About the Summit
Overview
Today’s unparalleled volatility, uncertainty and complexity is affecting every organization. The boldest and bravest leaders are using the upheaval to reimagine the path to value and purposeful growth. In this spirit, Leadership for a Networked World at Harvard University and Accenture are convening the 2021 Leading in a New Era of Value and Purposeful Growth virtual summit series to help leaders navigate challenges and seize new opportunities to be proactive, creative and pioneering.
This highly interactive series will feature Harvard faculty and chief financial officers (CFO) and chief supply chain officers (CSCO) from industry-leading businesses as they share insights and success stories with attendees. The sessions will cover:
- Strategy: How can we reimagine purpose and redesign business models, structures and systems to manage risk, maximize value and enable purpose-led growth?
- Human Capital: How can we foster a culture of vision, experimentation and innovation while operating in an environment of extreme risk and uncertainty?
- Risk Management: What can organizations do to manage risk across several dimensions, stabilizing and protecting the business while preparing for future volatility?
- Technology: What innovative digital platforms, technologies and analytics can help businesses to assess risk, predict the future and become more agile?
The virtual summit series is a must-attend for any CFO or CSCO looking to emerge stronger from these turbulent times. Join the conversation. Be among the leaders building a future of growth.
Session Lineup
February 9, 2021
Rebel Talent: A New Mindset for Innovation and Reinvention
Francesca Gino
Tandon Family Professor of Business Administration
Harvard Business School
Can you be a rebel? Should you be a rebel? Rebels have a bad reputation, but in truth, rebels are also those among us who change the world for the better with their unconventional outlooks. During volatility, uncertainty, and complexity bold and transformational leaders often need to shift their personal leadership approach, or at the very least send signals to employees and stakeholders that the time has come to move from standard strategies and practices to new approaches that spur creativity, innovation, and reinvention. In essence, leaders need to write a new story – a new script that people can embrace and enact. They need to embrace their inner rebel.
Francesca Gino, a behavioral scientist and professor at Harvard Business School, has spent more than a decade studying rebels at organizations around the world. In this session Professor Gino will argue that the future belongs to the rebel – and cultivating rebel talent is what will allow your organization to evolve and create new value for the world.
February 23, 2021
Championing Growth and Innovation at Adobe
John Murphy
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Adobe
Hear from John Murphy, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Adobe, as he described efforts to help the company accelerate growth and re-imagine its operating models using cutting-edge digital transformations, redesigned customer journeys, and data and analytics. John will discuss how his finance team has developed their subscription services models and acquisition strategy to fuel momentum and generate synergies. He will reflect on how the company’s emphasis on long-term relationships, ability to pivot, and frameworks for competing in an age of disruption have been enablers to innovation. And, he will talk about how efforts to work across the c-suite to reduce bureaucracy and increase speed and agility has accelerated organizational learning. For finance leaders interested in maximizing value, driving sustainable growth, and enabling innovations, this is a must-attend session.
February 25, 2021
Developing a Digitally Enabled, Agile Supply Chain at Corning
Cheryl Capps
Senior Vice President, Global Supply Chain
Corning Incorporated
Join us as Cheryl Capps, Senior Vice President and Chief Supply Chain Officer, discusses her multi-year transformational journey to develop best-in-class capabilities and deliver value to Corning. During this session, Cheryl will discuss the programmatic approach that was used to move from a portfolio of legacy tools to develop and deploy centers of excellence and advanced digitalization capabilities. She will share concrete examples of how these capabilities were employed to implement a robust enterprise risk management program that was tested during the recent COVID-19 pandemic, and how these capabilities are also enabling enterprise-wide supply chain sustainability and social responsibility initiatives. Finally, she will discuss the future of supply chain and her vision for the future of Global Supply Chain at Corning.
This is a must-attend event for supply chain leaders who want to redesign business models, structures, and systems to manage risk, maximize value, and enable purpose-led growth.
