Digital transformation

Why organisations work with Allister Frost A named, proprietary framework, the ReadyAlready Growth Cycle, that gives audiences a shared language for working through change fatigue, rather than a generic motivational message. Operator credibility from inside Microsoft’s first digital marketing strategy function, including the “I’M A PC” campaign and global Windows and Office launches, applied directly to the human side of technology adoption. Two decades of brand and transformation work at Kimberly-Clark and Microsoft, recognised by a Cannes Silver Direct Lion and twice by the Lester Wunderman Award for Outstanding Creative Work. A track record of large all-hands and culture-led audiences at BBC, Vodafone, 3M, Cisco, Pfizer, Hyundai, GE HealthCare and Reckitt, where the brief is energy and adoption, not abstract futurism. Recognition by his own profession: Chartered Marketer, Elected Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, twice UK Digital Marketing Personality of the Year, and Winner at The Speaker Awards 2023. Biography highlights Microsoft’s first Head of Digital Marketing Strategy, responsible for global Windows and Office launch campaigns, including “I’M A PC”. Former Kimberly-Clark marketing leader for Andrex, Kleenex and Huggies. Author of ReadyAlready: The Future-Ready Mindset to Keep Up, Stand Out, and Shape What’s Next. Cannes Silver Direct Lion winner; twice winner of the Lester Wunderman Award for Outstanding Creative Work. Chartered Marketer and Elected Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. UK Digital Marketing Personality of the Year, 2013 and 2019; Winner, The Speaker Awards 2023. Biography Most large organisations have not run out of change programmes. They have run out of people willing to engage with the next one. Years of restructure, platform migration and now AI rollout have left workforces more fatigued than resistant, and that is the harder problem to solve. Frost spent two decades inside that problem before he started speaking about it. At Kimberly-Clark he led marketing for Andrex, Kleenex and Huggies. He then moved to Microsoft as the company’s first Head of Digital Marketing Strategy, where he ran global launch campaigns for Windows and Office and the “I’M A PC” work. The work earned a Cannes Silver Direct Lion and two Lester Wunderman Awards for Outstanding Creative Work. Since 2012 he has built a speaking practice around a single framework, the ReadyAlready Growth Cycle, set out in his book ReadyAlready: The Future-Ready Mindset to Keep Up, Stand Out, and Shape What’s Next. The argument is that the gap holding back most transformation programmes is not strategy or technology, it is the human appetite to engage. The framework gives audiences a working language for that gap. His audiences reflect the brief. He has worked with BBC, Vodafone, 3M, Cisco, Pfizer, Hyundai, GE HealthCare, Reckitt, Bloomberg and Network Rail, typically at all-hands events, culture forums and senior leadership retreats. The Chartered Institute of Marketing has elected him a Fellow, and the UK industry named him Digital Marketing Personality of the Year in 2013 and again in 2019. He won at The Speaker Awards 2023. Key speaking topics Future-Ready Mindset Change fatigue and workforce adoption The human side of AI and digital transformation Employee engagement at scale Culture in technology-led change Leadership communication during transformation Marketing and brand reinvention Ideal for CHROs, Chief People Officers, and internal communications leads planning all-hands and culture moments Transformation and change leaders preparing workforces for AI and digital adoption C-suite and senior leadership teams running annual kickoffs, town halls, and strategy retreats CMOs and brand leaders rebuilding marketing function capability in an AI-shaped market Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for naming and working through change fatigue inside a team The ReadyAlready Growth Cycle as a usable framework, not just a model on a slide A clearer view of which human capabilities still matter as AI absorbs more of the work Practical prompts to turn passive consumers of change into active contributors Re-energised commitment to the next phase of transformation, anchored to specific personal habits

Why organisations work with Amit Joshi His work gives leaders a precise diagnosis of the “islands of excellence” problem – why AI generates results in one function but fails to cross organisational boundaries – and a practical application logic for what has to change structurally and strategically for it to scale. His 2025 book The AI-Centered Enterprise introduces the 3Cs framework: Calibrate, Clarify, Channelize, a practical decision architecture for leaders redesigning organizations around context-aware AI, grounded in documented case studies across multiple industries. He publishes in both Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review and has twice won the MSI/H. Paul Root Award for best paper in the Journal of Marketing: a combination that places analytical rigour and commercial applicability in the same conversation. As Co-Director of IMD’s AI Strategy and Agentic Implementation program and Director of its Generative AI for Business Sprint, he works continuously with senior executives from banking, pharma, telecoms, and retail navigating live AI transformations, not retrospective case analysis. Named one of Switzerland’s Digital Shapers in 2020 by a consortium of Swiss media including Bilanz, Handelszeitung, and Le Temps: one of a small group identified as shaping the European digital economy. Biography highlights Professor of AI and Strategy, IMD Business School, Lausanne; joined IMD in 2017 Co-Director, AI Strategy and Agentic Implementation program; Director, Generative AI for Business Sprint and Business Analytics for Leaders program, IMD Author of The AI-Centered Enterprise (2025) and GAIN: Demystifying GenAI for Office and Home (2025) Two-time winner of the MSI/H. Paul Root Award for best paper in the Journal of Marketing (2010 and 2015); Robert D. Buzzell Best Paper Award (2006) Named a Digital Shaper by Bilanz, Handelszeitung, Le Temps, and Digitalswitzerland (2020); voted favourite professor by IMD MBA Class of 2024 Published in Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Journal of Marketing, and Marketing Science; cited in the Financial Times, Bloomberg, NPR, CNN, and Forbes Led panel discussion at the World Economic Forum, Davos (2020) PhD, UCLA Anderson School of Management; PGDM, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta Biography Most senior leaders now have AI running somewhere in their organisation. The harder question – one that Joshi has built a body of work around – is why it rarely runs everywhere. As Professor of AI and Strategy at IMD Business School in Lausanne, Amit Joshi directs the Generative AI for Business Sprint and co-directs the AI Strategy and Agentic Implementation program, working with executives from banking, pharma, retail, and telecoms on both the strategic and application decisions that determine whether AI scales. His work with organizations across banking, pharma, retail, telecoms, and financial services has