Innovation und Disruption

Why organisations work with David Aguilar He holds a Guinness World Record for the first functional LEGO prosthetic arm and has built five iterations, MK-I through MK-V, giving any conversation on inclusion a concrete engineering artefact rather than a general narrative. He translates a congenital condition, Poland syndrome, into a design problem and a product line under the Hand Solo brand, which reframes accessibility as a market and a capability question for R&D, HR, and product teams. He is a UIC Barcelona bioengineering graduate and recipient of the university’s Bioengineering Innovation Prize, so the engineering credibility is not improvised around the story. He carries unusual cultural reach for an inventor: winner of LEGO Masters France, subject of the Filmax documentary Mr. Hand Solo (Boston Sci-Fi Festival, Best Documentary Feature), and a face of LEGO’s #RebuildTheWorld global campaign. He speaks in English and Spanish and pairs well with technology, healthcare, and culture audiences who want an innovation voice that is not another Silicon Valley founder. Biography highlights Guinness World Records title holder, first functional LEGO prosthetic arm (MK-I); Guinness Hall of Fame inductee. Bachelor’s degree in Bioengineering from Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (UIC Barcelona); recipient of the UIC Bioengineering Innovation Prize, 2018. Author of Piece by Piece: How I Built My Life (No Instructions Required), with Ferran Aguilar; Amazon Crossing (English), Penguin Random House (Spanish). Subject of Mr. Hand Solo (Filmax, 2021), Best Documentary Feature, Boston Science Fiction Film Festival. Winner, LEGO Masters France. Featured by Great Big Story (CNN Worldwide), WIPO Magazine, and in LEGO’s #RebuildTheWorld global campaign. Biography Poland syndrome is a rare congenital condition that prevents the full development of muscles on one side of the body. David Aguilar was born with it, and built his first LEGO prosthesis at nine. By eighteen, working from a LEGO Technic Rescue Helicopter set, he had built MK-I, the first functional LEGO prosthetic arm that Guinness has recognised. The work has continued in versions, not anecdotes. MK-I to MK-V move from mechanical grabber to motorised five-finger hand controlled by residual-arm movement. He has since built an arm for an eight-year-old and launched Hand Solo as a brand aimed at accessible, affordable prosthetics. UIC Barcelona awarded him its Bioengineering Innovation Prize and a place to complete the degree. The story travels because it behaves like both engineering and culture. The documentary Mr. Hand Solo won Best Documentary Feature at the Boston Science Fiction Film Festival. His memoir Piece by Piece, co-written with his father Ferran, sits on both trade and children’s lists. LEGO cast him in the global #RebuildTheWorld campaign, and he won LEGO Masters France on primetime television. For serious organisations, the relevance is practical. He gives inclusion teams a product, gives R&D teams a user who is also a builder, and gives leadership audiences a single question to take back to their own operating model: who inside this company is quietly solving a problem we never designed around, and what would it take to give them the bricks? Key speaking topics Inclusive innovation and design Accessibility and assistive technology Bioengineering and prosthetics STEAM education and youth invention Resilience through engineering Purpose-driven entrepreneurship Ideal for CHROs and heads of DEI building an inclusion agenda that produces outputs, not statements. R&D, product, and healthcare leaders working on accessibility as a market rather than a compliance question. STEAM education programmes, universities, and youth-focused foundations. Corporate culture and internal-innovation audiences where the brief calls for a builder rather than a consultant. Audience outcomes A working example of how a constraint becomes a product, not a motivational metaphor. A sharper brief for what accessible design looks like when the user is the engineer. A named set of artefacts (MK-I to MK-V, Hand Solo) that teams can reference back in their own work. A reset on what inclusion programmes should produce, measured in things built rather than campaigns run. A concrete answer to what young engineers inside the organisation might do with permission and materials.

Why organisations work with David Hanson He built Sophia. Few speakers on AI can point to a single, globally recognised artefact of their work that has been granted citizenship by a nation state and appointed the UN Development Programme’s first Innovation Champion. His perspective combines sculpture, materials science and AI in a way almost no other robotics founder can credibly claim. RISD-trained, Disney Imagineering-trained, PhD from UT Dallas, peer-reviewed in IEEE and SPIE. He has built and run a robotics company through the commercial reality of hardware, not just the AI software conversation. That grounds his view of where human-facing AI actually works and where it does not. The 2005 AAAI first-place prize for open AI system interaction, Tech Titans Innovator of the Year, and Sophia’s 2018 Edison Award give the innovation claim a named, credible track record rather than a marketing line. He is one of the small group of AI voices who can hold a serious conversation about ethics, emotional design and commercial deployment in the same session. That is what executive audiences increasingly want from the topic. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Hanson Robotics, Hong Kong Creator of Sophia, the first robot granted honorary citizenship (Saudi Arabia, 2017) and UN Development Programme’s first Innovation Champion Sophia awarded a 2018 Edison Award in robotics Co-recipient of the 2005 AAAI first-place prize for open interaction of an AI system PhD, Interactive Arts and Technology, University of Texas at Dallas; BFA, Rhode Island School of Design Co-author, “The Coming Robot Revolution” (Springer, 2009); author, “Humanizing Robots” Former Walt Disney Imagineer; earlier design and robotics roles at Universal Studios and MTV Featured in the New York Times, WIRED, Scientific American, Popular Science, BBC and CNN Biography Sophia was activated in February 2016 and made her first public appearance weeks later at SXSW. Within eighteen months she had honorary Saudi Arabian citizenship and a UN title, and David Hanson’s company, Hanson Robotics, had become the reference point for what a human-facing robot could look like. The artefact was the argument. The background behind that artefact is unusual. Hanson trained at the Rhode Island School of Design in film, animation and video, then spent years as a sculptor and material researcher inside Disney Imagineering before taking a PhD in Interactive Arts and Technology at the University of Texas at Dallas. The skin materials, the expression mechanisms and the facial architecture on his robots come from that rare combination of arts practice and engineering. The research record sits alongside it. Papers in IEEE, SPIE, IROS, AAAI and AI Magazine. A Springer-published co-authored book, “The Coming Robot Revolution”. A 2005 AAAI first-place prize for open AI system interaction. NASA and NSF awards. Tech Titans Innovator of the Year. His own company, founded in 2013 and scaled out of Hong Kong, building robots now deployed