Geschäftsmodellinnovation speakers

Why organisations work with Chika Russell CHIKA’S Foods went from home production to listings in Waitrose, Holland & Barrett and Ocado, and then to a $9.8 million Series A – Russell’s perspective covers every stage of that journey, not just the origin story. Her management accounting background gives her a financially specific way of talking about growth decisions that most founder narratives avoid: she built her initial stock and order management systems in Excel before the business could afford software, and that discipline remained the foundation of the company’s commercial architecture. She navigated a reverse diaspora expansion – building a UK consumer brand first, then returning to Nigeria with a manufacturing operation producing 2.6 million units a week – which is a rare, documented case study in cross-border market entry that runs in the opposite direction to most internationalisation models. In 2015 she received offers from all five investors on BBC’s Dragons’ Den and declined them all; six years later she secured institutional PE from a fund backed by the European Investment Bank and the African Development Bank. For organisations thinking about strategic patience and investor fit, that sequence is evidence, not anecdote. Social impact is structurally embedded in her commercial model – a penny from every pack sold goes to World Vision’s Empowering Girls programme, and CHIKA’S Africa employs over 300 people, more than half of them women – making her a credible voice on what purpose-led growth actually costs and yields. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of CHIKA’S Foods, launched 2015; UK national retail distribution including Waitrose, Co-op, Holland & Barrett, Ocado and WH Smith Secured $9.8 million Series A from Alitheia IDF, a gender-lens private equity fund backed by the European Investment Bank and African Development Bank (December 2021) Qualified management accountant; ten years in banking and finance before founding CHIKA’S BBC Dragons’ Den (2015): received offers from all five investors; Deborah Meaden described it as one of the best pitches she had ever seen BBC Question Time panellist; regular contributor to BBC Radio’s Wake Up to Money Business Leader Top 30 Inspiring UK Entrepreneurs (2019); Consumer Business Rising Star, Black British Business Awards (2019) Biography CHIKA’S Foods began in a home kitchen in 2014 with hand-toasted peanuts and plantain crisps inspired by Nigerian street food. Within a decade it had secured institutional private equity backing and a Lagos manufacturing operation producing 2.6 million units a week. The path between those two points is what Chika Russell talks about. Her background shapes that conversation in an unusual way. She is a qualified management accountant who spent a decade in banking before founding CHIKA’S. Her instinct for financial architecture, investor narrative and cost control runs through every growth decision she describes – not as theory, but as method. In 2015, she appeared on BBC’s Dragons’ Den and received offers from all five investors. She turned them all down. Six years later, she secured $9.8 million from Alitheia IDF – a gender-lens private equity fund backed by the European Investment Bank and the African Development Bank. For organisations trying to understand what attracts the right institutional capital, that sequence is direct evidence. CHIKA’S Africa, launched in Lagos in 2022, now employs over 300 people – more than half of them women. The business donates a penny from every pack to World Vision’s Empowering Girls programme. Russell is a BBC Question Time panellist and a regular on BBC Radio’s Wake Up to Money: the standing of an operator who has built across markets, not one who has written about doing so. Key speaking topics Consumer brand building and retail distribution Access to growth capital and institutional investment Cross-border market entry and expansion into Africa Financial discipline in early-stage and scaling businesses Purpose-driven commercial growth Entrepreneurship and founder decision-making Gender-lens investing and impact-linked capital Ideal for Founders and entrepreneurs seeking institutional capital or retail distribution scale FMCG, CPG and consumer brand leaders exploring cross-border or emerging market growth Investment and private equity audiences focused on impact-linked or growth-market strategies Senior executives in corporate entrepreneurship, innovation, or commercial development programmes Audience outcomes A clearer understanding of how financial discipline – not product vision alone – determines whether a consumer brand crosses from traction to institutional scale Insight into what impact-linked institutional investors actually require, and how to construct a credible narrative for them A practical perspective on cross-border market entry drawn from real first-mover experience in both the UK FMCG market and Nigeria Greater clarity on how to embed social purpose into a commercial model without compromising financial performance A more honest account of the investor journey – including the strategic value of declining the wrong capital

Why organisations work with Chris Anderson He wrote the book that gave retail, media and platform strategists a working vocabulary for digital assortment. The Long Tail is still the reference point senior teams reach for when they debate hits versus niches. Three separate books, three separate business-model arguments. Few speakers have published a sustained thesis on assortment, pricing and manufacturing in sequence, each rooted in named cases and data. He ran Wired through its most commercially important decade, winning the National Magazine Award for General Excellence three times. That is an operator’s view of how digital economics hit an established media business, not a consultant’s. He built a drone company out of an open-source community and took it to meaningful commercial scale. Leaders get a first-hand account of how distributed, software-led manufacturing actually works, not a slide about it. His framing has been adopted by boards and strategy teams well beyond technology, from publishing and retail to industrial products, because the underlying economics travel. Biography highlights Editor-in-chief of Wired from 2001 to 2012; the magazine won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2005, 2007 and 2009. Author of The Long Tail (2006), Free (2009) and Makers: The New Industrial Revolution (2012); The Long Tail won the 2007 Gerald Loeb Award for Business Book. Named on Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2007. Co-founder and former CEO of 3D Robotics; founder of the DIY Drones community and founding chairman of the Linux Foundation’s Dronecode Project. Seven years at The Economist covering business and technology from London, Hong Kong and New York; earlier editorial roles at Nature and Science. Physics at George Washington University, graduate study in quantum mechanics and science journalism at UC Berkeley, with research time at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Biography The Long Tail began as a Wired article in 2004 and, by 2006, had become the language strategy teams used to argue about assortment. Anderson’s point was simple and consequential. When shelf space is effectively free, the economics of selling a little of a lot start to rival the economics of selling a lot of a little. Retail, media and platform