Innovation et disruption

Why organisations work with Bjarke Ingels His “hedonistic sustainability” concept – coined in a 2011 TED talk with over two million views – gives leadership teams a credible, named argument against the assumption that environmental ambition and commercial performance are in tension. The Yes Is More manifesto argues against the choice between bold vision and practical delivery; it is taught beyond architecture because the logic is genuinely transferable to any organisation navigating competing strategic demands. BIG’s project portfolio – CopenHill’s waste-to-energy plant with a public ski slope, the BIG U flood-defence park in Manhattan, the Google North Bayshore campus co-designed with Thomas Heatherwick – gives executive audiences proof that resolving sustainability and desirability through design produces outcomes superior to either goal pursued alone. He has spoken at the World Economic Forum, TED, WIRED, and 10 Downing Street, meaning his frameworks have already been stress-tested in front of heads of government, technology leaders, and senior executives. Teaching at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Rice runs alongside leading a 400-person practice with major projects on four continents – his arguments carry the authority of both the seminar room and the construction site. Biography highlights Founder and creative partner of BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), established 2006; offices in New York, London, and Copenhagen; team of 400+ Originator of “hedonistic sustainability,” introduced in a 2011 TED talk now viewed over two million times Author of Yes Is More: An Archicomic on Architectural Evolution (2009) and HOT TO COLD: An Odyssey of Architectural Adaptation Named to TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People (2016); WSJ Innovator of the Year in Architecture; Fast Company 100 Most Creative People in Business Awards include the Golden Lion at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2004), ULI Award for Excellence (2009), Danish Crown Prince’s Culture Prize (2011); Honorary Fellow of the AIA (2020) and RIBA (2015) Featured as opening subject of Netflix’s Abstract: The Art of Design; speaker at TED, the World Economic Forum, WIRED, and 10 Downing Street Has taught at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Rice Universities; honorary professor at the Royal Academy of Arts, School of Architecture, Copenhagen Biography CopenHill is a waste-to-energy plant in Copenhagen that doubles as a public ski slope, climbing wall, and rooftop hiking trail. It is not a compromise between environmental performance and civic amenity. It is Bjarke Ingels’ most cited demonstration of what he calls “hedonistic sustainability” – the argument that reducing environmental impact and improving how people experience their city are the same design challenge. In his 2011 TED talk, now viewed over two million times, Ingels introduced the concept and set out the logic. His manifesto Yes Is More pushed the argument further, proposing “pragmatic utopianism” as a design principle: the deliberate rejection of the choice between visionary ambition and commercial delivery. The book was written for architects. It is now taught in business and strategy contexts because the core argument is transferable. Ingels founded BIG in Copenhagen in 2006, following earlier work at OMA under Rem Koolhaas and the co-founding of PLOT with Julien De Smedt. The firm now operates from New York, London, and Copenhagen with more than 400 staff. Its projects range from the BIG U – Manhattan’s Hurricane Sandy flood-defence infrastructure, redesigned as a continuous public park – to Google’s North Bayshore campus, co-designed with Thomas Heatherwick, where workplace performance and environmental targets were treated as a single design brief. TIME Magazine named him one of the world’s 100 Most Influential People in 2016. He holds the WSJ Innovator of the Year award, Honorary Fellowships from the AIA and RIBA, and has spoken at the World Economic Forum and 10 Downing Street. He has taught at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Rice. Netflix’s Abstract: The Art of Design featured him as its opening subject. His discipline is architecture; his primary value to organisations is a framework for dissolving the trade-off between ambition and pragmatism. Key speaking topics Hedonistic sustainability and design-led climate action Pragmatic utopianism and innovation strategy Urban resilience and large-scale infrastructure design Architecture’s role in organisational and civic identity Creative leadership at scale The built environment and corporate space strategy Design thinking across disciplines Ideal for C-suite and executive leadership teams at real estate, infrastructure, and large-scale development organisations Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG leads seeking to reframe sustainability as a source of commercial advantage rather than compliance cost Corporate boards and transformation leads examining how built environment decisions affect organisational culture, talent, and long-term asset value Civic leaders and urban planners making large-scale public investment decisions Audience outcomes A named, transferable framework – “hedonistic sustainability” – for challenging the trade-off assumption in ESG, design, and innovation strategy conversations Concrete examples, drawn from BIG’s global project portfolio, of how resolving competing constraints through design produces outcomes that neither goal alone would generate A reframe of what “innovation” means in large-scale, long-horizon project environments where short-term pragmatism typically wins Greater confidence in presenting design ambition as a strategic argument rather than an aesthetic or cost preference Practical insight into building and leading a high-velocity creative organisation across multiple geographies and project scales

