Geschäftsstrategie & Wachstum speakers

Why organisations work with Andy Milligan Seven books across Kogan Page and Financial Times imprints, including Bold (CMI Management Book of the Year, e-book category, 2012) and On Purpose with Shaun Smith, give him a documented track record on brand-led growth that consultants without published evidence cannot match. He works the full chain from purpose to promise to operational delivery, which is rare. Most advisors stop at strategy or stop at touchpoint design. He has spent thirty years on the connection between them. Client work spans Nissan, McLaren, Barclays, Unilever, FIFA, IHG, Roche and WWF across Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the USA and Europe. The breadth of categories and geographies means his examples land with audiences in heavily regulated, consumer, and B2B sectors equally. His starting position is that brand lives in employee behaviour before it lives in customer perception. For leaders trying to align a fatigued workforce behind a customer promise, that is the more useful framing. Biography highlights Founding partner of The Caffeine Partnership, the UK brand and growth consultancy he co-founded in 2006. Began his career at Interbrand in London; ran the firm’s Singapore office and later led its Internal Brand Management practice. Co-author of On Purpose (Kogan Page, 2015) and Bold: How to be Brave in Business and Win with Shaun Smith. Bold won the CMI Management Book of the Year award in the e-book category in 2012. Co-author of Myths of Branding with Simon Bailey (Kogan Page, 2017; second edition 2022). Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; media commentator for BBC, Sky and CNN on brand issues. Biography Brand is an operating discipline, not a marketing one. That has been the thesis of Andy Milligan’s work since his time at Interbrand in the 1990s, where he ran the Singapore office and later led the firm’s Internal Brand Management practice. The argument is now unfashionable enough to be useful again: customers do not experience strategy decks, they experience employees, products and service moments. In 2006 he co-founded The Caffeine Partnership, a brand and growth consultancy that has advised Nissan, McLaren, Barclays, Unilever, FIFA, IHG, Roche, WWF and Thai Airways across Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the USA and Europe. The work moves between purpose definition, customer experience design and employee engagement, treated as one connected problem rather than three departmental ones. The same argument runs through seven books. Uncommon Practice and See, Feel, Think, Do with Shaun Smith examined the link between corporate culture and brand experience. Bold: How to be Brave in Business and Win won the CMI Management Book of the Year in the e-book category in 2012. On Purpose (Kogan Page, 2015) set out a practical framework for translating purpose into a branded customer experience. Myths of Branding with Simon Bailey, now in its second edition with Kogan Page, dismantles the assumption that brand work is a logo problem. Milligan is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and comments regularly for BBC, Sky and CNN. The reason senior teams bring him into commercial growth conversations is straightforward: he has spent thirty years arguing that organisations get the customers their employees deserve, and he can show them where the gap is. Key speaking topics Brand-led business growth Customer experience strategy Employee engagement and brand Purpose and commercial strategy Brand culture and organisational alignment Marketing and brand myths Ideal for CMOs, CCOs and brand directors aligning marketing with operational delivery CHROs and CPOs connecting employee engagement to customer outcomes CEOs and boards repositioning a business around a sharper purpose Customer experience and transformation leads moving from strategy to execution Audience outcomes A clearer view of where brand promise and customer experience are diverging in their own organisation A working definition of purpose that can be tested against employee and customer behaviour, not slogan Named case examples across consumer, financial services, automotive and sport that translate to the audience’s category A short list of brand myths their leadership team is probably still operating under

Why organisations work with Angelica Cheung She built Vogue China from zero to the definitive voice in Chinese luxury over 16 years as founding editor-in-chief, which gives her a deeper read on how Chinese taste actually moves than almost any operating executive a board could hire. She now sits on both sides of the table, as Venture Partner at HongShan (formerly Sequoia Capital China) and as strategic adviser to Gildo Zegna for Asia, so her view is priced against real capital and real operating decisions. She holds board seats at Zegna Group, AMI Paris, We11Done and Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, a rare spread across European luxury, emerging Asian design and global hospitality that lets her compare what is working across categories. She is Asia Ambassador for the British Fashion Council and a recurring judge on the LVMH Prize, ANDAM, Woolmark and British Fashion Awards, which means she is reading the next generation of brands before they land. She was inducted into the BoF 500 Hall of Fame in 2019, an editorial recognition by Business of Fashion of long-run influence on the global industry, not a one-year listing. Biography highlights Founding editor-in-chief of Vogue China, 2005 to 2020, launching the title and leading it for 16 years. Venture Partner at HongShan (formerly Sequoia Capital China), covering consumer and lifestyle investments. Strategic Adviser to the CEO of the Ermenegildo Zegna Group for Asia. Board Director at Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, appointed January 2026, representing Cascade Investment. Board positions at Zegna Group (NYSE), AMI Paris and We11Done. Asia Ambassador of the British Fashion Council; BoF 500 Hall of Fame inductee, 2019. International Advisory Board, Durham University Business School. Biography China’s luxury market is one of the most studied and least understood commercial environments in the world. Angelica Cheung has spent more than two decades inside it, first as the editor who defined how Chinese readers saw global fashion, then as an investor and board director shaping how global brands enter the market. She launched Vogue China in September 2005 for Conde Nast and ran the title for 16 years until stepping down in December 2020. The first issue sold out its 