in research, therapy and education. For executive audiences, the value is a founder who can speak with authority about where human-facing AI is heading, how ethical and emotional design choices get made inside a real robotics programme, and what changes for industries from healthcare to customer experience when the machine has a face. Sophia is the headline. The argument behind her is why leadership teams book him. Key speaking topics Humanoid robotics and social AI Human-robot coexistence in work and everyday life AI ethics and responsible development The design and engineering behind Sophia Science fiction, storytelling and the shaping of real-world robotics The future of AI in healthcare, education and customer-facing industries Ideal for Executive teams and boards setting strategy for AI-mediated customer, patient or citizen interaction Innovation, R&D and technology leadership in healthcare, education, hospitality and customer experience Corporate conferences, industry summits and innovation festivals seeking a founder-level voice on human-facing AI Audiences exploring AI ethics, emotional design and the societal consequences of humanoid machines Audience outcomes A grounded view of where humanoid AI is today, told by the person who built the most visible example of it A clear read on the commercial sectors most likely to be reshaped by social robotics over the next decade The ethical questions serious robotics programmes are actually wrestling with, not the media version of them A sense of how arts, materials science and engineering combine to produce AI that people trust and engage with Direct exposure to Sophia when the format permits, and an informed discussion of what that interaction implies for their own organisation

Why organisations work with David Hughes Hughes reads the whole value chain – from farm inputs and life science companies through manufacturers, retailers and food service – and identifies the commercial implications of change at each stage, giving organisations a perspective they cannot assemble internally. His 1994 book «Breaking with Tradition: Building Partnerships and Alliances in the European Food Industry» established the intellectual case for vertical supply chain collaboration – a thesis that remains central to competitive advantage in the sector today. He does not only analyse food businesses; he built one. As co-founder of a branded fresh produce company that he grew and sold into US supermarkets, and as a 20-year Non-Executive Director of Berry Gardens Ltd – the UK’s largest farmer-owned berry business – his commercial judgement is grounded in direct business experience. Organisations working in any geography get genuine cross-continental intelligence. Hughes works across Africa, Asia, Australasia, North and South America and Europe, making his read on consumer trends and retail dynamics global in scope rather than extrapolated from one market. As Honorary Nuffield Scholar and the inaugural Sainsbury Professor of Food Marketing at what is now Imperial College London, his academic standing gives food and agribusiness organisations a credible, research-grounded voice for external-facing events, policy engagements and board-level discussions. Biography highlights Emeritus Professor of Food Marketing, Imperial College London; inaugural Sainsbury Professor of Food Marketing at Wye College (now Imperial College London) from 1991 Visiting Professor, Royal Agricultural University, UK Ph.D. Food Marketing, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne; M.Sc. Agricultural Marketing; B.Sc. (Hons.) Agricultural Economics Non-Executive Director, Berry Gardens Ltd – UK’s largest farmer-owned berry business – for 20 years; co-founder of a branded fresh produce business sold into US supermarket chains Author/editor: «Breaking with Tradition: Building Partnerships and Alliances in the European Food Industry» (Wye College Press, 1994); published in British Food Journal, Supply Chain Management, and Business Ethics: A European Review Honorary Nuffield Scholar; keynote speaker at major food industry conferences across Africa, Asia, Australasia, the Americas and Europe, with named clients including Nestlé HQ (Switzerland) and William Reed Ltd (The Grocer) Biography Consumer preferences for health, sustainability and convenience are not moving in straight lines – and the food businesses that are best placed to respond are those that see how each shift propagates across the whole value chain, from the genetics company at one end to the food service operator at the other. David Hughes has spent more than fifty years building exactly that whole-chain, whole-world view, working with senior management in food and agribusiness on every continent. Hughes became the inaugural Sainsbury Professor of Food Marketing at Wye College in 1991, later Emeritus Professor at Imperial College London, where he established and directed the Food Industry Management Group. His 1994 edited volume «Breaking with Tradition: Building Partnerships and Alliances in the European Food Industry» set out the commercial logic of vertical supply chain collaboration – an argument that has only become more relevant as retail power has concentrated and sustainability scrutiny has intensified. He is also Visiting Professor at the Royal Agricultural University and an Honorary Nuffield Scholar. What distinguishes Hughes from the academic analyst category is that he has operated commercially inside the industries he studies. He co-founded and sold a branded fresh produce business serving US supermarkets, and served as Non-Executive Director of Berry Gardens Ltd – Britain’s largest farmer-owned berry business – for two decades. That combination of institutional credibility and business experience is what makes his reads on market shifts actionable rather than observational. Known internationally as «Dr. Food,» Hughes speaks to boards, trade associations, producer groups and government bodies across Africa, Asia, Australasia, North and South America and Europe. His work is sector-wide – meat, dairy, fresh produce, packaged foods, food service and the input industries that serve them – and consistently oriented toward the commercial question: given what is shifting, what should an organisation do on Monday morning? Key speaking topics Global consumer food trends and retail dynamics Food and agribusiness commercial strategy Supply chain partnerships and vertical alliance models Sustainability, environment and the food industry Health, nutrition and food market development Fresh produce and grocery retail innovation Food entrepreneurship and business model change Ideal for C-suite and board-level audiences in food manufacturing, grocery retail, food service and agribusiness Trade associations and producer organisations seeking to brief members on market direction Government and policy bodies working on food security, trade and sustainability Financial services and investor audiences with food sector exposure Audience outcomes A clearer distinction between structural shifts in food consumer behaviour and short-term trends – and the commercial implications of each Understanding of how change in one part of the food value chain creates threats and opportunities in adjacent segments A cross-continental frame of reference for food market developments that is difficult to assemble from within a single geography or sector Practical direction on how food businesses can build the supply chain partnerships and consumer connections that underpin competitive advantage Greater confidence in communicating strategic rationale to boards, investors or government stakeholders on food industry direction

