Umbrex is pleased to welcome Kristine Simonsen with VelocitySquad. Kristine is a forward-thinking Digital Business Leader with +10 years of experience and a proven track record in accelerating and building businesses and products that challenge status quo. She brings a unique combination of strategic acumen, creative thinking and effective execution. Built +5 Digital ventures and led +10 large-scale Digital transformations for some of the world‘s largest companies within travel, consumer, and financial services and co-founded and led McKinsey‘s Digital Business…

  David Uriarte explores the limitations and opportunities in the future of travel.  In the travel industry, we are currently living devastating times. During these days, like many others, I try to imagine how the future of travel will be after Covid-19. In this process, analyze the new limits and new opportunities is a common exercise. In Europe, in the short term, many resort hotels are opening in June or July, with lower occupancies than expected, but probably with a…

  David Uriarte provides a short forecast on the travel industry post COVID-19. In the travel industry, we are currently living devastating times. During these days, like many others, I try to imagine the future of travel after COVID-19. In this process, analyze the new limits and new opportunities is a common exercise. In Europe, in the short term, many resort hotels are opening in June or July, with lower occupancies than expected, but probably with a larger “summer” season….

  Surbhee Grover takes a moment to think about the future and how the Coronavirus will change the way we work and live.   Our lives, as we’ve known them, have come to a grinding halt. What will the world look like when the music starts again? In the time we are not obsessing with COVID-19 updates, or trying to revive the business; ensure availability of dog food (and wine), and survive homeschooling, some of us are starting to wonder…

  Diane Mulcahy interviews Krystal Hicks to find out why some companies don’t hire remote employees, and how the Gig Economy has shifted the power balance between employers and employees.   Krystal Hicks is the founder of JOBTALK, a company that grew out of her side gig providing talent, recruiting, and job-hunting advice to companies and individuals. Before going out on her own, she managed U.S. Talent Acquisition for the Swiss chocolate maker Lindt, and was the former Director of…

To inspire successful innovation, Kaihan Krippendorff explains why the composition of the founding team is crucial and why the first step should be to find a sherpa. He provides six questions to help you assess and secure a powerful advocate to lead the team. That historic moment when the perfect team unifies beyond an opportunity, pregnant with possibility, is the essential scene of any great innovation legend: think Jobs and Wozniak when they created Apple, Gates and Allen with Microsoft,…

Geoff Wilson explains what Andrew Luck’s recent retirement from football should teach executives about protecting top talent. If you are an organizational leader who is leaning on a few star talents surrounded by a supporting cast of also-rans to ‘gut it out’ on a daily basis, you are playing a very dangerous game. Because when your top talent has had enough–when you have extracted enough of their soul by asking them to jump on yet another grenade dropped by a poor…

Dan Markovitz provides a reality check on the concept of management by walking around (MBWA); how the leaders at organizations embracing lean take a different approach, and why the latter is better than the former. Theodore Kinni argues in Strategy + Business that leaders must practice management by walking around (MBWA), a concept popularized by Tom Peters and Bob Waterman in their seminal book, In Search of Excellence. That’s the best way for them to stay connected to their businesses…