300,000 print run and was reprinted twice, and she went on to become the editorial interlocutor most global houses relied on when they had to read Chinese taste, generational shifts and cultural nuance. In 2021 she joined HongShan, formerly Sequoia Capital China, as Venture Partner covering consumer and lifestyle, and was appointed Strategic Adviser for Asia to Gildo Zegna, CEO of the Ermenegildo Zegna Group. She now holds board seats at Zegna Group, AMI Paris, We11Done and Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, the Four Seasons appointment announced in January 2026. Her credentials in the wider industry match the operating work. She is Asia Ambassador of the British Fashion Council, a judge on the LVMH Prize, ANDAM, International Woolmark and British Fashion Awards panels, a member of Durham University Business School’s International Advisory Board, and a BoF 500 Hall of Fame inductee since 2019. Key speaking topics China’s luxury and premium consumer Brand building in the Chinese market Generational shifts among Chinese consumers Culture-led strategy for global consumer brands Consumer and lifestyle investment in Asia Global luxury growth strategy Fashion industry leadership Ideal for CEOs and CMOs of global luxury, premium fashion and beauty groups Consumer brand boards considering entry, expansion or repositioning in China Hospitality and lifestyle leadership teams managing Chinese outbound and domestic demand Investors and corporate development teams allocating to Asian consumer Audience outcomes A clearer read on where Chinese luxury and premium demand is actually moving, from the people and platforms driving it A working view of how global brands are winning or losing with Chinese consumers right now, grounded in named brands and specific moves A sharper question set for their own China strategy, from positioning through to channel and talent A sense of what investors and boards are pricing into Asian consumer bets, told from someone doing both

Why organisations work with Anil Gupta His research on China and India spans thirty years and six books: not a regional specialist’s tour d’horizon, but a body of work that produced frameworks now used by boards and strategy teams at major multinationals The «global mindset» framework distinguishing local depth from global connect gives leadership teams a diagnostic tool for identifying where strategic blind spots sit, not just a description of why diversity matters One of only three professors in the world elected a lifetime fellow of all three premier academic bodies in his field: the Academy of Management, the Strategic Management Society, and the Academy of International Business Organisations that have engaged Gupta have included GE, Walmart, IBM, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, and SAP; his frameworks are tested against the operational complexity of companies with genuinely global footprints, not just emerging market theory He is a member of the Bretton Woods Committee, the body convened by the World Bank and IMF to advise on global economic challenges, giving him line-of-sight into macro-structural debates that rarely reach corporate strategy teams Biography highlights Michael D. Dingman Chair in Strategy and Entrepreneurship, Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland 2024 inductee, Thinkers50 Hall of Fame; ranked continuously in Thinkers50 since 2013; 2023 C.K. Prahalad Award for Scholarly Impact on Practice, Strategic Management Society One of only three professors worldwide holding lifetime fellowship from all three major academic bodies in the field: Academy of Management, Strategic Management Society, and Academy of International Business Co-founder and chairman, China India Institute, Washington DC; visiting professor of strategy, INSEAD Author or co-author of six books (Wiley), including Getting China and India Right (Axiom Book Awards Silver Prize) and The Silk Road Rediscovered; contributor to Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Bloomberg BusinessWeek PhD, Harvard Business School; MBA, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad; B.Tech, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur Member, World Economic Forum Global Expert Network and Bretton Woods Committee; regular participant at WEF Davos Biography Anil Gupta holds the Michael D. Dingman Chair in Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. Here, he has spent three decades building one of the most specific bodies of research in global strategy: the competitive dynamics of China and India, and what their rise means for organisations competing across the global economy. His 2024 induction into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame recognised that work, explicitly citing his contribution to understanding globalisation trends over thirty years. Most strategy advice on emerging markets treats China and India as a category. Gupta’s argument, developed across six books and more than seventy academic papers, is that they represent four distinct strategic realities simultaneously: mega-markets, cost platforms, innovation bases, and springboards for fearsome new global competitors. Getting China and India Right, the clearest statement of that argument, received the Axiom Book Awards Silver Prize and was shortlisted for the Asia Society’s Bernard Schwartz Book Award. The Silk Road Rediscovered extended that work into the competitive dynamics between the two economies themselves. What separates Gupta’s perspective from macro-commentary is its institutional background. He is one of only three professors in the world elected a lifetime fellow of the Academy of Management, the Strategic Management Society, and the Academy of International Business simultaneously, a peer recognition that reflects the rigour of the underlying research, not its public profile. He was awarded the Strategic Management Society’s C.K. Prahalad Award for Scholarly Impact on Practice in 2023. He is also chairman of the China India Institute, a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Expert Network, and sits on the Bretton Woods Committee convened by the World Bank and IMF. His work and opinion have appeared in the Harvard Business Review, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and Bloomberg BusinessWeek. He holds a PhD from Harvard Business School, an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad, and a B.Tech from IIT Kanpur. Key speaking topics Global strategy and international competitive advantage China and India as strategic priorities Emerging markets and diverging economic trajectories Global