Why organisations work with David Mattin Trend-Driven Innovation (Wiley) gives the organisations Mattin works with a named, repeatable method for identifying which emerging trends will reshape customer expectations – built on the counter-intuitive argument that the best signal is not in what customers say they want but in what leading businesses are already doing. His central argument – that human needs are fundamentally stable across decades even as technology accelerates – transforms trend analysis from a speculative exercise into a discipline with clear criteria, and gives leaders a reliable filter for deciding which AI-driven changes will actually matter. As Technology Lead at Global Macro Investor, his analysis of emerging technology is read and acted on by institutional investors including hedge funds, pension funds, and family offices – which subjects his commercial judgements about which technology shifts matter to a level of scrutiny that most trend and foresight work never encounters. The 30,000-subscriber New World Same Humans community – spanning business leaders, academics, and policymakers – means his frameworks are continuously tested against the exact professionals organisations are trying to anticipate and influence. Biography highlights Co-author, Trend-Driven Innovation: Beat Accelerating Customer Expectations (Wiley) – a structured framework for turning emerging trends into innovation strategy Former Global Head of Trends and Insights, TrendWatching Member, World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Consumption Technology Lead, Global Macro Investor; co-founder of The Exponentialist research service with macro investor Raoul Pal Founder, New World Same Humans – weekly newsletter on trends and technology with 30,000+ subscribers across business, academia, and policy Opening keynote at the NEXT Conference (Accenture Song) on multiple occasions; over 150 keynotes across five continents and 40+ countries Writing published in The Times, Quartz, Wired, Fast Company, the Guardian, and Google Think Quarterly; documentary work for BBC Radio 4 Graduate, University of Cambridge; began career at the features desk of The Times Biography Most organisations study their own customers closely. David Mattin’s core argument, developed during a decade leading trends intelligence at TrendWatching, is that the more useful signal lies elsewhere – in the moves leading businesses and disruptive startups are making to redefine what those customers consider normal. That argument found its fullest expression in Trend-Driven Innovation (Wiley), which made a counter-intuitive case: to anticipate what customers will want next, stop looking at customers and start tracking the businesses already reshaping their expectations. The underlying framework rests on a philosophical claim that runs through all of his work: human needs are fundamentally stable across decades, even as technology accelerates. New trends emerge when a technology or business innovation unlocks a new way to serve a need that was always there. Track those needs, observe which innovations are serving them, and the expectation gaps that matter become visible before competitors act. His current work extends that discipline into the era of AI. At Global Macro Investor, one of the world’s leading independent research services for institutional allocators, he serves as Technology Lead; he co-founded The Exponentialist alongside macro investor Raoul Pal. That institutional context means his analysis of emerging technology is regularly tested against the demands of hedge funds, pension funds, and family offices – not just conference audiences. The NEXT Conference (Accenture Song) has invited him to open the event on multiple occasions; he has delivered over 150 keynotes across five continents for clients including Meta, McKinsey, Google, Mastercard, Unilever, and Audi. His writing has appeared in The Times, Quartz, Wired, and Google Think Quarterly, and he has produced documentary work for BBC Radio 4. He read at Cambridge and began his career at the features desk of The Times. Key speaking topics AI and emerging technology strategy Consumer trends and expectation gap analysis Innovation strategy in a technology-driven market Scenario planning and strategic foresight Brand strategy and organisational culture in a transparent world The future of business and society in an era of exponential technology change Ideal for Strategy and innovation leadership teams evaluating medium-to-long-term technology bets CMOs and heads of customer experience navigating AI-driven shifts in consumer behaviour Boards and senior executive teams requiring a disciplined framework for separating technology signal from noise Investment professionals and corporate allocators seeking technology intelligence with commercial rigour Audience outcomes A named, replicable framework for identifying which emerging trends are likely to reshape customer expectations before competitors recognise them Clearer criteria for distinguishing technology-driven shifts that will prove durable from those that will not Industry-specific examples of how leading businesses have used expectation gap analysis to create competitive advantage A working understanding of how AI is changing the landscape of customer expectations – and which human needs remain stable enough to anchor innovation decisions A conceptual map of the technology convergences most likely to generate new commercial opportunities over the next five to ten years

Why organisations work with David McCandless He built the language of modern editorial data visualisation through Information is Beautiful, the blog and three books that defined the form for a generation of journalists and designers. He co-founded the Information is Beautiful Awards in 2012 with Kantar’s Aziz Cami, the global benchmark prize for data visualisation, giving him a panoramic view of what works across thousands of submissions. His work has been published by The Guardian, Wired, and Die Zeit and exhibited at MoMA, Tate Britain, and the Wellcome Trust gallery, evidence that the craft holds up to both editorial and curatorial scrutiny. His TEDGlobal 2010 talk, “The beauty of data visualization”, remains one of the most-watched introductions to the field and shapes how senior audiences think about visual storytelling. Biography highlights Author of Information is Beautiful (2009), Knowledge is Beautiful (2014), and Beautiful News (2023), published by HarperCollins. Founder of the Information is Beautiful blog and co-founder of the Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards (2012). TEDGlobal 2010 speaker: “The beauty of data visualization”. Information design featured in The Guardian, Wired, and Die Zeit. Work exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Tate Britain, and the Wellcome Trust gallery (London). Began his career as a journalist writing for The Guardian and Wired before building Information is Beautiful into a publishing platform. Biography The hardest problem in modern communication is not gathering data. It is making the data mean something to a reader who has eight seconds and a phone. That is the territory David McCandless has worked for nearly two decades, first as a journalist at The Guardian and Wired, then as the founder of Information is Beautiful. The blog became a publishing programme. Information is Beautiful (2009), Knowledge is Beautiful (2014), and Beautiful News (2023) collect more than 1,500 graphics that take subjects ranging from drug deaths to global wealth and turn them into images a non-specialist can read. The craft sits in the choices: what to compare, what to leave out, what visual metaphor lets a number argue with itself. In 2012 he co-founded what became the Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards with Aziz Cami, then Creative Director at Kantar. Through that platform McCandless has spent more than a decade looking at the best data visualisation work in the world, which gives him an unusually wide reference set when advising teams on what separates a chart that lands from one that does not. