Category: Press

Dubai – MENA Herald: Retail Leaders Circle (RLC), a pioneering industry summit bringing together global, influential and visionary industry leaders, will host its annual MENA summit on March 27th-28th, 2018, at Dubai’s Four Seasons Resort at Jumeirah Beach.

The high-level summit is being organised in partnership with the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry  under the theme “Re-imagining Retail in Middle East: Innovation and Disruption.” The exclusive event will bring together over 300 business leaders from the retail, real estate, and technology sectors, as well as investors and other key stakeholders

“It is with great pleasure that we host RLC MENA in Dubai, which is currently one of world’s hottest retail destinations,” said Panos Linardos, Retail Leaders Circle’s Chairman. “Dubai has become the preferred market for regional and international retailers and is the ideal location to provide industry inspiration for the entire region.”

H.E. Hamad Buamim, President and CEO of Dubai Chamber said: “Dubai Chamber is delighted to support RLC MENA as the event comes at a very exciting time for the region’s retail sector. In recent years, retail has become a much more important contributor to regional trade and economic growth. Dubai is an ideal place to host this premier event as it boasts a vibrant retail market with a strong presence of leading local, regional and international brands.”

Dubai Chamber’s President and CEO explained that Dubai’s strategic location as a hub for the movement of people and goods across the GCC region, Southeast Asia and the African continent and offers an ideal base for retailers to boost their profile and reach a market of 2 billion consumers across the Gulf, Africa, and Asia.

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Majority of us believe that creativity is an inborn thing and cannot be developed or nurtured. But that’s not the case anymore.

While rejecting this myth, renowned Professor Srikant Datar, faculty chair of the Harvard University Innovation Lab, believes human beings tend to fall into certain patterns of “fixednesses” – or fixed ways of thinking – which suppress creativity, innovative thinking and problem-solving techniques.

“People say innovation and creativity can’t be learnt – it’s either God-gifted or you are out of luck. So I went on Sabbatical to test that idea of what people say that it can’t be taught or learnt. I came away from Sabbatical test completely convinced that you can learn creativity. The theory is simple; we have certain kind of fixednesses – functional, relational, cognitive or structural. In order to break those fixednesses, there are specific techniques you can use. I have consistently seen that by using these methods, you can think in very different ways than the traditional thinking. We can make individuals, companies, products, services and business models all more innovative by simply applying innovative method of innovation. The course programme is very short and helps people develop those skills as you can break fixed ways of thinking,” said Professor Datar.

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The year 2016 has undoubtedly put Rwanda on the world map as a top African destination for most prestigious global conferences. Rwanda being one of Africa’s fastest growing economies and most secure places in Africa, it is only natural for the capital to attract more world-class activities. KORA Associates Ltd, a company which relocated its offices from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, has actively been promoting a new breed of professional Coaching practice in Rwanda. Its Kigali based entity was founded in order to meet exceeding need for efficient professional services in Human Capital Development. Its Managing Director, Mireille Karera stated that “Global Business Coaching industry is a multibillion dollar industry. Recent Market research studies on Business Coaching show a whopping figure of $12 billion contributed to the US economy.

Approximately $2 billion were attributed to Life Coaching and Self-Improvement markets. In the last three decades the Coaching industry has generated a new breed of entrepreneurs and multimillionaires.

Some high profile Coaches and Motivational Speakers include well known speakers such as Tony Robbins, John Maxwell, Les Brown, Brian Tracy, Robin Sharma etc. just to mention a few. When comparing the Coaching industry in Rwanda to that of its African peers or developed nations, there is a great gap needing to be bridged.

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Nisreen Shocair, President, Virgin Megastore, Patrick Chalhoub, Joint CEO, Chalhoub Group, Marwan Moukarzel, Deputy CEO, Azadea Group, Srinivas Rajagopalan, Chief Human Resources Officer, Landmark Group, Kevin Gill, Chief Executive Officer, Start, UK, and Ulf Smedberg, Head of Marketing, IKEA, Asia Pacific are just some of the 20+ speakers confirmed to speak at the upcoming Retail Leaders Circle that will take place on 22-24th of March at the St Regis Hotel, Dubai, UAE – two full retail days and one day Leadership masterclass in partnership with Cass Business School, City University.

Read more on UAE Today

The traditional 9-5 workplace will soon be a memory of the past. According to a study, 40% of the U.S. workforce will be freelancers by 2020. Instead of hiring full-time employees, organizations are becoming more and more dependent on outsourced transient talent. This evolving workplace, with contributors from all over the world, introduces new challenges for traditional organizations. IT Departments need to provide business users with tools that enable them to easily share information and meet and collaborate online – across organizational boundaries.

Perhaps more important, new behavior needs to be developed by employees within companies who want to thrive in this new economy. As with any change of human behavior, encouraging employees to adapt to a new work style is a huge challenge for many organizations.

Read more on Zawya

Focus on making connections to ensure smooth negotiation.

The use of force in ensuring successful negotiations today is overrated, says Professor Stuart Diamond, Google’s top negotiator.

