Geschäftsstrategie & Wachstum speakers

Why organisations work with Jamie Anderson He brings a working academic’s command of strategy and innovation research, not a recycled consultancy deck. His articles sit in California Management Review, MIT Sloan Management Review and Business Strategy Review, and he teaches the material at Antwerp Management School. His Lady Gaga and contemporary-art case work is the rare strategy content that lands with mixed senior audiences. It is taken seriously by London Business School’s journal yet readable for a leadership team without an MBA. He has built and taught executive programmes at London Business School, IMD, INSEAD, ESMT Berlin and Indian School of Business, which means his frame of reference is global executive practice, not one country or one sector. He is a Case Centre top-50 bestselling author, with a Nespresso case among the global prize winners. Buyers get a speaker whose teaching cases are actually used by other faculty. Financial Times named him a “management guru”; Business Strategy Review placed him among the world’s top 25 management thinkers. The credentialling is from named bodies, not bureau description. Biography highlights Professor of Strategy and Innovation, Antwerp Management School. Faculty and visiting positions at London Business School, IMD, INSEAD, ESMT Berlin, and Indian School of Business. Co-author, The Fine Art of Success (Wiley), and author of the Gaganomics / Strategy Gaga case work. Articles in California Management Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Financial Times, and Wall Street Journal. The Case Centre Top 50 Bestselling Case Authors (No. 33 in 2021/22; No. 28 in 2020/21); winner of a global case prize for his Nespresso case. Named “management guru” by the Financial Times; listed among the world’s top 25 management thinkers by Business Strategy Review. Biography The classic strategy textbook assumed advantage was something a firm could build and defend. The leaders running large organisations now treat that assumption as a liability. The question is no longer how to protect a position, but how to keep generating new ones at the cadence the market demands. Anderson’s work sits inside that question. As Professor of Strategy and Innovation at Antwerp Management School, with faculty experience at London Business School, IMD, INSEAD, ESMT Berlin and Indian School of Business, he has spent two decades translating innovation research into language operating leaders can use. His articles in California Management Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Financial Times and Wall Street Journal are the same material he teaches in executive programmes, written for practitioners. The signature of his work is its source material. Where most strategy speakers reach for the same handful of case studies, Anderson has built much of his teaching from artists and pop-culture figures, most famously his Lady Gaga case (Strategy Gaga / Gaganomics) and the book The Fine Art of Success. Business Strategy Review named the Lady Gaga article one of the top pieces of its year. The cases work because the underlying strategy is rigorous, and the surface is readable for a non-specialist audience. The recognition is from named bodies. The Financial Times has called him a management guru. Business Strategy Review put him among the top 25 management thinkers. The Case Centre lists him as a top-50 bestselling case author across multiple years, which is the closest the academic strategy world gets to a market test of whether other faculty actually use your work. Key speaking topics Strategic innovation and business model design Sustaining competitive advantage in mature industries Creativity and the strategy of contemporary brands Digital transformation and customer experience Leadership for innovation Personal strategy and career reinvention Ideal for Boards and executive committees rebuilding the innovation pipeline behind a mature core business CSOs, heads of strategy and corporate development teams in large incumbents CMOs and CXOs working on brand and customer-experience reinvention Senior leadership offsites where strategy content needs to land with a mixed, non-specialist audience Audience outcomes A clearer read on why traditional sources of competitive advantage are eroding, and what is replacing them Concrete cases of organisations and brands that have engineered new advantage in mature markets A working vocabulary for strategic innovation drawn from current management research, not consultancy framing A perspective on creativity and brand strategy that connects to operating decisions, not just marketing Energy. The Lady Gaga, Madonna and contemporary-art material is the rare strategy content senior audiences actually quote afterwards

Why organisations work with Jamie Kern Lima A founder track record at a scale almost no speaker in the entrepreneurship category can match: a category-creating consumer brand sold to L’Oreal for $1.2 billion, after Sephora said no for six years and QVC said no for three. First female CEO of a brand in L’Oreal’s history, with direct operating experience inside a $30 billion strategic acquirer post-acquisition, not just pre-exit. Two New York Times bestselling books, “Believe IT” and “Worthy”, giving sales teams and leadership audiences a tested framework on rejection and self-worth that the speaker has already road-tested with millions of readers. Host of the Gracie Award-winning Jamie Kern Lima Show, with first-time podcast interviews from figures including Meghan Markle and Michelle Obama, which gives the platform reach and the speaker a sharpened interviewer’s instinct for what actually moves an audience. A Columbia MBA and Columbia Business School board member who chooses to lead with the founder story, not the credential stack. The buyer gets the substance underneath the inspiration. Biography highlights Founder and former CEO of IT Cosmetics; sold to L’Oreal in 2016 for $1.2 billion. First female CEO of a brand in L’Oreal’s 100+ year history. Two-time New York Times bestselling author: “Believe IT” (Simon & Schuster, 2021) and “Worthy” (Hay House, 2024). Host of “The Jamie Kern Lima Show”, winner of the 2025 Gracie Award for Best Podcast, Lifestyle. Guest Shark, ABC’s Shark Tank, Season 16. MBA, Columbia Business School; member of the Columbia Business School Board of Overseers. Listed on Forbes’ America’s Richest Self-Made Women. Biography IT Cosmetics was turned down by Sephora for six years and by QVC for three before Jamie Kern Lima got either retailer on the phone. By 2016 the company was the largest luxury makeup brand in America, and L’Oreal paid $1.2 billion to acquire it. She became the first female CEO of a brand in the group’s history. The founding story is unusual because the product positioning was unusual. IT Cosmetics was built around real skin: rosacea, hyperpigmentation, post-chemotherapy skin, customers QVC’s buyers were not used to seeing on camera. Kern Lima insisted on putting them there. That decision, more than any single marketing tactic, is what separated the brand from the prestige beauty pack and made it acquirable at scale. Post-exit, she has built a second platform with similar discipline. “Believe IT” and “Worthy” are both New York Times bestsellers; “The Jamie Kern Lima Show” won the 2025 Gracie Award for Best Podcast in the lifestyle category, on the back of first-ever podcast interviews with Meghan Markle and a multi-part series with Oprah Winfrey. She is on the board of overseers at Columbia Business School, where she earned her MBA in 2004. For a corporate audience, the relevant content is concrete. How a category-creating consumer brand survives years of rejection from the gatekeepers it depends on. How founder-led marketing competes with conglomerate marketing budgets. What changes inside the business the day a $30 billion strategic acquirer owns it. What stays the same. Key speaking topics Founder-led brand building and category creation Selling to and operating inside a strategic acquirer Authenticity as a marketing operating principle Rejection as a sales and growth discipline Direct retail, on-camera selling and QVC scale-up Resilience and self-worth for senior leaders Women’s entrepreneurship at scale Ideal for Sales kick-offs, especially in consumer, retail, beauty, and direct-to-consumer categories CMOs and brand teams reframing what “authentic” marketing means in practice Founder and scale-up audiences inside corporate venture, accelerator, and women’s leadership programmes Annual conferences seeking a headline keynote with mainstream cultural reach Audience outcomes A working playbook on building demand for a consumer brand the trade buyers have already rejected A clearer framework for how founder-led companies should think about brand voice after acquisition Specific tactics on handling rejection as a recurring operational event, not a one-off setback A renewed willingness, particularly among senior women, to put their own conviction back at the centre of commercial decisions

Why organisations work with Jamie Siminoff He has the full founder arc on the record: invented a product category in a garage, pitched it on national television and walked out without a deal, rebuilt from near-bankruptcy, and sold to Amazon for about 1 billion dollars. He has run the acquired business inside Big Tech, giving buyers a rare view of what integration, reporting lines, and product autonomy look like after a landmark exit. He has repeated the cycle: founded Honest Day’s Work, sold it to Latch Inc., took the CEO seat at the acquirer, then returned to Amazon as a VP running Ring and adjacent smart home units. Most speakers have one exit story; he has a sequence. The Shark Tank rejection is specific and documented, which makes the resilience material credible rather than motivational. It is cited by the Sharks themselves as one of the biggest misses in the show’s history. He co-authored “Ding Dong: How Ring Went From Shark Tank Reject to Everyone’s Front Door” with Andrew Postman, published in November 2025, which gives buyers a named, durable reference point for the material. Biography highlights Founder and original CEO of Ring, acquired by Amazon in 2018 for approximately 1 billion dollars. Pitched DoorBot on ABC’s Shark Tank in 2013 and left without a deal; returned to the show as a guest Shark in 2018. Earlier founder of PhoneTag, the first voicemail to text service, and Unsubscribe.com, both acquired. Founder of Honest Day’s Work, acquired by Latch Inc. in 2023; subsequently appointed CEO of Latch. Rejoined Amazon in 2025 as Vice President running Ring and related smart home businesses, leading a pivot to AI. Babson College, Class of 1999, and Honorary Doctor of Laws from Babson in 2021, where he delivered the undergraduate commencement address. Co-author with Andrew Postman of “Ding Dong: How Ring Went From Shark Tank Reject to Everyone’s Front Door,” published November 2025. Biography Ring began as DoorBot, a Wi-Fi video doorbell built in a garage in 2011. By 2013 it was on Shark Tank, where every investor passed. The company was close to running out of money. Seven years later, Amazon bought it for roughly 1 billion dollars. That arc is the material Siminoff brings to the stage, and he brings it with the receipts. The more useful part of the story for serious operators is what happened between the rejection and the exit. Siminoff rebuilt the product and the brand, raised from Kleiner Perkins, Qualcomm Ventures, Goldman Sachs, DFJ Growth and Sir Richard Branson, and built Ring into a category defining consumer technology business. After the Amazon acquisition he stayed inside the company for five years, running Ring alongside Blink, Amazon Key and adjacent smart home lines. Most founder talks stop at the exit. His continues through integration. He has since extended the pattern. He founded Honest Day’s Work, sold it to Latch Inc. in 2023, stepped in as Latch’s CEO, and in 2025 rejoined Amazon as a Vice President running Ring and nearby smart home units, now pivoting the category toward AI. In November 2025 he published “Ding Dong” with Andrew Postman, the first full account of how Ring actually got built. A Babson graduate and Honorary Doctor of Laws from the same institution, he is one of a small group of founders who can speak to rejection, category creation, acquisition, and re-entry as connected stages of one working life. Key speaking topics Consumer technology product invention and category creation Scaling from prototype to acquisition Founder resilience through investor rejection Operating an acquired business inside Big Tech Smart home, connected devices, and AI in consumer hardware Brand building in hardware startups Hiring and team building in early stage companies Ideal for Founders, CEOs and product leaders in consumer technology and connected hardware Corporate innovation, strategy and M and A teams working on acquisition integration Investor audiences and startup ecosystems running portfolio or founder programmes Entrepreneurship centres and executive education audiences in business schools Audience outcomes A concrete, non-generic view of what it takes to get a hardware startup from prototype to billion-dollar exit. A working model for how to treat a high-profile rejection as distribution rather than a verdict. Specific insight into how an acquired category runs inside a company like Amazon, and what that means for teams going through similar integrations. A clear read on where consumer smart home and home security technology are heading as AI becomes the core layer of the product. Hiring and early team construction principles drawn from building Ring from a Craigslist hire list to a company sold for 1 billion dollars.

