
CREATING OPPORTUNITY: Disrupting Deprofessionalization with Design
The year 2016 could be referred to as the year of change. Across the world, the political status quo is being challenged and altered. How should we be responding to future challenges? Panelists and Presenters: Frank Mruk FAIA, FStratPS, founder, New York Center for Strategic Innovation ,Bradford J. Prestbo AIA, CDT, CSI, senior associate, Sasaki Associates; founder, BSA MakeTANK committee, Deborah Bentley RIBA, Transition I Space; board member, RIBA-USA. The discussion will break for a plenary session for audience discussion and participation and then return for a summary session. This event is sponsored by Autodesk .
December 2016 - Boston, MA
Sustainability, Innovation and Performance
NYIT Energy Conference: Panel Discussion, Green Design, Frank Mruk, FAIA, RIBA, Associate Dean, Moderator, with panelists Wolfgang Werner, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, USGBC Faculty, CPHD, Principal, URBAN FABRICK Inc., Paul Cataldo, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP BD+C, Principal, Paul Cataldo Architecture and Planning and Martin S. Dettling, Senior Vice President, Albanese Organization Inc.
June 2016 - Old Westbury, NY
EP Roundtable: The Future of Professions
Emerging Professionals Talk and Forum at AIA National Conference. Symposium with Alex Alaimo AIA, Jessica Sheridan AIA and Darius Sollohub. "The session was very well attended having been sold out and moved to a larger room. The discussions revolved around the capabilities and needs of millennials in the workplace, licensure, and engagement."
May 2016 - Philadelphia, PA
VISIONS OF EXURBIA: Town and Country, Past and Future
Sponsored with Alexandra Wolfe, executive director of the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities (SPLIA). The lecture, titled "Long Island Visions of Exurbia: Town in Country, Past and Future," will include a pechu-kucha-style panel discussion with the guest speakers as well as a book signing for Gardens of Eden: Long Island's Early Twentieth-Century Planned Communities.
April 2016 - Old Westbury, NY
The Architecture of Professions - Is it Sustainable?
Artistic creation, in its different forms, allows the artist to embody the world poetically and grow. Through drawing, painting, sculpture, film, music, dance, etc., the artist addresses collective cultural topics in a personal manner, questions, criticizes, and illuminates them, and thus actively participates in the shared reality. The Architecture of Professions - Is it Sustainable? examines the theoretical and philosophical aspects of making as modes of embodiment of the surroundings in which that making takes place.
April 2016 - Haifa, Israel
NCARB Region 2 Educator and Practitioner Symposium
Acted as host and panel participant for the NCARB Region 2 Educator and Practitioner Symposium at the Auditorium on Broadway (AOB). This was the first time that all five constituencies in the mid-Atlantic region got together to discuss topics on the future of education. Topics of discussion included the future education process for credentialing and the skills schools need to teach to meet the needs of practitioners within the next five years.
April 2016 - New York, NY
CEO STRATEGIC PLANNING AND INNOVATION SUMMIT: Emerging Architectures for Strategy and Innovation
Strategy has evolved from game theory, to positioning, from positioning to a resource based view, from a resource based view to innovation. How can we view strategy and innovation models and theory as code and reassemble that code in authentic ways to produce unique business model architectures that can supercharge competitive agility.
December 2015 - New York, NY
SUSTAINABLE MEGACITIES: Thriving in an Era of Resource Choke Points
Experts from China and the United States met in Beijing on Oct. 20 and reiterated the need for a systems-based, coordinated response to the world’s critical food, energy, and water (FEW) challenges. Engineers, urban planners, and policymakers shared their perspectives at a conference co-hosted by New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) and Peking University (PKU), Sustainable Megacities: Food, Energy, Water, and the Built Environment. “Megacities” of more than 10 million inhabitants are a critical area for research into the world’s FEW nexus. The pace of urbanization is increasing, and cities use more than their share of resources. While the earth’s freshwater reserves are in decline, demand for energy and food goes up. Moderator and presenter.