Instead, the world-renowned negotiator says that it is better to focus on making personal connections to ensure a smooth negotiation.

Diamond, who is a professor at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, was speaking at an event at the Khaleej Times offices, ahead of his two-day workshop organised by events management company, Innoverto.

Diamond said that conflict models can be found everywhere today, even in cartoons, and that is responsible in part for the problems “we face in interacting with each other”.

“Conflict models are ineffective and the costliest way to solve problems. The most common tactics used in a conflict model include issuing threats and enforcing deadlines. Negotiations are very sensitive to the words you use, so be careful that what you say doesn’t become perceived as a threat. Force is overrated as a negotiation tool, and deadlines just reduce creativity,” he said.

Read more on Khaleej Times

Author of the New York Times Bestselling book GETTING MORE: How You Can Negotiate to Succeed in Work and Life and one of the world’s most renowned and master negotiators is coming to Dubai this year.

Professor Diamond has advised and trained executives and managers from 220 of the Fortune 500 companies and more than 125 of the Global 1000 companies in addition to high profile consulting projects to the U.N., the World Bank and governments. He won a Pulitzer Prize at The New York Times, has a law degree from Harvard, an MBA from the top-rated Wharton where he is currently a professor and also teaches the Getting More class – which is the most sought-after by students over the past 20 years.

Professor Diamond has taught his Getting More negotiations course to more than 12,000 Googlers, for which it is estimated that for each $100 spent on Getting More training, the company brings in as much as $360,000, a return of 3,000 times, virtually unparalleled in business today. The GCC has also taken notice of these amazing results, and The Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank organized a Getting More negotiation workshop for 40 of its senior managers. Within 90-days, these managers reported making an additional $223 million in revenue using Getting More tools. This included improved client acquisitions, lucrative deals and favourable rates.

It is with this in mind that Initativez, in partnership with Innoverto, are delighted to announce Professor Diamond’s public workshop in the UAE on December 9-10th, 2015 in Dubai, UAE. The powerful, transformative 2 full day workshop is titled: GETTING MORE: How You Can Negotiate to Succeed in Work and Life” based on the New York Times best-seller heralded by leading experts, CEO’s and business leaders as “groundbreaking and innovative”.

Read more at Zawya

Some of the world’s top retail minds, including professor and bestselling author Lerzan Aksoy, Tim Keiningham, Nitin Sanghavi and Chris Roebuck will be joining an impressive line-up of speakers from companies such as IKEA, Chalhoub Group, Gap, Dubai Duty Free, Deloitte and Ipsos.

Over two (2) information-packed days, executives will get the opportunity to network, engage with industry peers, and discover what’s trending in the global retail space. Topics include retail optimization, customer engagement, omni- channel performance and transformational leadership. A key highlight on the second day is the first time presentation of the findings of PWC’s Middle East 2015 Total Retail Survey on ‘Online Shopping Habits of the Middle East Shopper’.

Attending organizations include Bukhatir Group, IKEA, Azadea Group, Alshaya, Virgin Middle East, Paris Gallery, Etisalat, Nakheel Retail and many more.

Read more at Zawya

The Advanced Certificate for the Executive Personal Assistant (ACEPA™) course is designed to help executive personal assistants and secretaries successfully meet the increasingly demanding roles that are expected of them in the modern corporate environment. Led by an experienced international Director and ex Big 4 Management Consultant, the course focuses on delivering a fundamental conceptual understanding of areas such as strategic thinking, corporate finance and HR, as well as practical skills. Upon successful completion of the course, attendees will receive an internationally recognized certification by the UK regulatory body Qualifi.

“The ACEPA training is offered worldwide and it’s now exciting to bring this training and certification to Saudi Arabia, a country with a strong growing sector of skillful Executive Personal Assistants and Secretaries. It is a power-packed program delivered from a unique top-down perspective that spans the range of duties now assigned to executive PAs, from basic presentation skills through to corporate strategy” says Richard Arnott, facilitator of ACEPA.

Read more at Zawya

The US based New York Institute of Management (NYIM) is launching a new initiative for the global retail industry, “The Retail Leaders Circle” (RLC), a preeminent global retail education destination dedicated to provide the world’s retail executives with the practical knowledge they need to improve their performance and better serve global market needs. RLC 2015 will feature an impressive line-up of visionary speakers raising top industry’s concerns and presenting pressing retail case studies, best practices and cutting edge insights that will help delegates to drive their business and career forward.

The launch locations and dates for the initiative to be rolled out have been announced and Dubai, UAE, has been selected to host the inaugural event in June this year, followed by a session in Chicago, USA, in October.

“The Retail Leaders Circle is an exclusive, power-packed, program that brings together the next generation retail executives from around the world for a truly unique experience; participants will sharpen their leadership skills, learn from international and experienced industry experts, and attain the perspectives needed to successfully respond to the challenges of the ever evolving retail landscape,” said Panos Linardos, Executive Director of NYIM. “We are very excited about bringing the world’s leading Retail experts to Dubai, as it is increasingly becoming the most vibrant retail center of the world.”

Read more at Zawya