Why organisations work with Brad Templeton He has sat inside the Google self-driving car program as a strategy and technology consultant since 2010, giving him a read on the robotaxi industry that armchair analysts cannot match. He holds 21 patents across self-driving cars and telephony, so claims about what is technically possible come from someone who has actually built in the space. As founder of ClariNet in 1989, the first company built to do commercial business on the internet, he has a forty-year pattern of calling commercial shifts before the market sees them. Twenty years on the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, including a decade as Chairman, means he speaks credibly on the privacy, surveillance and civil-liberties consequences of AI and autonomy. He is a founding faculty member and Chair for Computing and Networks at Singularity University, where the brief is to frame exponential technology change for senior decision-makers. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of ClariNet Communications (1989), the first company established to conduct commercial activity over the internet. Chairman Emeritus of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Chairman from 2000 to 2010, board member since 1997. Founding faculty and Chair for Computing and Networks at Singularity University since 2009. Strategy and technology consultant on the Google self-driving car project, now Waymo, since 2010. Inventor on 21 patents in autonomous vehicles and telephony. Forbes contributor on robocars; publisher of Robocars.com and the long-running Brad Ideas blog. Board member of the Foresight Institute; plaintiff in Reno v. ACLU. Biography ClariNet went live in June 1989 and sold the first commercial subscription on the internet to Stanford University. The founder was Brad Templeton. That single contract is the practical birth of the dot-com economy, and it sets the pattern for the rest of his career: spotting the commercial shape of a technology before the market has language for it. Two decades later the same instinct took him into Google’s self-driving car program. Since 2010 he has consulted on strategy and technology for what is now Waymo, while also writing a reference column on the industry for Forbes and at Robocars.com. His 21 patents in autonomous vehicles and telephony make the commentary load-bearing; he is not narrating the robotaxi race from the outside. Alongside the commercial work, Templeton spent twenty years on the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a decade of that as Chairman, and was a named plaintiff in Reno v. ACLU, the Supreme Court case that struck down the Communications Decency Act. That record is why boards bring him in when the question shifts from “does the AI work” to “what fights over privacy, surveillance and liability will shape who gets to deploy it.” At Singularity University, where he has been Chair for Computing and Networks since the founding faculty, the job is translating exponential technology curves for executives who need to plan against them. Few speakers combine an operator record in autonomous vehicles, a founder’s claim on the commercial internet, and two decades of civil-liberties advocacy in the same briefing. Key speaking topics Autonomous vehicles and the robotaxi industry Exponential technology and Moore’s Law thinking Artificial intelligence deployment and strategy Privacy, surveillance and civil liberties in a connected economy Internet history and the pattern of commercial technology shifts Future of mobility and urban transportation Cybersecurity and technology policy Ideal for Boards and executive teams sizing investment or partnership decisions in autonomous vehicles, mobility or AI. CTOs and chief innovation officers testing internal assumptions about exponential technology timelines. General counsel, chief privacy officers and policy leads working through AI and surveillance exposure. Automotive, insurance, logistics and urban-planning leadership teams preparing for autonomous deployment. Audience outcomes A sharper read on which autonomous-vehicle timelines are grounded and which are vendor marketing. A working mental model for exponential technology curves and what they mean for planning horizons. Specific case material from inside the Google and Waymo programs that is hard to source elsewhere. A clearer view of the privacy, liability and civil-liberties questions that will shape AI and autonomy regulation. Named examples drawn from forty years of commercial internet history, used to pressure-test current assumptions.

