The New Polymath Booktour - Amsterdam

Amsterdam event 13:00 - 13:45, 21st July 2010, Capgemini, Amsterdam, Hoogoorddreef 15

Featured Speaker: Vinnie Mirchandani, author of the recently published book, The New Polymath. And a raffle of a few copies of the book.

Update July 30th 14:07 CET: below a picture of Vinnie giving his tailormade presentation (Outsourcing in an age of AND not OR) at Capgemini Amsterdam

The Book

A Polymath—the Greek word for Renaissance Man—is someone who excels in many disciplines. From Leonardo da Vinci to Benjamin Franklin, we have relied on Polymaths to innovate and find creative solutions to the problems of the day. As our challenges have grown exponentially we need to bring together da Vinci, Franklin, and many more. The New Polymath is an enterprise that excels in multiple technologies—infotech, cleantech, healthtech, and other tech—and leverages multiple talent pools to create new medicine, new energy, and new algorithms. the diversity of today's technology palette and to profile over 150+ innovative people, products and places at:

• Large multinationals such as GE and BP
• Fast-growing, midsized companies like Cognizant and salesforce.com
• The cleantech industry in China, farms in Ireland, and the back roads of Rwanda

The Author

Mirchandani goes by the moniker of "Deal Architect," and coaches enterprises on how to exploit disruptive technology trends. A former Gartner analyst and PwC consultant, he is now a prolific blogger, writing about technology-enabled innovation on his "New Florence, New Renaissance" blog and about waste in technology on his "Deal Architect" blog. He has keynoted at many business and technology conferences and has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, The Financial Times, CIO Magazine, and other executive and technology publications.

The Topic

Mirchandani will discuss how trends described in the book create innovation opportunities and competitive challenges for European businesses and entrepreneurs. He will also provide insights into how he used “new world” publishing techniques in a centuries old book publishing model. He will describe how in 10 phases of the book – from book research to editing to marketing to sales he has leveraged social tools, communities, crowds…

Additionally, there will be a raffle for copies of the book which is just starting to ship in Europe, so you could get one of the first copies in the Netherlands. Amazon apparently doesn't ship until August

Further information

The New Polymath - the book
'Behind the scenes' of The New Polymath
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Commentary on book

Benjamin Fried, CIO, Google, Inc: "Mirchandani inspires us to return to IT's roots, with the transformative power that comes from putting technology innovation in service to business and society"

Andy Mulholland, Global CTO, Capgemini: " An excellent read on multiple levels: to learn from; to be entertained by; and most of all, to leave you wondering what you could personally achieve."

Abbie Lundberg, former Editor in Chief, CIO Magazine: "(The Book) is an absolute refutation of the idea that there’s a lack of innovation going on; it is a veritable firehose of innovation examples, presented by someone who knows what it takes to make innovation happen inside organizations large and small."