produced a sharply specific diagnosis of where enterprise AI goes wrong: not in the technology, but in the organization built around it. The concept he returns to is what he calls “islands of excellence”, AI that works in one function, under one champion, without the structural conditions to spread. His 2025 book The AI-Centered Enterprise, co-authored with Ram Bala and Natarajan Balasubramanian, addresses this directly. The book’s 3Cs framework – Calibrate, Clarify, Channelize – gives leaders a practical architecture for moving from point-solution AI to systems that understand organizational context, intent, and workflow. His earlier book GAIN, co-authored with Michael Wade, makes the strategic case that generative AI is a paradigm shift, not an upgrade, and that the organizational response should reflect that distinction. His research on marketing strategy, analytics, and AI applications has been published in the Journal of Marketing, Marketing Science, Harvard Business Review, and MIT Sloan Management Review. He has twice won the MSI/H. Paul Root Award for best paper in the Journal of Marketing and was named one of Switzerland’s Digital Shapers by a consortium of Swiss media in 2020. His analysis is regularly covered in the Financial Times, Bloomberg, Forbes, and NPR, and he led a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Joshi holds a PhD from UCLA Anderson School of Management and a postgraduate management diploma from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. He started his career as a sales manager at Cadbury India: a background that continues to shape an approach to AI strategy grounded in commercial reality rather than technical possibility. Key speaking topics Enterprise AI strategy and scaling Generative AI implementation Context-aware AI and organizational design Data and analytics capability building AI and commercial strategy Digital transformation leadership Building AI-ready organisations Ideal for C-suite leadership teams shaping or accelerating enterprise AI strategy CDOs, CTOs, and Chief Analytics Officers leading AI and data transformations Boards evaluating AI investment priorities and organizational readiness Senior executive education cohorts in banking, pharma, telecoms, retail, and financial services Audience outcomes A named diagnostic framework for identifying where and why AI is stalling in their organization Clarity on the distinction between context-aware AI and point-solution AI, and its strategic implications for investment and organizational design A practical model – the 3Cs: Calibrate, Clarify, Channelize – for moving from AI pilots to scaled enterprise capability A sharper understanding of how data infrastructure, organizational structure, and AI strategy need to be aligned, not sequenced The ability to evaluate AI proposals against a strategic rationale rather than a technology roadmap alone

Why organisations work with Andrea Iorio Operator credibility from inside a platform business: five years running Tinder across Latin America, where consumer-tech decisions had to be made under real commercial pressure, not theorised about. A published, peer-reviewed thesis on the AI-human boundary. Between You and AI (Wiley) made the USA Today bestseller list and gives him a defensible point of view that maps to a three-part framework executives can use. Four-language, multi-market authority. He writes the MIT Technology Review Brasil column, hosts NVIDIA Brazil’s official podcast, and lectures on the MBA at Fundação Dom Cabral, while delivering keynotes to Fortune 500 audiences in English, Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian. A working CX and digital-transformation playbook drawn from his time as Chief Digital Officer at L’Oréal Brazil, useful for any consumer-facing organisation rebuilding its phygital journey. A delivery cadence at Fortune 500 scale. Repeat clients include Abbott, Bayer, Cargill, Dow, IBM, Roche, Syngenta, and Tetra Pak. Biography highlights USA Today bestselling author of Between You and AI: Unlock the Power of Human Skills to Thrive in an AI-Driven World (Wiley). Author of two #1 Amazon Brazil bestsellers in People Management and Leadership: 6 Competências para Surfar na Transformação Digital and O futuro não é mais como antigamente. Former Head of Tinder, Latin America (5 years) and Chief Digital Officer, L’Oréal Brazil. MBA professor at Fundação Dom Cabral. Columnist at MIT Technology Review Brasil; host of NVIDIA Brazil’s official podcast. Economics, Bocconi University (Milan); MA International Relations, Johns Hopkins SAIS (Washington, DC). Biography AI capability is no longer the scarce resource inside large organisations. Human judgement is. Between You and AI, the Wiley book that put Andrea Iorio on the USA Today bestseller list in 2025, makes that case for senior teams trying to convert pilots into operating advantage. The argument runs along three axes: cognitive, behavioural, and emotional. Each carries a practical set of skills that AI tools cannot supply on their own. The operator credentials behind that argument are unusual for someone now working primarily as an author and educator. Iorio spent five years as Head of Tinder for Latin America, then served as Chief Digital Officer at L’Oréal Brazil. Both roles forced commercial decisions about consumer technology under real revenue pressure, not the conference-room version of digital transformation. The academic platform sits alongside. He teaches on the MBA at Fundação Dom Cabral, writes the MIT Technology Review Brasil column, and hosts NVIDIA’s official Brazil podcast. His first book in Portuguese, 6 Competências para Surfar na Transformação Digital, set out a framework of six competencies, from cognitive flexibility to digital altruism, that became the most-read leadership title on Amazon Brazil. Clients book him for Fortune 500 keynotes in English, Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian. The roster includes Abbott, Bayer, Cargill, Dow, IBM, Roche, Syngenta, and Tetra Pak. The work that follows the keynote is usually a board-level conversation about which human skills the organisation now needs to build, fast, alongside its AI deployment. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and human skills Digital transformation and leadership Customer-centricity and phygital experience Innovation culture Future of work in the age of AI Ideal for Boards and CEOs setting the human-skills agenda alongside an AI roadmap. CHROs and learning leaders redesigning capability programmes for an AI-augmented workforce. CMOs and CX leaders rebuilding the customer journey across digital and physical touchpoints. Latin America regional executive teams of multinational consumer and B2B businesses. Audience outcomes A three-part framework for the cognitive, behavioural, and emotional skills that matter most when AI enters the workflow. A concrete set of decisions about which managerial behaviours to keep, change, or retire in an AI-augmented operating model. Reference examples from Tinder, L’Oréal, and other consumer-facing businesses that have rebuilt the phygital customer journey. A working definition of innovation culture that distinguishes managed practice from creative theatre.

