Geschäftsmodellinnovation speakers

Why organisations work with Adam Smith The Real Junk Food Project is not a case study from a consultancy report. Smith built it from a single Leeds cafe in 2013 to a network of 120+ projects across seven countries, which makes his argument about the scalability of surplus redistribution operationally evidenced, not theoretical. The Pay As You Feel model challenges the assumption that pricing must track cost-price. For organisations navigating social value procurement, circular economy strategy, or food retail margins, that challenge is commercially relevant. Smith has given parliamentary evidence to an All-Party Parliamentary Group on food waste, which means his framing has direct policy credibility – useful for organisations managing regulatory and reputational exposure on ESG commitments. His current work at Surplus to Purpose, which diverted 506 tonnes of food in 2023, keeps his insight current. He is not drawing on a legacy project. The Telegraph named him one of the 50 most influential people in UK Food & Drink (Food & Drink Power List, 2017). His argument has been stress-tested in public, not just on stage. Biography highlights Founded The Real Junk Food Project in Leeds in December 2013; the network grew to 120+ projects across seven countries within four years TEDx speaker at TEDxWarwick (2015): “Let’s REALLY Feed the World” Named one of 50 most influential people in UK Food & Drink, The Telegraph Food & Drink Power List (2017) FRSA (Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts) Gave parliamentary evidence to an All-Party Parliamentary Group on food waste Yorkshire Awards 2025 Community Hero Award; Canal & River Trust Unsung Hero of Leeds (2022) CEO of Surplus to Purpose since 2022; appeared on Channel 4’s Inside the Superbrands Observer Food Monthly Awards runner-up across TRJFP projects in Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds (2017, 2018) Biography The UK food industry wastes an estimated 9.5 million tonnes of food annually. Most of it is edible. In December 2013, Adam Smith opened a single cafe in Armley, Leeds, that served meals made entirely from intercepted surplus. He called the pricing model Pay As You Feel. Within four years, that cafe had become a network of 120+ projects operating across seven countries. The model did not succeed because it was charitable. It succeeded because it demonstrated a functional alternative to the assumption that surplus has no commercial value – and that communities, schools, and organisations could participate in redistribution at scale without requiring philanthropy as a precondition. Smith stepped back from The Real Junk Food Project in 2019 and, in 2022, took on the leadership of Surplus to Purpose – a social enterprise built on the same structural argument but with a more explicit focus on the environmental costs of food waste in the supply chain. Surplus to Purpose diverted 506 tonnes of food in 2023. He has given parliamentary evidence to an All-Party Parliamentary Group on food waste, and The Telegraph placed him on its Food & Drink Power List in 2017 as one of the 50 most influential people in the sector. The TEDxWarwick talk from 2015 covers the core argument clearly. Food waste is a corporate supply chain decision, not a consumer behaviour problem. The organisations with the most leverage to change it are the ones that benefit most from not changing it. Key speaking topics Surplus food redistribution and supply chain waste Pay As You Feel and alternative pricing models Purpose-led business model design Social enterprise at scale ESG and food system accountability Corporate responsibility in the food supply chain Ideal for Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG leads in food retail, hospitality, and manufacturing Procurement and supply chain leadership in organisations with food or FMCG exposure Strategy and transformation teams working on circular economy frameworks Social value and impact leads in public sector and corporate foundations Audience outcomes A working model for how surplus redistribution operates at scale – not a concept, but a documented case with known failure points and operational evidence A concrete example of how pricing can be decoupled from cost-price to deliver both social value and commercial viability Clarity on where corporate supply chains generate waste and why existing incentive structures keep that waste in place A framework for distinguishing between ESG commitments that reduce reputational risk and changes that alter the underlying supply chain economics

Why organisations work with Adolfo Fernandez Operator perspective from inside the two platforms reshaping global retail. He has led commercialisation strategy for Google Shopping’s mid-market segment and now Global Product Strategy and Operations for TikTok’s eCommerce advertising suite. A working framework for cross-border growth, drawn from running Google’s internationalization advisory practice for the mid-market. It addresses the question most growth-stage companies misjudge: when domestic plateau means it is time to enter a new market, and on what terms. Recognised by the World Economic Forum, which invited him into its Expert Network on Retail, Consumer Goods and Lifestyle, and Digital Communications. That credential signals depth that bureau platforms alone cannot. Comfort across three buyer registers: regulators and policy bodies (UN, WTO), executive education audiences (IE Business School, MIT), and corporate boards. Leaders