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Tate Britain, and the Wellcome Trust gallery, and his TEDGlobal 2010 talk on the beauty of data visualisation introduced the field to a mainstream audience. For organisations sitting on data they cannot translate into action, he offers the rarer skill: editorial judgement on what is worth showing, and how. Key speaking topics Data visualisation Information design Data storytelling Data journalism Visual communication Creativity and pattern recognition Infographics in business communication Ideal for CMOs, brand and marketing leaders rethinking how data shapes customer narratives Communications, internal comms, and corporate affairs leads briefing senior audiences Heads of data, analytics, and insight whose dashboards are not changing decisions Innovation and design leaders building visual literacy across the organisation Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for what makes a data visualisation land with a non-specialist audience Sharper editorial judgement on which numbers in a dataset are worth showing and which are noise Concrete examples from across journalism, design, and the IIB Awards archive of what good looks like A clearer view of how to brief designers, agencies, and internal teams on data-led communication

Why organisations work with David Roberts His Exponential Leadership framework draws a hard diagnostic line between revolutionary and truly disruptive technology – giving senior teams a structured method for a decision most organisations currently make by instinct. He holds an MIT degree in Artificial Intelligence alongside a Harvard MBA, and built ventures backed by Kleiner Perkins, Vinod Khosla, and In-Q-Tel – his understanding of technology disruption is operational, not theoretical. As Vice President and two-time Director of Singularity University’s Graduate Studies Program, he has stress-tested these frameworks with senior leaders across sectors and geographies at scale. His background spans classified U.S. government programs – satellite systems, drone development, intelligence fusion centers – giving him credibility on high-stakes technological complexity that most innovation speakers cannot claim. Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley Business Schools have written and taught case studies on his leadership and decision-making – a level of academic scrutiny that validates the substance of the framework, not just its presentation. Biography highlights MIT B.S. Computer Science and Engineering, Distinguished Graduate, majored in Artificial Intelligence and Bio-Computer Engineering Harvard MBA Vice President and two-time Director of Singularity University’s Graduate Studies Program; Distinguished Faculty member Coined the term Exponential Leadership in 2010; founder of Exponential Leadership organisation Co-founder and President of FireDrop and Zaplet, acquired by MetricStream; ventures backed by Kleiner Perkins, Vinod Khosla, Cisco, Oracle, Accenture, and In-Q-Tel Chairman of 1QBit, one of the world’s first quantum computing software companies Career U.S. government officer: Air Force officer, decorated Special Agent; led development of satellite programs and the U.S. Drone Program; received personal citation from the Director of the FBI Media coverage in the Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine, USA Today, The New York Times, and CNN Biography Roberts studied AI at MIT before the term had reached the boardroom – under the guidance of Joseph Weizenbaum, creator of ELIZA and one of the discipline’s founding figures. That technical grounding was followed by a Goldman Sachs M&A posting and then a career in the U.S. government, where he led the development of satellite systems and the U.S. Drone Program across multiple national agencies. By the time he entered Silicon Valley, he had spent years building the technologies that other people were still learning to name. His venture career – FireDrop and Zaplet, backed by Kleiner Perkins and In-Q-Tel and ultimately acquired by MetricStream – gave him a second operational lens: what it takes to build and fund companies around genuinely disruptive technology, not merely competitive ones. That distinction became the foundation of his intellectual contribution. In 2010, working in a government context, he coined the term Exponential Leadership – a framework built on a single, testable claim: that the leadership models most organisations rely on were engineered for incremental change, and that they structurally fail when technologies start compressing competitive timelines from decades to years. Roberts went on to serve as Vice President and two-time Director of Singularity University’s Graduate Studies Program, reaching senior leaders across sectors with that framework. His talks do not stop at diagnosing the gap between technology speed and leadership capability – they give organisations a structured method for distinguishing truly disruptive technologies from merely revolutionary ones, and a leadership model calibrated to act on that distinction. Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley Business Schools have used his leadership and decision-making as the basis for case studies. His technology ventures have been covered by the Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine, and CNN. Key speaking topics Exponential Leadership Technology disruption and disruptive innovation theory Artificial intelligence and emerging technologies Quantum computing and advanced technology platforms Entrepreneurship and high-growth venture strategy Strategic decision-making in exponential environments Leadership development for technology-driven organisations Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership teams navigating technology-driven transformation Strategy and innovation leaders in sectors facing accelerating competitive disruption Corporate leadership development programmes seeking a framework for exponential change Boards and executive committees assessing long-term technology risk and strategic positioning Audience outcomes A working distinction between revolutionary and genuinely disruptive technology, with a framework for applying it to current strategic decisions Understanding of why traditional leadership models underperform in exponentially changing environments, and what a more effective model looks like in practice Clearer organisational language for discussing exponential change – moving beyond general awareness to specific, actionable diagnostic categories Exposure to emerging technologies – including AI, quantum computing, synthetic biology, and autonomous systems – framed through their leadership and strategic implications A practical foundation for aligning leadership behaviour and decision-making with the actual pace of technology change