Why organisations work with Javier Verdura He has shipped category-defining hardware, not slide decks. The Supercharger form, the Powerwall housing and the Solar Roof tile are his team’s work, manufactured globally. He is named inventor on more than 130 patents across surgical equipment, consumer products, packaging and energy hardware. The range is the point: the discipline travels across sectors. He operates inside one of the most demanding product environments in the world, reporting into a company that asks its teams to “fail fast” and still hit volume. Leaders hear how that actually runs day to day. He can speak to the handoff between design, engineering and manufacturing, which is where most product organisations lose time and money. His philosophy is explicit: if you can’t manufacture what you create, it is not worth designing. He brings a credible Latin American voice into rooms that rarely hear one at this level of product leadership, which matters for organisations building global teams. Biography highlights Global Director of Product Design at Tesla since 2012. Product design lead on the Tesla Supercharger network, Powerwall home battery and Solar Roof. Named inventor on more than 130 patents. Graduate of ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena (BS Product Design, 1991). Former VP of Industrial Design and Development at Product Ventures (Connecticut), where he spent roughly 15 years before Tesla. Has taught industrial design at Georgia Tech School of Design and Architecture and at Universidad de Monterrey (UDEM). Biography The Supercharger stall, the Powerwall on the garage wall, the Solar Roof tile that reads as a roof before it reads as a panel. All three had to look inevitable and be manufacturable at volume. Javier Verdura leads the team inside Tesla that does that work, and has since 2012. His route in was unusual. Tesla’s chief designer, Franz von Holzhausen, an ArtCenter classmate, called in 2012 and asked him to run product design. By then, Verdura had already spent a full career in industrial design consultancy: senior designer at Group 4 Design in Connecticut, design manager at Inno Design in Atlanta, then fifteen years as VP of design and development at Product Ventures, shipping surgical instruments, consumer goods and packaging for clients including Ingersoll-Rand, Kodak and Panasonic. The through-line is manufacturability. Verdura states his philosophy plainly: if you can’t make what you design, it isn’t worth designing. That discipline is what Tesla bought when it hired him, and it is the lens he brings to audiences wrestling with why their own product pipelines stall between concept and line. He holds more than 130 patents, a BS in Product Design from ArtCenter (1991), and teaching posts at Georgia Tech and Universidad de Monterrey. He is one of the most senior Mexican-born product leaders in the global technology sector, a fact that gives his accounts of working inside Tesla an additional resonance for organisations thinking about where their next generation of design and engineering talent comes from. Key speaking topics Product design leadership at scale Design-to-manufacture discipline Innovation inside Tesla: Supercharger, Powerwall, Solar Roof Electric vehicles and the energy transition Patent-driven product development Building global design and engineering teams Latin American talent in global technology Ideal for CEOs, CPOs and heads of R&D running product organisations where design, engineering and manufacturing have to meet on the same timeline. Boards and leadership teams in automotive, energy, consumer hardware and industrials benchmarking their innovation pipeline against Tesla’s. Design and engineering leadership summits that want an operator, not a theorist. Corporate events building Latino and Hispanic executive networks at a senior technical level. Audience outcomes A clear, first-hand account of how Tesla turns a pencil sketch into manufactured hardware at a global scale. The operating logic behind “fail fast” when the failures cost real capital, not slideware. A practical view of where most product organisations break between design, engineering and manufacturing, and where Tesla’s handoff is structured differently. Specific examples from the Supercharger, Powerwall and Solar Roof programmes, not generic innovation theory. A sharper sense of what a modern product leadership function has to look like to ship category-defining hardware.

Why organisations work with Jay Samit His framework for disruption is derived from operating on both sides of it: he led digital transformation at EMI and Sony when their core business models were collapsing, then went on to build and advise companies that were doing the disrupting. That dual vantage point is not common among innovation speakers. Disrupt You! provides a replicable method for identifying where value will migrate in a given industry, applicable at both the organisational and individual leadership level, giving teams a shared vocabulary and process, not just inspiration. His Deloitte advisory work means the framework has been stress-tested against the specific constraints of large, publicly accountable organisations, not just start-up environments. He translates exponential technology trends including AI, spatial computing, blockchain, automation into commercial and competitive decisions, rather than presenting technology as the end in itself. His Fortune column and WSJ documentary series give him a current, credible public presence that amplifies the authority he brings into a room; senior audiences have typically encountered his thinking before the engagement begins. Biography highlights Former Independent Vice Chairman, Deloitte Digital; led enterprise consulting across AI, robotics, IoT, and digital transformation Author of Disrupt You! (Flatiron Books, 2015), published in 12 languages, and Future Proofing You (2021) Global President of Digital Distribution, EMI / Capitol Records; led the label from negligible digital presence to industry benchmark for digital transition Creator and General Manager, Sony Connect; Executive Vice President, Sony Regular contributor to Fortune (bi-weekly column on exponential technologies), Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review Adjunct Professor, USC Viterbi School of Engineering; UCLA Presidential Fellowship graduate, magna cum laude Advised LinkedIn and eBay pre-IPO; CEO of NASDAQ-listed SeaChange International Biography Most organisations understand disruption as something that happens to them. The harder strategic question is whether an organisation can develop the internal capability to anticipate market shifts and capture value from them before competitors or new entrants do, and what that requires structurally, culturally, and at the leadership level. Jay Samit has occupied both sides of that problem. As Global President of Digital Distribution at EMI and as the executive brought in to lead Sony’s digital transformation, he operated inside institutions whose core revenue models were being destroyed by technologies they could see but could not commercialise fast enough. Those experiences inform Disrupt You!, his internationally published framework for applying disruptor logic inside established