get a speaker who can move between policy frame and operating frame without losing either. Delivery in English, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, which makes him useful for European and Latin American leadership audiences that other Silicon Valley operators cannot reach without translation. Biography highlights Global Director of Product Strategy and Operations for eCommerce advertising at TikTok, based in San Francisco Former Google leader: Business Development Manager for Spain and Portugal, Global Program Manager for Internationalization advisory, and Google Shopping commercialisation strategy lead for the SMB segment World Economic Forum Expert Network member since 2019 in Retail, Consumer Goods and Lifestyle, and Digital Communications Speaker at more than 200 international conferences, including United Nations and World Trade Organization platforms Guest lecturer at IE Business School and MIT MA in International Management, IE Business School; BA in Business Administration, University of Santiago de Compostela Biography Most companies still treat international expansion as a sequencing problem: which market next, in what order, on what timeline. The harder question is platform-shaped. Discovery, conversion and brand association now run through a small number of global commerce environments, and the rules of entry differ across them. That is the terrain Adolfo Fernandez works in. He is currently Global Director of Product Strategy and Operations for eCommerce advertising at TikTok, where he leads product strategy, product marketing and go-to-market for the platform’s commerce advertising suite. The role sits at the centre of one of the most consequential shifts in consumer attention of the last five years. Before TikTok, he spent close to a decade at Google. He started as Business Development Manager for Spain and Portugal in 2015, then took over Google’s Internationalization advisory services for the mid-market in 2018, before moving to San Francisco to lead Google Shopping commercialisation strategy for the SMB segment. The arc gave him an unusual vantage on how mid-sized firms actually win, and lose, in cross-border digital commerce. His public-facing work has reached the UN and the World Trade Organization, executive audiences at IE Business School and MIT, and the World Economic Forum, which invited him into its Expert Network on retail, consumer goods and digital communications in 2019. He works in English, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, which extends his reach into European and Latin American audiences that most Silicon Valley operators cannot serve directly. Key speaking topics Digital commerce and platform strategy International growth and market entry Retail technology and consumer behaviour Brand building in digital-first markets Innovation and product strategy Future of work in technology-led organisations Ideal for Boards and executive teams of mid-market and large companies planning international growth CMOs, commercial directors and digital leaders rethinking discovery, paid media and conversion economics Retail, consumer goods and lifestyle leadership teams reassessing platform dependency Executive education and leadership development audiences in Europe and Latin America Audience outcomes A clearer read on how Google and TikTok are changing the economics of consumer attention and commerce A practical lens for deciding when and how to enter new international markets A working distinction between innovation and creativity inside large organisations Specific examples of how digital-native brands have built relevance and speed without losing core values

Why organisations work with Aimee Connolly She has grown a cosmetics brand from one product to more than 100, and from a founder-led startup to around EUR 32.6 million in revenue in 2024 without external investment, giving her a concrete view on capital discipline most consumer founders do not have. She has worked every stage of modern beauty distribution in person: independent pharmacies, Boots, Brown Thomas, Dunnes Stores, Selfridges, airport retail, direct-to-consumer and standalone stores in Kildare Village, Belfast and London. Her team has scaled from her alone to more than 100 staff across Ireland and the UK, which makes her credible on the operational and cultural shifts a founder has to make to stop being the bottleneck. She is preparing a US launch for Q4 2026 and speaks openly about how AI is being used inside the business to lift productivity and support that expansion, which is unusually specific for a consumer-brand founder. Her awards are from credible named bodies (EY Entrepreneur of the Year Ireland 2021 in the Emerging category, IMAGE PwC Businesswoman of the Year 2025, UCD Alumni Award in Business 2025), so her authority does not rest on a single category or year. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Sculpted by Aimee; founded the business at age 23 while finishing her degree. Scaled the brand to EUR 32.6 million in 2024 revenue, 47% year-on-year growth, with more than 100 staff and over 500 stockists across Ireland, the UK and the Middle East. Retail footprint includes Boots, Brown Thomas, Dunnes Stores and Selfridges, plus own-brand stores in Kildare Village, Belfast and London. EY Entrepreneur of the Year Ireland 2021, Emerging category. IMAGE PwC Businesswoman of the Year 2025; Young Businesswoman of the Year 2022; Business and Finance Elevation Award 2024. University College Dublin Alumni Award in Business 2025; BComm International (first-class honours), UCD. Founder of Sculpted: The Academy, a professional training business for makeup artists. Biography Sculpted by Aimee did not exist in 2016. By 2024 it was turning over EUR 32.6 million, growing 47% year on year, and sitting on shelves in Boots, Brown Thomas, Dunnes Stores and Selfridges. It got there without outside investors. That single fact changes the conversation about what a bootstrapped consumer brand can realistically do inside a category dominated by multinationals. Aimee Connolly built the business at 23, while finishing a first-class BComm International at University College Dublin. The first product was a three-pan sculpting palette, which is where the name came from. The range is now past 100 SKUs, the team past 100 people, and the retail footprint covers Ireland, the UK and the Middle East, with own-brand stores in Kildare Village, Belfast and London and a US launch planned for the fourth quarter of 2026. Her credibility on growth is not theoretical. She has lived each transition that breaks most consumer founders: from practitioner to operator, from single-market to multi-market, from independent stockists to listings with Boots and Selfridges, from founder-led decisions to a structured team. She has been named EY Entrepreneur of the Year Ireland in the Emerging category, IMAGE PwC Businesswoman of the Year 2025, and received the University College Dublin Alumni Award in Business 2025. What she brings into a room is unusually specific for a consumer founder: the mechanics of self-funded scaling, retail buyer relationships, product discipline under rapid range expansion, and, more recently, how AI is being embedded inside the business to support the US move. She is the operator buyers want when the brief is how to grow without losing the brand, and without giving it away. Key speaking topics Scaling a self-funded consumer brand Founder to CEO transition Retail and omnichannel strategy in beauty Direct-to-consumer and e-commerce growth International market entry AI in operations and brand building Building and retaining a high-growth team Ideal for Founders and CEOs of consumer and beauty brands preparing for a step-change in scale. Retail, buying and category leadership teams looking at how challenger brands are winning shelf space. Women’s leadership and entrepreneurship programmes in large corporates. Marketing and e-commerce leadership teams in founder-led or founder-adjacent businesses. Audience outcomes A concrete sense of what self-funded scaling actually demands, from working capital to retail terms. A clearer view of the decisions that break founders at the EUR 10 million to EUR 50 million transition. Practical perspective on how a challenger brand gets and keeps listings at Boots, Brown Thomas and Selfridges. A grounded read on where AI is genuinely moving the needle in a consumer business today. Renewed confidence in the case for patient, brand-led growth over capital-heavy expansion.

Why organisations work with Alex Connock He runs the AI for Executives module on the Oxford Executive MBA and co-directs Oxford’s postgraduate course in Artificial Intelligence for Business, so the content has been pressure-tested with senior leaders before it reaches a corporate audience. He spent two decades running media businesses at scale, including thirteen years as co-founder and CEO of Ten Alps with Bob Geldof and five as Managing Director of Endemol Shine North, which means his framing of AI is grounded in production economics, not vendor narrative. His Routledge textbook on media business models in the AI age is a teaching reference at multiple business schools and has been translated into Korean and Turkish, giving him a coherent published argument rather than a deck of demos. He moves credibly between a board conversation about AI strategy and a creative team session on generative tools, which is rare in a topic dominated by either technologists or policy commentators. Biography highlights Senior Fellow, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford; co-director of Oxford’s postgraduate course in Artificial Intelligence for Business. Professor of Media and Artificial Intelligence, University of Exeter. Head of Department, Creative Business, National Film and Television School. Author of three Routledge titles, including “Media Management and Artificial Intelligence” (2022), “Media Management and Live Experience” (2024), and “Entrepreneurship in Media and Entertainment” (2025). Co-founder and former CEO of Ten Alps (now Zinc Media) with Bob Geldof; former Managing Director of Endemol Shine North. Education: PPE (Oxford), Journalism (Columbia), MBA (INSEAD), PhD in video optimisation for e-commerce. Biography Generative AI has reordered the cost base of every business that produces content, software, or marketing, and the question for leadership teams is no longer whether to engage but where the operating model actually changes. That question is harder to answer well than the public debate suggests. It needs someone who has run a production company through a previous wave of digital disruption, and who teaches the underlying technology to senior executives now. That is the position Alex Connock occupies. At Saïd Business School in Oxford he co-directs the postgraduate course in Artificial Intelligence for Business and runs the AI for Executives module on the Executive MBA. He holds a Professorship in Media and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Exeter and leads