Geschäftsstrategie & Wachstum speakers

Why organisations work with Candice Matthews Brackeen She invests her own fund’s capital into the same founder profile most institutions struggle to reach, which makes her perspective on deal flow operational rather than advocacy-led. She built and now owns Black Tech Week, the largest US convening of Black founders, investors and corporate partners, giving her direct visibility on which company-building patterns are working at scale. She testified before the US House Financial Services Committee in 2025 on expanding capital access beyond Silicon Valley, a credibility marker few speakers on this topic hold. She translates between corporate procurement, venture capital and underrepresented founder communities, the three groups that rarely sit in the same conversation despite all needing each other. Wall Street Journal named her one of the Top 10 Women in Venture Capital in 2020, a recognition that signals investor peers, not bureau marketing, rate her work. Biography highlights General Partner, Lightship Capital, a Cincinnati venture fund backing underrepresented founders in CPG, e-commerce, sustainability, AI and healthcare. Founder and CEO, Lightship Foundation, whose accelerator alumni have raised more than $100M in follow-on funding. Co-founder, Hillman Accelerator, the first Midwest accelerator dedicated to underrepresented tech founders. Witness before the US House Financial Services Committee, March 2025, on access to capital beyond Silicon Valley. Named to the Wall Street Journal’s Top 10 Women in Venture Capital, 2020. Member of NASA’s Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium; advisory roles with the Cincinnati Innovation District and Endeavor Northwest Arkansas. Contributing author at TechCrunch. Biography Less than one percent of US venture capital goes to Black-led companies. That number has been broadly stable for years, despite every major institutional commitment to change it. The interesting question for senior leaders is no longer whether the gap exists. It is what mechanism actually closes it. Lightship Capital is one of the small number of funds built specifically to answer that question with capital rather than commentary. As General Partner, Candice Matthews Brackeen invests in early-stage companies across consumer packaged goods, e-commerce, sustainability, artificial intelligence and healthcare, with a focus on founders outside coastal networks. She also founded Lightship Foundation, whose accelerator programmes have helped portfolio companies secure more than $100M in follow-on funding. Before Lightship she co-founded Hillman Accelerator in 2016, the first Midwest programme dedicated to underrepresented tech founders, and Hello Parent, a school-safety app that became a national partner of the Brady Campaign. She has since acquired Black Tech Week and moved it to Cincinnati, anchoring it next to Fortune 500 corporate partners including Kroger and Procter and Gamble. Her authority on this subject is institutional, not rhetorical. The Wall Street Journal named her one of the Top 10 Women in Venture Capital in 2020. In March 2025 she testified before the US House Financial Services Committee on expanding capital access beyond Silicon Valley. She also serves on NASA’s Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium and writes for TechCrunch on venture and entrepreneurship. Key speaking topics Venture capital outside Silicon Valley Building inclusive innovation ecosystems Access to capital for underrepresented founders Corporate partnerships with early-stage companies Entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership Public policy and capital markets Diversity, equity and inclusion in technology Ideal for Chief investment officers, corporate venture leads and innovation heads designing pipelines into underrepresented founder markets Procurement and supplier diversity leaders building substantive routes to minority-led suppliers Boards and CEOs of large corporates with stated commitments on capital, supplier or workforce inclusion Public sector and economic development leaders working on regional innovation strategy Audience outcomes A clearer picture of where credible deal flow from underrepresented founders actually sits and how to access it. A working view of what corporate partnerships with founder communities look like when they generate revenue, not just press. Specific language for boards on why capital access is an economic question, not only an inclusion one. Direct exposure to a working venture model that has produced documented follow-on funding outcomes.

Why organisations work with Carl Leighton-Pope He has sustained a boutique agency relationship with artists like Bryan Adams, Michael Bublé and Billy Ocean across decades of contractual and technological upheaval, which is rare evidence of how to keep large clients inside a small business. The catalogue of names is its own form of credibility: the Marquee Club in 1964, Dire Straits and Simple Minds at NEMS, The Chippendales as a touring product, WWE and Harlem Globetrotters in Europe. Few speakers can draw on a working roster of this length. He is, in commercial terms, an entrepreneur who diversified beyond his core: from agency work into management, into theatre production with Carnaby Street The Musical and LOVE, and into international touring across genres outside music. The delivery is built for audiences who want a senior business story told with humour and specific characters, not a framework deck. Useful for after-dinner, leadership offsites, and entrepreneurial events where the room wants substance carried by narrative. Biography highlights Founder and Managing Director, Leighton-Pope Organisation, London (incorporated 1991, Companies House 02634876). Career began in 1964 at the Marquee Club in Soho, working in an environment that included Rod Stewart, The Who and Eric Clapton. Former agent at NEMS, where he signed Dire Straits, Simple Minds, Patti Smith, The Motors, UFO and Camel. Signed Bryan Adams as an agency client in 1984 and has subsequently represented Michael Bublé, Billy Ocean, Van Morrison, Bonnie Tyler, Chris Rea, Keith Urban and Jeff Healey. Producer and international tour operator for The Chippendales, and his agency has handled WWE and Harlem Globetrotters tours. Writer and producer of Carnaby Street The Musical and the West End play LOVE (2023). Biography The music business has been rebuilt three times in a single working lifetime. Vinyl gave way to CDs, CDs to downloads, downloads to streaming, and the contractual and revenue logic underneath each change tore through agency businesses that could not adapt. The Leighton-Pope Organisation, founded in London in 1991, has carried the same artists across most of that turbulence. That continuity is the credential. Bryan Adams, signed in 1984 while Carl was still building his agency career, remains a client. Michael Bublé and Billy Ocean sit on the current roster alongside historical clients like Van Morrison, Bonnie Tyler, Chris Rea and Keith Urban. Earlier in his career, working at NEMS, he signed Dire Straits, Simple Minds, Patti Smith, The Motors, UFO and Camel. The names matter because they are the proof of an agency model that has held under load. The career began in 1964 at the Marquee Club in Soho. By 1972 he was running a recording studio in Cardiff and managing the band Sassafras on Chrysalis Records. The Leighton-Pope Organisation followed in 1991 and has since extended beyond music into international touring for The Chippendales, WWE and the Harlem Globetrotters, and into theatre production with Carnaby Street The Musical and the West End play LOVE in 2023. The speaking work draws directly on that operating history. The substance is entrepreneurship inside a creative industry, told through specific decisions, specific clients and specific deals over six decades. Audiences leave with named cases and the texture of how a small business keeps very large clients. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship in the entertainment industry Talent identification and long-term client retention Building a boutique business with global clients Diversification beyond a core service line Music industry reinvention across format cycles Business storytelling for leadership audiences Ideal for Entrepreneurs and founder-led businesses scaling around a small senior team. CEO and board offsites where the brief is business reflection through narrative rather than framework. After-dinner and gala audiences at industry conferences and corporate events. Leadership programmes covering client relationship longevity and creative industry commercial models. Audience outcomes A working understanding of how a boutique agency retains top-tier clients across decades and format changes. Specific cases on signing, developing and managing globally commercial artists. A view on diversification decisions taken across music, live entertainment and theatre. Material on entrepreneurial judgement under industry-wide disruption, drawn from a six-decade career.

Why organisations work with Carlos Cordon Direct advisory experience with Johnson and Johnson, Nestlé, Coca-Cola, Merck, Mondelez, Unilever, Heineken, Danone, and General Motors, which means the examples on stage come from rooms he has sat in. Reframes the supply chain conversation at board level as a revenue and growth discussion, shifting it away from the familiar cost-defence framing and into competitive territory. Teaching material that other business schools pay to use. His cases have twice placed him on The Case Centre’s Top 50 Bestselling Case Authors globally. Sits on Coca-Cola European Partners’ Digital Advisory Board, which gives him a working view of how a global consumer business is actually pricing digital and AI bets at the top. Writes regularly for TIME on supply chain and geopolitics, so a board gets someone whose argument has already been tested against an international editorial audience. Biography highlights Professor of Strategy and Supply Chain Management at IMD Business School, Lausanne. Director of IMD’s Strategies for Supply Chain Digitalization program. Author of Strategy is Digital (Springer), The Power of Two (Palgrave Macmillan), and Strategic Supply Chain Management (Routledge). Twice listed on The Case Centre’s Top 50 Bestselling Case Authors (#18 in 2020/21, #36 in 2023/24). Winner of the EFMD Case Writing Competition in 2017 and of The Case Centre’s Production and Operations Management Award in 2011 and again in 2026 for Apple’s Supply Chain Transformation. Regular contributor to TIME and to I by IMD; board advisor to Coca-Cola European Partners on digital. Biography Most supply chain conversations in the boardroom are still framed as cost questions. Cordon’s work reframes them as revenue questions. His argument, developed across three books and a case portfolio used in MBA programmes globally, is that how a company sources, makes, moves, and digitises its value chain now decides whether it can grow at all in a fragmenting world. At IMD, where he holds the chair in Strategy and Supply Chain Management, he directs the Strategies for Supply Chain Digitalization program and teaches senior executives from the companies shaping the consumer, pharma, and industrial economy. Johnson and Johnson, Nestlé, Coca-Cola, Merck, Mondelez, Unilever, Heineken, Danone, and General Motors are on his client list. He sits on Coca-Cola European Partners’ Digital Advisory Board, which keeps his perspective grounded in live commercial decisions. His published work tracks the trajectory of the field. The Power of Two (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) set out how smart customer-supplier partnerships create value that neither party could capture alone. Strategy is Digital (Springer, 2016) argued that big data and digital platforms had become the value chain, not an overlay on it. The current research programme tackles the hardest question leaders now face: how to reconfigure sourcing, manufacturing footprints, and operating models when tariffs, geopolitical risk, and Gen-AI are all moving at once. The case writing is a second form of evidence. He has twice placed in The Case Centre’s Top 50 Bestselling Case Authors globally and won the Production and Operations Management category in 2011 and again in 2026 for Apple’s Supply Chain Transformation. The EFMD Case Writing Competition recognised his Adidas case in 2017. Few supply chain academics are read this widely by other teachers of the subject, which is what gives his perspective on a live boardroom problem the weight it carries. Key speaking topics Supply chain reconfiguration under geopolitical and tariff pressure Reshoring, nearshoring, and manufacturing footprint strategy Digital value chains and the commercial use of Gen-AI in operations Customer-supplier partnership models Supply chain as a driver of revenue and competitive advantage Digital lean and process redesign Operating model resilience in consumer goods, pharma, and industrial sectors Ideal for Board and ExCo sessions where supply chain redesign is on the strategic agenda Chief Supply Chain Officers, COOs, and Chief Procurement Officers managing global footprint decisions Strategy and transformation leads working on reshoring, digitisation, or tariff response Consumer goods, pharma, and industrial leadership teams rethinking how operations create commercial value Audience outcomes A sharper read on how tariff fragmentation and geopolitical risk are reshaping operating model choices in the next three to five years. A working vocabulary for arguing the supply chain case at board level as a growth lever. Worked examples from named multinationals showing how reshoring, digitisation, and Gen-AI are being priced into real operating model decisions. A sharper test for where digital and AI investment in the value chain earns its cost, and where it does not.

