David G. Thomson

By: ICOSA Issue: Big Ideas, Smart People Section: Advisory Board David G. Thomson Founder and Chairman The Blueprint Growth Institute 14223 Eby Street Overland Park, KS 66221 Office: 408.593.5759 Mobile: 913.484.9178 [email protected] www.BlueprintGrowth.com

David G. Thomson is a bestselling author, advisor and speaker. He is the Founder and Chairman of The Blueprint Growth Institute, a specialized management-consulting firm focused on helping companies develop growth strategies and execute the 7 Essentials. His insights that identified the quantitative success pattern of America's highest growth companies—which he wrote about in his best seller Blueprint to a Billion—have been embraced globally. Thomson's Blueprint and 7 Essentials have been featured in media such as The New York Times, Investor's Business Daily, USATODAY, ABCNews.com, BusinessWeek.com, Korean Economic Daily and Sky TV (Australia). As a keynote speaker, he has presented to over 25,000 people and has been globally translated into multiple languages.

Thomson's newest research is identifying how America's growth companies are applying the 7 Essentials during recessionary times to become the leaders for the next growth cycles. He has synthesized these lessons in his recent book, released in 2010 from John Wiley & Sons, Mastering The 7 Essentials of High-Growth Companies. Jim Estill is both a seed investor and board member of Research in Motion (RIM). He commented that, Mastering The 7 Essentials of High-Growth Companies certainly applied to RIM in the early years. The principle of having a breakthrough proposition was the whole basis for the leading BlackBerry® business and because the smartphone market was in its infancy, it was clearly a high-growth market. In the early days to help RIM stay focused on research and development, they setup with co-CEOs. One focused on inside, and the other on outside research and development, while at the same time selling products/services and creating alliances with brand name service providers. David has nailed the essentials required to become a high-growth company."

Thomson's recent research report is GROWTHonomics: The Next 800 Companies to Lead America's Growth. He uniquely applies the quantitative "Blueprint" success pattern to identify the next companies, industries and states that will lead the next growth cycle through 2016. This research identifies that these companies will generate 3.4 million new jobs through 2016.

With the launch of Blueprint Growth Investors LLC, Thomson is uniquely linking management actions to the specific factors that drive shareholder value for high-growth companies. Based on three years of research with Standard & Poor's, Thomson can identify the financial and industry factors that maximize shareholder value and uniquely benchmark company performance based on fundamentals. The impact for management teams is a quantitative measurement of the impact of the 7 Essentials on shareholder value. For investors, Thomson has formed the Blueprint Growth Investors, LLC for private investors to invest in Blueprint Companies based on this quantitative approach.

Thomson has been studying and leading business growth for twenty years in general management and executive sales/marketing at Nortel Networks and Hewlett-Packard and as an associate principal during his five years at McKinsey & Company. Thomson graduated with an electrical engineering degree from the University of Waterloo and an MBA from the University of Western Ontario. Visit www.blueprintgrowth.com for more information and tools to help grow your business; The 7 Essentials Scorecard can help companies measure performance against each essential and The 7 Essentials Workshop will help teams define an actionable roadmap.