businesses have been adjusting to that argument ever since. Free and Makers extended the same pattern into pricing and production. Free looked at what happens to revenue models when the marginal cost of a digital copy is close to zero. Makers argued that cheap fabrication, open-source design and online distribution would move parts of manufacturing into the hands of smaller, faster firms. Both books sit on the reading lists of serious commercial strategists for the same reason. They name the mechanism, not just the trend. Anderson is not only a writer about these shifts. He ran Wired for eleven years, the period when the magazine won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence three times, while its print model had to adapt to the internet it was covering. He then co-founded 3D Robotics, built out of the DIY Drones open-source community he started in 2007, and chaired the Linux Foundation’s Dronecode Project. That sequence, from The Economist and Wired to an open-source manufacturing business, is why his view of digital economics is operator-grade. For commercial leaders, the value is a single coherent argument applied to three of the levers they still own: what they sell, how they price it, and where it gets made. Time magazine listed him among its 100 most influential people in 2007; The Long Tail won the Gerald Loeb Award the same year. The recognition matters less than the fact that his frameworks are still the ones boards use to test their strategy in digital markets. Key speaking topics The Long Tail and digital assortment strategy Pricing and revenue models in zero-marginal-cost markets Distributed manufacturing and the Makers economy Open-source communities as commercial engines Drones, autonomous systems and the commercial robotics market Media and content business models in digital markets Technology-led entrepreneurship Ideal for Boards, CEOs and chief strategy officers testing assortment, pricing and production choices against digital economics. Chief commercial, marketing and digital officers in retail, media, publishing and platform businesses. Heads of innovation, product and manufacturing in industrial firms exploring distributed production and open-source hardware. Corporate venture, R&D and transformation leaders assessing drones, autonomous systems and community-driven technology markets. Audience outcomes A sharper read on where long-tail economics do and do not apply in a given business, and what that means for range and merchandising decisions. A working framework for pricing when the marginal cost of the digital component is near zero. A clearer picture of how open-source communities, cheap fabrication and distributed production change the shape of a manufacturing strategy. Named cases from retail, media and hardware that leaders can bring directly into their own board and strategy conversations. A realistic operator’s view of how incumbent businesses adjust when digital distribution reorganises their market.

Why organisations work with Christer Holloman He built the playbook he now teaches. As founder and CEO of Divido, he scaled a white-label Buy Now Pay Later platform to 10 countries and an exit into NatWest, raising roughly $50 million from American Express and Sony along the way. His book “Transactional to Transformational: How Banks Innovate” is built on named case studies from Bank of America, BBVA, Citi, Deutsche Bank, ING, J.P. Morgan, Lloyds and Santander, not generic frameworks. He has been on the bank side as HSBC’s first Entrepreneur in Residence, so he speaks to incumbents from inside their own constraints, not as an outsider throwing stones. He works at the live edge of fintech: digital assets, open banking as a commercial play rather than a compliance exercise, and the shift from agentic AI into agentic commerce. Swedish by background, London and New York by career, multilingual, and at ease in a boardroom with both a retail CEO and a risk committee. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Divido (2014-2022); company acquired into NatWest in 2024. Author of “Transactional to Transformational: How Banks Innovate” (Wiley, 2021). Author of “The Social Media MBA” series and “How to Sell Online” (Wiley). Entrepreneur in Residence, HSBC (2022-2023). Co-founder and CEO of sustainable finance platform Credential. MBA, Said Business School, University of Oxford. Forbes contributor on fintech; former tech writer for Sky News. Biography Buy Now Pay Later looked like a retail feature before it looked like an asset class. Divido, the company Christer Holloman founded out of an Oxford MBA thesis in 2014, was one of the first platforms to treat it as infrastructure: a white-label product that banks and lenders could plug into any merchant, in any country, without rebuilding their own stack. By 2022 the business had raised around $50 million from investors including American Express and Sony, operated in 10 markets, and counted Mastercard, BMW and HSBC among its clients. In 2024 it became part of NatWest. That operator experience is the spine of everything he now teaches. After Divido, HSBC made him their first Entrepreneur in Residence, an unusual role that put a founder inside one of the world’s largest banks to challenge how it builds, buys and partners on new technology. It is also the reporting line behind his Wiley book “Transactional to Transformational: How Banks Innovate”, a collection of case studies drawn from named executives at Bank of America, BBVA, Citi, Deutsche Bank, ING, J.P. Morgan, Lloyds, Santander, Standard Chartered and others. The thesis is unsentimental: incumbents can innovate, but only when the operating model, not the PR team, gets redesigned. He has since moved to New York, co-founded the sustainable finance platform Credential, and continued to write for Forbes on fintech. Earlier in his career he launched Glassdoor in Europe for Rich Barton and ran digital product at The Times and The Sunday Times, which gives him a media-trained way of explaining complex regulated products to non-specialist audiences. What senior audiences get is someone who has raised the money, signed the bank partnerships, lived with the compliance questions and then written the book. He is particularly sharp on where AI, digital assets and embedded finance are about to collide inside balance-sheet businesses, and on the specific question of what serious incumbents should do about it. Key speaking topics Fintech and the future of banking Open banking as commercial strategy Digital assets and tokenisation Agentic AI and agentic commerce Buy Now Pay Later and embedded finance Innovation inside regulated industries Scaling a venture from founder to exit Ideal for Bank and insurance executive committees, innovation boards and retail banking leadership CDOs, CIOs and heads of innovation in financial services and large regulated enterprises Fintech, payments and retail finance conferences Corporate venture and M&A teams assessing fintech partnerships or acquisitions Audience outcomes A clear read on how incumbent banks are actually innovating right now, drawn from named case studies rather than consulting templates. Practical judgement on when to build, when to partner with a startup, and when to acquire. A working view of where open banking, digital assets and agentic commerce are converging into the next retail financial product. Founder-level honesty about what it takes to sell into, partner with and exit to a large bank.

