FORTUNE SMALL BUSINESS: Go For Growth

October 24-26, 2005 Dallas, Texas Join CEOs and executives of small to mid-size companies and bring your company to the next level. Register Now! Confirmed Speakers
Jim Collins Author Good to Great and Built to Last	Jim Collins is a student and teacher of enduring great companies—how they grow, how they attain superior performance, and how good companies can become great companies. Having invested over a decade of research into the topic, Jim has authored or co-authored four books, including the classic BUILT TO LAST, a fixture on the Business Week best seller list for more than six years, and has been translated into 25 languages. Jim's most recent book, GOOD TO GREAT: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't attained long-running positions on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Business Week best seller lists, has sold 2.0 million hardcover copies since publication and has been translated into 25 languages. Driven by a relentless curiosity, Jim began his research and teaching career on the faculty at Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he received the Distinguished Teaching Award in 1992. In 1995, he founded a management laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, where he now conducts research and teaches executives from the corporate and social sectors.

Brian Dumaine Editorial Director Fortune Small Business	As editorial director of FSB, Brian Dumaine writes about the world of the entrepreneur and helps guide the magazine's coverage of small, fast-growing businesses. Before joining FSB, Mr. Dumaine was with FORTUNE for 20 years. He was an assistant managing editor and international editor, in charge of the magazine's Asian and European editions. In addition to directing and editing FORTUNE's international coverage, Mr. Dumaine, winner of numerous journalism awards, has written more than 100 feature stories for FORTUNE, including covers such as "America's Toughest Bosses," "The Innovation Gap," and "America's Smartest Young Entrepreneurs." Throughout his career, he has also produced investigative pieces as well as articles on marketing, investing, technology, and corporate crime.

Seth Godin Author Purple Cow and All Marketers Are Liars	Seth Godin is an entrepreneur, a change agent and the author of six best-selling books, among them Permission Marketing, Unleashing the Ideavirus, the Big Red Fez and his latest, Free Prize Inside. His newest book, All Marketers Are Liars will be published this spring. Godin was the founder and CEO of Yoyodyne, the industry's leading interactive direct marketing company, which Yahoo acquired in 1998. He holds an MBA from Stanford.

Verne Harnish Author Mastering the Rockefeller Habits	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 and hosts a faculty of well-known business experts including Jim Collins, Geoff Smart, Jack Stack, Neil Rackham, Seth Godin, and Pat Lencioni and sponsors benchmarking trips to GE, Southwest Airlines, Microsoft, and Dell. 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 was released in April 2002 and 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. Verne chairs the renowned "Birthing of Giants" entrepreneurship leadership program at MIT and the MIT/WEO "Advanced Business Program". He also chaired the leadership program for the Canada's prestigious "Top 40 Under 40" program and helped launch in 2002 a new executive program in Malaysia entitled "Taipan, the Making of Asian Giants."

Kaihan Krippendorff Author The Art of the Advantage: 36 Strategies to Seize the Competitive Edge	Kaihan Krippendorff, the author of The Art of the Advantage: 36 Strategies to Seize the Competitive Edge (Thomson TEXERE 2003), helps individuals and organizations unleash strategic creativity and growth. He shows that our typical problem-solving approaches unnecessarily limit our options and that, by adding a fundamentally different, creative approach to their toolkits, corporate decision-makers can expand their thinking outside of the box to more consistently outthink, outmaneuver, and outperform the competition. By blending the disciplines of competitive strategy, innovation, cognition, and Eastern philosophy he rouses innovation throughout organizations. He has worked numerous small, medium, and large companies including Microsoft, Starbucks, and DHL. A former consultant and manager at McKinsey & Company, Kaihan has held various senior management positions in the consulting, investment banking, and retail sectors. He earned his MBA from Columbia Business School and London Business School, his BSE in Finance from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, and his BSE in Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering. He lives in Miami, Florida where he writes, teaches entrepreneurship, and runs The Strategy Learning Center, an executive education firm.