the Creative Business department at the National Film and Television School. Before the academic work he spent two decades as an operator. He co-founded Ten Alps with Bob Geldof in 1998 and ran it as chief executive for thirteen years, producing programming for UK and international broadcasters and the UK government’s Teachers TV. He then ran Endemol Shine North as Managing Director through a period of substantial growth. His three Routledge titles, including the 2022 textbook “Media Management and Artificial Intelligence” with Korean and Turkish translations, give the talks a published spine. The result is a speaker who can take a board conversation from generative AI as topic to specific decisions about content, channel, and capital, with a vocabulary that holds up in front of both the strategy team and the creative team. Key speaking topics Generative AI and the media business AI for executives and the corporate operating model AI applied to marketing and brand The economics of synthetic content and creator platforms AI, national strategy and creative industries policy Entrepreneurship and growth in media and entertainment Ideal for Boards and executive committees commissioning an AI strategy session that goes beyond capability demos. CMOs, CSOs, and content leaders in media, entertainment, publishing, advertising, and marketing. Executive education and senior leadership programmes inside large corporates. Industry conferences in media, technology, and creative industries seeking a credentialed academic voice with operator history. Audience outcomes A clear read on where generative AI changes the unit economics of content, marketing, and customer-facing operations. A structured view of the AI tooling landscape, anchored to specific business decisions rather than vendor categories. Reference points from media businesses already running AI in production, including platforms, broadcasters, and creator economies. A working vocabulary for the boardroom conversation on AI strategy that holds up with both technical and commercial colleagues.

Why organisations work with Alex Osterwalder The Business Model Canvas is used by millions of practitioners across industries. When Osterwalder presents it, he brings the doctoral research that produced it – giving leadership teams not just a tool but the underlying architecture for why it works and how to apply it to their specific strategic situation. The Value Proposition Canvas addresses a precise and expensive commercial failure: the gap between what organisations build and what customers actually need. For B2B marketing and product teams, this is the difference between offerings that generate revenue and those that absorb it. Strategyzer’s live programmes span three distinct commercial challenges – business model strategy, value proposition design, and innovation governance – through a single interconnected system. Leadership, marketing, strategy, and product functions can work with the same shared language rather than operating on separate frameworks. The Invincible Company framework gives executive teams a structural answer to the portfolio question: how to manage existing revenue-generating business models while simultaneously building new growth engines, with separate governance and metrics for each. Consistent top-10 placement across five consecutive Thinkers50 global rankings (2015-2025), with two Thinkers50 Strategy Awards, provides independent verification of Osterwalder’s standing – outside bureau self-attribution. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Strategyzer; co-founded 2010 following the publication of Business Model Generation Co-creator, with Yves Pigneur and Alan Smith, of the Business Model Canvas, Value Proposition Canvas, and Business Portfolio Map Business Model Generation (2010): international bestseller, more than 5 million copies sold, translated into nearly 40 languages Consistently ranked in the Thinkers50 global top 10 across five biennial rankings (2015-2025); two-time Thinkers50 Strategy Award recipient Visiting Professor, IMD; co-directs the Driving Strategic Innovation programme with MIT Sloan Contributor to Harvard Business Review; PhD, HEC Lausanne – doctoral thesis on business model ontology; recipient of the EU’s inaugural Innovation Luminary Award (2013) Biography Alex Osterwalder’s doctoral thesis at HEC Lausanne, completed in 2004, proposed a formal architecture for how value is created, delivered, and captured in any business. That thesis became the Business Model Canvas. Co-developed with Yves Pigneur, it is now in use across millions of teams at organisations including Microsoft, Nestlé, Mastercard, and Merck. The Value Proposition Canvas extended that system into one of the most consistently expensive failures in commercial strategy: building products and propositions without a clear picture of what customers actually need. For B2B marketing and product leaders, this is an operational problem. Strategyzer’s programmes on value proposition design, sales and marketing alignment, and customer understanding apply the same structured, testable approach to go-to-market challenges that the Canvas brought to strategy. The Invincible Company, co-authored with Pigneur, Smith, and Frederic Etiemble, addressed the portfolio dimension. Large organisations fail not from lack of innovation intent but from having no structural mechanism to run exploration and exploitation in parallel. The book provides that mechanism: separate governance, separate metrics, and a distinct