Why organisations work with Costantino Roselli He treats the avatar economy as an operating model, not a marketing channel. His core argument to boards is that avatar-native businesses need their own P&L, audience strategy, and creative pipeline, separate from the corporate website. He runs NTZNS as a working laboratory for the thesis, so the case studies he brings are commercial rather than conceptual. The Gabby digital fashion case, generating around $25,000 monthly within 18 months, is the worked example he uses to show what a single avatar-native operator can produce. He sits inside the institutional conversation through the Metaverse Fashion Council advisory board and the Metaverse Standards Forum, which gives boards a sense of where industry consensus is forming on interoperability, identity, and IP. He is one of the few speakers in this category who connects transmedia storytelling craft to commercial outcomes, which matters for brands that need narrative depth across owned channels, gaming, and creator platforms. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of NTZNS (NeTiZeNS), an immersive innovation studio building avatar-economy ventures. Advisory board member, Metaverse Fashion Council. Member, Metaverse Standards Forum. Speaker, Delphi Economic Forum IX, on the panel “Beyond the Hype: The Metaverse and its Future Hurdles”. Author of Million Dollar Chest: Pick Yourself and Become Unstoppable (2018). Founder of Weird Authentic People, an early digital branding agency using avatars and AI-led storytelling for client communication. Biography The avatar economy is mostly being run by the wrong people inside large companies. Marketing teams that built corporate websites are being asked to design digital fashion drops, transmedia worlds, and creator-led revenue lines, and the results read as expensive experiments rather than businesses. Roselli’s central argument is that this is structural. Avatar-first commerce demands its own operating unit. NTZNS, the studio he founded and leads, is the working test of that thesis. The company builds avatar-native ventures, mentors digital-only creators, and packages the playbook for brands trying to move past pilots. The reference case Roselli cites publicly, a fifteen-year-old creator in Argentina generating around $25,000 a month through an avatar-led fashion line, is used as a deliberate provocation to boards: a single distributed operator can already produce material revenue from this category. His institutional footprint gives the argument standing. He sits on the advisory board of the Metaverse Fashion Council, holds a seat in the Metaverse Standards Forum, and speaks regularly inside the policy circuit, including the Delphi Economic Forum panel on the metaverse and its hurdles in 2024. The point of those affiliations, in his framing, is to track where interoperability, identity, and IP standards are settling, because those are the variables that determine whether avatar businesses are durable. What separates Roselli from most metaverse commentators is that he treats storytelling as a commercial discipline. Transmedia worldbuilding, in his account, is not creative dressing on top of a technology stack. It is how avatar-native ventures earn audience loyalty across gaming, social, and owned channels at the same time, and it is the variable most brands fail to invest in seriously when they enter the category. Key speaking topics Avatar economy as an operating model Transmedia storytelling for consumer brands Generative AI in worldbuilding and creator economies Digital fashion and luxury in immersive environments Future of work, identity, and digital citizenship Metaverse standards, interoperability, and IP Ideal for CMOs, chief brand officers, and digital strategy leads at consumer brands evaluating digital fashion, gaming, and creator-led commerce. Innovation and venture teams inside fashion, luxury, beauty, entertainment, and media groups. Foresight and strategy teams looking for a substantive, commercially grounded view of the metaverse beyond the 2022 hype cycle. Audience outcomes A clear operating distinction between metaverse marketing, where existing functions can deliver, and avatar-native business, where they cannot. A specific revenue lens on digital fashion, creator commerce, and avatar IP, with named examples of what working models look like. A framework for deciding which categories of audience and revenue justify a dedicated avatar-native unit. A practical view of where standards work on interoperability and identity is heading, and what that means for long-term IP decisions.

