Members Meeting - Risk and De-Risking in B2B
June 23 -25, 2026 – Emory University – Atlanta, Georgia
June 23 - Morning - Mini Workshops
These mini workshop opportunities are designed for you to dive right in and work hands-on a project with ISBM partners and industry experts.
Minesweeper Software for De-Risking Projects
Dan Adams, Founder, The AIM Institute
Dan Adams founded The AIM Institute in 2005 to help B2B companies build market-facing skills needed for reliable organic growth. He is the author of the books, Business Builders: How to Become an Admired and Trusted Corporate Leader, and New Product Blueprinting… as well as the weekly blog Awkward Realities, and video series B2B Organic Growth. He is a chemical engineer with numerous patents and a listing in the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Dan has trained tens of thousands globally in B2B voice-of-customer skills.
Many companies consider it “too risky” to pursue Horizon 2 or 3 projects, e.g., adjacent markets and disruptive technologies. Join Dan Adams to learn a de-risking methodology he’s taught to multi-national companies around the world. It compresses timelines on good projects… and kills the bad ones fast. He’ll demonstrate it using The AIM Institute’s Minesweeper® software (to which you’ll receive a 30-day subscription) More important, you’ll learn the critical 7-step process, which you can apply on your own without this software.
Timing: 2 hours total, including group exercises. Take-aways: Each participant will receive handouts and a 30-day complimentary subscription to Minesweeper® software.
VOC In AI Era: De-Risking B2B Product Decisions
Kristyn Corrigan, Principle, Applied Marketing Science, Inc.
Kristyn leads the AMS’s Insights for Innovation practice. With over 20 years of consulting experience, she helps B2B and consumer-facing companies use customer insights to develop more successful products, services, and experiences.
Kristyn is a recognized leader in advancing VOC methods, including pioneering the use of AI-powered techniques to uncover customer needs with greater speed, depth, and scale. She specializes in in-depth interviewing, ethnographic research, and helping teams prioritize what matters most to customers to fuel innovation.
She also trains and coaches organizations to build their own in-house VOC capabilities. Kristyn serves on the PDMA Executive Board of Directors and is a frequent speaker at leading industry conferences and podcasts. She has also guest lectured at institutions including MIT Sloan and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
In an AI-enabled world, VOC is everywhere: sales calls, service tickets, communities, win/loss notes, and AI-generated summaries. The danger is acting on fast, surface-level signals (opinions, feature requests, metrics) instead of the deeper customer needs that should guide strategy and innovation.
This highly interactive 2-hour workshop reframes Voice of the Customer as a decision-making discipline for B2B that can be enabled by fine-tuned AI. This session focuses on how to separate signal from noise, apply judgment where AI can mislead, and translate insight into decisions. Participants will practice a needs-based lens using real-world examples and leave with a one-page “VOC Focus Brief” they can use to align stakeholders, prioritize with confidence, and de-risk B2B product and innovation bets.
Workshop Outline
If VOC is everywhere, why are B2B decisions still risky?
- The shift from only “doing VOC studies” to “running a VOC operating system”
- What AI accelerates vs. what it cannot decide for you
Map your B2B “Voice Landscape”
- Where customer voice shows up (internal and external sources)
- Where insight gets diluted, biased, or lost
Signal vs. noise: what a real customer need is
- Classifying input as needs vs. solutions/opinions/metrics/internal assumptions
- The power of truly understanding the underlying “why”
AI in VOC: where it helps, where it increases risk
- Rules of thumb for AI summaries and synthesis
- Common failure modes in B2B
Needs-based prioritization to de-risk B2B bets
- Identify high-value unmet needs, define trade-offs, and test “what we would not do.”
- How a needs mindset improves roadmap, differentiation, and positioning
Build your VOC Focus Brief
- The decision point
- Hypotheses
- Key segments
- Most credible voice sources (and what’s missing)
- Next step to validate and apply inside the organization
Wrap up and Implementation
Aperture.ai VertEx Strategic Growth Platform
Jonathan Fegely, President, Aperture
Co-founder and President of Aperture.ai, a data analytics company with the mission of helping innovators better connect their unique technologies with unmet market needs. Prior to founding Aperture in 2019, Jonathan spent 15 years consulting on innovation and organic growth with senior executives at some of the most sophisticated technology organizations in the world – from startups to universities to Fortune 500 manufacturers.
