ACTE (http://www.acte.org), the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, is a major organization in the travel industry.
The ACTE European Conference is, at the time I’m writing, taking place in Berlin, an incredible and ‘must visit’ city. I must confess I used the opportunity of attending the conference to spend two days here before the event. Coincidentally, October 3 was the 20thanniversary of German reunification, one year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and you can imagine the celebrations taking place.
Monday 10.00am, Ron DiLeo, new Executive Director of ACTE, is on stage. Ron is a salesman in the best sense of the word; he has an abundance of ‘American’ energy and great marketing sense. He is an American travel veteran who also lived in Europe (London) for a while when he was President of Amex Europe.
What I liked in Ron’s speech and announcement was the desire to break with the traditional list of topics and content you get at these conferences. He gave several examples of people having innovated in the travel industry, but coming from backgrounds outside the industry.
Most importantly, there was an announcement of four new programs: Travel University, Consultant Certification, Innovation and Business Angel Space. Two of these resonate incredibly well with what I believe an organization like ACTE can be about:
- A program to identify innovators and reward three of them, one in each region (Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific)
- A business angel space for people wanting to invest in those innovations.
Sometimes things are as simple as that. What we want to get when we go to a conference is new ideas; we want to get back home and be inspired. And what we ideally want is a business ecosystem that helps ideas to flourish. Fabulous initiatives, Ron.
There are other things I continue to like less, for example the lengthy list of sponsored speeches which tend to take too much space in proportion to the rest. Most of them are very boring. We are all in business and we all do marketing. I know ACTE needs dollars to run, but please, Ron, do something about it.
There was then a presentation from two real showmen about innovation and improvisation. It was about the art of communicating, listening to others and building on each other’s ideas. Innovation is seldom the result of isolated individuals. In that session, I heard the best definition ever of innovation. Innovation = Optimism. Innovating mainly consists of seeing things in an optimistic way. I will use this definition for the rest of my life. They managed to touch the heart of what it is. What can you say after that?
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