About Keith
Leadership
NEWS & RESOURCES

Ten Transformations

Keith Krach’s endless quest to challenge the status quo and make a profound and far-reaching impact on the world.

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Transformational Leadership

Factory automation

Transformational Leadership

Engineering Automation

Transformational Leadership

Electronic Commerce

Transformational Leadership

Leadership Service

Transformational Leadership

Higher Education

Philanthropy

Transformational Leadership

Office Automation

Transformational Leadership

Global Mentorship

Transformational Leadership

International Diplomacy

Transformational Leadership

Global tech security

“Throughout his career, Krach has brought powerful transformational leadership to many sectors: factory automation, engineering, commerce, education, philanthropy, leadership development and even the way people sign. His focus on innovation and productivity combined with his approach of perpetually challenging the status quo and empowering people to accomplish more than they had ever imagined possible has resulted in a profound impact on GDP per capita, international trade and the sustainability of our planet. ”

Salman Khan
Founder and CEO of Khan Academy
01

Factory Automation

From: Tedious Labor
To: Streamlined production
Transformational Leadership
Transformational Leadership

Led joint venture that became world’s largest robotics manufacturer.

01

Factory Automation

Krach is recognized as an early pioneer in the robotics industry. As a General Motors VP in the early 80s, he initiated and led the robotics joint venture between GM and Fanuc which gave rise to as the largest industrial robotics company in the world. It quickly rose to be the dominant player by leveraging GM’s sophisticated robot technology and huge captive market combined with Fanuc’s leadership position in NC controllers and its low cost, automated factories.

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Transformational Leadership
02

Engineering Automation

From: Physical prototypes
To: Optimized designs
Transformational Leadership
Transformational Leadership

Revolutionized mechanical engineering with automatic design optimization.

02

Engineering Automation

In the early 90s, Krach and his founding team at Rasna created the category of Mechanical Design Synthesis by developing an easy to use methodology for analyzing mechanical designs. It enabled design engineers to automatically optimize products instead of having to rely on PhD specialists. Rasna was ranked #3 on the Inc. 5000 fastest growing companies, and was later acquired by Parametric Technologies and remains today strategic for engineers globally.

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Transformational Leadership
03

Electronic commerce

From: Paper process
To: Global networks
Transformational Leadership
Transformational Leadership

Created B2B e-Commerce Industry – $3.7 Trillion/yr. of commerce.

03

Electronic commerce

In 1996, Krach co-founded Ariba serving as Chairman/CEO. Krach took it public in 2000, ultimately achieving a market capitalization of $40 billion and building one of the fastest-growing software companies in history. In honor of his accomplishment of creating the category of B2B eCommerce, EY named Krach the 2000 National Entrepreneur of the Year. Today, $1.7 trillion/year of commerce is transacted on the Ariba network, which is more than Amazon and Alibaba combined.

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Transformational Leadership
04

Leadership Service

From: Social fraternity
To: Leadership development
Transformational Leadership
Transformational Leadership

Launched vision to focus fraternity mission on building character and leadership.

04

Leadership Service

As Sigma Chi’s Grand Consul (President,) responsible for over 244 university chapters and 350,000 lifetime members, Krach drove the transformation of the institution to be exclusively focused on next generation leadership development to serve the world. He drove the creation of the Horizons Leadership Institute in Snowbird, Utah a new long-term strategic plan and at the 150th Anniversary, launched the fraternity’s bold vision to be the preeminent collegiate leadership development organization with the mission to develop values-based leaders committed to the betterment of character, campus and community.

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Transformational Leadership

“Krach’s companies are considered disruptors became the clear market leaders through category creation, generated significant shareholder value, and chose paper or manual processes as their main competitors.”

Bruce Harreld
Harvard Business School’s former faculty chair of Building New Businesses
05

Higher Education

From: Classroom-only
To: World public university
Transformational Leadership
Transformational Leadership

Made world’s first public university affordable and available to all.

05

Higher Education

Krach is credited with initiating and guiding a key paradigm shift in higher education. As Chairman of Purdue and in partnership with past President Cordova (Director of NSF) and President Daniels, generated a new model in STEM education, with unprecedented progress in student affordability, online learning, and retraining the workforce. By leveraging Purdue’s prestige in engineering, large international student body and acquisition of Kaplan University, Purdue University Global was launched as the “World’s First Public University” which has been a catalyst for transforming higher education.

