This year, the Siegfried Award for Entrepreneurial Leadership was given to Dr. Kaihan Krippendorf, Founder of The Outthinker Strategy Network, an exclusive network of Chief Strategy Officers from large organizations with over $1B in revenue. Throughout his extensive career, Kaihan has made great strides in helping organizations and individuals thrive in the modern technological age by creating innovative growth strategies and providing unique perspectives on organizational leadership.
Beginning his career at McKinsey & Company before founding his own consulting firm, Outhinker, his efforts have generated billions of dollars for titans of industry like JP Morgan Chase, L’Oreal, Microsoft, Raytheon, and Yahoo. A notorious facilitator of impactful dialogue and author of five best-selling books, most recently the Edison Award-nominated, Driving Innovation From Within: A Guide for Internal Entrepreneurs, Kaihan is highly respected for his transformative thinking. Kaihan chose to donate the $10,000 honorarium to The Educational Center for the Arts, an organization that provides high school students with the experience of studying fine arts with practicing professional artists, stimulating a life-long curiosity for learning and a passion for the arts.
“Everywhere you look in the world, people who demonstrate superior leadership qualities are making meaningful change in the world,” Dan Freeman shared. “In understanding that, we are extremely pleased to have the opportunity to recognize individuals for their outstanding impact on the practice of entrepreneurial leadership.”
Building Your Leadership CORE
After a brief introduction from Dan Freeman, Nat Measley kicked off the workshops for the day with a guided discussion about the leadership values of confidence, optimism, resilience, and engagement. Nat spoke about the importance of these values and asked attendees to consider how strong we are in them, why we felt that way, and how to develop mental habits to enhance them.
Driving Innovation from Within
Dr. Krippendorf focused mainly on internal entrepreneurship (intrapreneurship) during his workshop session, explaining how most of the innovation happening in the world right now comes from employees working within established corporate structures. In order to maintain a continued presence in today's market environment, companies have to provide employees with the space and resources to practice intrapreneurship and innovate. To help employees overcome barriers and accomplish internal innovation, Kaihan created The IN-OVATE Framework.
Activate your INTENT to innovate
Understand what the market and the organization NEED
Generate a portfolio of innovative OPTIONS
Predict and neutralize VALUE-BLOCKERS
ACT on experiments(don’t write a plan)
Assemble a fast-moving, cross-functional TEAM
Manage the ENVIRONMENT, finding an “island of freedom”
The workshop also featured an emphasis on the potential of coordination for existing markets, the importance of being people-centric, and the value of solving social problems in a profitable way. Kaihan encouraged attendees to disregard the outdated view that places value solely on shareholders, and to also consider the social impact one might be able to achieve through innovation.
“Find a way to profitably do good in the world,” Kaihan said.
The Siegfried Group’s CEO and Founder Robert Siegfried Jr. imparted to attendees the advantage of maintaining a founder’s mentality. Founder’s mentality, a term coined in Chris Zook and James Allen’s The Founder's Mentality: How to Overcome the Predictable Crises of Growth, is characterized by an insurgent mission on behalf of underserved customers, an obsession with customer-facing interactions, and an owner’s mindset from employees. He also highlighted the importance of finding your own personal higher purpose and basing career decisions on that, as he has in “inspiring transformation in himself and others”.
The event would not have been possible without Siegfried and his wife, Kathy, who have been a driving force for innovation in leadership in the business world and has helped UD students unlock their leadership potential through the Siegfried Initiative for Entrepreneurial Leadership. The initiative is a unique experience designed to expand and deepen understanding of leadership and oneself as a leader, connect and learn with others, and inspire initiative for positive impact.
About Horn Entrepreneurship
Horn Entrepreneurship serves as the creative engine for entrepreneurship education and advancement at the University of Delaware. Currently ranked among the best entrepreneurship programs in the US, Horn Entrepreneurship was built and is actively supported by successful entrepreneurs, empowering aspiring innovators as they pursue new ideas for a better world.
About The Siegfried Group
Siegfried is an entrepreneurial leadership organization that provides financial executives with a powerful combination of leadership advisory, talent delivery, and financial advisory services. Through this strategic bundle of services, leaders and financial decision makers can better clarify the best path forward and we can assist them with getting their most important work done right. For nearly 35 years, we’ve worked with our clients to deliver more than just success.
Our higher purpose is to help people transform themselves into better leaders to exponentially improve their lives.
