Créativité speakers

Why organisations work with Fernando Trias de Bes He is the only Spanish author to have co-written books with Philip Kotler, and the frameworks in Lateral Marketing and Winning at Innovation give leadership teams a shared vocabulary for where their ideas actually come from. Winning at Innovation, with its A-to-F Model, won the CMI Innovation and Entrepreneurship category at the 2013 Management Book of the Year Awards, a credential that speaks directly to boards asking how innovation should be structured inside the firm. He runs Salvetti and Llombart, a Barcelona-based consumer research and innovation consultancy whose client list has included PepsiCo, Sony, Hewlett-Packard, Nestle and McKinsey, which means the classroom work is tested against paying clients. He bridges two registers most economists do not reach, serious academic marketing theory and popular business writing, and audiences that have read La buena suerte or El libro negro del emprendedor often arrive already familiar with his thinking. He presents in English and Spanish and has been delivering executive-level keynotes since 2003, with hundreds of international engagements behind him. Biography highlights Associate Professor of Marketing Management at ESADE Business School since 1994. Co-author with Philip Kotler of Lateral Marketing (Wiley, 2003) and Winning at Innovation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). CMI Management Book of the Year 2013, Innovation and Entrepreneurship category, for Winning at Innovation. Founder and President of Salvetti and Llombart, a consumer insight and innovation consultancy working with PepsiCo, Sony, HP, Nestle and McKinsey. Regular columnist for La Vanguardia, ARA and El Pais Semanal; author of more than twenty books of essay and fiction translated into more than thirty languages. Winner of the Premio Espasa de Ensayo (2015), Premio De Hoy de Ensayo (2009) and Shinpukai Prize (Japan, 2005). Biography Most innovation in large companies is lateral in name only. Teams segment further, tweak an existing product, and call it new. Fernando Trias de Bes spent two decades arguing, in books co-written with Philip Kotler, that this is the core reason corporate pipelines stall, and building methods that address it directly. Lateral Marketing, published by Wiley in 2003, set out a structured way to generate product concepts that do not come from narrower segmentation but from a different logical operation on the category itself. Winning at Innovation, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2011, took the argument further with the A-to-F Model, a step-by-step description of the roles and stages an organisation needs to convert ideas into launches. The Chartered Management Institute named it Innovation and Entrepreneurship Book of the Year at its 2013 awards. Trias de Bes has taught marketing and innovation at ESADE Business School since 1994 and runs Salvetti and Llombart, the Barcelona consumer research and innovation consultancy he co-founded in 1996. Clients have included PepsiCo, Sony, Hewlett-Packard, McKinsey and Nestle, which gives the academic frameworks a field of consumer goods and services to answer to. Beyond the business books he writes columns for La Vanguardia, ARA and El Pais Semanal, and has published essays and novels translated into more than thirty languages, including La buena suerte, co-written with Alex Rovira, and El libro negro del emprendedor. The Premio Espasa de Ensayo in 2015 sits alongside earlier recognition in Japan and Spain. That range, economist, consultant, columnist, novelist, is the unusual shape of the author, and it is what audiences tend to remember from the keynote. Key speaking topics Business model innovation Lateral marketing and creativity in commercial strategy The A-to-F Model for organising innovation Entrepreneurship and the economics of new ventures Economic trends and consumer behaviour Corporate reinvention and disruptive thinking Ideal for CMOs, CSOs and heads of innovation confronting commoditised categories and stalled pipelines. Executive committees running corporate strategy offsites on growth and reinvention. Business schools and management development programmes covering innovation, marketing and entrepreneurship. Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for lateral versus vertical innovation that a leadership team can use the next day. The A-to-F structure for assigning innovation roles and stages inside an organisation. Concrete examples, drawn from consumer goods and services, of where breakthrough ideas actually come from. A sharper read on why most corporate innovation produces line extensions rather than category moves.