Why organisations work with Carlos Munoz Two airline company builds from scratch, not one. Vueling taken to IPO in 2006, then Volotea launched in 2011 on a deliberately different commercial model. Few entrepreneurship speakers can point to repeat, verifiable company-building at that scale. Operator credibility on a contrarian model that worked. Volotea targets secondary and medium-sized European cities that the major low-cost carriers avoid, and has scaled to c.2,000 employees and EUR 800 million plus in revenue on that thesis. First-hand perspective on founder-board disagreements about strategy. His 2007 Vueling exit came over a merger he opposed, and he went on to build a second business. Useful material for leadership audiences thinking about conviction, governance and when to walk. Fluent in the strategic language of serious buyers. ICADE undergraduate, Harvard MBA, ex-McKinsey; the commercial arguments land with finance, strategy and board audiences without needing translation. Biography highlights Founder of Vueling Airlines; CEO 2002-2007; took the company public on the Spanish stock market in 2006. Co-founder and CEO of Volotea since 2011, the airline connecting secondary and medium-sized European cities. Volotea has carried more than 55 million passengers since operations began in 2012. Former McKinsey and Company management consultant, San Francisco office, 1998-2000. MBA, Harvard Business School; undergraduate degree in Business Administration, ICADE (Universidad Pontificia Comillas), Madrid. Subject of a Harvard Business School teaching case on Vueling Airlines. Biography Most low-cost carriers in Europe compete for the same hub airports and the same passenger flows. Volotea does not. The airline, co-founded by Carlos Munoz in 2011, was built around the cities the majors had written off: medium-sized and secondary European airports, point to point, bypassing the main hubs. The bet worked. Volotea operates from around 20 bases across France, Italy and Spain, employs roughly 2,000 people, and reported revenue in the EUR 800 million plus range in 2024. More than 55 million passengers have flown the airline since it began operations in 2012. It is his second airline, not his first. Munoz founded Vueling in 2002, served as CEO through its IPO in 2006, and left in 2007 after opposing a merger with Clickair that the shareholders backed. Vueling is today part of IAG and one of the largest low-cost carriers in Europe. The career arc gives him a rare vantage point: two distinct commercial models, one exit driven by strategic disagreement, and a second company built on a thesis the first did not address. The earlier credentials explain how the commercial arguments are structured. A business degree from ICADE in Madrid, a Harvard MBA, and two years at McKinsey in San Francisco analysing low-cost carrier economics; Vueling and Volotea are applied versions of that analysis. The Vueling build has since become a Harvard Business School teaching case. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and founding companies at scale Business model innovation in commoditised industries Challenger strategy against entrenched incumbents Growth strategy in the airline and travel sector Customer experience as a commercial lever Founder conviction, governance and strategic disagreement Ideal for CEOs and founders of challenger businesses competing against scaled incumbents Strategy and commercial leaders rethinking where the company plays Boards and executive teams of travel, transport and consumer services companies Leadership and management development programmes focused on entrepreneurial decision-making Audience outcomes A clearer view of where incumbents are structurally unable to defend, and what that implies for positioning. A worked example of a contrarian commercial model, from thesis through to operational scale. Honest framing of the founder-board tension points that decide whether a strategy actually gets executed. Practical reference points from two separate company builds, not one, for leaders weighing a second act.