October 2015 - Beijing, China
Strategic Intuition - Dr. William Duggan - Columbia University
Introduced Columbia professor Dr. William Duggan who spoke to our members about his findings on innovation and strategic planning on 10/15/2008 at our monthly meeting of the Association for Strategic Planning - NY Metro chapter. He believed that the best and most innovative ideas we come up with are while we are engaged in mundane activities (showering, cleaning dishes, exercising, etc), but finds it hard to believe that corporate groups insist on setting up a brain storming session to come up with innovative ideas, “O.K. everyone, settle down, it’s 3:30pm and we need to start brain storming on how to come up with new and exciting products that will show the market how innovative we are”. Doesn’t exactly make sense to him and he started to convince some of us that it did seem like a strange practice. In his book, Strategic Intuition: The Key to Innovation he uses examples about Apple, Google and even Napolean to describe how “great artists steal” in order to innovate and eventually take over the world. Ideas are all around us but we need to be at such peace within our mind in order to be able to take in all of the ideas that are out there and be able to put them in an order that would create the next IPod or killer internet application.
October 2015 - New York, NY
STRATEGY IS GLOBAL: A New Body of Knowledge for Strategic Planning
The Annual ASP Conference is the world's premier forum for the exchange of professional ideas and experiences among strategy professionals and organizational leaders. Each year our conference brings together thought leaders and practitioners dedicated to advancing strategic thinking, planning and action. The ASP Strategic Planning and Strategic Management Body of Knowledge was launched at this event.
April 2015 - Washington, DC
INTERNATIONAL STRATEGIC PERFORMANCE SUMMIT: Strategy Dynamics and Rapid Pace Innovation
Lecture at the Balanced Scorecard Institute (BSI) and the International Quality and Productivity Center's (IQPC) third international strategic performance summit, held March 18-20, 2013 at the Westin Peachtree Plaza in Atlanta, GA. Over seventy participants from around the world attended the summit to learn from industry experts who shared their practical experiences with strategic performance and change management frameworks and approaches through best practices, case studies and practical hands-on advice.
March 2013 - Atlanta, GA
Strategy Innovation via Design Thinking and Dynamic Capabilities in Rapid Change Environments
With a theme of “Rethink...Reset...Execute for Results,” the conference brought together thought leaders and practitioners to assess their current strategies, create new strategies that better align with their goals and effectively execute these new strategies to drive results.
April 2012 - Chicago, IL
Leading in Rapid Change Ecosystems
Lecture at the Balanced Scorecard Institute (BSI) and the International Quality and Productivity Center's (IQPC) second international strategic performance summit, held March 2012 at the in New Orleans, LA. Participants from around the world attended the summit to learn from industry experts who shared their practical experiences with strategic performance and change management frameworks and approaches through best practices, case studies and practical hands-on advice.
March 2012 - New Orleans, LA
Reanimating Strategy through Tweening Innovations
ASP's Annual Conference is the nation's premier forum for professional discussion and exchange of information and experiences among strategic planning practitioners. Once each year our conference brings together thought leaders and practitioners dedicated to advancing all aspects of strategic thinking, planning and action.
March 2011 - Dallas, TX
Think Green Global Forum Nanjing China
Moderated Plenary 4 Green Building and Architecture Sustainable architecture and the environmental impact of buildings through measures of efficiency and choice of materials will be explored. How can we incorporate design to positively impact the built environment for today as well as for future generations? Panelists:
Mark Strauss, Senior Partner, FXFOWLE
Robert Arthur Ouellette, VP Special Projects, Zerofootprint.net
Bert de Muynck, Co-director of MovingCities, a Beijing-based think tank
Dr. Yunsheng Su, Chief Engineer, Shanghai Tongji Urban Planning Design Institute
Mr. Kevin Mo, Senior Sustainable Building Specialist, Natural Resources Defense Council, China
April 2010 - Nanjing, China
How to make Green Building Profitable in the US
The Consulate General of Sweden arranged a seminar on green building in cooperation with Skanska on October 14. The seminar featured prominent speakers Tim McEnery (Vice President, US Green Building Council), Olle Cyrén (Head of Department, Stockholm City Development Administration) and Kevin Kampschroer (Acting Director, Office of Federal High- Performance Green Buildings, US General Services Administration), discussing the business case for green building in the US.
