Dr. Florida is an adjunct scholar with the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. and has been a visiting professor at MIT and Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential academics on the shift to the new, knowledge economy and has spearheaded national debates on industrial competitiveness, high-technology industries, and the globalization of industry. His latest book is Industrializing Knowledge: University-Industry Linkages in the Japan and the United States edited with Lewis Branscomb and Fumio Kodama, published in October 1999 by MIT Press.

Dr. Florida has published more than 75 articles and five books, including Beyond Mass Production published by Oxford University Press and The Breakthrough Illusion published by Basic Books. He is currently working on the globalization of industry, the role of talent and amenities in the knowledge economy, and the ways that cities and regions can become "hot spots" of the new economy. Florida's work is frequently highlighted in major national publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and U.S. News and World Report. He also has been a featured commentator in PBS documentaries about the U.S. economy, global competitiveness and the future of jobs. He has served as an advisor to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. Congress, state and local governments, the Canadian government, the European Union, the Japanese government, and multinational corporations. While working with the Council of Great Lakes Governors, Florida helped design the successful economic development and environmental strategy for that region, and has been a chief architect of the economic renewal of greater Pittsburgh.

Dr. Florida heads his own consulting firm which focuses on regional strategy, economic development, environmental issues, and organizational transformation. He is member of the Board of Directors of Team Pennsylvania and of Pennsylvania's 21st Century Environmental Commission. Dr. Richard Florida earned his Bachelor's degree from Rutgers College, and did advanced graduate work at MIT before receiving his Ph.D. from Columbia University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1986.

In every issue of Forbes, Rich writes a column called Digital Rules. It appears in the front pages of Forbes, directly after columns by Steve Forbes and Caspar Weinberger. In his "Digital Rules" column, Rich writes about technology, entrepreneurship, regional economic development, and the future of business and work. He also lectures on these subjects and is a regular guest on the Fox News Channel's Forbes on Fox.

Rich joined Forbes in 1992 to start Forbes ASAP, a technology magazine, along with Forbes CEO and editor-in-chief Steve Forbes, and the futurist and writer George Gilder. At Forbes ASAP Rich commissioned original works by Tom Wolfe, Gore Vidal, John Updike and other notable American writers.

Rich is an accomplished entrepreneur. He has co-founded two companies (Garage Technology Ventures, in 1997; and Upside Magazine in 1988) and one civic organization (the 2500-member Churchill Club in 1985). For the latter, Rich was a co-winner of the Ernst & Young Northern California "Entrepreneur of the Year" award.

His current board-of-director affiliations include Forbes.com, Garage Technology Ventures and Extend America.

Rich was raised in Bismarck, North Dakota and graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in Political Science. Currently, he lives with his wife and two children in Northern California. When he is not working or spending time with his family, Rich likes to fly his airplane around the country and meet the people who make America unique and great.

Dr. Noel M. Tichy is a Professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, where he is the director of the Global Business Partnership, which for over a decade ran the Global Leadership Program, a 36-company consortium of Japanese, European and North American companies who partnered to develop senior executives and conduct action research on globalization in China, India, Russia and Brazil. He now heads up the Global Leadership in Healthcare Program working with CEOs and their senior teams from major medical centers in the U.S. along with teams in Europe and India. Professor Tichy also conducts the CYCLE OF LEADERSHIP executive program at the University of Michigan. Most recently, he led the launch of the Global Corporate Citizenship Initiative in partnership with General Electric, Procter & Gamble and 3M, designed to create a national model for partnership opportunities between business and society emphasizing free enterprise and democratic principles.

In the mid 1980s, Dr. Tichy was head of GE's Leadership Center, the fabled Crotonville, where he led the transformation to action learning at GE. Between 1985 - 87, Dr. Tichy was Manager of Management Education for General Electric where he directed its worldwide development efforts at Crotonville. Prior to joining the Michigan faculty, he served for nine years on the Columbia University Business School faculty.