Why organisations work with Freddy Wexler A working hit-maker, not a commentator. Ten Billboard number ones with Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Post Malone, BLACKPINK and others give him a verifiable claim on how popular taste actually moves. The Billy Joel case study. Coaxing a thirty-year creative silence into a Grammy-stage single, including the full marketing rollout and an AI-directed music video, is a rare example of cultural reactivation that buyers can study end to end. Talent identification with a track record. Wexler scouted and pitched Stefani Germanotta as a future Madonna while she was still unsigned, and signed Rachel Platten before “Fight Song”. Useful for audiences thinking about how to spot signal early. A view on AI and creative work shaped by shipping product. The “Turn the Lights Back On” video was a Webby-winning AI-led production, which gives him a practitioner’s read on where machine generation helps and where it does not. Commercial track record across formats. Founder of The Brain Music with joint ventures involving Disney, Scooter Braun Projects, Warner Chappell and Prescription Songs, plus a first-look television deal with Disney. Biography highlights Grammy-nominated songwriter and producer with ten Billboard number one contributions Co-writer and producer of Billy Joel’s “Turn the Lights Back On” (Columbia Records, 2024), the artist’s first new pop single in roughly thirty years Album of the Year Grammy nomination for Justin Bieber’s Justice (2022); credited contributor on Laufey’s Bewitched, a 2024 Grammy-winning album Co-wrote “Stuck with U” by Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande, a Billboard Hot 100 number one that raised over five million dollars for first responders’ families Founder of The Brain Music, with joint ventures involving Disney, Scooter Braun Projects, Warner Chappell and Prescription Songs; first-look television deal with Disney Webby Award (2024) for direction of the AI-led “Turn the Lights Back On” music video; Golden Globe nomination for “Forbidden Road” from the Robbie Williams biopic Better Man Biography Billy Joel had not released a new pop single for thirty years when “Turn the Lights Back On” arrived in February 2024 on Columbia Records. The song was co-written and produced by Freddy Wexler, who spent more than a year developing the material with Joel from a CD of unfinished sketches. The track debuted at number one on classic hits and classic rock radio, picked up a Grammy-stage performance, and was packaged with an AI-directed music video that later won a Webby. As a worked example of how a dormant creative voice gets reactivated and brought back to market, it is unusually complete. That collaboration sits inside a longer hit-making record. Wexler has ten Billboard number one contributions and Grammy nominations across three consecutive years, including Album of the Year for Justin Bieber’s Justice and contributor credit on Laufey’s Bewitched. He co-wrote “Stuck with U” for Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande, a Hot 100 number one that raised more than five million dollars for first responders’ families during the early pandemic. His writing and production credits span Post Malone, BLACKPINK, Selena Gomez, Halsey, Diana Ross and Celine Dion. He is also a builder of companies. The Brain Music, founded in 2012, runs joint ventures with Disney, Scooter Braun Projects, Warner Chappell and Prescription Songs. The Freddy Wexler Company holds a first-look television deal with Disney and a slate spanning Nickelodeon’s Kid Cowboy, a Broadway production of The Last Five Years, and a Hulu special with Sebastian Maniscalco. The Variety Family Entertainment Impact Report has recognised the operation. For organisations, the relevant point is access to a practitioner who can describe how a cultural moment actually gets made, including the writing room, the artist relationship, the rollout, and the use of AI in production. Few speakers on creativity can point to a specific commercial artefact and walk a senior audience through the craft behind it. Wexler can. Key speaking topics Creativity as a working practice Storytelling across music, film and brand AI in creative production and music video direction Talent identification and early-signal spotting Cultural moments and the commercial rollout behind them Resilience and creative reinvention Philanthropy embedded in creative product Ideal for Marketing, brand and CMO leadership teams thinking about cultural relevance Creative and content function heads inside media, entertainment and consumer companies Innovation and product groups exploring AI-assisted creative production Senior offsites and leadership conferences looking for a practitioner perspective on craft Audience outcomes A working framework for how cultural moments are constructed, drawn from a specific recent case A practitioner’s read on AI in creative production, anchored in a Webby-winning video A more concrete sense of what early signal looks like in talent and ideas, before they are obvious Reference points from a hit-making catalogue that audiences can apply to their own creative briefs