Why organisations work with Charlene Li Her central argument inverts the standard AI conversation: organisations do not need a separate AI strategy – they need AI deployed in service of the strategy already in place. That reframe moves boards from analysis paralysis to sequenced action, in a space where most external voices add complexity rather than remove it. The Disruption Mindset reverses thirty years of received innovation wisdom: disruption does not create growth – growth creates disruption. That distinction changes how leadership teams set strategy and allocate resources, not merely how they talk about change. Winning with AI (2025, co-authored with Dr. Katia Walsh, Harvard Business School’s inaugural Chief Digital Officer) is grounded in two years of research and 50+ executive interviews, and includes the Six-Quarter Walk planning tool – a practical sequencing instrument designed to be used without external consultants. Her research spans the full arc of technological disruption – internet, social media, digital transformation, generative AI – giving her longitudinal credibility when leadership teams are being asked to make bets on technologies whose business implications are still contested. As the founder of Altimeter Group, a firm built explicitly to compete with Gartner, Forrester, and IDC before being acquired by Prophet, Li has operated as both a researcher and an entrepreneur navigating the disruption she now advises on – a position most AI strategy voices cannot occupy. Biography highlights New York Times bestselling author of six books, including The Disruption Mindset, Open Leadership, Groundswell, and Winning with AI: The 90-Day Blueprint for Success (2025, co-authored with Dr. Katia Walsh) Founder of Altimeter Group (2008), a research and strategy firm that competed directly with Gartner, Forrester, and IDC; acquired by Prophet in 2015 Former Chief Research Officer at PA Consulting; currently leads Quantum Networks Group Graduate of Harvard College (magna cum laude, A.B.) and Harvard Business School (MBA) Named one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company; Top 50 Leadership Innovators by Inc.; LinkedIn Top 10 Voices on Company Culture (2022) Keynote speaker at the World Economic Forum, TED, and South by Southwest; regularly cited in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Reuters; has appeared on 60 Minutes and CNBC Biography The most common failure point in AI transformation is strategic misdiagnosis. Charlene Li’s research – two years of fieldwork and more than 50 executive interviews for Winning with AI: The 90-Day Blueprint for Success (2025) – found that organisations treating AI as a strategy in its own right fall behind those that deploy it in service of the strategy they already have. That distinction, between AI as initiative and AI as instrument, is what separates pilot programmes from scaled competitive advantage. The same counterintuitive rigour runs through her earlier body of work. The Disruption Mindset (2019) challenged a core assumption of competitive strategy: disruption does not create growth – growth creates disruption. Companies that make disruption the goal, rather than the outcome of aggressively pursued growth opportunities, build the wrong culture and the wrong metrics. That argument, backed by research, has changed how board-level strategy conversations are framed, not just concluded. Li’s analytical credibility was built at Altimeter Group, the research firm she founded in 2008 as a deliberate competitor to Gartner, Forrester, and IDC – and which was acquired by Prophet in 2015. She subsequently served as Chief Research Officer at PA Consulting before founding Quantum Networks Group. Across those institutions, she has worked with organisations including 14 of the Dow Jones Industrial 30. She holds a Harvard MBA and an undergraduate degree from Harvard College, earned magna cum laude. Named one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company and one of Inc.’s Top 50 Leadership Innovators, Li has keynoted the World Economic Forum, TED, and South by Southwest, and is regularly cited by The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. What distinguishes her from others working the same ground is the research arc: she has tracked and advised on each major wave of technological disruption – internet, social media, digital transformation, generative AI – from inside analytical and advisory institutions, not from the outside looking in. Key speaking topics AI strategy and competitive deployment Disruptive transformation and growth strategy Leadership in the digital age Future of work and AI’s workforce implications Organisational culture and the disruption mindset Strategic decision-making under technological uncertainty Business model disruption and innovation Ideal for C-suite and board members responsible for AI investment and transformation decisions Chief Digital Officers, Chief AI Officers, and technology transformation leads Strategy and innovation leaders at established organisations facing competitive disruption Senior HR and people leaders managing workforce implications of AI adoption Audience outcomes A clear framework for aligning AI with existing business strategy – rather than building a parallel AI initiative Understanding of why most AI pilot programmes stall and what organisationally moves them into scaled production The Disruption Mindset distinction: why pursuing disruption as a goal is a strategic error, and what to pursue instead Practical tools for sequencing AI investments against business priorities, including the Six-Quarter Walk planning framework A more confident leadership posture for communicating AI strategy internally – to boards, to workforces, and across the organisation

Why organisations work with Charlie Whyman A working B2B marketing operating model. The OTTER Framework gives commercial teams a five-step planning structure that ties objectives to tools, training, expectations and review, used inside her consultancy and her current managing director role. Operator credibility, not consultant theory. She runs a specialised aviation services business as managing director of TGIS Aviation, so her commercial advice lands as something already being applied at the top of a P&L. A point of view on customer curiosity as a commercial discipline. Her podcast, The Curiosity Key, and her speaker work argue that better questioning of customers is the input that most B2B marketing teams skip and most commercial strategies depend on. A direct route into the experience of women leading in male-dominated commercial sectors. She has built her career across automotive, mining, shipping and aviation, and speaks credibly to organisations trying to move that conversation past slogans. Biography highlights Managing Director, TGIS Aviation Ltd, appointed 2024 Founder, Curious B2B Marketing, 2017 Creator of the OTTER Framework, a five-step B2B