Why organisations work with David Rowan He runs the climate-tech and health-tech investment funds at Voyagers and has personally backed more than 180 early-stage tech companies. The view he brings to a board is from active deal flow, not from a research summary. Nine years editing WIRED UK gave him direct working relationships with the founders of WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Google, Spotify, Didi, Xiaomi and Nest while those companies were still being built. He reports on the frontier from inside the rooms where it is designed. His Penguin bestseller Non-Bullshit Innovation came out of a 20-country investigation into what real corporate innovation looks like once the theatre of accelerators and chief disruptive growth officers is stripped away. Boards get a tested set of strategies, not a list of trends. Every talk is researched and built around the sector in the room. Recent briefs include aviation (SITA), insurance, automotive after-market, real estate, luxury fashion and television. He converts frontier technology into the decisions a CEO has to take this quarter. Repeat clients include Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Google, Sky, Salesforce and Warner Bros. Biography highlights Founding Editor-in-Chief of WIRED UK, 2008-17 Author of Non-Bullshit Innovation (Penguin); Amazon #1 business bestseller; Financial Times Business Books of the Month; translated into Japanese, Korean, Russian and Ukrainian 900+ keynotes globally; event moderator for the World Economic Forum, the UK and French governments, the G8 Innovation Conference, the Royal Academy of Engineering and GITEX Dubai Technology columnist for The Times, GQ, Condé Nast Traveller and The Sunday Times Investor in 180+ early-stage tech companies; named unicorns include Grammarly, Improbable, Maven Clinic, Cerebral, Commure, Rebellion Defense, Kitopi and Onfido Founder of Voyagers; manager of its climate-tech and health-tech investment funds; adviser to Lakestar Biography The length of task an AI agent can autonomously complete is doubling every seven months. Autonomous robots are already running factory shifts. Most boards are setting strategy from briefings that pre-date both. David Rowan’s working life sits inside the gap between those two realities. As founding Editor-in-Chief of WIRED UK, he built working relationships with the founders of WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Google, Spotify, Didi, Xiaomi and Nest while those companies were still scaling. He has since backed more than 180 early-stage tech companies, eight of which have reached unicorn valuations: Grammarly, Improbable, Maven Clinic, Cerebral, Commure, Rebellion Defense, Kitopi and Onfido. He now runs the Voyagers climate-tech and health-tech investment funds. His Penguin bestseller Non-Bullshit Innovation came out of a 20-country investigation into how incumbent businesses actually generate new value, once the theatre of accelerators and chief disruptive growth officers is set aside. The book was named a Financial Times Business Book of the Month and translated into Japanese, Korean, Russian and Ukrainian. Its argument is that genuine innovation is a discipline with specific, testable strategies. His next book is on culture as the differentiating asset for organisations in an era when AI risks commodifying everything else. Repeat clients include Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Google, Sky, Salesforce and Warner Bros. He moderates for the World Economic Forum, the UK and French governments, the G8 Innovation Conference and the Royal Academy of Engineering. His stated KPI for a keynote: leave the audience 91% excited about the future, and 9% afraid. Key speaking topics AI strategy for established businesses Exponential technology and industry disruption Innovation as a managed discipline inside incumbent organisations The future of work in the age of AI agents Culture and talent strategy under AI commodification Sector-specific technology foresight Ideal for CEOs and boards setting AI strategy for established businesses CHROs and Chief People Officers reshaping talent strategy as AI changes the shape of work Chief Innovation, Digital and Strategy leaders translating frontier technology into operating decisions Senior leadership teams in sectors facing acute technology disruption: finance, real estate, aviation, media, healthcare, insurance, automotive Audience outcomes A clearer separation of what is genuinely real at the AI frontier from what remains hype A practical triage of technology decisions: what to fund this quarter, what to pilot, what to ignore The 17 strategies from Non-Bullshit Innovation, applied to the audience’s own sector A sector-specific reading of what AI agents are likely to do to operating models and headcount over the next 24 months

Why organisations work with David S. Kidder He hands leadership teams a named, tested method for growth, the GrowthOS, rather than inspiration. Accenture bought the company built around it, and Fortune 500 partners including Nike, P&G, Citi, and GE ran it inside their own businesses. His work targets the specific failure mode of large firms: they grow existing businesses well but rarely turn new opportunities into meaningful revenue. He gives leaders a way to do the second thing without abandoning the first. The methodology is published and taught, not proprietary folklore. New to Big set out the Growth Operating System in full, and the approach has been used as teaching material on enterprise growth and innovation. He works from the operator’s chair, not the lectern. He built Bionic to $30 million in revenue and sold four companies, so his frameworks come with the scar tissue of having run them under real commercial pressure. His current systems, PreMortem and Apogee, extend the same logic into decision discipline: surfacing the two or three assumptions that decide whether a funded initiative actually succeeds, before more capital is committed. