Innovation og disruption

Why organisations work with Alessandro Lanteri The CLEVER Framework and the Innovation Pyramid are named, peer-reviewed tools – not proprietary consulting models – giving leadership teams a shared analytical language for strategy in technology-disrupted markets that can be used well beyond the event itself. His PhD in Philosophy and Economics from Erasmus University Rotterdam brings disciplinary rigour to AI ethics and strategic decision-making that management-trained advisors rarely provide; his arguments sit at the intersection of decision theory, ethics, and competitive strategy – a combination that is demonstrably scarce in this speaker category. Two commercially published books – CLEVER (Amazon #1 bestseller in Italy and the UK) and Innovating with Impact (The Economist Books, 2023) – confirm that his frameworks have been validated by mainstream leadership audiences, not just academic peer reviewers. Teaching engagements at Saïd Business School (Oxford), London Business School, and ESCP mean his content has been stress-tested against senior executive cohorts in multiple institutional contexts before it reaches the conference stage. His TEDx talk “Why Driverless Cars Need Philosophers” – over 200,000 views – demonstrates an ability to make the ethics and competitive logic of emerging technology land with audiences who are not technical specialists, which is precisely the audience most organisations need to bring along. Biography highlights Full Professor of Strategy and Innovation, ESCP Business School (Turin campus) Author of the CLEVER Framework (CLEVER: The Six Strategic Drivers for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Amazon #1 bestseller in Italy and the UK) and the Innovation Pyramid (Innovating with Impact, The Economist Books, 2023, with Ted Ladd) Contributing writer to Harvard Business Review, MIT Technology Review, World Economic Forum Agenda, and Forbes TEDx speaker – “Why Driverless Cars Need Philosophers” (TEDxHultAshridge), over 200,000 views Executive education faculty, Saïd Business School (University of Oxford) and London Business School PhD in Philosophy and Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam; MSc in Economics, Bocconi University Biography The gap between technology adoption and competitive strategy is one of the most consistent failure points in corporate innovation – organisations make significant investments in AI, digital platforms, and emerging technologies without the strategic architecture to turn those investments into competitive position. Alessandro Lanteri’s body of work is a direct response to that problem. Lanteri is Full Professor of Strategy and Innovation at ESCP Business School, where his research and teaching focus on how organisations compete in environments shaped by technological disruption. He also contributes to executive education at Saïd Business School (University of Oxford) and London Business School. His PhD in Philosophy and Economics from Erasmus University Rotterdam gives his strategic frameworks an analytical foundation that is uncommon in management education – his thinking on AI ethics, decision-making under uncertainty, and competitive logic draws on disciplines that sit well outside the standard strategy canon. His two books give organisations structured tools for navigating this terrain. CLEVER: The Six Strategic Drivers for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, an Amazon #1 bestseller in Italy and the UK, identifies the deep forces reshaping competitive advantage in technology-driven markets and provides a diagnostic framework for leadership response. Innovating with Impact – co-authored with Ted Ladd and published in the Economist Edge series – introduces the Innovation Pyramid, a model that sequences the cultural foundations, methods, and strategic themes organisations need to move from isolated innovation experiments to systematic, measurable impact. His practitioner writing appears in Harvard Business Review, MIT Technology Review, the World Economic Forum Agenda, and Forbes. A TEDx talk on the ethics and strategic implications of autonomous AI decision-making has been viewed over 200,000 times – evidence of an unusual capacity to make complex arguments about technology and strategy accessible to the leadership audiences that most need to hear them. Key speaking topics Innovation strategy and competitive advantage The CLEVER Framework and the Fourth Industrial Revolution Artificial intelligence and business strategy The Innovation Pyramid: from innovation experiments to strategic impact Digital transformation and emerging technologies AI ethics and responsible technology adoption in organisations Strategic foresight and scenario planning in uncertain markets Ideal for Strategy directors and C-suite leaders defining competitive positioning in technology-disrupted markets Corporate innovation and digital transformation leads Executive education cohorts at business schools and senior leadership development programmes Boards reviewing innovation governance and technology investment strategy Audience outcomes A named, structured framework (CLEVER) for diagnosing how AI, digital platforms, and emerging technologies affect their specific competitive environment A step-by-step model (the Innovation Pyramid) for building the organisational cultures, processes, and strategic themes needed for consistent, high-impact innovation Clarity on which technology investments are likely to yield strategic advantage – and the diagnostic tools to distinguish those from investments that produce activity without impact A framework for approaching AI and digital transformation through a competitive strategy lens, rather than a purely technical one Practical methods for aligning innovation activity with long-term strategic positioning