The seminar was concluded with a panel discussion on "How to make Green Building profitable in the US" led by Frank Mruk, Associate Dean, New York Institute of Technology. The panellist were asked about their recipes to advance green building in the US. Jonathan Drescher (the Durst Organization) emphasised the current demand for green buildings and that his organisation as long-term owners, looked at a life-cycle cost analysis allowing them to make the economic case for green building. Dan Kaplan (Senior Partner, FXFOWLE Architects) argued that today’s commercial customers take green for granted as a pre-requisite for new buildings. Anthony Malkin (President of Malkin Holdings) stressed that energy efficiency is the key factor to make a difference and that the industry to make a real impact needs to "drive it all to dollars". Olov Hemström (Senior Project Leader, Swedish Trade Council) highlighted the need to widen the perspective from buildings to neighbourhoods to capture the economic and environmental benefits and asked for more federal incentives for small-scale energy production in the US.
October 2009 - New York, NY
Why Good Strategies Fail: Creating Sustainable Performance in Turbulent Times
Tonight I gave the introduction and lead in to a lecture by William A. Schiemann, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Metrus Group. Dr. Schiemann and his colleagues have consulted extensively with many major corporations on the development and implementation of business strategies, employee and customer measurement, strategy-operations alignment, productivity and quality improvement, cost containment, strategic acumen of employees at all levels, culture change, and mergers and acquisitions. Dr. Schiemann and his firm are known for their pioneering work in the creation of performance gauges and scorecards to measure strategy implementation, and for establishing linkages between employee, customer, and financial outcomes.
April 2009 - New York, NY
Strategic DNA
Tonight I gave the introduction and lead in to a lecture on Strategic DNA. During these dynamic economic times, focus is no longer a nice to have, but essential. In the book “Strategic DNA," Lawrence Hobbs describes a coordinated strategic approach to organizational performance. Barbara Theurkauf, Hobbs’ US affiliate, will describe how to compliment existing tools and technologies to enhance performance … it’s not about revolutionizing strategic planning. It’s about getting strategy implemented in an interconnected fashion and that all management practices share “basic strategic resemblances and aims.” That is, they have a family resemblance (DNA). Theurkauf shows us the importance of how decisions are made and communicated is critical to successful implementation and tips and techniques to get you there.
February 2009 - New York, NY
Introduced Diane Smith @ the Harvard Club
This month as part of our Association for Strategic Planning salon, we were honored to host Diana Smith from the Monitor Group. As I’m sure you are aware, Monitor Group is a one of the leading privately-owned global management consulting firms along with McKinsey & Company, the Boston Consulting Group, Booz & Company, and Bain & Company. Monitor provides services in the areas of strategy consulting, capability building, and capital services. It was founded in 1983 by a group of six entrepreneurs with ties to the Harvard Business School.
For as many years as Smith has practiced, she’s written on teams. Early on, while earning her doctoral degree at Harvard, she co-authored a classic book on intervention theory with Chris Argyris and Robert Putnam. Her new book is called Divide or Conquer.
December 2008 - New York, NY
Introduced Art Kleiner lecture
The Age of Heretics explores the evolution of corporate culture – through the lives of its heretics – from 1945 to the present. The book is a history of the social movement to change large mainstream corporations for the better, but it is not just that. It is also an inquiry into the precise way in which corporations have changed our world, and what it means to be a hero or heroine in a world bounded by immense institutions.
