Digitale Transformation

Why organisations work with Dan Sobovitz Five years inside the cabinet of a European Commission Vice-President, writing speeches and running digital for the institution that regulates much of Europe’s technology agenda. That is a view of how policy communication actually works that external consultants rarely have. Runs spreadable.io, the agency behind interactive programmes for the European Commission, European Parliament, UNESCO, Michelin, Groupe RATP, and Viva Tech. Clients hire him when a standard panel format will not hold the room. Chief communications role at the European Startup Prize for Mobility, Europe’s largest acceleration programme for clean mobility startups, gives him a working feed of what is actually happening in European mobility and climate tech rather than a reading of it. Hosts and moderates in English and French across tech, mobility, and sustainability events including Viva Tech, ChangeNow, and Michelin’s Movin’On Challenge, with a hosting style built around live audience interaction rather than scripted Q and A. Civil society work through DemoCrisis and Fondation Ceci n’est pas une crise gives him a serious, non-promotional voice on how digital platforms are changing democratic participation. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, spreadable.io, Brussels Chief Communications Officer, European Startup Prize for Mobility Senior Adviser, Digital Communications, BCW Former speechwriter and digital communications strategist, cabinet of European Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic TEDx speaker, “Can technology make democracy great again?” (TEDxAUEB) MA, Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs; MPP, Hertie School of Governance Biography Inside the European Commission, the problem was not a shortage of policy. It was that the policy was not reaching anyone outside Brussels. Dan Sobovitz spent five years in the cabinet of Vice-President Maros Sefcovic working on exactly that, writing speeches and running digital channels that tried to turn technical EU work into something recognisable to citizens, journalists, and founders. The methods were unusual for an institution. Live interactive interviews from a self-driving car. VR footage of EU satellites going into orbit. Crowdsourcing policy input from youth and climate activists through digital platforms. Live audience voting at EU startup pitches. Most of it came out of a single idea: the Commission had interesting things to say and was burying them under procedural language. He now runs spreadable.io, the interactive-events agency he founded after leaving the Commission, with clients including the European Parliament, UNESCO, Michelin, Groupe RATP, and Viva Tech. Alongside this he is Chief Communications Officer at the European Startup Prize for Mobility, the EU’s largest acceleration programme for clean mobility startups, and a Senior Adviser on Digital Communications at BCW. His civic work through DemoCrisis and Fondation Ceci n’est pas une crise addresses a narrower question that runs under everything else he does: what happens to democratic participation when the public conversation moves onto platforms none of the participants control. He writes and speaks on that question in English and French, and has given a TEDx talk, “Can technology make democracy great again?” Key speaking topics Digital communications and institutional storytelling Technology, democracy, and civic participation Sustainable mobility and clean transport innovation European startup ecosystems and innovation policy Interactive conference formats and audience engagement Public policy communication in the age of platforms Ideal for Corporate and institutional communications leaders rethinking how they talk about technology and regulation Innovation, mobility, and sustainability programmes looking for a bilingual host who can run a serious technical room Public affairs and policy teams operating at the EU level CEO and C-suite audiences planning flagship innovation or transformation events Audience outcomes A sharper read on how European institutions and corporates are actually communicating technology and policy, and where that is breaking down Concrete examples of formats that move an audience out of passive listening, drawn from live EU and corporate programmes A working understanding of how the European clean mobility and startup landscape fits together across Commission, Parliament, and industry A more honest view of what digital platforms are doing to public debate and what institutions can do about it

Why organisations work with Dan Waldschmidt He has run the turnaround himself. As CRO then CEO of Panzura, he led 150% year-on-year customer base growth and 288% three-year revenue expansion, which gives the speaking material a current operator’s authority. The Edgy Conversations thesis is research-based, drawing on 1,000 case studies of outlier performers across business, science, and sport, and gives audiences a defensible argument for unconventional commercial choices. He speaks credibly to enterprise technology buyers. The Panzura mandate sits in hybrid cloud storage and ransomware resilience, which makes him useful for boards balancing growth ambition with infrastructure risk. His work travels well from sales kickoffs to executive offsites because the same framework is applied to revenue, talent, and brand positioning. The voice is direct and confrontational by design. Senior teams that are tired of motivational keynotes tend to respond to a speaker willing to name what is not working in the room. Biography highlights Chief Executive Officer of Panzura, appointed January 2024, having joined as reFounder and Chief Revenue Officer in 2020. Author of Edgy Conversations: How Ordinary People Can Achieve Outrageous Success, published 2014. Founder of Waldschmidt Partners International, a strategy consultancy active 2010 to 2018. Wall Street Journal listed his Edgy Conversations blog among the top sales blogs online. Contributor at Entrepreneur.com; featured in Forbes, CNBC, and Business Insider. Ultra-endurance athlete with multiple 100-mile race finishes, including the Everest Marathon course. Biography The hardest part of a turnaround is not the diagnosis. It is doing the work while the business is still running. Revenue targets do not pause for restructuring, customers do not wait for a refreshed value proposition, and the sales team needs a story to tell on Monday morning. Most strategy advice does not survive contact with that pressure. Dan Waldschmidt’s career has been built inside that pressure. At Panzura, the hybrid cloud storage company, he joined in 2020 as reFounder and Chief Revenue Officer, rebuilt the commercial engine, and was appointed CEO in January 2024. The published numbers, 150% year-on-year customer base growth, 288% three-year revenue expansion, 125% net retention, and Inc. 5000 recognition, came from a deliberate repositioning into the enterprise market and a tightening of the sales motion around ransomware resilience and data security. The intellectual backbone is Edgy Conversations, his book based on the stories of 1,000 outlier performers across