Why organisations work with Alex Cicelsky His 2024 peer-reviewed paper in MRS Energy and Sustainability on Lightweight Straw and Clay Blocks – a self-supporting, carbon-sequestering insulation material fabricated from post-harvest crop residue – is one of the few published, field-tested proofs of concept for low-embodied-carbon construction, giving sustainability teams a citable alternative to conventional materials. He brings thirty years of active construction experience in extreme desert conditions from Kibbutz Lotan’s carbon-neutral EcoCampus: a monitored, measurable, functioning built environment – not a model, but a standing result. His work connects supply chain sustainability to concrete materials decisions: agricultural waste, natural binders, and thermal building performance are his research domain, not a framing device. For organisations whose sustainability commitments have not yet reached their built-environment procurement, he provides both the science of what is possible and a living demonstration of what has already been built. For sustainability education programmes, his curriculum experience spans the Green Apprenticeship at Kibbutz Lotan – a globally recognised programme that has trained hundreds of practitioners in ecological design, natural building, and permaculture across decades of continuous operation. Biography highlights Co-founder and core faculty member, Center for Creative Ecology, Kibbutz Lotan – a carbon-neutral EcoCampus in Israel’s Arava Valley desert and internationally recognised sustainability education centre Founding member, Kibbutz Lotan; member community of the Global Ecovillage Network PhD researcher, Department of Energy Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; BSc in Soil and Water Sciences and Environmental Quality in Agriculture, Hebrew University Faculty of Agriculture Published in MRS Energy and Sustainability (2024): peer-reviewed research on Lightweight Straw and Clay Blocks – carbon-sequestering construction insulation derived from post-harvest wheat straw Center for Creative Ecology: Israel Ministry of Environment Shield Award for Environmental Education (2000); Global Ecovillage Network Ecovillage Excellence Prize (2006) Lectures at universities and professional seminars internationally on ecological design, sustainable construction, and regenerative systems Biography Buildings carry two kinds of carbon footprint: what they consume after occupation, and what was spent building them. The second, larger figure is fixed at construction and is invisible to most operational sustainability programmes. Alex Cicelsky has spent three decades designing, constructing, and researching structures that address both – in one of the world’s most demanding climates. He is co-founder and core faculty of the Center for Creative Ecology at Kibbutz Lotan, a carbon-neutral desert community in Israel’s Arava Valley and a member of the Global Ecovillage Network. The Centre’s EcoCampus, designed and monitored by Cicelsky and his colleagues, operates as a live demonstration and research site. It has been recognised by the Israel Ministry of Environment and the Global Ecovillage Network for its contribution to environmental education, and its buildings have been the subject of formal post-occupancy research. That research has produced peer-reviewed results. A 2024 paper in MRS Energy and Sustainability – co-authored with colleagues at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, where Cicelsky holds a PhD research affiliation in the Department of Energy Engineering – documents the thermal and mechanical performance of Lightweight Straw and Clay Blocks (LSCBs). Fabricated from post-harvest wheat straw bound with clay, LSCBs are self-supporting and carbon-sequestering. In field tests against autoclaved aerated concrete and expanded polystyrene, they demonstrated superior thermal performance in extreme summer heat, with a two-hour thermal lag that reduced peak indoor temperatures measurably below ambient. The practical implication for any organisation with ESG commitments that extend to its built environment is direct: the materials exist, the performance has been independently measured, and the construction has been done. What Cicelsky brings to a serious sustainability conversation is not a proposition but a record. Key speaking topics Embodied carbon in the built environment Natural and low-carbon construction materials Ecological design and permaculture systems Carbon sequestration through agricultural-waste materials Regenerative community and ecovillage development Sustainable building in extreme climates ESG strategy and the built environment Ideal for Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG leads responsible for Scope 3 and built-environment carbon reporting Real estate, infrastructure, and facilities teams developing low-carbon construction or procurement strategies Sustainability education programmes at universities and professional bodies Organisations and communities developing regenerative development or ecovillage frameworks Audience outcomes A clear understanding of embodied carbon in construction and why it falls outside most current ESG reporting frameworks Awareness of peer-reviewed materials alternatives – including agricultural-waste insulation blocks – that reduce and sequester carbon in new construction A working reference point in the Kibbutz Lotan EcoCampus: a carbon-neutral built environment designed, constructed, and monitored over thirty years in an extreme desert climate Practical orientation to permaculture design as an organising framework for regenerative buildings and communities A sharper understanding of the gap between operational efficiency targets and whole-life carbon commitments – and what closing it requires at the procurement stage

Why organisations work with Alex Depledge She has built, scaled and exited a venture-backed UK consumer marketplace, and is currently advising the Chancellor of the Exchequer on entrepreneurship policy. Few speakers can hold both a founder’s lens and a policy lens at once. She speaks to boards from inside the boardroom. Her FTSE-100 seat at Persimmon and NED role at Goodlord mean her advice on innovation, governance and growth is grounded in current PLC reality, not consultancy abstraction. She frames the gender funding gap and the women-in-tech question with hard numbers and self-implicating honesty rather than the standard talk-track, which is why programme committees book her for conversations they want to feel more honest than usual. She has a working view, formed through Hassle.com and Resi, on why corporates struggle to copy start-up behaviour, and what they can realistically take from it. She talks about regulation, sharing economy policy and UK scale-up barriers as a current operator and current government advisor, which gives those sessions weight that retrospective speakers rarely match. Biography highlights First ever Entrepreneurship Advisor to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, appointed by Rachel Reeves in June 2025. Independent Non-Executive Director, Persimmon PLC (FTSE 100), since May 2023; sits on remuneration and nomination committees. Founder of Resi.co.uk, the UK’s largest residential architectural practice, with over 10,000 home projects delivered. Stepped down as CEO in December 2025 and moved to the board. Co-founder and former CEO of Hassle.com, sold to Helpling in 2015 after Accel Partners-led funding. MBE for services to the Sharing Economy, 2016. Named in Computer Weekly’s 50 Most Influential Women in UK Tech and Debrett’s 500 Most Influential