Geschäftsstrategie & Wachstum speakers

Why organisations work with Holly Tucker She built a marketplace that gave more than 5,000 independent businesses a commercial route they could not otherwise access, and can speak directly to what scaled that community and what broke it. Her second act, Holly and Co, is a certified B Corp built around purpose-led small business advice, giving her a live view of what founders are wrestling with now, not a decade ago. As host of Conversations of Inspiration, she has interviewed several hundred founders in long form, which makes her one of the few speakers in the UK with a continuously refreshed sense of what early-stage builders are learning. Her MBE and appointment as a UK Prime Minister’s Business Ambassador give her credibility on the policy side of small business, not only the operator side. She translates founder thinking into language corporate audiences can use: retail teams, marketing teams and transformation teams leave with a sharper sense of what independent brands do that scale players do not. Biography highlights Co-founder of notonthehighstreet.com (2006), the UK marketplace for independent makers. Founder of Holly and Co (2017), a certified B Corporation supporting small businesses. MBE, 2013, for services to small businesses. UK Prime Minister’s Business Ambassador for creative small businesses, 2015. Author of Do What You Love, Love What You Do (Virgin Books, 2021), a Sunday Times bestseller; earlier titles with Simon and Schuster. Presenter of ITV’s Be Your Own Boss and host of the Conversations of Inspiration podcast. Biography Notonthehighstreet.com began as a frustration with nowhere to sell handmade Christmas wreaths. Holly Tucker and Sophie Cornish turned that frustration into the UK’s defining marketplace for independent brands, and over thirteen years it gave more than five thousand small businesses a route to customers they would not otherwise have reached. That is the operator credential Tucker brings into a room. Holly and Co, founded in 2017 and a certified B Corporation since 2022, is where the second chapter sits. It is a platform, a shop and an advice engine for independent founders, and it is the evidence base for most of what Tucker says publicly about small business. The weekly Conversations of Inspiration podcast now runs into the hundreds of episodes, which gives her a continuously updated read on what founders are actually doing, not what commentators think they are doing. Her public role has extended beyond business. An MBE in 2013 for services to small businesses, and appointment as a UK Prime Minister’s Business Ambassador in 2015, placed her inside the conversation about how policy shapes independent enterprise. Three books, including Sunday Times bestseller Do What You Love, Love What You Do, turned that experience into written form for founders at earlier stages. Where Tucker is most useful to a corporate audience is on the question larger companies rarely answer well: what exactly do independent brands do that scale players find hard to replicate, and how should a big business think about that when it partners with them, buys from them, or tries to build its own version. She speaks to that from both sides of the relationship. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and the founder mindset Building and scaling marketplaces Independent retail and the creative economy Purpose-led business and B Corp practice Small business advocacy and policy Female founders and enterprise Brand, storytelling and community for consumer businesses Ideal for Retail, consumer and marketplace leadership teams thinking about independent brand partnerships. Marketing and brand leaders who want a grounded view of what small and founder-led brands do that larger ones cannot. Conferences and internal events focused on entrepreneurship, purpose-led growth or the creative economy. Female founder communities and enterprise networks within larger organisations. Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what independent founders actually do differently, drawn from a marketplace of more than five thousand small businesses. A practical read on what purpose-led and B Corp businesses look like in operation, not in theory. Fresh founder stories from a podcast library that now spans several hundred interviews. Language for corporate teams to use when they talk about supporting, partnering with or learning from small businesses. A sharper sense of how policy, platform and community interact in the creative economy.

Why organisations work with Howard Yu The Future Readiness Indicator – a quantitative, publicly available benchmark developed by Yu’s Center at IMD – gives boards an industry-specific measure of strategic preparedness, replacing intuition with verifiable data and enabling direct comparison with the leading companies in their sector. His LEAP thesis makes a specific and testable claim: competitive longevity depends not on refining the current knowledge base but on deliberately crossing into adjacent disciplines before copycats commoditise what already exists. This is a named argument with an empirical track record, not a generic innovation position. His case material spans century-old incumbents (P&G, Novartis) and recent disruptors (BYD, WeChat) across industries – giving leadership teams cross-sector evidence for what strategic transformation actually looks like, rather than analogies drawn from a single sector. His doctoral research at Harvard Business School was supervised by Clayton Christensen and Joseph Bower – grounding his frameworks in a rigorous empirical tradition and a direct intellectual lineage from the two most cited strategy thinkers of their generation. He co-directs IMD’s Future-Ready Enterprise programme, run jointly with MIT, and has designed and delivered strategic transformation work for organisations including ABB, Novo Nordisk, Heineken, Bosch, and Maersk – his content is tested in demanding executive contexts, not developed for stage consumption alone. Biography highlights LEGO Professor of Management and Innovation, IMD Business School, Switzerland Director, IMD Center for Future Readiness – established with funding from the LEGO Brand Group Creator of the Future Readiness Indicator, a publicly available composite index benchmarking seven industries on long-term strategic preparedness Author of LEAP: How to Thrive in a World Where Everything Can Be Copied (2018) – Axiom Business Book Award