business, science, mathematics, and sport. The argument is that breakthrough commercial outcomes come from a small number of unfashionable behaviours: deliberate focus, willingness to refuse the conventional path, and a narrow definition of what counts as success. Before Panzura, he ran Waldschmidt Partners International, advising leadership teams on revenue strategy, and his columns and blog have been cited by the Wall Street Journal and Entrepreneur.com. For senior buyers, the practical relevance is the combination of operator and author. The frameworks are not abstract. They are the same frameworks he is currently applying to a public-stage enterprise technology business with real customers and real quarterly numbers. Key speaking topics Revenue turnaround and commercial repositioning Sales transformation in enterprise technology High-performance behaviour in commercial teams Brand and category differentiation under pressure AI and data security as growth narratives Leadership of restructured commercial functions Ideal for Chief Revenue Officers and sales leadership teams resetting commercial strategy CEOs and boards navigating a turnaround or strategic repositioning Founders and scale-up leadership teams in enterprise technology Sales kickoffs, partner summits, and executive offsites where the audience is operators rather than observers Audience outcomes A direct read on which commercial behaviours predict outlier results and which do not A framework for tightening sales motion and customer focus during a strategy reset Specific operating examples from a current enterprise technology turnaround Language for repositioning a business in a contested category A challenge to the default assumption that incremental change will deliver step-change growth

Why organisations work with Daniel Bobroff He has invested retail’s money on retail’s behalf. As co-founder of ASOS Ventures he ran due diligence on the technologies retail boards are now being asked to buy, which is a different vantage point from the consultant or analyst. He built a category from scratch. Pioneering in-game advertising through Microtime gives him a working understanding of how a new commercial medium emerges, scales and is monetised, which transfers directly to current arguments about immersive commerce and gamified retail. He operates inside the engineering layer. His role at HTEC Group means his views on AI in retail are grounded in actual implementation work on customer experience, cloud and supply chain, not in keynote abstraction. He covers the full retail tech stack in one voice. Boards rarely find a speaker who can talk credibly about ad-tech, VR, visual search, ecommerce platforms and corporate venture in the same session, and link them to a single commercial argument. Biography highlights Founder, Coded Futures, retail and consumer technology advisory firm. Special Advisor, HTEC Group, advising on retail digitalisation, AI and customer experience. Co-founder and former Investment Director, ASOS Ventures, the venture capital arm of ASOS. Founder of Microtime, the first digital agency dedicated to in-game advertising, credited with starting a now multi-billion-dollar category. Founder of Deibus Studios, video games developer with combined platform sales reported above 50 million units across PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo. Has delivered keynotes for Google, Facebook, Salesforce, Mastercard and the Retail Institute. Biography Retail has spent two decades arguing about whether technology is a channel, a function or a strategy. The argument is now closed by capital allocation. Personalisation engines, generative AI, gamified loyalty and immersive commerce are all sitting in the operating plan, often without a clear test for which of them pays back and which is a costly experiment in brand theatre. Daniel Bobroff has worked on both sides of that question. At ASOS he co-founded the company’s venture capital arm and was directly responsible for identifying and backing the technologies the retail sector is now being sold. Before that he founded Microtime, the first digital agency dedicated to in-game advertising, and Deibus Studios, an independent games developer whose titles for PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo achieved combined platform sales above 50 million units. Today he runs Coded Futures, a retail and consumer technology advisory firm, and sits as Special Advisor to HTEC Group, the global engineering business, where he advises on AI, cloud and customer experience programmes. The combination matters: he sees retail technology from the investor’s underwriting position, the founder’s product position and the engineering partner’s delivery position. That is an unusual sightline for a speaker on this subject. His keynote work, including engagements for Google, Facebook, Salesforce, Mastercard and the Retail Institute, focuses on the same question a board is wrestling with after the third AI vendor presentation of the quarter: which of these bets is real, what does the customer experience actually look like once they land, and how does the commercial model hold up at scale. Key speaking topics AI in retail and consumer-facing operations Gamification of loyalty, engagement and commerce Immersive commerce, VR and the metaverse in retail Hyper-personalisation and predictive analytics Corporate venture capital and retail innovation pipelines Customer experience redesign in fashion and consumer brands Supply chain optimisation through AI and emerging technologies Ideal for Retail and consumer brand boards weighing major AI and digital investment decisions CMOs, Chief Digital Officers and Chief Customer Officers redesigning customer journeys around AI and personalisation Innovation, venture and corporate development teams inside large retailers and consumer goods groups Retail technology vendors and platform partners briefing their senior client audiences Audience outcomes A working sense of which retail AI use cases have shown commercial returns and which are still in the demonstration phase A sharper read on where gamification, immersive commerce and generative AI fit inside an existing retail operating model A vocabulary for discussing personalisation, loyalty and experience investments with credibility at board level A reference set of named retailers, technologies and venture-backed companies to anchor internal strategy debates