Why organisations work with Fredrik Haren His formula IDEA = P(K+I) – a person combining existing knowledge with new information – converts creativity from an abstract value into a model that managers can act on; this is the foundation of how he runs workshops, not just a rhetorical device The Idea Book has been deployed as an internal training tool by HP, Ericsson, Volvo, China Mobile, and GE – demonstrating that his framework translates from conference platform to in-organisation application His research base is genuinely cross-cultural: 25 years of field interviews across 75 countries, including fieldwork in North Korea and Mongolia, gives him material that no Western-campus-based creativity theorist can replicate He holds the Global Speaking Federation’s International Ambassador Award – given to fewer than 15 speakers globally since 2001 and, at the time of his award, never previously to a non-native English speaker based in Asia – a peer-verified credential, not a self-declared one His most recent book, The World of Creativity (Capstone/Wiley), entered for The Business Book Awards 2026, signals that his thinking continues to develop rather than recycle the same material Biography highlights Author of 10 books including The Idea Book, listed among the 100 Best Business Books of All Time Recipient of the International Ambassador Award from the Global Speakers Federation – awarded to fewer than 15 speakers globally since 2001 One of approximately 30 Global Speaking Fellows (CSPGlobal) worldwide Speaker of the Year, Sweden (2007); founder of interesting.org 2,000+ speeches delivered across 75 countries and 6 continents over a 25-year career Clients include KPMG, Grant Thornton International, HP, IKEA, BMW, Ericsson, GE, Volvo, and American Express Biography Fredrik Haren’s starting point is a question most organisations avoid asking directly: if you need a new idea tomorrow, where does it come from? His formula – IDEA = P(K+I), meaning a person combining existing knowledge with new information – strips creativity of its mystique and reframes it as something organisations can design for. The Idea Book, first published in 2004, applied that thinking in a concrete format: 150 pages of frameworks combined with 150 blank pages for working. It became an internal training tool at HP, Ericsson, Volvo, China Mobile, and GE, and was listed among the 100 Best Business Books of All Time. His most recent book, The World of Creativity (Capstone/Wiley), draws on 25 years of field research – interviews with thousands of people across 75 countries including North Korea – to map how creativity is both universal and shaped by culture. That fieldwork is the differentiator. Where most speakers on innovation draw from research or theory, Haren’s material comes from direct observation across markets and contexts that Western organisations rarely access. It gives global conference audiences – whose reference points span multiple continents – a framework that holds across cultures rather than one that travels badly. His credentials within the professional speaking community are a useful proxy for depth: Certified Speaking Professional, one of approximately 30 Global Speaking Fellows worldwide, and recipient of the Global Speakers Federation’s International Ambassador Award – given to fewer than 15 speakers since 2001 and, at the time of his award, the first to a non-native English speaker based in Asia. Key speaking topics Business creativity and idea generation Innovation as a repeatable organisational process Cross-cultural creativity and global mindset Creativity in the age of AI Building creative capability in organisations Future skills and the innovation-ready workforce Ideal for Global conference audiences spanning multiple nationalities where a single Western-centric perspective will not land CHROs and Learning & Development leads seeking to build creative capability beyond individual talent acquisition Senior leadership teams of multinationals where innovation is a stated priority but no reliable process exists to support it Innovation and transformation executives accountable for sustaining competitive differentiation Audience outcomes A working model – IDEA = P(K+I) – for understanding how ideas are generated and how to apply it in their own context Practical techniques for stimulating idea generation individually and with teams, applicable on return to the office A cross-cultural perspective on how creative practice differs across markets – relevant for any organisation operating across geographies A reframe of creativity from personal talent to organisational skill, with direct implications for how teams are developed A clearer read on how AI changes – and does not change – the fundamentals of human creativity

Why organisations work with George Nagle He built his innovation method inside oil and gas water chemistry, one of the most conservative industrial sectors there is, and used it to launch 19 products in 14 months across a portfolio worth more than $352 million. His Breakthrough Thinking series gives leadership teams a named, codified methodology to use after the keynote, not a set of slogans to remember. He is a certified FORTH method instructor with black and green belt credentials in Innovation and Growth Systems, Green Belt for Growth, and Value Innovations. The toolset is academically accredited, not invented for the stage. He has applied the same approach across more than 24 industries, which makes him a credible voice for boards and executive teams that want innovation discipline transferred into their context, not borrowed from a single sector. Biography highlights Former global executive and strategy lead at a multi-billion-dollar industrial services company, with portfolio responsibility above $352 million. Launched 19 products in 14 months in the oil and gas water chemistry sector. Founder of The Ideation Emporium of Creativity, LLC, and author of the Breakthrough Thinking series. MS in Biology and MBA in Marketing and Management from Duquesne University; BS in Biology with