decision logic for the existing business and the growth bets being built alongside it. Osterwalder is founder and CEO of Strategyzer, a Visiting Professor at IMD, and a Thinkers50 top-10 thinker across five consecutive rankings from 2015 to 2025. Whether the challenge is growth strategy, value proposition design, or innovation governance, a leadership team, a marketing function, and an innovation unit in the same organisation can each engage with the same interconnected system. Key speaking topics Business model design and competitive strategy Value proposition design and customer fit Go-to-market strategy and offering management Sales, marketing, and product alignment Innovation portfolio management Customer discovery and assumption testing Competing on business model advantage Ideal for CEOs and executive leadership teams working on growth strategy and business model resilience Chief Marketing Officers and commercial leaders in B2B organisations designing and testing value propositions Chief Strategy Officers and heads of corporate development managing business model portfolios Innovation leaders and transformation directors responsible for testing and scaling new growth engines Audience outcomes A working understanding of the Business Model Canvas, Value Proposition Canvas, and Portfolio Map, and how to apply each to live strategic and commercial challenges A shared language across leadership, marketing, strategy, and product functions for discussing business model design and value proposition fit Practical methods for testing assumptions about customer needs and market demand before committing significant resource A structural framework for running exploration and exploitation in parallel, with the governance logic each requires Clearer diagnostic tools for identifying where value propositions are failing to match real customer needs, and what to do about it

Why organisations work with Amy Thomson A founder who has actually built and sold in consumer markets twice, once in brand communications with Nike, Microsoft and Instagram as clients, and once in femtech with a venture-backed app and a Penguin-published book underneath it. Specific operating knowledge of category creation in stigmatised territory: how to position, fundraise, and market around hormonal health without the wellness-industry shortcuts that erode trust. A published Penguin title grounded in research from gynaecologists, endocrinologists and nutritionists, which means consumer health and pharma teams get a speaker with editorial credibility, not just a founder pitch. A first-person account of hormonal burnout as a CEO that resonates with leadership audiences, then connects to a commercial argument about why workforce health is being misread by employers. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Moody Month, awarded “Top Female Health App” by Apple Author, Moody: A 21st Century Hormone Guide, Penguin Founder, SEEN brand agency, clients including Nike, Microsoft, RBS, Instagram and Diageo; sold to Captivate Group Co-founder, Future Girl Corp, with Sharmadean Reid, partnered with Google and Diageo Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London Keynote engagements include Apple HQ and Vogue Biography Most consumer health products built for women have been designed without a serious commercial thesis attached to female physiology. Thomson started Moody Month to close that gap, building a venture-backed app that tracks hormonal and mental health across the menstrual cycle. Apple named it “Top Female Health App” and featured it on the App Store Today Tab. Her route to femtech was operational. She founded SEEN at 23, a brand and content agency working with Nike, Microsoft, RBS, Instagram and Diageo, before selling the company to Captivate Group. A hormonal burnout, driven by years of high-intensity client work, forced her to stop. The decision to study what had happened to her body became the foundation for Moody and for her Penguin book, Moody: A 21st Century Hormone Guide, which draws on gynaecologists, endocrinologists and nutritionists rather than wellness orthodoxy. That dual track, agency exit then femtech category creation, gives her a particular usefulness to consumer health, FMCG and pharma teams trying to build credibly in physiology markets. She has co-founded Future Girl Corp with Sharmadean Reid, partnered Google and Diageo into that programme, and raised institutional capital around a product category most investors still find awkward to underwrite. The commercial argument she makes is concrete: hormonal health is a consumer market that has been mispriced by incumbents and underserved by wellness branding. For leadership audiences, the burnout story carries a sharper edge than the wellness circuit typically allows. It is told by a founder who walked away from a profitable agency, rebuilt around a physiological problem her own body forced her to take seriously, and then commercialised the answer. Key speaking topics Femtech and women’s health as a commercial category Consumer brand building in stigmatised markets Founder-led category creation Hormonal health, data and machine learning Raising venture capital as a female founder Burnout, physiology and executive performance Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and consumer innovation teams in FMCG, pharma and health Investor audiences in femtech, digital health and consumer technology Founder programmes and scale-up leadership networks Boards and leadership teams reviewing workforce health beyond standard wellbeing programming Audience outcomes A working commercial frame for women’s health as a consumer category, not a CSR line A founder’s account of fundraising in stigmatised markets, with the patterns that move investors A first-person view of hormonal burnout at CEO level and what it changed about her operating model A clearer read on why hormonal data is becoming a serious input for consumer product and workforce health