Why organisations work with Andreas Welsch Two decades inside SAP, including a vice president role connected to its Global AI Center of Excellence, give him a working knowledge of enterprise AI at the scale Fortune 500 boards actually operate. His AI Leadership Handbook is built on 60+ named interviews with AI leaders and offers a practitioner framework rather than commentary on the market. The 9 Steps to Successful AI Projects gives leadership teams a sequence to challenge stalled programmes against, covering ownership, strategy alignment, cross-functional delivery and governance. His What’s the BUZZ? podcast, running since 2021 with hundreds of AI executives, keeps his material grounded in what is currently working inside enterprises, not what was true 18 months ago. Named LinkedIn Top Voice, Thinkers360 Top 10 in AI, Generative AI and Agentic AI, and DataIQ Data & AI Leader of the Year Finalist 2025, which signals he is taken seriously by the audiences that book him. Biography highlights Founder and Chief AI Strategist, Intelligence Briefing Former Vice President at SAP, with leadership roles connected to its Global AI Center of Excellence and Business AI go-to-market function Author of AI Leadership Handbook and The HUMAN Agentic AI Edge Host of What’s the BUZZ? AI in Business podcast since 2021 Adjunct Professor at West Chester University of Pennsylvania; Editorial Board member, Journal of AI, Robotics, and Workplace Automation LinkedIn Top Voice; Thinkers360 Top 10 in AI, Generative AI and Agentic AI; DataIQ Data & AI Leader of the Year Finalist 2025; PEX Network Top 30 AI Leader 2025 Biography Enterprise AI has moved past the question of whether to invest. The harder question now is why most programmes never leave pilot. Welsch’s work answers it from the operator’s seat. Over two decades at SAP, including a vice president role connected to its Global AI Center of Excellence, he watched Fortune 500 organisations buy capability and fail to convert it into operating advantage. That experience is the substrate of the AI Leadership Handbook, his best-selling book drawn from 60+ interviews with AI leaders. The book sets out a practitioner sequence, The 9 Steps to Successful AI Projects, that leadership teams use to challenge stalled programmes against ownership, strategy alignment, cross-functional delivery and governance. Through Intelligence Briefing, the advisory he founded after SAP, Welsch now works with senior teams on agentic AI specifically: where autonomous systems sit on the org chart, how accountability survives when decisions are delegated to machines, and what workforce design looks like when AI agents are colleagues rather than tools. His second book, The HUMAN Agentic AI Edge, makes that argument in book form. His What’s the BUZZ? podcast, running since 2021, keeps the material fresh by putting him in regular conversation with named AI leaders inside Accenture, IBM, NVIDIA, PwC, SAP and Siemens. Thinkers360 ranks him in their top 10 globally on AI, Generative AI and Agentic AI; DataIQ named him a Data & AI Leader of the Year finalist in 2025. Key speaking topics Enterprise AI strategy and operating advantage Agentic AI and autonomous systems in the enterprise AI governance and responsible adoption Generative AI for business outcomes Workforce design for the AI-ready organisation AI leadership and executive readiness Change management for AI programmes Ideal for Boards, CEOs and executive committees commissioning enterprise-wide AI strategy CIOs, CTOs, CDOs and Chief AI Officers responsible for moving AI from pilot to operating model CHROs and people leaders redesigning roles around AI capability Industry conferences and leadership summits in technology, financial services, manufacturing and professional services Audience outcomes A sharper read on why most enterprise AI programmes stall and what changes when they do not Familiarity with The 9 Steps to Successful AI Projects as a diagnostic for their own programme A working position on agentic AI: where it belongs in the operating model and where it does not Specific governance questions to take back to the board on accountability, data privacy and risk A view of what other Fortune 500 AI leaders are actually doing now, from Welsch’s podcast research

Why organisations work with Andrew Grill He gives leadership teams a working vocabulary for AI, quantum, blockchain, and adjacent technologies, built on the 200+ concepts codified in “Digitally Curious” and tested on boards at Vodafone, Dell, Nestle, and the NHS. His engineering training and former IBM Global Managing Partner role mean technical claims hold up under scrutiny from a CTO, while the framing stays legible to a CFO or CHRO. Each session ends with the “Curious Five”, a concrete set of follow-up actions, so the room leaves with decisions to make rather than slides to forward. He has delivered five TEDx talks and advises at board level, so the same material scales from a 1,500-person keynote to a closed strategy session. Biography highlights Former Global Managing Partner, IBM Social Consulting Author, “Digitally Curious” (Wiley, 2024), international bestseller Host, the Digitally Curious Podcast, running since 2019 Named to the AI 100 UK List 2025 for responsible AI leadership Five TEDx talks delivered in London and Cardiff Non-Executive Director, Britain Australia Society Bachelor of Electronic Engineering plus two Master’s degrees (Engineering, MBA) Biography Every board now has AI on its agenda. Far fewer have a clear view of which decisions inside the business actually change because of it. Andrew Grill built his career in the gap between those two positions, first as a telecoms engineer at Optus and Telstra in Australia, then as Global Managing Partner in IBM’s Social Consulting practice, working with some of the largest enterprises in the world on how technology reshapes the way they operate. “Digitally Curious”, published by Wiley in 2024, is the distilled version of that experience. It walks executives through more than 200 technology concepts, from generative AI and quantum to blockchain and 5G, and ends every chapter with the Curious Five, a short set of concrete actions. The book reached international bestseller status and has become the spine of his keynote and advisory work. The podcast of the same name, running since 2019 with more than 60 interviews, gives him a working library of case material. That shows up in the room. Boards at Vodafone, Dell, Nestle, DHL, Sanofi, Bupa, and the NHS have brought him in for sessions that move from technology explanation to specific organisational choices, usually in the same hour. He has delivered five TEDx talks across London and Cardiff, appears regularly on BBC, Sky News, Channel 4, and in The Economist and Financial Times, and was named to the AI 100 UK List in 2025 for his work on responsible AI. The throughline is consistent: make the technology legible to the people who actually have to decide what to do about it. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and generative AI for business Digital transformation at board level Responsible AI and AI governance The future of work Emerging technology: quantum, blockchain, Web3 Customer experience in an AI-mediated economy Digital fluency for senior leaders Ideal for Boards and executive committees sequencing their AI strategy CIOs, CDOs, and transformation leads building internal buy-in for technology roadmaps CHROs and people leaders reshaping roles around AI-augmented work Industry conferences addressing senior commercial and technology audiences Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary across the executive team for AI, generative AI, and adjacent technologies A concrete short list of next actions, drawn from the Curious Five framework, tailored to the brief Sharper judgement on which vendor claims and use cases deserve investment and which do not A clearer view of where AI changes roles, processes, and customer experience inside their own organisation

Why organisations work with Andrew Lloyd Gordon He brings a working academic’s grasp of behavioural science into the room where pricing, positioning and campaign calls actually get made, rather than leaving it at theory. His Google Digital Academy and “We Are Squared” training work gives him a current, practitioner-grade read on how digital marketing is actually taught and executed inside the platforms buyers depend on. His Warwick teaching post on the business MSc at WMG means his material is tested on senior post-graduate students, not only conference audiences, which sharpens the frameworks before they reach a client room. He has delivered to commercial, public-sector and charitable buyers at the same level of specificity – Cabinet Office, Vodafone, Lloyds, Dyson, the NHS, University of Cambridge – so the behavioural-science argument holds up outside the usual marketing-conference audience. Biography highlights Assistant Professor, WMG, University of Warwick, teaching on the post-graduate business MSc. MSc Business Psychology (Distinction), Coventry University; BA (Hons) Psychology, University of Liverpool; Organisation Studies, Warwick Business School. Trainer on Google’s “We Are Squared” digital marketing programme and member of Google’s Digital Academy training team. Client work with the UK Cabinet Office, Vodafone, Lloyds, Dyson, Hitachi, Hearst Magazines, the NHS, Universal Music, Kings College London, UCAS and the University of Cambridge. Signature keynote topics include customer psychology, the psychology of pricing, marketing-led growth and innovation adoption. Speaks internationally across the UK, USA, Middle East, Europe and the West Indies, to audiences ranging from 30 to 3,000. Biography Buying decisions are not made on the spreadsheet side of the brain. Price sensitivity, brand preference, the decision to try something new, the decision to stay with a supplier – these sit in territory that behavioural science has spent four decades mapping. Most commercial functions have not caught up. That gap is the working material of Andrew Lloyd Gordon’s career. He is a business psychologist with an MSc from Coventry, undergraduate psychology from Liverpool and organisation studies from Warwick Business School, and he holds an Assistant Professor post at WMG, University of Warwick, teaching on the post-graduate business MSc. The academic grounding is real; the output is commercial. His practitioner credentials sit next to the academic ones. He is a trainer on Google’s “We Are Squared” digital marketing programme and a member of Google’s Digital Academy training team, which keeps his material close to how digital acquisition is actually executed inside the platforms most organisations rely on. Client work spans the UK Cabinet Office, Vodafone, Lloyds, Dyson, Hitachi, Hearst, the NHS, Universal Music, Kings College London, UCAS and the University of Cambridge. The argument he makes to senior commercial audiences is narrow and useful. Pricing, persuasion, innovation adoption and customer retention are psychological problems before they are channel problems, and teams built around funnels and attribution models routinely miss this. His keynotes walk leaders through the specific behavioural mechanisms – how price is perceived, how influence actually works, why new products stall on launch – and translate them into decisions marketing and product teams can take the next morning. Key speaking topics Customer psychology and the science of influence Behavioural pricing Marketing-led business growth Innovation adoption inside organisations Digital marketing strategy Applied behavioural science for commercial teams Ideal for CMOs, marketing directors and commercial leaders rebuilding how their teams think about customer decision-making. Pricing, revenue and product leaders who need a behavioural-science lens on pricing architecture and positioning. Innovation and transformation leads launching new propositions into sceptical internal and external audiences. Senior leadership teams in regulated or public-sector contexts where persuasion and adoption matter as much as the policy itself. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the behavioural mechanisms that drive customer choice, with named principles rather than anecdotes. Specific questions to take back to pricing, marketing and product teams about where psychology is being ignored in current practice. A sharper read on why well-resourced campaigns and launches underperform, and what to change first. Practical examples drawn from Google training and FTSE-scale client work, not laboratory studies alone.

