Hermann Simon, Partner of Simon-Kucher & Partners, and author of Hidden Champions in the 21st Century

For the last 4 years, business leaders have named Simon one of the most influential management thinkers in Europe. He is an expert in strategy, marketing and pricing and has advised clients from around the world. Simon has published more than 30 books on strategy, marketing, and pricing. Manage for Profit, not for Market Share challenges the wide spread focus among managers on volum and market share, advocating instead a clear profit orientation. H

is most recent books, Hidden Champions of the 21st Century and Beat the Crisis, are due out in June and September of this year. Before founding Simon-Kucher & Partners in 1985, Simon was a professor of business administration and marketing at the Universities of Mainz and Bielefeld in Germany. He has also served as visiting professor at Harvard Business School, London Business School, INSEAD, Stanford, and MIT.

SKP a global strategy and marketing consulting firm, with 18 offices across the U.S., Europe, and Asia. The firm has helped thousands of market leaders achieve high rates of revenue-driven profit growth, including companies in high-tech, financial services, healthcare, telecommunications, machinery, and consumer goods. SKP is widely recognized as the world leader in price consulting.

Guy Parsons, Leader in implementing Toyota's LEAN Methodology in service and retail firms (as well as manufacturers)

Guy C. Parsons is the founder of valuestreamSolutions. In this role he provides lean manufacturing consulting, leads Value Stream Mapping workshops and delivers educational presentations on lean principles.

Guy also conducts training workshops on behalf of the Lean Enterprise Institute, for both public events, and company specific engagements for clients such as BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, and Federal Mogul. At the Lean Enterprise Institute, Guy's role was to develop the program for the annual Lean Summit. He worked closely with Jim Womack in developing and managing research projects, educational materials, seminars, and building a network of lean thinking leaders in industry. Guy worked closely with Mike Rother and John Shook to produce Learning to See, a powerful tool used to guide cohesive lean transformation activities.

Now, more than ever, growth fi rms can't afford to waste a dollar or a second of time. The fi rst company in any industry that fully adopts and implements the principles of LEAN will dominate their industry like Toyota is dominating the auto industry.

David Meerman Scott is a marketing strategist, keynote speaker, seminar leader, and the author of the hit new book World Wide Rave. His previous book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR is an award-winning BusinessWeek bestseller and is being published in 24 languages.

He is a recovering VP of marketing for two publicly traded technology companies and was also Asia marketing director for Knight-Ridder, at the time one of the world’s largest newspaper and electronic information companies.

David has lived and worked in New York, Tokyo, Boston, and Hong Kong and has presented at industry conferences and events in over twenty countries on four continents.

Satisfied audiences include: Cisco, HP, Microsoft, The New York Islanders, NASDAQ Stock Market, the Government of Ontario, McKesson, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Marine Corps, SAP, Google, Digital River, Hill & Knowlton, Hanley Wood, Dow Jones, National Investor Relations Institute, Milken Institute Global Conference, America Credit Union Conference, TS2, Giant Screen Theater Association, Realtors® Conference, and many, many more . . .

Verne Harnish, CEO of Gazelles, Inc. • Founder of Young Entrepreneurs Organization (YEO) • Author of Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Fast Growth Firm

Married to Julie and father of four children Cameron, Cole, Jade, and Quinn, Verne is the founder of two world-renowned entrepreneurship organizations, the Young Entrepreneurs’ Organization (YEO) and the Association of Collegiate Entrepreneurs (ACE), Verne is presently founder and CEO of Gazelles, Inc., which serves as an outsourced corporate university for mid-size firms. The “Growth Guy” columnist for several publications and a contributing editor for Fortune Small Business magazine, Verne is the author of Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Fast-Growth Firm, which has been translated into Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Named one of the “Top 10 Minds in Small Business” by Fortune Small Business Magazine, he appeared on the cover of the Dec/Jan 2002 issue of the magazine.