People; FT 30 Female Founders to Watch. Biography Most established companies want to behave more like start-ups and very few succeed. The reason is rarely a shortage of ambition. It is that the operating habits, the speed of decision and the comfort with risk that actually produce scale-up growth get filtered out by the systems large organisations use to govern themselves. Alex Depledge has lived on both sides of that gap and now advises across it. She co-founded Hassle.com in 2012 with Jules Coleman, took Accel Partners funding, expanded across Europe and exited to Helpling in 2015. The next year the same partnership launched Resi.co.uk, now the UK’s largest residential architectural practice with more than ten thousand projects delivered. She led Resi as CEO for nearly a decade before stepping back to the board in late 2025. Her current portfolio is what makes her unusual on a stage. She is the first Entrepreneurship Advisor to HM Treasury, appointed by Chancellor Rachel Reeves in June 2025 to work directly on the barriers UK companies hit when they try to scale. At the same time she sits as an independent non-executive director of Persimmon PLC, the FTSE-100 housebuilder, and joined Goodlord’s board in December 2025. That mix gives her audiences a rare combination of inputs: a founder who has banked an exit, a board member inside a UK plc, and a named voice in active conversation with the Treasury about why British scale-ups stall. She was awarded an MBE in 2016 for services to the sharing economy and writes and broadcasts regularly on entrepreneurship, technology policy and the gender funding gap. Key speaking topics Scale-up leadership and the founder operating mindset What large organisations can and cannot learn from start-ups UK entrepreneurship policy and barriers to scale Women, funding and structural bias in venture capital Innovation inside regulated and traditional sectors The future of work and platform-economy business models Proptech and the digitisation of legacy industries Ideal for CEOs, COOs and strategy leaders in incumbent businesses trying to behave more entrepreneurially Boards and Chairs commissioning sessions on innovation governance and growth CHROs and inclusion leads addressing gender, funding and pipeline questions in tech Industry conferences in property, financial services, professional services and government Audience outcomes A clearer read on which start-up behaviours scale into a corporate environment and which do not A current operator’s view of UK entrepreneurship policy and the live Treasury debate on scale-up barriers An honest framing of the gender funding gap that names structural causes rather than rehearsing the symptoms A board-level perspective on innovation as a governance discipline, drawn from FTSE-100 practice A real example of building, scaling and exiting a venture-backed UK consumer marketplace

Why organisations work with Alex Goryachev He ran the function he now talks about. Cisco’s global innovation strategy, AI programme launch and innovation centres on five continents were built under his direction. He gives boards and executive teams a working playbook for moving AI past the pilot stage, drawn from Fearless Innovation and codified into the global ISO Standards on Innovation he helped shape. He addresses workforce resistance to AI directly, naming the cultural and behavioural blockers that stall enterprise AI programmes, rather than focusing only on the technology layer. He bridges enterprise practice and the next generation of leaders through his Executive-in-Residence role at Tulane’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, which keeps his frameworks tested against current operating reality. Biography highlights Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Fearless Innovation (Wiley, 2020). Former Managing Director and Global Head of Innovation Strategy, Cisco. Established Cisco’s Global Innovation Centers across five continents and led the launch of its AI innovation programme. Executive-in-Residence, Tulane University Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Contributor to global ISO Standards on Innovation. Frequent contributor to Forbes, Fast Company, Entrepreneur and CEOWORLD; LinkedIn Top AI Voice. Earlier leadership roles at IBM, Dell and Pfizer. Biography Most enterprise AI programmes do not fail at the model. They fail at the handover, at the moment a promising pilot has to become a working capability inside a large operating company. That is the territory Goryachev spent two decades in. As Managing Director and Global Head of Innovation Strategy at Cisco, he established the company’s Global Innovation Centers across five continents and led the launch of its AI innovation programme. Earlier leadership work at IBM, Dell and Pfizer gave him an unusually broad view of how innovation actually moves through large, regulated organisations. That operating experience became the basis of Fearless Innovation (Wiley, 2020), a Wall Street Journal bestseller that lays out a practical discipline for converting innovation rhetoric into measurable results. The book sits alongside his contribution to the global ISO Standards on Innovation, where he helped codify the principles for how organisations build innovation capability at scale. He continues that work today as an Executive-in-Residence at Tulane University’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and as a regular contributor to Forbes, Fast Company, Entrepreneur and CEOWORLD on the question that now dominates board agendas: how to move from AI as a slide-deck strategy to AI as an operating advantage. Key speaking topics Enterprise AI strategy and operational deployment Innovation as a managed discipline AI literacy and workforce readiness Digital transformation in large enterprises Leadership in an AI-first operating model Culture change and innovation behaviour Ideal for Boards and CEOs setting an AI agenda beyond proof-of-concept Chief Innovation, Strategy and Transformation Officers responsible for translating AI ambition into operating results CHROs and learning leaders rebuilding workforce capability for an AI-first business Executive teams in Fortune 500s, scale-ups and government bodies stalled at the pilot stage of AI Audience outcomes A clear view of the difference between AI experimentation and AI as an operating capability, with named markers of each. Specific patterns from inside Cisco’s innovation programme that audiences can map onto their own organisations. A direct read on where workforce resistance to AI typically appears, and what leaders can do about it. A working sense of what Fearless Innovation prescribes as the discipline behind sustained innovation results.