mindset and cross-border leadership capability Geopolitical shifts and corporate strategy Global megatrends and scenario planning Globalisation, deglobalisation, and supply chain restructuring Ideal for C-suite and board-level leadership teams with significant international exposure or expansion mandates Chief Strategy Officers and corporate strategy functions navigating market entry or competitive repositioning in Asia Investor and sovereign wealth audiences monitoring emerging market trajectories Executive education cohorts at graduate business schools focused on global strategy Audience outcomes A structured framework – the «global mindset» model – for diagnosing where an organisation’s international strategy assumptions are outdated or misaligned Clearer understanding of why China and India require distinct strategic logics, not a single emerging-markets approach Practical perspective on which emerging markets are better positioned for long-term growth and what that means for investment and competitive positioning Sharper criteria for evaluating when global expansion creates competitive advantage versus merely adding complexity An updated reading of the macro-structural forces – demographic, technological, environmental – reshaping international competition over the next decade

Why organisations work with Ann Handley She built two of the businesses that defined modern digital marketing, ClickZ and MarketingProfs, so her advice on content operations comes from running them, not theorising about them. Everybody Writes, now in a second edition, gives commercial teams a single shared standard for how the company writes to customers, prospects and employees. She has spent 15+ years shaping the agenda at the MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum, which gives her a working view of what is actually moving the pipeline for B2B marketers right now. Her Total Annarchy newsletter, read fortnightly by more than 51,000 marketers, is itself the case study: subscriber-driven, voice-first, low-volume, high-trust. IBM named her among the seven people shaping modern marketing; that recognition reflects influence on how the discipline is practised, not just commented on. Biography highlights Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs (600,000+ subscribers; annual B2B Marketing Forum). Co-founder of ClickZ, an early authority in digital marketing news and commentary. Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Everybody Writes; co-author of Content Rules; works translated into 19 languages. Named by IBM as one of “the 7 people shaping modern marketing,”; cited by Forbes as a top thought leader. Writes Total Annarchy, a fortnightly newsletter with 51,000+ subscribers. Contributing writer to Entrepreneur, Inc., Mashable, Huffington Post and the Wall Street Journal. Biography Most marketing functions have a content problem they have decided to call a strategy problem. They publish more, segment harder, automate further, and the writing still sounds like everyone else’s. Ann Handley’s working argument is that the words are the product, and that an organisation’s marketing is only as serious as the sentences it is willing to put its name to. She has tested that argument inside the businesses she helped build. As co-founder of ClickZ and Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs, she has spent two decades running marketing operations rather than narrating them, and the MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum has become one of the few places where senior B2B marketers go to compare notes on what is actually working. Her book Everybody Writes, a Wall Street Journal bestseller now in a second edition, gives commercial teams a shared operating standard for marketing writing. Content Rules, her earlier title with C.C. Chapman, did the same job for the wider content stack. Both have been translated into 19 languages and are used inside marketing organisations as training material, not coffee-table reading. What sets her work apart at the keynote level is the refusal to treat content as a category. IBM placed her among the seven people shaping modern marketing because she keeps pulling marketing back to the part of the job that is hardest to fake: writing something a customer would actually want to read. Key speaking topics Content marketing strategy Marketing writing as a commercial discipline B2B marketing and demand generation Brand voice and editorial standards Email and newsletter strategy Customer experience through content Storytelling for business Ideal for CMOs and heads of marketing are rebuilding content operations for measurable commercial outcomes Heads of brand, communications and content responsible for editorial standards across teams B2B marketing leaders working on demand generation and customer engagement Founders and commercial leaders whose growth depends on the company sounding like itself Audience outcomes A clearer working definition of what good marketing writing looks like inside their own organisation Specific tests for whether a piece of content earns the attention it asks for A view on how to run content as an operating function, not a campaign output Concrete examples of B2B and B2C brands using writing and editorial voice to win commercially A more honest read on what their current marketing sounds like to a customer

Why organisations work with Anne Lise Kjaer The Trend Management Toolkit is a published, step-by-step methodology – not a proprietary black box – giving leadership teams a repeatable, teachable system for reading and prioritising complex signals before they become obvious to competitors. The 4P framework (People, Planet, Purpose, Profit) gives boards a practical lens for evaluating long-range decisions against societal value as well as financial return – a model that predates mainstream ESG adoption and has been tested across sectors from automotive to humanitarian. Government advisory appointments – to the UK’s DEFRA and Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority IPE – mean her foresight work is calibrated against real policy and long-horizon planning environments, not only corporate strategy rooms. Kjaer Global has operated continuously since 1988; the methodology behind her speaking work has been applied and revised across multiple economic cycles, not developed for the conference circuit. Her design background gives trend analysis a granular, sensory dimension: she reads cultural and behavioural shifts in material culture and consumer behaviour before they appear in quantitative data. Biography highlights Founder of Kjaer