave in order to make an impact in the new dig­i­tal age.

For the full list of Inno­va­tions & Thought Lead­ers track ses­sions, please vis­it http://summit.adobe.com/emea/sessions/at-a-glance/ and be part of the con­ver­sa­tion #Adobe­Sum­mit.