Why organisations work with Daniel Burrus He offers a named, tested method for distinguishing Hard Trends (future certainties) from Soft Trends (future possibilities), giving executive teams a shared vocabulary for strategic bets. The Anticipatory Organization model has been implemented inside the Pentagon’s Joint Service Provider, Deloitte, Lockheed Martin and IBM, so the framework has been stress-tested inside institutions where the cost of being wrong is high. He has tracked exponential technology shifts since the early 1980s, which means his AI commentary is grounded in four decades of pattern recognition rather than recent opinion. He sits inside the NSA CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame, a credential held by fewer than 300 speakers worldwide, which is a meaningful signal of platform craft alongside the intellectual content. Seven books with two New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers give buyers a body of work to pre-read and align their teams around before the engagement. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Burrus Research Associates, operating since 1983. Author of seven books including Flash Foresight (New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller) and The Anticipatory Organization. Inductee, National Speakers Association CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame. Founding member of the Department of Defense Joint Services Futures Group. Contributor to Harvard Business Review, Wired and Huffington Post; LinkedIn Top Voice with more than 1.2 million followers. Creator of the Hard Trend Methodology, adopted inside Deloitte, Lockheed Martin, IBM and the Pentagon’s Joint Service Provider. Biography Strategy teams spend most of their planning time on things that might happen. The harder question is which parts of the future are already fixed. The Hard Trend Methodology, developed by Daniel Burrus over more than thirty years of research at Burrus Research Associates, is built to answer that question in a way executive teams can actually use. The method separates Hard Trends, which are projections grounded in measurable demographic, technological and regulatory change, from Soft Trends, which are projections that look solid but can be influenced. Deloitte, Lockheed Martin, IBM and the Pentagon’s Joint Service Provider have applied the framework to reshape how they forecast and plan. The Anticipatory Organization, his 2017 book, is the public statement of that model and was an Amazon number one new business release. Burrus started tracking exponential technology shifts in the early 1980s, long before AI became a boardroom topic. That long arc gives his current work on artificial intelligence, automation and digital transformation a pattern-recognition quality that newer commentators cannot match. Flash Foresight, his 2011 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, set out the underlying cognitive approach for senior leaders working without a futures team. His platform credentials match the intellectual ones. He is a CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame inductee, a LinkedIn Top Voice with more than 1.2 million followers, and a contributor to Harvard Business Review, Wired and Huffington Post. He is a founding member of the Department of Defense Joint Services Futures Group, which is how a serious foresight practitioner signals that the work has been tested in environments where the cost of strategic surprise is highest. Key speaking topics Hard Trend Methodology and Anticipatory Organization Artificial intelligence strategy for senior leaders Disruptive innovation and exponential technology Digital transformation Strategic foresight and long-horizon planning Future of business and technology-driven growth Competitive advantage through anticipation Ideal for CEOs, COOs and strategy leaders running multi-year planning cycles under accelerating technology change Board directors and executive committees assessing AI and technology bets Transformation and innovation leads inside regulated or capital-intensive industries Government and defence leadership teams building foresight capability Audience outcomes A working distinction between Hard Trends and Soft Trends they can apply to their own strategic bets A shared vocabulary for anticipating disruption before it lands, rather than reacting after it does A concrete read on the exponential technologies most likely to reshape their industry in the next planning cycle A clearer view of where AI investment produces durable competitive advantage and where it produces noise Practical moves for shifting an organisation from reactive to anticipatory posture

Why organisations work with Trabucchi and Buganza The Platform Thinking Matrix gives strategy and transformation teams a structured instrument for identifying precisely where platform mechanisms can be applied to existing business models, built from a decade of research on established companies, not borrowed from startup literature. The Digital Phoenix Effect draws on analysis of 140 platform initiatives across S&P 500 companies, with detailed cases from Siemens, AXA, Eni, and Domino’s – the organisations their research is built around look like most audiences, not like Silicon Valley startups. With 100+ peer-reviewed publications in journals including the Journal of Product Innovation Management and Technovation, their frameworks can be tested against sustained evidence – not just a practitioner’s conviction codified into a model. As Scientific Directors of the Platform Thinking HUB within Politecnico’s Digital Innovation Observatories, they give organisations access to live, connected research, not a fixed set of frameworks. Shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Award in Digital Thinking: the body that the Financial Times has described as producing the Oscars of management thinking. Biography highlights Associate Professor of Platform Thinking (Trabucchi) and Full Professor of Leadership & Innovation (Buganza), School of Management, Politecnico di Milano Co-founders and Scientific Directors of the Platform Thinking HUB within Politecnico’s Digital Innovation Observatories, and of LEADIN’Lab; Buganza chairs the EIASM International Product Development Management Conference Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2024; shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Award, Digital Thinking category Co-authors of Platform Thinking: Read the Past. Write the Future (Business Expert Press, 2023) – shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2024 and translated into Italian and Chinese – and The Digital Phoenix Effect (Platform Thinking Publishing, 2025) 100+ peer-reviewed articles in journals including the Journal of Product Innovation Management, Technovation, and Information Systems Journal Co-founders of Symplatform (2018), the annual international conference on digital platforms connecting researchers and practitioners Biography Most digital transformation advice is written for companies that do not yet exist. Trabucchi and Buganza study the ones that do: established firms with legacy assets, existing customer relationships, and infrastructure they cannot simply abandon. Over more than a decade at Politecnico di Milano’s School of Management, they developed Platform Thinking as a named strategic framework. It is not a description of what Uber or Airbnb do. It is a method for how any established organisation can activate its existing assets to generate the multi-sided value that platform businesses create. The Platform Thinking Matrix formalises this as a practical instrument for strategy and transformation teams. Their 2025 book, The Digital Phoenix Effect, draws on 140 platform initiatives analysed across S&P 500 companies, with cases from Siemens, AXA, Eni, and Domino’s. The argument that incumbent firms cannot compete in the platform economy on their own terms is a common one. Trabucchi and Buganza make the