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At next month’s PCMA-ICESAP Annual Conference in Bangkok, the closing main-stage speaker will share his entrepreneurial toolkit for thriving amid disruption.
Embrace change. Welcome disruption. Thrive amid VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity). Everyone’s gotten that memo. But there aren’t any pithy slogans about just how to do that. Srikrishna “Sri” Vadrevu, the closing main stage speaker at the 2018 PCMA-ICESAP Annual Conference in Bangkok, Thailand, Nov. 7–9, says he has tools to help.
Srikrishna “Sri” Vadrevu
“It’s become a truism now that change is everywhere,” Vadrevu — CEO and co-founder of consulting, business services, and video-analytics company SigMax-e Services, and co-author of 9 ENTREPRENEURisms: Management Practice for a VUCA World — told Convene. “What is being ignored is that many things also remain the same. Identifying these enables us to leverage them to tackle the change … while enjoying the ride.”
Before taking the reins at SigMax-e Services, Vadrevu worked with small businesses, entrepreneurs, and startups in India, Malaysia, and the United States. At the other end of the spectrum, he has also held senior roles at such long-established organizations as State Bank of India and General Electric.
Vadrevu said that his presentation in Bangkok will focus on the research behind the 9 ENTREPRENEURisms — self-efficacy, risk taking, passion, innovation, opportunism, learning, realism, persuasiveness, and execution. He also will share case-study examples of organizations sharing those traits.
What he thinks will resonate most with business- events leaders attending his “Embracing Change and Disruption Like an Entrepreneur” session, not surprisingly, is how to embrace change. He bases that on the reaction to his keynote address at the August PCMA Knowledge Exchange in Kuala Lumpur.
At that event, he said, it was clear that many industry professionals were anxious about change, especially in regard to technology and event organizers’ audience expectations. In Bangkok, attendees “will take away some fresh ideas on how they can deal with these changes,” Vadrevu said, “and how such changes will help their businesses.”
In 9 ENTREPRENEURisms, Vadrevu and co-author Anwar Jumabhoy point to examples of entrepreneurial companies that exemplify nine specific traits, from Apple to Uber. They say their book offers an alternative lens with which to view management and argue that the way companies “operate or manage will need to change.”
“The 9 ENTREPRENEURisms are like tools in a box,” Vadrevu told Convene. “Most of us typically overuse — or are strong — in a few. The idea is to learn to use others.”
Learn more about the 2018 PCMA-ICESAP Annual Conference.
Learn more about 9 ENTREPRENEURisms.