honours from the University of Pittsburgh. Certified online instructor in the FORTH method; black belt and multiple green belt certifications in academically accredited innovation systems. Published interviews with Authority Magazine on communication, attention, and creative habits. Biography Innovation in heavy industry is hard for a reason. The cultures are engineered for safety, repeatability, and risk avoidance, which are exactly the traits that make new ideas die quietly in a meeting. George Nagle spent his executive career inside that environment, in oil and gas water chemistry, and built a method to move past it. As a global executive, he carried a portfolio of more than $352 million and led the launch of 19 products in 14 months in a sector where most launches take years. That operating record sits behind everything else he does. He went on to found The Ideation Emporium of Creativity, codifying the approach into the Breakthrough Thinking series, including “The Five Letter F Word”, “Miserable At Work? Why? You Don’t Have To Be”, and “How Are Kids Innovating Faster Than You?”. His credentials are unusual for an innovation speaker. He holds an MS in Biology and an MBA from Duquesne University, a BS in Biology with honours from the University of Pittsburgh, and academically accredited certifications in Innovation and Growth Systems, Green Belt for Growth, and Value Innovations. He is also a certified FORTH method instructor. The toolkit is borrowed, tested, and labelled, not improvised. What distinguishes him is the breadth of application: more than 24 industries have used the same set of ideation tools, from industrial chemistry to consumer-facing services. For leadership teams that want innovation treated as a managed discipline rather than a creative-culture initiative, that record makes him a practical voice. Key speaking topics Innovation as a managed discipline Creative ideation and the FORTH method Commercial product launch under operating constraint Strategy communication across organisational levels Breakthrough Thinking methodology Workplace engagement and creative culture Ideal for Chief innovation officers, R&D leaders, and product portfolio executives looking to convert pilots into shipped revenue CEOs and executive teams in mature, process-heavy industries trying to install repeatable ideation Strategy and transformation leads responsible for cross-functional innovation programmes Senior HR and culture leaders pairing innovation capability with employee engagement work Audience outcomes A named, repeatable ideation method audiences can put into a project the next week A clearer view of why innovation efforts stall in conservative organisations and which mechanisms unblock them Specific tools for separating real strategic priorities from organisational noise Practical examples of how a structured innovation cadence produced 19 product launches in 14 months Language for connecting creativity, engagement, and commercial outcomes in a single business case

Why organisations work with Greg Orme A book-length, award-winning thesis behind every keynote. The Human Edge won Business Book of the Year 2020 and gives senior audiences a single, memorable framework, the four “superpowers”, they can apply to their own teams the next morning. London Business School pedigree as a builder, not just a teacher. He founded LBS’s Centre for Creative Business and ran executive programmes there for seven years, so the content has been pressure-tested on senior cohorts before it reaches a client stage. Recognised by peers in the people function. HR Magazine named him among its Most Influential Thinkers in 2022, which matters to CHROs sponsoring leadership and capability work. Translates the AI conversation into something a workforce can act on. Where most AI speakers describe the technology, Orme tells leadership teams what human behaviours their organisation now has to develop deliberately. Biography highlights Author of The Human Edge: How Curiosity and Creativity are Your Superpowers in the Digital Economy (Pearson, 2019), named Business Book of the Year 2020 and translated into Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese. Author of The Spark: How to Ignite and Lead Business Creativity (FT Publishing, 2014). Founding CEO of London Business School’s Centre for Creative Business; programme director and lecturer at LBS for seven years. Named to HR Magazine’s Most Influential Thinkers 2022. Forbes contributor writing on leadership, creativity and the digital economy. Clients include Microsoft, Accenture, BMW, EY, Sky, Virgin Media O2, ING, Novo Nordisk, the International Olympic Committee and the World Economic Forum. Biography The arrival of generative AI has forced a question that most leadership development programmes were not built to answer. If machines can now write, summarise, analyse and code, what exactly should an organisation expect from its human workforce? Greg Orme’s work is a direct response to that question. His book The Human Edge, published by Pearson and named Business Book of the Year 2020, argues that four human capabilities, consciousness, curiosity, creativity and collaboration, become more commercially valuable as routine cognitive work is absorbed by technology. The thesis has travelled. The book has been translated into Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese, and the framework now sits behind his keynote and executive education work. That work has institutional roots. Orme founded London Business School’s Centre for Creative Business and spent seven years there as a programme director and