Pat Lencioni Author The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and Death by Meeting	Patrick Lencioni is the founder and president of The Table Group, Inc., a specialized management-consulting firm focused on organizational health. He has been described by The One-Minute Manager's Ken Blanchard as "fast defining the next generation of leadership thinkers." Pat's passion for organizations and teams is reflected in his writing, speaking, and consulting. He is the author of four business books, including The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (2002), which continues to be highlighted on The New York Times, BusinessWeek, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today best-seller lists. Death by Meeting (2004) is following suit. His earlier successes include The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive (2000) and The Five Temptations of a CEO (1998). Pat has also completed a companion guide on teamwork entitled Overcoming The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Field Guide (2005).

Jim Murphy Author The Fighter Pilot's Guide to Flawless Execution	Jim "Murph" Murphy, former US Air Force fighter pilot, is the founder and chairman of Afterburner Inc., an international corporate training company that uses fighter pilots to teach the techniques of "Flawless Execution" and peak performance. To date, the Afterburner team of 50 men and women fighter pilots has led over one million managers and top executives of the FORTUNE Global 1000 through Afterburner's unique, high-energy programs. Murph's groundbreaking book, Business Is Combat is now in its third printing, and his latest book Flawless Execution was released in May 2005. The concept of "Flawless Execution" is a simple, continuous improvement process designed to help military aviators win in combat. Today, companies in all industries are using Murph's Flawless Execution ModelSM to dramatically improve the way their teams perform.

Michelle Peluso President & Chief Executive Officer Travelocity	Michelle Peluso founded and ran the leading online last-minute travel Web site, Site59, which was acquired by Travelocity in March 2002. Most recently, she was named president and chief executive officer of Travelocity in December 2003. A distinctive entrepreneurial spirit drives Peluso—whether it's cultivating relationships with Travelocity's supplier and distribution partners, or exploring new adventures on trips that take her everywhere from California to Cambodia. Prior to her appointment as Travelocity's COO in April 2003, Peluso served as senior vice president of product strategy and distribution. Here, she launched the company's fast-growing and innovative merchant hotel product and has overseen the build-out of the company's dynamic packaging engine, TotalTripSM. Before her Site59 venture, she managed cases at the Boston Consulting Group and served as White House Fellow and Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Labor.

Geoff Smart Co-author Topgrading: Interview and Hire A Players [DVD]	Geoff Smart is author of perenial best-seller, Topgrading, and and expert on leadership and recruiting, grooming and retaining the best talent. He is also chairman & CEO of Chicago-based ghSMART, a consulting firm he founded in 1995. Prior to founding hs own firm, Smart worked for what is now PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Smart earned a B.A. in Economics with Honors from Northwestern University, an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Psychology from Claremont Graduate University, where he was a student of management guru Peter F. Drucker.

Jeff Taylor Founder and Chief Monster Monster.com	The idea for Monster came to founder Jeff Taylor in a dream. Head of his own recruitment ad agency, Adion, Jeff was focusing his business on big ideas and technological efficiencies for his high-tech clients. In the fall of 1993, a client said to him, "No more big ideas. I want a monster idea!" Soon afterward, Jeff says, "I woke up at 4:30 a.m. from a dream that I built a bulletin board system where people could look for jobs. In the dark, I wrote down on a pad next to my bed, 'The Monster Board.' Realizing that in the morning I wouldn't be able to read what I had written, I got out of bed, went to a coffee shop, and at five in the morning designed a lot of the concepts and interface we're still using today." His "monster idea," conceived at the dawn of the World Wide Web, quickly became one of the first dot-com companies (454th registered domain on the Web) and has since grown into the world's leading online career site. Today, the Monster global network consists of 22 local content and language sites in 20 countries and serves 20 million unique visitors monthly.

John Thompson Vice President and General Manager, Americas Solution Partners Organization HP	As head of the Americas Solution Partners Organization (SPO) John leads the organization to maximize mutual profitability, revenue and growth by leveraging the complete HP product and services portfolio. Through close collaboration with commercial and enterprise channel partners to extend HP's reach, the SPO team drives best-in-class customer and partner satisfaction. John was previously Vice President and General Manager of Commercial Solutions for HP Personal Systems Group Americas Region, where he oversaw commercial P&L performance for PSG Americas including operations, supply chain, marketing and sales development for HP Business PCs, Notebooks, Handhelds, Workstations and Emerging Technology Global Business Units.

Confirmed Speakers