Day 2 at AMUG 2026: The GENERAL ATOMICS & DIVERGENT Keynote

1. WHAT OTHERS DO
   What I particularly enjoyed was to see the role of catalyst that an Association or of a Trade Show can play in exposing visitors to Industries they’re not familiar with but can actually relate to.
   
   Steve listened to Kevin Czinger‘s Key Note in 2022, saw an opportunity for a technology transfer and sat with Kevin for a brainstorming coffee.

   I’d like to quote a Business Strategy Guru, Gary Hamel. Called as consultant for a Hotel business he was questioned by a lad: “You don’t come from our industry”. Prof. Hamel replied: “That is precisely my competitive advantage”.
   At USI Executive MBA, EMBA this video was played during the Strategy class – it was my moment to see the light.

   Invite End Users to your event. Give them the podium. Make sure they belong to a diversified set of Industries. That moves the needle. The alternative is a peers gathering – fine per se, but not developing the business.

2. COME TOGETHER
   They described how the two teams had to come together, define the strategy, make it business-viable. That was a class in organizational behavior and people’s management.

3. HIRE DOWNSTREAM, GO WORK UPSTREAM
   One more thing: Scott was recruited from General Atomics. Hire talent from the Industry you want to enter, get the insight and adopt their jargon, communication processes etc.

   From an employee perspective: a move upstream on the Value Chain can allow a transformative action on the new employer’s business and even on its culture.

Scott seemed pretty cheerful and by working with his former pals, to some extent, one could say he didn’t really leave.

An excellent show-stealing talk.
Arno Held-proof.
Well done, AMUG.

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