Lisa bodell

• Why Simple Wins: Killing Complexity to Unlock Capacity
  Bodell argues that complexity is quietly killing organizations' ability to innovate — and that simplicity has become the competitive advantage of our time. She gives leaders practical tools to eliminate the busywork, rules, and friction that crowd out the work that actually matters.
• Kill the Company: Ending the Status Quo
  Drawing on her bestseller, Bodell challenges teams to turn the tables on their own assumptions — using provocation and her signature "Kill a Stupid Rule" exercise to move an organization from complacency to a culture of active, fearless thinking.
• Leading Innovation in an AI-Powered World
  Bodell shows leaders how to make their teams genuinely AI-native — using AI as a provocateur and amplifier of human thinking rather than a replacement for judgment, and closing the gap between "we need to embrace AI" and "here's exactly how."
• Future-Ready Leadership: Clarity Over Complexity
  Bodell delivers a call for leaders to cut through contradiction and reclaim the authority to lead — replacing performative, process-choked management with clarity, focus, and the capacity to act on what matters.

speaker Bio: 

Lisa Bodell is a globally recognized expert on simplification and innovation, and the founder and CEO of FutureThink, one of the world's largest sources of innovation and simplification tools and training. Since founding the firm in 2003, she has worked with leading organizations — including Google, Netflix, Pfizer, SAP, Citigroup, and the U.S. Department of National Intelligence — helping them eliminate the complexity that undermines their ability to innovate and adapt. The bestselling author of Why Simple Wins and Kill the Company, she reaches more than 100,000 people a year and ranks on the list of the Top 50 Speakers Worldwide.

A serial entrepreneur who began her career at the advertising agency Leo Burnett after earning her degree from the University of Michigan, Bodell has taught innovation at American University and Fordham, delivered a popular TED talk, and serves on advisory boards including the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council and the Association of Professional Futurists. A monthly contributor to Forbes, she is known for a high-energy, practical style — challenging the status quo while making change feel achievable, with tools audiences can use immediately.

Summary: Why Simple Wins

Bodell's core argument inverts a common assumption about underperformance: when the most important work isn't getting done, the problem usually isn't the people — it's the work itself. Organizations accumulate complexity by default — redundant meetings, obsolete rules, endless reports — until that complexity crowds out the creative, high-value work that drives innovation. Her response is not a productivity hack but a leadership discipline: deliberately removing friction to create capacity — the time and mental space people need to think, adapt, and innovate. What makes her distinctive on stage is that she doesn't just diagnose the problem; she hands audiences concrete, slightly subversive tools — like challenging them to "kill a stupid rule" on the spot — that turn the abstract idea of simplification into immediate action.

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