Why organisations work with Alf Rehn His central argument runs against the grain of the innovation industry: that most of what organisations call innovation is performance, not practice – and that rebuilding the real thing requires dismantling the very frameworks many have paid consultants to install. Innovation for the Fatigued (Kogan Page) provides a named, publishable framework – “deep innovation” – that gives leadership teams a vocabulary to diagnose and address innovation theatre without discarding ambition. His current research at SDU’s Center for Organizational Datafication and its Ethics in Society gives him a credible, peer-reviewed lens on how AI and algorithmic systems are reshaping management and innovation decisions – a perspective grounded in data, not trend commentary. Having held chairs at three universities across Finland, Denmark and Sweden, and served on the board of a billion-dollar corporation, he operates across the researcher-practitioner boundary in a way that is rare in the innovation speaking space. His Thinkers50 Guru Radar inclusion (2016) and coverage in the Financial Times, The Sunday Times and Harvard Business Review give buyers a named, verifiable body of external endorsement to anchor the engagement. Biography highlights Professor of Innovation, Design and Management, University of Southern Denmark Head of the Center for Organizational Datafication and its Ethics in Society, SDU – researching AI’s effects on management, innovation and algorithmic ethics Previously held the Chair of Management and Organisation at Åbo Akademi University, Finland; and a professorship in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden Named to Thinkers50 Guru Radar (2016) – listed among “the 30 management thinkers most likely to shape the future of management” Author of Innovation for the Fatigued (Kogan Page) and Dangerous Ideas – the latter translated into eight languages Featured in the Financial Times, The Sunday Times and Harvard Business Review; over 1,000 keynotes delivered across five continents Biography Alf Rehn has spent much of his academic career making the same uncomfortable argument: that organisations are not suffering from a lack of innovation, but from an excess of innovation theatre. His book Innovation for the Fatigued, published by Kogan Page, names this problem directly – and his concept of “deep innovation” offers a framework for distinguishing creative cultures that produce real output from those that have learned to imitate one. That critique has weight because of where it comes from. Rehn holds a chair in Innovation, Design and Management at the University of Southern Denmark, where he also leads the Center for Organizational Datafication and its Ethics in Society – a research unit examining how AI and algorithmic technologies are changing the way executives, engineers and managers make decisions. He has previously held professorships at Åbo Akademi University in Finland and KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, combining research across critical management studies, creativity and organisational theory. His earlier book Dangerous Ideas – translated into eight languages – argues that the ideas organisations most need are precisely the ones they are instinctively disposed to dismiss. Together, the two books form a coherent intellectual position: that genuine innovation requires not better processes but the courage to engage with what is uncomfortable, inconvenient and structurally difficult. Named to the Thinkers50 Guru Radar in 2016 and covered by the Financial Times, The Sunday Times and Harvard Business Review, Rehn engages boards and executive teams on the strategic gap between innovation ambition and innovation reality – and on how emerging technologies, including AI, are creating new versions of the same problem. Key speaking topics Innovation strategy and organisational creativity Innovation fatigue and deep innovation Creative cultures and their destruction Dangerous and unconventional ideas in business AI, datafication and ethics in management Leadership paradox and contradictory demands on leaders Scenario planning and taboo futures Contrarian and critical thinking in strategy Ideal for Chief Innovation Officers and strategy leads seeking to audit and rebuild innovation culture Executive leadership teams who have invested in innovation programmes with limited return Boards and C-suite audiences examining how AI is reshaping organisational decision-making CHROs and transformation leads working on the cultural conditions for sustained creativity Audience outcomes A clearer diagnostic for distinguishing genuine creative capacity from performative innovation activity Practical language and frameworks from Innovation for the Fatigued to challenge and rebuild internal innovation practice A more rigorous approach to unconventional and uncomfortable ideas, informed by the argument of Dangerous Ideas Familiarity with how AI and algorithmic systems are reshaping management decisions, grounded in current academic research A more honest account of what leadership under contradictory demands actually requires – and how to navigate it without resolving it

Why organisations work with Alison McCauley She brings a Stanford-trained social scientist’s lens to AI adoption, focused on the human and organisational variables that decide whether a deployment moves the operating numbers. Her LinkedIn Learning course on emerging technology has reached more than 90,000 enterprise learners, evidence she can translate complexity into something a non-technical workforce can act on. How To Think With AI is built on a year of fieldwork with hundreds of early adopters, giving her a usable framework for cognitive performance with AI rather than a survey of capabilities. She has tracked technology adoption cycles across blockchain and AI since 2016, which gives boards a pattern recogniser, not a vendor pitch, when assessing what is signal and what is hype. Her writing in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and VentureBeat, plus LinkedIn Top Voice status, gives senior audiences a credible voice they can quote internally after the keynote. Biography highlights Bestselling author of Unblocked: How Blockchains Will Change Your Business (O’Reilly Media) and How To Think With AI. Founder and CEO of Unblocked Future, a strategy firm advising leaders on adoption of emerging technology. Chief Advocacy Officer at Think with AI. LinkedIn Learning course creator with more than 90,000 students enrolled in her enterprise technology programme. Named a LinkedIn Top Voice; published in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and VentureBeat. BA in Psychology and MA in Organization Design and