Why organisations work with Costas Markides His “Fast Second” argument runs directly counter to first-mover advantage orthodoxy: established firms should let small entrepreneurial companies take the risk of discovering new markets, then move in as consolidators once a market has been validated. That counter-intuitive thesis – developed with Paul Geroski and shortlisted for the FT/Goldman Sachs Management Book of the Year – changes how organisations think about where to place innovation investment. His framework for “playing two business models at the same time” addresses a structural problem that most strategy advice sidesteps: how a firm competes in its existing market while also contesting the model that is disrupting it. He identifies specific conditions under which this works, and the organisational reasons why it usually fails. A UK Research Excellence Framework impact case study credits his work as the first to identify the “business model” as a concept distinct from product innovation – a distinction that gives organisations a more precise lens for analysing competitive threats and deciding which type of response a given disruption actually demands. His ideas on business model innovation have been formally adopted by Nestlé, Roche, and If Insurance as the basis for executive transformation programmes – documented in the REF 2014 public record, not claimed from a speaker circuit. He has appeared on the Thinkers50 list of the world’s top management thinkers every year since 2005, and was ranked 31st in 2011 – a sustained peer recognition that reflects a body of work rather than a single book cycle. Biography highlights Robert P. Bauman Chair of Strategic Leadership; Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, London Business School (since 1990) MBA and DBA, Harvard Business School; BA (Distinction) and MA in Economics, Boston University Thinkers50 listing every year since 2005; ranked 31st in 2011; named in Forbes.com “Most Influential Management Gurus” 2009 Author of six books including Fast Second (shortlisted FT/Goldman Sachs Management Book of the Year 2005) and All the Right Moves (shortlisted Igor Ansoff Strategic Management Award 2000) Published in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, and Academy of Management Journal Board of Directors, Strategic Management Society; World Economic Forum participant, Davos Biography The hardest question for an established company facing disruption is not whether to respond – it is which response will not destroy the model that made it successful. Costas Markides has spent three decades at London Business School studying exactly that problem, building a body of research that challenges the accepted wisdom on disruption at almost every point. His most counter-intuitive contribution is the “Fast Second” thesis, developed with Paul Geroski: large established companies are structurally poor at discovering radical new markets and should not try to be first. Their role is to move in once a market has been validated – as consolidators, not pioneers. That argument, shortlisted for the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Management Book of the Year, reframes how organisations think about where innovation investment belongs. His subsequent research sharpened the strategic question further. Game-Changing Strategies (2008) and Business Model Innovation (2023) identify the conditions under which an established firm can disrupt its own disruptor – and the structural reasons most firms fail when they try. A UK Research Excellence Framework impact assessment credits his work as the first to distinguish “business model innovation” from product innovation as a separate strategic concept – a distinction now embedded in how companies like Nestlé and Roche have approached their own transformation programmes. Markides holds the Robert P. Bauman Chair of Strategic Leadership and has held a faculty position at LBS since 1990. His appearance on the Thinkers50 list every year since 2005 reflects continuity of contribution rather than a single publication; his most recent book, Diversification in the World of Data and AI (2025), extends his long-running framework into the context of AI-driven market change. Key speaking topics Business model innovation for established firms Strategic response to disruption Corporate entrepreneurship and innovation culture Strategic innovation and new market creation Growth strategy for incumbents Managing two business models simultaneously Diversification strategy in the age of AI Ideal for Chief Strategy Officers and strategy leadership teams at large established companies facing competitive disruption Boards and senior executive teams evaluating major decisions about business model change or market entry Executive education cohorts focused on corporate strategy, innovation leadership, and competitive positioning Transformation leads and heads of innovation at organisations initiating enterprise-wide strategic renewal Audience outcomes A framework for categorising the type of disruption the organisation faces and the range of available responses Understanding of why the most commonly reached-for responses to disruption tend to fail, based on documented research rather than case-study selection bias A practical structure for assessing when and how to pursue two business models simultaneously without fracturing the existing one Clearer distinction between business model innovation and product innovation as strategic challenges requiring different organisational approaches A more accurate mental model of when large established firms can realistically pioneer new markets – and when they should not try

Why organisations work with Cyril Jamelot He has launched products that reached scale inside the world’s most demanding FMCG marketing machines: Coke Light Lemon at Coca-Cola, Nalu, and Alpro Light at Danone Alpro. The storytelling discipline he teaches is the one he used on shelf, not a theoretical model. Two TEDx talks at TEDxULB, “Offering your soul, a disruptive marketing strategy” and “From silver to gold”, show him able to hold a serious commercial argument in a 15-minute format that translates directly to a keynote stage. His book I love marketing: The soul of tomorrow’s Marketing is yours sets out a thesis that brand love is built through specific narrative practice, not adjectives, and gives senior commercial teams a shared vocabulary for what their content is actually for. He delivers in French and English to international audiences, with more than 200 conferences across 10 countries; useful for European groups running cross-market brand or sales kick-offs. Through CECYDI and Morphoblue he is still operating as a consultant and researcher, so the material in the room is current commercial practice, not retrospective. Biography highlights Former marketing executive at Coca-Cola and Danone Alpro, with product launches including Coke Light Lemon, Nalu and Alpro Light. Founder of CECYDI, a marketing and communications agency, and principal of Morphoblue, a market research agency. Author of I love marketing: The soul of tomorrow’s Marketing is yours, Les secrets du Storytelling Stratégique and Ils étaient là. Two TEDx talks delivered at TEDxULB on marketing strategy and the senior consumer market. More than 200 conferences delivered across 10 countries in French and English. Marketing and communication faculty in business schools. Biography Coke Light Lemon, Nalu and Alpro Light all reached shelf because someone inside the marketing teams at Coca-Cola and Danone Alpro could explain, in a sentence a buyer would repeat, why the product mattered. Cyril Jamelot built that habit as an FMCG marketing executive before he ever called it storytelling. That operating background is what separates his work from agency-side storytelling consultancy. The argument running through his book I love marketing: The soul of tomorrow’s Marketing is yours is direct: brands earn attention by saying something specific about themselves, in language built for the customer, repeated across every channel the business actually controls. Adjectives and brand decks do not do this work. Narrative architecture does. He now runs two firms: CECYDI, a marketing and communications agency, and Morphoblue, a market research practice. He teaches marketing and communication in business schools, has delivered two TEDx talks at TEDxULB, and has spoken at more than 200 conferences across 10 countries in French and English. Les secrets du Storytelling Stratégique sets out the ten-step method behind the keynote material, used by sales, marketing and internal communication teams. The room he is most useful in is the commercial leadership offsite where the question is no longer what the brand says but whether anyone outside the building still recognises it. He gives marketing, sales and customer-experience teams a shared way of building a story the business can stand behind and the market will repeat. Key speaking topics Strategic storytelling for brands Brand positioning and differentiation Customer experience in retail and FMCG Sales narrative and social selling Internal communications and leadership communication Marketing innovation and product launch Ideal for CMOs and senior marketing leaders running brand refresh, repositioning or product launch programmes Sales leadership and customer-experience teams at consumer brands and B2B sellers building a narrative-driven commercial approach Internal communications leaders and HRDs needing senior leaders to communicate change more memorably European commercial offsites and kick-offs requiring a bilingual (French and English) keynote Audience outcomes A working definition of strategic storytelling that maps to commercial outputs: a launch, a campaign, a sales pitch, an internal message. A clearer view of what a brand story is for, and what it is not, with examples from Coca-Cola, Danone Alpro and other FMCG operators. A vocabulary the marketing, sales and internal communication teams can share when they argue about content. Specific moves senior leaders can use to make their own messages more repeatable.