marketing planning system Host, The Curiosity Key podcast Founder, Palmavera, an award-winning Sardinian olive oil business, 2006 Keynote speaker, BHBIA Annual Conference 2025 Biography Most B2B marketing functions are full of activity and short of insight. Campaigns get built before customer questions get asked. That gap is what Whyman has spent the last decade attacking, first through her consultancy Curious B2B Marketing and now through the OTTER Framework, a five-step planning structure that forces objectives, tools, training, expectations and review into one commercial conversation. She is unusual in pairing that practitioner work with an operating role. In 2024 she was appointed Managing Director of TGIS Aviation, a UK firm specialising in airworthiness management for aircraft and engine owners. The appointment came from inside the client base, after she ran the growth strategy as a consultant. It puts her on the board of a niche commercial business while she continues to teach and speak. Her career sits across sectors most marketers avoid: automotive, mining, shipping and aviation. She founded an award-winning Sardinian olive oil business in 2006, weathered redundancy twice, and built Curious B2B Marketing in 2017. She hosts The Curiosity Key podcast, where the recurring argument is that intentional curiosity about customers is the cheapest, most under-used commercial input available to B2B leaders. For organisations, the value is direct. She is a serving managing director with a structured method, a clear position on what marketing is for, and the lived experience of a woman leading in industries that do not naturally make space for her. She talks to commercial teams as one of them, and to leadership audiences as someone who has just come from the P&L. Key speaking topics B2B marketing strategy and operating systems Customer curiosity as a commercial discipline Sales and marketing alignment for commercial leaders Courage and action in career and commercial decisions Women leading in male-dominated industries Growth strategy in specialist B2B firms Ideal for CMOs, marketing directors and B2B commercial leaders CEOs and managing directors of specialist or technical SMEs Sales and marketing leadership teams under pressure to prove pipeline impact Industry conferences in engineering, manufacturing, life sciences and aviation Audience outcomes A clear test for whether a current marketing plan is built on customer insight or assumption The OTTER Framework as a working structure for B2B marketing planning A sharper position on how curiosity, questioning and customer research feed commercial strategy Practical language for talking about courage and action when career or commercial decisions stall A perspective on visibility and influence for women operating in male-dominated commercial environments

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

Why organisations work with Chris Barton He built a product under conditions that proved his point: no smartphones, no app stores, no viable algorithm, and a consensus view from MIT and Stanford that the problem was unsolvable. Shazam survived six years of near-bankruptcy before the App Store arrived. That timeline is the argument, not a metaphor for it. His two named frameworks – «Start from Zero» and «Creative Persistence» – give innovation leads something to work with after the event: a method for stripping assumptions back to first principles, and a model for distinguishing productive persistence from sunk-cost thinking. His role building Android’s carrier distribution infrastructure at Google, and leading mobile carrier partnerships at Dropbox, means his perspective on how transformative products actually reach scale is drawn from the operational history of three category-defining companies. He holds 12 patents across Shazam, Google, and Dropbox – including one employed in the Google Search algorithm – and testified as a key DOJ witness in the Google antitrust trial on the mobile default deals he personally negotiated. That depth of institutional involvement in the mobile computing era is not a speaker credential; it is a primary source. Guard Inc., his current startup applying AI to drowning detection in swimming pools, is a live demonstration that his frameworks are not retrospective lessons from one successful exit – he is still using them on a problem that experts regard as unsolved. Biography highlights Co-founder and first CEO of Shazam; the company was acquired by Apple in 2018 for a reported $400 million and has been downloaded more than 2 billion times First business development employee at Google focused on mobile partnerships; led the carrier agreements with Verizon and AT&T that established Android’s distribution infrastructure One of the first 100 employees at Dropbox, heading mobile carrier partnerships Holds 12 patents across Shazam, Google, and Dropbox, including one employed in the Google Search algorithm BA Economics and MBA, UC Berkeley; Master in Finance, University of Cambridge; early career at L.E.K. Consulting Key witness for the U.S. Department of Justice in the United States v. Google LLC antitrust trial (2023), testifying on mobile search default agreements he personally negotiated Founder and CEO of Guard Inc., an AI startup building drowning detection technology for swimming pools Biography Most organisations treat innovation as a culture question. Chris Barton treats it as a methods problem. As co-founder and first CEO of Shazam – the music recognition app Apple acquired in 2018 for a reported $400 million – he built a category that did not exist, under conditions that should have made it impossible. When Barton conceived the idea in 1999, there were no smartphones, no app stores, and no algorithm capable of identifying music from ambient audio. Professors at MIT and Stanford told him the pattern recognition problem could not be solved. Shazam launched commercially in 2002 and survived six years of near-bankruptcy before the App Store created its distribution opportunity. It reached 300 million monthly active users before Apple acquired it. The timeline matters: this is not a story about a fast breakthrough. It is a story about sustained method under prolonged failure. His track record inside the companies that built mobile computing adds a different layer of authority. At Google he was the first business development employee focused on mobile, leading the carrier agreements with Verizon and AT&T that established Android’s distribution infrastructure. At Dropbox he was one of the first 100 employees, heading mobile carrier partnerships. He holds 12 patents across all three companies, including one used in the Google Search algorithm, and in 2023 testified as a key DOJ witness in the United States v. Google LLC antitrust trial – speaking to the mobile default deals he personally negotiated. His frameworks – «Start from Zero» and «Creative Persistence» – extract a repeatable method from that experience: how to strip assumptions back to first principles, and how to sustain focus on core insight when resistance is at its strongest. He applies both now as founder and CEO of Guard Inc., an AI startup building drowning detection technology for swimming pools – a problem, again, that multiple experts have called unsolvable. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and startup creation Innovation under expert and institutional resistance Consumer AI and the origins of mobile technology Friction elimination and product simplicity Creative Persistence as an organisational method Technology and business model disruption Assumption-stripping and first-principles thinking Ideal for Senior leadership and innovation teams at large organisations launching new products or business units against internal or expert resistance Chief Digital Officers, CTOs, and heads of innovation building internal capability for breakthrough thinking Entrepreneurial organisations and scale-up leadership navigating prolonged uncertainty Conference audiences of founders, technology executives, and business leaders in high-disruption sectors Audience outcomes A working understanding of the «Start from Zero» and «Creative Persistence» frameworks, and how to apply them when pursuing ideas facing expert or institutional opposition A concrete model for distinguishing productive persistence from sunk-cost thinking – drawn from six years of near-bankruptcy at Shazam before the product reached scale Specific techniques for identifying and eliminating friction – the unnecessary effort that prevents otherwise viable ideas from reaching users A revised understanding of how transformative consumer products (Shazam, Android, Dropbox) were built from first principles, not from incremental improvement Greater organisational confidence in pursuing ideas that current consensus dismisses

Why organisations work with Chris Brogan A defined framework for online influence, not just opinions about it. Trust Agents named what separates real customer traction from noise, and the CREATE equation in The Impact Equation turned the same idea into a model a marketing team can actually apply to a campaign. Three decades of working through every online wave in real time. He was blogging before the term existed, co-founded the PodCamp unconference series in 2006, and signed up as the 10,212th user on Twitter. His read on what AI will do to marketing is calibrated by having been early on the last four platform shifts. Credibility with the brands others want to sell into. Disney, Google, General Motors, Microsoft, Coke, PepsiCo, Cisco, Humana, and Sony USA have all retained him as a consultant or keynote speaker. He has sat inside the marketing functions of the companies most audiences are trying to reach. A thousand keynotes’ worth of calibration. Audiences have ranged from the Coldwell Banker GenBLUE conference to the royalty of the United Arab Emirates. Forbes named him one of its Must Follow Marketing Minds; Success magazine commissioned him to interview Richard Branson for its cover story. Biography highlights New York Times bestselling co-author of Trust Agents with Julien Smith (John Wiley & Sons, 2009; 10th Anniversary Edition 2019), also a Wall Street Journal bestseller. Author or co-author of nine business books, including The Impact Equation (Portfolio, 2012) and The Freaks Shall Inherit the Earth (Wiley, 2014). Named by Forbes as one of its Must Follow Marketing Minds of 2014; chrisbrogan.com listed by Forbes among the 100 best websites for entrepreneurs. Co-founder of the PodCamp new-media unconference series (launched 2006 with Christopher S. Penn). Former monthly columnist at Entrepreneur magazine; featured in The Boston Globe, Forbes, Success, and USA Today; appeared on the Dr. Phil Show. Over a thousand keynote speeches delivered to clients including Disney, Google, General Motors, Microsoft, Coke, PepsiCo, Cisco, Humana, and Sony USA. Biography The cost of reaching customers online has fallen dramatically. The cost of earning their belief has climbed. Trust Agents, the 2009 New York Times bestseller Chris Brogan co-authored with Julien Smith, was among the first mainstream business books to name this problem. Its argument was that influence online accrues the way reputation does anywhere else, through consistent and useful contact with a defined community. The book’s “trust agent” framework set a vocabulary for a commercial category. With AI now flooding every inbox and feed with plausible noise, the framework has aged unusually well. The follow-up, The Impact Equation, made the same argument operational. Impact equals Contrast multiplied by the sum of Reach, Exposure, Articulation, Trust, and Echo. The formula tells a marketing team which of five dials to turn when campaigns underperform. Brogan’s work has been tested inside some of the companies with the most to lose on this question: Disney, Google, Microsoft, General Motors, Coke, Cisco, Humana, Sony USA. His authority on this stretches back further than most in the category. He was blogging before the term existed, co-founded the PodCamp unconference series in 2006 with Christopher S. Penn, and was signed up as the 10,212th user of Twitter. Forbes has listed him among its Must Follow Marketing Minds and named chrisbrogan.com one of the 100 best websites for entrepreneurs. Entrepreneur magazine ran his monthly column for years; Success commissioned him to interview Richard Branson for its cover. The point Brogan keeps returning to in keynotes and advisory work is commercial. Every competitor runs broadly the same automation stack and the same CRM vendors. The organisations that win real customer loyalty are the ones willing to do slower, more specific work for a defined audience. A thousand keynotes across audiences from the Coldwell Banker GenBLUE conference to the royalty of the United Arab Emirates is the track record that stands behind the argument. Key speaking topics Trust and influence in digital markets Customer relationships in the age of AI marketing Content strategy and online community building The CREATE framework for campaign impact Human-centred approaches to digital transformation Executive leadership in a distracted marketplace Ideal for CMOs and marketing leaders rebuilding channel strategy as paid reach plateaus and AI transforms audience behaviour Sales and customer experience leaders responsible for converting digital attention into durable revenue Communications and corporate affairs teams rethinking how their organisation earns trust at scale Founders and senior operators in content-heavy businesses where audience, community, and media are the core assets Audience outcomes A usable way of diagnosing where marketing effort is being wasted, drawn from the CREATE equation A sharper read on where AI and automation extend customer relationships and where they erode them Shared vocabulary for internal debates about attention, trust, and audience value Specific examples from Fortune 500 marketing functions that clarify what “doing business the human way” looks like in practice