lecturer, building and running executive education for senior cohorts. He holds an LBS MBA. HR Magazine named him among its Most Influential Thinkers in 2022, a recognition that matters in the people function where his content is most often commissioned. What separates him from other voices in the AI conversation is the audience he is talking to. He is not selling tooling, and he is not forecasting. He is telling leadership teams what their organisations have to develop in their people, deliberately and at scale, so that an AI strategy produces advantage rather than displacement. Key speaking topics Human capability in the age of AI Leadership in the digital economy Creativity and innovation as organisational disciplines Curiosity and learning culture Purpose-driven leadership Influence and storytelling for senior leaders Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers redesigning leadership and learning around AI. Executive committees setting the human capability agenda alongside a digital or AI strategy. Senior leadership offsites where the brief is to reset behaviours, not roll out tools. Boards and partner groups in professional services confronting AI’s impact on talent value. Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary, the four superpowers, for what the organisation now needs from its people. A clearer view of where AI raises the value of human judgment and where it erodes it. Specific behavioural prompts senior leaders can model in their own teams the following week. A sharper sense of which leadership development investments still pay back in an AI-enabled organisation.

Why organisations work with Hal Gregersen A specific, teachable method for recasting strategic problems: the four-minute “Question Burst,” published in Harvard Business Review and used inside organisations from Disney/Pixar to Patagonia. Co-author of “The Innovator’s DNA” with Clayton Christensen and Jeff Dyer, the foundational research identifying the five behaviours, including questioning, that separate disruptive innovators from ordinary executives. A perspective shaped by 200-plus structured interviews with catalytic questioners, including founders and CEOs, plus a behavioural database of more than 25,000 leaders. MIT Sloan and former MIT Leadership Center director credentials that give his frameworks weight in C-suite and board settings, not just innovation labs. Ranked on the Thinkers50 list across five cycles, peaking at #16, and winner of the 2017 Distinguished Achievement Award for Leadership. Biography highlights Senior Lecturer in Work and Organization Studies, MIT Sloan School of Management. Former Executive Director, MIT Leadership Center. Co-author of “The Innovator’s DNA” (Harvard Business Review Press) and author of “Questions Are the Answer” (Harper Business, 2018). 2017 Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Award for Leadership; ranked Thinkers50 #16 in 2019. Senior Fellow at Innosight; co-founder of the Innovator’s DNA consulting group. Previous faculty roles at INSEAD, London Business School, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, and Aalto University. Biography The most consequential strategic mistakes rarely come from missing data. They come from accepting a flawed framing of the problem. The leaders who break that pattern share a behavioural habit, asking catalytic questions, that can be researched, isolated, and taught. That argument runs through twenty years of work at MIT Sloan, where Hal Gregersen serves as Senior Lecturer in Work and Organization Studies and previously led the MIT Leadership Center. With Clayton Christensen and Jeff Dyer, he co-authored “The Innovator’s DNA,” the research project that identified the five discovery skills, including questioning, observing, and experimenting, that separate disruptive innovators from competent operators. His subsequent book, “Questions Are the Answer,” drew on more than 200 interviews to formalise the practice. Out of that work came the “Question Burst,” a four-minute structured method published in Harvard Business Review’s “Better Brainstorming” and now used inside organisations from Disney/Pixar to Patagonia to reframe stuck problems before solutions are debated. The Thinkers50 ranking, peaking at #16 globally in 2019, and the 2017 Distinguished Achievement Award for Leadership reflect what senior teams actually take from his sessions: a transferable discipline for changing the questions in the room before changing the strategy. Key speaking topics Inquiry-driven leadership The Innovator’s DNA and the five discovery skills The Question Burst methodology Building cultures of constructive questioning Disruptive innovation as a leadership behaviour AI and the future of catalytic inquiry Leading through transitions Ideal for CEOs and senior executive teams setting strategy under deep uncertainty. Chief Innovation Officers, Chief Strategy Officers, and transformation leads building innovation capability beyond pilot programmes. Boards and leadership development programmes seeking a research-grounded behavioural framework rather than a values statement. Audience outcomes A working command of the Question Burst method, applied live to a real organisational problem. The five Innovator’s DNA behaviours mapped onto the audience’s own roles, with a clear view of where they default to answering rather than questioning. A diagnostic for spotting the questions a leadership team is currently avoiding, and the strategic cost of that avoidance. Concrete language for embedding catalytic questioning into operating rhythms, board reviews, and innovation portfolios.