winner; named to Inc.’s Best Strategy Books of 2018 Thinkers50 Strategy Award, 2023; included in the Thinkers50 global management thinkers ranking DBA, Harvard Business School, supervised by Clayton Christensen and Joseph Bower Regular contributor to Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, and Forbes; frequent commentator on Bloomberg, BBC, and CNBC Named among the world’s top 40 business professors under 40 by Poets&Quants Biography Yu holds the LEGO Chair in Management and Innovation at IMD Business School and directs the Center for Future Readiness. His research addresses a recurring failure that most strategy teams prefer not to name: the slow commoditisation of the capabilities that once guaranteed advantage, and the organisational inertia that makes it so hard to act before the damage is visible. His book LEAP, winner of the Axiom Business Book Award and named by Inc. as one of the best strategy books of 2018, argues that competitive longevity requires deliberate moves across knowledge disciplines. Companies must leap from the domain that built today’s advantage to the one that will define tomorrow’s, before competitors close the gap. The case material runs from P&G’s sequential moves through manufacturing, consumer psychology, and biotechnology to pharmaceutical firms navigating organic chemistry, microbiology, and genomics over more than a century. That historical argument has a quantitative counterpart. The Future Readiness Indicator, developed by Yu’s Center, is a composite index benchmarking seven industries using publicly available data on R&D investment, revenue generation, and innovation behaviour. At IMD, he co-directs the Future-Ready Enterprise programme, run jointly with MIT, working directly with leadership teams from ABB, Novo Nordisk, Heineken, Bosch, and Maersk. His doctoral work at Harvard Business School was supervised by Clayton Christensen and Joseph Bower. In 2023, he received the Thinkers50 Strategy Award. He writes regularly for Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, and Forbes, and appears frequently on Bloomberg, the BBC, and CNBC. Key speaking topics Competitive advantage in commoditising markets Strategic leaps and knowledge discipline transitions Future readiness measurement and benchmarking Business model resilience and transformation Innovation strategy in incumbent organisations Long-term value creation under disruption Ideal for Board and C-suite teams confronting decisions about strategic transformation or competitive commoditisation Chief Strategy Officers and heads of corporate development Senior leadership teams at large incumbents in sectors facing digital or technological disruption Executive education cohorts focused on long-term strategy and innovation capability Audience outcomes A specific vocabulary for diagnosing where competitive advantage is in the process of commoditisation, before the position has fully eroded Practical application of the LEAP framework to identify which knowledge discipline transitions are most relevant to their industry and timeline Understanding of how the Future Readiness Indicator works and what the leading companies in their sector are doing differently on the dimensions it measures A shift from generic innovation language to a structured argument about which strategic bets are worth making and when Clarity on the distinction between strategic planning and forward-looking capability-building – and the leadership behaviours that drive the difference

Why organisations work with Hunter Tura His “22nd Century Brand” framework, developed publicly through DesignSingapore Council, gives leadership teams a precise vocabulary for what brand investment is actually supposed to deliver, reframing brand from a static identity asset to a dynamic participation platform that drives commercial affiliation. He has built and run design businesses at CEO level, which means his counsel on brand strategy is not advisory abstraction. Rather, it is the same kind of operational decision-making he is asking leadership teams to make. His client portfolio spans luxury (Prada, Chanel, Tiffany), cultural institutions (Victoria & Albert Museum, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts), aviation (Changi Airport), and technology (Netflix, GE, Samsung) providing a level of cross-sector pattern recognition that a single-sector brand consultant cannot offer. His formation in architecture under Rem Koolhaas at Harvard GSD gives him a systems-thinking approach to brand that most strategists, who are trained in marketing or communications, lack. It shows in how he diagnoses problems others misread. His work at Entro on experiential branding and the built environment addresses a dimension of brand strategy – how physical spaces communicate and shape participation – that is almost entirely absent from the mainstream brand conversation, but increasingly urgent for property, hospitality, aviation, and cultural sectors. Biography highlights Chief Creative Officer, Entro Communications (appointed November 2025); previously President & CEO, Bruce Mau Design (2010–2019) and CEO, The Creative Organization Client work spanning Netflix, Samsung, GE, Unilever, Audi, Lululemon, Changi Airport Group, Lucid Motors, and the Victoria & Albert Museum Curator, Canada Pavilion, 2018 London Design Biennale; juror, Presidential Design Awards Singapore (2017) and Florence Design Biennale (2019) Commentator, “Design Canada” (2017 documentary) Creator of “The 22nd Century Brand” – a conceptual series produced with DesignSingapore Council and the National Design Centre, reframing brand evolution as a strategic and societal imperative March, Harvard University Graduate School of Design (thesis directed by Rem Koolhaas); Supermentor, Harvard Business School Field X/Y programme; Alumni Council, Harvard GSD Biography The organisations that use brand to create durable competitive advantage treat it as a design discipline, not a marketing function. Hunter Tura has spent 25 years at that boundary, running Bruce Mau Design as President & CEO for nine years, founding SYNDICATE X and The Creative Organization, and now serving as Chief Creative Officer at Entro Communications, where he leads creative strategy across experiential branding, wayfinding, and built-environment design at an international scale. His client work crosses sectors that rarely share a diagnostic framework: luxury goods (Prada, Chanel, Tiffany), cultural institutions (the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts), aviation and hospitality (Changi Airport, Marina Bay Sands), and technology (Netflix, GE, Samsung). The common strategic problem is consistent: how does an organisation make its brand do genuine commercial work rather than simply look credible? That question has a specific intellectual architecture in Tura’s hands. His “22nd Century Brand” framework traces how brand has evolved from static trademark to dynamic participation platform. The organisations ahead of their competitors have designed brand as a system. The ones falling behind have commissioned a refresh. Tura holds an MArch from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where his thesis was supervised by Rem Koolhaas, and a BA from Haverford College in the Growth and Structure of Cities. He has served on the Harvard GSD Alumni Council, is a Supermentor at Harvard Business School, and was curator of the Canada Pavilion at the 2018 London Design Biennale. He also appeared as a commentator in the 2017 documentary Design Canada. Key speaking topics Brand strategy as a driver of competitive growth Design-led business transformation Experiential branding and the built environment The evolution of brand from identity to participation platform Building and leading creative organisations at scale Cross-sector brand innovation The commercial case for design thinking Ideal for CMOs and senior marketing leadership managing significant brand investment with unclear ROI CEOs and boards navigating brand repositioning, post-merger integration, or market repositioning Senior leaders in property, hospitality, aviation, and cultural sectors where physical environment is central to brand experience Executive education cohorts in innovation, design strategy, or competitive differentiation Audience outcomes A diagnostic framework for identifying why brand investment is not producing competitive returns – with named examples from luxury, tech, and cultural sectors A clear distinction between communications-led and design-led brand strategy, and what each produces Practical language for commissioning, evaluating, and challenging brand strategy work at leadership level An understanding of how experiential and environmental design is reshaping brand expectations across sectors Exposure to cross-sector patterns from a practitioner who has made CEO-level brand decisions across more than twenty years and four distinct industry categories

Why organisations work with Ian Khan He gives executive teams a diagnostic rather than a forecast. The Future Readiness Score, built from his research across hundreds of organisations, turns “are we ready for AI” into a scored view across seven operating pillars. His writing carries commercial weight. Undisrupted won the Bronze Medal at the 2025 North American Book Awards and the Non-Fiction category at the Goody Business Book Awards 2025; Metaverse For Dummies is a Wiley title. He reports on the future as a working journalist, not only a consultant. As executive producer and host of The Futurist on Amazon Prime Video, he has interviewed hundreds of global leaders on the record, which keeps his keynote content closer to evidence than to speculation. He separates AI hype from AI advantage in front of technical and non-technical rooms. His AIRS assessment gives boards a common language for where they sit on vision, use cases, data, governance, and adoption. Biography highlights USA Today bestselling author of Undisrupted, which introduces the Future Readiness Score across seven organisational pillars. Author of Metaverse For Dummies, published by Wiley. Executive producer and host of The Futurist, a streaming series on Amazon Prime Video across more than 45 regions. Director of the documentary Blockchain City and producer of additional films on AI and the future of work. Thinkers50 Future Readiness Award finalist and Thinkers360 Distinguished honoree. Media contributor and on-record commentator featured by CNN and Forbes. Biography Most AI strategy conversations stall at the same point. The executive team agrees the technology matters. Nobody can agree on what to do on Monday. Khan’s contribution is a working answer to that problem, built from research across hundreds of organisations and codified in his book Undisrupted and the Future Readiness Score that sits inside it. The Score moves the question from opinion to diagnostic. It measures an organisation across seven pillars, including engagement, learning, collaboration, culture, innovation, and execution, and returns a prioritised picture of where readiness is thin. His AIRS framework does the equivalent for AI specifically, covering vision, use cases, data, governance, and adoption. Boards use both as a shared map before they approve the next investment. Khan works across the commercial and editorial sides of technology. He is the author of Metaverse For Dummies, published by Wiley, and of additional titles on prompt engineering and value creation. As executive producer and host of The Futurist on Amazon Prime Video, he has interviewed hundreds of founders, scientists, and policy leaders on the record. Commentary work with CNN and Forbes sits alongside that. His keynote practice reflects that dual background. Audiences get a filmmaker’s feel for narrative and a consultant’s insistence on instrumentation, applied to the decisions leadership teams are actually trying to make about AI, automation, and emerging technology. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and generative AI strategy Future readiness and organisational diagnostics Digital transformation and enterprise technology adoption Emerging technology and disruption AI governance and responsible deployment Leadership in an AI-driven operating environment Ideal for CEOs, CIOs, and CTOs sponsoring AI strategy across business units Boards and executive committees setting technology investment priorities Transformation and digital leaders responsible for moving pilots into production Government and public-sector leaders assessing AI readiness and governance Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for assessing where the organisation actually stands on AI and digital readiness. A prioritised view of which technology bets are worth compounding and which to retire. Sharper criteria for AI governance decisions, from data to adoption. Concrete patterns drawn from hundreds of documented executive interviews, not abstract predictions.