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Transformational Leadership
06

Philanthropy

From: Slow, inefficient
To: Innovative impact
Transformational Leadership
Transformational Leadership

Transforming lives by transforming noble causes.

06

Philanthropy

Krach’s drive to challenge the status quo extends to philanthropy. He established the $30m DocuSign IMPACT Foundation with the mission, not just to give to charities, but to transform them—by using DocuSign technology to streamline operations and maximize resources to support the cause. The Krach Family Foundation serves numerous innovative causes. Krach was honored by City Year with the “2018 Citizen Leadership Award” for his dedication, innovation and impact to communities around the world.

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City Year -- Keith Krach
07

Office automation

From: Paper, fax, FedEX
To: Digital transactions
Transformational Leadership
Transformational Leadership

Built Global Standard – 1 million companies and 1 billion users in 199 countries.

07

Office automation

As DocuSign’s current chairman and CEO until 2017, Krach created the category of Digital Transaction management and built the DocuSign Global Trust Network, with more than 1 million companies and 1 billion users in 199 countries, which “Empowers anyone to transact anything, anytime, anywhere, on any device– securely.” DocuSign became the verb across real estate, financial services, insurance and other industries and established the benchmark for trust in the industry by creating the Global xDTM Standard. In 2016 the company was named #3 on Forbes Best Cloud Companies and Krach was honored as E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year.

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Transformational Leadership
08

Global Mentorship

From: Traditional approach
To: Virtual mentorship
Transformational Leadership
Transformational Leadership

Building Tomorrow’s leaders with Hybrid Mentor Model at scale.

08

Global Mentorship

What Krach pioneered in business and higher education, he is now applying to developing the next generation of transformational leaders by building the Virtual Mentor Network. Seeing a shortage of role models, Krach is using technology to tap the insights of great leaders and mentor at scale. The principles of creating networks and categories from his previous endeavors are the formula for building the ultimate pay-it-forward category. This could be Krach’s most transformative and profound venture yet.

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Transformational Leadership

“Keith has a unique ability to take ordinary people and make them extraordinary. Trough his leadership, through his consensus building, his encouragement, ordenary people perform at level that they themselves never thought possible… And doing that is a true definition of a leader.”

Hatim Tyabji
Chairman of Best Buy
09

International Diplomacy

From: Power Principle
To: Trust Principle
Transformational Leadership
Transformational Leadership

New basis for international relations garners Nobel Prize nomination.

09

International Diplomacy

As Under Secretary of State, Krach saw US leaders “hitting the panic button” over China’s growing dominance in 5G telecommunications. He revolutionized traditional diplomacy by creating the ‘Trust Principle’ doctrine of collaboration engineered to advance freedom through trust-based alliances. The Clean Network alliance of democracies, established a set of shared trust standards for 5G, and rallied countries and companies to embrace only technologies that met these standards. Sixty nations, representing more than two thirds of the world’s GDP joined. The ‘Trust Principle’ has been called “the new basis for 21st century international relations.” For his work, Krach was sanctioned by China and nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

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Krach
10

Global Tech security

From: Traditional tools
To: Tech Statecraft
Transformational Leadership
Transformational Leadership

Applying Trust Principles to advance freedom through Tech Statecraft.

10

Global Tech security

The success of the Clean Network convinced Krach that US policy makers and diplomatic personnel need to understand how to apply the trust principles and tech-statecraft strategies of the Clean Network to other tech sectors, to ensure that they advance freedom, not undermine it. This gave rise to his founding of the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy, along with Co-Founder, Mung Chiang. The mission of the Institute is to advance freedom through tech-statecraft–coupling high-tech sector strategies with foreign policy tools to build a Technology Trust Network that rallies allies, leverages private sector innovation, and promotes democratic trust principles.

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Krach Teaches Trust Principle at West Point

“We’re inspired by Krach. Everywhere he goes, his dynamism and enthusiasm light up the room. He uniquely combines vision, principled leadership and an ability to empower and motivate people that has enabled him to have a dramatic transformative impact in business, education, philanthropy and mentorship. He sets an example for leadership that can transform the world.”

LifeandNews.com’s
2018 Transformational Leader of the Year Award