opposite case, and back it with sustained empirical research. Both were included in the Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2024 and shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Award in Digital Thinking. As co-founders of Symplatform and Scientific Directors of the Platform Thinking HUB, they connect rigorous academic research to active practitioner communities. Their frameworks emerge from sustained, peer-reviewed inquiry – over 100 published articles across journals including the Journal of Product Innovation Management and Technovation – not from advisory work alone. Key speaking topics Platform thinking and business model transformation Legacy organisations in the platform economy The Platform Thinking Matrix Data as a platform asset GenAI and internal platform development Platform leadership and innovation management Multi-sided platforms and ecosystem strategy Ideal for Chief Strategy Officers and Chief Digital Officers leading platform transformation in established businesses CEOs and boards of legacy organisations facing disruption from platform competitors Innovation and transformation leads in non-digital-native companies Executive MBA and corporate learning audiences focused on digital business model innovation Audience outcomes A working definition of Platform Thinking and how it differs from conventional digital transformation advice The Platform Thinking Matrix as a practical framework for identifying where platform mechanisms apply to existing business models Real cases from established firms – Siemens, AXA, Eni, Domino’s – showing how legacy assets become platform advantages Clarity on the specific leadership conditions that enable platform-based change within established organisations A starting point for assessing their organisation’s platform potential against a research-backed framework

Why organisations work with Danilo McGarry He has run AI inside two of the largest regulated enterprises on the planet. Buyers get an operator who has defended budgets, cleared risk committees and shipped at scale, not a consultant describing other people’s work. His track record is tied to outcomes in the numbers. His work at Alter Domus is associated with a period of significant valuation growth, and his engagements are framed around measurable cost, revenue and risk impact rather than adoption metrics. He sits at the board-level interface of AI. He teaches on the Financial Times Board Directors Programme and advises the CIPD on AI, which means the language he uses lands with directors, not just technologists. He explains complex AI choices in terms non-technical leaders can act on. That is what earns him repeat invitations from banks, insurers, health systems and consultancies where the decision rests with a chief executive or a chair. Biography highlights Former Head of AI at Citigroup, leading enterprise AI and automation inside one of the world’s largest banks. Former Head of AI at UnitedHealth Group, operator of one of the largest software-robot estates in any healthcare business. Former Global Head of AI and Automation at Alter Domus, the fund services group, from December 2019. Strategic adviser on artificial intelligence to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). Faculty contributor to the Financial Times Board Directors Programme. Host of the “It’s All About AI” podcast; TEDx speaker; ranked on Thinkers360 and Onalytica lists of leading AI voices. Biography The hard part of enterprise AI is not the model. It is the decision to commit, the governance to contain the risk, and the operational grip to turn a working pilot into a line on the P&L. Danilo McGarry has spent his career on the inside of that problem. At Citigroup he led artificial intelligence and machine learning, launching automation and AI initiatives across capital markets operations. He then became a senior AI leader at UnitedHealth Group, where his remit included a programme of roughly 3,500 software “digital workers” embedded in one of the largest healthcare businesses in the United States. As Global Head of AI and Automation at Alter Domus from 2019, he built an AI and automation function inside a fund services firm through a period of significant growth. Earlier roles at JPMorgan and Royal Bank of Canada gave him the grounding in regulated operations that now sits under everything he says on stage. That operator track record is why boards listen. He is a faculty contributor to the Financial Times Board Directors Programme and strategic adviser on AI to the CIPD, which puts him in front of chairs, chief executives and people leaders making the governance calls. He is cited and quoted in outlets including the Financial Times, The Times, Bloomberg, Forbes and WIRED, and ranks on Thinkers360 and Onalytica lists of leading voices in AI and intelligent automation. His argument on stage is practical. Treat AI as an operating-model question, not a tooling question. Pick the handful of processes where the economics are real, industrialise them, and build the governance that lets the next wave scale without fresh permission every time. It is a message that lands with leadership teams who are tired of pilot decks and want to know what to do on Monday. Key speaking topics Enterprise AI strategy AI operating models and governance Intelligent automation at scale AI in financial services and healthcare Board-level AI literacy Digital workers and the future of operations Responsible AI adoption Ideal for Boards and chief executives setting enterprise AI policy and investment envelopes. CIOs, CDOs and heads of transformation running AI and automation portfolios. CHROs and people leaders rethinking workforce design around AI and digital workers. Regulated-sector leadership teams in banking, insurance, asset servicing and healthcare. Audience outcomes A clearer view of where AI actually moves the numbers inside their own operating model. A working vocabulary for the governance, risk and workforce questions AI creates at board level. Concrete reference points from AI deployments inside Citigroup, UnitedHealth Group and Alter Domus. A sharper read on which AI investments industrialise and which stay trapped as pilots. Confidence to set the next twelve months of AI priorities with fewer, better bets.

