Changing the world begins with changing the way people experience the world, both customers and employees. But this isn’t easy — it takes change leadership. Those willing to be a troublemaker, a changemaker who can stretch the organizational comfort zone to try new things. In this talk, Dustin Garis shares the unexpected best practices of corporate troublemakers behind breakthrough market innovations (from Virgin to Southwest Airlines). Whether c-suite executives or frontline managers, they don’t just adapt to change, they lead the change that has been behind all great human advancement in history.

As the Chinese proverb states, “Hearing something a thousand times is less impactful than experiencing it once.” Why then is our primary focus on brand messages instead of brand experiences? There’s a shift taking place -- leadership brands (from Coke to Mr. Clean) have stopped talking about their brand, to now focus on experiences that get people to live their brand. This is the single largest white-space opportunity for brands to grow: real life. Taking your brand off the shelf and out of media, to authentically enrich people’s life, generates the highest level of loyalty, advocacy, and sales (with a game-changing 95% lift).

Considering that “over 95% of consumers and employees are human,” how could our approach to innovation be more human? From his years helping global megabrands act like entrepreneurial startups, brand humanist Dustin Garis proved that the greatest opportunity for brands is not just innovating on products and marketing, but rather innovating on the full human experience. In this talk, Dustin Garis shares mind-bending principles for reinventing the organization from the inside out, creating a culture of creativity/agility and unconventional approaches to human understanding, for breakthrough market impact.

Now that the world has gone digital, it’s time to get offline. In our blind rush to prove our tech savvy, we’ve lost sight of our true brand purpose. To fix this, we must look beyond the noise of shiny new gadgetry, to focus on key drivers of market disruption, which are rooted in fundamental human behaviors. We now have the clarity and capability to leverage digital media as a gateway (a means vs. an end) to true brand engagement and customer experience. Brands from The North Face to Zappos have discovered that in this age of authenticity, “virtual” will always be secondary to “reality.”

“80% of Millennials prefer experiences over stuff.” This is the most powerful, yet untapped, human insight driving the marketplace. It can be seen in how the Millennial social movement is changing the traditional model of consumption, employment, and lifestyle. This experience-first generation presents a challenge to brands, with implications across all functions (marketing, product design, hiring, etc), but also an extraordinary opportunity to tap into it. In this talk, Dustin Garis teaches brands and retailers “how to fish” for hidden insights, and offers a futurist look at the trends (and countertrends) of Millennial-first brands like GoPro and AirBnb that are changing the world of business… and the world.