Why organisations work with Irita Marriott A working case study of starting from outside every advantage that business literature assumes, foreign-born, self-funded, self-taught, and still arriving at ownership of a regulated specialist business. Live commercial credibility: she runs an auction house in Melbourne, Derbyshire that trades weekly, not a personal brand built on past achievement. A direct view of how a specialist trade actually works, valuations, vendor relationships, buyer psychology, that translates well into wider commercial conversations about expertise and trust. One of a small number of women who own and run an auction house in the UK, which gives her observations on under-represented leadership a concrete operational base, not a panel-circuit one. An unusual combination for an after-dinner or inspirational slot: a recognisable BBC television face who is also the principal of an active SME. Biography highlights Expert on BBC One’s Antiques Road Trip, Celebrity Antiques Road Trip and Bargain Hunt. Expert on Channel 4’s The Greatest Auction. Presenter of The Derbyshire Auction House on Really TV. Founder and principal of Irita Marriott Auctioneers and Valuers Ltd, Melbourne, Derbyshire (opened 2023). Seven years as salesroom assistant, cataloguer and valuer at a Derbyshire auction house before launching her own business. Self-taught in the antiques trade after arriving in the UK aged 20 from Latvia, via the United States. Biography Most successful entrepreneurs in British specialist trades inherit a network, a name, or both. Irita Marriott inherited neither. She arrived in the UK at twenty, having grown up on a self-sufficient farm in Latvia and worked as an au pair in the United States, and started in a Derbyshire garden centre as temporary Christmas staff. The route from there to ownership of a regulated auction house in the same county did not follow any of the standard patterns. The substantive credential is the seven years she spent inside a Derbyshire auction house as a salesroom assistant, then cataloguer, then valuer, while dealing antiques independently at fairs and car boot sales on her own time. That is the period in which the trade was actually learned. The television work began in 2021, when she sent a direct approach to the producers of Antiques Road Trip rather than waiting to be discovered, and she has since become a regular expert on Bargain Hunt, Celebrity Antiques Road Trip and Channel 4’s The Greatest Auction, alongside presenting her own Really TV series, The Derbyshire Auction House. In June 2023 she opened Irita Marriott Auctioneers and Valuers Ltd in Melbourne, Derbyshire, making her one of a small handful of women in the UK to own and run an auction house. The business runs regular sales, free public valuations and a working catalogue, which is a meaningful operational footprint rather than a personal brand exercise. For organisations, the value of her perspective is the texture of how a specialist business is actually built and run by someone who started without the conventional advantages. She is most useful to audiences who want to hear how confidence, credibility and clientele are constructed in practice, in a trade where reputation is the asset, by a principal who is still doing the work. Key speaking topics Building a specialist business from outside the industry Female ownership in male-dominated trades Reinvention across countries and careers Self-taught expertise and credibility The antiques and auction trade Combining a working business with a media profile Ideal for Founders, owner-managers and SME leadership audiences Women’s leadership networks and ERGs in commercial organisations Conferences on entrepreneurship, reinvention and career change After-dinner and awards audiences who want a substantive business story rather than a celebrity name Audience outcomes A grounded sense of what it actually takes to build a specialist business when starting without contacts, capital or industry training. A practical view of how reputation is constructed in a trust-driven trade. A direct example of how a public profile and an operating business can reinforce each other rather than compete. A perspective on under-represented leadership rooted in ownership rather than commentary.

Why organisations work with Isabel Aguilera Navarro She has run the Iberian or Southern European business of three of the most scrutinised multinationals in the world (Dell, Google, GE) and can speak from the CEO chair, not the consultant’s deck. She sits on the boards of five listed and regulated companies spanning cement, real estate, biotech, digital advertising and water, giving her a cross-sector read on how governance and transformation actually play out at board level. She chairs the Audit and Control Committee of Lar Espana, a role that forces her to translate strategic ambition into numbers, risk and control, which is exactly the language CFOs and chairs want to hear from a speaker. She has held an Executive in Residence position at Esade Business School in Strategy and General Management for over two decades, so the frameworks she uses are taught as well as lived. She wrote a full book on intelligent digital transformation, Lo que estaba por llegar ya esta aqui, giving audiences a defined thesis rather than a collection of anecdotes. Biography highlights President, General Electric Spain and Portugal (2008 to 2009). General Manager, Google Spain and Portugal (2006 to 2008), leading the set-up of Google Iberia. CEO, Dell Computer for Spain, Italy and Portugal (1997 to 2002). Operations Director, NH Hotel Group (2002 to 2005). Independent director of Cemex, Lar Espana, Oryzon Genomics, Canal de Isabel II and Making Science; chair of the Audit and Control Committee at Lar Espana. Executive in Residence, Department of Strategy and General Management, Esade Business School; former President of the Social Council of the University of Seville. Author of Lo que estaba por llegar ya esta aqui: Secretos de la transformacion digital inteligente (LID Editorial, 2016). Biography Most transformation programmes fail in the gap between the boardroom and the country P&L. Isabel Aguilera Navarro has spent her career working in that gap. She stood up Google’s operation in Spain and Portugal, then moved across to run General Electric in the same region, having earlier led Dell’s Iberian and Italian business through the years in which Dell took the top of the PC market in Europe. That sequence, Dell then NH Hoteles then Google then GE, is unusual. It put her inside a Silicon Valley growth company, a Spanish hospitality group, a consumer technology brand at its commercial peak and an American industrial conglomerate, each at the moment the business model was being rewritten. The operating lessons translate directly into how she now advises boards. Today she sits as an independent director of Cemex, Lar Espana, Oryzon Genomics, Canal de Isabel II and Making Science, chairing the Audit and Control Committee at Lar Espana. The mix is deliberate: heavy industry, commercial real estate, biotech, a regulated water utility and a digital advertising firm. Few speakers can move between those governance contexts with credibility, and fewer still have done so while also holding an Executive in Residence role at Esade Business School. Her book Lo que estaba por llegar ya esta aqui argues that the digital transformation leaders were preparing for has already arrived, and the remaining work is organisational rather than technological. Financial Times and Fortune have both included her in their European and global rankings of senior women in business, and the Wall Street Journal named her among the 30 Most Influential Business Women in Europe in 2001 for her work at Dell. Key speaking topics Corporate governance and board strategy Digital transformation in established businesses Leadership across industries and operating models Strategy and competitive positioning Innovation inside large organisations Technology company operating culture Ideal for Boards and nominating committees preparing for a strategy refresh or a digital transformation programme. CEOs and executive committees of large, multi-country businesses navigating technology and operating-model change. Audit and risk committees looking to translate strategic ambition into governance, numbers and control. Leadership programmes for senior women in business and cross-sector executive development audiences. Audience outcomes A board-level view of where digital transformation programmes tend to break inside real P&Ls, drawn from three country-CEO seats. A clearer sense of how governance structures can either accelerate or stall strategic change, from someone who chairs an audit and control committee. Specific contrasts between how Silicon Valley, American industrials and European operators approach the same strategic problem. Frameworks from Esade’s Strategy and General Management faculty, tested against sitting boards in cement, real estate, biotech and water. Reference points from her book on intelligent digital transformation that audiences can take back into their own planning cycles.