Global, London-based trend management and futures consultancy, established 1988 Author of The Trend Management Toolkit: A Practical Guide to the Future (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) – a step-by-step methodology for strategic trend analysis and scenario planning Developer of the 4P framework (People, Planet, Purpose, Profit), applied with clients including BMW, McKinsey, IKEA, EY, UNICEF, Amazon, and Volvo Appointed adviser to the UK government’s DEFRA (2022); former member of Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority International Panel of Experts (2018–2022) Listed among Forbes’ 50 Leading Female Futurists (2020); featured in MIT Technology Review’s profile of professional forecasters Profiled by the Financial Times; regular media contributor across BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Fast Company, and The Times Copenhagen Goodwill Ambassador (honorary title, since 2004); BA in Design, TEKO Design and Business School Biography Most organisations treat trends as incoming intelligence to be monitored. Anne Lise Kjaer’s argument – developed over more than three decades running Kjaer Global – is that monitoring is not enough. Trends require a system for evaluation, prioritisation, and integration into decisions. Without that system, even well-informed leadership teams are reacting, not preparing. The Trend Management Toolkit, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2014, is the codification of that system. It moves through the practical mechanics of trend mapping: how to distinguish structural drivers from surface noise, how to scenario-plan across people, planet, purpose, and profit dimensions, and how to apply foresight to brand, innovation, and leadership decisions. The 4P framework at its core is not a values statement – it is a decision architecture, and it predates the mainstream ESG vocabulary by several years. The client range is deliberate evidence. BMW, McKinsey, EY, IKEA, and UNICEF are not natural strategic neighbours, but each has used Kjaer’s methodology for different planning challenges. Her formal advisory roles extend the same logic into government: as an appointed adviser to the UK’s DEFRA and a member of Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority’s International Panel of Experts – advising on urban planning to 2060 – her foresight work has been tested against policy timelines, not only commercial ones. The Financial Times described her perspective as one that creates social prototypes based on nascent trends. Forbes included her among its 50 Leading Female Futurists; MIT Technology Review featured her in its 2020 profile of professional forecasters. She has contributed commentary across BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Fast Company, and The Times, and holds the honorary title of Copenhagen Goodwill Ambassador. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and trend management methodology The 4P framework: People, Planet, Purpose, Profit Sustainable and responsible innovation Long-range consumer and societal trends Scenario planning for leadership and strategy Glocalisation and regional economic ecosystems Futures thinking for business model development Ideal for Executive and leadership teams building or pressure-testing long-range strategy Chief Strategy Officers and innovation leads with responsibility for horizon-scanning and scenario planning Boards integrating ESG and societal value into long-term business decision-making Strategy, futures, and sustainability conferences requiring rigorous methodology rather than trend commentary Audience outcomes Practical understanding of the Trend Management Toolkit methodology and how to apply it to their organisation’s planning cycles A working model for distinguishing high-signal trends from background noise in a saturated information environment Familiarity with the 4P framework as an operational decision lens – not an abstract value statement – applicable to board-level strategic choices Concrete examples of how organisations across sectors have translated structured foresight into competitive advantage Greater confidence in making long-term strategic commitments under conditions of genuine uncertainty

Why organisations work with Anthony Hilton Five decades inside the City press, from trainee on The Guardian in 1968 to City Editor of The Times and the Evening Standard, give audiences a working memory of how UK financial crises, regulatory shifts and market cycles actually play out. A named position of record. As Senior Commentator for The Independent and The Standard his arguments on markets, pensions and the economy are already in public circulation, so organisations get a writer whose views are testable. Specific authority on pensions and long-term savings, an area he has covered as a weekly columnist for more than 30 years and on which he has been singled out by UK pensions industry awards. A track record of calling the 2008 crash, recognised by the University of Aberdeen with an honorary degree in 2010 for articles from 2005 to 2007 warning that the financial system was heading for trouble. Deep fluency in corporate and financial communication, drawn from his book How to Communicate Financial Information to Employees and a career running the editorial operation at the Evening Standard as Managing Director. Biography highlights Senior Commentator for The Independent and The London Standard, writing on markets, pensions, investor relations and the economy. Former City Editor of The Times (1981 to 1983) and City Editor of the Evening Standard (1984 to 1989), then Managing Director of the Evening Standard from 1989. Author of City Within a State: A Portrait of Britain’s Financial World, a study of how the City of London really works. Wincott Prize for Business Journalism; Business Journalist of the Year and Outstanding Achievement in Financial Journalism at the 2014 ABI Financial Media Awards; Association of British Insurers Commentator of the Year (twice); Decade of Excellence Award, World Press Awards, 2007. Honorary degree from the University of Aberdeen, 2010, for services to journalism, including articles from 2005 to 2007 predicting the financial crash; MA in Economics, University of Aberdeen. Joint founder and past non-executive chairman of Newsdesk Media Group; Visiting Professor in Economics at London Metropolitan University, 2010 to 2012; former Editor of Accountancy Age. Biography The 1970s sterling story, the 1980s Big Bang, the dotcom crash, the 2008 banking collapse and the pensions and inflation shocks since: the same journalist has