Why organisations work with Andrew McAfee His Geek Way framework – four named cultural norms (science, ownership, speed, openness) derived from evolutionary biology and management research – gives leadership teams a specific, testable diagnostic for why their organisations underperform digitally, not another instruction to move faster or fail more His research at MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy produces evidence-based findings on how AI and automation are actually affecting productivity and competitive structure – drawn from organisations that have already made the transition, not from modelled projections He holds simultaneous positions as MIT Principal Research Scientist, inaugural Visiting Fellow at Google’s Technology and Society group, and co-founder of Workhelix, an AI workforce optimisation startup – a combination that grounds his analysis in research, platform-scale practice, and operating reality at once The Second Machine Age and Machine, Platform, Crowd – both New York Times bestsellers co-authored with Erik Brynjolfsson – established the intellectual framework through which most serious organisations now think about automation, labour displacement, and platform competition; many executives in the room will be updating assumptions formed by those books He and Brynjolfsson are the only individuals named to both the Thinkers50 ranking of the world’s top management thinkers and the Politico 50 group of people transforming American politics – a dual recognition that reflects the reach of his work into the policy questions, not just the business questions, that will define the digital economy’s next decade Biography highlights Principal Research Scientist, MIT Sloan School of Management; co-founder and co-director, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy Inaugural Visiting Fellow, Technology and Society, Google Co-founder, Workhelix (AI workforce optimisation startup) Six-time Thinkers50 honoree; Thinkers50 Digital Thinking Award 2015 with Erik Brynjolfsson; one of only two individuals named to both the Thinkers50 and the Politico 50 Author of The Geek Way (Economist Best Books 2023; Forbes Top 10 Business Books 2023) and More from Less; co-author of The Second Machine Age and Machine, Platform, Crowd (New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers) Contributor to Foreign Affairs, Harvard Business Review, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times; featured on CNN, 60 Minutes, TED, and the World Economic Forum Biography The gap between digital investment and digital performance is one of the most consequential – and least clearly explained – problems in business strategy. Andrew McAfee, Principal Research Scientist at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and co-founder of MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy, has spent three decades building the research base to explain it precisely. His 2023 book The Geek Way – named a best book of the year by both The Economist and Forbes – makes a specific argument: the companies consistently outperforming their sectors share four cultural norms (science, ownership, speed, openness), and those norms are not accidents of Silicon Valley geography but replicable patterns grounded in evolutionary science. Organisations that treat digital transformation as an infrastructure challenge, McAfee argues, are misidentifying the problem. The bottleneck is almost always managerial culture, not technology capability. That argument carries weight from multiple directions. McAfee is the inaugural Visiting Fellow at Google’s Technology and Society group and co-founder of Workhelix, an AI startup focused on workforce optimisation – positions that situate his MIT research in both platform-scale and operating practice. His earlier books with Erik Brynjolfsson – The Second Machine Age and Machine, Platform, Crowd, both New York Times bestsellers – established the frameworks that shaped how most serious organisations now think about automation, platform competition, and the economics of digital productivity. He and Brynjolfsson are the only individuals named to both the Thinkers50 ranking of the world’s top management thinkers and the Politico 50 group of people transforming American politics – a pairing that reflects how far McAfee’s work extends beyond corporate boardrooms into the policy questions about AI, labour, and economic growth that will define the decade ahead. Key speaking topics AI and digital business performance The Geek Way: cultural norms for the digital organisation Platform competition and digital business models Technology, productivity, and economic growth Machine intelligence and the future of work Dematerialisation and sustainable growth Organisational culture in the technology-driven enterprise Ideal for C-suite and board audiences evaluating digital strategy and competitive positioning against digital-native rivals Strategy and transformation leads in established industries under sustained digital disruption Innovation and R&D leaders benchmarking organisational culture against technology-sector performance models Executive education programmes on digital leadership, AI adoption, and future-of-work strategy Audience outcomes A clear account of why digital-native organisations outperform incumbents structurally – not through superior technology budgets but through specific, replicable management norms A practical diagnostic framework (The Geek Way: science, ownership, speed, openness) for identifying where organisational culture is constraining digital performance Evidence-based perspective on how AI and automation are actually affecting productivity and workforce structure, grounded in MIT research rather than market projections A more disciplined vocabulary for separating genuine digital transformation from technology investment that changes operating performance little Sharper thinking on platform competition and the long-term viability of traditional business models against digital-native challengers

