Business in the Age of Google Thought Leader & Worldwide Media Leader
Jeff Jarvis is the author of What Would Google Do? and Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live, as well as the ebook Gutenberg the Geek. He has been a business keynote speaker and moderated at conferences around the world – including South by Southwest, the World Economic Forum at Davos, and Picnic; for industry associations ranging from technology to law to libraries and even to truck-stop and retirement-community owners; and for companies, including Salesforce.com, Hearst, Gucci, LexisNexis, Axel Springer, and Holtzbrinck. Jarvis delights in highly interactive conversations with his audiences, speeding around the room like Oprah to tackle problems together.
Jarvis is director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. He blogs at Buzzmachine.com, tweets under @jeffjarvis (with 100,000+ followers), and posts at Google+, where he has more than 2 million followers). Jarvis is also cohost of the popular weekly podcast “This Week in Google” and writes frequently for the Guardian. Previously, he was creator and founding editor of Entertainment Weekly magazine; TV critic for TV Guide and People magazines; president of Advance.net, the online arm of Advance Publications (Conde Nast and Newhouse Newspapers); Sunday editor and associate publisher of the New York Daily News; and a columnist on the San Francisco Examiner. He has consulted for media, retail, and technology companies.
More on Jarvis’s Speaking Topics
- Publicness and Privacy: The author of the provocative book Public Parts argues in favor of the benefits of sharing and warns of the dangers of overreacting to fears about privacy brought on by the internet. Privacy matters and needs protection but so does publicness, Jarvis contends, as he brings historical and personal perspective to understanding how technology can change society for the better.
- What Would Google Do?: The author of this best-selling book takes audiences through a fascinating exercise, asking them to imagine the Google car company or restaurant or government … or version of their own company. Thus he helps them to understand what made Google the fastest growing company in the history of business and to find their own opportunities in the disruption brought on by the internet.
- Save the Net: The internet is in danger. Not just tyrants but also well-meaning governments and clumsy companies threaten to limit the freedom and power that the net is bringing to anyone – to publish to the world and even to organize revolutions and new nations. Jarvis has urged CEOs and heads of state to take a Hippocratic oath for the net: First do no harm. He proposes principles of an open internet and open society and urges his audiences to protect them both.
- Honey, We Shrunk the Economy: Today, technology leads to efficiency over growth. The result: countless jobs lost in recent years will not return. That’s a harsh reality that policymakers and pundits refuse to face. In a discussion with his audiences, Jarvis looks at industry after industry – from media to retail to manufacturing to education – in which productivity and profitability may soar but so will disruption, destruction, and unemployment. What results is a conversation about strategies and opportunities in the face of this disruption.
- Beta: Technology has taught us a new way to develop products: in public. When Google releases a beta, it is a statement of humility that says, “This thing isn’t finished, it isn’t perfect, in fact, we’re not sure what it is yet – so help us make it better.” The beta is an invitation to collaborate with customers. That’s a wise model for more enterprises and activities as Jarvis and his audiences explore the beta company, beta government, beta marriage, and beta life.
- The Future of News and Media – Yes, They Have One: The disruption that has overtaken media thanks to the internet will come to most industries and institutions. There are lessons to be learned in what media have done wrong. But more important, there are also lessons to be had in exploring the opportunities media face to reinvent themselves as services and relationship businesses rather than just content factories. At the Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism he directs, Jarvis researches and advises companies on implementing new business models for news.
- Disrupting Education: Jarvis, a professor at the City University of New York, argues for disrupting the university, taking advantage of new ways to teach more skills; finding new efficiencies and economies of scale so we do not continue to bankrupt our children’s future; and rethinking the value of the lecture, the campus, and the diploma.
Praise for Jeff Jarvis
“Jeff’s lecture was right on target. The content of his presentation was exactly what our staff needed to hear, and his laid-back and humorous style made this both entertaining and informative.”
— Gary A. Wasdin, Director, Office of Staff Development, The New York Public Library
Praise for What Would Google Do?
“Wait. Stop. In your hands you hold a rare thing, the work of a genuine visionary, someone willing to regularly and aggressively challenge the status quo. Five years from now, many people are going to regret the fact that they didn’t read this book today, when they had the chance. Don’t make that mistake. Google wouldn’t.”
— Seth Godin, author of Tribes
“Google is not just a company, it is an entirely new way of thinking about understanding who we are and what we want. Jarvis has done something really important: extend that approach to business and culture, revealing just how revolutionary it is.”
— Chris Anderson, Author of The Long Tail
“What Would Google Do? is an exceptional book that captures the massive changes the internet is effecting in our culture, in marketing, and in advertising.”
— Craig Newmark, Founder of craigslist
“Most of Jarvis’s points – about customer influence, user-driven innovation, the death of middlemen – are by now axiomatic. And yet he manages to make the revolution feel newly revolutionary. . . the book exudes credibility.”
— Inc.
“[Jeff Jarvis] is an intelligent observer of technology and the media and has intellectual scruples. . . there are lessons to be learnt from Google and its single-minded determination to change how business is done.”
— Financial Times
“Jeff Jarvis’s What Would Google Do? is a divining rod for anyone looking for ways to hit real pay dirt in the new territory of Web 2.0 marketing. Jarvis has a sharp eye for what is relevant, real, and actionable. Isn’t that what we all need today?”
— Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO, salesforce.com
“[Jarvis’s] bold thinking and prodigious faith results in a rollicking sermon on reinvention and reinvigoration.”
— Miami Herald