Frustrated by the lack of meaningful, data-driven insight informing strategic growth, Jonathan and the Aperture team set out to create a new approach built on novel data, software, and processes that have been field tested to deliver real, measurable success. They are working at the cutting edge of data mining, natural language processing, distributed architecture, and innovation using AI-powered analytics for identifying and analyzing unmet needs, market disruptions, technologies, and company capabilities to provide novel and powerful perspective to guide sales and marketing teams and innovation and R&D leaders.
Aperture is an AI-first platform that maps your company’s capabilities, identifies high-leverage growth opportunities, and automates the market research needed to pursue them. Starting from a single product or technology, our platform identifies and prioritizes hundreds of adjacent applications and longer-term innovation opportunities that build on your unique strengths. Teams can collaborate to review and refine these opportunities, flag key questions for deeper analysis, and take the next step — identifying target customers, cross-selling opportunities, and ideal contacts to reach out to. We’re also launching a series of market, customer, and competitor deep dives to surface opportunities beyond your existing capabilities. Our data is different than what you can get from most AI tools in both creativity and detail, with all datapoints scored for confidence, validated against original sources, and linked directly in the platform for full transparency.
We will be providing a demo of our VertEx platform. Map your company’s product and capability portfolio and a run a sample analysis of potential growth opportunities.
From AI Experiments to Enterprise Execution: Making AI a Business Practice with Ainzel
Bernhard Ritz, CEO & Founder, Ainzel
Bernhard Ritz is a results-driven business and technology executive with a distinguished track record in corporate strategy, business development, and operations. As the founder and CEO of Ainzel, an Enterprise AI platform that integrates Virtual AI Agents into businesses, he is at the forefront of AI innovation. Bernhard and Ainzel are leading the future of AI in ACM (AI Capability Management). Based in Berwyn, PA, Bernhard combines strategic vision with technical expertise to drive impactful change. With 22 years at SAP in key roles and as President of Palturai Inc., he has successfully navigated both large corporations and startups, excelling in strategic partnerships, market penetration, and team building. Fluent in German and English, he holds a Master’s degree in Business Information Science from the University of Mannheim, Germany. Known for his exceptional team-building and executive communication skills, Bernhard consistently drives strategic change and innovation.
Artificial intelligence is no longer just a technology initiative or a collection of isolated pilots. It is becoming a core business practice that reshapes how organizations operate, make decisions, create value, and scale expertise. This three-hour practical session explores how companies can move from scattered AI use cases to a structured, governed, and outcome-driven model for enterprise adoption. Using Ainzel as the reference platform, the session introduces a pragmatic approach to building a hybrid workforce in which employees and AI coworkers collaborate across real business processes to deliver faster, smarter, and more precise outcomes.
Participants will examine how AI can be embedded into day-to-day business execution through domain-specific capabilities, reusable use cases, contextual knowledge, orchestration across agents and humans, and enterprise-grade governance. The session will also walk through the core elements of Ainzel’s methodology for becoming AI-ready, including assessing current capabilities, identifying and prioritizing opportunities, building competency, developing the right data and governance foundation, and creating a roadmap for implementation and scale.
Rather than focusing on AI in theory, this session is designed to be practical and business-centered. Attendees will learn what it takes to turn AI into a managed business capability, how to avoid fragmented adoption, and how to connect AI initiatives to measurable business outcomes such as productivity, speed, quality, personalization, and strategic advantage. By the end of the session, participants will have a clearer understanding of how to operationalize AI inside the enterprise and how Ainzel can help transform AI from a promising tool into an organized, scalable, and governed business practice.
June 23 - Afternoon - 1 on 1 Meetings
Schedule 30 minute conversations with ISBM fellows, partners, speakers and industry experts for open discussions focused for your business.
