Press Releases
CEO Leadership Summit 2008 Review
June 2008
A number of CEOs and other business leaders gathered at the London Stock Exchange on Wednesday 18 June to attend the CEO leadership summit 2008 produced by ICON Corporate Finance and Intellect. The event, which was sponsored by the Daily Telegraph Business Club, drew speakers from as far as China and America who came to share their experiences and impart insights on how the CEOs in the audience could become the global leaders of tomorrow.
Following an introduction from Alan Bristow, CEO of ICON Corporate Finance, the delegates listened to a motivational talk from the bestselling author of The Naked Leader, David Taylor who articulated his formula for being successful in business. David, who advises many of the FTSE 100 CEOs and is also an Honorary Professor of Leadership at Warwick Business School, touched on areas of personal success and an individual’s ability to succeed by setting clear, achievable, targets and ensuring that they do everything in their power to meet them.
The next speaker was James Foster, CEO and co-founder of XMOS Semiconductors, a fabless semi-conductor and software company that has achieved considerable success in a competitive market in only it’s first three years. James’ talk was entitled Born Global. XMOS has considerable pressure to succeed in order to justify the $100-$150m of cash investment that a semi-conductor business requires as standard just to reach the stage of releasing its first commercially viable product. XMOS has found that by establishing expert regional management in their overseas offices it has given them the power and time to deal with key strategic issues; their productivity and value to the company has increased no end.
After a short break for coffee, Chris Baker of Oracle took the floor to explain how to cultivate innovation within an organisation in order to fuel the top and bottom line. Chris, who is responsible for innovation across Oracle UK, Ireland, Israel and South Africa, explained how far the EU lags behind Japan and the US in Research and Development spend and the potentially detrimental knock on effects that this might have on UK Plc. He also broke down his three key ingredients for innovation which are: an original idea, the ability to develop the idea into a product or service, and the ability to sell the product or service. He then went on to highlight Oracle’s modus operandi for investing in young innovative companies.
Having heard the opinions of Oracle, Yann de Vries of CISCO Systems took to the stage to discuss the practical challenges of achieving global success. In his position of responsibility for Cisco’s corporate business development activities in Europe, Mr de Vries explained that Cisco needed to add between $4 and $5 billion in order to hit internal targets and that in order to do this it was essential to leverage off the company’s $24 billion balance sheet.
Cisco currently have 80 to 100 people worldwide in the development team whose job is to nurture an innovation ecosystem by cultivating local networks of innovators around the world. Cisco has also found that working with VCs is an excellent way to provide them with access to innovators.
Mr de Vries added that Cisco’s strategy is to avoid buying anything that bigger than 10% of the size of Cisco, in order to ensure ease of integration.
The delegates then took a break for lunch before returning for the afternoon session which began with a talk from Sue Thexton who was EMEA Vice President of Macromedia for ten years and who has also grown and built a number of other software and media companies.
Sue led the attendees through the story of Adobe and the steps that are required to become an industry standard. She explained the vital role perseverance played in Adobe’s success. Launched in 1993, Adobe took ten years to become a lead player in its sector and only by maintaining the highest standards did their success manifest itself.
Adobe comprises two key parts; the technology that allows you to open a document and the reader that allows a document to be opened. Originally, Adobe charged people for the reader but Sue told the audience that one of the most important decisions they ever made was to give the reader away for free, which at the time drew a great deal of criticism.
The last individual speaker of the day was Robin Abrams, the ex-president and CEO of Palm Computing, Inc. and ex-president of Apple, Americas. Robin gave an illuminating talk on the perils, pitfalls and opportunities that await anyone wishing to do business in Asia.
The key starting point is to be realistic about what market you can go after and to analyse how quickly it is changing. It is also important to realise that seldom can a single country deliver profitability and that you need to target the region as a whole. Robin highlighted the need to be flexible and accept different working practices than you might be used to. Two such examples were working through indirect channels and granting exclusivity agreements.
The next important ingredient is to maintain momentum. You have to be opportunistic as you will not be given years to prove the market’s potential. It is vital to align staff that might be from different cultural backgrounds, beware of local customs and triple check all translations.
The day was brought to a conclusion with a panel session, fielding the combined experiences from senior executive roles within Apple, Microsoft, Partygaming and 3i. Debate was lively and the panel hosted a variety of questions on the best methods for financing global expansion and how to stay ahead of the competition in the current economic climate.
Having discussed a number of other topical issues which drew on the panel’s extensive business knowledge, Alan Bristow gave a final word of thanks before the delegates departed following an extremely informative and enlightening day at The Stock Exchange.