Why organisations work with Isabel Garro She has held the policy seat, the multilateral seat, and the operating seat. Special Advisor to Spain’s High Commissioner for the 2030 Agenda, founding Director General of the UN Global Compact Network Spain, now Chief Sustainability Officer EMEA at Votorantim Cimentos. Few ESG voices can read regulation, capital, and operations in one sitting. She built the institution that translates UN Global Compact commitments into corporate practice in Spain, then ran it for more than a decade. She speaks about ESG governance from the side that wrote the rules, not the side that complies with them. Her current operating role inside a major cement group means her view on climate transition is tested against one of the hardest decarbonisation problems in industry, not against a theoretical model. She is fluent in the gap between SDGs as communications and SDGs as commercial opportunity. The work is about which of the 17 goals contain a real margin, not which of them play well in a sustainability report. Biography highlights Chief Sustainability Officer EMEA, Votorantim Cimentos, since November 2023. Founding partner and CEO of 3a4b, a sustainability strategy advisory firm based in Madrid. Founding Executive Director and Director General, UN Global Compact Network Spain, for more than a decade. Special Advisor to the High Commissioner for the 2030 Agenda, Government of Spain, 2018 to 2020. President of the Local Networks Advisory Council of the UN Global Compact, the elected body that advises the Compact on regional decisions. Associate professor, Master’s in Competitive Social Transformation, Universidad Complutense de Madrid and IE Business School. MBA, Brown University and IE Business School. Biography ESG arrived in the boardroom as a disclosure problem and is leaving as a capital allocation problem. The gap between what a company is required to say about sustainability and what it has to actually fund, build, and restructure to deliver on it has become one of the harder strategic questions of the decade. That gap is the territory Isabel Garro has worked in for more than twenty years, from the inside of government, the inside of the United Nations system, and now the inside of a major industrial group. She founded the UN Global Compact Network Spain in 2005 and led it for over a decade as Director General, building the institution that translates global sustainability commitments into Spanish corporate practice. She was then appointed Special Advisor to Spain’s High Commissioner for the 2030 Agenda, working on the integration of the SDGs into national policy. She has also chaired and now presides over the Local Networks Advisory Council of the UN Global Compact, the elected body representing networks in over 60 countries. Since November 2023 she has been Chief Sustainability Officer EMEA at Votorantim Cimentos, one of the largest cement and building materials groups in the world. That seat puts her inside one of the most operationally demanding decarbonisation problems in heavy industry, where the distance between net zero rhetoric and net zero engineering is unforgiving. She is also founding partner and CEO of 3a4b, advising organisations on sustainability strategy, and an associate professor at Universidad Complutense de Madrid and IE Business School on the Master’s in Competitive Social Transformation. What makes her useful in a room of senior leaders is the working hypothesis she brings: that sustainability is now a competitive variable, not an external compliance cost, and that the companies treating it as the former will allocate capital differently from those still treating it as the latter. She holds an MBA from Brown University and IE Business School. Key speaking topics ESG strategy and corporate governance The 2030 Agenda and SDGs as commercial opportunity Climate resilience and the decarbonisation of heavy industry Sustainable supply chains and stakeholder governance Sustainability reporting and regulatory change in Europe Regenerative business design and circular economy Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting ESG and climate strategy under tightening EU regulation Chief Sustainability Officers, Chief Strategy Officers and Chief Risk Officers building the operating layer behind sustainability commitments Industrial, infrastructure and capital-intensive groups facing real decarbonisation costs Public-private leadership forums on the SDGs, 2030 Agenda, and corporate-government cooperation Audience outcomes A clearer separation between ESG as disclosure and ESG as operating substance, with the questions a board should be asking about each A working view of which of the 17 SDGs contain commercial margin for a given business model An honest read on the gap between net zero communication and net zero capital expenditure A practical map of how European sustainability regulation is reshaping corporate strategy this decade

Why organisations work with Itai Green He runs the operator’s playbook for open innovation, built on programmes delivered for named multinationals including Toyota, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Maccabi Healthcare, and Electra. He owns the access point to two of Israel’s largest vertical startup communities, ITTS (around 350 traveltech founders) and IITS for insurtech, which gives corporate audiences a direct route into live deal flow. His book with Business Expert Press, Innovation or Elimination: Winning in a World of Constant Change. An Executive Playbook (2026), codifies a two-decade framework for collaboration between corporates and startups, so the keynote carries a published thesis rather than a deck. He has briefed senior commercial audiences at repeat Economist summits, UNWTO, and Amcham Brazil’s CEO Forum, which means he calibrates to board-level decision makers, not technology enthusiasts. He was inside corporate innovation at Amadeus IT Group before building the consultancy, so he speaks to the internal politics of innovation programmes from the same side of the table as the buyer. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Innovate Israel (2017 to present). Former Head of Business Development and Innovation, Amadeus IT Group Israel. Former CEO, Maxtech Technologies; former VP Business Development, Techtium; prior roles at Elbit. Co-founder, JerusalemOnline. Author, Innovation or Elimination: Winning in a World of Constant Change. An Executive Playbook (Business Expert Press, 2026). Founder of the ITTS and IITS startup communities covering traveltech and insurtech in Israel. Keynote speaker at Economist summits (2018 to 2022), UNWTO Tourism Startup Competition, and Amcham Brazil CEO Forum. Biography Most corporate innovation programmes fail quietly. They produce pilots, demo days, and scouting reports, but very little that reaches a P&L. The gap is not talent or budget; it is the wiring between the corporate and the outside ecosystem it claims to work with. Itai Green has spent two decades inside that wiring. As Head of Business Development and Innovation at Amadeus IT Group in Israel, and before that as a CEO and operator across Maxtech, Techtium, and Elbit, he built the internal muscle that most large organisations are still trying to grow. In 2017 he founded Innovate Israel to run that playbook for global corporates, connecting them to Israeli startups across IT, pharma, finance, travel, retail, banking, insurance, energy, and construction tech. Client work has included Toyota, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Maccabi Healthcare, and Electra. Alongside the consulting practice, he built two of the largest sector communities in Israel’s ecosystem. ITTS (Israel Travel Tech Startups) now covers around 350 founders. IITS does the same job for insurance technology. For a corporate buyer, those communities are the live deal flow behind the keynote. His book Innovation or Elimination: Winning in a World of Constant Change. An Executive Playbook (Business Expert Press, 2026) sets out the framework he has been using with clients: how leadership teams structure open innovation, how they absorb external technology without breaking their core business, and how they stop confusing pilots with outcomes. Key speaking topics Open innovation and corporate-startup collaboration Generative AI in corporate strategy Israeli innovation ecosystem and ecosystem engagement Traveltech and insurtech Corporate venturing and scouting models Innovation leadership and organisational readiness Business model innovation under geopolitical and tariff pressure Ideal for Chief Innovation Officers, Heads of Corporate Venturing, and Chief Strategy Officers building or resetting an open innovation function. Executive committees in travel, insurance, pharma, retail, energy, and banking evaluating engagement with Israel’s startup ecosystem. Business development and R&D leaders who have active scouting but no reliable path from pilot to deployment. Boards and CEO forums looking for an operator’s view on turning innovation spend into commercial growth. Audience outcomes A working definition of what separates a functioning open innovation programme from a scouting theatre. A clear map of how to engage with Israel’s startup ecosystem without burning internal credibility on dead-end pilots. A perspective on where generative AI shifts the corporate-startup dynamic, grounded in live client work rather than forecasts. Specific internal structures and incentives that leaders can use to move a pilot from proof of concept to a line of business. A candid read on where open innovation tends to fail inside large corporates, from someone who has sat on both sides.

Why organisations work with Jack Shaw Operator experience across successive AI waves, from expert systems and eCommerce through Knowledge-Based Expert Systems to today’s generative AI. That span of hands-on work is rare, and it is what lets him tell a board which shifts are durable and which are noise. Author of The AI Imperative Series, a planned multi-volume set examining AI transformation industry by industry. The first volume, Manufacturing’s AI Imperative, was published in April 2026; subsequent volumes covering healthcare, finance, distribution, and government are in preparation. Track record advising senior leadership at Mercedes-Benz, Siemens, GE, Caterpillar, Rockwell Automation, Coca-Cola, 3M, IBM, Oracle, and Bosch. The client mix skews industrial and regulated, which is directly relevant when the audience is not a technology company. A working framework that separates tactical AI initiatives, which can pay back inside twelve months, from strategic programmes that reshape the operating model over three to five years. The framework is built for executive teams running both tracks simultaneously without one starving the other. Presents in 26 countries and all 50 U.S. states, with material that adapts to manufacturing, distribution, financial services, and public sector audiences rather than a single vertical. Biography highlights Author of The AI Imperative Series; first volume, Manufacturing’s AI Imperative, published April 2026 Graduate of Yale University; MBA, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University Enterprise AI experience spanning commercial expert systems and machine learning through to today’s generative AI Former Vice President of Commercial Systems, Applied Systems Intelligence; previously led an AI software company in Knowledge-Based Expert Systems Advisor to senior leadership at Mercedes-Benz, Siemens, GE, Caterpillar, Rockwell Automation, Coca-Cola, 3M, IBM, Oracle, and Bosch Keynote presentations in 26 countries and all 50 U.S. states, across manufacturing, distribution, financial services, and public sector audiences Biography Knowledge-Based Expert Systems were running in defence and industrial settings long before ChatGPT gave AI a consumer face. Shaw was writing commercial software in that space in the 2000s as Vice President of Commercial Systems at Applied Systems Intelligence, after leading an AI software company through the previous wave. He has been inside enterprise AI since before most organisations were asking the question, which is why he can tell a board which shifts are durable and which are noise. Drawing on more than four decades in AI and enterprise technology, Shaw has delivered over 1,000 keynote presentations across 26 countries. As an AI transformation advisor, he works with senior leadership at Mercedes-Benz, Siemens, Bosch, GE, Caterpillar, IBM, Coca-Cola, and Oracle. His focus is where AI changes the economics of the business, not just its tooling. His work turns on a dual-path distinction between Tactical AI and Strategic AI. Tactical AI covers the applications that pay back inside twelve months; Strategic AI is the operating-model change that reshapes competitive position over three to five years. He frames the destination as the Autonomic Enterprise, where routine sensing and response run at machine speed and human judgement is reserved for the decisions that cannot be delegated. That thinking is now published. Manufacturing’s AI Imperative: An Executive Mandate is the first volume in The AI Imperative Series, an industry-by-industry set applying the framework to the AI decisions facing the C-suite, with volumes on distribution, government, healthcare, and finance in preparation. A Yale graduate with a Kellogg MBA, Shaw advises internationally on executive AI strategy, AI governance, and workforce transformation. He speaks directly to what boards are asking now: how to get out of pilot purgatory, how to cut the decision latency that stalls AI programmes, and how the gap between AI leaders and laggards compounds faster than in any previous technology shift. Key speaking topics Tactical AI and Strategic AI: the dual-path framework Enterprise AI from pilot