Storming the Brainstorm: How to Unlearn Everything You Have Been Taught in Your Career in Order to See a New Light for Ideas – and to Have FUN!

Does This Mean War? Pricing, Business
War Games, and Successful Strategy

Registration: Open from 8:00 AM

Workshop: 9:00-12:00

How often have you been in the situation of needing to find new ideas – and feeling like everything has already been done, thought of, or explored?

Why do we put so many barriers in front of ourselves for true innovation?

Why don't we have fun anymore in our daily routines?

If you want to find answers to these questions then join this workshop, where you will experience a hands-on approach to looking at the world through a new lens filter. This interactive, engaging and passionately-charged session will explore the following areas:

1) Where are the best ideas in the world coming from?
2) How are these ideas being created and communicated?
3) Trend and Super-trend opportunity identification spotting
4) Exercises that will help you unlearn your roadblocks and look at opportunities through a new lens filter

Capital C is an international award-winning agency that has championed innovation and new ways of thinking for clients such as Pepsi, Xbox, Unilever, Frito-Lay, RBC, ICI Paints, Duracell, Pep Boys, Nike, Andres Wines and Hallmark. Matthew Diamond, Partner, will lead this session.

You will walk away with energy, passion and excitement for how to create, spot and sell ideas within your organization.

Matthew Diamond, Partner, CAPITAL C

If you would like to participate in this workshop, check the box that reads Workshop A: Storming the Brainstorm (M1901 B2) on your registration form.

Registration: Open from 8:00 AM

Workshop: 1:45-4:30

Many of the most successful companies have mandated that pricing strategy be integral to overall marketing plans. Nobody intentionally starts a price war they expect to lose, yet price wars (in which everyone loses) get started by someone. How does that happen? Price wars, and other pricing mishaps are far too common to chalk up to mistakes or bad judgment.

Having designed and conducted 100 business war games for top companies around the world, the workshop facilitator brings unique insight into how strategists make good and bad pricing strategy decisions. This interactive and provocative workshop will describe ways of thinking that lead strategists to make bad decisions despite good intentions, and how to use business war games to improve those decisions. It will include a live business war games in which attendees will compete.

Attendees will learn:
• How conventional thinking about pricing and other aspects of competitive strategy lead smart strategists to choose bad strategies.
• How strategists in real companies have used business war games to test "obvious" strategies and avoid unseen traps.
• How business war games work, and why they can lead to competitive advantage.
• How to select, develop, and conduct a successful pricing war game.

Mark Chussil, Founder and CEO, ADVANCED COMPETITIVE STRATEGIES, INC.

If you would like to participate in this workshop, check the box that reads Workshop B: Does This Mean War? Pricing, Business War Games, and Successful Strategy (M1901 B3) on your registration form.