Geschäftsstrategie & Wachstum speakers

Why organisations work with Eric Ries He authored the operating method most used by modern product teams. When a CFO asks how an innovation portfolio should be measured and governed, the answer most large companies reach for is his. He has tested the method inside GE, IBM, Intuit, and the US federal government, not just early-stage startups, so the case studies he draws on are at enterprise scale. He founded the Long-Term Stock Exchange, a SEC-approved national securities exchange. That gives him a working perspective on how ownership structure and reporting cadence shape executive behaviour, well beyond a consultant’s view. His new book Incorruptible reframes corporate governance as a strategic act, addressing why successful companies drift from the principles that built them. Useful for boards under pressure on mission, accountability, and long-term value. Biography highlights Author of The Lean Startup, The Startup Way, and Incorruptible (Authors Equity, distributed by Simon & Schuster, 2026). Founder and Executive Chairman of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, approved by the SEC in 2019. Architect of GE’s FastWorks program under CEO Jeff Immelt, applied across thousands of GE executives. Former Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Harvard Business School and IDEO Fellow; advisor to Pivotal. Ranked #12 on the Thinkers50 list (2019); The Lean Startup on the Thinkers50 Management Classics Booklist (2023). Biography Most large companies are excellent at running the business they already have and unreliable at building the next one. The systems that govern the core business, budgets, milestones, quarterly review, were not designed for ventures whose value is mostly unknown at the point of funding. Eric Ries spent two decades turning that mismatch into a working method. The Lean Startup, published in 2011, codified validated learning, the minimum viable product, and innovation accounting as a portable management discipline. The book has been translated into more than thirty languages and now sits on the Thinkers50 Management Classics Booklist. Its follow-up, The Startup Way, captured what happens when those ideas are pushed into established companies. The case studies are drawn from inside GE, where Ries worked with CEO Jeff Immelt on the FastWorks program, alongside engagements with IBM, Intuit, and the US federal government. The governance question runs through all of his work. In 2015 he proposed the Long-Term Stock Exchange in The Lean Startup; the SEC approved LTSE as a national securities exchange in 2019, and Ries serves as Executive Chairman. His 2026 book Incorruptible, published by Authors Equity and distributed by Simon & Schuster, argues that good companies fail predictably because ownership, incentives, and accountability quietly reshape behaviour as they scale. The book was selected for the Thinkers50 Best New Management Booklist. What separates Ries from other innovation speakers is range. He has authored the methodology, run the corporate transformations that test it, and built a regulated capital-markets venue to address the structural problem his books diagnose. For senior teams that want innovation handled as a portfolio discipline, not a culture programme, he is the source. Key speaking topics Lean Startup methodology Innovation accounting and the management of internal ventures Entrepreneurial management inside established companies Corporate governance and long-term value AI applied to product validation and customer acquisition The Long-Term Stock Exchange and capital-markets reform Ideal for CEOs and boards of public companies wrestling with quarterly pressure versus long-horizon investment. Chief innovation, strategy, and transformation officers responsible for portfolios of new ventures inside large organisations. Founders and senior leaders of scale-up companies preparing for institutional ownership. Corporate development and venture teams looking to apply validated-learning discipline to internal investment decisions. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for measuring new ventures separately from the core business, drawn directly from innovation accounting. A clear diagnosis of why most corporate innovation programmes fail at the governance layer rather than the creativity layer. A view of how ownership structure, board cadence, and reporting rules quietly shape executive behaviour over time. Specific case material from GE, IBM, Intuit, and US federal agencies that audiences can map onto their own structures.

Why organisations work with Erik Saelens The Triple-A Brand Index (Authenticity, Accountability, Activation) gives leadership teams a structured diagnostic – not a creative brief – for understanding why brand trust is gained or lost, and what to do about it. His research base of 300+ rebranding and renaming operations worldwide is one of the largest of its kind; most brand consultants draw on case studies, Saelens draws on a proprietary empirical database. He operates at board level rather than at agency level – having served as senior brand advisor to the board of Royal Dutch Telecom KPN and as a current board director at multiple companies – which means his framing of brand problems maps directly onto the decisions executives actually face. His work on brand and M&A strategy addresses a gap that most marketing speakers ignore: the specific identity and equity challenges that arise when companies merge, acquire, or prepare for IPO. The Brandhome Method® gives marketing and strategy teams a replicable operating system for brand building, not a set of principles to interpret. Biography highlights Founder and executive strategic director of Brandhome Group, established 1995; active across strategy, design, and brand consultancy Creator of the Triple-A Brand Index – a proprietary brand measurement framework built around Authenticity, Accountability, and Activation Researched and executed more than 300 rebranding and renaming operations worldwide Former senior brand advisor to the board of Royal Dutch Telecom KPN; earlier career at Sodexo’s international brand management team Board director at Unbox (Belgium), CQ (US), and Stackin (US) Author of 15+ books on brand marketing, including The Brandhome Method®, The Story Wars, In Triple-A® We Trust, and Branded Columnist for The Drum; regularly profiled by the London Speaker Bureau and other international platforms Biography Brand equity is consistently listed as one of the most valuable intangible assets on a company’s balance sheet – and consistently treated as one of the least manageable. The gap between what organisations believe their brand is worth and their ability to actively steer it is where most brand strategy fails. Erik Saelens has spent 25 years closing that gap. As founder and executive strategic director of Brandhome Group, he has built one of the more unusual intellectual positions in brand strategy: a