organisations, which argues that the methods used to build new markets are the same methods available to incumbents willing to challenge their own assumptions. His subsequent role as Independent Vice Chairman of Deloitte Digital extended that work across industries and at scale, applying AI, robotics, and data analytics to the operational and competitive challenges of major global enterprises. That trajectory – from operator to adviser to author to investor – gives his arguments about disruption an empirical base that distinguishes them from frameworks developed in academic or consultancy settings alone. His writing appears regularly in Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review, and he teaches innovation at USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering. Senior leadership teams engaging with his work gain not only a model for reading competitive environments, but a practical method for building the internal conditions that allow large organisations to act on what they see. Key speaking topics Disruption strategy for established enterprises Business model innovation and value migration Entrepreneurial thinking inside large organisations Exponential technologies and commercial strategy AI, automation, and competitive positioning Data analytics as competitive advantage Future-proofing careers and leadership capability Ideal for CEOs and executive leadership teams navigating competitive disruption or industry transition Chief Strategy Officers and Chief Innovation Officers building internal innovation capability Boards and senior leadership in media, financial services, retail, and technology sectors facing structural change Transformation leads and digital strategy functions tasked with operationalising change at enterprise scale Audience outcomes A structured way of thinking about where value will migrate in their industry, and how to position ahead of it rather than responding after the fact Practical methods drawn from Samit’s Disrupt You! framework for identifying market gaps and turning internal constraints into innovation triggers Clearer understanding of how exponential technologies (AI, automation, spatial computing) translate into specific commercial and competitive decisions A reframe of disruption as a strategic tool available to incumbents, not just start-ups – with examples from Samit’s own operational experience Greater confidence in communicating a growth and innovation agenda internally, using a common language and set of principles

Why organisations work with Jeannie Walters She gives operators a working method, not a slogan: the CXI Navigator and CXI Compass frameworks turn customer-experience strategy into something a leadership team can run, not just endorse. She translates CX from a contact-centre function into a board-level commercial lever, framed around retention, loyalty, and the cost of reactive service. The dual credential set (CCXP and CSP) is unusual: she is certified in the discipline she speaks on and in the craft of speaking itself, which means content holds up under scrutiny from CX practitioners. A 2026 book with Mission Driven Press and Simon and Schuster distribution gives her thesis a citable spine, with named tools (CX Mission Statement, CX Success Blueprint, Four Cs of CX Culture) leaders can take back into the business. Reach into operating teams runs deeper than most keynote speakers: more than 500,000 LinkedIn Learning participants, plus the Experience Action podcast, mean her language is already inside many client organisations before she arrives. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Experience Investigators, a customer experience consultancy founded in 2009. Author of “Experience Is Everything: Making Every Moment Count in the Age of Customer Expectations” (Mission Driven Press, April 2026). Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) and charter member of the Customer Experience Professionals Association. Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) and Professional Member of the National Speakers Association. Host of the Experience Action podcast, recognised by CX Network among its leading CX podcasts. LinkedIn Learning instructor whose courses have reached more than 500,000 learners; named clients include Verizon, Siemens, GitLab, PayPal, BASF, Comcast, Allstate, and SAP Litmos. Biography Most companies that say they are customer-centric are not. They are service-centric, organised to absorb complaints, route tickets and react to survey scores. The decisions that actually shape loyalty, retention and willingness to pay sit upstream, in product, operations and leadership, and that is the gap Jeannie Walters has spent two decades closing. She is the founder and CEO of Experience Investigators, the consultancy she launched in 2009 to help organisations design customer experience as a deliberate discipline rather than a reactive function. Her clients include Verizon, Siemens, GitLab, PayPal, BASF, Comcast, Allstate and SAP Litmos, and the work tends to focus on the same problem: leadership intent that does not survive contact with the operating model. Her 2026 book, “Experience Is Everything: Making Every Moment Count in the Age of Customer Expectations”, published by Mission Driven Press with Simon and Schuster distribution, sets out the thesis. CX is treated as a business discipline with named tools, including a CX Mission Statement, a CX Success Blueprint, and the Four Cs of CX Culture, that give leadership teams something to run rather than something to admire. Her CXI Navigator and CXI Compass frameworks structure the operating side of that work. Credentials reinforce the practice. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and a charter member of the Customer Experience Professionals Association, a Certified Speaking Professional, and a LinkedIn Learning instructor whose courses have reached more than 500,000 learners. The Experience Action podcast, named by CX Network among its top CX podcasts, extends her work into the day-to-day of leaders trying to put it into effect. Key speaking topics Customer experience strategy Customer loyalty and retention Proactive versus reactive customer experience Customer journey design Employee experience and CX alignment CX measurement and accountability AI in customer experience Ideal for Chief Customer Officers, Chief Experience Officers and CX leadership functions CMOs and Chief Revenue Officers responsible for retention and lifetime value Heads of operations and service in B2C and B2B businesses where churn is a board issue Senior leadership teams trying to convert customer-centric language into operating discipline Audience outcomes A working definition of customer experience as a commercial discipline, separate from customer service. A method for spotting where the journey is leaking value, drawn from the CXI Navigator and CXI Compass frameworks. A clearer link between CX investment and the metrics finance and the board care about: retention, lifetime value, churn cost. A practical view of how AI changes CX expectations, and where automation should and should not enter the journey. Language and tools (CX Mission Statement, CX Success Blueprint, Four Cs of CX Culture) leaders can take into the next operating review.