covered them in real time for a general reader, inside the British national press. That continuity is unusual, and it is the reason senior audiences listen when Anthony Hilton explains what is happening in the City. He joined Fleet Street in 1968 as a trainee on The Guardian, moved to New York in 1978 as Business Correspondent for the Sunday Times, and returned in 1981 to become City Editor of The Times. From 1984 he was City Editor of the Evening Standard, then its Managing Director from 1989, before returning to writing. He is now Senior Commentator for The Independent and The London Standard. The published argument is the other half of the case. City Within a State set out how the City of London actually works as a system of firms, regulators and capital flows. How to Communicate Financial Information to Employees codified what he has observed boards and finance chiefs get wrong when talking about money to their own people. His weekly columns on pensions, investor relations and the economic outlook have run for more than 30 years. The recognition is from bodies that matter in the field. The Wincott Prize for Business Journalism, Business Journalist of the Year and Outstanding Achievement in Financial Journalism at the 2014 ABI Financial Media Awards, and Commentator of the Year from the Association of British Insurers, twice. The University of Aberdeen awarded him an honorary degree in 2010 in recognition of columns from 2005 to 2007 that warned the financial system was heading for serious trouble. Key speaking topics UK economic outlook and policy City of London, markets and investor relations Pensions, long-term savings and retirement policy Corporate governance and financial communication Financial journalism and the media view of business Economic history and lessons from past UK financial crises Ideal for Boards and CEOs in financial services, asset management, insurance and pensions needing an informed macro and markets read CFOs, heads of investor relations and corporate communications teams preparing for scrutiny from the City press Pensions trustees, scheme sponsors and providers running strategy or member communication programmes Conferences and industry dinners needing a senior City commentator as host, moderator or after-dinner speaker Audience outcomes A clearer read on how UK economic policy, Bank of England decisions and market conditions intersect with their own sector A working columnist’s view on how the City press is interpreting their industry and their company Named historical reference points for making sense of current market and pensions stress A sharper frame on pensions and long-term savings policy for employers and trustees An argument on where the UK economy is heading and what that implies for strategy and communication

Why organisations work with Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez His “Project Economy” argument, developed across seven books, two Harvard Business Review cover articles, and the 2026 book Powered by Projects (HBR Press), gives boards and CEOs an evidence-based framework for why transformation fails and what structural changes are required to fix it. He provides the most specific publicly available diagnosis of executive project failure: leaders sponsor too many initiatives, misunderstand their own sponsorship role, and treat execution as a delegated technical function rather than a strategic leadership responsibility. His current C-suite work focuses on execution speed and the integration of AI into prioritisation, sponsorship, and decision-making, addressing the practical mechanics of moving transformation programmes faster rather than only managing them better. His 2026 “Project-Driven Organization” model offers transformation leaders a concrete operating architecture beyond agile and beyond PMO reform for building organisations capable of delivering sustained change. A 25-year corporate career at PwC, BNP Paribas Fortis, Fortis Bank, and GlaxoSmithKline Vaccines, including leading the post-merger integration of ABN AMRO, one of the largest acquisitions in financial services history, means his frameworks are stress-tested against the mechanics of real, large-scale transformation. Twice recognised in the Thinkers50 ranking (2023, 2025) and the most published project management author in Harvard Business Review, his arguments carry institutional credibility in conversations at board and C-suite level. Biography highlights Creator of the “Project Economy” concept; author of the featured Harvard Business Review articles “The Project Economy Has Arrived” (Nov/Dec 2021) and “The Project-Driven Organization” (Jan/Feb 2026) Author of Powered by Projects: Leading Your Organization in the Transformation Age (HBR Press, 2026) and the Harvard Business Review Project Management Handbook (HBR Press, 2021) Twice included in the Thinkers50 ranking of the world’s most influential management thinkers (2023, 2025); recipient of the Thinkers50 “Ideas into Practice” award; most published project management author in Harvard Business Review Fellow and former global Chairman, Project Management Institute (2016); currently Vice President, Association for Project Management (APM) Senior corporate career at PricewaterhouseCoopers (global lead, project and change management), BNP Paribas Fortis, Fortis Bank, and GlaxoSmithKline Vaccines Visiting professor at Duke CE, IE Business School, Solvay, Vlerick, École des Ponts, and Skolkovo; MBA, London Business School Founder of Projects & Company; co-founder of the Strategy Implementation Institute; creator of the Brightline Initiative; member of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches Biography Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez built the first phase of his career inside the machinery of large-scale transformation. At PricewaterhouseCoopers, he became global lead for project and change management. At Fortis Bank, he led the post-merger integration of ABN AMRO (at the time, the largest acquisition in financial services history). At GlaxoSmithKline Vaccines, he served as Director of the Program Management Office. Those twenty-five years gave him a precise understanding of where transformation programmes break down, and why. The conclusion he drew is counterintuitive: the problem is not project management. The problem is leadership. His “Project Economy” argument, first published in Harvard Business Review in 2021, extended in his January 2026 book Powered by Projects (HBR Press) and a companion HBR article the same month, holds that projects are now the primary mechanism through which organisations