Why organisations work with Danny Rensch Inside view of a bootstrapped consumer platform that reached a billion-dollar valuation with no venture capital, told by the operator who built its content, events and media strategy from the inside. Direct authorship of Chess.com’s signature commercial properties, including the Speed Chess Championship, the PRO Chess League, Titled Tuesday, and the PogChamps streamer events that opened chess to a non-chess audience. A working framework for using a 1,500-year-old game as a commercial asset: turning a niche pastime into a streaming category, an esports format, and a content engine for 40 million monthly users. Memoir-grade material on resilience and self-leadership grounded in a specific, publicly documented personal history, published by Hachette in 2025 and endorsed by Jeannette Walls and Ben Mezrich. Biography highlights Co-founder and Chief Chess Officer, Chess.com, the platform with over 225 million registered members and roughly 40 million monthly active users. International Master (FIDE) and former Arizona youngest National Master (1999); 1998 Elementary National Champion, 2000 Junior High National Champion, 2004 National High School Co-Champion. Author of Dark Squares: How Chess Saved My Life (Hachette Book Group, 2025), reviewed by Kirkus as “A winning memoir” with endorsements from Jeannette Walls and Ben Mezrich. Created and hosted the 2016 $40,000 GM Blitz Battle Championship featuring Magnus Carlsen, the format that became the Chess.com Speed Chess Championship. Hosted PogChamps, the streamer chess tournament credited with bringing chess to mainstream Twitch and YouTube audiences during 2020. Speaker at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference; profiled by Fortune in 2025 on the Chess.com growth story. Biography Chess.com is one of the few consumer platforms of its scale that never took venture capital. Over fifteen years, the company grew from a small bootstrapped operation into a service with more than 225 million registered members, around 40 million monthly active users, and a valuation above one billion dollars by 2023. Danny Rensch co-founded the company in 2009 and built its content, events and media operations. The competitive layer of the business is his work. He created and hosted the 2016 $40,000 GM Blitz Battle Championship featuring Magnus Carlsen, the format that grew into the Speed Chess Championship. He hosted the first PogChamps in 2020, the streamer tournament that pulled a non-chess audience onto the platform and re-cast a 1,500-year-old game as a streaming category. The PRO Chess League and Titled Tuesday sit in the same portfolio. Before the company, there was a player. Rensch is a FIDE International Master and a former scholastic champion: Elementary National Champion in 1998, Arizona’s youngest National Master in 1999, Junior High National Champion in 2000, and National High School Co-Champion in 2004, the year he earned his first IM norm. His memoir, Dark Squares: How Chess Saved My Life, was published by Hachette in 2025 and describes a childhood inside the Church of Immortal Consciousness, an Arizona cult, and chess as the route out. Kirkus called it “A winning memoir.” The commercial argument and the personal argument reinforce each other. A board considering how a niche product becomes a global consumer category, or a leadership team studying the discipline required to operate without external capital for fifteen years, will find specific operating material in the Chess.com story. A management audience working on resilience and decision-making under pressure has, in the same speaker, a primary source. Key speaking topics Bootstrapped consumer platform growth Building category-defining digital products Content, community and commercial events strategy Lessons from chess for business strategy and decision-making Resilience and self-leadership through adversity Streaming, esports and the modernisation of legacy categories Ideal for CEOs and founders of consumer platforms, marketplaces and subscription businesses CMOs, CCOs and heads of content building community-led growth Boards and leadership teams of bootstrapped or founder-led companies Conferences on entrepreneurship, scale-up leadership, sports business and digital media Audience outcomes A concrete view of how a bootstrapped consumer platform compounds product, content and events decisions over fifteen years. Operating examples of turning a legacy category into a streaming-first business, drawn from the Speed Chess Championship and PogChamps. A working language for applying chess concepts (anticipation, calculated risk, pattern recognition) to commercial strategy without metaphor inflation. A grounded perspective on resilience, decision-making and personal recovery, sourced from a published memoir rather than generic motivational material.

Why organisations work with Dave Coplin His central argument – that the «digital deluge» is not a productivity crisis to be managed but a strategic opportunity to be led – gives boards a reframe that most AI and digital transformation programmes never offer: the question is not adoption, but what kind of organisation you are willing to become. He built that argument from the inside: twelve years at Microsoft UK as the executive responsible for imagining the human future of technology, a vantage point that neither pure academics nor management consultants can replicate. His books Business Reimagined (2013) and The Rise of the Humans (2014, Harriman House) give organisations a specific, portable framework – the choice between efficiency and effectiveness – that leadership teams can apply directly to their own AI strategy decisions. NED board experience at Mitchells & Butlers plc, Vianet Group plc, and the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association means his perspective on digital strategy carries weight at governance level, not just at conference level. His positioning at the intersection of generative AI adoption and organisational performance means he addresses the question executive teams are now actually asking: how do we become more effective through AI, rather than just faster at what we already do? Biography highlights Founder and CEO of The Envisioners, a digital strategy consultancy established in 2017 after a 12-year career at Microsoft UK Former Chief Envisioning Officer at Microsoft UK – a role he created, focused on the future of the human-technology relationship Author of Business Reimagined (2013) and The Rise of the Humans (2014, Harriman House) Independent Non-Executive Director at Mitchells & Butlers plc, Vianet Group plc, and the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association Regular contributor to BBC, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times, Channel 4, and CNN on AI, digital transformation, and the future of work Keynote speaker for clients including Microsoft, Barclays, HP, Vodafone, Ernst & Young, Facebook, and Google, as well as the UK and EU Parliaments Biography Technology investment reliably outpaces the organisational willingness to change. That gap – between what digital tools can do and what organisations are willing to become – is where Dave Coplin has built his career, first as Chief Envisioning Officer at Microsoft UK and now as founder of The Envisioners. His book The Rise of the Humans (Harriman House, 2014) sets out the core argument: the digital deluge of data, tools, and competing demands is not something to survive – it is something to harness. The organisations that succeed are those that stop asking how to automate what they already do and start asking how to reinvent what they do entirely. That argument was relevant when the book was written. With generative AI now reshaping every sector, it has become the defining strategic question for boards and leadership teams. Coplin spent twelve years at Microsoft UK before founding The Envisioners in 2017, advising organisations and governments on what technology-led change actually requires of the people leading it. His clients have included Barclays, Vodafone, Ernst & Young, and the UK and EU Parliaments. He serves as an independent non-executive director at Mitchells & Butlers plc and Vianet Group plc, and has held the same role at the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association. He is a regular contributor to the BBC, The Guardian, The Telegraph, and CNN. His first book, Business Reimagined (2013), made the case for collaborative and flexible working as a technology-enabled opportunity rather than a cultural preference. Both books frame the same consistent argument: the human decision about how to relate to technology matters more than the technology itself. Key speaking topics Generative AI and organisational effectiveness Digital transformation strategy The future of work Human-technology relationship AI adoption and workforce change Reimagining how organisations create value Ideal for CIOs, CTOs, and senior technology leaders shaping AI and digital strategy CEOs and executive teams navigating generative AI adoption decisions CHROs and transformation leads managing the human impact of digital change Board members and non-executive directors overseeing digital governance and technology investment Audience outcomes A clear framework for distinguishing between technology-led efficiency and technology-led effectiveness, and why that distinction matters commercially A reframe of generative AI from operational risk to strategic lever – and the conditions under which that reframe becomes actionable Practical perspective on why human agency and organisational culture are the deciding factors in whether digital investment delivers A sharper view of where AI strategies are likely to stall, and what leadership teams can address before they do Confidence to engage with AI at a strategic rather than technical level – including in board and senior leadership conversations

Why organisations work with David Meerman Scott He wrote the book that reset the category. The New Rules of Marketing and PR sits in its ninth edition, has been translated into 29 languages, and is standard reading inside marketing functions worldwide. When he speaks to a commercial team, they are hearing from the person who named the model they already use. He coined Newsjacking, now in the Oxford English Dictionary, and turned it into a repeatable method for injecting a brand into live news cycles without a campaign budget. He has been inside HubSpot’s growth story since 2007, when the company had fewer than ten employees, and continues as its Marketer in Residence. The playbook he talks about is one he helped build in practice. Fanocracy, his Wall Street Journal bestseller with Reiko Scott, gives commercial leaders a second framework: how to turn customers into fans, and fans into a growth engine that competitors cannot copy. He sits on advisory boards across software, AI, and live-music businesses, which keeps his material in front of current commercial problems rather than recycled case studies. Biography highlights Author of more than a dozen books, including The New Rules of Marketing and PR (9th edition, 29 languages), Fanocracy, Real-Time Marketing and PR, Marketing the Moon, and Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead. Coined “Newsjacking”; the term entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2017. HubSpot advisory board member since 2007 and current Marketer in Residence. Keynotes and masterclasses delivered on all seven continents and in more than 45 countries, for clients including Cisco, HP, SAP, Google, Microsoft, Ford, PwC, NASDAQ, McKesson, the US Air Force, and the US Marine Corps. Advisor and board member to emerging companies including Eloqua (IPO 2012, acquired by Oracle), NewsWatch KK (acquired by Yahoo Japan), and GrabCAD (acquired by Stratasys). Serves on the advisory boards of the Grateful Dead Archive at UC Santa Cruz and the voter-registration nonprofit HeadCount. Biography The shift that matters in marketing is not a tool, it is a timing problem. Buyers move through most of a purchase decision on their own, using search, social, and peer networks, before a seller is ever involved. David Meerman Scott built his career by naming that shift and giving commercial teams a way to work inside it. The New Rules of Marketing and PR, first published in 2006 and now in its ninth edition, turned a set of emerging practices into a coherent model: publish useful content, reach buyers directly, and abandon the campaign calendar as the organising unit of marketing. The book has been translated into 29 languages and is now treated as a standard reference inside marketing functions from Fortune 500 incumbents to early-stage software companies. Real-Time Marketing and PR and Newsjacking extended the argument into live events and breaking news, and gave the commercial world a new vocabulary for opportunistic reach. His credibility is not only editorial. He has been on the HubSpot advisory board since 2007, when the company had fewer than ten employees, and remains its Marketer in Residence. He sat on the board of Eloqua through its IPO and sale to Oracle, and on NewsWatch KK through its sale to Yahoo Japan. With his daughter Reiko Scott he wrote Fanocracy, a 2020 Wall Street Journal bestseller that moved the conversation from reach to fandom, and gave leaders at companies like Hagerty, MeUndies, and HubSpot a framework for building customer communities that behave like a compounding asset. When Scott walks into a sales kickoff or a marketing leadership offsite, the value is compression. He has already tested these ideas across more than 45 countries, all seven continents, and hundreds of commercial teams, and he will tell a CMO in the room which parts of the playbook are load-bearing and which are noise. Key speaking topics Modern marketing strategy and the new rules of marketing and PR Newsjacking and real-time marketing Content-led sales and social selling Fanocracy and customer community as a growth engine Digital buyer behaviour and the shift from campaigns to always-on Marketing leadership inside high-growth technology companies Ideal for CMOs, marketing directors, and heads of brand rebuilding their function for a post-campaign buying journey. Chief Revenue Officers and sales leaders running kickoffs where marketing and sales need one shared operating model. Founders and leadership teams at growth-stage software, services, and consumer businesses looking for a repeatable customer-acquisition method. Corporate communications and PR leaders modernising earned-media strategy around live news and owned content. Audience outcomes A clear read on where their current marketing and sales model is leaking pipeline, and which specific tactics to retire. A working definition of Newsjacking and Real-Time Marketing, with concrete examples of how to execute both inside a regulated or conservative organisation. The Fanocracy framework for converting buyers into repeat advocates, with named examples from Hagerty, MeUndies, HubSpot, and HeadCount. A sharper view of what a modern marketing and sales operating rhythm looks like day to day, not as an annual plan. Practical language to align a CMO, CRO, and CEO on what good looks like in the next twelve months.