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of Bionic, the enterprise-growth firm acquired by Accenture in 2021 and folded into what became Accenture Song Creator of the GrowthOS, deployed with CEOs and leadership teams at Nike, Procter & Gamble, Citi, GE, and more than forty other Fortune 500 organisations Co-author of New to Big (Currency, 2019) with Christina Wallace, endorsed by Clay Christensen, Adam Grant, and Marc Andreessen Creator and co-author of The Intellectual Devotional, a New York Times bestselling series; his books have sold more than one million copies across 18 languages Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year (2008) and recipient of ID Magazine’s International Design Award; graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology Angel investor in more than 150 startups, with early positions including SpaceX and Airbnb Biography Large companies are good at making big businesses bigger. They are far worse at turning a new idea into a business that matters, which is the skill entrepreneurs and venture investors live by. David S. Kidder built his career on closing that gap. At Bionic, the company he co-founded and led as CEO, Kidder created the GrowthOS: a system that borrows the tools and mindsets of venture capital and installs them inside established organisations. He deployed it directly with leadership teams at Nike, Procter & Gamble, Citi, GE, and more than forty other Fortune 500 firms, and bootstrapped the company to $30 million in revenue before Accenture acquired it in 2021 and made the method a core part of Accenture Song. The thinking is set out in New to Big, written with Christina Wallace and endorsed by Clay Christensen, Adam Grant, and Marc Andreessen. Its argument is practical: stop guessing from the inside out, obsess over the customer problems that create real opportunity, run growth as a portfolio, and treat productive failure as information. His earlier books, including the New York Times bestselling Intellectual Devotional series, have sold more than a million copies across 18 languages. Kidder now applies the same discipline to the moment before capital is committed. PreMortem is a decision system that forces teams to name the assumptions underneath their highest-stakes initiatives and test the two or three that decide the outcome. Apogee, rooted in behavioural science, works on how leadership teams commit to each other and hold the line on those commitments. Both come from the same conviction that runs through his four exits: growth is not luck, it is a system you can build and run. Key speaking topics Enterprise growth systems and the GrowthOS New business-model discovery inside established companies Innovation as a repeatable, portfolio-based discipline Commercial decision-making and assumption testing under uncertainty Corporate reinvention and the founder’s mindset at scale Leadership-team performance and accountability Ideal for CEOs, CSOs, and chief growth or innovation officers at large enterprises trying to build new revenue without disrupting the core business Boards and executive teams with a fully funded, high-stakes initiative they cannot confidently say is on course PE and VC portfolio companies under pressure to accelerate new revenue and prove repeatable growth CHROs and people leaders responsible for turning leadership development into visible behaviour change Audience outcomes A shared framework for identifying where genuine new growth lives and a clear first move for pursuing it The specific two or three assumptions that will decide whether a major initiative succeeds, and a plan to test them before more capital goes in A working understanding of how to run innovation as a governed portfolio rather than a series of one-off bets A concrete practice for leadership teams to make visible commitments and hold each other accountable to them Language and mental models that separate a real growth engine from activity that only looks like progress

Why organisations work with Dean van Leeuwen His Grey Elephant framework gives boards a named, structured radar for seven megatrends – distinguishing the forces that demand a strategic response from background noise and positioning leaders to act before disruption arrives, not after His McKinsey consulting background means the output of his foresight work is strategic choices, not predictions – he applies commercial strategy discipline to futures thinking in a way that most futurists do not His book “Quest: Competitive Advantage and the Art of Leadership in the 21st Century” codifies a three-quality leadership model drawn from case research on high-performing organisations, giving teams a shared model they can apply after the event He teaches in executive leadership programmes at Saïd Business School, Henley Business School, and CEDEP, Fontainebleau – his frameworks are tested against senior leadership cohorts, not developed solely for conference stages He co-hosts the “Elephants in the Boardroom” podcast, a named monthly research output that applies the Grey Elephant framework to live signals – keeping his content current and substantiated rather than recycled from a fixed talk Biography highlights Co-founder of TomorrowToday Global, a futurist and strategy consultancy operating across more than 50 countries; founder of TomorrowToday UK Former consultant at McKinsey and Company, with work that included advising on South Africa’s largest bank merger Executive lecturer at Saïd Business School (University of Oxford), Henley Business School, and CEDEP, Fontainebleau Author of “Quest: Competitive Advantage and the Art of Leadership in the 21st Century” (self-published, available on Amazon) TEDx speaker MSc in Business Strategy, Henley Management College; undergraduate background in economics and law Named clients include L’Oreal, Anglo American, BNP Paribas, GSK, John Lewis Partnership, and Deloitte Biography Most organisations have access to trend data. What they are missing is a structured way to turn that data into decisions their boards will commit to and their teams will execute. Dean van Leeuwen, co-founder of TomorrowToday Global, has spent two decades building exactly that – a practical bridge between foresight and strategic action. His most distinctive intellectual contribution is the Grey Elephant framework, a proprietary megatrend radar developed by TomorrowToday and built around seven named forces identified as highly probable, high-impact, and consistently underacted upon. The framework helps leadership teams name the forces they can already see coming and design responses before the window closes. He also applies the BANI diagnostic – Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible – as a lens for teams operating in conditions where cause and effect no longer follow predictable patterns. Earlier in his career, he worked at McKinsey and Company, where his work included advising on South Africa’s largest bank merger. That grounding in commercial strategy discipline is what separates his foresight practice from abstract futurism where the output is decisions and trade-offs, not trend catalogues. He now teaches in senior executive programmes at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, Henley Business School, and CEDEP in Fontainebleau. He is the author of “Quest: Competitive Advantage and the Art of Leadership in the 21st Century,” which decodes what leaders at high-performing organisations actually do through a three-quality model grounded in case research. He co-hosts the “Elephants in the Boardroom” podcast with Graeme Codrington, applying the Grey Elephant framework monthly to live signals across geopolitics, technology, and the global economy. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and megatrend analysis Leadership decision-making under uncertainty Innovation as organisational capability Strategic transformation and competitive advantage The BANI operating environment Antifragility and organisational resilience Human-technology collaboration Ideal for Boards and C-suite leadership teams facing strategic inflection points, technology shifts, or competitive disruption Strategy, transformation, and innovation directors responsible for long-range planning Organisations navigating sector disruption, regulatory change, or structural market shifts Executive education cohorts focused on future-ready leadership and strategic foresight Audience outcomes A named framework for distinguishing megatrends that demand a strategic response from trends that can safely be monitored Shared language for leading teams in conditions where cause and effect are nonlinear and outcomes are hard to predict Practical tools for converting trend intelligence into decisions that commit direction and resources A clearer view of the specific forces most likely to reshape their competitive environment in the near and medium term Improved confidence in making strategic choices under uncertainty without waiting for conditions to stabilise

