What to Watch at Ideas Week: Jeff Semenchuk

There's a lot to wrap your mind around with the approaching Chicago Ideas Week, and we're helping with series of speaker profiles designed to highlight the benefit to you.

In this profile: Jeff Semenchuk

Accolades: Ideas Week's website itself boils it down pretty greatly: "He is responsible for leading global, enterprise-wide, cross-functional innovation efforts that create new guest experiences, product and service offerings, and ways of operating to generate significant value for guests, owners, and colleagues."

Why you should care: Semenchuk has been repeatedly handed the reins at a lot of huge corporations over the last 25 years. More to the point, he's become synonymous with innovation, a term that's easy to dismiss as a dusty buzz word, but is anything but. Semenchuk has served as the head of global innovation at Pfizer -- the producers of Viagra -- and more recently left Citigroup in 2010 and has come aboard at Hyatt as chief innovation officer.

If you've been running your own business for a while and are feeling uninspired or just can't seem to -- pardon the expression -- think outside the proverbial box, Semenchuk is likely to reignite your passions. He's also formed four start-ups, so will be able to relate and communicate with entrepreneurs since you can innovate all you want, but deep down you never forget where you came from.

When you can see him: Oct. 11, Museum of Contemporary Art, 4 p.m. - 7 p.m.

You can check out the full list of speakers here, and register for passes here.

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