Experts Available for 1 on 1 Conversation and their area of expertise:
- Dan Adams – Innovation De-Risking
- Will Casavan – Responsible AI
- Kristyn Corrigan – Voice of the Customer
- Ralph Cummins – Marketing Due Diligence
- Paul Drees – B2B Marketing Transformations
- Liam Fahey – Market Intelligence
- Jonathan Fegley – Aperture.ai
- Sandy Sap – Strategic Partnering and Channels
- Luciano Lapa – Business Risk
- JT Mudge – Foresight
- Allison Northrop – B2B Influences
- Ralph Oliva – Branding and Value Propositions
- Bernhard Ritz – Ainzel Agentic Technology
June 24 & 25 - Meeting Presentations
Managing Your Career Risk In An AI World
Dan Adams, Founder, The AIM Institute
Dan Adams founded The AIM Institute in 2005 to help B2B companies build market-facing skills needed for reliable organic growth. He is the author of the books, Business Builders: How to Become an Admired and Trusted Corporate Leader, and New Product Blueprinting… as well as the weekly blog Awkward Realities, and video series B2B Organic Growth. He is a chemical engineer with numerous patents and a listing in the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Dan has trained tens of thousands globally in B2B voice-of-customer skills.
Some AI experts believe much of the work done by B2B marketers will be done by AI. Sure, we humans will still be needed when empathy, imagination, and judgment are called for… but if AI does 80% of the time-consuming work, will two marketers do the work of ten? Consider the digital waterline: AI can only operate on what’s been digitally published. What could safeguard your career? Become as efficient as possible above the waterline (using AI) and as effective as possible below the waterline (doing what AI cannot).
In this session, Dan Adams will present the latest predictions on how much human work AI will “take over”… and cover his concept of a Digital Waterline. You’ll discuss what this means for B2B marketers in small table buzz groups and wrap up by sharing the top ideas. Then let’s keep thinking about career risk—not just business risk—the rest of our conference!
Rethinking How B2B Companies De-Risk New Growth
David J. Bland , Founder & CEO, Precoil
David J. Bland is the founder and CEO of Precoil, an innovation consulting firm that helps leaders make better decisions when outcomes are uncertain. He is the co-author of Testing Business Ideas, an internationally bestselling book translated into more than 20 languages, and his work has been featured in Harvard Business Review. David has guest lectured at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, UC Berkeley, London Business School, and other leading institutions.
David works with leadership teams to reduce risk before committing significant capital. He created the Precoil EMT System (Extract–Map–Test), a decision readiness standard that helps organizations surface hidden risk, separate signal from noise, and make clear evidence backed decisions. This work has generated millions of dollars in new growth at DuPont and has been nominated for an industry award. Other clients include, but are not limited to, Adobe, Behr, GE, HP, IBM, Mazda, Toyota, and Walmart.
David also gives back to the community by teaching at several Silicon Valley accelerators, where he helps founders rapidly test new business models and avoid costly early stage mistakes.
Most B2B organizations manage risk after the fact, through controls, compliance reviews, and post-mortems. Far fewer design risk directly into how decisions are made.
In this presentation, David J. Bland introduces a decision infrastructure for making uncertainty visible. Rather than debating opinions in conference rooms, leaders learn how to extract the assumptions driving a growth initiative, map where exposure sits, and design targeted tests to reduce that exposure early.
Drawing on enterprise case studies, he will show how B2B companies can:
- Turn strategic ambiguity into explicit, testable assumptions
- Align commercial and technical teams around shared evidence
- Increase decision speed without increasing risk
- Build internal systems that surface exposure before it becomes expensive
This session reframes risk from something to avoid or into something to structure, measure, and systematically reduce.
Responsible AI Framework, Considerations for B2B
Will Casavan, Senior Partner Marketing Manager – Data|AI (SDC), Microsoft
Will Casavan has extensive expertise in product, program and project development, coupled with a strong focus on brand awareness across domestic and international markets. Proven track record in managing marketing strategies for products, services, and brands within channel and B2B industries, navigating regional, national, and global landscapes. Recognized for my ability to analyze complex challenges, establish clear strategic directions, and inspire teams to excel. As a Certified Project Management Professional (PMP), I bring significant experience in driving success for startups and established organizations alike. Specialties: Brand Marketing, Corporate Relations, Project/Product Management. Significant International Business Experience. Motivator, Coach, Team Builder.
