
Dr. Nick Bontis
World’s Leading Expert on Intellectual Capital
Dr. Nick Bontis
World’s Leading Expert on Intellectual Capital
Biography
Dr. Nick Bontis is the world’s leading expert on intellectual capital and its impact on performance and was named as one of the Top 30 Management Gurusworld-wide. He helps organizations leverage their most important intangible asset for sustainable competitive advantage. Nick has been immersed in the field since 1991 when a cover story in Fortune Magazine, titled “Brainpower”, changed the course of his life. Risking a secure future, Nick left a promising banking career to pursue a PhD in the field. His groundbreaking doctoral dissertation went on to become the #1 selling thesis in Canada. His accomplishments thus far could fill a volume.
As a professional speaker, Nick has delivered keynote presentations on every continent for leading organizations in both the private and the public sector. His dynamic, high-energy presentations provide personal and team recommendations for improving individual and organizational effectiveness leaving audiences with the tools, inspiration and impetus to accelerate management performance. His customized programs are a mix of practical managerial tools, rigorous academic research, strategic consulting, entertaining humour and a blast of youthful exuberance.
As an academic, “Nicky B” (as he is known by his students) is an award-winning tenured professor who delivers enlightening content with energy that virtually zings off the walls when he steps into a room. He currently teaches strategy to undergraduates, knowledge management to MBAs, and advanced statistics to PhD students at the DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University. He has won over 12 major teaching awards and faculty researcher of the year twice. Maclean’s Magazine has rated him as one of McMaster’s most popular professors for six years in a row! TVO recognized him as one of the top 10 lecturers in Ontario. OUSA and OCUFA awarded him Ontario’s top professor. He is also a 3M National Teaching Fellow, an exclusive honour only bestowed upon the top university professors in the country often referred to as the Nobel prize of teaching!
Nick earned his PhD from the prestigious Ivey Business School, Western University where he received the top scholastic achievement award. He won a Canadian national silver medal in the running long jump, with a remarkable leap of seven and half metres – that’s nearly 25 feet! Nick also competed on the varsity men’s soccer team receiving both MVP and leading goal scorer honours as well as an induction into the Western Mustangs Sports Hall of Fame. As an athlete, Nick received national all-star status and several high profile awards all while performing in the Western symphony band as a euphonium player. He was inducted into the Hamilton Soccer Hall of Fame and is currently serving on the Concacaf Council as Vice President.
As a consultant, Dr. Bontis is the Director of the Institute for Intellectual Capital Research – a leading strategic management consulting firm. His services have been sought after by leading organizations such as the United Nations, Microsoft, Health Canada, Royal Bank, Telus, Accenture, SAS, Mitsubishi, United Way, the US Navy and IBM. Tom Stewart, former Editor of Fortune Magazine and Harvard Business Review, recognizes him as a “pioneer and one of the world’s real intellectual capital experts”. Nick is also on the Advisory Board of several organizations including a variety of educational-based institutions designing and implementing executive development programs across the country.
As a writer, Nick is the author of the best-selling book Information Bombardment: Rising above the digital onslaught. He has won international acclaim for his leading edge research and award-winning management cases. He is ranked as one of the top cited authors in management research globally with over 50,000 citations world-wide.
As an entrepreneur, Nick is Chief Knowledge Officer of Knexa Solutions – the world’s first knowledge exchange and auction, based in Vancouver. He is also Director of Harvest Portfolios Group – an investment firm based in Oakville. Dr. Bontis also draws on his wealth of practical, hands-on business experience. He started his career at Human Resources Development Canada and later at KPMG. He then moved on to work for several years at CIBC Securities Inc. in a variety of areas including marketing, securities analysis, recruitment, strategy and software development. He received the CIBC Chairman’s Award for outstanding contribution to the bank.
With his unique combination of substance and sizzle, Dr. Bontis is guaranteed to ignite, entertain and enlighten audiences, empowering them with both the tools and the inspiration to perform at a higher level of accelerated performance. He currently resides in Ancaster, Ontario with his family.