Why organisations work with Jeff DeGraff He brings a tested intellectual frame, the Competing Values Framework, that gives executives a shared language for the trade-offs they already feel but cannot resolve. His Innovatrium has built innovation programmes inside more than half the Fortune 500, including Google, Apple, Coca-Cola, Pfizer, NASA and Microsoft, so the methods are stress-tested in real operating conditions. The work crosses sectors that rarely share a stage: commercial, military (US Air Force, NATO, Singapore Armed Forces), academic and mission-driven, which sharpens his diagnosis of what is structural and what is industry-specific. He treats innovation as a system of competing roles (Artist, Engineer, Athlete, Sage), so leaders leave with a way to staff and sequence change, not a motivational pep talk. The Ross School base and the Certified Professional Innovator programme give buyers a credible academic anchor when they need to sell the engagement internally. Biography highlights Clinical Professor of Management and Organizations, University of Michigan Ross School of Business, since 1990. Co-creator of the Competing Values Framework, with Robert Quinn, Kim Cameron and John Rohrbaugh. Founder of the Innovatrium Institute for Innovation, working with Fortune 500 firms, NASA and allied military commands. Author of The Art of Change (Berrett-Koehler, 2025), The Creative Mindset, The Innovation Code, Leading Innovation and Competing Values Leadership. Host of the PBS programme Innovation You and contributor to Michigan Public’s The Next Idea. Former Vice President of Communications and New Ventures at Domino’s Pizza during the period the company scaled from a regional chain to a global brand. Biography Innovation inside large organisations rarely fails for lack of ideas. It fails because the same organisation rewards efficiency, control and reliability while asking a small group to break those very rules. That tension is the subject Jeff DeGraff has spent his career mapping, first as a co-creator of the Competing Values Framework alongside Robert Quinn, Kim Cameron and John Rohrbaugh, and then as the architect of a more applied body of work on innovation as a system. The academic anchor is the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, where he has been Clinical Professor of Management and Organizations since 1990. The applied side is the Innovatrium, the institute he founded to put the theory into contact with operating reality. Through Innovatrium and direct consulting, his methods have been used inside more than half the Fortune 500, including Google, Apple, Coca-Cola, Pfizer, Microsoft and NASA, and inside the US Air Force, NATO and the Singapore Armed Forces. His three most recent books, The Innovation Code (2017), The Creative Mindset (2020) and The Art of Change (Berrett-Koehler, 2025), form a single argument. Innovation is not a personality trait, it is a discipline of holding competing values long enough to produce something new. The Innovation Code translates that into roles and team design. The Creative Mindset breaks creative work into six trainable skills. The Art of Change reframes paradox itself as the engine of transformation. The career arc explains the bias toward application. He earned his PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1985 and went directly into industry as Vice President of Communications and New Ventures at Domino’s Pizza, where the nickname “Dean of Innovation” stuck. The work since has kept the same shape: a serious framework, tested against organisations that cannot afford abstractions. Key speaking topics Innovation strategy and operating models Competing Values Framework in practice Creative leadership and team design Organisational change and transformation Culture and capability for sustained innovation Cross-sector innovation: commercial, public, military Paradox and decision-making under competing priorities Ideal for CEOs and executive teams under pressure to deliver core performance and a credible innovation agenda at the same time Chief Innovation Officers, CSOs and heads of strategy designing or rebuilding innovation operating models CHROs and learning leaders building creative capability across senior cohorts Public-sector, defence and mission-driven leadership groups that need a private-sector grade innovation method Audience outcomes A shared language for the competing demands inside the business and a way to talk about them without picking sides A working model for staffing innovation teams across distinct creative roles rather than relying on a few “creative” individuals A practical sequence for turning paradoxes (efficiency versus experimentation, control versus autonomy) into design decisions Confidence that innovation can be built as a repeatable system, not a personality-driven exception Examples drawn from companies, NASA and military commands that translate cleanly back to the audience’s own context

Why organisations work with Jeff Speck He has translated walkability from a planning preference into a measurable argument about carbon, healthcare costs, property values and downtown economic performance, set out in Walkable City and applied in master plans for Memphis, Grand Rapids, Lowell and Tampa. His General Theory of Walkability gives mayors, developers and corporate site selectors a single framework for evaluating the trade-offs in any street, block or downtown investment. He brings both sides of the table: ten years inside Duany Plater-Zyberk shaping the New Urbanism, four years running design policy at the National Endowment for the Arts, and almost two decades leading his own consultancy advising cities and the real estate industry. Walkable City is the best-selling urban planning book written this century, and his two 2013 TED Talks have passed six million views, which means audiences arrive already familiar with the argument and ready to discuss application. The 2022 Seaside Prize, awarded previously to Jane Jacobs and Christopher Alexander, places him in a small group of figures recognised for shaping how cities are now planned. Biography highlights Principal of Speck Dempsey, the urban design consultancy he has led since 2007. Director of Design at the US National Endowment for the Arts, 2003 to 2007, where he ran the Mayors’ Institute on City Design and founded the Governors’ Institute on Community Design. Former Director of Town Planning at Duany Plater-Zyberk and Company, a ten-year tenure inside the firm at the centre of the New Urbanism movement. Author of Walkable City and Walkable City Rules; co-author of Suburban Nation and The Smart Growth Manual. FAICP, FCNU, LEED-AP, Honorary ASLA. Master of Architecture with Distinction, Harvard Graduate School of Design. 