Lisa Ring,
Director – Global Recruitment
THNK School of Creative Leadership,
Amsterdam, Netherlands

“How can THNK help you change the world?” is the first question that we ask every creative leader we connect with. Our mission is to address the world’s most pressing and inspiring societal challenges by accelerating the development of the next generation of creative leaders and their ventures.

As a result, the THNK School of Creative Leadership has forged a new category in global business education by becoming a C-school. Where a B-school focuses on management, our training is centered on innovation leadership. Where a D-school focuses on product design, our training is centered on business design. As a C-school, we allow our students to explore topics such as innovation strategy, business design thinking, leadership development, entrepreneurship and the triple bottom line.

The THNK School of Creative Leadership has grown to more than 300 people since 2010. Our community is defined by its diversity, and although every THNK journey is unique, every member of THNK’s alumni have passed through our Creative Leadership Program, our flagship part-time 6 month course.

During four 8-10 day modules, participants are fully immersed in the THNK methodology, whether that is around the city, in the wilderness or on campus at our homes specially designed for experiential learning.

The Creative Leadership Program is made up of 4 elements:

At THNK, our classes bring together participants from across the globe, people from very different backgrounds. We consciously bring together leaders from big business, entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, government and public sector, participants are given unique exposure to a range of new perspectives and ideas.
THNK focuses on accelerating the next generation of creative leaders. Our guiding principles shape how we think about learning. For example, we believe learning should be short on theory and long on experience; learning should be fun yet at the same time challenging; and learning should always be linked to topics that are relevant and real for the learner.

While these guiding principles are deep in the DNA of how we engaged all participants at THNK, during our 18-month, part-time Executive Program, we support our participants to build their creative leadership skills through four program elements:

Challenge: The Challenge is the next generation of the business school staple, the business case. In the Challenge, an external sponsor brings in a topic of large societal relevance (such as food or mobility or education), which our participants explore using THNK’s innovation toolkit. Our toolkit is derived from a number of disciplines including design thinking, critical thinking and systems thinking.

Quest: In the Quest, participants explore the personal leadership dimensions of creativity and innovation. They learn to tap into their passion and purpose while maintaining an explorative mindset. They learn to envision what a better future could look like, orchestrate creative teams and drive their vision to break-through impact.

Forum: The Forum is a lecture reinvented. During the Forum, a global creative leader spends an evening engaging our
participants in a dialogue of co-creation, sparking inspiration and new insights.
Accelerator: The Accelerator is the participant’s own project that is designed to change the world. Participants use all the things they have learned during the THNK journey to launch their Accelerator.
Since the first Creative Leadership Program in 2012, THNK has grown globally and is now offering the same program in Amsterdam, Vancouver and Lisbon. The ever-growing global popularity of THNK directly results from the inspiring societal impact that previous participants are now making around the world.

Creative leaders across the globe that serves as a role model

Elon Musk for his uncompromisingly, challenging vision for the future; Steve Jobs for his ability to articulate the needs of consumers before they were able to articulate them themselves and his relentless strive for perfection; Richard Branson for his burning entrepreneurial drive; Muhammad Yunus for his brilliance in scaling a small concept into something with large societal impact.

Testimonials of leaders that have been featured in this program

Participants such as Jacob Ellenberg, Osher Gunsberg, Rym Baouendi, Wempy Dycota Koto share their experience in THNK as fulfilling, genuine, an incredible methodology to manifest business plans, spiritual by design, transformative experience, endless journey – a drive to contribute to the world, and provides functional knowledge.
Upcoming programs in 2016 therefore have limited spaces left, but we encourage all potential participants to make contact and allow us to ask the question: “How can THNK help you change the world?”

Profile: Lisa Ring
Lisa currently leads the global recruitment function on behalf of THNK Amsterdam which she considers a privilege. Passionate about discovering, engaging and developing top talent, Lisa is truly inspired to be cultivating the next breed of creative leaders on a daily basis for THNK.

Lisa has over a decade of experience working across sectors and industries, having the bulk of her experience within the education sector as Director of Recruitment & Marketing for Hult International Business School where she helped to scale-up a rapidly growing program in Asia Pacific.

She also spent time working within the Human Resources sector with organizations such as The Adidas Group and Philips International LTD.

Lisa is passionate about non-profit international work and spent a year working with HIV/AIDS orphaned children in South Africa and continues to stay active in this sector.