Why organisations work with Ann Handley She built two of the businesses that defined modern digital marketing, ClickZ and MarketingProfs, so her advice on content operations comes from running them, not theorising about them. Everybody Writes, now in a second edition, gives commercial teams a single shared standard for how the company writes to customers, prospects and employees. She has spent 15+ years shaping the agenda at the MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum, which gives her a working view of what is actually moving the pipeline for B2B marketers right now. Her Total Annarchy newsletter, read fortnightly by more than 51,000 marketers, is itself the case study: subscriber-driven, voice-first, low-volume, high-trust. IBM named her among the seven people shaping modern marketing; that recognition reflects influence on how the discipline is practised, not just commented on. Biography highlights Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs (600,000+ subscribers; annual B2B Marketing Forum). Co-founder of ClickZ, an early authority in digital marketing news and commentary. Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Everybody Writes; co-author of Content Rules; works translated into 19 languages. Named by IBM as one of “the 7 people shaping modern marketing,”; cited by Forbes as a top thought leader. Writes Total Annarchy, a fortnightly newsletter with 51,000+ subscribers. Contributing writer to Entrepreneur, Inc., Mashable, Huffington Post and the Wall Street Journal. Biography Most marketing functions have a content problem they have decided to call a strategy problem. They publish more, segment harder, automate further, and the writing still sounds like everyone else’s. Ann Handley’s working argument is that the words are the product, and that an organisation’s marketing is only as serious as the sentences it is willing to put its name to. She has tested that argument inside the businesses she helped build. As co-founder of ClickZ and Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs, she has spent two decades running marketing operations rather than narrating them, and the MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum has become one of the few places where senior B2B marketers go to compare notes on what is actually working. Her book Everybody Writes, a Wall Street Journal bestseller now in a second edition, gives commercial teams a shared operating standard for marketing writing. Content Rules, her earlier title with C.C. Chapman, did the same job for the wider content stack. Both have been translated into 19 languages and are used inside marketing organisations as training material, not coffee-table reading. What sets her work apart at the keynote level is the refusal to treat content as a category. IBM placed her among the seven people shaping modern marketing because she keeps pulling marketing back to the part of the job that is hardest to fake: writing something a customer would actually want to read. Key speaking topics Content marketing strategy Marketing writing as a commercial discipline B2B marketing and demand generation Brand voice and editorial standards Email and newsletter strategy Customer experience through content Storytelling for business Ideal for CMOs and heads of marketing are rebuilding content operations for measurable commercial outcomes Heads of brand, communications and content responsible for editorial standards across teams B2B marketing leaders working on demand generation and customer engagement Founders and commercial leaders whose growth depends on the company sounding like itself Audience outcomes A clearer working definition of what good marketing writing looks like inside their own organisation Specific tests for whether a piece of content earns the attention it asks for A view on how to run content as an operating function, not a campaign output Concrete examples of B2B and B2C brands using writing and editorial voice to win commercially A more honest read on what their current marketing sounds like to a customer

Why organisations work with Anna Bance First-mover operator in luxury fashion rental. She built the category in 2009, before “circular” was a retail strategy term, and has spent over a decade running the unglamorous infrastructure behind it. Direct line of sight on what rental does to a balance sheet. Inventory turns, dry-cleaning economics, customer acquisition costs and breakage rates are answered from experience, not from a McKinsey deck. Credibility on both sides of the luxury question. Former Head of UK PR at Hermès, then founder of a platform that puts luxury brands into a rental model many of them initially resisted. Backed by Global Founders Capital, the Rocket Internet associated fund of Oliver Samwer, with Girl Meets Dress one of its maiden investments. A useful proof point on commercial substance, not just narrative. Articulate on the consumer shift behind the model: experience economy, sustainability pressure, and the limits of “buy something new every season” as a retail proposition. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO, Girl Meets Dress, since 2009 Former Head of UK PR, Hermès, and PR for Temperley London BA (Hons) Fashion Promotion, London College of Fashion Early-career editorial roles at The Telegraph, Harper’s Bazaar and InStyle First institutional funding from Global Founders Capital, the Oliver Samwer fund Recognition includes Drapers Etail Innovation Award, NatWest Fashion Entrepreneur of the Year, Specsavers Everywoman in Retail, and a Management Today 35 Under 35 cover Biography Girl Meets Dress launched in 2009, before “circular fashion” was a retail board agenda item. The proposition was simple, the operations were not: rent designer dresses online, return them, repeat. Anna Bance built the company from inside the luxury PR world, where she had been Head of UK PR for Hermès, and where she had watched designer wardrobes sit unworn for most of their useful life. The harder part of the story is what comes after the idea. Rental at scale is a logistics business dressed as a fashion brand: dry cleaning, inventory rotation, repair, sizing accuracy, customer acquisition against a category most consumers had to be taught existed. Global Founders Capital, Oliver Samwer’s fund, named Girl Meets Dress as one of its maiden investments, and the business spent the next decade proving the unit economics of rental in a category designed for ownership. That operator vantage point is what makes her useful to retail and consumer leadership teams. The argument for circular commerce is well understood at this point. The argument that needs sharper voices is the operational one: where rental margins actually come from, why some categories work and others do not, what the brand consequences are when a luxury house lets its product enter a secondary access model, and how consumer behaviour around occasion-wear is shifting under experience economy pressure. Recognition has followed the build, not the pitch. Drapers Etail Innovation Award, NatWest Fashion Entrepreneur of the Year, Specsavers Everywoman in Retail, a Management Today 35 Under 35 cover. The work that earned them is still running. Key speaking topics Circular fashion and rental as a retail model The operational economics of access over ownership Luxury brand strategy in a secondary-use market Female founders and scaling a category-defining business Consumer behaviour in the experience economy Sustainability as commercial strategy, not marketing Ideal for Retail, fashion and consumer goods leadership teams reassessing wholesale and DTC models Brand owners and CMOs in luxury weighing entry into rental, resale or subscription Sustainability and strategy leads who need the commercial case for circular, not the ethical one Female founder networks, VC-backed scale-up audiences and entrepreneurship programmes Audience outcomes A sharper read on which retail categories rental works in and which it does not Honest numbers on what circular fashion does to inventory, margin and customer acquisition A clearer view of where luxury brands stand to gain or lose by entering rental A founder-level account of building a category before its time, and the operational cost of doing so