proprietary empirical base of more than 300 rebranding and renaming operations that allows him to speak about brand transformation not as a philosophy but as a pattern-recognition exercise. His Triple-A Brand Index – built around Authenticity, Accountability, and Activation – gives organisations a diagnostic framework for auditing brand trust, not just measuring brand awareness. His credibility at the executive level is grounded in practice rather than proximity. Before founding Brandhome, Saelens served as senior brand advisor to the board of Royal Dutch Telecom KPN, and he currently sits on the boards of companies including Unbox, CQ, and Stackin. His work on brand strategy in M&A and IPO contexts gives him a specific fluency in the decisions that matter most when brand equity is genuinely at stake – acquisition integration, identity rationalisation, and the reputational dimensions of market entry. Across 15 books – including The Brandhome Method®, The Story Wars, and In Triple-A® We Trust – and as a regular columnist for The Drum, Saelens has developed a body of work that is practical in architecture and commercially framed in argument. His audiences leave with a structured vocabulary for brand decisions, not a renewed conviction that branding matters. Key speaking topics Brand strategy and commercial brand architecture Rebranding and renaming operations Brand trust measurement and the Triple-A framework Brand management in M&A and IPO contexts Storytelling as a strategic brand instrument Internal branding and identity-driven organisations The future of marketing and consumer attention Ideal for CMOs and marketing leadership teams navigating brand transformation or post-acquisition integration Boards and C-suite executives making decisions on brand equity in M&A, IPO, or market expansion contexts Strategy and transformation leads in organisations undergoing identity change Senior marketers and brand managers seeking a structured, evidence-based approach to brand building Audience outcomes A clearer understanding of brand as a commercial asset with measurable dimensions, not a creative output Practical familiarity with the Triple-A framework as a diagnostic tool for brand trust A structured way to think about what changes – and what must be protected – in a rebranding operation Sharper criteria for brand investment decisions, particularly in M&A, IPO, and market entry scenarios An accessible methodology (the Brandhome Method®) for building or rebuilding brand from a strategic starting point

Why organisations work with Felix Oberholzer-Gee His Value Stick reduces competitive strategy to two quantifiable variables – customer willingness-to-pay and employee willingness-to-sell – giving leadership teams a data-driven basis for ranking strategic priorities rather than accumulating them. His central argument – that consistent outperformers do fewer things, not more things – gives boards and strategy teams a principled case for simplification that does not read as retreat or reduced ambition. The framework is designed to be cascaded across an organisation, not held at the strategy function level; it has been used in HBS executive programmes including the Harvard General Management Program and validated by senior practitioners including the CEOs of Michelin and Google X. His research base spans top-tier peer-reviewed economics journals (American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy) and two decades of HBS executive teaching, so the framework holds under board-level scrutiny and works in a workshop setting. As co-host of After Hours on the TED Audio Collective with Youngme Moon and Mihir Desai, he brings the same analytical rigour to live, public business questions – signalling a communicator as well as a researcher. Biography highlights Andreas Andresen Professor of Business Administration, Strategy Unit, Harvard Business School – member of faculty since 2003 Author: Better, Simpler Strategy: A Value-Based Guide to Exceptional Performance (Harvard Business Review Press, 2021) Creator of the Value Stick framework, taught in HBS MBA and executive programmes including the Harvard General Management Program Faculty Chair: Driving Digital Strategy; Senior Executive Leadership Program for China; Managing Turbulence – Harvard Business School HBS Class of 2006 Faculty Teaching Award (best teacher in core curriculum); 2002 Helen Kardon Moss Anvil Award, Wharton School Research published in American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Financial Economics, and Journal of Law and Economics Co-host of After Hours, TED Audio Collective, alongside HBS professors Youngme Moon and Mihir Desai Former faculty member, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; former Managing Director, Symo Electronics (Switzerland) Biography Felix Oberholzer-Gee has spent more than two decades at Harvard Business School making a counterintuitive argument: the organisations that consistently outperform their rivals are doing fewer things than their competitors, not more. His work is less a critique of strategic planning than a dismantling of the assumption that better strategy means broader strategy. The tool at the centre of his approach is the Value Stick, a framework he developed through research and refined through HBS executive programmes. It measures competitive performance through two variables: customer willingness-to-pay at one end, and employee and supplier willingness-to-sell at the other. The gap between them is the value a firm creates. Any initiative that does not widen that gap, his research shows, is a drain on competitive advantage rather than a contribution to it. That argument is the basis of Better, Simpler Strategy (Harvard Business Review Press, 2021), endorsed in practice by the CEOs of Michelin and Google X. The framework is data-driven and designed to work at every level of an organisation – from board-level portfolio decisions to operational choices about talent and supplier relationships. Oberholzer-Gee holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Zurich and has served in senior leadership roles at HBS, including chair of the MBA programme and Senior Associate Dean for the school’s global research centers. His research has been published in the American Economic Review and the Journal of Political Economy, and covered by the Financial Times, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal. As co-host of After Hours on the TED Audio Collective, he applies the same analytical approach to business and culture questions with a wide public audience – extending the reach of his strategic thinking well beyond the executive classroom. Key speaking topics Value-based competitive strategy The Value Stick framework and willingness-to-pay analysis Strategic focus and initiative prioritisation Digital transformation and value creation Non-market strategy and competitive positioning Business performance in digital and disrupted markets Global competition and the Chinese economy Ideal for Chief Strategy Officers and corporate strategy teams choosing between competing strategic priorities Boards and senior leadership teams evaluating competitive positioning Executive education cohorts focused on general management and commercial strategy Leadership teams in digitally disrupted sectors reassessing the value they create for customers and talent Audience outcomes A single, quantifiable framework for assessing whether a strategic initiative creates or destroys competitive value Clarity on how to reduce strategic complexity without reducing strategic ambition A practical method for mapping competitive advantage through willingness-to-pay and willingness-to-sell Sharper criteria for deciding which initiatives to pursue and which to cut A common language for strategy discussions that can be applied consistently across business units and leadership levels