Why organisations work with Chris Endersby He treats a brand as an internal operating system before he treats it as a marketing asset, so the work changes how the leadership team behaves, not just how the company looks. The DARE methodology he co-developed at Firestarter gives founders a structured way to test whether their positioning is genuinely differentiated, authentic to the team, resonant with the buyer, and expressed consistently across every touchpoint. His background sits at the intersection of corporate change work at JP Morgan, KPMG, UBS and Barclays and front-line risk management in child safeguarding, which gives him a non-marketing read on how people actually respond to disruption and uncertainty. He is registered in both coaching psychology and psychotherapy, which means he can hold the harder conversations that surface when a founder’s stated brand and the team’s lived experience do not match. Biography highlights Co-founder and COO of Firestarter, a London brand consultancy for purpose-led scale-up B2B businesses. Co-developer of the DARE methodology (Differentiation, Authenticity, Resonance, Expression). Corporate change and consulting experience with JP Morgan, KPMG, UBS and Barclays. Dual professional registration in coaching psychology and psychotherapy. Earlier career as a front-line child safeguarding practitioner, manager and researcher. Biography Scale-up B2B brands tend to fail in the same way. The founder’s original conviction gets diluted in committee, the language drifts toward whatever the competitor set is saying, and the team can no longer explain in plain terms why a customer should choose them. Chris Endersby’s work starts from that failure pattern, and from the observation that brand is rarely a marketing problem first. It is a leadership and behaviour problem that surfaces as a marketing problem. Endersby co-founded Firestarter, a London consultancy that works with founders of scale-up B2B businesses to rebuild that conviction. Alongside his business partner he co-developed the DARE methodology, which moves a brand through four practical tests: is it genuinely Differentiated in its market, Authentic to the people who have to live it, Resonant with the audience it is trying to reach, and Expressed consistently in everything the company does. The methodology is designed to make brand work auditable rather than aesthetic. His credibility for this work comes from an unusual stack. He has spent years inside corporate change programmes at JP Morgan, KPMG, UBS and Barclays, where he learned how large organisations actually metabolise new strategy. Before that he worked in child safeguarding as a practitioner, manager and researcher, which gives him a working understanding of risk, human behaviour under pressure, and the gap between what institutions say they do and what they do. He is registered in both coaching psychology and psychotherapy. The result is a speaker who can sit in front of a founding team and ask the questions that brand agencies usually avoid: whether the leadership group actually believes its own positioning, where the team’s behaviour contradicts the stated values, and what the cost of that contradiction is in hiring, pricing and retention. Key speaking topics Brand differentiation for scale-up B2B Authentic positioning and purpose Founder-led brand strategy Organisational behaviour and brand Change and transformation in growth-stage businesses Coaching psychology applied to leadership teams Ideal for Founders and CEOs of Series A to Series C B2B businesses approaching a rebrand or repositioning Chief marketing officers and brand leads inside scale-ups where the brand has outgrown its origin story Leadership teams preparing for a funding round, acquisition or international expansion where positioning is under scrutiny Audience outcomes A clearer test for whether their current positioning is actually differentiated or just well-written A working understanding of why brand work fails when it stays inside the marketing function Specific questions to take back to their own leadership team about the gap between stated values and lived behaviour A framework (DARE) for auditing brand expression across product, sales, hiring and internal communication

Why organisations work with Chris Griffiths He brings a named, tested method. GRASP and the Solution Finder process, published across The Creative Thinking Handbook and GRASP The Solution, give teams a four-step route from problem to decision that can be run again without him in the room. He has built the tooling, not just the theory. OpenGenius turned the mind mapping method into Ayoa, a commercial platform used across Pfizer, the NHS, the European Commission and the State Bank of India, which gives his frameworks an operating record outside the keynote. He treats neurodiversity as a creative asset. Through the Inspire Genius Foundation and Ayoa’s neuroinclusive design, he connects creative thinking to the way neurodivergent minds actually work, giving leaders a practical angle on inclusion that is tied to output rather than compliance. He has run the playbook at scale. With Tony Buzan he built a global network of more than 1,000 licensed instructors operating inside Sony, the Ministry of Defence and the NHS, which is unusual evidence that his method transfers beyond the author. His work has been stress-tested in serious rooms. He facilitated a Nobel Laureate brainstorm at the Petra Nobel Conference convened by HM King Abdullah II of Jordan, and has coached senior teams at the European Commission. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of OpenGenius, the company behind the Ayoa mind mapping and productivity platform. Author of The Creative Thinking Handbook (Kogan Page), GRASP The Solution, and Mind Maps for Business (with Tony Buzan), with titles translated across more than 15 countries. Co-creator, with Tony Buzan, of the ThinkBuzan Licensed Instructor Course, a global network of more than 1,000 accredited mind mapping instructors. Founder of start-ups that have ranked in the Deloitte European Fast 50 and The Sunday Times Fast Track 100. Facilitator of a brainstorming session with Nobel Laureates at the Petra Nobel Conference, hosted by HM King Abdullah II of Jordan. Contributor and cited expert in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fast Company, BBC, The Telegraph and GQ. Biography Creativity inside most organisations is still treated as a talent rather than a process. Chris Griffiths has spent nearly three decades arguing the opposite, and building the books, frameworks and software to prove it. His published work sets out a specific method. The Creative Thinking Handbook, published by Kogan Page and now available in more than