THNK Leadership Training

Profile: Lisa Ring
Lisa currently leads the global recruitment function on behalf of THNK Amsterdam which she considers a privilege. Passionate about discovering, engaging and developing top talent, Lisa is truly inspired to be cultivating the next breed of creative leaders on a daily basis for THNK.
Lisa has over a decade of experience working across sectors and industries, having the bulk of her experience within the education sector as Director of Recruitment & Marketing for Hult International Business School where she helped to scale-up a rapidly growing program in Asia Pacific.
She also spent time working within the Human Resources sector with organizations such as The Adidas Group and Philips International LTD.
Lisa is passionate about non-profit international work and spent a year working with HIV/AIDS orphaned children in South Africa and continues to stay active in this sector.

Founder of the Sasol Solar Challenge, Winstone Jordaan, had the idea of building an electric car in 2003. After visiting the World Solar Challenge in 2005 he realized that people in South Africa did not possess basic knowledge about electric cars. He was impressed by the 1400 skilled students from all over the world in Australia, and could only imagine how much knowledge South Africa would be able to gain when hosting a solar challenge as well. This knowledge will result in accomplishing the ultimate goal; an improved future for South Africa.

1.1 Goal and Objectives
Our eco-efficiency challenge allows teams from around the world to come together in South Africa to participate and demonstrate the sophistication and performance of solar-powered vehicles. The Purpose of the event is to promote research into sustainable transport, showcase technologies and present a platform for participants and the public to engage. The underlining goal of the solar challenge is to increase the number of people in South Africa that are interested in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects. These subjects are crucial to get the country to a higher level.

1.2 Organizing the Sasol Solar Challenge has resulted in giving South Africa a platform where they can exercise the skills in building cars locally. This in turn has resulted in an increased level of knowledge & curiosity in the industry about electric motors, its battery systems, vehicle aerodynamics and more. Secondly, solar cars show the public, what solar panels can do. When people will see solar panels driving a car, it creates a positive sentiment, building trust in its ability. Trusting this technology, will also make electric vehicles more acceptable in the community. Finally, the Sasol Solar Challenge motivates students to fresh thinking, a creative approach, and flexible solution.

1.3 History:
Fortunately, we managed to run the first South African Solar Challenge in 2008. Tokai was one of the teams competing in South Africa. Back then they competed with an eleven year-old car they built, with which they were able to win the race. The Japanese team leveraged massively from the victory in South Africa. It enabled them to receive sponsorships and build a new car to compete with in the World Solar Challenge in 2009, and ultimately win the Australian race.

The second edition of the solar challenge in 2010, included a 4 100 km route and five teams competing. The focus of this race was on recognition, compliance and alignment with the FIA. The aim of the 2012 event was to get more local teams participating, especially universities. A total of twelve teams competed in the third edition of the South African Solar Challenge.

In 2014, we raised the level of the event to an international standard. The World Solar Challenge Winners, NUNA from the Netherlands, joined us for an amazing event. The event started in Pretoria and finished the one way route in Cape Town.

In 2014, we launched an educational program, that entailed an educational kit which explained how solar powered vehicles work and material that enabled kids to build their own solar car. For the 2014 Solar Challenge more than 600 schools were engaged which makes it more than 350,000 scholars in total.

1.4 The Sasol Solar Challenge, South Africa, occurs on public roads with normal traffic. It is therefore essential that teams comply with the road rules and any conditions imposed by the road traffic authorities. The solar challenge will start in Pretoria on September 24th and ends eight days later in Cape Town going through Kroonstad, Bloemfontein, Gariep Dam, Graaff-Reinet, Port Elizabeth, Sedgefield and Swellendam. The main route will span approximately 2000km through the country, covering an average distance of 260km a day.

1.5 All correspondence regarding the Sasol Solar Challenge can be forwarded to: Annalie van Vuuren (Project/Event Manager) E-mail: annalie@solarchallenge.org.za Mobile: +27 71 687 0047 OR Winstone Jordaan (Race Director) E-mail: winstone@solarchallenge.org.za Mobile: +27 83 284 7747

An Invention that addresses Water & Food Security
Change Maker of India, Founder & Innovator Biplab Ketan Paul
Ahmadabad, Gujarat

MOSAICQUE Magazine in its August 2015 edition is honoured to feature an ASHOKA INNOVATOR, the “Change Maker of India” Biplab Ketan Paul, whose invention “BHUNGROO” addresses the water and food security issue in the most economical and ecofriendly way. The word “Bhungroo” literally means “a straw” in Gujarati – is a water invention that assists in safeguarding the underground water reservoir table by storing excess rainfall water, lessening the damaging effects of salt deposits on soil, frees land of water logging and provides access to fresh water. Enclosed is the write-up about the innovation and the inventors view points for your reading:

1. How did the idea of Bhungroo came about?
In my childhood, in West Bengal I saw devastation of flood and in my late twenties I observed the issues related to paucity of water and severe drought in Gujarat state. These two diametrically opposite phenomenon convinced me the strength and power of water. It was also an eye-opener for me to understand the human follies and its impact on nature.
In that context, I endeavoured to find a solution which can assist mother earth to help her children. And in that process I have followed simple principle of nature to learn basic natural science (I am a student of Humanities) more and design new methods. The output is the unique irrigation technology named as Bhungroo. Now nothin

Kristine Oustrup Laureijs
Co-Founder, Innovation Network & Director, Business Innovation Culture (BIC)

Kristine Oustrup is a creative and dynamic woman, a Goodwill Ambassador of Copenhagen that is committed in using design and fashion in a responsible way on open innovation models, for midsize and large companies. MOSAICQUE magazine was privileged to interview Kristine in regards to her achievement and her future aspirations.

According to Kristine being creative is at the core of being human. And so, she inquires into a most challenging question, if Technology can do pretty much anything in the world, can technology be truly creative? So to address this, BIC tested out an idea called the ICoNS, to see if different people innovate differently.

She co-founded Qi Global to incite such change and believes that innovation happens when there is cross-pollination of knowledge, hence their approach involves reaching out to individuals and organisations from diverse industries. Ideas are the seeds, but we also need passion from the community, and resources from the corporate world to nurture a meaningful space that can allow these ideas to come to fruition. By bridging people from these different backgrounds together, synergistic encounters are engineered, and innovative projects are formed as a result of their collective effort to be architects of a different future.

One of Qi-Global’s current project is the Rainforest Cuisine brand intends to protect the depleting rainforest of West Kalimantan by providing the local tribes an alternative source to livelihood rather than taking part in the oil palm and timber industries which is the cause of Borneo’s rapid deforestation. Encroachment from palm oil plantations was rapidly transforming Borneo’s rainforest, possibly the world’s most magnificent example of biodiversity. Borneo’s primary rainforest is 130 million years old, making it the oldest in the world. There are over 15,000 unique species of flowering plants making it one of the most bio-diverse places on earth. In order to support and develop a long term relationship with local tribes, Chef Andre and Kristine aimed to establish a supply chain for sourcing produce from the rainforest in a responsible and sustainable manner.

With Cathy Henkel, the Director behind “The Rise of the Eco-Warriors”, and Andre Chiang, one of Singapore’s top chefs, they have started an initiative that tackles deforestation in a novel way. The destruction of rainforests stems from the fact that the new forms it takes – such as timber and fertile agricultural land – are far more than profitable than its original state.
Our solution, hence, is to monetise the rainforest as it is by supplying haute cuisine establishments with rare, original and natural rainforest ingredients. The sustainable, fair-trade supply chain they are developing allows the rainforest to continue flourishing, bring equitable returns to the local communities and, on a larger scale, generate interest in protecting rainforests by showcasing its beauty and diversity to the rest of the world. Kristine’s role is to inspire, incubate ideas and help make the impossible happen.

Profile:
Kristine “Kiki” Oustrup Laureijs, is a contemporary visual artist exploring new frontiers.
Using visual and multimedia art installations, her works offers both visionary and sometimes provoking commentaries on contemporary social, political and cultural issues.
Currently she is exploring multicultural identity in a globalising world for FACES of the FUTURE.
A graduate in International Business & Marketing, she originally joined the Scandinavian fashion group METROPOL (St. Martins) in Denmark, before moving to Hong Kong as Head of Innovation for global lifestyle brand DIESEL.
After a move to France in 2001, Kiki became the co-founder of the French trend agency Style-Vision, where she consulted several global luxury brands and initiated the Style-Vision Round Table events, supported by the Financial Times.
In 2009, Kristine arrived in Singapore to establish Qi GLOBAL, an open innovation platform for sustainability, with the mission of “Human Progress in Harmony with Nature”.
During 2012-2015, she pivoted the online platform into Business Innovation Culture, a change management company, served on the advisory board of the Singapore Institute for Innovation & Productivity (SiPi) and as the Chairwoman of the growing CEO Innovation Network.
With her innovative ideas gaining continuous recognition, she has been appointed “Goodwill Ambassador of Copenhagen” under the patronage of His Royal Highness, Prince Joachim of Denmark, to represent and promote the country of her birth.