Why organisations work with Freek Vermeulen He has built a specific, named argument that “best practices” are frequently bad practices in disguise. Leaders leave with a method for stress-testing the practices their company has stopped questioning. His book Breaking Bad Habits, published by Harvard Business Review Press, is built on empirical research across industries from newspapers to IVF clinics to West End theatre. The examples carry, because they are not from the usual case-study roster. He bridges academic rigour and operating language better than most. Published in Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science and Strategic Management Journal, but read in the boardrooms of Bosch, BP, Goldman Sachs, Maersk and Vodafone. He was the first recipient of LBS’s Excellence in Teaching Award and named to the 2016 Thinkers50 Radar. The audience signal: he is among the management thinkers actively shaping how strategy is taught at senior level. Biography highlights Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, London Business School. PhD, Tilburg University. Author of Breaking Bad Habits (Harvard Business Review Press) and Business Exposed (FT Prentice-Hall). Translated into seven languages. Named to the Thinkers50 Radar list, 2016. First recipient of the LBS Excellence in Teaching Award; also recipient of the school’s Best Teacher Award. Regular contributor to Harvard Business Review; one of his 2025 HBR articles was named among HBR’s Most Popular Articles of 2025. Academy of Management Journal Best Paper Award; INFORMS/ISA Best Paper Award; Vienna University of Economics and Business Theory-to-Practice Award. Biography Industries inherit habits. A newspaper prints on broadsheet because newspapers print on broadsheet. A consultancy charges by the day because that is what consultancies do. Most of these habits started with a reason. Most have outlived the reason. Almost none are questioned, because everyone in the industry is still doing them. This is the territory Freek Vermeulen has spent his academic career mapping. His book Breaking Bad Habits, published by Harvard Business Review Press, argues that the most damaging strategic mistakes are not bold moves that fail. They are conventions that nobody is auditing. The same logic appears across his Harvard Business Review writing, where he has been a regular contributor, including a 2025 piece with a London Business School colleague that was named among HBR’s Most Popular Articles of 2025. Vermeulen is Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at London Business School, where he has chaired the Strategy and Entrepreneurship department and served on the school’s Management Board and Board of Governors. He was the first person to receive the school’s Excellence in Teaching Award, and the 2016 Thinkers50 Radar list identified him as one of the management thinkers most likely to shape the next decade of organisational practice. The work is academic in origin, with Best Paper Awards from the Academy of Management Journal and INFORMS, and it has translated into a client list that includes Bosch, BP, GE, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Lufthansa, Maersk, Novartis, Roche, Toshiba and Vodafone. The reason for the breadth is the angle. Vermeulen does not tell senior leaders what to do next. He tells them which of the things they are already doing have stopped earning their place. Key speaking topics Strategic innovation and corporate transformation Why “best practices” become bad practices Strategy execution and making strategy happen Profitable growth and international expansion Acquisitions, alliances and corporate scope Organisational learning and industry evolution Ideal for CEOs, CSOs and corporate strategy teams in mature industries facing flatlining growth Board and ExCo audiences re-examining what their company does because it has always done it M&A, post-acquisition integration and corporate development leaders Strategy and transformation conferences at multinational scale Audience outcomes A specific method for distinguishing practices that create value from practices that have simply been inherited A sharper view of how industry conventions form, persist and quietly damage performance Worked examples drawn from research across multiple industries, not the usual handful of case studies A frame for strategy execution that treats the deletion of bad habits as seriously as the launch of new initiatives

Why organisations work with Frits van Paasschen Two Fortune 500 CEO seats, Coors Brewing and Starwood Hotels and Resorts, give him a perspective most disruption speakers do not have: he has actually run the kind of company being disrupted, with shareholders, a board, and a quarter to report. Author of The Disruptors’ Feast, a book built from travel to more than 100 countries and interviews with operators rather than academics, which gives board conversations a concrete evidence base rather than a theoretical one. Still sits inside the rooms he advises. Current directorships at Amadeus, Williams-Sonoma, dsm-firmenich, and Sonder mean his view of governance under disruption is current, not retrospective. Credible on the international dimension in a way US-centric speakers are not. Dutch-American, ran Nike’s EMEA business out of the Netherlands, speaks five languages, led Starwood during its China expansion. A Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute fellowship and a Harvard MBA Teaching Fellowship in Economics signal the same thing his book does: he treats the CEO job as an intellectual problem, not a performance. Biography highlights President and CEO, Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, 2007 to 2015 President and CEO, Coors Brewing Company, 2005 to 2007 Corporate Vice President and General Manager, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Nike Author, The Disruptors’ Feast: How to Avoid Being Devoured in Today’s Rapidly Changing Global Economy Current directorships at Amadeus IT Group, Williams-Sonoma (Chair, Audit and Finance Committee), dsm-firmenich, and Sonder