Why organisations work with Daniel Ek Ek’s solution to the music industry’s piracy crisis was structural, not technical: he gave the major labels equity in Spotify, turning potential vetoes into aligned interests. That approach to neutralising incumbent opposition through deal design is directly applicable to any organisation entering a two-sided or multi-sided market. Spotify’s 2018 NYSE listing was conducted as a Direct Public Offering rather than a traditional IPO – a deliberate challenge to standard investment banking practice that gave existing shareholders more direct liquidity and attracted sustained attention from boards and capital markets executives examining alternatives to conventional listing structures. His perspective on scaling is grounded in nearly two decades of building a single global platform from startup to €1.4 billion operating profit – not advisory work, not a theoretical framework, but a continuous operational record in one of the most contested commercial markets of the past twenty years. Via Prima Materia, Neko Health, and Helsing, Ek is an active participant in how AI is being deployed in sectors – preventative health and defense – where error tolerance is low and the design and governance challenges are substantially different from consumer technology. That gives him a perspective on high-stakes AI implementation that most platform founders do not have. He built Spotify from Stockholm into a company that outcompeted Apple, Amazon, and Google in its core market – making him a directly relevant voice for European and non-US organisations arguing that global technology leadership does not require a Silicon Valley address. Biography highlights Co-founded Spotify with Martin Lorentzon in Stockholm in 2006; platform launched October 2008 across eight European markets including the UK, Germany, and France Served as Spotify CEO for nearly two decades; transitioned to Executive Chairman in January 2026 with co-CEOs reporting to him on long-term strategy and capital allocation Oversaw Spotify’s growth to over 600 million monthly active users and its first full year of operating profit (€1.4 billion) in 2024 Led Spotify’s unconventional NYSE listing via Direct Public Offering in April 2018, bypassing traditional IPO underwriting Named most powerful person in the music industry by Billboard in 2017 Co-founded Neko Health (2018), an AI-driven preventative health scanning company with clinics in Stockholm and London; raised $260 million Series B Founder of Prima Materia (2021), pledging €1 billion in European technology; Chairman of Helsing, a defense AI company valued at €12 billion after Prima Materia led a €600 million funding round in 2025 Early career included CTO at Stardoll, senior technology leadership at Tradera (acquired by eBay), and founding of Advertigo (acquired by TradeDoubler); briefly served as CEO of µTorrent Biography The music industry spent the early 2000s in litigation – chasing peer-to-peer platforms through courts as recorded revenues fell. Daniel Ek’s diagnosis was different: piracy persisted because no legal alternative was good enough to justify paying for it. His answer was Spotify, co-founded with Martin Lorentzon in Stockholm in 2006 and launched across European markets in 2008. Building the platform required resolving a structural problem that most technology founders prefer to avoid: persuading the rights-holders whose content made the platform valuable to participate in their own disruption. Ek structured licensing deals that gave the major labels equity in Spotify, turning potential opponents into financially aligned stakeholders. That decision – contested at the time by both sides of the music industry – was central to Spotify’s ability to secure the agreements it needed to grow. By 2024, the platform had reached 600 million monthly active users and recorded its first full year of operating profit at €1.4 billion. Ek’s approach to public markets was equally unconventional. Rather than a traditional IPO, Spotify listed on the NYSE in April 2018 via a Direct Public Offering, giving existing shareholders more direct access to liquidity and bypassing standard underwriting practice. The move drew sustained attention from boards and capital markets practitioners examining what governance and ownership alternatives actually look like in practice. Since transitioning to Executive Chairman of Spotify in January 2026, Ek has directed his investment vehicle Prima Materia toward a €1 billion commitment to European technology companies. His portfolio includes Neko Health, an AI-powered preventative health company operating clinics in Stockholm and London, and Helsing, a defense AI firm valued at €12 billion after Prima Materia led a €600 million funding round in 2025. Across these ventures, his perspective spans platform economics, AI deployment in high-stakes sectors, and the structural argument that building globally competitive technology companies outside Silicon Valley is achievable – and worth investing in deliberately. Key speaking topics Platform business model design and subscription economics Scaling consumer technology companies at global scale Digital disruption and incumbent stakeholder management AI applications in audio, health, and defense technology Unconventional paths to public markets and capital structure European technology ecosystems and tech sovereignty Leadership transitions in founder-led organisations Ideal for CEOs and founders navigating platform entry or subscription model transformation Boards and executive teams examining capital markets strategy and unconventional listing structures Technology and media executives managing rights, licensing, and platform dependency relationships Chief Strategy Officers and investment leads exploring European deep tech and AI deployment in high-stakes sectors Audience outcomes A first-hand account of how to convert incumbent opposition into platform participation through deal structure – applicable to any organisation entering a two-sided market Practical understanding of what subscription model scaling actually requires: licensing logic, pricing architecture, and the sequencing of market entry across international territories Direct insight into Spotify’s Direct Public Offering – what it was designed to achieve, what it required from the board, and what it means for organisations rethinking conventional listing assumptions A cross-sector perspective on AI deployment in sectors where the consequences of failure are material – health diagnostics, defense technology, and audio personalisation at scale Grounded perspective on building technology businesses in Europe: the structural conditions, the competitive realities, and the case for investing in European tech sovereignty as a deliberate strategy rather than a default

