Bio

Business consultant, creativity leader, inspirational speaker, author, magician and musician, Dimis advises organizations in the areas of creative leadership and innovation, strategy and marketing, change and transformation.

Dimis combines his unique experience as a business executive and creativity expert with his talents as a speaker and magician to inspire people in organizations, demonstrating to audiences around the world how uncreative entities can become creative, how creative entities can become more so, and how innovation improves both business performance and happiness at work.

Background

Dimis has extensive international business experience in General Management, Marketing and Finance and has led three corporate mergers. He worked with the World Bank/IFC for five years based in Washington, DC, structuring and financing projects in Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Madagascar, Rwanda and Burundi, in sectors as diverse as petrochemicals, textiles, agri-business, glass and cement.  He spent eight years with ICI Agrochemicals (later Zeneca) in Paris, his last job as Marketing and Sales Director.  In 1997, after two years as Deputy Director of the Council of Europe Development Bank in Paris, he became CEO of Interamerican Insurance (later Laiki Cyprialife), the largest insurance company in Cyprus.

In 2003, he founded Performa Consulting, a business consulting and training company of which he is Managing Director and has since delivered presentations and led workshops in numerous creativity forums including the Creative Problem Solving Institute (USA), the American Creativity Association, CREA (Europe), European Conference for Creativity and Innovation and Africa Creativity Conference. He has worked for a large number of clients including IBM, Societe Generale, O2, Bayer CropScience, PepsiCo, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Syngenta, Vivartia, Bank of Cyprus, Bank of Piraeus. He is also a Director of a number of private companies and serves on the Board of Trustees of the Creative Education Foundation in the US.

In 2007 Dimis published “The Art of Innovation – Integrating Creativity in Organizations”, the world’s first management-art book with art by Umit Inatci which was hailed as “the Bible for 21^st century CEOs”.

From 2004 to 2007 Dimis was Visiting Lecturer at Queen Mary College, University of London and, since 2008, Lecturer at the Cyprus International Institute of Management.

Dimis is a graduate of the London School of Economics with postgraduate degrees from Sussex University (MA) and the London Business School (MBA). He also completed the “Leadership in Organizations” course at INSEAD, France and numerous advanced programs at the Creative Problem Solving Institute of the Creative Education Foundation, USA.

Speaking

Dimis has successfully addressed, trained and entertained audiences of all professions around the world, from Boards of Directors and senior management teams, to marketers, sales forces, accountants and engineers, in workshops, conferences, seminars, retreats and lunch/dinner events.

Dimis regularly uses magic, music and art in his business presentations that are original both in form and content. His most popular themes are The Art of Innovation – How to Integrate Creativity in Your Organization which examines the structures and culture necessary to drive innovation and Marketing, Magic and Myth™ on how customers’ perceptions can be influenced through Fantasy, Emotions, Aesthetics and Reason (the Cocktails of F.E.A.R!). The presentations are pleasantly provocative and entertaining, enhanced by magical demonstrations where this is relevant to the business content.

Workshops

Off-stage is where the real work (and fun) of meeting challenges in organizations takes place.  Solo, or supported by his colleagues from Performa, Dimis provides out-of-the-ordinary learning and doing experiences designed to meet specific client needs. The most popular themes are The Art of Innovation – a comprehensive approach to organizational creativity which includes an organizational audit, Creatively Confronting Challenges – using creative method and techniques to resolve client challenges, Innovative Teams – for those teams that want to go beyond “good and great” to “imagine and invent” new things, and Happiness @ Work – engaging people for performance .

Dimis loves his wife and son, his mother and brother, magic and music, art and history, cinema and theater, Penn and Teller, circus and street performers and his dog, Goya.