March 9, 2021
The Strategic CFO and CSCO
Joe Perfetti
Duke Corporate Education
As organizations navigate a world of disruptive change and quickly shifting markets and landscapes, the role of the chief financial officer (CFO) and chief supply chain officer (CSCO) are evolving – and fast. CFOs no longer simply ‘keep score’ by measuring financial performance. CSCOs no longer simply ensure reliability and gain efficiencies, but also generate growth. Increasingly, they are both involved in leading the transformation of organizations, reflecting a changing definition of value creation. We are in the era of the transformational CFO and CSCO.
During this session, Joe Perfetti, an Innovation Fellow with Duke Corporate Education, will describe the competencies of a transformational CFO and CSCO. He will introduce the concept of an agile dashboard and explore how organizations can measure and improve financial cycle times, interactions with the market, and the ability to pivot. He will also offer insights on strategies CFOs and CSCOs can adopt to rethink risk as organizations place bets in an increasingly uncertain and fast-paced world.
March 23, 2021
CFO Leadership Through Turbulence
Nelson Chai
Chief Financial Officer
Uber
The role of the CFO has been undergoing a dramatic change. This volatile moment in history has accelerated those shifts and demanded a new level of leadership, with a heightened focus on strategy and transformation. Leading through turbulence demands the right mindset, a tolerance for risk, a willingness to experiment and learn quickly, and new competencies.
In this not to miss session, Nelson Chai, the Chief Financial Officer of Uber will reflect on his experiences for more than a decade in senior positions at some of the world’s leading publicly traded financial services and insurance companies, including guiding Merrill Lynch through the 2008 recession. He will share lessons he has learned, and he will reflect on the personal attributes and competencies he has had to develop along this journey.
March 25, 2021
Reimagining the Future Supply Chain at AB InBev
Peter Kraemer
Chief Supply Chain Officer
Anheuser-Busch InBev
At AB InBev, technology has enabled the supply chain team to dream big about new possibilities, and Peter Kraemer, the Chief Supply Officer, has led the way in developing the capabilities and agility to advance this new vision. In this session, Peter will describe transformation efforts that have been built from the plant floor up to generate efficiencies, enhance operations, create resilience and agility, and lay the foundation to achieve ambitious sustainability goals. In particular, he will describe how artificial intelligence, digital twins, and planning tools have provided better visibility into the business. He will speak about AB InBev’s new sustainability goals. And, he will reflect on the application of the technology to operations to reduce carbon, support healthy watersheds, and reduce energy.
April 6, 2021
Delivering on Value and Purposeful Growth
David Ager
Managing Director, Executive Development, Executive Education
Harvard Business School
As today’s organizations reimagine the path to value and purposeful growth, newfound agility is paving the way. This "Agility" has become a common 'outcome' sought by organizations as they contend with the realities of not only emerging stronger from turbulent times, but also designing the future of value creation. Achieving agility demands new forms of leadership, operating models, and talent. And it begs the questions: What are the structures and processes that enable firms to pivot quickly? How do we fully leverage the people whose insights, ideas, and innovations are at the heart of shaping the strategy and managing its successful execution? What are the tools and methods to drive an 'agile transformation' that prepares an organization to move quickly? In this session, Dr. David Ager of Harvard Business School, will help us examine the tools needed to emerge from an exceptionally turbulent time more agile, resilient, stronger and prepared to deliver new value and purposeful growth.
Who Should Attend?
The Virtual Summit is an invitation-only program designed to develop the next generation of chief financial officers, and chief supply chain officers. Participants in the program are chief financial officers, chief supply chain officers, and/or a senior-level team member designated by the chief executive officer, chief financial officer, or chief supply chain officer of their respective firms.
Admission & Participation
Participation is limited to chief financial officers, chief supply chain officers, and/or their designee. All other applicants will be reviewed and accepted on a case-by-case basis. This event is supported by the hosting and collaborating organizations, so there is no tuition or fee to participate in these virtual sessions.