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 David Gandy He has lived both sides of a licensing deal, as the face of Dolce & Gabbana’s Light Blue for more than a decade and as the founder designing and pricing his own range at M&S. He built Wellwear from a clear commercial insight, that softness and fabric performance were an unworked seam between loungewear and everyday apparel, and translated it into a sellable category. His BoF 500 listing and first-ever male BFC Model of the Year nominations give him standing with fashion, retail, and luxury audiences that few outsiders can match. He speaks from inside the consumer press, as a long-running British GQ car reviewer, British Vogue blog contributor and former Telegraph Men columnist, which shapes how he thinks about voice and media. Biography highlights Face of Dolce & Gabbana from 2006 and the Light Blue fragrance from 2007, shot by Mario Testino. Only male model to appear more than once on the Forbes highest-paid models list; widely cited as the highest-grossing male model in history. First male nominated for British Fashion Council Model of the Year (2010); nominated again in 2012; appointed to the BFC committee launching London Collections: Men. Designer of the David Gandy for Autograph range at Marks & Spencer across underwear, sleepwear, swim and loungewear from 2014. Founder of David Gandy Wellwear (2021), an apparel label built around fabric performance and everyday wellbeing, now stocked at M&S. Listed in Business of Fashion’s BoF 500; regular contributor to British GQ, British Vogue and the Telegraph. Biography Light Blue launched in 2007 with a Mario Testino shoot, an 11-million-view online reel and a fifty-foot billboard in Times Square. The male figure at the centre of the campaign was a 27-year-old British model who had won a daytime television competition six years earlier. That campaign, and the decade-plus of Dolce & Gabbana work that followed, turned David Gandy into the highest-grossing male model on record and the only male to feature on the Forbes list of highest-paid models more than once. What happened after the campaigns is more useful to a business audience. Gandy used the visibility to build a product business. A long-running collaboration with Marks & Spencer produced the David Gandy for Autograph range, moving across underwear, sleepwear, swim and loungewear. In 2021 he launched David Gandy Wellwear, a label built around a specific commercial thesis, that everyday clothing could compete on fabric performance and wellbeing rather than on logo or silhouette. His institutional footprint tracks the same arc. The British Fashion Council made him its first male Model of the Year nominee in 2010, nominated him again in 2012, and placed him on the committee that launched London Collections: Men. Business of Fashion has named him among the BoF 500. He writes for British GQ as its car reviewer, has blogged for British Vogue since 2011, and has held columns at the Telegraph and Evening Standard. For a corporate audience, the specific value is the inside view: what a licensing deal looks like from the talent side, what it takes to move a recognisable name into an owned label, and why most celebrity brands fail the test that Wellwear was built to pass. Key speaking topics Personal brand building in consumer markets Licensing and brand partnerships in luxury and retail Category creation in apparel Founding a consumer label from an established name Menswear design and the premium high street Media voice, column writing and press strategy Ambassadorship and long-form brand alignment Ideal for Consumer brand, luxury and retail leadership teams working on licensing or founder-led ranges Marketing and creative directors briefing long-form brand campaigns Retail and wholesale conferences in fashion, lifestyle and wellbeing Corporate hospitality audiences where a recognisable cultural name adds pull Audience outcomes A founder’s view of how a celebrity licensing deal is negotiated, structured and sustained A concrete read on why the Wellwear category was built the way it was, including fabric, fit and price positioning A working sense of what a twenty-year commercial relationship with a global fashion house actually requires A sharper question set for any team considering a celebrity partnership or an own-label extension

Why organisations work with David S. Kidder He hands leadership teams a named, tested method for growth, the GrowthOS, rather than inspiration. Accenture bought the company built around it, and Fortune 500 partners including Nike, P&G, Citi, and GE ran it inside their own businesses. His work targets the specific failure mode of large firms: they grow existing businesses well but rarely turn new opportunities into meaningful revenue. He gives leaders a way to do the second thing without abandoning the first. The methodology is published and taught, not proprietary folklore. New to Big set out the Growth Operating System in full, and the approach has been used as teaching material on enterprise growth and innovation. He works from the operator’s chair, not the lectern. He built Bionic to $30 million in revenue and sold four companies, so his frameworks come with the scar tissue of having run them under real commercial pressure. His current systems, PreMortem and Apogee, extend the same logic into decision discipline: surfacing the two or three assumptions that decide whether a funded initiative actually succeeds, before more capital is committed. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of Bionic, the enterprise-growth firm acquired by Accenture in 2021 and folded into what became Accenture Song Creator of the GrowthOS, deployed with CEOs and leadership teams at Nike, Procter & Gamble, Citi, GE, and more than forty other Fortune 500 organisations Co-author of New to Big (Currency, 2019) with Christina Wallace, endorsed by Clay Christensen, Adam Grant, and Marc Andreessen Creator and co-author of The Intellectual Devotional, a New York Times bestselling series; his books have sold more than one million copies across 18 languages Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year (2008) and recipient of ID Magazine’s International Design Award; graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology Angel investor in more than 150 startups, with early positions including SpaceX and Airbnb Biography Large companies are good at making big businesses bigger. They are far worse at turning a new idea into a business that matters, which is the skill entrepreneurs and venture investors live by. David S. Kidder built his career on closing that gap. At Bionic, the company he co-founded and led as CEO, Kidder created the GrowthOS: a system that borrows the tools and mindsets of venture capital and installs them inside established organisations. He deployed it directly with leadership teams at Nike, Procter & Gamble, Citi, GE, and more than forty other Fortune 500 firms, and bootstrapped the company to $30 million in revenue before Accenture acquired it in 2021 and made the method a core part of Accenture Song. The thinking is set out in New