Why organisations work with Debarati Guha Sits at the editorial centre of one of the largest non-Asian international broadcasters covering Asia, with operational responsibility across nine language services run from Germany, and bureaus in Taipei, Delhi, Jakarta, and Chennai. Two decades of front-line reporting on South Asian politics, including direct interviews with Sheikh Hasina, Shashi Tharoor, and Amartya Sen, gives her a working network few moderators in the region can match. Recognised as one of Germany’s top ten women leaders by Global Woman Leader in 2023, with a track record of leading multi-country, multi-language editorial teams through digital transition. Comfortable chairing complex media and policy panels for organisations like WAN-IFRA, where the room mixes editors, regulators, and platform leaders. Bilingual cultural register: equally readable to a Berlin or Brussels audience and a Delhi, Dhaka, or Jakarta one, which matters when the conversation crosses both. Biography highlights Director Programs for Asia, Deutsche Welle, leading nine Asian language departments plus Asia Desk (English and German). MA and MPhil in Political Science, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Career interviews include Sheikh Hasina, Shashi Tharoor, and Amartya Sen. Top 10 “Women Leader in Germany” 2023, Global Woman Leader. “Most Influential Business Leader” 2024, Business Frontier. Executive Management Programme, EBU Academy (2022); BAKS course on Southeast Asian politics and Germany (2023). Panel chair at WAN-IFRA Indian Media Leaders eSummit and similar industry forums. Biography Asia is no longer a single story for international organisations. India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Taiwan, and the Mekong economies each move on different political clocks, and the editorial signal reaching Western capitals is increasingly mediated by national platforms with their own agendas. Reading Asia from a London or Frankfurt boardroom is harder than it was ten years ago. That is the operational world Debarati Guha works inside every day. As Director Programs for Asia at Deutsche Welle, she oversees nine Asian language services plus the Asia Desk in English and German, with editorial bureaus in Taipei, Delhi, Jakarta, and Chennai. The job involves judgement calls on what crosses the line between regional reporting and global business interest, made several times a day across very different political environments. Her background is unusual for that seat. She trained in political science at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, started in journalism as the New Delhi assistant to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’s Asia correspondent in 2003, and joined DW in 2007. By 2013 she was running DW’s Bengali service; by 2018, the whole Asia operation. Along the way she has interviewed Sheikh Hasina, Shashi Tharoor, and Amartya Sen, and built relationships across South and Southeast Asian political and intellectual life. For Speakers Associates, this means a moderator and panellist who can hold a room of senior leaders on Asia, media, and the politics of digital information without resorting to high-level summary. She was named one of Germany’s top ten women leaders by Global Woman Leader in 2023, and chairs panels at WAN-IFRA’s Indian Media Leaders eSummit, where the audience is exactly the working editors and platform leaders she manages every day. Key speaking topics Geopolitics of South and Southeast Asia Asia-Europe relations and cross-continental media strategy Digital transformation in newsrooms Women in media leadership Disinformation and political reporting in Asia Cross-cultural editorial leadership Ideal for Boards and executive teams shaping Asia strategy or expansion plans Conferences on international media, journalism, and digital news Leadership programmes on cross-cultural management and women in senior media roles Panels and summits requiring an informed chair on Asia, geopolitics, or the information ecosystem Audience outcomes A clearer read on the political and media dynamics shaping South and Southeast Asia Direct insight into how a major international broadcaster makes editorial calls across nine languages and three Asian bureaus Practical perspective on running multilingual, multicultural teams through digital change A sharper sense of where disinformation, platform power, and politics intersect in Asia A panel or session moderated with senior-room composure, where the questions land and the speakers are pushed

Why organisations work with Dhiraj Mukherjee He has done the thing most innovation speakers describe. Shazam was a category invention before mobile internet was mainstream, and it ended with a reported $400 million sale to Apple. A 250-company investment portfolio across AI, climate tech and frontier software gives him a working map of which emerging technologies are moving from pilot to operating substance and which are stalling. Direct line of sight into capital flows alongside Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management, which is rare for a keynote speaker working on climate and AI together. Operator credibility inside large incumbents as well as start-ups, including Head of Banking Innovation at Virgin Money and senior roles at Bauer Media, Infosys and Reuters. Named to the Financial Times’ Top 50 European technology entrepreneurs, The Digital Banking Club’s Power 50 and Smith & Williamson’s Power 100, which positions him as a credible voice on UK and European innovation policy as well as commercial strategy. Biography highlights Co-founder of Shazam Entertainment, acquired by Apple in 2017 for a reported $400 million Named to the Financial Times’ Top 50 European technology entrepreneurs (2015) Elected to The Digital Banking Club’s Power 50 (2016) and Smith & Williamson’s Power 100 (2017) Angel investor in over 250 technology companies across AI, climate tech and “Tech for Good” Former Head of Banking Innovation, Virgin Money; previous roles at Bauer Media, Infosys, Reuters and Save the Children Mathematical Economics degree, Dartmouth College; MBA, Stanford Graduate School of Business Biography Shazam was launched in 2000, before smartphones, before app stores, before mobile data was reliable enough to stream a song. The team built a service that recognised music by sound from a feature phone over a voice call. Eighteen years later, Apple bought the company for a reported $400 million. Dhiraj Mukherjee co-founded it. That history matters because it is the practical version of what most boards are now trying to do with AI. Identify a capability that the technology curve will eventually make obvious, build it before the market is ready, survive long enough to be right. Shazam went through the dot-com crash and the 2008 financial crisis on the way to Apple, which is why his perspective on category-building is closer to operating experience than to theory. Since exiting Shazam, Mukherjee has invested in more than 250 technology companies, with a declared focus on AI, climate tech and “Tech for Good.” He has co-invested into Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the climate vehicle backed by Bill Gates, and into Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management, which gives him an unusual vantage point on where institutional capital is actually moving across the AI and energy transition curves. His earlier career sits inside large incumbents, including Head of Banking Innovation at Virgin Money and senior roles at Bauer Media, Infosys and Reuters. The Financial Times named him to its Top 50 European technology entrepreneurs in 2015, and he holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a Mathematical Economics degree from Dartmouth. Key speaking topics Emerging technology and AI strategy Innovation and category creation Climate tech and the energy transition investment case Digital transformation inside large incumbents Resilience and the long arc of building a technology company Tech for Good and impact investing The future of work in the age of AI Ideal for CEOs, CSOs and innovation leads setting AI and emerging-technology strategy Boards and investment committees pressure-testing capital allocation across AI and climate Senior leadership teams inside banks, media and consumer businesses navigating digital transformation Founder and scale-up audiences inside corporate venturing and accelerator programmes Audience outcomes A sharper read on which emerging technologies are moving from pilot to operating advantage and which are stalling A working framework, drawn from Shazam, for how categories actually get built through downturns An investor’s view of where AI and climate-tech capital is concentrating, and what that signals for corporate strategy A more honest sense of the time, capital and persistence required to compound a technology bet into commercial outcome

