About Steve Denning

Steve Denning is the author of six successful business books on leadership, leadership storytelling, and management, as well as a novel and a volume of poems.

Since 2011, he has been writing a popular Leadership column for Forbes.com and has published more than 600 articles on the Creative Economy, with more than 6 million visitors and more than 15 million page views. He has interviewed eminent gurus such as Clayton Christensen

Steve is a member of the Advisory Board of the Drucker Forum, headquartered in Vienna, Austria. The annual Drucker Forum, held in November each year, has become the leading global conference on general management issues. Each year, Steve has chaired a panel at the Forum, which attracts the world’s top thought leaders in management.

Steve is a member of the Advisory Board of the Drucker Forum, headquartered in Vienna, Austria. The annual Drucker Forum, held in November each year, has become the leading global conference on general management issues. Each year, Steve has chaired a panel at the Forum, which attracts the world’s top thought leaders in management.

From 2014 to 2016, Steve was a member of the board of directors of Scrum Alliance, a rapidly growing association of some 460,000 members with a mission of transforming the world of work. On behalf of Scrum Alliance, he hosts a monthly series of webinars with world-renowned management thought leaders like Gary Hamel and Roger Martin.

In 2015, Steve led the Learning Consortium for the Creative Economy in which a group of firms, including Microsoft and Ericsson, which shared insights on the emerging Creative Economy. The Learning Consortium was highlighted by the Financial Times and by Forbes and presented to the Drucker Forum in November 2015.

In 2016, the SD Learning Consortium became a non-profit corporation registered in the state of Virginia. More details about it are available here. (For more information, contact Steve at steve@stevedenning.com).

In November 2016, in Vienna Austria, Steve chaired the panel of organizations presenting the report of the Learning Consortium for the Creative Economy to the Drucker Forum. The 2016 report of the SD Learning Consortium is available here.

Steve has more than 19,000 followers on Twitter He has been named by A.T. Kearney as “one of the top ten digital innovation influencers on Twitter.”

Steve Denning is the author of The Age of Agile, The Leader's Guide to Radical Management: Re-inventing the Workplace for the 21st Century (Jossey-Bass, 2010), The Secret Language of Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2007) and The Leader's Guide to Storytelling (Jossey-Bass, 2005).

From 1996 to 2000, Steve was the Program Director, Knowledge Management at the World Bank where he spearheaded the organizational knowledge sharing program.

In November 2000, Steve Denning was selected as one of the world’s ten Most Admired Knowledge Leaders (Teleos)

He now works with organizations in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia on leadership, innovation, business narrative and most recently, radical management.

His clients have included many organizations, large and small, around the world, including GE, IBM, Microsoft, McKinsey, Shell, Netflix, Bristol Myers Squibb, Deloitte, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Syngenta, Danfoss, McDonalds, Unilever, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Abbott Laboratories, MWH, Ernst & Young, CRM Learning, Xerox, Oracle, Maritz, Target, Burns & McDonnell, Mitre Corporation, Innovation Council, Deluxe, Fetzer Foundation, Diageo (UK), UK Parliamentary Ombudsman, Nestle (Switzerland), Novo Nordisk (Denmark), International Energy Agency (Austria), Symbiosis (Austria), PMI (France), Ambrosetti (Italy), ARK group (UK, Asia, Australia), Air New Zealand, World Bank, UN, UNDP, US Army, USAID, CIA, NSA, Defense Intelligence Agency, NetHope, The Brookings Institution, American Institute of Architects, California Workforce Association, CIA, NSA, NIMA, FAA, NY State Government, Oregon State Government, Australian government ministries, New Zealand ministries and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Norway).

In April 2003, Steve was ranked as one of the world's Top Two Hundred Business Gurus by Davenport & Prusak, "What's The Big Idea? (Harvard, 2003).

Steve's latest book is The Age of Agile to be published by AMACOM on February 1, 2018. Pre-order it now from Amazon. The Agile of Agile

Steve's book, Leader's Guide to Radical Management: Re-inventing the Workplace for the 21st Century (Jossey-Bass, 2010), was selected by 800-CEO-READ as one of the best five books on management in 2010. It offers a comprehensive guide to the reinventing the organization for the 21st Century.

Steve's book, The Secret Language of Leadership: How Leaders Inspire Action Through Narrative (October 2007) was selected by the Financial Times as one of the best books of 2007. It was also selected by the book distributor, 800-CEO-READ, as the best book on leadership in 2007. It is a comprehensive guide to transformational leadership, particularly how to use develop and use narrative intelligence to inspire enduring enthusiasm in any audience for your cause.

Steve's book, The Leader's Guide to Storytelling (2005) is a comprehensive guide to the various ways in which leaders can use of storytelling to achieve a variety of organizational purposes, including spark action, communicate who they are, transmit the brand, transfer values, share knowledge, inspire collaboration, tame the grapevine and lead people into the future.

Steve's book, The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations (Butterworth Heinemann, 2000) describes how storytelling can serve as a powerful tool for organizational change and knowledge management.

Steve's book, Squirrel Inc.: A Fable of Leadership and Storytelling was published by Jossey-Bass in June 2004. It discusses the seven highest value forms of organizational storytelling, about which there is already considerable advance praise.

Another book, co-authored by Steve Denning along John Seely Brown, Katalina Groh and Larry Prusak, was published in June 2004 by Elsevier. It is entitled Storytelling in Organizations: How Narrative and Storytelling Are Transforming Twenty-first Century Management

Steve was born and educated in Sydney, Australia. He studied law and psychology at Sydney University and worked as a lawyer in Sydney for several years. He did a postgraduate degree in law at Oxford University in the U.K. Steve then joined the World Bank where he worked for several decades in many capacities and held various management positions, including Director of the Southern Africa Department from 1990 to 1994 and Director of the Africa Region from 1994 to 1996. From 1996 to 2000, Steve was the Program Director, Knowledge Management at the World Bank.

Steve was a Senior Scholar at the Burns Academy of Leadership at the University of Maryland from 2006-2009.

In the Fall of 2009, Steve was a Visiting Fellow at All Souls Colleges, Oxford University, UK.

Steve was a member of the Quality Council V of the Conference Board from 1993 to 1996.

He has published a novel, The Painter and a a volume of poetrySonnets 2000.