FEATURED PRESENTER:  TOM WUJEC

Autodesk Fellow, Tom Wujec, will weave his work on Creativity and Visual Innovation (based on his books “Imagine – Design – Create,” “Pumping Ions,” and “Five-Star Mind”) with work he’s currently doing on two books related to “Clarity –Bringing Business Back to Its Senses.”

 Wujec will guide U40 Summit II participants through a series of interactive group activities that will stimulate their creative strategic planning processes through proven visualization techniques: making ideas visible, tangible, and persistent, and thereby building collaboration that yields clarity in problem-solving.

These exercises will be based on Wujec’s 10 emerging ideation techniques that create strategic, tactical, organizational, and personal development. These techniques are characterized by the 5 C’s: Clear, Concise, Correct, Compelling, and Collaborative.

CLARITY: TOOLS TO ENGAGE, ALIGN AND TAKE BOLD STEPS
In today's turbulent world, seasoned leaders now know that clarity is a vital dimension of business. The ability to clearly describe the forces that shape your company, paint a vivid picture of your mission, and plainly illustrate the strategies that lead to growth, largely determines your potential for success. Join Tom Wujec in a lively, full-day interactive workshop to help you build four essential capabilities to foster clarity:
1. Identify the essential business questions fundamental to success. 
From broad organizationally focused questions, such as Where is the market heading? and How do we extend our business model? to personal questions, including How do I grow in my firm? and How can I increase my personal value?, participants will use a simple framework to select questions that are most relevant and pressing to you now. 
2. Think through and answer questions visually. 
Participants will distill and answer these questions by creating systems diagrams. Drawing from a visual library and using sketches, sticky notes and visual prototypes, they will make their thinking visible, tangible and persistent.
3. Facilitate conversations to create insight and meaning.
Participants will also spend time building their facilitation skills, not only listening more carefully, but fostering an environment to help others arrive at insight faster and discover elegant solutions, building trust and bringing out the best in people. 
4. Applying systems thinking to take bold steps.
Finally, participants will work collaboratively to produce holistic solutions, applying visual systems that illustrate dilemmas and trade-offs, as well as the clear course of action to move forward.

About Tom Wujec
Tom Wujec is a thought leader in personal and team creativity, technology innovation, and visual strategy. He is the author and editor of several books, a fellow at Autodesk, an adjunct professor at Singularity University, a TED Conference speaker and a pioneer in the emerging practice of business visualization.
 
At Autodesk, Tom charts long-term strategy and introduces disruptive technologies serving the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, Manufacturing and Entertainment industries. As a founding professor at Singularity University, he teaches design paradigms, collaboration techniques and how to harness exponentially growing design technologies. And as a facilitator, Tom has developed a practice called Visual Strategy that incorporates visualization, rapid prototyping and business mapping.
 
His next book, called ClarityTools, documents the practice of making business ideas visible. In it, he demonstrates why clarity has become a vital aspect of work, why we lose it and how we can gain more of it. Based on over a decade of practical research, ClarityTools provides a rich visual framework to help teams explore, understand and decide on the essential aspects of their businesses – from broad strategic issues that affect entire organizations to specific motivations relevant to individual performance and satisfaction.
 
Tom has brought several software applications to market, including Autodesk SketchBook Pro, PortfolioWall, and Maya which won an Academy Award for its contribution to the film industry.Tom is a pioneer in business visualization, the emerging practice of using images, sketches and data-driven infographics to help teams solve complex problems. Tom's work has been featured in many international conferences, such as TED, Pop!Tech and the Fortune Innovation SummitTom is a highly sought after international speaker, and delivers visually rich innovation keynotes, workshops and knowledge maps.
 
Tom has worked as a creative director, writer and animator, has designed dozens of museum exhibits, and lives in Toronto with his wife and two children. The Clarity Workshop combines business and design thinking in an entertaining, but fruitful practice. Applying these fundamental tools for fostering clarity will make meetings more productive, businesses more aligned and people more creative.