Development, Stanford University. Speaking platforms include SXSW, the Aspen Ideas Festival, Columbia University, and UC Berkeley. Biography Most AI rollouts stall at the same place. The model works, the licence is bought, and three months later the only people getting value from it are the same handful who would have found a way regardless. The variable that matters is not the technology. It is whether the rest of the workforce learns to think with it. That is the operating problem Alison McCauley has spent two decades on. Her training is in psychology and organisational behaviour, both at Stanford, and her consulting career has put her opposite C-suites at firms including Adobe, Oracle, IBM, PNC, First Data, and Verizon. She studies the human side of how new technology lands inside organisations, which is why her work reads differently from technologist commentary on AI. She wrote Unblocked with O’Reilly Media in 2018, before blockchain literacy was a board concern, and her LinkedIn Learning course on the same topic became a default executive education resource with more than 90,000 enrolments. Her current book, How To Think With AI, is built on a year of fieldwork with hundreds of generative AI early adopters and translates what they do differently into a framework leaders can teach. As Chief Advocacy Officer at Think with AI and founder of Unblocked Future, she works with senior teams on the practical question of what changes when AI becomes a capability rather than a tool. Her articles appear in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and VentureBeat. She has been named a LinkedIn Top Voice. The reason boards bring her in is not to be told that AI matters; it is to be shown what their workforce has to do differently for the next eighteen months to count. Key speaking topics AI adoption and workforce capability Human-centred technology change Generative AI for cognitive performance Digital transformation strategy Emerging technology pattern recognition Executive AI literacy Future of work in the age of AI Ideal for C-suite and board audiences setting AI strategy beyond pilots CHROs and learning leaders rebuilding capability around AI Transformation and innovation leads moving deployment from tooling to operating advantage Executive education and senior leadership programmes Audience outcomes A clear vocabulary for the human variables that determine AI return on investment A practical framework, drawn from fieldwork with early adopters, for how individuals and teams use AI to lift cognitive performance A sharper read on which AI signals matter for their sector and which are vendor noise Confidence to lead AI conversations internally without deferring to technology vendors A point of view on workforce redesign that holds up in a board setting

Why organisations work with Amy Edmondson She is the original source of the psychological safety research now cited by Google, the NHS, and most leading management programmes, not a downstream interpreter of it. Her frameworks come from two decades of field research inside hospitals, manufacturing plants, and Fortune 500 teams, not from theory or anecdote. She translates an idea that leaders often misread as softness into operational language about error rates, learning speed, and innovation throughput. Her Right Kind of Wrong work gives executives a practical taxonomy of failure types, separating the failures organisations should prevent from the failures they should encourage. Thinkers50 ranked her the world’s number one management thinker in both 2021 and 2023, which signals her standing among the practitioners and academics buyers most respect. Biography highlights Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School. Ranked #1 on the Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers in 2021 and 2023. Winner of the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year 2023 for Right Kind of Wrong. Author of seven books, including The Fearless Organization, Teaming, and Right Kind of Wrong. Recipient of the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award (2019) and Talent Award (2017). PhD in Organizational Behavior, AM in Psychology, AB in Engineering Sciences, Harvard University. Biography The most expensive errors inside large organisations are rarely caused by people who do not know what to do. They are caused by people who know, and choose not to say. Decades of research at Harvard Business School have made that pattern visible, and have given senior leaders a vocabulary for it: psychological safety. Amy Edmondson built that vocabulary. As Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, she has spent more than twenty years studying teams in hospitals, manufacturing operations, technology firms, and government. Her 1999 paper in Administrative Science Quarterly is the academic anchor for an idea now used inside Google’s people analytics, NHS quality improvement work, and most credible executive education curricula. The work has expanded from a single concept into a coherent body. Teaming examined how cross-functional groups learn fast enough to keep up with the work in front of them. The Fearless Organization gave leaders a step-by-step model for making honest contribution the norm, not the exception. Right Kind of Wrong, which won the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year in 2023, separates the failures organisations should engineer against from the failures they should be willing to commission. Thinkers50 has ranked her since 2011 and named her the world’s number one management thinker in 2021 and again in 2023. That recognition matters because it tracks how often working executives, not academics, cite her frameworks when they describe what they are trying to change inside their own organisations. Key speaking topics Psychological safety and team performance Learning from intelligent failure Teaming in cross-functional and high-stakes work Leadership in high-reliability environments Organisational learning Innovation cultures and candour Leading through error and recovery Ideal for C-suite and board audiences in healthcare, aviation, financial services, and other high-stakes industries CHROs and chief learning officers redesigning culture and capability programmes Heads of innovation and R&D leaders building teams that need to fail intelligently Executive education and leadership development cohorts inside large organisations Audience outcomes A working definition of psychological safety that separates it from comfort, niceness, or lowered standards A taxonomy of failure types that leaders can apply to their own portfolio of decisions Specific leader behaviours that increase the rate at which problems surface early A clearer language for talking about error, candour, and accountability inside the organisation Evidence-based responses to the common executive objection that psychological safety reduces performance pressure