Why organisations work with Debbie Wosskow Three exits as founding CEO across PR, the sharing economy, and the women’s network category, giving boards a rare interlocutor who has personally taken capital, scaled a team, and sold the business. Co-Chair of the UK government’s Invest in Women Taskforce, which closed over £255m of committed capital for female founders in November 2024, the largest pool of its kind globally. Author of the 2014 government review “Unlocking the Sharing Economy”, the regulatory frame that legitimised platforms including Airbnb and Zipcar in the UK market. Operates inside the institutions that allocate capital and reputation: Senior Advisor at McKinsey, Non-Executive Director of Channel 4, Mayor of London’s Business Advisory Board. Co-author with Anna Jones of “Believe. Build. Become” (Penguin, 2019), the playbook that emerged from the AllBright Academy and continues to anchor her keynote material on women in leadership. Biography highlights Founder and exited CEO of three businesses: Mantra (sold to Loewy Group), Love Home Swap (sold to Wyndham Destination Networks, $53m, 2017) and AllBright (co-founded with Anna Jones, exited 2022). Co-Chair, Invest in Women Taskforce, appointed by Chancellor Rachel Reeves. Non-Executive Director, Channel 4, since January 2024. Senior Advisor, McKinsey & Company. OBE for services to business; Freedom of the City of London. Author of “Believe. Build. Become” (Penguin, 2019) with Anna Jones, and the UK government’s “Unlocking the Sharing Economy” review. Biography The UK economy loses roughly £250bn a year because women start and scale businesses at a fraction of the rate of men. Debbie Wosskow has spent two decades building inside that gap, first as a founder and now as the operator who sits at the table where institutional capital is reassigned. The Invest in Women Taskforce she co-chairs closed over £255m of committed funding for female founders in November 2024, the largest dedicated pool of its kind anywhere. Her authority on the topic is not theoretical. Wosskow founded and sold Mantra in her twenties, built Love Home Swap into a subscription business that Wyndham Destination Networks bought for $53m in 2017, and co-founded AllBright with Anna Jones in 2016, exiting in 2022. Each business was venture-backed and each exit was completed under her as CEO. Government and regulators use her as a translator between policy and operating reality. She wrote the 2014 review “Unlocking the Sharing Economy” for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the document that shaped how the UK regulates platforms including Airbnb and Zipcar. She now sits as Non-Executive Director of Channel 4, Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Company, and Executive Chair of The Better Menopause, with a board seat on the Mayor of London’s Business Advisory Board. For senior audiences, the proposition is specific: an operator who has built and sold three companies, written the rules for one of the largest new market categories of the last decade, and now controls one of the most consequential pools of growth capital aimed at women in the UK. Her co-authored Penguin title “Believe. Build. Become” remains the public expression of that argument. Key speaking topics Female entrepreneurship and access to capital Scaling and exiting venture-backed businesses The sharing economy and platform regulation Women in leadership and the AllBright thesis Investing in women as economic strategy Building and selling businesses at pace Boardroom voice for entrepreneurs Ideal for Boards and ExCos commissioning a serious operator voice on female founders, capital allocation, and the economics of inclusion. CEOs, CFOs and investment committees rethinking how growth capital reaches female-led businesses. Financial services, professional services and corporate venture audiences seeking a credible UK policy and operator perspective. Female leadership networks and executive development programmes within FTSE-listed and global organisations. Audience outcomes A clearer operator account of what scaling and exiting a venture-backed business actually requires, drawn from three completed exits. A working understanding of the £255m Invest in Women Taskforce model and what it signals for corporate capital strategy. The argument and the evidence base behind investing in female founders as a growth lever, not a CSR line. Practical perspectives from “Believe. Build. Become” on building career and leadership capital as a woman in a senior commercial role. A direct read on how Westminster, the City and corporate boards are currently moving on female entrepreneurship.

Why organisations work with Deborah Meaden Twenty years of unscripted investment judgement on Dragons’ Den, where she has personally backed dozens of businesses, given audiences a working language for evaluating risk, founders and growth. Operator credibility built on a £33 million sale of Weststar Holidays to Phoenix Equity Partners in 2005, after a management buyout she led from inside the family business. A consistent, public position on sustainability as a commercial question: through The Big Green Money Show on BBC Radio 5 Live she has interrogated CEOs of major UK and global businesses on what climate strategy actually costs and earns. Author credibility across audiences from senior operators (Common Sense Rules) to financial literacy for children (HarperCollins Little Experts series, including a Financial Times Book of the Year 2023 Critics’ Choice). A direct, plain-language style that translates entrepreneurial decisions into something a leadership team can argue with, not just admire. Biography highlights Investor on BBC’s Dragons’ Den since 2006. Led the 1999 management buyout of Weststar Holidays and sold the majority to Phoenix Equity Partners in 2005 for £33 million. Author of Common Sense Rules (Random House Business, 2009) and the HarperCollins Little Experts financial literacy series. Why Money Matters named a Financial Times Book of the Year 2023 Critics’ Choice; silver at the Made For Mums Toy Awards. Co-host of The Big Green Money Show on BBC Radio 5 Live with Felicity Hannah. Trustee of Tusk Trust, Fellow of WWF, Ambassador for the RSPB, Marine Conservation Society and World Horse Welfare, Compassion Visionary at CIWF. Honorary degrees from the University of Exeter Business School, Staffordshire University, Keele University and Bath Spa University. Biography Weststar Holidays was a single-site family business when Deborah Meaden joined its arcade operations in 1988. By 2005 it was a five-park operator hosting around 150,000 holidaymakers a year, sold to Phoenix Equity Partners for £33 million after the management buyout she had led six years earlier. The arc, from operator to owner to seller, is the spine of how she reads other people’s businesses. Two decades on