SPEAKERS

Welcome from Manchester Business School
by Dil Sidhu, Chief External Officer

A self-confessed ‘Life Student’ Dil has 3 Master’s degrees and is alumnus of Harvard Business School and London Business School. Dil has also worked in 24 countries including developing economies.

He has experience with a myriad of Fortune 500 companies delivering workshops to executives of all levels. He has held leadership roles at KPMG, Ernst & Young UK and several other premier organizations.

Mr. Sidhu will welcome all conference delegates to the business summit - a day of discussion, ideas and debate.

For now Ajaz Ahmed is best known for being the Founder of Freeserve, which was once the UK’s largest Internet Company, but that was a long time ago.

His eureka moment came when he bought a computer in PC World and nobody there could tell him how to get onto the Internet. After much persuasion by him, Dixons launched Freeserve in 1998, it became the UK's largest ISP in 3 months. It floated 9 months later with a market cap of £1.5bn and entered the FTSE 100 soon after reaching a market cap of £9bn. Freeserve was sold by Dixons to France Telecom for £1.6bn in 2001. He left soon after (They wanted him to learn French.)

It all started when CUT THE CRAP founder, Ajaz Ahmed was asked to give a talk to a group of business people. Fed up of listening to so called ‘business experts and gurus’ talking, well, crap and who never get to the point or actually leave the audience with any wisdom. He decided to come up with a different format, one that focuses on the subject matter and not the personality.

People who come in to contact with the brand start to use it in their everyday lives, they start to ‘Cut the Crap’ and get to the point or find simpler easier ways of doing things. CUT THE CRAP is powerful and becomes a way of life.

James recently completed a research study about how young entrepreneurs build multi-million pound businesses, the first project in the world to do this. The research, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, investigated how entrepreneurs under 30 were able to grow businesses with a turnover of up to £90 million, and included interviewing some of the UK's most successful young entrepreneurs.

This workshop will consider different stances on whether you should pursue making the latest technological breakthrough. Steve Jobs excelled at bringing the latest technologies to market through Apple products, while Warren Buffett has regularly cautioned entrepreneurs and investors about pursuing the latest technological breakthrough while building Berkshire Hathaway. Both have been incredibly successful, Jobs through disruptive technologies, Buffett through different means. This interactive workshop will help you consider which approach may be right for you.

Great communication is all about connection, and in this session Andrew will explain how storytelling is perhaps THE most powerful connection strategy. Using real examples and an interactive approach, he will explain how a marketing message can connect better with its audience and how individuals can connect on more than a superficial level. The key, he will claim, is to communicate in a more authentic, humanistic way that builds stronger relationships between each party and injects a bit more soul into business.

Formisimo will be showcasing its new web tracking technology that will show how big data is really used and analysed for commercial purposes.