Why organisations work with Ana Andjelic Her “aspirational economy” thesis that brand value is now built through social, cultural, and environmental capital rather than product features or advertising reach gives leadership teams a conceptually rigorous basis for repositioning brands in fragmented consumer markets, not just a set of tactics. She has delivered verified results at scale: the Banana Republic rebrand under her leadership produced a 27% year-on-year comparable sales increase, which means boards are not being asked to take a theory on faith. Her two Routledge-published books, combined with The Sociology of Business newsletter (ranked among Substack’s top 15 business publications), mean her framework is publicly available, continuously tested, and already in use by the marketing leaders her audiences need to influence. She brings C-suite brand experience across three distinct commercial contexts – global mass retail (Banana Republic, Esprit), contemporary luxury (Mansur Gavriel), and independent fashion (Rebecca Minkoff), making her diagnostic toolkit applicable beyond any single category or brand tier. A Columbia sociology doctorate and a senior career at agencies including Droga5 and Havas means she can diagnose what has broken in a brand’s relationship with culture and explain why, not just describe the symptoms. Biography highlights Chief Brand Officer at Banana Republic, rebrand delivered a 27% year-on-year comparable sales increase Former Global Chief Brand Officer at Esprit, led brand repositioning across Europe and market re-entry in North America and Asia-Pacific Author of two books published by Routledge: The Business of Aspiration and Hitmakers: How Brands Influence Culture Recognised three times by Forbes for CMO work, including Forbes CMO Next Publishes The Sociology of Business, ranked among the top 15 business publications on Substack Contributor to Harvard Business Review, Financial Times, Fast Company, The Guardian, Adweek, and Vogue PhD in Sociology and MA in Media Studies; senior agency experience at Droga5, Havas Media, and Spring Studios Biography Ana Andjelic spent two decades in C-suite brand roles, at Banana Republic, Esprit, Mansur Gavriel, and Rebecca Minkoff, while simultaneously building a body of intellectual work that explains why most brand strategy fails. The result is a perspective with unusual commercial credibility: she has made the argument at board level and then delivered the numbers. Her central thesis, developed in The Business of Aspiration (Routledge), is that modern consumers no longer signal status through wealth or possessions but through taste, curation, and values – what she calls social, cultural, and environmental capital. The organisations that understand this are not running better advertising. They are restructuring brand strategy around cultural influence: collaborations, creative communities, content, and what she identifies in her second book, Hitmakers: How Brands Influence Culture, as the systematic production of cultural hits. At Banana Republic, she translated this framework into a full brand repositioning that delivered a 27% year-on-year comparable sales increase. At Esprit, she oversaw the brand’s repositioning across Europe and its re-entry into North American and Asia-Pacific markets. Both assignments required her to make cultural arguments in commercial terms and to redesign the marketing function to deliver them. Andjelic holds a PhD in Sociology from Columbia University and a Masters in Media Studies. Her Sociology of Business newsletter is among Substack’s top 15 business publications. She contributes to Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times, Fast Company, and Vogue, and is a frequent expert source for the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. Key speaking topics Brand strategy and repositioning Cultural influence and the aspirational economy Consumer aspiration and shifting status symbols Cultural hitmaking as commercial strategy The Creative Class and cultural audience segmentation Brand storytelling and narrative architecture Retail innovation and brand-driven growth Ideal for Chief Marketing Officers and Chief Brand Officers leading brand repositioning or category entry C-suite leaders in fashion, luxury, and retail responsible for connecting brand investment to commercial outcomes Strategy and brand teams in consumer-facing businesses seeking a model for cultural relevance that scales Boards and leadership teams reviewing brand value architecture, growth planning, or market re-entry Audience outcomes A working framework for understanding how social, cultural, and environmental capital now drive brand value and purchase decisions, and what that means for brand investment A practical model for redefining brand strategy as cultural influence, with organisational and operational implications Clarity on the role of cultural products, collaborations, content, entertainment, community, in building sustainable brand growth beyond advertising A method for segmenting audiences by their relationship to culture, including how the Creative Class functions as an amplification layer Tested examples of how cultural strategy translates into commercial results, including the conditions that made the Banana Republic repositioning work

Why organisations work with Anand Tamboli His Apress book Build Your Own IoT Platform is a widely used technical manual for developers building IoT platforms, which anchors him outside the bureau-speaker register and inside the engineering community. His second book Keeping Your AI Under Control applies the same discipline to AI governance, giving senior audiences a specific frame on the control layer that most AI keynotes skip. Chartered Engineer status plus MBA in International Business gives him the combination buyers want: deep technical credibility with business-side vocabulary. He mentors innovators through Venture Cafe Sydney, CSIRO and UNSW, so the current reading on emerging technology is current and specific to what is actually being built, not abstract. Twenty-plus years of Fortune 500 speaking and consulting plus awards from Consensus Group Australia («Best Author of the Year») and IoT Hub Australia («IoT Pioneer» nomination) give the credibility an external anchor. Biography highlights Founder, Knewron Technologies; Chartered Engineer; MBA in International Business Author of Build Your Own IoT Platform (Apress) and Keeping Your AI Under Control Innovation mentor for Venture Cafe Sydney, CSIRO and UNSW Honorary