create value. Most senior leaders, however, still manage them as a secondary, delegated activity. The result is a structural misalignment: transformation investment is spread too thin, executive ownership is ambiguous, and programmes stall not from lack of capability but from the absence of a structure built to execute at speed and scale. The “Project-Driven Organization” framework he introduced in 2026 addresses this directly. It is not an argument for better project managers; it is a blueprint for how boards, CEOs, and transformation leads must redesign authority, resource allocation, and culture to make strategic execution a repeatable organisational capability. This is taught at Duke CE, IE Business School, Solvay, Vlerick, École des Ponts, and Skolkovo, and underpins advisory work with organisations including Nestlé, L’Oréal, Google, ING, and Moodys. Twice included in the Thinkers50 ranking (2023 and 2025) and recipient of the Thinkers50 “Ideas into Practice” award, he is a Fellow and former global Chairman of the Project Management Institute and currently Vice President of the Association for Project Management. He is a member of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and the most published project management author in Harvard Business Review. Key speaking topics The Project Economy The Project-Driven Organization Transformation at scale and speed Strategy execution and organisational transformation Executive sponsorship and leadership accountability Portfolio prioritisation and strategic focus AI in accelerating execution Ideal for CEOs, COOs, and boards overseeing large-scale transformation programmes Chief Transformation Officers and strategy implementation leads PMO directors seeking executive-level alignment and mandate Executive education cohorts at business schools focused on strategy execution and organisational change Audience outcomes A reframed understanding of why transformation programmes fail – and the specific leadership behaviours that drive or undermine them Practical criteria for prioritising strategic initiatives when resources are constrained and demand is unlimited A working model of the Project-Driven Organization: what it looks like, how it differs from agile, and how to begin the transition Clarity on what active executive project sponsorship means in practice – and how it differs from oversight Familiarity with the Project Economy argument as a framework for making the case internally for structural change in how transformation is governed

Why organisations work with Archie Norman He ran the Asda turnaround from 1991 and sold the business to Walmart in 1999 at eight times the starting share price, a reference point that still defines UK retail recovery. He has chaired three FTSE-scale boards in very different states of repair: Asda, ITV and Marks & Spencer. Few speakers can discuss board, CEO and shareholder dynamics from all three seats. He sits at the intersection of commercial leadership and public policy, having served as Conservative MP for Tunbridge Wells, Chief Executive of the Conservative Party, and Lead Non-Executive at BEIS. He co-founded Policy Exchange in 2001, a think tank that shaped UK economic and public service reform, which gives his commentary on business and government real weight. The Institute for Turnaround awarded him its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010 for practitioner work on corporate recovery, not for commentary on it. Biography highlights Chairman of Marks & Spencer since September 2017. Chairman of ITV plc from 2010 to 2016. Chief Executive then Chairman of Asda from 1991 to 1999, sold to Walmart in July 1999. Co-founder of the Policy Exchange think tank with Francis Maude in 2001. Lead Non-Executive Board Member at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, 2016 to 2020. Conservative MP for Tunbridge Wells 1997-2005; Chief Executive of the Conservative Party 1998-1999. Institute for Turnaround Lifetime Achievement Award, 2010. Biography Asda was close to collapse when Archie Norman arrived as Chief Executive in 1991. Over the following eight years, he and Allan Leighton rebuilt the operating model, the culture and the commercial pitch. The business was sold to Walmart in 1999 at eight times the starting share price, and the story is still used as a practitioner case at Harvard Business School. What distinguishes his perspective is the seat he has held since. Chairman of ITV from 2010 to 2016 through a hard pivot in the broadcast market. Chairman of Marks & Spencer since 2017, running a multi-year reset of stores, supply chain and digital. Three listed boards, three different forms of inertia, one consistent operating philosophy about how change actually happens inside a large company. The public policy side matters commercially. He was Conservative MP for Tunbridge Wells, Chief Executive of the Conservative Party under William Hague, and Lead Non-Executive at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy from 2016 to 2020. He co-founded the Policy Exchange think tank with Francis Maude in 2001. That background shapes how he reads the interaction between regulators, ministers and boards, which is useful for any chair or CEO managing that perimeter. Youngest partner ever at McKinsey at 28, group finance director at Kingfisher at 32, and recipient of the Institute for Turnaround’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. The point of the sequence is not the speed of it. It is that by the time he arrives in a boardroom to discuss a stalled transformation, he has seen the same patterns from the inside at every scale a UK board is likely to be operating at. Key speaking topics Corporate turnaround and organisational recovery Board and chair leadership Retail strategy and transformation Culture change inside listed companies Business and government Executive leadership under pressure Ideal for Chairs, CEOs and senior independent directors navigating a turnaround or strategic reset. Retail and consumer sector leadership teams. Boards and executive committees managing cultural resistance to change. Senior leaders in regulated industries where government relations shape commercial outcomes. Audience outcomes A concrete view of what the first 100 days of a serious turnaround actually look like at board and operating level. A sharper read on where cultural inertia sits inside a listed business and how to move it. A practitioner perspective on how chair, CEO and shareholder dynamics succeed or fail in a crisis. A clearer picture of how the business-government perimeter is managed in practice, from both sides.

