SPEAKER: MIKE HARRIS

Founder and Executive Vice Chairman of Egg plc, the UK's leading Internet Bank which launched in October 1998 and is seen as a European leader in developing a successful open-finance model appropriate for the New Economy - he became Executive Vice Chairman in January 2001 to focus on the major strategic moves necessary for Egg to fulfil its potential as a world beater.

CEO of Mercury Communications - at that time the UK's second largest telecommunications operator between 1991 and 1994

Founder and CEO of Firstdirect from 1988-91 covering the start-up period of the UK's first direct bank

Previous Experience in Banking and Information Technology.

Outside of business he is a Board Member at "The Club of Budapest"- a think tank on the impact of the New Economy on society and has served on Government Committees concerned with the transformation of public services.

Mike Harris believes that the new economy represents the most rapid and profound change ever experienced by society and business. There is no end game - the only hope for a business is to stay one or two steps ahead of the competition. His own approach has been to create business models, which fundamentally challenge and transform the industries in which they operate. In this he succeeded spectacularly at Firstdirect and Egg and failed equally spectacularly at Mercury (although it was a close brush with success!).

He has developed an approach to leadership, which has drawn on coaching and re-invention models and on the new science of complexity, and which is designed to inspire a whole organisation to take on impossible challenges in service of a purpose bigger than the organisation itself.

He has extensive conference and seminar experience in talking about the New Economy, its opportunities and its threat to existing business models, and about "New Economy Leadership" and its key tools of "management of context" and "open eyed commitment". He always illustrates points from his own experience and will always seek to be both provocative and inspirational whilst using humour to add some fun to the occasion.