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

Why organisations work with Isabel Behncke Her evidence base is unusually direct. More than 3,000 kilometres tracking wild bonobos in Congo gave her the first comprehensive field study of adult play in our closest living relatives, which anchors every claim she makes about creativity and social bonding in observed behaviour rather than metaphor. She translates evolutionary biology into practical arguments about culture. Her framing of play as a core adult competence, not a perk, gives leaders a defensible language for investing in creativity, psychological safety and informal connection inside performance-driven cultures. She moves between serious scientific and serious commercial settings. TED main stage twice, WIRED, Google Zeitgeist, SXSW, the House of Lords, the United Nations General Assembly and the G20, which means she is used to calibrating the same argument for scientists, policymakers and executives. She holds institutional credibility across three continents. Oxford DPhil, Gruter Institute fellowship, PERC board seat and a research post at Universidad del Desarrollo’s Social Complexity Research Center, plus advisory work on Chile’s long-term science and innovation strategy. She sits outside the behavioural economics cohort. Her discipline is field ethology, which gives her arguments about trust, risk and collaboration a biological depth that lands differently with leaders who have already heard the standard behavioural science keynote. Biography highlights DPhil in Evolutionary Anthropology from the University of Oxford, with the first comprehensive scientific study of adult play behaviour in wild bonobos at the Wamba research site in Congo. MPhil in Human Evolution from the University of Cambridge; BSc in Zoology and MSc in Wildlife Conservation from University College London. TED Fellow and TED Resident; two main-stage TED talks including «Evolution’s gift of play, from bonobo apes to humans» and «Does nature have a sense of humor?». Researcher at the Social Complexity Research Center (CICS), Universidad del Desarrollo, Santiago; Fellow of the Gruter Institute for research on human behavior and institutions; board member at PERC. Advisory roles in Chile’s long-term strategy for science, technology, innovation and knowledge, with affiliations including the Centro de Estudios Publicos. Platform work includes WIRED, Google Zeitgeist, SXSW, the United Nations General Assembly, the House of Lords and the G20, alongside features in BBC and National Geographic documentaries and The Tim Ferriss Show. Biography Most organisations talk about creativity and collaboration as if they were cultural aspirations. Field ethology treats them as biological functions. Isabel Behncke built her career studying how social mammals, and specifically wild bonobos in the Congo, generate trust, creativity and resilience through play, risk-taking and informal bonding. Her DPhil at Oxford produced the first comprehensive scientific study of adult play behaviour in wild bonobos, based on more than 3,000 kilometres of field observation at the Wamba research site. That field base shapes how she works with organisations. Her argument is that adult play is not a soft concept but an adaptive mechanism that underpins learning, social bonding and innovation in every species that depends on flexible behaviour, humans included. Leaders hear a case for culture that is rooted in evolutionary evidence rather than slogans, delivered by someone who has watched these behaviours in the wild. Her institutional footprint runs across science, policy and public platforms. She is a researcher at the Social Complexity Research Center at Universidad del Desarrollo in Santiago, a Fellow of the Gruter Institute, a board member at PERC and an adviser on Chile’s long-term science and innovation strategy. She is a TED Fellow and TED Resident, has spoken twice from the main TED stage, and has appeared at WIRED, Google Zeitgeist, SXSW, the House of Lords, the United Nations General Assembly and the G20. For senior leaders grappling with how to build adaptive, creative teams under pressure, she offers a rare combination: the rigour of a field scientist, the clarity of a seasoned public communicator, and a set of questions most boards have never asked about why their best work tends to happen in their least controlled rooms. Key speaking topics Play as a driver of adult creativity and adaptation Trust, risk-taking and social bonding inside teams Evolutionary perspectives on organisational culture Human behaviour, complexity and change Creativity and the science of collaboration Rituals and informal structure in working life Ideal for CEOs, Chief