Why organisations work with Didem Ün Ateş She has operationalised responsible AI inside three of the world’s largest organisations (Microsoft, Accenture, and Schneider Electric) as an executive with direct accountability, not as an external advisor. That gives her a precise understanding of where enterprise AI governance breaks down in practice. Her role as Advisor and Generative AI Council Member for Goldman Sachs Value Accelerator, working with over 300 portfolio companies, gives boards and investment teams a live investor-grade view of how AI strategy translates, or fails to translate, into commercial value and risk-adjusted returns. LotusAI’s documented methodology, running 60 co-creation workshops across more than 200 SVPs and VPs to identify and prioritise 200 generative AI use cases inside a single Fortune 500 company, is a concrete, tested model for enterprise AI adoption, not a conceptual framework. As an accredited algorithm auditor and former WEF AI Governance Alliance Fellow, she connects organisations to the governance principles emerging at the regulatory and multilateral level, including the responsible-AI debates shaping how the technology is regulated globally. Her dual degree from the University of Pennsylvania (BS in Engineering from the Moore School and BS in Economics from the Wharton School), combined with an MBA from Columbia Business School, means she can engage credibly at both the technical architecture and commercial investment layers of an AI decision, a combination that is genuinely uncommon. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of LotusAI Ltd, advising private equity firms, hedge funds, financial institutions, and Fortune 500 companies on AI strategy, responsible AI governance, and talent transformation Former Vice President, AI Strategy & Innovation at Schneider Electric, where she defined the company’s AI and generative AI strategy, innovation roadmaps, ecosystem partnerships, and responsible AI programme Former Head of Data & AI / General Manager, Data & AI at Microsoft (EMEA) and former Managing Director of Data & AI, Europe at Accenture’s Microsoft Business Group; earlier roles at Capgemini, EY, BT, and Motorola Advisor and Generative AI Council Member for Goldman Sachs Value Accelerator, working with the firm and over 300 portfolio companies Board member of the Edge AI Foundation, the Wharton AI Alumni Studio, the Columbia Business School Women’s Circle, and the Hg Foundation Technology Advisory Board Certified Algorithm Auditor and Executive Coach; former WEF AI Governance Alliance Fellow; Forbes Technology Council member TechWomen100 Champion and Trailblazer 50 honouree; 2025 recognition includes CEO of the Year Awards UK in the AI Advisory category, Responsible AI Innovation & Growth in Business Award, New Technology Consultancy of the Year, Best New Business of the Year, and British Business Excellence Award Alumna of the University of Pennsylvania (Management & Technology dual degree: BS in Engineering from the Moore School and BS in Economics from the Wharton School) and Columbia Business School (MBA) Biography Most enterprise AI strategies stall in the same place: at the gap between approved roadmap and accountable delivery. Didem Ün Ateş has worked on both sides of that gap inside organisations large enough for every failure to matter. As VP, AI Strategy & Innovation at Schneider Electric, she held direct accountability for the company’s generative AI strategy and innovation roadmap, its ecosystem partnerships, its responsible and sustainable AI programme, and the upskilling of its global workforce. Before that, she served as Head of Data & AI and General Manager, Data & AI at Microsoft EMEA, with revenue accountability of over $2.7 billion across more than 70 subsidiaries, and as Managing Director of Data & AI, Europe within Accenture’s Microsoft Business Group. She founded LotusAI Ltd to apply that operational depth where boards and investment teams need it most. Her advisory relationship with Goldman Sachs Value Accelerator, as Advisor and Generative AI Council Member, puts her in direct conversation with over 300 portfolio companies on AI value creation, governance, and risk. LotusAI’s engagements have included guiding a generative AI opportunity scan across more than 200 senior leaders in a Fortune 500 company, delivering a three-year use-case roadmap tied to the organisation’s strategic plan and regulatory requirements. Her work sits at the intersection of commercial strategy and institutional accountability. As an accredited algorithm auditor and former WEF AI Governance Alliance Fellow, where she has co-chaired sessions on AI and sustainability at WEF summits, she connects the boardroom conversation to the multilateral frameworks shaping how responsible AI is defined and regulated globally. She also sits on the Hg Foundation Technology Advisory Board, alongside senior leaders from ING, Google, McKinsey, and Accenture. She holds a dual degree from the University of Pennsylvania, in Engineering from the Moore School and in Economics from the Wharton School, and an MBA from Columbia Business School. Recent recognition includes the CEO of the Year Awards UK 2025 in the AI Advisory category, the Responsible AI Innovation & Growth in Business Award 2025, and the British Business Excellence Award 2025, alongside the earlier TechWomen100 Champion and Trailblazer 50 honours. Key speaking topics Enterprise AI strategy and governance Generative and agentic AI adoption at scale Responsible and sustainable AI AI for private equity, private credit, and financial services AI-driven workforce capability and talent transformation AI risk management and regulatory compliance Edge AI, physical AI, embedded AI, and tinyML AI leadership training and executive workshops Ideal for Boards and C-suite teams (CEO, CTO, CDO, CAIO) building or pressure-testing enterprise AI strategies Chief Data and AI Officers designing governance frameworks for generative AI adoption Private equity and investment leadership teams assessing AI value creation and risk across portfolios Transformation and innovation leaders in financial services, industrial, and consulting sectors navigating responsible AI operationalisation Audience outcomes Practical criteria for identifying, prioritising, and sequencing AI use cases, tools, platforms, and agents within a complex organisation A clearer model of where enterprise AI governance frameworks typically break down, and what structural conditions make them durable A sharper understanding of how responsible AI principles translate into investment-grade governance, not just compliance documentation A working language for talent transformation in the agentic AI era, including the workforce decisions board members need to be ready to make More confident language for board-level conversations on AI risk, sustainability, and value creation Awareness of inclusive AI design as both a reputational risk and a long-term commercial consideration