ten languages, lays out the Solution Finder model. GRASP The Solution distils a four-step process that teams can run on any live business problem. Mind Maps for Business, co-authored with Tony Buzan, remains a standard text on applied visual thinking. The frameworks have a commercial track record attached. As founder and CEO of OpenGenius, he turned the method into Ayoa, a mind mapping and productivity platform used inside Pfizer, the NHS, the European Commission and the State Bank of India. With Tony Buzan he built the ThinkBuzan Licensed Instructor Course into a network of over 1,000 accredited instructors operating inside Sony, the Ministry of Defence and the NHS, a rare piece of evidence that the method works without the author in the room. His businesses have ranked in the Deloitte European Fast 50 and The Sunday Times Fast Track 100. He has facilitated a Nobel Laureate brainstorm convened by HM King Abdullah II of Jordan at the Petra Nobel Conference, and through the Inspire Genius Foundation he funds young neurodivergent entrepreneurs, the group Ayoa’s neuroinclusive design was built around. Key speaking topics Applied creative thinking in business Systematic innovation and problem solving Mind mapping for leadership and strategy AI as a creative partner for human teams Productivity and focus for knowledge workers Neuroinclusive approaches to innovation Entrepreneurship and venture building Ideal for CEOs, founders and senior leadership teams who want a shared method for problem solving across the executive group. Chief Innovation Officers, Heads of Strategy and transformation leads tasked with making innovation repeatable rather than episodic. L&D and People leaders building creative-thinking capability and neuroinclusive practice across the workforce. R&D, product and commercial teams preparing for a specific planning cycle, offsite or innovation sprint. Audience outcomes A named four-step process (GRASP) that leaders can apply to a live business problem the day after the session. A working grasp of the Solution Finder model from The Creative Thinking Handbook and how to run it with a team. A practical introduction to mind mapping as a decision tool, not a sticky-note exercise. A view of where AI fits alongside human creativity, drawn from the design choices inside Ayoa. A clearer read on how neurodivergent thinkers contribute to creative output and how to design sessions that use that.

Why organisations work with Chris Hirst He has actually run a 10,000-person global P&L. The leadership argument comes from a CEO seat, not a research role. He took Grey London from underperformer to a business that tripled in size and quadrupled profit in five years, then took Havas from also-ran to second in Campaign Magazine’s global rankings in three. That is the exact operating story most boards are asking for. No Bullsh*t Leadership won UK Business Book of the Year, an independently awarded credential rather than self-published positioning. The argument now runs across three books, on leadership, change, and career, together selling more than 100,000 copies in seven languages. His content travels into operating environments because it was built for one. Recent clients include Google, PepsiCo, PwC, Deloitte, Nissan, and Warner Music Group. He gives leadership teams a shared language for the small, repeatable behaviours that determine whether change actually happens, not another model to put on a slide. Biography highlights Former Global CEO, Havas Creative Group, leading more than 10,000 people across more than 100 countries. Took Havas from also-ran to second in Campaign Magazine’s global network rankings in three years; shortlisted by Campaign as Global CEO of the Year, 2022. Former UK CEO of Grey London (WPP); the agency tripled in size and quadrupled profit during his tenure. Author of three books, No Bullsht Leadership (UK Business Book of the Year 2020), No Bullsht Change, and Indispensable (Pan Macmillan), together selling more than 100,000 copies in seven languages. Host of the No Bullsht Leadership podcast (with Intelligence Squared), more than 500,000 downloads, and founder of the No Bullsht Leadership Academy. Now a Fractional Chair and Non-Executive Director to scaling companies; graduate of Brasenose College, Oxford (Engineering Science) and Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program. Biography Grey London was a struggling agency inside WPP when Chris Hirst took over as UK CEO. Five years later it had tripled in size and quadrupled profit. He then ran Havas Creative Group globally, more than 10,000 people across more than 100 countries, taking the network from also-ran to second in Campaign Magazine’s global rankings in three years. Campaign shortlisted him as Global CEO of the Year in 2022. That operating record is the foundation of his leadership work. No Bullsht Leadership, published by Profile Books in 2019, was named UK Business Book of the Year 2020. It argues that leadership is a small set of repeatable behaviours, not a personality type, and is written for people running things rather than studying them. The argument now runs across three books, No Bullsht Leadership, No Bullsht Change, and Indispensable, together selling more than 100,000 copies in seven languages. It also reaches a podcast made with Intelligence Squared, a monthly Management Today column, and the No Bullsht Leadership Academy. Organisations that have worked with him include Google, PepsiCo, PwC, Nissan, and Warner Music Group. He still runs businesses too, now as a Fractional Chair and Non-Executive Director to scaling companies. What he gives a serious audience is rare on the leadership circuit: a former Global CEO who reduces leadership to behaviours a team can use the same week. His own equation, Impact equals Clarity times Action, is the spine of it, tested across more than a decade of running businesses and a billion-dollar global P&L. Key speaking topics Practical leadership and decision-making Leading transformational change Building high-performing cultures Turnaround and growth leadership Leading teams through AI-driven change Executive presence and credibility The behaviours of effective CEOs Ideal for CEOs, CHROs and executive teams running through restructure or growth Senior leadership populations inside large organisations rebuilding culture High-potential leadership programmes and talent cohorts Boards and partner groups in professional services and agencies Audience outcomes A working definition of leadership stripped of jargon and slogans His core equation for impact, Clarity times Action, and what it means when either side falls to zero A way to read culture as the behaviour of leadership, not a values poster, and to spot a culture problem before it becomes a performance one The 40/70 rule for making decisions without waiting for complete information A direct, occasionally uncomfortable challenge to current leadership habits