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Marketing Risk Management
Ralph Cummins, CMO, EMM Group
Ralph Cummins is an ISBM Practice Fellow and the President and CMO of EMM Group, a marketing excellence firm that deploys the best practices of strategic marketing to help their clients develop a winning growth strategy and the capabilities to repeat it. Over his diverse marketing career, Ralph has been a management consultant, a global brand leader, and an agency executive. Through it all, he has been a tireless advocate for building strong brands to differentiate and drive business growth. In other words, he has been arguing with his clients about their hesitancy to invest in their brands for decades
Have you ever received a response like this after presenting what you thought was a killer marketing plan? “Great job – really great stuff – we’ll get back to you shortly.” And then, nothing but crickets. That’s the risk aversion talking – or not talking. The fact is marketing is a critical component of any growth strategy, and any form of marketing is a risk. That’s particularly true if your key stakeholders are not as familiar with the dark art of radical concepts like branding or content strategy. And in uncertain times, risk feels magnified. Which is precisely why great marketers lean into uncertainty for growth while others retrench.
In fairness, since we can’t actually predict the future, the apprehension is understandable. And while we can’t eliminate risk, we can identify and manage it in a way that it really doesn’t seem all that risky. In fact, much of what is perceived as risk is just that – perceptions often linked to bias. In this presentation, we will review the common internal and external sources of marketing risk, review a simple framework for assessing risk across several key dimensions, and discuss actions you can take to eliminate perceived risk so you can focus on managing the real risks and your marketing plan.
Q&A Practitioner Panel Discussion About Current Risk and Ways To View Risk
Sandy Jap, Sarah Beth Brown Professor of Marketing, Emory University
Sandy Jap is the Sarah Beth Brown Endowed Professor of Marketing at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. Her research focuses on strategic partnering, business-to-business management, channels of distribution, and go-to-market strategies. She has published widely across the top academic journals in marketing and management science. She is among the top 2% of most cited scholars and scientists worldwide across 22 scientific fields and 176 subfields.
She has received numerous awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Marketing Association (AMA) Interorganizational Special Interest Group, the Innovative Marketing Award from the Marketing Management Association, and many paper awards for her contributions and service to the academy. She is an AMA and Marketing Science Institute (MSI) fellow as well as at Institute for the Study of Business Markets (ISBM) at the Pennsylvania State University and the Direct Selling Education Foundation (DSEF). She is currently an MSI board member, and a former editor-in-chief at Marketing Letters.
She is the author of Partnering with the Frenemy, and co-author of A Field Guide to Channel Strategy; both are how-to books on going to market strategy. She is a former faculty member at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the Wharton School. Her PhD is from the University of Florida (Go Gators!).
Bring your questions for Sandy and her practitioner panel about current risks and how each panelist views these risks.
The Intersection of Marketing and Risk
Luciano Lapa, Assistant Professor of Marketing, Penn State
I am looking for insights into how B2B executives manage risks. If you are interested in having a conversation about “what work challenges currently keep you up at night,” please come see me. I am working with our current PhD student Kathryn Elenius on identifying the most pressing risks in B2B settings.
I am also available to talk about my research, which focuses on how executives respond to different kinds of risk, how those responses affect their companies’ performance, and what executives can do to increase the positive consequences of their responses as well as decrease the negative ones.
I find that executives have vastly different, and sometimes even opposite reactions (e.g., more vs less risk taking) to different kinds of risk (e.g., past sales volatility vs future sales risk). The reasoning behind these reactions to risk are equally varied.
There is no such thing as marketing without risk. From making sense of data and consumer needs to showing the ROI of marketing investments, marketers are expected to drive profits while keeping risk at acceptable levels.
In this presentation, we will use a comprehensive method to the analysis and management of marketing-related risks. The goal of the presentation is to provide a practical toolkit to understand and manage risk, as well as avoid being blindsided by undetected risks. After the session, participants will be able to use the methodology in the field.
The format will be a hands-on approach that applies the latest knowledge in risk analysis research and practice, using risks identified by participants.