Holdings Fellow, Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute; MBA, Harvard Business School; BA Economics and Biology, Amherst College Biography Starwood Hotels and Resorts was acquired by Marriott in 2016. In the years immediately before that, the company was navigating Airbnb, the rise of China as its fastest-growing market, a mobile-first guest, and an activist investor. Frits van Paasschen ran it through most of that period, from 2007 to 2015, having arrived from the CEO seat at Coors Brewing and, before that, Nike’s EMEA business. Three different consumer industries, three different disruption stories, one operator. That operating lineage is what makes his view on disruption unusual. The Disruptors’ Feast, his 2017 book, is not a consultant’s map of “the future of” anything. It is reporting, drawn from more than 100 countries he has worked in or travelled to, on how the combination of connectivity, demographic shift, and capital flows actually lands inside companies. The argument is that most incumbents do not lose to a single disruptor; they lose to the compounding of several forces they treated as separate problems. He remains inside the governance conversation rather than outside commentating on it. He chairs the Audit and Finance Committee at Williams-Sonoma, sits on the boards of Amadeus, dsm-firmenich, and Sonder, and recently completed a two-year fellowship at the Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute. That combination matters for a speaking audience of directors and C-suite leaders: when he talks about how a board should read a strategic threat or a management succession under pressure, he is describing the seat he is currently in. The value for a serious leadership audience is not the disruption taxonomy. It is watching a former public-company CEO think out loud about the decisions he got right, the ones he did not, and what a director should actually be asking when the operating model starts to strain. Key speaking topics Leadership under disruption Global strategy and international expansion Board governance in volatile markets Consumer and hospitality business transformation CEO decision-making and accountability Cross-cultural leadership of global organisations Ideal for Boards and non-executive directors working through strategic threats to the core business CEO and C-suite offsites where the agenda is how to lead an incumbent through sustained disruption Global consumer, retail, hospitality, and travel-industry leadership audiences Senior strategy, transformation, and corporate development teams inside multinationals Audience outcomes A sharper read on which disruptive forces compound inside an incumbent and which are noise A working vocabulary for how boards and CEOs should talk about risk, governance, and pace of change together rather than separately Specific, named examples from Starwood, Coors, Nike, and the companies he now sits on the boards of, rather than generic case studies A more honest framework for what a global leadership role actually requires, from someone who has run one on three continents

Why organisations work with Gabriela Salinas She converts brand into a number a CFO will defend. Her methodology training underpins valuations used in M&A, licensing, litigation, and tax disputes at companies including Bank of America, Telefónica, and Repsol. She sits inside the rulebook. Membership of ISO/PC 231, the committee behind the international brand valuation standard, means she can speak with first-hand authority on what counts as a credible valuation and what does not. Her sustainability research pushes back on the prevailing ESG storyline. Perceived sustainability lifts brand value only when customers see it improving the product, a finding that reframes how marketing teams should brief CFOs on ESG spend. Three published books on brand valuation, including the Wiley reference manual cited across the discipline, give her a depth of source material that bureau speakers in marketing rarely match. She teaches the next generation of CFOs and CMOs at IE Business School, which means her frameworks are tested every term against live cases brought by senior executives. Biography highlights Senior Director, Brand Finance, and Global Managing Director of the Brand Finance Institute Adjunct Professor of Strategic Brand Management and Brand Valuation at IE Business School since 2011 Author of The International Brand Valuation Manual (Wiley, 2009) and two earlier brand valuation titles Member of ISO/PC 231, the international committee for the brand valuation standard Published in the Journal of Brand Management, Marketing Science Institute, and Harvard Deusto Business Review Previously Global Senior Brand Manager at Deloitte and Managing Director at Brand Finance Iberia Biography Brand is the largest single intangible on many corporate balance sheets, and one of the least understood by the people who sign off on its budget. Boards approve brand investment with little sense of how it converts to enterprise value. CFOs ask for a number and receive a story. Gabriela Salinas works at the seam between marketing and finance, where that confusion is most expensive. As Senior Director at Brand Finance and Global Managing Director of the Brand Finance Institute, she advises corporations on what their brand is worth, how to measure it, and how to manage it as a financial asset. Her client work has included Bank of America, Telefónica, Repsol, Mapfre, Iberia, LaLiga, and Johnson & Johnson. Her authority rests on three foundations. Twenty years of practitioner work across Brand Finance, Deloitte, and FutureBrand in New York, Madrid, Singapore, and Buenos Aires. Three published books on brand valuation, including the Wiley manual that remains a standard reference in the field. And membership of ISO/PC 231, the international committee that wrote the global standard for brand valuation methodology. Her recent research with Carmen Abril at Complutense University tests a question CFOs have been asking quietly for years. Does sustainability add brand value? The finding: only when customers see it improving the product. That answer travels well in rooms where marketing teams are under pressure to justify ESG spend in financial terms. Key speaking topics Brand valuation and intangible asset measurement Brand as a financial asset on the balance sheet Sustainability and brand value Corporate reputation and brand architecture Strategic brand management Brand portfolio strategy in M&A and licensing Ideal for CFOs and CMOs working to align brand investment with measurable enterprise value Boards reviewing brand performance, M&A intangibles, or ESG capital allocation Marketing and finance leadership teams jointly accountable for brand strategy Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for discussing brand in financial terms with CFOs, auditors, and investors Clarity on which brand metrics actually predict commercial outcomes and which are noise A defensible position on whether and how sustainability investment translates into brand value Familiarity with the ISO methodology that underpins formal brand valuation in M&A, tax, and litigation