People Officers and culture leads rethinking collaboration, creativity or psychological safety Leadership and talent development programmes that want a serious scientific frame rather than another behavioural economics keynote Innovation, R&D and design leaders examining how team environments shape creative output Organisations rebuilding rituals and informal structure after hybrid and remote disruption Audience outcomes A clear evolutionary case for why adult play, humour and informal bonding shape performance, not just morale Language for talking about trust, risk and creativity that rests on observed behaviour in social mammals A sharper read on which cultural habits accelerate adaptation and which quietly suppress it Fresh questions to ask about how teams learn, collaborate and recover under sustained pressure

Why organisations work with Jade Simmons A mainstage moment that combines a Steinway, live performance and a structured keynote, rather than a podium talk. Few speakers can carry that format credibly at scale. A classical performance pedigree that holds up under scrutiny: Sphinx Medal of Excellence, performances at the White House and the US Supreme Court, repertoire from Rachmaninoff to contemporary crossover work. Author of an Amazon bestseller, Audacious Prayers for World Changers, and host of American Public Media’s Decomposed, a podcast named to best-of lists by Time, Esquire, BBC America and IndieWire. A track record headlining for Dell, NBCUniversal, Raytheon, Pfizer, Intuit QuickBooks, Nationwide, Hershey’s and Royal Bank of Canada at sales kick-offs, leadership summits and culture events. Biography highlights Recipient of the Sphinx Organization’s Medal of Excellence, with the ceremony hosted at the US Supreme Court by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Concert performances at the White House, Ravinia, Chicago Sinfonietta at Symphony Hall, New York’s Town Hall and the Detroit Institute of Arts. Host of Decomposed on American Public Media, recognised by Time, Esquire, BBC America and IndieWire. Author of Audacious Prayers for World Changers (Amazon bestseller, English and Spanish editions) and Purpose the Remix. CEO and founder of Jade Media Global; ran as an independent candidate for US President in 2020. Northwestern University undergraduate; Master’s as a Provost Fellow at Rice University; first runner-up at Miss America 2000. Biography Corporate audiences sit through more keynotes in a year than most of them care to count. The hardest brief a programme committee inherits is the opening or closing slot at a large convening, where the room needs to lift, not settle. A piano on stage and a performer who can also hold a leadership argument is one of the few formats that reliably moves a thousand people from neutral attention to engagement. Simmons built that format from the classical concert hall. She holds the Sphinx Organization’s Medal of Excellence, awarded in a ceremony at the US Supreme Court hosted by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Her concert resume includes the White House, Ravinia, the Chicago Sinfonietta at Symphony Hall and New York’s Town Hall. She trained at Northwestern and Rice, where she held a Provost Fellowship. The keynote work extends the performance into a structured message about purpose, reinvention and what she calls “Maverick Behavior.” She has headlined for Dell, NBCUniversal, Raytheon, Pfizer, Intuit QuickBooks, Nationwide, Hershey’s and Royal Bank of Canada. Her book Audacious Prayers for World Changers is an Amazon bestseller in English and Spanish, and her American Public Media podcast Decomposed has been named to best-of lists by Time, Esquire, BBC America and IndieWire. She also runs Jade Media Global, the company that produces her live experiences and content. Buyers commission her when the brief is to make a single moment in a long agenda the one people remember. Key speaking topics Purpose and reinvention Leadership and self-leadership Creativity and personal innovation Performance and mainstage entertainment Diversity and inclusion as a culture lever Personal branding and creative identity Resilience and breakthrough Ideal for CEO town halls, sales kick-offs and annual leadership conferences that need a mainstage opener or closer Chief People Officers and culture leads programming purpose, inclusion or engagement events Awards nights, customer summits and recognition events where the room needs to feel something specific Industries booking marquee music-led keynotes (financial services, pharma, tech, professional services) Audience outcomes A shared mainstage moment the room references for the rest of the agenda A direct, personal message on purpose, reinvention and creative courage A live concert performance that sits inside, not alongside, the keynote argument Practical language for leaders to talk about reinvention with their own teams