Treasurer, Computer Society of India; member, Australian Computer Society «Best Author of the Year», Consensus Group Australia; «IoT Pioneer» nomination, IoT Hub Australia 21-plus years speaking and consulting with Fortune 500 clients Biography Most AI and IoT keynotes operate at the level of strategy slides. Anand Tamboli’s work starts at the implementation layer. His Apress title Build Your Own IoT Platform is used by engineering teams to stand up working platforms inside a small number of business days. His second book Keeping Your AI Under Control does the same job for AI governance: it translates the control question into decisions that a senior operator can make, not an ethics committee. The academic base is Chartered Engineer status and an MBA in International Business, with earlier training in electrical, electronics and power-systems engineering. The commercial base is over two decades of Fortune 500 speaking and consulting through Knewron Technologies. The community base is mentoring through Venture Cafe Sydney, CSIRO and UNSW. Those three combined are unusual in the technology-futurist speaker market. The recognition sits with the substance. He has been named «Best Author of the Year» by Consensus Group Australia and nominated as an IoT Pioneer by IoT Hub Australia. He serves as Honorary Treasurer of the Computer Society of India and is an active member of the Australian Computer Society. The institutional footprint is inside engineering communities, not inside bureau marketing. For boards, CIOs, CTOs, innovation leaders and transformation functions at Fortune 500 enterprises, Tamboli offers a register that sits between engineering implementation and executive governance. He works in English across keynote, masterclass, panel and consulting formats. Key speaking topics AI governance and keeping AI deployments under control IoT platform strategy and implementation Transformative innovation and future-ready organisations Technology ethics and responsible technology Learning to unlearn and leading through disruption Distributed leadership and the future of work Ideal for Boards, CIOs and CTOs making AI and IoT deployment decisions Innovation, R&D and transformation functions at Fortune 500 enterprises Engineering leadership communities requiring a technical, not commentator-level, speaker Asia-Pacific and Australasian corporate and public-sector audiences Audience outcomes A working framework for AI governance drawn from Keeping Your AI Under Control An engineering-level view of IoT platform strategy from an Apress-published author Specific examples drawn from 21-plus years of Fortune 500 technology consulting A view of where the emerging-technology agenda sits for boards over the next cycle

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 Andrés Oppenheimer His sector-by-sector analysis of automation’s job impact – developed through the same investigative methodology that produced a Pulitzer Prize – gives leadership teams a specific, evidence-built picture of workforce risk rather than a generalist technology forecast. “The Oppenheimer Report” column runs twice weekly across 60+ newspapers in the US and Latin America, meaning his read on political and economic shifts is drawn from live, primary reporting – not filtered retrospective analysis. He can address geopolitical risk and AI-driven workforce disruption in a single conversation, from a single credible position – organisations operating across the Americas do not need separate voices to cover both agendas. His television programme “Oppenheimer Presenta” on CNN en Español gives him direct, ongoing access to heads of state, finance ministers, and regional business leaders – a source network that shapes the quality and specificity of his intelligence. Nine books across four decades of reporting on Latin American competitiveness means his arguments carry empirical ballast: when he makes a forecast, he can point to the precedents it rests on. Biography highlights Latin America editor and syndicated foreign affairs columnist, The Miami Herald; “The Oppenheimer Report” appears twice weekly in 60+ US and international newspapers Anchor, “Oppenheimer Presenta,” CNN en Español – broadcast across 19+ countries in the US, Latin America and the Caribbean Co-winner, 1987 Pulitzer Prize, as part of the Miami Herald team that broke the Iran-Contra scandal Author of nine books, including The Robots Are Coming! (Vintage/Random House, 2019) and Innovate or Die! (2014), translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese Awards include: Ortega y Gasset Award (El País, 1993), Maria Moors Cabot Award (Columbia University, 1998), King of Spain Award (2001), Overseas Press Club Award (2002) Master’s degree in Journalism, Columbia University; freelance contributor to The New York Times, The Washington Post, BBC, and CBS’ 60 Minutes Biography The Americas produce a particular kind of strategic risk – one where political instability, trade volatility, and currency pressure arrive together and faster than most organisations expect. Andrés Oppenheimer has spent four decades reporting from inside that complexity, as Latin America editor and syndicated foreign affairs columnist for The Miami Herald, with “The Oppenheimer Report” appearing twice weekly in more than 60 newspapers across the US and internationally. His investigative credentials are substantive. He was part of the Miami Herald team awarded the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for uncovering the Iran-Contra affair – a grounding in primary-source journalism that has shaped every argument he has made since. His awards from El País (Ortega y Gasset, 1993), Columbia University (Maria Moors Cabot, 1998), and the Spanish news agency EFE (King of Spain Award, 2001) confirm a standing in the Spanish-speaking world that extends well beyond the conference circuit. His book The Robots Are Coming! (Vintage/Random House, 2019) applied that same investigative rigour to the future-of-work debate. Oppenheimer interviewed Oxford economists, Silicon Valley engineers, and sector specialists across Japan, South Korea, Israel, and Europe to build a profession-by-profession account of what automation is actually doing to legal work, banking, medicine, and manufacturing – and what the evidence says about whether new industries will replace what is being lost. The earlier Innovate or Die! (2014) set out his argument that innovation capacity is the defining variable in national competitiveness in the knowledge economy. As anchor of “Oppenheimer Presenta” on CNN en Español, he interviews heads of state, policymakers, and business leaders across a region that remains both strategically critical and consistently misread by organisations operating