Professor Tichy is the author of numerous books and articles. His most recent book is THE ETHICAL CHALLENGE: How to Lead with Unyielding Integrity (Jossey-Bass 2003, with Andrew McGill). He also authored, THE CYCLE OF LEADERSHIP: How Great Leaders Teach their Organizations to Win (Harper-Collins 2002, with Nancy Cardwell) and THE LEADERSHIP ENGINE: How Winning Companies Build Leaders at Every Level (with Eli Cohen), named one of the top 10 business books in 1997 by BusinessWeek. He is co-author of EVERY BUSINESS IS A GROWTH BUSINESS (with Ram Charan), published October 1998 (Random House). In addition, Tichy is also the co-author of CONTROL YOUR DESTINY OR SOMEONE ELSE WILL: How Jack Welch is Making General Electric the World's Most Competitive Company (with Stratford Sherman). Tichy has long been regarded as a staple of management literacy as noted by his rating as one of the "Top 10 Management Gurus" by BUSINESSWEEK and BUSINESS 2.0. He has served on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Review, Organizational Dynamics, Journal of Business Research, and Journal of Business Strategy and was the founding editor and chief of HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT.

Noel Tichy consults widely in both the private and public sectors. He is a senior partner in Action Learning Associates. His clients have included: Best Buy, GE, PepsiCo, Coca Cola, GM, Nokia, Nomura Securities, 3M, Daimler-Benz and Royal Dutch Shell.

Roger L. Martin is the dean of the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. He was appointed to a seven-year term that commenced on September 1, 1998 and was recently reappointed to a second five-year term that commenced on July 1, 2005. He is also a professor of strategic management at the Rotman School.

A Canadian from Wallenstein, Ontario, Roger was formerly a director of Monitor Company, a global strategy consulting firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During his 13 years with Monitor, he founded and chaired Monitor University, the firm's educational arm, served as co-head of the firm for two years, and founded the Canadian office.

His research interests lie in the areas of global competitiveness, integrative thinking, business design and corporate citizenship. He has written Harvard Business Review articles in 1993, 2002 and 2003, and his first book, The Responsibility Virus: How Control Freaks, Shrinking Violets -- And the Rest of Us -- Can Harness The Power of True Partnership (Basic Books), was published in October, 2002. He writes extensively on Canadian competitiveness policy in The Globe and Mail, National Post and Time magazine. He is chair of the Ontario Task Force on Competitiveness, Productivity and Economic Progress..

Roger received his AB from Harvard College, with a concentration in economics, in 1979 and his MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1981.

Roger Martin is the chair of Workbrain Inc., serves on the Boards of The Thomson Corporation, Tennis Canada, the Canadian Credit Management Foundation, and the Skoll Foundation, and is a trustee of The Hospital for Sick Children. He is also on the Advisory Boards of Butterfield & Robinson, Social Capital Partners and Jefferson Partners, and is a founder of E-magine.

Dr. Cappelli was a staff member on the U.S. Secretary of Labor's Commission on Workforce Quality and Labor Market Efficiency from 1988-'90, Co-Director of the U.S. Department of Education's National Center on the Educational Quality of the Workforce, and a member of the Executive Committee of the U.S. Department of Education's National Center on Post-Secondary Improvement at Stanford University. Professor Cappelli has served on three committees of the National Academy of Sciences and three panels of the National Goals for Education. He was recently named by Vault.com as one the 25 most important people working in the area of human capital, one of the top 100 people in the field of recruiting and staffing by Recruit.com., and was elected a fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources. He serves on the advisory boards of several companies, and is the founding editor of the Academy of Management Perspectives.

Dr. Cappelli's research has tackled issues including downsizing and performance, market-driven approaches to employee retention, and the so-called shortage of information technology workers.

Areas of Expertise: Labor Economics, Economic Development, Learning, Talent Management, HR, Retention

Sydney Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School at Dartmouth College, where he teaches courses on Leadership, Top Management Teams, and Managing Mergers and Acquisitions. He has taught executive education at the Tuck School (where he serves as the Faculty Director of the flagship Tuck Executive Program), Northwestern, Wharton, Duke, Bocconi, London Business School, Australian Graduate School of Management, Melbourne Business School, Hanoi School of Business, and the Helsinki School of Economics. He holds a B.Commerce from Concordia University, a Masters degree in economics and industrial relations from the London School of Economics, and a Ph.D. from Columbia University in strategic management.