Why organisations work with Anne Hoyer She has built IoT and digital innovation functions inside SAP, CGI France and Danfoss. Boards get a practitioner’s view of why these programmes stall before ROI arrives. Her Copenhagen Goodwill Ambassador position gives her privileged access to one of the world’s most studied Smart City programmes, which she translates into concrete lessons for corporate and municipal leaders. She works natively in the partnership economics of modern technology: when to build capability in-house versus when to co-create with hyperscalers and scale-ups. Leadership teams leave with a sharper model of how their own tech ecosystem should be structured. A former radio and podcast host before moving into tech, she brings communications discipline to the stage that IoT speakers often lack. Complex material reaches commercial audiences cleanly. Biography highlights Head of Partnerships in Digital Services at Danfoss, leading partnership strategy as the group operates as a Microsoft-managed ISV. Previously headhunted to CGI Business Consulting France in 2018 to launch the firm’s SAP Advanced Technology practice. Began her technology career at SAP, reaching a global IoT role in Barcelona within the Leonardo IoT and Predictive Maintenance portfolio. Copenhagen Goodwill Ambassador since 2019 with Copenhagen Capacity, representing the city globally on technology and urban sustainability. Named one of the 30 Inspirational Women to Watch in Tech by Inc.com (2017), shortlisted as Future CIO of the Year by Information Age (2018), and selected as a Global Rising Star by SAP. Chairs the Advisory Board at Smart IoT London and founded Group Saint Honoré, a consultancy supporting tech scale-ups on commercial go-to-market. Biography IoT promised an operational revolution. The industry is still learning to deliver one. Most projects are orphaned between IT and the business, starved of the partner ecosystem that actually makes them scale. This is the terrain Anne Hoyer works in. Her career has tracked that problem from three different angles. At SAP, she progressed to a global IoT role in Barcelona covering Leonardo IoT and Predictive Maintenance Services. In 2018 she was headhunted to CGI Business Consulting in France to launch the firm’s SAP Advanced Technology practice. She now leads partnerships inside Danfoss’s Digital Services function, brokering alliances between big tech, system integrators and scale-ups while the group operates as a Microsoft-managed ISV. The Copenhagen connection runs deeper than geography. Since 2019 she has served as an official Copenhagen Goodwill Ambassador with Copenhagen Capacity, representing the city internationally on technology and urban sustainability. Copenhagen has been named among the world’s smartest cities, and she carries its case study material directly into her corporate keynotes. The stagecraft has history. Before joining SAP in 2015, Anne hosted a weekly show on Danish commercial radio and co-created Trendpodding, the first fashion podcast in Denmark. The communications discipline of those years still shows on stage. Board audiences hear the strategic case without getting lost in the architecture. Her external recognition tracks the work: Inc.com’s 30 Inspirational Women to Watch in Tech (2017), Information Age’s Future CIO of the Year shortlist (2018), and SAP’s Global Rising Star. She also chairs the Advisory Board at Smart IoT London and founded Group Saint Honoré, a consultancy supporting tech scale-ups on commercial go-to-market. Key speaking topics IoT and data-driven innovation Smart cities and urban sustainability Digital transformation in industrial sectors Partnership and ecosystem strategy Women in technology Innovation leadership Ideal for CDOs, CTOs and Chief Innovation Officers running IoT or digital transformation programmes Industrial, energy and manufacturing leadership teams moving from product to software and service models Smart city and municipal leadership teams responsible for urban technology strategy Women-in-tech networks and early-career technology talent programmes Audience outcomes A clearer read on why IoT and digital innovation programmes lose momentum inside large organisations, and where the interventions actually sit Working lessons from one of the world’s most studied Smart City programmes, with direct transfer value into corporate transformation agendas A sharper view of how a leadership team should structure partnerships with hyperscalers, scale-ups and research institutions Confidence that IoT and innovation investments can be sequenced for commercial return when the business case leads the technology choice For younger technology audiences, a credible path from non-technical backgrounds into senior IoT and innovation roles

Why organisations work with Anthony Thomson He is one of the very few operators in the world who has launched three licensed banks on three different models: a physical high-street challenger, a UK app-only bank, and an Australian smart bank. His Metro Bank launch ended a century-long drought of new UK high-street banks and set the reference point for what a customer-centred retail banking proposition looks like. He speaks from the chair’s seat, not the analyst’s gallery. Every argument he makes about challenger strategy, brand, and regulation has been tested against a real balance sheet and a real regulator. With Lucian Camp he wrote No Small Change (Wiley), a direct manifesto on why financial services marketing is broken and what has to replace it. He can brief a boardroom on what it actually takes to turn a strategy deck about “customer obsession” into a licensed, funded, operating business. Biography highlights Co-founder and founding chairman, Metro Bank, the first new UK high-street bank for over a century. Founder and former chairman, Atom Bank, the UK’s first app-only bank, licensed in 2015. Co-founder and former chairman, 86 400, Australia’s first smart bank, later acquired by NAB. Chair of Zip UK, the UK arm of the Australian buy-now-pay-later group. Co-author, No Small Change: Why Financial Services Needs A New Kind of Marketing, Wiley, 2018, with Lucian Camp. Co-founder and former chairman, The Financial Services Forum; Visiting Professor at London Metropolitan University and David Goldman Visiting Professor at Newcastle University Business School. Biography Metro Bank opened its first branch in Holborn in July 2010, the first new