from outside it. That combination – live political intelligence, investigative depth, and a published analytical framework on automation and competitiveness – is what distinguishes his contribution in a board conversation on international risk. Key speaking topics Geopolitics and political risk across the Americas AI, automation, and the future of work Latin American economic trends and competitiveness Innovation strategy in the knowledge economy The impact of automation on professional sectors Global economic forecasting and scenario analysis Ideal for C-suite and board-level leaders in organisations with commercial exposure or operations across Latin America and the Americas Risk, strategy, and policy leads navigating geopolitical uncertainty in international markets Senior leadership teams examining the intersection of AI-driven workforce disruption and macroeconomic risk Global business conferences and economic forums seeking analytical depth on hemispheric political and technological change Audience outcomes A clearer framework for understanding how geopolitical risk and automation interact as compounding – not separate – forces on competitive strategy Sector-specific insight into which professional roles and industries face the earliest automation pressure, grounded in published research rather than prediction A more accurate and current picture of Latin American political and economic dynamics, drawn from active reporting rather than retrospective analysis A working understanding of why innovation capacity determines national and organisational competitiveness in the knowledge economy Confidence to brief boards and senior colleagues on the forces reshaping international markets – with the evidence and context to withstand scrutiny

Why organisations work with Andrew and Gaia Grant The co-presenting format is its own offer. The audience hears two voices working a leadership problem in real time, with the academic and the facilitator perspectives playing off each other. The frameworks come out of Gaia Grant’s PhD research in the Discipline of Strategy, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Sydney Business School. The Innovation Climate Leadership Indicator (iCLi) is an academically validated diagnostic, which matters when the work has to defend itself in front of a board or audit committee. They treat the explore-preserve tension as the actual problem. Most innovation speakers present innovation as a simple acceleration story, which leaves leaders without a useful answer for the part of the business that has to stay reliable. The thirty-year working partnership is itself the case study for the leadership content. Andrew and Gaia have built a co-authored body of research while running a global consultancy together, and that lived material reads in the room as something that cannot be performed. Biography highlights Co-authors of The Innovation Race: How to Change a Culture to Change the Game (John Wiley & Sons, 2016) and the international bestseller Who Killed Creativity?…And How Do We Get it Back? (Wiley, 2012) Dr Gaia Grant: PhD researcher and lecturer in the Discipline of Strategy, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Sydney Business School Andrew Grant: founder and director of Tirian International Consultancy and a TEDx speaker, with three decades of executive facilitation across more than thirty countries Developers of the academically validated Innovation Climate Leadership Indicator (iCLi) and the Dynamic Polar Positioning (DPoP) framework, used with executive teams from Fortune 500 firms and government innovation programmes Keynote work at YPO Global Leadership Conference, APEC CEO Summit, the PwC US National Conference, Gartner ITxpo, TEDx and the Salesforce ANZ Roadshow Clients include Google, Nestlé, Boeing, Disney, Salesforce, Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, Citibank, Visa, Goldman Sachs, UBS and the UAE Prime Minister’s Office Biography The hardest part of innovation is not coming up with new ideas. It is running the rest of the business while you do it. That tension is the central argument of two books co-authored by Andrew and Gaia Grant: The Innovation Race and Who Killed Creativity?. It is also the problem most organisations get wrong when they accelerate AI adoption. The research backbone is Dr Gaia Grant’s doctoral work in Strategy, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Sydney Business School. Her PhD examined what lets some organisations innovate sustainably while others stall. Two tools came out of it: the academically validated Innovation Climate Leadership Indicator (iCLi) and Dynamic Polar Positioning (DPoP), both now used by executive teams worldwide. Andrew Grant founded Tirian International Consultancy and is the working other half of the research in the room. Gaia anchors the academic case; Andrew runs the live facilitation, with simulations, audience experiments and the kind of pacing that keeps a three-thousand-person Salesforce roadshow following the argument. The partnership is thirty years old, which is why the co-presented sessions read as a working dialogue, not a stitched-together keynote. The work has been used by Google, Nestlé, Boeing, Salesforce, Four Seasons and the UAE Prime Minister’s Office, often delivered with partner institutions including Duke Corporate Education. What gets repeated is the clearest signal of fit: roadshows that return, leadership programmes that scale, teams running iCLi diagnostics by the next planning cycle. Key speaking topics Innovation leadership and culture The explore-preserve paradox in AI adoption Sustainable innovation in complex organisations Creative intelligence and critical thinking Ambidextrous leadership Innovation diagnostics and culture transformation Ideal for C-suite teams running concurrent AI adoption and core-business protection mandates Heads of innovation, transformation and strategy in large, complex organisations Boards and CEOs designing a programme of cultural change with a long delivery arc Executive education and leadership programmes that need academically defensible content Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the explore-preserve tension that surfaces in every AI and innovation programme An honest read on where the organisation sits on innovation readiness, supported by the Innovation Climate Leadership Indicator (iCLi) A workable distinction between creative thinking and innovation execution, and where each is breaking down inside the audience’s own teams Visibility into which leadership archetypes in the room pull toward exploration and which pull toward preservation Decisions that hold up in a board paper because the framework behind them is academically validated