Why organisations work with Arlan Hamilton She built and capitalised a venture firm from nothing, sleeping on the floor at SFO between meetings, then deployed roughly $30 million into more than 200 companies. That is operator credibility on entrepreneurship and capital, not theory. Her investment thesis at Backstage Capital is a working commercial argument that underestimated founders are a mispriced asset class. Audiences leave with a specific framework for how that misallocation happens and where it produces opportunity. Two books with major trade publishers, It’s About Damn Time (Penguin Random House) and Your First Million (Hachette), give her a body of written work that travels with the booking and gives audiences a way to extend the conversation. She is one of a small number of Black women operating at fund-principal level in US venture, and the first non-celebrity Black woman on the cover of Fast Company. That visibility matters for organisations briefing her in front of leadership, founder, or investor audiences. Her register is direct and personal rather than corporate. She is bookable for founder events, investor summits, and leadership conferences where the audience wants honesty about how capital actually gets allocated. Biography highlights Founder and managing partner of Backstage Capital, established 2015; the firm has raised approximately $30 million and backed more than 200 startups led by underrepresented founders. Author of It’s About Damn Time (Penguin Random House, 2020) and Your First Million (Hachette, 2023). First non-celebrity Black woman on the cover of Fast Company (2018). Named one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business (2016). Named to Business Insider’s 23 most powerful LGBTQ+ people in tech (2019). Host of Your First Million, a long-running podcast on building wealth and businesses from the ground up. Biography Backstage Capital was founded in 2015 by a single operator with no finance background, no MBA, and, at the time, no permanent address. The firm has since deployed around $30 million across more than 200 startups led by Black, women, and LGBTQ+ founders. That track record is the central claim of Arlan Hamilton’s work, and it is the basis on which serious organisations book her. Hamilton’s argument is commercial before it is moral. Capital flows to founders who look familiar to the people allocating it, and entire categories of viable business get priced as risk when they are simply unfamiliar. Backstage exists to test that thesis in the market. The portfolio is the proof point, and the books extend the argument into method. The biographical detail is by now well-documented: she built the fund while sleeping on the floor at San Francisco International Airport, doing Silicon Valley meetings by day. It’s About Damn Time (Penguin Random House, 2020) and Your First Million (Hachette, 2023) set out the operating system she developed across that period: how to identify unmet need, how to raise capital without a network, how to build multiple income streams, how to keep going when the room does not yet believe you. She is most useful to organisations and audiences working on early-stage investing, founder development, inclusive capital, and the structural question of how decisions about funding actually get made. Her authority in those conversations is operator authority, not advocacy, which is what makes the work travel. Key speaking topics Venture capital and underestimated founders Entrepreneurship from zero Building and scaling new funds Inclusive investing as commercial strategy Personal resilience and self-belief in business Wealth building and ownership for first-generation founders Ideal for Founder, scale-up and accelerator audiences Venture capital and private equity teams looking at deal flow beyond their networks Corporate venture and innovation leads, particularly those working on supplier diversity or new-market entry Leadership audiences on inclusion who want a commercial frame rather than a compliance frame Audience outcomes A specific argument for why underrepresented founders are a structurally mispriced opportunity, with portfolio evidence A concrete account of how a venture fund gets built without an existing network or institutional backing Practical method on identifying unmet need and turning lived experience into a fundable business Honest perspective from a Black, queer fund principal on how capital decisions are actually made inside the room

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

Why organisations work with Arnaud Chevallier His “Frame, Explore, Decide” process – the core of Solvable (Pearson, 2022) – gives leadership teams a shared language for problem diagnosis that reduces the organisational cost of premature solution-jumping; this is a named, teachable framework, not a consulting philosophy. His research on the five types of strategic questions – published in Harvard Business Review (May-June 2024) and selected for HBR’s 10 Must Reads 2026 – gives executives a tool they can apply immediately to ambiguous, high-stakes discussions. His PhD in nonlinear stochastic mechanics, combined with strategy consulting at Accenture, produces frameworks that are simultaneously more rigorous in their evidence base and more usable in practice than most management academic alternatives. He has worked on genuinely complex, high-ambiguity problem-solving with the International Committee of the Red Cross, Gavi (the Vaccine Alliance), and Tetra Pak – organisations whose decision environments require structured diagnosis, not generic strategy advice. As director of IMD’s Global Management Foundations program and its Complex Problem Solving program, he brings institutional proof that serious executive audiences return to his frameworks at multiple career stages. Biography highlights Professor of Strategy, IMD Business School; joined in 2018 Author, Strategic Thinking in Complex Problem Solving (Oxford University Press, 2016) Co-author, Solvable: A Simple Solution to Complex Problems (Pearson FT, 2022), with Albrecht Enders Contributor to Harvard Business Review; “The Art of Asking Smarter Questions” (May-June 2024) selected for HBR’s 10 Must Reads 2026 Director, IMD Global Management Foundations program; Director, MSc Sustainable Management and Technology (IMD/EPFL/University of Lausanne); Co-Director, IMD Complex Problem Solving program Former Accenture strategist (Houston and London); former Associate Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, Rice University; former graduate dean, University of Monterrey PhD in mechanical engineering, Rice University; engineering degrees, Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Biography Arnaud Chevallier began teaching strategic thinking to engineers at Rice University – a combination that turned out to be revealing. Technically sophisticated minds, trained in rigorous