Dave Hanley, CEO of Tomorrow, is leaving his mark on a global scale. His work in global activism earned Hanley a seat as a young global leader attendee of the World Economic Forum. This forum is an annual meeting founded on the idea that there are problems too big for governments, businesses, or multilateral organizations—such as the United Nations—to solve on their own. The forum connects young leaders to successful CEOs, Head of States, and other prominent individuals and a

Rivers, lakes, crevasses, and other geographical gaps exist in terrain requiring bridges to transport people, goods, and resources across distances that otherwise may be impossible to navigate. Similarly, a physical and mental gap exists between individuals facing global issues first-hand and their counterparts who are farther away with the necessary resources. Such detachment particularly occurs when issues arise in an area at a different socioeconomic level than the one in

Blackberry dominated the smartphone market in the mid-to-late 2000s. With a 50 percent market share in the United States, and 20 percent globally, prospects looked good for the Canadian based company. Many even nicknamed their product the “crackberry” because of its massive consumer demand. But their good fortune didn’t last; Blackberry’s total market share today sits at 0 percent. The cause for Blackberry’s fall? The smartphone industry changed, and the company didn’t change

When people think of Mickey Mouse, they commonly think of Walt Disney. But creating the well-known character was actually a team effort. In the early 1900s, a different character—Oswald the Lucky Rabbit—represented Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio. Though created by Disney, Oswald was owned by Universal. Wanting to sever ties with the other studio, Walt Disney assembled a team of animators and composers to create a new character to be the face of Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio.

On the Windows 95 operating system, Microsoft chose to color 800,000 pixels a slightly different shade of green which, unknown to Microsoft, represented disputed Kashmiri territory in India. The different color was interpreted in India as meaning that the territory was not part of their country. The product was promptly banned by the nation and 200,000 copies of the system were returned. Had the team at Microsoft taken more time to understand culture, the losses – both moneta

Indira Nooyi was the first female CEO of Pepsico. In her first five years in that position, Nooyi successfully led the company through the great recession of 2008 and pushed the company to nearly double its worldwide revenues – from $35 billion in 2006 to $65 billion in 2011. Nooyi is said to “have led a financial recovery for Pepsico” by focusing on environmental sustainability initiatives, increasing company globalization, and shifting product portfolios. According to Nooyi

Blockbuster’s CEO, John Antioco, will always be known as the man who laughed. After much persistence, Netflix founders, Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph,finally sat down with Antioco to make their pitch—buy Netflix for 50 million dollars. In this partnership, Netflix would run the Blockbuster brand online, while Blockbuster would promote Netflix’s mail-in subscription service instore. Antioco laughed. Blockbuster dominated the video rental industry. With 9,000 retail locations

In 2013, Nike initiated a women’s athletic clothing line patterned after traditional Pacific tattoos. The line quickly received backlash, however, due to cultural insensitivities. One Polynesian native said “To the outside world it’s just a design. But to my Polynesian people, it’s sacred.” Nike’s mistake was that the pattern they chose for the women’s leggings resembled the Samoan Pe’a, atattoo reserved for men. Receiving the Pe’a is an often long and painful process. Origin

In 2007, Drew Houston, founder of Dropbox, quickly turned down Steve Jobs’ generous offer to buy his fast-growing company. In response, Jobs boldly replied that Apple was going to take over the Dropbox market with the new iCloud service. Certainly, that wasn’t very comforting to Houston and his business; but not selling his company was a risk he was willing and prepared to take. As this story indicates, successful global leaders take risks. Many individuals are natural risk t