to Big, written with Christina Wallace and endorsed by Clay Christensen, Adam Grant, and Marc Andreessen. Its argument is practical: stop guessing from the inside out, obsess over the customer problems that create real opportunity, run growth as a portfolio, and treat productive failure as information. His earlier books, including the New York Times bestselling Intellectual Devotional series, have sold more than a million copies across 18 languages. Kidder now applies the same discipline to the moment before capital is committed. PreMortem is a decision system that forces teams to name the assumptions underneath their highest-stakes initiatives and test the two or three that decide the outcome. Apogee, rooted in behavioural science, works on how leadership teams commit to each other and hold the line on those commitments. Both come from the same conviction that runs through his four exits: growth is not luck, it is a system you can build and run. Key speaking topics Enterprise growth systems and the GrowthOS New business-model discovery inside established companies Innovation as a repeatable, portfolio-based discipline Commercial decision-making and assumption testing under uncertainty Corporate reinvention and the founder’s mindset at scale Leadership-team performance and accountability Ideal for CEOs, CSOs, and chief growth or innovation officers at large enterprises trying to build new revenue without disrupting the core business Boards and executive teams with a fully funded, high-stakes initiative they cannot confidently say is on course PE and VC portfolio companies under pressure to accelerate new revenue and prove repeatable growth CHROs and people leaders responsible for turning leadership development into visible behaviour change Audience outcomes A shared framework for identifying where genuine new growth lives and a clear first move for pursuing it The specific two or three assumptions that will decide whether a major initiative succeeds, and a plan to test them before more capital goes in A working understanding of how to run innovation as a governed portfolio rather than a series of one-off bets A concrete practice for leadership teams to make visible commitments and hold each other accountable to them Language and mental models that separate a real growth engine from activity that only looks like progress

Why organisations work with Dhar Mann He has done what most CMOs are still trying to do: build a content engine that earns ten billion views a year without buying media, and is willing to explain the mechanics behind it. He is one of two entrepreneurs ever ranked #2 on Forbes’ Top Creators list two years running, and he runs it from a 125,000 sq ft Los Angeles studio with a full production staff. Buyers get a working operator, not a personal brand. He was named to the inaugural TIME100 Creators list and dubbed the “Moral Philosopher of YouTube” by The New York Times, which makes him uniquely credible on values-led content as a commercial strategy, not as a CSR talking point. He scaled LiveGlam from $600 of starting capital to eight-figure subscription revenue before founding the studio, which means his commentary on customer acquisition and creator-led growth comes from two successful builds, not one. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Dhar Mann Studios; the world’s #1 digital scripted creator, with more than 140 million followers and over 10 billion annual views across platforms. Named to the inaugural TIME100 Creators list, 2025. Ranked #2 on Forbes’ Top Creators list in 2024 and 2025. Three-time Telly Award winner; Shorty Award for Best YouTube Presence; multiple Kids’ Choice Awards nominations for Favourite Male Creator. Founder of LiveGlam, the cruelty-free cosmetics subscription business he grew from $600 to eight-figure annual revenue. Confirmed 2026 keynote at NATPE Global and the Realscreen Summit, Miami, alongside Dhar Mann Studios CEO and former MTV president Sean Atkins. Biography The creator economy is now worth more than $250 billion, and most large organisations are still trying to work out how to participate in it without losing their brand to it. Dhar Mann Studios is one of the clearest answers in market. From a 125,000 sq ft production base in Los Angeles, the company publishes scripted shorts that have generated over 10 billion views a year and a following of more than 140 million people, built without traditional media spend. The studio model is what distinguishes the proposition. Dhar Mann is the founder and CEO, but the business is run as a vertically integrated production house, with a full writers’ room, actors, post-production and distribution discipline. The New York Times called him the “Moral Philosopher of YouTube” for the values-led structure of the content; Forbes ranked him #2 on its Top Creators list in both 2024 and 2025; TIME named him to the inaugural TIME100 Creators list in 2025. The relevant point for organisations is that values, in his work, are an operating choice that drives retention and reach, not a brand veneer. Before the studio, he founded LiveGlam, a cruelty-free cosmetics subscription business he grew from $600 of starting capital to eight-figure annual revenue, an early proof that he can build a customer-acquisition engine inside a category he did not previously operate in. The same instinct, treating storytelling and community as the primary product, has carried into partnerships with MTV, Amazon, Universal and Instagram, and into a confirmed 2026 keynote at NATPE Global and the Realscreen Summit, where the brief is the convergence of creator economics and traditional media. For senior commercial leaders, the value sits in three places: how to think about content as a customer asset, how to structure a studio rather than a campaign function, and how to use values-led narrative as a loyalty mechanism in categories where awareness no longer converts. Key speaking topics Purpose-driven storytelling and brand loyalty The creator economy and the studio model Building customer acquisition at scale Entrepreneurship and category entry Empathy and values as commercial strategy Culture inside fast-scaling creative businesses Ideal for CMOs and brand leadership teams rebuilding their content function Founders and CEOs scaling consumer or subscription businesses Innovation, marketing and customer experience teams looking to act on creator economics Media, entertainment and platform organisations navigating the convergence with creators Audience outcomes A working view of how a scripted-content studio earns ten billion views a year, and which parts of that model port into a corporate brand function A specific take on values-led content as a commercial choice, with the loyalty and retention evidence to back it up The operating logic behind taking a business from a few hundred dollars to eight-figure revenue inside a new category A clearer read on where the creator economy and traditional media are actually converging, and what that means for marketing spend