Speaker Videos
Dr. Nick Bontis - Canadian academic & keynote speaker (2025)
Speech Topics
Transforming Your Leadership & Productivity for Peak Performance
Are you an ambitious individual that feels there’s too much on your plate, yet you still desire to blast through every target and then some? Dr. Nick Bontis has leveraged two decades worth of research on personal productivity that will shrink your ever-growing “to do” list to the most important activities that are necessary for you to delight your customers, impress your team members, and solidify your value to your organization. Never worry again about not having enough time to do this or that. The time has finally come to transform your personal productivity for peak performance. During this enlightening and action-packed keynote presentation, Dr. Nick Bontis will show you how to:
- increase your personal productivity by providing the three (3) most important actionable tactics that ensure a higher level of efficiency
- create a bullet-proof shield for your career that no competition or disruptive technology can penetrate
- provoke your ability to strategically manage change before anyone else can even see it coming
Accelerating Collaboration & Communication at Hyper-Speed
Is your team just spinning its wheels, but you know deep-down it can do more with less? Dr. Nick Bontis has harnessed the best practices of knowledge sharing by consulting with some of the world’s leading organizations. High performance teams are supposed to harvest the synergy embedded in all of their members within and across departments to create value above and beyond what is expected. Help your team solidify its reputation as the smartest group around by accelerating collaboration and communication at hyper speed. During this inspirational and dynamic keynote presentation, Dr. Nick Bontis will show you how to:
- improve coordination within and across your teams by learning the top four (4) drivers of collaboration
- orient your team towards the single most explosive secret for guaranteeing knowledge sharing
- avoid the three biggest pitfalls that make teams perform at sub-optimal levels
Leadershifting & Strategizing Towards Innovation & Growth
The markets are turbulent, the geopolitical economy is unstable, your competition is frothing at the mouth, and you are holding it all together and executing the strategic plan. As the senior leader in your organization, you know you can’t do it alone. How do you harvest the full intellectual capital potential of your organization? Dr. Nick Bontis is an awardwinning professor of strategy and the most-cited author on the planet in his field. Let him show you a clear path. Don’t let unforeseen disruptive technology make you and your organization obsolete. During this engaging and world-class keynote presentation, Dr. Nick Bontis will show you how to:
- embrace the three (3) most important steps for developing an inimitable sustainable advantage so you can drive the execution of your strategy
- leadershift your strategic position by turning chaos into opportunity
- evade the single largest strategic misstep that will curtail your leadership and execution
Think Ahead! Take a Knowledge Journey
Are you overwhelmed by information bombardment? Do you have too much to do and not enough time to do it? By the 1930’s, all the information that existed in the world doubled every 30 years. By the 1970’s, this rate shrunk to 7 years. By the end of next year, all the information that exists in the world will double every (find out from Dr. Bontis)! Information bombardment is the single most damaging threat to productivity. But, it doesn’t have to be this way. Why not transform this threat into a sustainable competitive advantage for you and your firm? During this enlightening and action-packed keynote presentation, you will learn how to:
- cope with information bombardment
- improve your ability to manage change
- lift productivity and efficiency
- works smarter, instead of harder
The Ultimate Performance Accelerating Activity for Teams
Employees spend in excess of 50% of their time looking for answers and then spend 20% of their time replicating answers for others. Is your team suffering from the same dilemma? Does your team seem to be spinning its wheels? High performance teams are supposed to harvest the synergy embedded in all of their members to create value above and beyond what each person could do on their own. During this inspirational and engaging keynote presentation, you will learn how to achieve your team’s full potential as well as:
- enhance team collaboration and coordination
- avoid waste and duplication costs
- promote knowledge sharing vs. hoarding
- accelerate your team’s productivity
A Competitive Edge for Leaders
The average Fortune 500 company loses $64 million dollars a year because of ineffective knowledge sharing. Firms generally leverage only 2% of their employees’ talent, which is also the #1 reason why employees leave their jobs. As your organization’s leader, it is your responsibility to make sure that your firm is fully engaged and operating at optimum capacity. Unfortunately, some leaders misallocate their resources. Or worse, some leaders have no clue what strategic initiatives are necessary to achieve great performance. Let Dr. Bontis navigate you towards the best performance you have ever experienced. Using a unique causal modelling methodology he developed, you will learn how to:
- understand exactly what impacts revenue and profit
- decrease expenses by reducing waste
- appreciate exactly which investments are worth making
- optimally allocate your scarce resources
Selling in the Nick of Time
Today’s sales environment is competitive and complex, with businesses selling through many channels including direct marketing, value-added resellers and e-commerce. To stay ahead of the game you need to learn how to sell “in the Nick of time”. The days when customers relied solely on the salesperson for information are long gone. Information is abundant and at everyone’s fingertips. Successful salespeople use customer knowledge as their main competitive weapon for nurturing long-lasting relationships. Learn how to attain loyal and committed customers, with less effort than ever before. During this motivational keynote presentation, you will learn how to:
- discover tomorrow’s business development trends today, keeping you ahead of the curve
- learn the one sales tool that will have you working smarter not harder
- empower the analytical skill within you to provide more than just information
- experience synergies never before realized with your sales and marketing team
Combating the Biggest Thread Ever! Organizational Dementia
Baby-boomers carry a massive amount of know-how in their heads and are generally responsible for the smooth functioning of almost every organization. They hold a lifetime of experience and expertise, and soon they will simply walk out the door. Capturing this intellectual capital (brainpower of the organization) before the imminent threat of retirement is a crucial task forevery manager. However, do Gen Xers and Gen Yers realize their role in sustaining the memory of every organization. Furthermore, does your organizational leadership appreciate that something must be done now instead of later? During this dynamic keynote presentation, you will learn:
- how to turn this pending threat into an advantage
- how to ensure a smooth transition from retired employees
- why various scenarios of knowledge loss affect performance in different ways
- what you can do to retain more critical knowledge in the face of major turnover