2022 Seaside Prize, an award whose previous recipients include Jane Jacobs and Christopher Alexander. Ranked among the ten most influential urbanists of all time in Planetizen’s 2023 reader poll. Biography Most arguments about downtowns get stuck on aesthetics. The serious case is economic. Jeff Speck has spent twenty years showing public officials, developers and corporate leaders that the width of a lane, the placement of a parking lot and the design of a block decide whether a city captures investment, talent and tax base, or quietly loses it. Walkable City, published in 2012, set out the General Theory of Walkability and the ten-step process Speck uses to apply it. It became the best-selling urban planning book written this century, and his two 2013 TED Talks have since passed six million views. Walkable City Rules followed in 2018 as the operating manual for practitioners. The argument is built on three decades inside the work. Ten years as Director of Town Planning at Duany Plater-Zyberk and Company, the firm at the centre of the New Urbanism movement. Four years running design at the US National Endowment for the Arts, where he oversaw the Mayors’ Institute on City Design and created the Governors’ Institute on Community Design. Almost two decades leading Speck Dempsey on master plans and street designs for cities including Memphis, Grand Rapids, Lowell and Tampa. The 2022 Seaside Prize, awarded previously to Jane Jacobs and Christopher Alexander, recognises the small group of figures whose work has changed how American cities are now planned. For boards, mayors and developers wrestling with the future of downtown, Speck is the rare adviser who can move between climate strategy, real estate economics and the design of a single intersection without losing the thread. Key speaking topics Walkable cities and downtown economic performance The General Theory of Walkability Street design and the public realm New Urbanism and smart growth Cities, climate and public health economics Downtown revitalisation and real estate investment Transportation policy and the future of the car Ideal for Mayors, city managers, planning directors and downtown development authorities Real estate developers, REITs and corporate site selectors making place-based investment decisions Sustainability, ESG and climate leads in organisations linking property and emissions strategy Boards and senior teams in retail, hospitality and mixed-use real estate Audience outcomes A working definition of walkability as four conditions a street must meet, applicable to any block under review The economic case for walkable places, expressed in terms of property values, retail performance, healthcare costs and carbon A ten-step sequence for prioritising downtown investments when the budget will fund a fraction of what is on the wishlist A clear view of the trade-offs between car capacity, street life and downtown tax base, with named examples of cities that have got it right and wrong A shared vocabulary between planners, developers, finance teams and elected officials for the next set of decisions

Why organisations work with Jeremy Schwartz He has sat in the chief executive seat at The Body Shop and as interim joint CEO at Pandora, so the advice on transformation comes from someone who has signed off the trade-offs, not described them. He led the launch of “Enrich Not Exploit” at The Body Shop, a sustainability commitment with hard 2020 targets across ingredients, packaging, suppliers and stores, and oversaw the business through the 1bn euro sale to Natura. He proposed the consumer concept behind Coca-Cola Zero during his time as Marketing and Innovation Director for Coca-Cola Europe, giving him credibility on commercial brand creation as well as ethical repositioning. His current mandates as Practice Chairman at Kantar and advisor to McKinsey’s Business Transformation Practice keep him close to live programmes inside large consumer and retail organisations. Few speakers can argue the commercial case for sustainability from inside the P&L of a global beauty business and the boardroom of a listed jewellery company. Biography highlights CEO of The Body Shop, 2013-2017; led the “Enrich Not Exploit” sustainability strategy and the 1bn euro divestment from L’Oreal to Natura. Chief Operating Officer and interim joint CEO of Pandora A/S. Managing Director, L’Oreal UK; Marketing and Innovation Director, Coca-Cola Europe; Brand Director, Sainsbury’s; CMO, News International. Practice Chairman, Kantar Sustainable Transformation Practice; Senior Advisor, McKinsey Business Transformation Practice. Founder and host of the “Saving Tomorrow’s Planet” podcast. Founding trustee, Against Malaria Foundation. Biography The hardest job in a consumer business right now is holding two clocks at once. The quarterly clock that the market reads, and the multi-year clock that sustainability commitments, digital re-platforming and supply chain redesign actually run on. Schwartz has run a business under both. As CEO of The Body Shop from 2013 to 2017, he led the launch of “Enrich Not Exploit”, a sustainability commitment with measurable 2020 targets on ingredients, packaging, fair trade sourcing and habitat protection. Over the same period he steered the business back to growth and through the 1bn euro sale from L’Oreal to Natura. Before that he was Managing Director of L’Oreal UK, Marketing and Innovation Director for Coca-Cola in Europe (where he proposed the consumer concept behind Coca-Cola Zero), Brand Director at Sainsbury’s, and CMO at News International. He later served as Chief Operating Officer and interim joint CEO of Pandora. His advisory work now sits inside the practices that buy-side leaders actually use. He is Practice Chairman of Kantar’s Sustainable Transformation Practice and Senior Advisor to McKinsey’s Business Transformation Practice. That keeps the speaking material close to live transformation programmes rather than retrospective case studies. He hosts the “Saving Tomorrow’s Planet” podcast, interviewing leaders who are reducing emissions inside operating businesses, and is a founding trustee of the Against Malaria Foundation. The through-line across all of this is the same argument he makes to boards: sustainability and commercial growth are not parallel agendas to be balanced, they are the same agenda once the operating model is set up to carry both. Key speaking topics Consumer brand transformation Sustainability and commercial growth Retail leadership CEO and executive team performance Marketing and innovation in consumer businesses Purpose and culture in transformation Digital transformation in retail Ideal for CEOs and executive committees in consumer, retail and FMCG businesses balancing growth targets with sustainability commitments. CMOs and brand leaders rebuilding propositions around purpose without losing commercial discipline. Boards and chairs evaluating ESG and transformation programmes with real P&L implications. Senior leadership teams inside transformation, sustainability or digital programmes that need an outside CEO voice. Audience outcomes A working argument for why sustainability and commercial growth belong in the same operating plan, drawn from a CEO who has run it. Specific examples from The Body Shop, Pandora, L’Oreal and Coca-Cola of how brand, marketing and sustainability decisions look from inside the P&L. A clearer view of where consumer transformations stall and what senior leaders can do about it before they reach the operating teams. Practical reference points for boards on how to set sustainability targets that survive contact with quarterly performance.

