David Rowan

Why organisations work with David Rowan

• He runs the climate-tech and health-tech investment funds at Voyagers and has personally backed more than 180 early-stage tech companies. The view he brings to a board is from active deal flow, not from a research summary.
• Nine years editing WIRED UK gave him direct working relationships with the founders of WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Google, Spotify, Didi, Xiaomi and Nest while those companies were still being built. He reports on the frontier from inside the rooms where it is designed.
• His Penguin bestseller Non-Bullshit Innovation came out of a 20-country investigation into what real corporate innovation looks like once the theatre of accelerators and chief disruptive growth officers is stripped away. Boards get a tested set of strategies, not a list of trends.
• Every talk is researched and built around the sector in the room. Recent briefs include aviation (SITA), insurance, automotive after-market, real estate, luxury fashion and television.
• He converts frontier technology into the decisions a CEO has to take this quarter. Repeat clients include Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Google, Sky, Salesforce and Warner Bros.

Biography highlights

• Founding Editor-in-Chief of WIRED UK, 2008-17
• Author of Non-Bullshit Innovation (Penguin); Amazon #1 business bestseller; Financial Times Business Books of the Month; translated into Japanese, Korean, Russian and Ukrainian
• 900+ keynotes globally; event moderator for the World Economic Forum, the UK and French governments, the G8 Innovation Conference, the Royal Academy of Engineering and GITEX Dubai
• Technology columnist for The Times, GQ, Condé Nast Traveller and The Sunday Times
• Investor in 180+ early-stage tech companies; named unicorns include Grammarly, Improbable, Maven Clinic, Cerebral, Commure, Rebellion Defense, Kitopi and Onfido
• Founder of Voyagers; manager of its climate-tech and health-tech investment funds; adviser to Lakestar

Biography

The length of task an AI agent can autonomously complete is doubling every seven months. Autonomous robots are already running factory shifts. Most boards are setting strategy from briefings that pre-date both.

David Rowan’s working life sits inside the gap between those two realities. As founding Editor-in-Chief of WIRED UK, he built working relationships with the founders of WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Google, Spotify, Didi, Xiaomi and Nest while those companies were still scaling. He has since backed more than 180 early-stage tech companies, eight of which have reached unicorn valuations: Grammarly, Improbable, Maven Clinic, Cerebral, Commure, Rebellion Defense, Kitopi and Onfido. He now runs the Voyagers climate-tech and health-tech investment funds.

His Penguin bestseller Non-Bullshit Innovation came out of a 20-country investigation into how incumbent businesses actually generate new value, once the theatre of accelerators and chief disruptive growth officers is set aside. The book was named a Financial Times Business Book of the Month and translated into Japanese, Korean, Russian and Ukrainian. Its argument is that genuine innovation is a discipline with specific, testable strategies.

His next book is on culture as the differentiating asset for organisations in an era when AI risks commodifying everything else. Repeat clients include Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Google, Sky, Salesforce and Warner Bros. He moderates for the World Economic Forum, the UK and French governments, the G8 Innovation Conference and the Royal Academy of Engineering. His stated KPI for a keynote: leave the audience 91% excited about the future, and 9% afraid.

Key speaking topics

• AI strategy for established businesses
• Exponential technology and industry disruption
• Innovation as a managed discipline inside incumbent organisations
• The future of work in the age of AI agents
• Culture and talent strategy under AI commodification
• Sector-specific technology foresight

Ideal for

• CEOs and boards setting AI strategy for established businesses
• CHROs and Chief People Officers reshaping talent strategy as AI changes the shape of work
• Chief Innovation, Digital and Strategy leaders translating frontier technology into operating decisions
• Senior leadership teams in sectors facing acute technology disruption: finance, real estate, aviation, media, healthcare, insurance, automotive

Audience outcomes

• A clearer separation of what is genuinely real at the AI frontier from what remains hype
• A practical triage of technology decisions: what to fund this quarter, what to pilot, what to ignore
• The 17 strategies from Non-Bullshit Innovation, applied to the audience’s own sector
• A sector-specific reading of what AI agents are likely to do to operating models and headcount over the next 24 months