Why organisations work with Gary Hamel He gives leadership teams the vocabulary to see their own bureaucracy. Terms he co-introduced, core competence, strategic intent and now humanocracy, are the language many boards already use to argue about strategy and design. He pushes past the innovation-theatre version of transformation. His work with Michele Zanini on Humanocracy is a data-backed argument that most large companies are organised to slow people down, and it offers a specific model for dismantling that. He sits at the intersection of strategy and organisation design that few thinkers occupy. Most strategists stop at the market; most organisation specialists stop at culture. Hamel argues the two are the same problem. He brings credentials senior buyers recognise on sight: more than three decades on the London Business School faculty, the most reprinted author in Harvard Business Review, Thinkers50 Hall of Fame inductee. Biography highlights Visiting Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, London Business School, for more than 30 years Most reprinted author in Harvard Business Review history Thinkers50 Hall of Fame, inducted 2022; ranked inside the global top 30 management thinkers across five successive Thinkers50 lists Co-author with C.K. Prahalad of “Strategic Intent” (1989) and “The Core Competence of the Corporation” (1990), two of the most cited HBR articles ever published Author or co-author of Competing for the Future, Leading the Revolution, The Future of Management, What Matters Now and Humanocracy Founder of Strategos and the Management Lab; Fellow of the Strategic Management Society and the World Economic Forum Biography Strategy schools teach leaders to study their markets. Hamel’s career has been a long argument that the harder problem sits inside the building. Competing for the Future, written with C.K. Prahalad in 1994, reframed competitive advantage around distinctive capability rather than market position, and the HBR articles behind it, “Strategic Intent” and “The Core Competence of the Corporation”, remain fixtures on executive reading lists three decades later. That work made him one of the defining strategy voices of the 1990s. What he did next is the part senior leaders tend to value most now. Across The Future of Management and Humanocracy, written with Michele Zanini, he has turned the same analytical lens on the management model itself, arguing that the structures most companies rely on were built for compliance and control and are actively hostile to the initiative, agility and judgement those same companies say they want. Humanocracy is the sharp edge of that argument. Drawing on data from more than 10,000 employees and a set of named case companies, the book sets out what it takes to replace bureaucratic routines with a model in which people are the point rather than the resource. It became a Wall Street Journal bestseller and anchors his current speaking work with boards and executive committees. The credentials behind that argument are unusually thick. Hamel has been on the London Business School faculty for more than thirty years, is the most reprinted author in HBR’s history, and was inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 2022. Fortune has called him the world’s leading expert on business strategy; the Financial Times calls him a management innovator without peer. Key speaking topics Management innovation and the future of the management model Humanocracy and post-bureaucratic organisation design Strategic intent and core competence in contested markets Organisational agility and resilience at scale Building innovation capability inside large incumbents Leadership for strategic renewal Ideal for CEOs and executive committees wrestling with strategy-to-execution drift CHROs and chief transformation officers redesigning operating models Board conversations on long-horizon competitiveness and management capability Leadership programmes inside large, bureaucratic incumbents Audience outcomes A sharper read on where their own management model is costing them speed and initiative Specific language, core competence, strategic intent, humanocracy, that senior teams can use to argue about strategy the next morning Named case examples of companies that have dismantled bureaucratic routines and what it took A clearer line between strategy work and organisation design, and why treating them as separate projects fails A view of innovation capability as a systems problem, not a culture slogan

Why organisations work with Gary McGann He has run the playbook, not studied it: a cross-border merger with Kappa Packaging in 2005, a 2007 Euronext IPO, and thirteen years as CEO of a global listed packaging multinational. He brings chair-level governance experience from Flutter Entertainment, Aryzta, Allegro.eu, Aon Ireland and Sicon, which is a rare spread across gambling, food, e-commerce, insurance and construction. His view of the Irish and European business environment is informed by direct roles: former President of IBEC, former Chairman of the Confederation of European Paper Industries, and current Chairman of Teneo’s Ireland Advisory Board. He is credible with both boards and operators because he has sat on both sides, including through the Anglo Irish Bank period and the post-2008 rebuild of Irish corporate confidence. Organisations book him when the brief is honest conversation about leadership judgment, not motivational framing. Biography highlights Group CEO of Smurfit Kappa, November 2002 to August 2015, including the 2005 Smurfit-Kappa merger and 2007 IPO on Euronext Dublin and Amsterdam. Former CEO of Aer Lingus Group and former CEO of Gilbeys of Ireland. Former Chairman of Flutter Entertainment plc (formerly Paddy Power Betfair), 2016 to 2023. Former Chairman of Aryzta AG, 2016 to 2020, and former Chairman of the Confederation of European Paper Industries. Former President of IBEC, the Irish Business and Employers Confederation. Senior Advisor and Chairman of Teneo’s Ireland Advisory Board; current Chairman of Aon Ireland Investment Holdings, Sicon Ltd and Allegro.eu SA. Named Business and Finance “Business Person of the Year” 2008; UCD Alumni Business Award 2014. Biography Jefferson Smurfit and Kappa Packaging announced their merger in 2005 and completed it that December. Gary McGann was Group CEO. Two years later, he took the combined Smurfit Kappa public on Euronext Dublin and Amsterdam, raising net proceeds of around 1.3 billion euros. That sequence, executed through the run-up to and aftermath of the financial crisis, is the core of his operating record. Before Smurfit Kappa he ran Aer Lingus Group and, earlier, Gilbeys of Ireland. Three very different businesses: aviation in deregulation, a drinks operation inside a global brand