analysis, still defaulted to the same error: they solved problems they had never properly defined. That observation has driven his work at IMD Business School, where he is now Professor of Strategy. His two books – Strategic Thinking in Complex Problem Solving (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Solvable (Pearson FT, 2022, co-authored with Albrecht Enders) – give executives a cross-disciplinary framework for navigating complexity: Frame, Explore, Decide. Both make the same foundational argument. Most strategic failures are framing failures. Organisations commit to solutions before the actual problem is understood. His research on decision quality extends to the questions executives ask. His article “The Art of Asking Smarter Questions,” published in Harvard Business Review in May-June 2024 and co-authored with Frédéric Dalsace and Jean-Louis Barsoux, identifies five types of strategic inquiry that consistently improve decision outcomes. The piece was selected for HBR’s 10 Must Reads 2026 – an editorial signal that the question of how leaders think has moved to the centre of the management agenda. At IMD, Chevallier directs the Global Management Foundations and Complex Problem Solving programs. His consulting work includes Shell, the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and Gavi (the Vaccine Alliance) – organisations whose challenges require structured diagnosis before any solution can be considered. Before entering academia, he worked in Accenture’s Strategy and Business Architecture practice across Houston and London, a background that grounds the frameworks in the reality of high-pressure institutional decisions. Key speaking topics Complex problem-solving frameworks Strategic decision-making under uncertainty Problem framing and diagnosis Cognitive bias and de-biasing in executive decisions Structured questioning for strategic clarity T-shaped thinking and cross-disciplinary problem-solving Evidence-based reasoning in organisations Ideal for Chief Strategy Officers and senior leadership teams navigating high-ambiguity decisions Transformation leads and strategy functions working through complex, multi-stakeholder challenges Engineering and technical leaders transitioning into general management or executive roles Executive MBA cohorts and senior leadership development programmes Audience outcomes A named, deployable framework – Frame, Explore, Decide – for structuring complex, ill-defined problems in real organisational contexts Practical tools for identifying problem misframing before resources and credibility are committed to the wrong solution A working method for recognising and reducing cognitive bias in high-stakes group decisions The five types of strategic question to apply in ambiguous, politically charged, or time-pressured discussions Sharper habits of structured reasoning that can be applied independently after the session

Why organisations work with Arnt Eriksen PayPal, American Express, Visa, Domino’s, and Salesforce all sit on his client list. His point of contact is usually the senior marketing leader carrying the number. His forthcoming book Marketing at Velocity (Kogan Page, April 2027) sets out a thesis on B2B brand compounding, with proprietary frameworks (Velocity Loops, the TRUTH Framework, the Velocity Brand Scorecard) that audiences can apply once they leave the room. Thirty years agency-side at Grey, DDB, Ogilvy, and Isobar means his frameworks come out of work that shipped and clients who renewed. He is a practitioner with a published thesis, which is rarer in this category than buyers expect. Senior marketing audiences have heard the AI-and-content pitch from a dozen other speakers. He gives them a diagnosis of why brand activity is not converting into category position, and a working set of tools for fixing it. Biography highlights Forthcoming book: Marketing at Velocity: B2B Brand Building, Momentum and Category Leadership (Kogan Page, April 2027) Author of Brand You Economics (2021) Thirty years of senior brand experience across more than 75 global brands, including PayPal, American Express, Visa, Domino’s, Salesforce, Meta, and doTERRA Senior agency career at Grey, DDB, Ogilvy, and Isobar; co-founded his first agency at twenty-five Host of the Marketing at Heart podcast Keynotes delivered across the Nordics, Europe, North America, and Australia, including for Salesforce stages Biography Most B2B brands run their marketing as a continuous feed of campaigns and content. Activity rises, dashboards look healthy, and category position barely moves. Arnt Eriksen’s argument is that this is a compounding problem, not an effort problem. For thirty years he has worked inside the marketing functions of global brands including PayPal, American Express, Visa, Domino’s, Salesforce, and doTERRA. His agency career covered Grey, DDB, Ogilvy, and Isobar; he co-founded his first agency at twenty-five. The pattern in his work is consistent. The brands that pulled away from their categories were the ones whose positioning held long enough to compound. That argument runs book-length in his forthcoming Marketing at Velocity, published by Kogan Page in April 2027. The premise is that speed wins moments and velocity wins markets. Around it sits a working set of frameworks. The One Rule (1rE²Zag), Velocity Loops, the TRUTH Framework, and the Velocity Brand Scorecard are tools senior marketers can take back into a planning cycle, not concepts that live only on a stage. Beyond the book, he hosts the Marketing at Heart podcast and runs Conquer OS, his London-based consultancy. His client work has produced concrete commercial outcomes, including a Domino’s Internet-of-Things pizza-ordering button that the company’s Digital Director, Nick Dutch, publicly credited with what he called “mind-blowing” return on investment across PR coverage and sales. Key speaking topics B2B brand building Brand velocity and category leadership Marketing strategy for senior leaders Customer relationship economics AI and the modern marketing function B2B narrative and positioning Ideal for CMOs and senior marketing leaders accountable for brand position and revenue contribution B2B leadership teams in crowded categories where differentiation is starting to blur Founders and CEOs of growth-stage businesses where marketing is being asked to translate spend into category position Audience outcomes A working diagnosis of why their B2B brand activity is not converting into category position A set of named frameworks, including Velocity Loops, the TRUTH Framework, and the Velocity Brand Scorecard, that translate directly into next-quarter marketing planning A clear read on whether their current marketing is producing speed or velocity, and what to change if the answer is speed A reframe of trust, story, and consistency as commercial assets that compound, with implications for budget allocation and channel mix