Dorjee Sun
CEO, Carbon Conservation

MOSAICQUE magazine takes privilege in featuring in its August 2015 edition Dorjee Sun – the trailblazer Australian, the unstoppable, kind-hearted, green entrepreneur who is passionate about saving the earth one step at a time, through his company Carbon Conservation.
Carbon Conservation grew out of Sun’s concern for the millions of hectares of rain forest destroyed each year in Indonesia. He knew that nonprofits alone weren’t going to stop tropical deforestation, which contributes as much as a quarter of the world’s carbon emissions. According to Dorjee, deforestation would only end when it becomes more profitable to keep forests than to turn them into logs or farms. The Kyoto Protocol doesn’t yet recognize avoided deforestation and Sun literally had to force himself at Thirteenth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP13) held in Bali, Indonesia to put his business on the map.

In April 2008, Sun brokered the world’s first commercial avoided-deforestation project, in the war-torn Indonesian province of Aceh, with Merrill Lynch stepping up to pay its villagers to protect 1.9 million acres (770,000 hectares) of pristine jungle in exchange for the value of the carbon locked inside the trees. In exchange, Merrill got carbon credits, which are also known as carbon offsets. These credits meet the quality standards set by a group called the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance (CCBA), whose members include environmental groups Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy and the Rainforest Alliance, and companies as BP, Intel and SC Johnson.

Profile:
Dorjee is a social entrepreneur who has founded 11 companies with 2 acquisitions and 3 exits and assets sales [cvMail (2000), Elevate Education (2002), AsiaGroove (2004), Honey RoastedTV (2005), Joosed (2005), Carbon Conservation (2007), Carbon Agro (2009), Whogives (2012), SnapClip (2014), Freedoms (2014) and Home Group (2014)].

His experience in technology ranges from ecommerce where he has advised TESCO’s Asian CEOs and KUONI Travel on ecommerce innovation strategy, engaged to help with their internal hackathons. Advised Shopline a SME SaaS e-tail platform in Asia and started, operated and led Visa’s Bigger Better Sale recruiting 45K customers and 60 vendors in Singapore in just 77 days. He is advising a crowdfunding platform ‘StartSomeGood’ and ChangeTip a bitcoin tipping platform. He is a Director for Whogives the company deploying the world’s first commercial Google Glass public project, also the company deploying kindness and philanthropy project for Singapore’s Government, he is Chairman of Nexus Singapore. He previously owned AsiaGroove, at the time the biggest Asian youth community in Australia with virtual currency 5K gifts p/day and currently is a co-Founder and investor relations/ marketing for an innovative new mobile video animation app called Snapclip.

Dorjee is a founder and director of the Home Group which owns equity in companies that work in the areas of conservation, agriculture, philanthropy, technology and financial innovation. Dorjee is also a founder and director of Carbon Conservation which owns equity in large scale sustainability and carbon conservation projects globally with project partners and clients such as Rio Tinto, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Olam and Twitter. One such project in Aceh, Indonesia, won the Carbon Finance Deal of the Year award and was also the subject of an award winning documentary, “The Burning Season”, narrated by Hugh Jackman which explained how orangutan conservation and avoided deforestation could be tied in to generate alternative monetary incentives. The African Rainforest Conservancy honoured Dorjee with an Earth Day Award and by naming a newly discovered blue spotted species of chameleon from the Tanzania rainforest – the “Kinyongia dorjeesuni”.

His most recent undertaking is a solution for busy undergraduates called UNSWOT – a simple idea, an enabling digital platform, to engage the students face-to-face online with a conversation, a discussion, a debate on wide ranging issues such as challenges facing UN, Australian immigration policies, international obligations and climate change. Last month, this new idea was presented to University of North South Wales Vice Chancellor Ian Jacobs and 51 other Heads of Schools.

Dorjee has also been named one of TIME Magazine’s Heroes of the Environment, a World Economic Forum Global Leaders of Tomorrow, CPA Top 20 Business Leaders, one of Esquire Magazine’s 5 Gentlemen of Philanthropy, one of the Young Leaders by The Australian newspaper, he has won the Asialink Leaders Program Alumni Award, was named an Asia Society 21 Fellow, a World Cities Summit Future Leader, is the Chairman Nexus Youth Philanthropy Singapore Conference, on the board for the Nexus Youth Philanthropy Australia Conference and his work has been covered in Wall Street Journal, Fortune, TIME, Esquire, ABC, PBS, BBC, Discovery, CNBC, Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian and other media outlets.

Dorjee has a law degree, commerce degree and diploma of Asian Studies (Mandarin) from the University of New South Wales, studied at North Sydney Boys High. Growing up in Sydney he now shares his time between Singapore, San Francisco, Sydney and other project locations.