Why organisations work with Jim Carroll He builds each keynote around the client’s own industry data, not a generic deck. NASA, Pfizer, the World Bank, and the PGA of America have brought him in to map their specific sector horizon, from space to pharma acceleration to manufacturing in emerging economies. BusinessWeek named him one of four leading sources of insight on innovation and creativity, a credential that travels well in C-suite rooms where buyers want an outside voice with editorial standing. He pairs futurist work with a CPA background and a decade inside large advisory firms. That combination tends to land with CFOs and operating leaders who push back on speakers without commercial grounding. Two million-plus attendees across thirty years of corporate, institutional, and conference platforms, including the World Government Summit and the Swiss Innovation Forum, give him a pattern library few peers can match. His column work for the Globe and Mail and trade titles such as Profit and Marketing established an independent public record of trend calls, useful when boards want a speaker whose views predate the engagement. Biography highlights Named by BusinessWeek as one of four leading sources of insight on innovation and creativity. Lifetime Achievement Award, Canadian New Media Awards (2002), for pioneering work in the digital industry. Named “One of 50 International Names to Know” by the Online Journalism Review. Keynote engagements for NASA, The Walt Disney Company, Pfizer, the World Bank, the PGA of America, Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft, BlackRock, the Swiss Innovation Forum, and the World Government Summit. Author of titles including “The Future Belongs To Those Who Are Fast”, “Think Big, Start Small, Scale Fast”, and “Dancing in the Rain: How Bold Leaders Grow Stronger in Stormy Times”. Former national columnist for the Globe and Mail; columns in Profit, Marketing, and hiTech Careers; CPA with prior advisory, tax, and audit experience at predecessor firms of KPMG and EY. Biography The hardest call in any boardroom is timing. Most leadership teams can describe the trend lines reshaping their industry. Far fewer can say, with conviction, which curve bends in the next eighteen months and which is still a decade out. That gap is where Carroll’s work lives. He has spent more than thirty years building a library of industry-specific futurist research, then translating it into keynotes for the executive teams making capital and portfolio decisions. NASA brought him in twice for sessions on the future of the space industry. Pfizer engaged him on the acceleration of medical science. The PGA of America used him to rethink innovation in golf. The World Bank asked him to look at manufacturing in emerging economies. Each engagement is built from the client’s own sector data rather than a generic trends deck. The credentials behind that work matter. BusinessWeek named him one of four leading sources of insight on innovation and creativity. The Canadian New Media Awards gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002. The Online Journalism Review listed him among “50 International Names to Know”. A CPA designation and roughly a decade in advisory, tax, and audit roles at predecessor firms of KPMG and EY underwrite the commercial register he speaks in. His books, from “The Future Belongs To Those Who Are Fast” through to “Dancing in the Rain: How Bold Leaders Grow Stronger in Stormy Times”, argue a consistent line: the organisations that win in volatile decades are the ones that compress decision cycles, treat optimism as a strategy, and refuse to let the planning calendar set the pace of change. Key speaking topics Industry-specific trend forecasting Innovation and disruption Strategic foresight and scenario planning Acceleration and decision velocity Future of healthcare, manufacturing, and financial services Leadership in volatile markets Workforce and skills transformation Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting three-to-five-year strategy in industries facing structural disruption CEOs, CSOs, and innovation leads commissioning offsites that need an outside trend voice anchored in their sector Conference programmes for healthcare, manufacturing, energy, financial services, and technology that need a headline futurist with sector range Audience outcomes A clearer view of which trends in the audience’s specific industry are accelerating, which are overhyped, and which are mispriced by current strategy. A sharper internal language for talking about decision speed, with examples drawn from sectors as varied as space, pharma, and manufacturing. Confidence to challenge planning cycles and capital allocation assumptions that quietly assume a slower world. Concrete reference points from named organisations (NASA, Pfizer, the PGA of America, the World Bank) that have used the same lens.