Why organisations work with Anders Indset His Quantum Economy framework gives organisations a named argument for what comes after digitalization – not a call to “transform,” but a specific claim: that existing economic and organisational models require a philosophical upgrade, and that human potential, not technology alone, determines what follows. He coined the concept of the “Final Narcissistic Injury of Humankind” – the argument that AI’s deepest threat is not job displacement but the erosion of human agency and self-perception. This gives boards and executive teams a precise vocabulary for what is genuinely at stake in AI strategy. His “Anticipated Future” concept reframes strategic foresight as a leadership competency: the capacity to project forward from exponential data rather than extrapolate backwards from historical analysis. It is a directly applicable decision-making discipline, not a futurist premise. As an early investor in Terra Quantum AG and founder of the Njordis Group, his perspectives on deep tech are grounded in active investment decisions – meaning his claims about emerging technology have been stress-tested against real capital allocation. He has co-authored peer-reviewed philosophical and scientific papers with physicist Florian Neukart on the simulation hypothesis and the convergence of AI and human intelligence (AHI) – providing a rigour of argument that distinguishes him from commentators working purely at the level of narrative. Biography highlights Four Spiegel bestselling books – Wild Knowledge, The Quantum Economy, Das infizierte Denken, The Viking Code – translated into more than ten languages Named to Thinkers50 Radar 2018 among 30 Global Thinkers most likely to shape the future of organisational leadership; 2019 Breakthrough Idea Award finalist for The Quantum Economy Founder, Global Institute of Leadership and Technology (GILT), 2012; Founder and Chairman, Njordis Group (venture capital and advisory) Early investor and advisory board member, Terra Quantum AG; supervisory board member, German Tech Entrepreneurship Center (GTEC) Keynote speaker at the World Economic Forum, Global HR Summit, and Mobile World Congress; over 1,500 presentations across more than 60 countries Media coverage in Fast Company, Forbes, Fortune, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, NZZ, and Harvard Business Manager Dubbed “Rock’n’Roll Plato” by European media; guest lecturer at leading international business schools Biography Anders Indset’s central argument is simple and uncomfortable: in a world with near-unlimited access to information, knowledge is no longer the scarce resource for leaders – understanding is. His work begins where most AI and technology commentary stops, asking not what technology can do but what it means for human decision-making, economic design, and organisational purpose. His 2019 Spiegel bestseller The Quantum Economy introduced the concept of a post-digital economic framework – a named thesis, not a trend report – arguing that capitalism requires a philosophical upgrade to remain compatible with human values as algorithms become authorities. The book was a finalist for the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award and reached number one on the Manager Magazin business book chart. Subsequent books – including The Viking Code (2024) and The Singularity Paradox (2025, co-authored with physicist Florian Neukart) – have extended the framework into culture, values-driven leadership, and the emergence of what Indset and Neukart term Artificial Human Intelligence (AHI): the argument that a conscious, human-centred response to superintelligence is both possible and necessary. Indset is not a commentator at a distance from the technologies he describes. As an early investor in Terra Quantum AG and founder of the Njordis Group, he has made active capital commitments in quantum computing, AI, healthtech, and cybersecurity. This positions his philosophical arguments inside real decisions about where exponential technology is heading – not above them. He has spoken at the World Economic Forum, the Global HR Summit, and Mobile World Congress, and his work has appeared in Fast Company, Forbes, Fortune, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. For organisations navigating the question of what leadership actually means when AI can outperform human cognition on an expanding range of tasks, Indset offers something specific: a systematic philosophical framework, tested in print, in investment, and across executive audiences in more than 60 countries. Key speaking topics The Quantum Economy and post-digital capitalism Artificial intelligence and human agency Exponential technology and organisational strategy Anticipated Future as a leadership discipline Artificial Human Intelligence (AHI) and the technological singularity Values-driven performance culture Philosophical foundations of strategic decision-making Ideal for C-suite and board-level audiences wrestling with the strategic and existential implications of AI Technology, innovation, and strategy leadership