Art Kleiner is the editor-in-chief of strategy+business, the award-winning quarterly management magazine published by Booz & Company. Kleiner is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (1986), and a faculty member at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, where he taught scenario planning, writing for new media, and other courses between 1986 and 1995. As a lecturer or educator, he has been associated with groups that include the Shambhala Institute Authentic Leadership program, the MIT Center for Organizational Learning, Global Business Network, and the United Nations AIDS in Africa scenario project.
November 2008 - New York, NY
Strategic Thinking, Planning and Execution
Architecture in Urban Planning Program and the Association for Strategic Planning Metro New York Chapter hosted Stephen Haines, a world leader in Systems Thinking and Strategic Management, who discussed the top 12 common mistakes most organizations make in their strategic planning processes—and the antidotes to them in Proven Best Practices. In the introduction ASP Metro NY President Frank Mruk described System Thinking and Strategic Management as a mission critical pedagogy in todays hyper economic environment.
September 2008 - New York, NY
Indo-US Green Building Initiative
In our third iteration of the INDO-US series of lectures we were happy to accomondate Himanshu Burte who apeeared last minute in NY while working on his Fulbright!
The agenda included:
Safety & LEED Complexity, Makrand Bhoot AIIA, LEED AP (Founder/Director: P-A-T-H)
Green Ground Zero, John Amatrruda, (partner Viridian EE)
New York New Visions, Earnest Hutton AICP (Coalition for Rebuilding Lower Manhattan)
Place Making, Himanshu Burte (Fulbright Scholar)
September 2008 - New York, NY
DESIGN is DESIGN is DESIGN: Graduation SOAD Keynote
Excerpts form my Graduation speech: To the class of 2008....Gertrude Stein could have said Design is Design is Design. It doesn’t matter if it’s a building, a town, a government or a financial system. Creativity, ideas and design are now a preferred form of international currency. A currency that travels the world with frightening velocity.
I suspect, the people getting diplomas in those other tents on this campus do not have these skills we have been talking about today. They do not have experience in dismantling a problem, turning it upside down or inside out, redesigning it, and in essence rethinking the fundamental basis for its being. They do not know how to view old never ending world problems from unique angles. They can’t produce under tremendous pressure like you can. You have these skills. You are prepared, marketable, and competitive and aspire to great things. Who better to reinvent the world than you? No one. I have witnessed first hand your capabilities.
I urge you to fear nothing and get out there and let it rip. Reinvent everything. The world needs your skills now more than ever.
May 2008 - Old Westbury, NY
INDIA Lecture Tour - Americas First Solar Hydrogen House & SMART CITIES
This April I was invited to lecture at several schools in India including SPA in New Dehli, CEPT in Ahmedabad, Sir JJ and the Raheja Vidyanidhi IAES in Mumbai, Ganpat University in Mehsana and the Goa School in Goa. I talked to faculty and architects and learned that we, the two largest largest English speaking democracies on the planet share many of the same concerns and problems. We are dealing with many of the same issues. I met with industry leaders, Deans (Principals) and practicioners including Doshi, Dr. Prem Jain, Rajeev Kathpalia, Neelkanth Chhaya, Anand Patel, Ravi Hazra, and Rajan Lakule.
It was an eye opening trip! We hope to set up a INDO-US Green Building Institute on my return.
April 2008 - INDIA
LEED vs. BREEAM
On the 28th of October 2007, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Prime Minister and Vice-President, and Ruler of Dubai issued a new resolution to adopt the ’Green Building’ model in Dubai to ensure a healthy and environment-friendly city. As per the new resolution, effective January 2008, all residential and commercial buildings in Dubai must comply with these green standards.
In an effort to promote awareness, the American University in Dubai and Sesam Business Consultants organized ’Dubai Green Seminar’ at the AUD auditorium on Thursday, February 28th 2008. Over 450 people attended the Dubai Green Seminar, including NYIT and our students from the Abu Dhabi.
After the event some of us attended a reception to experience a participant designed on the Palm Island.