high-street bank to enter the UK market in more than a hundred years. Anthony Thomson co-founded the bank and served as its founding chairman, steering it from concept to licensed, trading retail institution. He did not stop there. A few years after leaving Metro, Thomson founded Atom Bank, the UK’s first app-only bank, which secured its banking licence in 2015. He then co-founded 86 400, Australia’s first smart bank, which was later acquired by National Australia Bank. Three licensed banks, three distinct models, one consistent thesis: the industry is overdue a redesign around the customer. That thesis is argued at length in No Small Change (Wiley, 2018), co-written with Lucian Camp, which treats financial services marketing as a discipline in need of serious reconstruction rather than a cosmetic refresh. Earlier in his career, Thomson co-founded City Financial Marketing, later acquired by Publicis, and The Financial Services Forum, giving him a practitioner’s view of brand and proposition design across the sector before he ever chaired a bank. Today he chairs Zip UK and speaks to boards, executive teams, and regulators about what it actually takes to launch and scale a new financial business. His work holds a precise answer to a question many incumbents struggle with: where does customer-led transformation stop being a slogan and start being a balance sheet. Key speaking topics Challenger banking and fintech strategy Customer-led retail banking models Launching regulated businesses from scratch Brand and marketing in financial services Digital and mobile-first banking Entrepreneurship inside regulated industries Ideal for Boards and executive teams of banks, insurers, and asset managers reviewing customer strategy. CMOs and brand leaders in financial services rethinking proposition and marketing investment. Founders, investors, and transformation leads building or funding fintech and regulated ventures. Audience outcomes A clearer view of what separates a challenger proposition that scales from one that stalls at launch. A concrete account of how a licensed bank gets designed, funded, and brought to market. Sharper questions to take back to their own customer, brand, and distribution strategy. A realistic sense of where regulation helps and where it quietly kills good ideas.

Why organisations work with Aric Dromi Nine years as an in-house Futurologist at Volvo Cars gives him an operator’s view of how a global manufacturer actually absorbs autonomous, electric and connected technology, not a consultant’s slide on it. He works across the same problem from three angles, corporate strategy, government policy and civic infrastructure, which is unusual in technology foresight and useful when a brief touches more than one of them. Founder of TEMPUS.MOTU and advisory board member at NTT Innovation Institute and UNLEASH, with a network that spans telecoms, mobility, energy and the UN Sustainable Development Goals agenda. Pushes against deck-driven strategy. His stated rule, that any strategy worth executing should fit on a napkin, lands well with executives tired of frameworks that do not survive contact with the operating business. Comfortable in uncomfortable territory. He frames himself as a “professional troublemaker” and is booked for sessions where leadership wants their assumptions stress-tested, not validated. Biography highlights Nine-year tenure as in-house Futurologist at Volvo Cars, advising on autonomous, electric and connected vehicle strategy. Founder of TEMPUS.MOTU, a strategic advisory and think tank serving corporate and public-sector clients. Advisory board, NTT Innovation Institute, the corporate research arm of NTT Group. Innovation Advisory Board, UNLEASH, the global innovation lab built around the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Earlier roles at Ericsson, Microsoft and Cellcom, where he was Chief Knowledge Officer. Author of The Intellectual Rage and The Prophet, plus further titles published under the pen name D.B. Solomon. Biography Volvo did not hire a futurologist for nine years to predict the next car. It hired one to help the leadership team work out what a car company even is once mobility becomes autonomous, electric and connected. That brief, sustained over almost a decade inside one of Europe’s most identifiable industrial brands, is the foundation of how Aric Dromi thinks. He now runs TEMPUS.MOTU, a strategic advisory and think tank that takes the same posture into other sectors. The work spans corporate strategy, government policy and city-scale infrastructure, with engagements that have included clients such as Mastercard, Siemens, Volkswagen, Telefonica, the World Bank and the IFC, alongside government work in Kazakhstan and Moscow city. His public positions reflect the same range. He sits on the advisory board of NTT Innovation Institute, the research arm of one of the world’s largest telecoms groups, and on the Innovation Advisory Board of UNLEASH, the global lab built around the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The point of those affiliations is not credentialing. It is access to the actual conversations where technology, capital and policy are being negotiated. Dromi is direct about what he is for and what he is against. He calls himself a professional troublemaker, writes books that read more like critiques than playbooks, and tells executive audiences that any strategy worth doing should fit on a napkin. Leaders book him when they want their assumptions broken in a room where it still costs less than breaking them in the market. Key speaking topics AI, automation and the future of work Autonomous and connected mobility Smart cities and urban infrastructure Data, privacy and digital governance Strategic foresight under exponential change Innovation strategy and corporate transformation Geopolitics of technology Ideal for Boards and CEOs of industrial, mobility and energy businesses are confronting AI and automation as a strategy question, not an IT one. CSOs, CIOs and heads of innovation are responsible for translating foresight into operating decisions. Government and city leaders are working on smart-city, mobility and digital infrastructure programmes. Executive offsites and leadership summits where the brief is to break orthodoxies, not confirm them. Audience outcomes A clearer view of how AI, automation and connected systems will reshape the audience’s specific industry, not technology in general. Sharper questions for the next strategy cycle, framed around capability, governance and societal licence to operate. A working sense of where corporate, policy and civic decisions intersect, and where leaders are exposed when they assume they do not. Confidence to retire foresight tools that no longer survive contact with the operating business. A direct, sometimes uncomfortable challenge to assumptions the leadership team has stopped questioning.