owner, and a packaging giant listed in two markets. The common thread is running companies through periods when the external conditions refuse to hold still. The post-executive chapter is largely about governance. He chaired Flutter Entertainment through its transformation into a global gambling group, chaired Aryzta through a Swiss food business in distress, and now chairs Aon Ireland, Sicon and Allegro.eu alongside the Teneo Ireland Advisory Board. As a former President of IBEC and former Chairman of the Confederation of European Paper Industries, he has also operated at the industry and policy level in Ireland and across Europe. What makes his perspective valuable to a senior audience is the unglamorous part of the record. A merger that actually integrated. An IPO that priced and cleared. A board career shaped by Anglo Irish Bank, Aryzta’s restructuring and Flutter’s scale-up, which is to say shaped by the moments when governance either holds or does not. Key speaking topics Leadership through mergers, IPOs and post-crisis recovery Board governance and the chair-CEO relationship Corporate strategy in listed multinationals Ireland and European business environment Turnaround and restructuring in complex organisations Long-horizon succession and leadership development Ideal for Boards, chairs and non-executive directors navigating restructuring, succession or M and A integration CEO and executive committee offsites where the brief is leadership judgment under pressure, not functional training Senior leadership audiences in packaging, aviation, consumer goods, financial services and gambling Irish and European business and policy audiences, including IBEC-style industry gatherings Audience outcomes A grounded account of what boards and CEOs actually do during a merger, IPO or downturn, from someone who has run each Sharper thinking on the chair-CEO relationship and where it breaks A clearer read on the Irish and European corporate operating environment from inside the room Practical reference points for governance decisions in distressed or transitional businesses Language for talking about leadership that avoids the usual vocabulary of resilience and transformation

Why organisations work with Gary Pisano He gives leaders a framework for diagnosing why innovation investment is not compounding, and a language for fixing it at the level of strategy rather than process. His work on industrial commons, developed with Willy Shih in Producing Prosperity, explains how manufacturing and R and D decisions shape long-term competitive capacity, a lens most strategy advisors do not carry. The thesis of Creative Construction reframes scale as a potential innovation asset, which is directly relevant to incumbents under pressure from smaller, faster rivals. The 1997 Dynamic Capabilities paper he co-authored is foundational reading in corporate strategy; buyers get the person whose ideas their strategy team has already been citing. Board experience at Axcella Health and Celixir, plus advisory work across aerospace, biotech, pharma, medical devices, semiconductors and financial services, grounds the academic argument in operator reality. Biography highlights Harry E. Figgie, Jr. Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School; on faculty since 1988. Former Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Promotion and Tenure at HBS (2018 to 2023). Author of Creative Construction: The DNA of Sustained Innovation (PublicAffairs, 2019) and Science Business (HBS Press, 2006); co-author of Producing Prosperity (HBS Press, 2012). Won the 2009 McKinsey Award for best HBR article for Restoring American Competitiveness with Willy Shih. Co-author of Dynamic Capabilities and Strategic Management (1997), one of the most cited papers in the management literature. PhD from UC Berkeley; BA in Economics from Yale. Biography Innovation spend in large organisations often grows faster than any measurable return on it. The reason is rarely a failure of execution. It is a failure to define what innovation is supposed to do for the business in the first place. This is the problem Gary Pisano has spent three decades unpicking at Harvard Business School. As the Harry E. Figgie, Jr. Professor of Business Administration, Pisano has published over 100 scholarly articles and case studies and written six books. Creative Construction, his 2019 book, argues that large firms are not condemned to be outrun by start-ups. Scale is an asset when strategy, systems, and culture are set up to use it. The argument cuts directly against the disruption orthodoxy that has shaped a generation of boardroom thinking. His earlier work reaches further back into the industrial architecture of competitiveness. Producing Prosperity, co-written with Willy Shih, shows how outsourced manufacturing hollows out the capability to invent. Science Business, his study of biotech, explains why a whole industry built on extraordinary science has struggled to translate it into sustained commercial performance. The 1997 Dynamic Capabilities paper, written with David Teece and Amy Shuen, is one of the most cited in the history of strategic management. That research base is matched by three decades of direct advisory work across aerospace, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, semiconductors, software, and financial services, plus board seats at Axcella Health and Celixir. Leaders come to him when the innovation portfolio looks busy but the competitive position is not improving, and they leave with a sharper account of why. Key speaking topics Innovation strategy Sustained innovation in large organisations Competitive strategy and dynamic capabilities Growth and the limits of scale Manufacturing, industrial commons and national competitiveness Science-based business models R and D and intellectual property strategy Ideal for CEOs, CSOs and heads of strategy in incumbent firms losing ground on innovation Boards overseeing large R and D portfolios that are not compounding into advantage Executive teams in biotech, pharma, medical devices and advanced manufacturing Policy and industry leaders working on national competitiveness and supply chain capability Audience outcomes A sharper diagnosis of why innovation spending is not producing durable advantage A working definition of innovation strategy that ties R and D choices to business strategy An argument for when scale helps innovation and when it quietly kills it A clear view of how manufacturing and process capability feed, or starve, future product innovation Language senior teams can use to challenge an innovation portfolio without defaulting to start-up envy

