Tom Cheesewright
Most leadership teams consume far more futures content than they can act on. The problem is not a shortage of prediction. It is the absence of a structured method for connecting macro change to the specific decisions an organisation is already under pressure to make. Without that connection, strategic planning is reactive, investment decisions trail the market, and the wrong questions dominate the board’s time.
Tom Cheesewright is an applied futurist who gives leadership teams a structured method – his proprietary Intersections framework – for converting AI signals and macro trends into clear decisions on strategy, risk, and investment, developed through advisory work with more than 30 Global 500 companies and government bodies.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Tom Cheesewright
- The Intersections methodology maps incoming macro trends against the specific stress points inside an organisation or sector; producing prioritised decision-points with the analysis behind them, not a generic forecast that leadership teams have to interpret themselves.
- The framework is teachable and licensable. Organisations leave with a repeatable process they can run internally, not a dependency on a single advisor.
- His published credentials – Future-Proof Your Business (Penguin; FT business book of the month) and High Frequency Change (Business Book Awards shortlist, 2020) – mean audiences arrive already oriented to his thinking. He does not need to spend the first third of a session building the intellectual case.
- A decade-plus of broadcast experience across BBC, Channel 4, and national press makes him unusually effective at translating complex AI and technology change for non-technical board audiences without losing analytical precision.
- Named clients across sectors – Google, Barclays, NASA, HMRC, BMW, Virgin Media, Visa – give procurement teams confidence in sector-agnostic credibility. This is not a speaker whose framework only works in one industry.
Biography highlights
- Creator of the Intersections foresight methodology, now licensed and delivered to third-party organisations
- Author of High Frequency Change (LID Publishing, 2019) shortlisted, Business Book Awards 2020, ‘Leadership for the Future’ category
- Author of Future-Proof Your Business (Penguin Business Experts, 2020), Financial Times business book of the month
- Clients include Google, Barclays, NASA, HMRC, BMW, Visa, HSBC, Accenture, and Virgin Media and more than 30 Global 500 companies
- Regular contributor and broadcaster: BBC Breakfast, BBC Radio 4, Channel 4 Sunday Brunch, The Guardian, The Times, Evening Standard, The Daily Telegraph
- BEng in Mechatronics, Lancaster University; established as a full-time applied futurist in 2012
Biography
Most organisations know they need to anticipate change. Very few have a structured way to do it. The annual strategic planning cycle and the technology roadmap were not designed to connect incoming macro trends to the specific decisions a leadership team faces this quarter.
Tom Cheesewright built the Intersections methodology to close that gap. It maps macro trends, from AI capability shifts to demographic and regulatory change, against the existing pressures inside an organisation or sector, identifying the points where disruption will hit hardest and where meaningful opportunity sits. More than 30 Global 500 companies and government bodies, including NASA, HMRC, Google, and Barclays, have put the framework to work.
His two business books establish the intellectual foundation. High Frequency Change (LID Publishing, 2019; shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2020) sets out why organisations feel overwhelmed by the pace of change and what structural responses actually work. Future-Proof Your Business (Penguin Business Experts, 2020; Financial Times business book of the month) translates the methodology into practical tools for strategy teams. His sustained media presence – BBC Breakfast, Radio 4, Channel 4, The Guardian, The Times – means he is not an unknown quantity when he walks on stage.
A mechatronics engineer by training, Cheesewright spent years in technology marketing and digital business before establishing himself as a futurist in 2012. That background – engineering logic, commercial experience, years of public communication about technology – is what keeps the Intersections work grounded. The output is not prediction. It is a structured process for stress-testing an organisation’s assumptions against what is actually coming.
Key speaking topics
- AI and automation in strategic decision-making
- Scenario planning and applied foresight methodology
- Organisational agility and adaptive strategy
- Technology-driven disruption and competitive positioning
- The future of consumer behaviour and business models
- Change management in high-frequency environments
- Long-range strategic planning under uncertainty
Ideal for
- Executive leadership teams and boards preparing long-range or scenario-based strategy
- Chief Strategy Officers and Chief Technology Officers navigating AI investment decisions
- Industry associations and sector bodies facing structural disruption from technology or regulation
- Conference audiences drawn from finance, technology, retail, government, or professional services sectors
Audience outcomes
- A working understanding of the Intersections methodology and how to apply it to their own organisation’s planning process
- Clarity on which AI and technology developments are commercially significant in their sector, and which can be deprioritised
- A revised set of strategic questions, not just better answers to the existing ones
- Stronger language and frameworks for briefing boards and senior stakeholders on emerging technology risk and opportunity
- A clearer view of where their organisation is most exposed to macro-level disruption over the next three to five years
Talks
Explains why organisations feel overwhelmed by the pace of change and provides a structural framework for building adaptive capacity rather than constantly firefighting disruption.
Key takeaways:
- Change has both amplitude and frequency; the modern challenge is frequency, not scale — and the distinction changes what organisations need to do about it
- Why the instinct to wait for certainty is a competitive liability, and what replaces it
- Practical approaches to building organisational agility that accelerates decision-making without sacrificing strategic coherence
A bespoke keynote using the Intersections methodology to deliver a foresight analysis specific to the audience’s sector, identifying the macro trends most likely to reshape their competitive environment.
Key takeaways:
- The critical macro forces bearing down on the audience’s specific industry in the near term
- Where the intersection of those forces with existing business pressures creates the highest-priority risks and opportunities
- How to build an ongoing internal process for monitoring and responding to the identified signals
Examines how AI-driven decision-making is transforming consumer behaviour and reordering competitive dynamics, and what organisations need to do to remain relevant as the choice landscape explodes.
Key takeaways:
- How AI agents and algorithmic intermediaries are changing the way consumers discover, evaluate, and choose products and services
- The strategic implications for brand, distribution, and pricing when human attention is no longer the primary variable
- What organisations need to build or change now to compete in a world of effectively infinite alternatives