conferences Executive development programmes exploring the relationship between philosophy, leadership, and emerging technology Policy and business forums on the future of economies and social structures in an AI-accelerated world Audience outcomes A named, book-backed conceptual vocabulary – Quantum Economy, Anticipated Future, Possibilism – for framing strategic thinking about technology beyond trend language A sharper distinction between information access and organisational wisdom, and why the gap between them is the real leadership challenge of the AI era Specific philosophical tools for exercising anticipatory leadership: projecting forward from exponential change rather than extrapolating from historical data A reframing of AI risk – moving beyond job displacement to the deeper question of human agency, purpose, and self-determination in technology-driven organisations A perspective on performance culture grounded in values and collective intelligence, drawing on the Viking Code framework

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

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

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

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

Why organisations work with Arnaud Bonzom He co-authored the INSEAD and 500 Startups study of the Forbes Global 500, which mapped how 262 of the world’s largest public companies actually engage startups. Few corporate-innovation speakers can point to an original dataset of that scale. He has advised more than 200 corporations on corporate-startup engagement, including Accenture, Airbus, Allianz, AWS, BMW, Shell, Standard Chartered and Volkswagen, as well as the European Commission and several national governments. He can distinguish, on the record, between a startup competition, a corporate accelerator, a corporate venture capital arm and a direct M&A play, and tell a board which one fits the problem they are actually trying to solve. His vantage point is Southeast Asia, built over a decade on the ground in Singapore at 500 Startups and INSEAD, which matters for Western corporates trying to understand Asian market entry and innovation sourcing. Biography highlights Co-author with INSEAD Professor Serguei Netessine of “How do the World’s Biggest Companies Deal with the Startup Revolution?”, the INSEAD and 500 Startups study covering the Forbes Global 500. Former Venture Partner at 500 Startups, focused on Southeast Asian founders. Entrepreneur-in-Residence at INSEAD; previously Assistant Director of Corporate Partnership Development at INSEAD. Founder and Managing Director of Black Mangroves; co-founder of Map of the Money, a platform mapping active investors across Southeast Asia. Research and commentary cited by Forbes, Bloomberg TV, Les Echos, Bain, SAP, BNP Paribas and Orange, with coverage in 28 countries. Speaker at Slush, Web Summit, DLD, Tech in Asia, Rise and SuperReturn. Biography Most large companies now run some form of startup engagement programme. The INSEAD and 500 Startups study of the Forbes Global 500, co-authored by Arnaud Bonzom with Professor Serguei Netessine, found that 262 of those 500 companies were already working with startups. The harder question, which the study set out to answer, is which models actually produce returns. That question sits at the centre of his work. As Director of Corporate Innovation at 500 Startups and later as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at INSEAD, he spent years watching corporates set up accelerators, write cheques, sign partnerships and run competitions, often in parallel, often without a clear theory of what each one was meant to deliver. His argument to boards is that these are different instruments with different risk profiles, and treating them as interchangeable is how budgets get burned. He has put the argument to more than 200 corporations, including Accenture, Airbus, Allianz, AWS, BMW, Shell, Standard Chartered and Volkswagen, and to the European Commission and the governments of Estonia, Germany, Singapore and Taiwan. His work has been cited by Forbes, Bloomberg TV, Les Echos, Bain, SAP, BNP Paribas and Orange, with coverage across 28 countries. His current base is Singapore, where he founded Black Mangroves and co-founded Map of the Money, a data platform that maps active investors across Southeast Asia. That gives him a direct line into one of the more complex venture ecosystems in the world, which matters for any multinational trying to understand where Asian growth capital is actually moving. Key speaking topics Corporate-startup engagement models Corporate venture capital Startup ecosystems Southeast Asia innovation and venture capital Corporate innovation strategy Entrepreneurship and fundraising Ideal for CEOs, CSOs and heads of strategy reassessing corporate innovation and venture programmes Corporate venture capital leads, accelerator directors and M&A teams Boards and executive committees of multinationals expanding into or sourcing innovation from Southeast Asia Audience outcomes A clear read on which corporate-startup engagement model fits which strategic objective, with trade-offs named A grounded view of how the Forbes Global 500 are actually engaging startups, based on original research rather than anecdote A practical perspective on Southeast Asia’s venture and innovation landscape for corporates entering or scaling in the region Sharper questions to take back to internal innovation teams about what returns they are actually being asked to produce