Why organisations work with James Taylor A named, published model. The Eight Ps of SuperCreativity (Purpose, Personality, Practice, People, Process, Place, Product, Persuasion) gives leadership teams a common language for a problem most companies still discuss in abstractions. Field-tested with the buyers he is pitching to. Apple, Cisco, Deloitte, EY, Visa, IBM, McDonald’s, Sony and Johnson and Johnson have used his work with their teams, so the credibility problem is solved before the conversation starts. Primary research, not curation. Through the SuperCreativity Podcast he has interviewed hundreds of founders, researchers and creative directors, which gives his keynotes specific stories that bureau-written talks on AI cannot match. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts with a TED talk on augmenting human creativity, which signals institutional seriousness for boards that want more than a futurist pitch. Works in partnership as The Ethical Futurists with Alison Burns when briefs require joint treatment of AI, sustainability and ethical business practice. Biography highlights Author, SuperCreativity: Accelerating Innovation in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (Sirmione Publishing, 2026). Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA); MBA. TED speaker: SuperCreativity, Augmenting Human Creativity in the Age of AI. Host, SuperCreativity Podcast, featuring interviews with creative leaders, founders and AI researchers. Advisory and keynote client roster includes Apple, Cisco, Deloitte, EY, Visa, IBM, McDonald’s, Sony, Mercedes-Benz and Johnson and Johnson. Co-founder of The Ethical Futurists with Alison Burns, focused on sustainability, ethics and future of work. Biography The conversation in most boardrooms has moved on from whether to adopt AI to whether AI is producing anything genuinely new. Productivity gains are easier to claim than originality, and executives now want to understand what separates teams that use AI to compress existing work from teams that use it to generate ideas their competitors have not yet considered. That is the question Taylor has built his practice around. His book SuperCreativity, published by Sirmione Publishing in 2026, argues that the age of the lone genius is over and that creative advantage now belongs to leaders who can orchestrate collaboration between humans and machines. The Eight Ps framework at the centre of the book (Purpose, Personality, Practice, People, Process, Place, Product, Persuasion) is how he translates the argument into something a leadership team can act on. The evidence base is unusually direct. Through the SuperCreativity Podcast he has run long-form interviews with founders, researchers, and creative directors across Silicon Valley and beyond, building a library of primary material on how creative work is actually being done under AI conditions. That research feeds keynotes for Apple, Cisco, Deloitte, EY, Visa, IBM, McDonald’s, Sony, Mercedes-Benz and Johnson and Johnson. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, holds an MBA, and has delivered a TED talk on augmenting human creativity in the age of AI. With Alison Burns he also runs The Ethical Futurists, a dedicated partnership for briefs that sit at the intersection of AI, sustainability and corporate ethics. Key speaking topics Human-AI creative collaboration Innovation capability and the Eight Ps of SuperCreativity Creative leadership in AI-enabled organisations Applied artificial intelligence for business teams Ethics and responsibility in AI adoption Future of work and creative skills Ideal for C-suite and board sessions weighing the strategic return on AI investment beyond productivity Chief Innovation Officers, CTOs and transformation leads responsible for integrating AI into existing teams Leadership offsites for creative, marketing, product and R and D functions Industry conferences on AI, innovation and the future of work Audience outcomes A shared framework, the Eight Ps of SuperCreativity, that leadership teams can carry back into their own planning A clearer view of where AI augments human judgement and where it dilutes it Specific examples of how large organisations are using AI to raise creative output, not just operational speed A starting position on the ethical questions that follow any serious AI rollout Prompts for how to redesign roles, teams and workflows around human-AI collaboration

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

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