Dragons’ Den have widened that lens. Since 2006 she has sat through several thousand pitches and put her own capital behind a long list of UK ventures, from artisan manufacturer Fox Brothers to consumer brands across food, retail and clean technology. The pattern audiences see, the questions about unit economics, founder discipline and market truth, is the same pattern she applies to her own portfolio. Her published work extends the argument into financial literacy and commercial sustainability. Common Sense Rules (Random House Business, 2009) sets out the operating principles she uses on the Den. The Little Experts series with HarperCollins takes the same plain-language approach to children: Why Money Matters was named a Financial Times Book of the Year 2023 Critics’ Choice. On The Big Green Money Show with Felicity Hannah, she presses senior corporate leaders on whether climate commitments survive contact with a profit-and-loss account. Trustee at Tusk Trust, Fellow of WWF, Ambassador to the RSPB, Marine Conservation Society and World Horse Welfare, and Compassion Visionary at CIWF: the environmental work is a working part of how she frames commercial choices. Honorary doctorates from Exeter, Staffordshire, Keele and Bath Spa recognise the same combination of operating record and public argument. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership Investment judgement and growth strategy Building and selling a business Sustainability as a commercial discipline Brand, customer and consumer trust Resilience and decision-making in private companies Women in business and leadership Ideal for Founders, CEOs and senior operators of growth-stage and family-owned businesses Boards setting strategy on sustainability and long-term capital allocation Sales, partner and customer-facing leadership teams Annual conferences and leadership offsites for operating businesses Audience outcomes A practical view of how an experienced investor reads pitches, plans and people. Concrete reference points from twenty years of UK private investment, including her own deals. A clear-eyed framing of sustainability as a commercial choice, with named examples from major UK and global businesses. Confidence to ask harder questions of their own numbers, founders and customers. A memorable, direct keynote voice that audiences quote back inside their organisations.

Why organisations work with Deborah Nas Her book Design Things That Make Sense sets out a codified methodology: 24 strategies to strengthen what technology offers users and 13 to reduce the resistance that causes adoption to fail. It gives innovation teams a structured diagnostic rather than a set of principles to interpret on their own. She founded the Centre for Quantum and Society at QuantumDelta NL – making her one of very few people who can address quantum technology’s ethical, legal, and organisational implications in terms senior teams can act on before the technology reaches commercial scale. Her position leading multidisciplinary research teams at TU Delft – on mobility futures, quantum societal readiness, and energy transition – means her perspective is shaped by live scientific frontier work, not commentary on published trends. She is on the investment committee of InnovationQuarter Capital, a €143 million deep tech fund, and on the supervisory board of Hardt Hyperloop – direct sight lines into where deep tech investment is moving, not just where it currently stands. Her starting point is the psychology of technology resistance – the reason most implementation initiatives stall – which is the question most organisations have not structured an answer to and the one that most directly explains expensive innovation failures. Biography highlights Professor of Strategic Design for Technology-based Innovation, Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, TU Delft Initiative Lead and founder, Centre for Quantum and Society, QuantumDelta NL Author, Design Things That Make Sense (BIS Publishers) – a practitioner framework of 37 named design strategies for technology-based product innovation Visiting professor, Politecnico di Milano Investment committee member, InnovationQuarter Capital (€143 million deep tech fund); supervisory board member, Hardt Hyperloop MSc Industrial Design Engineering with honours, TU Delft; 16 years co-founding and running a strategic innovation agency Biography Technology that works and technology that people will actually use are two different achievements. Deborah Nas, Professor of Strategic Design for Technology-based Innovation at TU Delft’s Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, has spent 25 years studying the gap between them. She began at Philips and KPN, then spent 16 years co-founding and running a strategic innovation agency before anchoring her work in research and teaching at TU Delft. Her core contribution is a codified methodology: 24 design strategies to strengthen what a technology product offers and 13 to reduce the user resistance that causes adoption to fail. Published in Design Things That Make Sense (BIS Publishers), the framework draws on consumer psychology and is structured for direct use by product teams and innovation managers. She also teaches it as a visiting professor at Politecnico di Milano. She has extended this work into the next generation of technology adoption challenges. As founder and Innovation Lead of the Centre for Quantum and Society at QuantumDelta NL, she is developing the ethical, legal, and societal frameworks organisations will need before quantum technology reaches commercial scale. She is also on the supervisory board of Hardt Hyperloop and on the investment committee of InnovationQuarter Capital, a €143 million deep tech fund. Organisations that work with her are not typically looking for enthusiasm about what emerging technology can do. They want a structured answer to why technology investments fail at the point of adoption – and a methodology that gives their teams a way to act on it. Key speaking topics Technology adoption and consumer resistance Human-centred design for technology-based innovation AI strategy and organisational readiness Quantum technology and societal implications Deep tech ecosystem and investment landscape Future of work and intelligent systems Innovation strategy for established organisations Ideal for Chief Innovation Officers, R&D leads, and product strategy teams working with emerging technologies Boards and senior leadership teams making investment decisions on AI, quantum, or deep tech Corporate innovation functions examining why technology projects stall or fail at adoption Government and public sector bodies engaging with the organisational and societal implications of advanced technologies Audience outcomes A clear framework for understanding why technology-based products fail at adoption – and what design decisions change that outcome Working familiarity with the Tech Design Strategies methodology: 24 strategies to strengthen product benefits and 13 to reduce user resistance Practical orientation to how AI and quantum technologies will affect their specific industry or sector Ability to separate technological capability from technology adoption as distinct strategic problems requiring different organisational responses Insight into how organisations and investors at the deep tech frontier are currently making decisions about technology bets