March 2008 -Dubai, UAE
Open House Sendoff Celebration
Under sunny skies, NYIT community members, elected officials, sponsors, press, and other guests gathered to give the interdisciplinary team a fitting sendoff to the "solar village" in Washington, D.C. NYIT President Edward Guiliano, Ph.D., congratulated the students on the culmination of two years of intensive work and collaboration. He also thanked all supporters for recognizing NYIT as a forward-thinking institution and helping to make it a "green college." New York State Senator Carl L. Marcellino stated NYIT's effort "is what the country is all about." In addition, congratulatory letters were read from U.S. Senators Charles E. Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Randy Spitzer (M.A. '05), a representative from the Long Island Power Authority, one of the team’s sponsors, stated "this is the future." The celebration was covered by several broadcast outlets, including WCBS-TV, WCBS-AM 880, Fox 5, and CW 11. In addition,
September 2007 - Old Westbury, NY
Going Green Business Symposium and Expo
I recently participated in the "Going Green" Symposium held by the Huntington Chamber of Commerce at the Crest Hollow Country Club in Woodbury, NY. With much attention currently being focused on global warming and it’s future impact on the environment, the Huntington Township Chamber of Commerce hosted this very important Symposium and Business Expo in Cooperation with Senator Carl L. Marcellino.
This timely event, was moderated by Greg Cergol, Long Island Correspondent, WNBC and featured experts in the fields of environmental conservation, science, and business and industry who participated in a panel discussion. The panel included:
· Bruce Germano - VP Retail Sales, Long Island Power Authority
· Sarah Lansdale - Executive Director, Sustainable Long Island
· Patti Wood - Executive Director, Grassroots Environmental Education
· Ron Lanner - Partner, H2M Group
· Daniel Losquadro - Suffolk County Legislator, 6th District
· Frank Mruk - Associate Dean at NYIT
Among the issues discussed were alternative and flex fuel vehicles, energy-efficient lighting, building and architecture, solar and clean energy options and other green products currently available for use at home or at work.
September 2007 - Woodbury, NY
America's First Solar Hydrogen Home Inauguration
Following NYITs successful showing in this year’s DOE sponsored Solar Decathlon competition, the New York Institute of Technology’s Solar Hydrogen House was relocated from the contest site on the National Mall in Washington DC to its new home at the US Merchant Marine Academy. Kings Point students have completed reassembly of the home and its unique "Solar-Hydrogen" energy systems. This house will become an actual residence while continuing to be an alternative energy research facility and a show place accessible to the pubic.
June 2007 - Kings Point, NY
Energy Shock, Climate Change and the Role of Technology
Today NYIT held its second annual energy shock conference. Invited Speakers included: Thomas Lovejoy President the Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment, Kevin Law, Chairman Long Island Power Authority, Joseph Ambrosio, Co-Founder and CTO Odyne Corporation, & Gerard A. "Duke" Dufresne, Sector Vice President, Airborne Early Warning and Electronic Warfare Systems, Northrop Grumman. The Leadership in Sustainable Technology Award was presented by Congressman Steve Israel to Stanford Ovshinsky (my Hero), President of ECD Ovonics. We did a presentation on America's first solr hydrogen house.
You may remember Stanford from the SONY 2006 documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?"
Stanford R. Ovshinsky,the son of a Lithuanian-born scrap-metal dealer, is a self-taught engineer, inventor, and physicist. During the Great Depression, he was forced to drop out of school to help support his family, but despite this early setback, he went on to become a successful mechanical and electrical engineer, and a prolific inventor.
June 2007 - Old Westbury, NY
Rethink, Rebuild, Renew: Creating a Sustainable Future for Long Island
NYIT’s Solar Decathlon team joined more than 350 Long Island business owners, municipal officials, community leaders, architects, and developers at Stony Brook University to explore the region’s sustainable future. The conference featured discussions and workshops on four major areas of sustainability: Sustainable Business Practices; Sustainable Design; Sustainable Energy; and Creating Sustainable Communities: Business and Government Working Together.
April 2007 - Stony Brook, NY