Why organisations work with George Nagle He built his innovation method inside oil and gas water chemistry, one of the most conservative industrial sectors there is, and used it to launch 19 products in 14 months across a portfolio worth more than $352 million. His Breakthrough Thinking series gives leadership teams a named, codified methodology to use after the keynote, not a set of slogans to remember. He is a certified FORTH method instructor with black and green belt credentials in Innovation and Growth Systems, Green Belt for Growth, and Value Innovations. The toolset is academically accredited, not invented for the stage. He has applied the same approach across more than 24 industries, which makes him a credible voice for boards and executive teams that want innovation discipline transferred into their context, not borrowed from a single sector. Biography highlights Former global executive and strategy lead at a multi-billion-dollar industrial services company, with portfolio responsibility above $352 million. Launched 19 products in 14 months in the oil and gas water chemistry sector. Founder of The Ideation Emporium of Creativity, LLC, and author of the Breakthrough Thinking series. MS in Biology and MBA in Marketing and Management from Duquesne University; BS in Biology with honours from the University of Pittsburgh. Certified online instructor in the FORTH method; black belt and multiple green belt certifications in academically accredited innovation systems. Published interviews with Authority Magazine on communication, attention, and creative habits. Biography Innovation in heavy industry is hard for a reason. The cultures are engineered for safety, repeatability, and risk avoidance, which are exactly the traits that make new ideas die quietly in a meeting. George Nagle spent his executive career inside that environment, in oil and gas water chemistry, and built a method to move past it. As a global executive, he carried a portfolio of more than $352 million and led the launch of 19 products in 14 months in a sector where most launches take years. That operating record sits behind everything else he does. He went on to found The Ideation Emporium of Creativity, codifying the approach into the Breakthrough Thinking series, including “The Five Letter F Word”, “Miserable At Work? Why? You Don’t Have To Be”, and “How Are Kids Innovating Faster Than You?”. His credentials are unusual for an innovation speaker. He holds an MS in Biology and an MBA from Duquesne University, a BS in Biology with honours from the University of Pittsburgh, and academically accredited certifications in Innovation and Growth Systems, Green Belt for Growth, and Value Innovations. He is also a certified FORTH method instructor. The toolkit is borrowed, tested, and labelled, not improvised. What distinguishes him is the breadth of application: more than 24 industries have used the same set of ideation tools, from industrial chemistry to consumer-facing services. For leadership teams that want innovation treated as a managed discipline rather than a creative-culture initiative, that record makes him a practical voice. Key speaking topics Innovation as a managed discipline Creative ideation and the FORTH method Commercial product launch under operating constraint Strategy communication across organisational levels Breakthrough Thinking methodology Workplace engagement and creative culture Ideal for Chief innovation officers, R&D leaders, and product portfolio executives looking to convert pilots into shipped revenue CEOs and executive teams in mature, process-heavy industries trying to install repeatable ideation Strategy and transformation leads responsible for cross-functional innovation programmes Senior HR and culture leaders pairing innovation capability with employee engagement work Audience outcomes A named, repeatable ideation method audiences can put into a project the next week A clearer view of why innovation efforts stall in conservative organisations and which mechanisms unblock them Specific tools for separating real strategic priorities from organisational noise Practical examples of how a structured innovation cadence produced 19 product launches in 14 months Language for connecting creativity, engagement, and commercial outcomes in a single business case

Why organisations work with Gerald Ratner His name is embedded in the business lexicon. “Doing a Ratner” is not a metaphor; it is a documented event with a verified cost of £500m, which organisations reference every time a leader’s words threaten to become the story. He provides the only first-person account of what happens inside a catastrophic, self-inflicted reputational collapse; not from a crisis consultancy, but from the person who caused it, survived it, and rebuilt from it. His growth story stands independently of the fall. Taking Ratners Group from 130 stores and £13m in sales to 2,500 stores and over £1.2bn in turnover is a concrete case study in scaling a mass-market brand in a staid, elitist industry. He demonstrates that commercial credibility can be rebuilt without institutional support. The health club sold for £3.9m and GeraldOnline’s subsequent emergence as the UK’s largest online jewellery business were both built after banks had refused to back him. His 2007 autobiography “The Rise and Fall…and Rise Again,” reviewed in the Financial Times and serialised in the Sunday Times, gives audiences a structured, honest account rather than the selective narrative most comeback stories rely on. Biography highlights CEO and Chairman of Ratners Group, built into the world’s largest jewellery retailer, with 2,500 stores and annual sales exceeding £1.2bn by 1990 April 1991 speech at the Institute of Directors conference, Royal Albert Hall: a single remark wiped approximately £500m from the company’s market value The phrase “doing a Ratner” entered the English business vocabulary as a term for self-inflicted reputational damage; referenced in media, business schools, and boardroom conversations worldwide Author of “The Rise and Fall…and Rise Again” (Capstone/Wiley, 2007), serialised in the Sunday Times and reviewed in the Financial Times and Management Today Founded GeraldOnline in 2003, which became the UK’s largest online jewellery business Ranked first in The Sun’s published list of the 50 biggest business mistakes of all time Biography Most leaders know that reputation is fragile. Few have experienced, in precisely documented financial terms, exactly how fast it can go. In April 1991, a single off-the-cuff remark at the Institute of Directors annual conference at the Royal Albert Hall wiped £500m from Ratners Group within days. Gerald Ratner had built that company. He joined the family jewellery business in 1966 and, within two decades, grew it to 2,500 stores and over £1.2bn in annual sales, including H. Samuel, Ernest Jones, Watches of Switzerland, and more than a thousand stores in the United States. It was the world’s largest jewellery retailer. He was dismissed as CEO in November 1992. The company renamed itself Signet Group and expunged his name. What followed is the more instructive half of the account. After bankruptcy and a period of professional isolation, Ratner financed a health club in Henley-on-Thames against his home, sold it for £3.9m, and used the