Why organisations work with Jim Harris Direct strategic counsel on enterprise AI deployment from a consultant who advises CEOs at IBM, SAP, Walmart, American Express and the UK Cabinet Office on the same decisions A peer-validated authority signal: named 2024 Speaker of the Year by TEC Canada, the Canadian arm of Vistage, an audience of operating chief executives who book speakers for utility, not entertainment An evidence base built across industries undergoing structural disruption, from autonomous vehicles and insurance to retail, financial services and energy, applied to the specific competitive context of the client A clear analytic frame separating product innovation (where most executive attention sits) from business model, process and customer experience innovation (where most of the value sits) Biography highlights #1 international bestseller Blindsided!, published in 80 countries and selected by Soundview Executive Summaries as a best business book of the year TEC Canada Speaker of the Year, February 2024, recognising AI keynotes to chief executives Closing keynote speaker, World Future Society conference Consulting and keynote client roster including Walmart, IBM, SAP, American Express, Barclays, Munich Re, Swiss Re, Zurich Insurance and the UK Cabinet Office Trained personally by former US Vice President Al Gore to deliver An Inconvenient Truth BA in English and Politics, Queen’s University; former representative of the Covey Leadership Center teaching The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People Biography Most enterprise AI investment has produced pilot projects, not operating advantage. The boards funding those pilots increasingly want to know which ones will move the P&L, which ones should be killed, and which competitor’s business model will collapse first as generative AI matures. That is the brief Jim Harris is working against when he sits with an executive team. His authority is built on the consulting side of his career, not the publishing side. Walmart, IBM, SAP, American Express, Barclays, GM, Canon, Munich Re, Swiss Re and the UK Cabinet Office have all retained him for strategic work on disruption and innovation. TEC Canada, part of the Vistage peer network of operating CEOs, named him Speaker of the Year in 2024 specifically for his AI keynotes. The award is meaningful because the audience is buying decision-grade content, not motivation. His core analytic argument is simple. Product innovation gets the budget and the headlines, but reimagining the business model, the process stack and the customer experience is where most of the value moves. Blindsided!, a #1 international bestseller distributed in 80 countries and summarised by Soundview to 80,000 executives, traced that pattern across industries. The current generative AI cycle is the most concentrated test of that argument so far. Harris was trained personally by Al Gore to deliver An Inconvenient Truth and has been the closing keynote speaker at the World Future Society conference. He read English and Politics at Queen’s University and spent the early 1990s representing the Covey Leadership Center, teaching The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People before the consulting practice took over. Key speaking topics Generative AI in the enterprise Disruptive innovation across industries Business model and process redesign Digital transformation strategy Leadership through technological disruption Strategic foresight and scenario planning Sustainability and the energy transition Ideal for CEO, COO and board audiences setting AI and digital strategy Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers and Chief Digital Officers responsible for enterprise AI rollout Strategy and transformation leaders working on business model redesign Executive offsites and senior leadership retreats where the brief is to set direction, not workshop tactics Audience outcomes A sharper view of where in the business AI investment is most likely to convert into margin and where it is being wasted Industry-specific examples of how disruption cascades from a single technology shift into adjacent sectors A working distinction between product, process, business-model and customer-experience innovation, applied to live competitive questions A defensible answer to the question a board will ask next: which of our current bets are pilots, and which are operating commitments

Why organisations work with Jim McKelvey He built the only company on record to beat Amazon in a head-to-head product fight, and turned that experience into a transferable framework leadership teams can apply to their own categories. He sits at the rare intersection of operator and macroeconomic policymaker, currently chairing the board of the St. Louis Fed while still building companies; few speakers can move credibly between Square’s product decisions and the rate environment shaping them. His Innovation Stack thesis gives strategy teams a sharper diagnostic than the standard moat conversation: not what protects your business today, but how many interlocking decisions a rival would need to replicate to dislodge you. He brings a public, named example of how to think about workforce reinvention through LaunchCode, which has placed more than 4,000 non-traditional candidates into technology roles at Mastercard, Boeing and others. Biography highlights Co-founder of Square (now Block, Inc.), launched with Jack Dorsey in 2009; original card reader held in the Museum of Modern Art permanent collection. Author of The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time, Portfolio/Penguin, 2020. Chair of the board of directors, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, designated 2022 and redesignated 2023; Class C Independent Director since 2017. Founder of LaunchCode, a non-profit that has placed over 4,000 people into technology careers across 500-plus hiring partners. Founder and CEO of Invisibly, rebuilding the economics between publishers, readers and data. McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis named in his honour in 2019 following a $15 million gift. Biography Amazon launched a payments product designed to kill Square. It undercut on price, leaned on its scale, and inside a year quietly withdrew. That contest is the substrate of Jim McKelvey’s argument: when a category is genuinely new, single innovations do not protect you. Stacks of them do. The Innovation Stack, published by Portfolio in 2020, formalises what McKelvey lived through as Square’s co-founder. The thesis is that companies which expand markets, rather than capture them, are built from chains of decisions where each new solution forces the next. Competitors who copy one element fail because the system, not the feature, is the moat. It is the working theory boards reach for when they want a sharper alternative to the conventional advantage conversation. McKelvey’s authority on this question is not solely literary. He chairs the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, a Class C Independent Director seat held since 2017 and the chair role designated for 2022 and 2023, which gives him a continuous view of the macro environment in which capital and category decisions are made. He also founded LaunchCode, which has placed more than 4,000 people into engineering jobs at firms including Mastercard and Boeing by treating the talent gap as a system problem, not a training one. His current company, Invisibly, is an attempt to rebuild the economic contract between publishers, readers and the platforms that mediate them. Like Square in 2009, it is a wager on a category that does not yet exist in the form it needs to. That is the work McKelvey is recognisably good at, and the work he can teach leadership teams to see in their own organisations. Key speaking topics The Innovation Stack as a strategy framework Category creation versus category capture Defending against larger incumbents Entrepreneurship at scale Workforce reinvention and technology talent Payments, fintech and the economics of money Boards, capital and the macro environment Ideal for CEOs and executive committees rethinking competitive moat Strategy and corporate development leaders evaluating new categories Founders and scale-up leadership teams beyond product-market fit Boards and innovation committees revisiting growth assumptions Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the Innovation Stack and how to map their own organisation’s stack A specific lens for assessing whether a current advantage is replicable or systemic Sharper questions to bring to category bets, M&A targets, and adjacency moves An operator’s account of beating a larger incumbent without matching its resources A clearer view of how monetary and capital conditions shape commercial strategy