to operating-model change The Autonomic Enterprise and the emerging Autonomic Economy AI governance, risk, and executive accountability Workforce transformation in the age of AI Industry-specific AI strategy for manufacturing, distribution, and regulated sectors Decision latency and compounding advantage in enterprise AI Ideal for Boards and C-suites setting enterprise AI and digital strategy CIOs, CTOs, and CDOs sequencing AI investment across competing priorities: infrastructure, workforce capability, data readiness, and vendor selection Manufacturing, automotive, distribution, and financial services leadership teams Industry associations and regulated-sector conferences asking where the technology actually lands in operations Audience outcomes A clearer read on which AI capabilities matter for their specific industry and time horizon Concrete examples from Fortune 500 deployments rather than generic case studies Vocabulary to challenge vendor pitches and internal proposals with sharper questions A dual-path framework for separating the AI initiatives that pay back inside twelve months from the strategic programmes that reshape the operating model over three to five years, with a method for running both tracks simultaneously without one starving the other

Why organisations work with James Hardy He has run growth on both sides of the platform divide, leading EMEA for Alibaba and now global retail at Flutterwave, so he can argue marketplace strategy from inside the operating model, not from a consultancy slide. He co-founded Avenue51, the platform that won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in 2020 and The Guardian Start Up of the Year in 2016, which gives him founder credibility on selling Western brands into China. He frames e-commerce as ecosystem competition, not site optimisation, which reframes how boards think about platform dependency, payments infrastructure and customer data. He is one of the very few speakers who can speak with operator authority on Africa as a commercial market, via Flutterwave’s role as the continent’s largest fintech. Biography highlights Head of Global Retail & Market Development at Flutterwave, Africa’s largest fintech. Former Head of Europe, Middle East and Africa at Alibaba.com. Co-founder of Avenue51, the UK platform that helped Western brands enter China. Avenue51 won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise, International Trade, in 2020 and The Guardian Small Business Showcase Start Up of the Year in 2016. Named in the Financial Times Leap 100. MBA, Melbourne Business School; earlier career as a solicitor at Mishcon de Reya and Travers Smith, then General Counsel at Next 15, Bite Communications and Text 100. Biography Alibaba and Amazon are not the same business and never have been. One is a vertical operator that buys, stocks and ships. The other is a payments-and-data ecosystem that lets merchants sell. Hardy ran EMEA for Alibaba, and the distinction shapes how he advises Western brands on international growth. Before Alibaba, he co-founded Avenue51, the UK platform that helped European brands build market share in China through Tmall and the Alibaba marketplaces. Avenue51 won The Guardian Small Business Showcase Start Up of the Year in 2016, and the Queen’s Award for Enterprise, International Trade, in 2020. His Financial Times Leap 100 listing came out of that period. He now runs global retail and market development at Flutterwave, Africa’s largest fintech, which gives him a live operator’s view of where commerce, payments and platform competition are heading next. That perspective is rare on the speaker circuit. Most e-commerce speakers come from one platform, one geography, or one consultancy lens. Hardy has been an operator inside Alibaba, a founder selling Western brands into China, and is now building consumer and SME revenue across Africa. His earlier career was legal, with stints as a solicitor at Mishcon de Reya and Travers Smith and General Counsel roles at Next 15, Bite Communications and Text 100. That background shows up in how he handles questions on platform terms, data sovereignty and the contractual asymmetry between brands and marketplaces. Key speaking topics International e-commerce and retail globalisation Alibaba and Amazon: comparative platform strategy Marketplace and ecosystem business models China market entry for Western brands African commerce and fintech infrastructure Data-driven decision-making in commercial strategy Corporate innovation and startup operating models Ideal for CCOs, CMOs and heads of ecommerce planning for international or marketplace expansion Boards weighing platform dependency, marketplace risk and channel strategy Brand and retail leadership teams entering China, the Gulf or Africa Corporate innovation leads to working on ecosystem and platform plays Audience outcomes A clearer view of where Alibaba and Amazon are genuinely different, and what that means for marketplace strategy A working model for assessing platform dependency as a board-level risk Operator-level perspective on entering China and African markets without ceding the customer relationship Sharper questions for the leadership team on payments, data and ecosystem economics

Why organisations work with James Henderson He treats strategy as a sequence of staged commitments, not a single plan, which is what boards facing capital decisions in volatile sectors actually need. His teaching draws on more than 50 published case studies built with named companies, so the room is working with operating examples, not abstractions. He has run IMD’s Strategic Partnerships and Leading Sustainable Business Transformation programs, giving him a working view of how ecosystems and sustainability commitments are reshaping competitive strategy. As a former Dean of Programs and Innovation at IMD, he has built and led large executive programs himself, which translates into sessions designed for senior decision-makers rather than classroom delivery. Biography highlights Professor of Strategic Management, IMD Lausanne, since 2006. Program Director of IMD’s Strategic Partnerships course; Co-Director of Leading Sustainable Business Transformation. Former Dean of Programs and Innovation at IMD (2012 to 2016); launched the Global Leadership in the Cloud online portfolio. Co-edited Restructuring Strategy (Strategic Management Society, 2005); editorial board, Strategic Management Journal. EFMD Excellence in Practice Gold Award (2018); Academy of Management Carolyn Dexter Award (2009); ECCH Best Selling Case in Europe. PhD, INSEAD; MBA, Ivey School of Business; BA Economics, University of Western Ontario. Biography Strategy textbooks describe choices that have already been made. The harder work is the period before, when leaders must commit capital, build partnerships and reshape portfolios while the underlying competitive logic is still moving. That is the territory Henderson has