Why organisations work with Diana Verde Nieto She has built the operating substance behind two commitments most companies treat as comms exercises. Positive Luxury and the Butterfly Mark turned sustainability claims into an audited certification with periodic re-earn cycles. Edify is now doing the same work for AI-driven capability, turning brand standards and SOPs into something frontline teams actually use. “Reimagining Luxury” (Kogan Page, 2024) is built on direct contributions from chief sustainability officers at LVMH, Kering, and L’Oréal, alongside Harvard’s John P. Kotter and Paul Polman. The frameworks it sets out are drawn from how the major houses actually run sustainability, not how they describe it externally. Shortlisted, Business Book Awards 2025, Change and Sustainability category. Two founded-and-exited businesses (Clownfish, sold to Aegis-Dentsu in 2008; Positive Luxury) mean her thinking on commercial strategy has been tested by real investors and real markets, not consulting decks. Through Edify Collective, she is applying the same thesis to workforce capability, embedding policies and standards into the daily flow of work rather than relying on training events that fade within weeks. World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and Harvard Kennedy School graduate. Non-Executive Director at the British Beauty Council and Watts 1874. Former adviser to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the UN Conscious Fashion and Lifestyle Network, and La Prairie (Beiersdorf). Biography highlights Co-Founder and CEO of Edify Collective, an AI-native frontline performance support platform that embeds policies, SOPs, and brand standards into the daily flow of work, bridging board-level strategy and frontline execution. Co-founder of Positive Luxury (2011), creator of the Butterfly Mark, the luxury sector’s best-known independent ESG certification. Founder of Clownfish (2002), one of the world’s first dedicated sustainability communications consultancies; built to a presence in five markets and sold to Aegis-Dentsu Group in 2008. Author of Reimagining Luxury: Building a Sustainable Future for Your Brand (Kogan Page, 2024); shortlisted, Business Book Awards 2025, Change and Sustainability category. World Economic Forum Young Global Leader; degree in Global Leadership and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School. Non-Executive Director, British Beauty Council and Watts 1874; former adviser to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the UN Conscious Fashion and Lifestyle Network, and La Prairie (Beiersdorf). Biography Most organisations are excellent at deciding what needs to change. They write the policy, sign off on the strategy, brief the leadership team. The work that follows, embedding that decision into how thousands of people actually behave at the frontline, is where most of the value is either captured or lost. Diana Verde Nieto has spent two decades building businesses around this problem. In 2002 she founded Clownfish, one of the first dedicated sustainability communications consultancies, scaled it to five markets, and sold it to Aegis-Dentsu in 2008. In 2011 she co-founded Positive Luxury with Karen Hanton MBE and built the Butterfly Mark, an independent ESG certification now sought by over 100 brands across fashion, beauty, jewellery, and travel, awarded on demonstrated performance across nine criteria and re-earned every two years. Reimagining Luxury (Kogan Page, 2024), shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2025, draws directly on contributions from the chief sustainability officers of LVMH, Kering, and L’Oréal, alongside Harvard’s John P. Kotter and Paul Polman. As Co-Founder and CEO of Edify Collective, she is now applying the same thesis to workforce capability. Edify is an AI-native platform that embeds policies, SOPs, and brand standards directly into the flow of frontline work, replacing fragmented training tools with a single performance support layer. The argument is the same one she has been making for 25 years, but the domain has shifted: the strategy-execution gap is now also the gap between AI ambition and AI deployment, and the same operating disciplines apply. A World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and Harvard Kennedy School graduate, she serves as a Non-Executive Director at the British Beauty Council and Watts 1874. Her previous advisory work includes the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the UN Conscious Fashion and Lifestyle Network, and La Prairie (Beiersdorf). Key speaking topics Closing the Strategy-Action Gap: From Boardroom to Frontline The AI-Native Workforce: Augmentation, Not Replacement Operationalising Purpose: Building Standards That Survive Daily Operations Lessons from Luxury: How LVMH, Kering, and L’Oréal Run Sustainability as Commercial Strategy Trust as a Brand Asset: Why Operational Reality Determines Reputational Value The Entrepreneurial Journey: Building, Scaling, and Exiting Purpose-Driven Businesses Seeing Markets Before They Arrive: Strategic Foresight in Volatile Industries Ideal for CEOs and brand leaders responsible for bridging strategic intent and daily operational reality Chief Operating Officers and Chief Transformation Officers redesigning legacy systems and workflows for an AI-native workforce Boards and Non-Executive Directors whose governance responsibilities turn on whether operational substance backs board-level commitments Founders, investors, and venture partners examining purpose-driven businesses, scale-up discipline, and exit strategy Industry associations, regulators, and policy bodies operating at the intersection of corporate strategy and standards-based oversight Audience outcomes Diana’s focus is the final mile of leadership: the work between strategy being agreed and strategy being delivered through the daily behaviour of frontline teams. Her sessions are built for senior audiences who have already named the strategic problem and need to understand how to operationalise the answer. A working definition of The Action Gap, the space between board-level commitments and frontline reality, and the operating disciplines that close it. A direct view of how LVMH, Kering, and L’Oréal turn sustainability commitments into auditable commercial strategy, drawn from her book’s primary research with their CSOs. A reframing of AI in the workforce from substitution to augmentation: what it means to put expert-level judgement into the hands of frontline workers in real time, and what that requires of the operating model. A founder’s view of scale, exit, and the discipline of building purpose-driven businesses that hold their commercial integrity through investor scrutiny and global expansion. A practical map of where brilliant strategies fail at the point of work, and what board-level leaders can do about it before the failure becomes a reputational event.