Addressing Risk with Foresight
JT Mudge, Adjunct Professor, University of Houston
JT Mudge is an award-winning futurist passionate about sustainability, ethics, and ancestral futures. He has a master’s of science in Foresight from the University of Houston, where he is also an adjunct professor teaching foresight and change theory.
Foresight and futures studies allows us to explore what is possible. It gives us the vision to anticipate what could be around the next corner. Most importantly, it gives us the tools to not just anticipate, but to create better futures that are more sustainable, inclusive, equitable, and resilient.
As an award-winning futurist and strategist, JT has over 25 years of consulting experience. JT advises organizations on strategy and foresight. He has worked with numerous NGO’s governments, and corporations including the US CDC, UNDP, U.S. CDC, The Nature Conservancy, Pew, Apple, and Samsung.
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Ignore B2B Influencers At Your Own Peril
Allison Northrop, Public Relations Manager; Creator Relations Lead, Godfrey
Alli brings extensive experience in B2B media relations, influencer engagement and account management, with a proven track record of executing high-impact public relations programs. She excels at cultivating and sustaining strong relationships with B2B media and influencers, consistently delivering meaningful results for her clients.
In her current role at Godfrey, Alli serves as the agency’s go-to expert on influencer and creator engagement—leading best practices, identifying emerging trends and shaping processes and strategy that drive measurable impact.
Alli has been with Godfrey since 2019, partnering with clients across industries including HVAC, construction, logistics, towing and other industrial sectors.
Alison Adams, VP, Strategy and Analytics, Godfrey
Alison has over 20 years of experience in B2B marketing communications, partnering with organizations that operate in complex, technical and highly competitive markets. She leads a team of strategists and analysts focused on developing innovative, data-driven and high-performing strategies that connect meaningfully with B2B audiences and clearly demonstrate measurable ROI.
With strong experience across the industrial manufacturing landscape, Alison works closely with clients to translate complex offerings into compelling value propositions that resonate with buyers throughout long sales cycles. As a strategist on key accounts, she works to combine industry knowledge, audience insight and strategic creativity to ensure marketing programs drive engagement, alignment and sustainable business growth.
Alison has been at Godfrey since 2010 and has supported clients in markets such as manufacturing, construction, chemicals, and automation and controls, among others.
In today’s complex buying environment, traditional brand messaging alone isn’t enough to build trust or drive meaningful engagement. B2B buyers are increasingly influenced by trusted industry experts, niche thought leaders and content creators who shape conversations longbefore a prospect ever engages with sales. And B2B influencers exist in virtually every industrial market, they just look different than people may expect, often taking the form of engineers, contractors, consultants, analysts or educators rather than traditional social media celebrities — though increasingly, some are becoming exactly that in their industries. In fact, recent LinkedIn research shows nearly six in 10 buyers discover new brands through creator content, and about two-thirds say creator perspectives help them evaluate options and separate real solutions from noise. Ignore them, and you risk missing where credibility is truly built.
In this session, we’ll explore why B2B influencers aren’t just trendy, optional add-ons — they’re powerful partners in building awareness, authority and trust across the full buying journey.From sparking early awareness to driving action, creator content has measurable impact: nearly half of buyers report visiting a vendor website after engaging with influencer content, and morethan a third say it prompted them to speak with sales. You’ll learn how to identify the right voices, align influencer efforts with real business goals and build relationships that extend beyond one-and-done collaborations.
With industry analysts like Forrester arguing that B2B influencer relations must evolve from a one-off tactic into a strategic growth driver, we’ll share practical ways to activate influence across earned, owned and paid channels. Through real-world examples and actionable approaches, you’ll see how to humanize complex solutions, show up in the right conversations and create impact that goes beyond impressions.
Whether you’re new to influencers, already experimenting or a healthy skeptic who still thinks influencers are just dancing on TikTok, you’ll leave with clear next steps, renewed confidence and maybe even a little excitement about putting influence to work — thoughtfully,strategically and with purpose.
June 25 - Afternoon - Marketing Excellence Roundtable (MEX)
The MEX Roundtable is focused on people who have interest in development of marketing competencies and capabilities at their organization, and perhaps overseeing their corporate universities or training programs. In this MEX Roundtable we will also be communicating several new bundled offering packages and a tiered membership structure for 2027.
