His particular focus is on creating corporate processes that enable management teams to operate effectively and rapidly in changing environments.

After gaining first class degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Chemical Engineering from Cambridge University, Barry’s early career was with The Boston Consulting Group, which he joined in Boston after gaining a Baker Scholarship and MBA as a Harkness Fellow at Harvard Business School. He was a member of the team that established BCG’s London office and he later founded the European arm of the international strategy, financial consulting and private equity firm Braxton Associates. This later became the global strategy practice of Deloitte Consulting. As its Chief Executive Barry grew this to around 1000 consultants operating from over 20 offices worldwide.

Throughout his consulting career Barry lectured part time at Business Schools internationally, becoming a Professor at Imperial College Management School, London, focussing on strategy topics and returning to Cambridge University in 2000 as a Fellow of Gonville & Caius College, also teaching courses at the Judge Business School. This has combined naturally with his role as co-founder and active Chair of Dialectyx, helping senior management teams internationally develop “Fast Strategy” commercially effective business solutions, using innovative and “gamified” experiential learning processes.

“People are at their most mindful when they are at play; their senses are fully engaged, their physical and mental prowess is at its highest. If we find ways of enjoying our work – blurring the lines between work and play – the gains will be greater.”

Ellen Langer, Professor of Psychology, Harvard University

Today, difficult decision choices come at you thick and fast. There’s rarely enough time to research and analyse a business proposition as thoroughly as you would like. This workshop is designed to help you to prosper in this challenging business environment. You will learn how to calibrate your business instinct so that the rapid conclusions you have to reach are as sound as possible. And how to ensure that your commercial choices are enterprising, and oriented towards growth and new value creation, rather than “safe” (which often means negative).

Barry’s workshop will be practical, fast, experiential and interactive using an approach that has been applied both on-line and face-to-face for several years in Cambridge and other universities and also in many international corporate settings, large and small.

The “Fast Strategy” principles it embodies are supported by the BBC, Sony and Deloitte, who were all involved in the research on which it is based and contributed to its design.

Participants will learn to rapidly distil out the essentials of commercial market and competitive success, link them with financial, organisation and people risk assessment, and apply them in making go/no go decisions.

Participants will work in teams to see how much value you can create from a fast-paced succession of real world investment opportunities: “smart simulations” based on popular media such as BBC TV’s Dragons’ Den. These experiences will give you confidence that you can similarly address any of the wide range of actual business situations you will confront later when you return to work after the conference. You will also be taught to start assessing your own personal commercial skills, preparing the ground for the later sessions in the conference oriented towards professional skills enhancement and leadership.

Importantly, the workshop methodology is fun and feels both exciting and real.