proceeds to launch GeraldOnline, a name forced on him because his former company blocked him from trading under his own. It became the UK’s largest online jewellery business. His 2007 autobiography, “The Rise and Fall…and Rise Again,” published by Capstone/Wiley and serialised in the Sunday Times, set out the full arc without omission. The phrase “doing a Ratner” now circulates in business schools and boardrooms internationally. It captures what happens when a leader’s offhand candour meets public trust at scale. Ratner is the only person who can speak to it from inside all three moments: the building, the collapse, and the recovery. Key speaking topics Reputational risk and crisis leadership Resilience and recovery after catastrophic failure Brand trust and the consequences of leadership communication Retail growth and mass-market brand building Entrepreneurship after failure Organisational crisis and business survival Ideal for Executive and senior leadership conferences where reputational risk, crisis management, or communication under pressure are on the agenda CHRO and L&D audiences focused on building genuine resilience culture, rather than frameworks without lived experience behind them Business award dinners, gala events, and after-dinner occasions where a high-recognition, self-deprecating narrative sets the tone Entrepreneurship and business growth forums where the full cycle of building, losing, and rebuilding a commercial enterprise is directly relevant Audience outcomes A concrete, real-world illustration of how quickly a leader’s words can overtake the reputation of an organisation they have spent years building An honest account of what recovery from professional catastrophe looks like in practice – including the financial, psychological, and strategic dimensions A sharper instinct for the gap between what leaders say internally and how public statements land with customers and markets Practical perspective on rebuilding commercial credibility without institutional backing, drawn from two separate comebacks in the same industry A reference story they will use – the “Ratner effect” framework is already in common use; hearing it directly sharpens how teams apply it

Why organisations work with Giuseppe Stigliano Co-author with Philip Kotler of three books on the future of retail and marketing, including Redefining Retail: 10 Guiding Principles for a Post-Digital World, giving boards a tested framework rather than a point of view. Sits on both sides of the table: Global CEO of Spring Studios, former CEO of Wunderman Thompson Italy, and Adjunct Professor at UCL, so the same person who teaches the framework has run the P&L it applies to. Named to the Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2024, the bench of emerging thinkers the Thinkers50 community expects to shape management practice. Works directly with CMOs and retail leadership on the operating consequences of AI, omnichannel and changing consumer behaviour, not the headline trends. Delivers keynotes in English, Italian, Spanish and French, with a substantial and growing share now in Spanish for audiences across Spain and Latin America. Platform experience spans more than thirty countries and both B2B and B2C audiences. Biography highlights Co-author with Philip Kotler of Retail 4.0, Onlife Fashion and Redefining Retail (Wiley, 2024); books translated into eight languages. Global CEO of Spring Studios; former CEO of Wunderman Thompson Italy; previously led a WPP EMEA team across FCA, J. Walter Thompson and Spring Studios. Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2024. Adjunct Professor of Retail and Consumer Entrepreneurship at UCL School of Management, with prior teaching at Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and POLIMI Graduate School of Management. Ph.D. in Marketing and Economics; Forbes columnist and LinkedIn Top Voice. TEDx talk How To Become a Marketing Superhero with over one million views. Biography Retail used to be a question of channel. It is now a question of operating model. Consumer businesses run physical stores, e-commerce, marketplace, social commerce and emerging virtual touchpoints in parallel, often with separate leadership, separate metrics and separate technology stacks. The customer sees one brand. The organisation behaves like several. Redefining Retail, co-authored with Philip Kotler and published by Wiley in 2024, sets out ten principles for running the commercial model of a consumer business when the digital age is no longer the destination but the baseline. The argument behind the book is operational: sustainability, inclusion, working policy and AI are no longer brand topics, they are inputs into the value chain. The book sits alongside two earlier Kotler co-authorships, Retail 4.0 and Onlife Fashion, and together the three are translated into eight languages. The credibility on the operating side comes from three CEO tenures at international marketing agencies. As Global CEO of Spring Studios, Stigliano leads a creative platform with offices in London, New York, Los Angeles and Milan, serving fashion, beauty, luxury, hospitality and lifestyle clients. Before that he was CEO of Wunderman Thompson Italy and led a WPP EMEA team across FCA, J. Walter Thompson and Spring Studios. The academic side is held at UCL School of Management, where he is Adjunct Professor of Retail and Consumer Entrepreneurship. Thinkers50 named him to its Radar Class of 2024. He writes a Forbes column, holds a LinkedIn Top Voice designation, and his TEDx talk on marketing has passed a million views. In a boardroom on retail or consumer strategy, the most useful thing he brings is the dual standing: the framework being discussed is one he wrote, and the operating problem in the room is one he has had to solve as CEO. Key speaking topics The future of retail and the post-digital consumer Marketing and brand transformation Customer experience and commerce across physical, digital and virtual channels The business implications of AI for consumer-facing organisations Post-digital leadership Innovation in fashion, beauty and luxury Scaling consumer businesses internationally Ideal for CMOs and Chief Customer Officers redesigning the marketing and commerce operating model Retail, fashion, beauty, luxury and hospitality executive teams and boards Heads of digital and e-commerce inside consumer businesses moving past pilot-stage AI Innovation, transformation and strategy leads in consumer industries Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the post-digital retail model and where it breaks current operating assumptions A framework, taken from Redefining Retail, for prioritising the ten shifts that matter most Sharper questions about where AI changes the customer-facing P&L and where it does not A clear read on how leading consumer brands are restructuring around omnichannel commerce Concrete examples drawn from his client work and CEO experience across luxury, fashion and beauty