spent twenty years teaching at IMD. He treats strategy as a discipline of staged commitment. Where many frameworks assume a stable view of advantage, his work focuses on options-based investment, corporate venturing, and the timing of moves into new positions. The argument is that senior teams overestimate the cost of acting early and underestimate the cost of waiting for clarity that does not arrive. That work is grounded in operating cases. Henderson has developed more than 50 published case studies, including the Heineken Buckler Beer case that became ECCH’s best-selling case in Europe. He co-edited the Strategic Management Society’s Restructuring Strategy and sits on the editorial board of the Strategic Management Journal, the field’s flagship journal. Inside IMD he has carried operating responsibility as well as faculty responsibility. As Dean of Programs and Innovation he launched the school’s Global Leadership in the Cloud online portfolio. He directs the Strategic Partnerships course and co-directs Leading Sustainable Business Transformation, two of IMD’s anchor programs on how ecosystems and sustainability are reshaping commercial strategy. Key speaking topics Strategy under uncertainty Strategic agility and options-based investment Corporate strategy and portfolio decisions Strategic partnerships and ecosystems Strategy execution Sustainable business transformation Corporate entrepreneurship and new growth platforms Ideal for Boards and executive committees facing capital allocation decisions in volatile or transitioning markets. CSOs, heads of corporate development and strategy teams running portfolio and partnership reviews. CEOs and senior leadership teams working through sustainable business transformation. Senior leadership programs and offsite agendas focused on commitment and execution under uncertainty. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for staging strategic commitments rather than treating strategy as a single decision. A sharper read of when to invest early, when to hold optionality, and when waiting becomes the costlier choice. Operating examples from named companies that map onto the audience’s own portfolio and partnership questions. A view of how ecosystem and sustainability pressures are restructuring competitive advantage in capital-intensive industries.

Why organisations work with James Sinclair He runs the playbook he teaches. The Partyman Group is a roughly GBP 40 million portfolio across childcare, leisure, food and beverage, and heritage brands that he owns and operates, not advises. He has a concrete thesis on why price-led consumer businesses fail, set out in The Experience Business, and can show operators how to apply it inside their own units. He has done the hardest part of growth through acquisition in public: the 2023 rescue of Party Pieces from administration is a documented case study in buying a broken consumer brand and absorbing it. He raised GBP 700,000 from 21 lenders at 20 years old without venture capital, and has built every subsequent business on cash flow. Founders who are bootstrapped or PE-averse hear their own constraints in his story. He is direct, funny, and pitched at operators rather than boardrooms. Audiences of SME owners, franchisees, and consumer brand teams tend to leave with something they can action on Monday. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Partyman Group: soft play centres, Twizzle Tops Day Nurseries, Marsh Farm Animal Adventure Park, Rossi Ice Cream, a grade II listed hotel, and Party Pieces. Acquired Party Pieces from the Middleton family out of administration in May 2023. Author of The Millionaire Clown and The Experience Business: Why Price-Focused Businesses Fail And What Winners Do Instead. Host of James Sinclair’s Business Broadcast podcast and a long-running YouTube channel focused on business operating decisions. Built the group without venture capital, funded through cash flow and lender-backed acquisitions. Speaks regularly across the UK and Europe to entrepreneur, SME, and franchise audiences. Biography Party Pieces was insolvent and more than GBP 2.5 million in debt when James Sinclair bought it out of administration in May 2023, adding the Middleton family’s party supplies brand to a portfolio that already included soft play centres, nurseries, a farm park, and Rossi Ice Cream. That kind of deal sits at the centre of how he has built the Partyman Group: find a distressed consumer business, buy it cheaply, and fold it into an operating model designed around experience rather than discounting. The group now reports turnover in the region of GBP 40 million. Sinclair built it without venture capital, starting at 16 as a children’s entertainer and, at 20, raising GBP 700,000 from 21 separate lenders to open his first soft play centre in Basildon. The first location hit GBP 1 million turnover inside a year. Every subsequent acquisition has been funded on cash flow and operator credibility, not equity rounds. His book The Experience Business sets out the thesis that underpins all of it: price-focused consumer businesses lose because customers are buying a feeling, and the winners are the operators who invest in the moments that feeling depends on. The Millionaire Clown, his earlier book, is the operator’s version of the same argument told through the businesses he has bought, broken, and fixed. What buyers get when they book him is not a strategist commenting on a sector. It is an owner-operator describing, specifically, how he grew a multi-brand consumer group through acquisition, what he overpaid for, what he did not, and how he keeps experience from degrading as the portfolio scales. The register is closer to a founders’ workshop than a keynote, which is why he tends to land well with SME and franchise audiences. Key speaking topics Growth through acquisition in consumer businesses Buying and turning around distressed brands Experience-led differentiation over price competition Building multi-brand portfolios without venture capital Cash flow, profitability, and operator discipline Customer acquisition for consumer and leisure brands Entrepreneurship and founder-led scaling Ideal for SME founders and owner-operators scaling consumer businesses Franchise networks and multi-site leisure, hospitality, and childcare operators M&A and corporate development leads working on distressed consumer assets Entrepreneur conferences, business schools, and founder communities Audience outcomes A working mental model for when to compete on experience and when price still matters A concrete view of how to evaluate a distressed consumer business before buying it Operator-level tactics for protecting customer experience as a portfolio adds brands A bootstrapped founder’s case for funding growth through cash flow and lenders rather than equity Specific stories, including Party Pieces, that audiences can pattern-match against their own deals