David S. Kidder

Build Systems to Decide Faster, Execute Under Pressure, and Grow in Uncertainty

The Resilient Growth Imperative

The relentless acceleration of outside forces is overwhelming organizations and fundamentally shifting how leaders and teams need to operate. Geopolitics shift overnight, AI is compressing the speed and complexity of every decision, and competitive landscapes that once evolved over years are now reshaping in months.

Most organizations still rely on systems built for a different era. The constraint is not talent or ambition, but how the organization is structured to decide, adapt, and execute.

‍The resilient growth imperative is clear. The organizations that will thrive are the ones that upgrade how they grow, how their teams execute under pressure, and how their leaders show up when the stakes are highest.

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FOUNDER

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INVESTOR‍

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SPEAKER

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BUILDER

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About David

For over two decades, David has inspired and equipped leadership teams to turn volatility into lasting advantage. As an architect of the systems that ignite resilient growth, he fuses the vulnerability of his entrepreneurial experience with proven methodologies that drive real, measurable change. Every engagement is custom, built backwards from the specific outcome your organization needs to achieve, and can come to life as a keynote, an executive workshop, or a pilot.

Everything he shares comes from experience, and his delivery carries the presence of a founder, investor, and guide who has lived the journey from startup to scale.
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Ignite Resilient Growth™

Customized as a Keynote, Workshop, or Pilot
When the world changes faster than the systems organizations were built on, growth demands a new approach. David brings proven mindsets and systems that Ignite Resilient Growth from three sides of the challenge.

NEW GROWTH

Applied Experience: Bionic, acquired by Accenture Song in 2021
Every established organization reaches a moment where the core business is strong but the future demands something new. David brings a proven system for discovering and accelerating new engines of revenue, market expansion, and strategic reinvention. Growth moves from inside out assumptions about existing markets to an outside in focus on the customer problems that actually create opportunity.

Leaders leave with a shared framework for discovering, validating, and capturing new growth before the window closes.
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COMMERCIAL VELOCITY

Applied Experience: PreMortem, launched 2026
When twelve month plans expire in twelve weeks, leadership teams need an evidence driven way to know whether their highest stakes initiatives are actually on course. David brings a decision discipline that surfaces hidden risks, stress tests the assumptions driving the strategy forward, and aligns the team around what actually needs to be true for the initiative to succeed.

Teams leave having identified the two or three assumptions that will determine success and a clear plan for how they will test them.
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LEADERSHIP PERFORMANCE

Applied Experience: ApogeeOS, launched 2025
The rate of change is asking leaders to operate at a level most were never trained for. David brings a methodology rooted in behavioral science that drives an identity level shift in how leaders show up, collaborate, and hold each other accountable, transforming individual talent into the collective performance that resilient growth demands.

Leaders leave with a proven practice they begin using immediately to strengthen trust, candor, and accountability across the team.
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Example Engagements

Organizational Keynote

The Resilient Growth Playbook: Thriving Through Change

The hardest moment for any leader and team is realizing that what worked yesterday won’t work tomorrow. Vision is important, but resilience is what carries organizations through change. Drawing on decades of experience, David brings lessons from ventures and enterprises that turned uncertainty into momentum. Leaders and teams walk away with ways to adapt faster, navigate uncertainty, and keep growth alive in any environment.
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Organizational and Team

The Power of the Premortem: Fix the Future

Most failures don’t come from bad ideas, they come from the assumptions no one thought to question. The Premortem is a way to surface those blind spots before they cost you. In this keynote and workshop, David demonstrates how teams can pressure-test their plans, align on what really drives success, and turn risks into advantages. The result is sharper decisions and stronger outcomes when it matters most.
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Leadership Keynote

ApogeeOS: Grow With Your Personal Board

No one succeeds alone. Behind every breakthrough is a circle of people who challenged, guided, and supported the journey. In this keynote, David shares how to create your own Personal Board of Directors. It’s a group of mentors, peers, and truth-tellers who help you see what you cannot see and raise the bar on who you can become. Leaders leave with a clear, practical way to bring this into their own lives and careers.
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David's Impact

David Kidder is the unique human you always want in your corner, personally and professionally. His experience as an entrepreneur is peerless and his insights to successfully grow a business are priceless. There is no one I quote more often professionally and trust more personally.
Linda Boff
CEO, Said Differently
Deploying David Kidder’s Growth Operating system at Citi was a game changer. His powerful and compelling case for change hit home. Our leaders stepped into the urgent need to learn new skills and new ways of working in order to bring relevant new products and services to our customers.
Debra Hopkins
Former CEO of Citi
Once a big company makes the decision to grow, it has to learn how. New to Big presents a unique roadmap for big companies looking to spark powerful growth engines from within.
Clayton Christensen
Harvard Business School and bestselling author of The Innovator’s Dilemma
The lessons of Kidder's book are simple. They did it and you can too. No magic tricks, no special genetic advantage, just passion, persistence, good sense, and a little luck
Seth Godin
Founder + Author (This is Strategy)
Kidder’s Startup Playbook is a one-inch punch of the start-up experience—a raw insider’s guide to the real playbooks behind some of tech’s greatest successes and comebacks.
Marc Andreessen
Cofounder and General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz
David Kidder and his team at Bionic offer innovative and powerful ways for legacy companies to create entirely new legacies.
Pauline Brown
Former Chairperson, LVMH NA
With passion and unbridled candor, David and Bionic team deliver not just the “Growth Operating System tools” but the ability to spark a new way of thinking among ‘co-founders’ and provoking large Enterprises to do things very differently.
Jud Linville
CEO, Citi Cards, Citi
Working with David Kidder and the Bionic team gives teams the energy, tools, and, most importantly, the courage to innovate and scale new growth.
Beth Comstock
Former Vice Chair, GE
David Kidder understands like nobody else what makes start-ups successful and how big companies can learn from them. If entrepreneurship is a new form of management, David is the Michael Porter of our era!
Pedro Earp
Chief Marketing and ZX Ventures Officer
New To Big is a great how-to book for change leaders seeking to drive scalable, profitable growth in big companies, reminding us how to use deep questioning, masterful listening, and a learning culture to discover the ‘commercial truth’!
Kate Johnson
CEO, Lumen Technologies

Ignite Resilient Growth

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