Josh Linkner

Biography

Josh Linkner is the New York Times Bestselling author of Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity, named one of the top 10 business books of 2011. Josh is the CEO and Managing Partner of Detroit Venture Partners. Together with business partners Earvin "Magic" Johnson and NBA team owner Dan Gilbert, Josh is actively rebuilding urban areas through technology and entrepreneurship. Josh is also Adjunct Professor of Applied Creativity at the University of Michigan.

Josh is the Founder, Chairman and former CEO of ePrize, the largest interactive promotion agency in the world providing digital marketing services for 74 of the top 100 brands.

Prior to ePrize, Josh was the founder and CEO of three other successful technology companies. He has been honored as the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year and is a President Barack Obama Champion of Change award recipient. Josh is a regular columnist for Fast Company and Inc. Magazine, and his work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, USA Today, and The New York Times. Josh is also a Berklee-trained professional jazz guitarist performing regularly in jazz clubs throughout the United States.

Most importantly, Josh is on a mission to make the world more creative.

Publications

Disciplined Dreaming
A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity

A 5-part process that will transform your organization - or your career - into a non-stop creativity juggernaut.

We live in an era when business cycles are measured in months, not years. The only way to sustain long term innovation and growth is through creativity - at all levels of an organization. Many companies preach the virtues of creativity to their employees, but kill their creative expression through corporate bureaucracy and its entrenched resistance to new ideas. In Disciplined Dreaming, entrepreneur and jazz musician Josh Linkner shows you how to create profitable new ideas, empower all your employees to be creative, and sustain your competitive advantage over the long term. In Disciplined Dreaming, Linkner distills his years of experience in business and jazz - as well as hundreds of interviews with CEOs, entrepreneurs, and artists - into a 5-step process that will make creativity easy for you and your organization.

Disciplined Dreaming will give you a creative skill-set in an age in which creativity represents the only sustainable competitive advantage. The methodology is simple, backed by proven results, and demonstrated through stories and examples. Disciplined Dreaming:

- Turns the mystery of creativity into a simple-to-use process
- Empowers individuals, teams and organizations to meet creative challenges posed by the marketplace
- Shows how creativity can be used for everything from innovative, game-shifting breakthroughs to incremental advances and daily improvements to business processes
- Offers dozens of practical exercises, thought-starters, workouts to grow "creative muscles," and case studies

Disciplined Dreaming shows even the stuffiest corporate bureaucracies how to cultivate creativity in order to become more competitive in today's shifting marketplace


Leaning Forward:
Surviving and Winning In the Future of Interactive Marketing

Leaning Forward takes a penetrating look at the future of Interactive marketing. Major brands throughout the world have embraced the "Digital Revolution", and have fundamentally changed the way they interact with their consumers. As a marketer, you will learn what you need to know to stay ahead of the curve and compete in this dramatically changed landscape.

Renowned entrepreneur Josh Linkner shows you real world examples of what the best marketers are doing today and where the trends are heading. You will learn how the most savvy marketers: Establish and nurture direct, one-to-one relationships. Motivate specific consumer behavior. Get marketing messages heard above the non-stop "noise". Combine brand immersive experiences with proven direct-marketing techniques. Generate "hand-raisers". Increase relevancy, response rates, and overall performance. Drive immediate and measurable results by examining the major sea of change that has happened over the last ten years.

Linkner shares best practices, trends, and helps readers avoid common pitfalls. This book is a must-read for today's marketing professional, business owner, or aspiring entrepreneur.

Titles

Unleashing Creativity
We now live in a world of dizzying speed, exponential complexity, and ruthless competition. As most of the advantages of the past have become commoditized, creativity has become the currency of success; in both business and life. In this interactive talk, Josh shows participants how to jump-start their creativity to drive meaningful and immediate results. Attendees will learn specific techniques to unleash their most valuable resources -- human creativity, imagination, and original thinking.

Executing Imagination: Turning Creative Fire into Real Results
Organizations often have an abundance of raw creativity, but lack a systematic process to harness it. In an era where ideas only count when they drive results, how do you focus your team`s imagination into practical outputs? Josh Linkner helps you make the leap from whiteboard to tangible results. How do you ensure your best ideas don`t get lost during execution? How do you maintain a creative culture through the realities of your hyper- competitive world? How do you drive everyday creativity and direct it toward specific, measurable gains? You will be energized by the answers to these questions and more in this fast-moving, fun, and interactive session.

7 Steps to a Creative Culture
Despite today`s ultra-competitive environment, companies like Zappos, Groupon, and Facebook have enjoyed tremendous growth and profitability. The leaders of hyper-growth companies often credit a culture of innovation as the primary driver of their success. In this interactive session, Josh shares proven philosophies and practices to help you build and maintain a creative culture. In turn, you will enjoy breakaway growth and success by unleashing your organization`s most powerful hidden natural asset: human creativity.

5 Big Ideas from Starting 5 Companies
Celebrated five-time entrepreneur Josh Linkner shares five big ideas that can transform your organization and career. Expanded from his highly acclaimed TED talk, Josh takes audiences through a journey of entrepreneurship. From triumphant victories to crushing defeats, audiences will be gripped with drama, insights, and inspiration throughout this exciting talk. These philosophies can be immediately implemented to drive breakaway success and seize your full potential.