'Disrupt or be Disrupted' at the 2015 International CES

The Fast Innovation keynote, slated for 11am, 7th January at the Westgate Las Vegas (formerly Las Vegas Hilton) Theater, will feature top executives including John Chambers, chairman and CEO, Cisco; Neil Smit, president and CEO, Comcast Cable; and Werner Struth, member, board of management, Robert Bosch. The session will be moderated by David Kirkpatrick, founder, host and CEO, Techonomy, and will feature a discussion on the evolution of the connections between people, data, business and innovation as enabled by the IoE and a connected society.

Gary Shapiro, President and CEO, CEA, comments: “We are very excited to hear from these creative leaders who are connecting with their customers to create new products and services. We look forward to their insights on the future of personalisation of services and how the availability of consumer data is changing relationships between companies and their customers”.

John Chambers, chairman and CEO, Cisco.

Chambers has helped grow the company from $70m when he joined Cisco in January 1991, to $1.2bn when he assumed the role of CEO, to $47bn in fiscal year 2014. In 2006, Chambers was named Chairman of the Board, in addition to his CEO role. Chambers has received numerous awards for his leadership over his past 18 years at the helm of Cisco, including the 2012 Bower Award for Business Leadership from the Franklin Institute, Time Magazine’s '100 Most Influential People', one of Barron’s’ 'World’s Best CEOs', the 'Best Boss in America' by 20/20, one of BusinessWeek’s 'Top 25 Executives Worldwide', 'CEO of the Year' by Chief Executive Magazine, the Business Council’s 'Award for Corporate Leadership', and 'Best Investor Relations by a CEO' from Investor Relations Magazine three times.

Neil Smit, president and CEO, Comcast Cable and EVP, Comcast Corp.

In this role, Smit is responsible for all business aspects of the Company’s cable operations. Smit joined Comcast in March 2010 from Charter Communications where he served as CEO and director since 2005. Prior to joining Charter, Smit was the president of Time Warner’s America Online Access Business, where he oversaw Internet access services, including America Online (AOL), CompuServe and Netscape ISPs. He also served at AOL as Executive VP, member services, and COO of MapQuest. Smit also was a regional president with Nabisco and served in a number of management positions at Pillsbury. For five and a half years, Smit served on active duty with the Navy SEAL Teams and retired from the service as a Lieutenant Commander.

Werner Struth, member, board of management and chairman, Robert Bosch

Struth has been a member of the board of management of Robert Bosch GmbH and Chairman, Robert Bosch LLC since January 2012. In these capacities, he is responsible for Bosch activities in North and South America, global manufacturing coordination, production system development, investment planning and environmental protection. He is also responsible for the Group’s Industrial Technology business sector including the Packaging Technology and Drive and Control Technology divisions. During his 25 year career at Bosch, Struth has held a variety of positions with increasing responsibility in engineering, human resources, manufacturing and operations, purchasing, quality and management in Germany and Japan. Struth joined the Fraunhofer Society’s Institute for Production Technology (IPT) and earned his PhD in general and theoretical mechanical engineering at RWTH Aachen.

David Kirkpatrick, founder, host and CEO of Techonomy

Kirkpatrick is a journalist, commentator about technology, and author of the bestselling book 'The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company that is Connecting the World', published in 32 countries. He spent 25 years at Fortune, and founded and hosted its Brainstorm and Brainstorm Tech conferences. In addition to writing for Techonomy, he contributes to Forbes and Vanity Fair and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Fast Innovation Keynote is part of the 2015 International CES keynote lineup. Other keynoters will include CBS president and CEO, Leslie Moonves, Ford Motor president and CEO Mark Fields, Samsung Electronics’ president and CEO, Boo-Keun Yoon, chairman of the board of management of Daimler and Head of Mercedes-Benz Cars, Dr. Dieter Zetsche and Intel CEO, Brian Krzanich.

The 2015 CES will feature more than 3,500 exhibitors unveiling the latest consumer technology products and services across the entire ecosystem of consumer technologies.