Professor Finkelstein is the author of Why Smart Executives Fail (New York: Portfolio, 2003). Based on a six-year study of 51 companies and 200 interviews of business leaders, the book identifies the fundamental reasons why major mistakes happen, points out the early warning signals that are critical for investors and managers alike, and offers ideas on how organizations can develop a capability of learning from corporate mistakes. This book was one of Fortune's Best Business Books for Summer 2003 and was an Amazon #1 bestseller in both the U.S. and Japan. The Wall Street Journal called it "a marvel - a jargon-free business book based on serious research that offers genuine insights with clarity and sometimes even wit - It should be required reading not just for executives but for investors as well." It has also been featured in such media as the Financial Times, Business Week, the London Times, the Toronto Globe and Mail, Fast Company, Across the Board, and Entrepreneurship, among others, and has been translated into 11 different languages.

Professor Finkelstein has conducted extensive research on strategic leadership, and published numerous articles in the major journals in his field. He is an expert on mergers and acquisitions, executive compensation, and corporate governance, and is an experienced executive coach. His book, Strategic Leadership: Top Executives and Their Effects on Organizations, was a finalist for the Academy of Management's Terry Book Award in 1998. His article on power dynamics within top management teams was ranked as the number one publication by academicians in strategic leadership in the first half of the 1990s.

Professor Finkelstein's awards include Finalist for the Academy of Management Executive Best Paper Award (2004), the McKinsey & Company Strategic Management Society Best Conference Paper Prize Honorable Mention (2002), the Best Paper Award from the Academy of Management Executive for his article "Leveraging Intellect" (1997), two Citations of Excellence from ANBAR, the world's leading guide to management journal literature (1997 & 1998), the Ascendant Scholar Award from the Western Academy of Management (1993), the Cenafoni Prize for research in Entrepreneurial Strategy (1991), and finalist for the A.T. Kearney award for the best research in strategic management (1988). He currently serves on the Editorial Review Boards of the Strategic Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, and Strategic Organization. He has participated on numerous CEO forums, been interviewed or had his work appear in numerous leading media outlets, served as a consultant and speaker for major companies in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Mexico, including Aetna, American Express, Avaya, BASF, Boeing, Deloitte & Touche, Deutsche Bank, Enhance Financial Services, Entergy, GE, Glaxo, Hasbro, JP Morgan, McKinsey, Monsanto, NACM, Omax de Mexico, Onninen Oy, Raytheon, Roche, Tasman Pulp & Paper, Prudential, PwC, Russell Reynolds, UPM, and Wyeth, and taught in executive development programs in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

Hubert Saint-Onge is the founder and Principal of SaintOnge Alliance. In addition to holding key senior management positions in leading companies over the past 25 years, he has developed and refined a "knowledge assets" model to optimize the performance of an organization. This model strategically integrates business plans with branding, leadership and people management approaches.

International Recognition in Optimizing Performance
Hubert's client work showcases the extensive experience he has accumulated as a senior executive in the oil industry as well as in financial services. Hubert was recently featured as one of five practitioners around the world who have had the most impact on organizations, based on his work as Senior VP of Strategic Capabilities at Clarica. During his tenure, the company was also selected as one of the top ten "Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises" in the world, two years in a row. At the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), his conceptualization and development of the CIBC Leadership Centre was featured in "Fortune magazine as a prime example of accelerated organizational learning.

Experience Around the Globe
The Prime Minister of Canada appointed Hubert to the Board of The Canadian Centre for Management Development between 1995 and 1999. He has given presentations globally on organization learning, leadership development, and knowledge value creation, and since 2002 has co-authored 2 leading-edge books in the field. His most recent book The Conductive Organization provides a blueprint for creating knowledge-based cultures in organizations to achieve breakthrough performance. Hubert is a passionate and compelling presenter in English, French and Spanish.

Experience Around the Globe
While he maintains a busy practice a select group of clients, Hubert has been Executive-in-Residence at the University of Waterloo where his interest is focused on the Centre for Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology. Recognized by Harvard University for his thought leadership in the field, Hubert has been appointed a Visiting Scholar to Harvard for the 2005/2006 year. His main areas of study will be organizational learning, knowledge mana