Why organisations work with Brenda Romero Forty-plus years inside a creative industry as designer, studio CEO and educator, with credits on roughly 49 shipped titles including the Wizardry series, Jagged Alliance, Ghost Recon and Empire of Sin. A working perspective on running an independent creative business: she co-founded Romero Games in Galway in 2015 and has built it through publisher deals, original IP and the realities of indie studio economics. An unusual record on the question of how design carries meaning. Her Train (2009) and the broader The Mechanic is the Message series are studied in academic literature as examples of game mechanics used to communicate difficult historical material. Formal industry recognition that buyers can reference without explanation: BAFTA Special Award (2017), GDC Ambassador Award (2015), Fulbright Scholar (2014). An educator’s clarity. As Director of the MSc in Game Design and Development at the University of Limerick (2016 to 2019) she taught the craft to a graduate cohort, and co-authored Challenges for Game Designers with Ian Schreiber, a standard text in the field. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO, Romero Games Ltd, Galway, Ireland (2015 to present). BAFTA Special Award, 2017, for creative contribution to the games industry. Game Developers Choice Ambassador Award, 2015. Fulbright Scholar, 2014. Director, MSc in Game Design and Development, University of Limerick, 2016 to 2019. Designer of Train (2009) and the The Mechanic is the Message series; works held by the Strong National Museum of Play; TED speaker on games for understanding. Biography Most discussions of innovation get stuck at the level of culture. Romero’s career is a sustained argument that it is really a question of craft. She began at Sir-tech Software in 1981 on the Wizardry role-playing series, and has since shipped credits on roughly 49 titles across PC, console and mobile, including Jagged Alliance, Ghost Recon, Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes and Empire of Sin. In 2015 she co-founded Romero Games in Galway with John Romero, where she is CEO. The studio sits outside the conventional tech hubs, an operating choice rather than an aesthetic one, and a useful case study for any leader thinking about how to build a creative organisation away from the talent magnet cities. The work spans publisher partnerships, original IP and the day-to-day of running a creative business through cycles. Alongside the commercial work, Romero has used game design to address serious historical material. Train (2009) and the wider The Mechanic is the Message series treat the mechanics of a game, the rules players agree to follow, as the message itself. Train won the IndieCade Vanguard Award and is studied in academic literature on serious games and design ethics. The credentials line up around a consistent argument. BAFTA Special Award in 2017. GDC Ambassador Award in 2015. Fulbright Scholar in 2014. Director of the MSc in Game Design and Development at the University of Limerick from 2016 to 2019. Co-author with Ian Schreiber of Challenges for Game Designers, a standard text used in graduate programmes worldwide. Key speaking topics Creative leadership in technology and entertainment The discipline of design and managed innovation Building and running an independent creative studio Games as a medium for communicating complex ideas Women in technology and the games industry The economics of creative work and intellectual property Ideal for Leaders of creative, R and D, brand and product organisations. Boards and executive teams in entertainment, media and consumer technology. Innovation and transformation leads looking for a working studio perspective on creative output. Talent and learning leaders building creative capability inside a corporate environment. Audience outcomes A working operator’s view of how creative output is produced under commercial pressure. A clearer picture of what good design discipline looks like when the subject is hard or contested. Reference points from inside the games industry that translate into corporate creative function. A frank account of building a creative business outside the obvious geographies, with the trade-offs named.

Why organisations work with Brett King He built one of the first mobile-only banks. Bank 4.0 is grounded in operating experience at Moven, not theory borrowed from outside the industry. He has briefed governments and regulators, including advising the Obama administration on fintech policy, and continues to advise central banks and regulators on technology transformation. Two of his books, Augmented and Bank 4.0, became sustained international bestsellers, with Bank 4.0 recognised as Top Book by a Foreign Author in Russia in 2019 under a PwC-audited process. Breaking Banks and The Futurists give him a continuous, current read on what fintech operators, regulators and technologists are actually doing, week by week, in more than 180 countries. His thesis stretches beyond banking. The Rise of Technosocialism, co-authored with Richard Petty, sets out four scenarios for an economy reshaped by AI, automation, inequality and climate, which makes him a useful voice for boards thinking beyond their own sector. Biography highlights Founder of Moven, an early mobile-only banking startup launched in New York in 2011. Author of Bank 4.0, Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane, Bank 2.0, Bank 3.0, Breaking Banks and The Rise of Technosocialism (with Dr. Richard Petty). Inducted into the Fintech Hall of Fame by CB Insights in 2020. Host of Breaking Banks on VoiceAmerica and co-host of The Futurists podcast. Advised the Obama administration on fintech policy; advises bank boards and regulators internationally. Keynote stages include TED, Web Summit, The Economist events, SIBOS, Singularity University, IBM World of Watson and CES. Biography Most large banks were designed around branches, products and quarterly earnings. The industry now competes with software companies, payments networks, embedded-finance providers and increasingly with AI agents that sit between customers and money. The question for boards is no longer whether to digitise. It is what kind of institution they want on the other side of the next decade. Brett King has been close to that question for fifteen years. He founded Moven in New York in 2011, one of the first mobile-only banks, and used the experience as the basis for Bank 4.0: Banking Everywhere, Never at a Bank, which mapped how value, distribution and trust move when the branch is no longer the unit of banking. The book was named Top Book by a Foreign Author in Russia in 2019, under a PwC-audited award process, and remains widely cited inside the industry. His range stretches further than banking. Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane tracked how AI, sensors, biotechnology and smart infrastructure compound into a different operating environment for business and society. The Rise of Technosocialism, co-written with Richard Petty, takes the argument forward, setting out four scenarios for a world in which automation, inequality and climate force political economies to rewire. That body of work is why central banks, regulators and global financial institutions invite him into rooms where the question is structural, not tactical. Two podcasts keep his perspective current. Breaking Banks, which he hosts on VoiceAmerica, has become a reference point for fintech operators worldwide. The Futurists, which he co-hosts, gives him a regular working dialogue with technologists and researchers across AI, space, biotech and energy. His induction into the Fintech Hall of Fame in 2020 reflects the operating record, not the podcast catalogue. Key speaking topics The future of banking and financial services Embedded finance and the platform economics of money Artificial intelligence and the automated economy Fintech, regulation and the role of central banks AI, inequality and climate as forces reshaping political economy Long-range technology foresight for boards and regulators Ideal for Bank, insurer and asset-manager boards and executive committees setting digital and AI strategy Central bankers, financial regulators and policy bodies working on payments, digital assets and AI governance Large enterprises whose business model is exposed to fintech, embedded payments or AI-driven disintermediation Conferences and summits in financial services, technology and futures-of-industry programmes Audience outcomes A sharper read on where banking, payments and customer trust are moving over the next decade. A grounded view, from an operator, of what works and what fails when incumbents try to digitise. Named scenarios for how AI, automation and climate may reshape labour markets, capital and policy. A practical agenda for board-level discussions on AI deployment, fintech partnerships and regulatory exposure.

Why organisations work with Brett StClair He has run the inside of both sides of the problem: a Google regional product portfolio and the digital stack of a 40,000-person bank across 32 markets. That is rare credibility on the operating reality of AI inside a regulated enterprise. He frames AI adoption as a leadership and workforce problem first, technology problem second, which is what most boards actually need before they spend the next budget cycle on tooling. Through Teraflow.ai he works with enterprise clients on the implementation, not only the strategy. The keynote content is grounded in current delivery, not retrospective case studies. The “Rebel Technologist” thesis gives senior leaders a usable language for identifying and protecting the internal disruptors who actually move transformation programmes. Biography highlights Co-Founder and Chief Connector, Teraflow.ai, an enterprise AI and cloud consultancy. Former Head of Digital Products, Barclays Africa, leading digital modernisation across 32 countries. Former Google executive across mobile, YouTube, AdMob and Cloud for the Africa region. Host of the “Rebel Technologist” podcast on AI adoption and digital leadership. Computer Science, University of Cape Town. MBA, University of South Africa. Featured in BBC, Financial Times, Forbes and regional business press including ITWeb and Business Day. Biography Most enterprise AI conversations stall at the same point. Leaders agree the technology is significant. They cannot agree what to do with it on Monday. The gap between a board’s appetite for AI and an operating model that can actually absorb it is now the central problem in digital transformation, and it is exactly where Brett StClair works. StClair spent his Google years inside the product engine for Africa, with responsibilities across mobile, AdMob, YouTube and Cloud. He left to take on a different kind of problem: rebuilding Barclays Africa as a digital bank, leading product across 32 countries and an organisation of around 40,000 people. That experience, working at the seam between a hyperscaler and a regulated bank, sits behind his current work. As Co-Founder and Chief Connector of Teraflow.ai, he leads enterprise engagements on AI and cloud adoption with banks, healthcare organisations and large corporates. His “Rebel Technologist” thesis, carried through his podcast and keynotes, names a recurring pattern inside large firms: the internal disruptors who actually move transformation forward, and the leadership choices that determine whether they survive long enough to ship. His keynote from Google to global banking has been delivered to audiences including Mastercard, Vodafone, Standard Bank, Nedbank, FNB, Deloitte and Accenture, and his work has been referenced in BBC, Financial Times and Forbes coverage of AI and digital change. Key speaking topics Enterprise AI adoption Generative AI in regulated industries Digital transformation at scale DevOps and agile inside large organisations Cloud strategy for enterprises Innovation culture and internal disruptors Leadership in technology change programmes Ideal for CIOs, CDOs and CTOs setting AI and cloud strategy Transformation, innovation and digital leads moving from pilot to production Boards and executive committees in banking, healthcare and large corporates Heads of operations and HR designing workforce capability around AI Audience outcomes A clearer view of where AI investment converts into operating advantage and where it does not. A working language for governance, risk and capability around generative AI in regulated environments. Practical lessons from inside Google and Barclays Africa on what makes large-scale digital change actually land. A sharper sense of how to identify and protect the internal disruptors who carry transformation programmes through their hardest stages.

Why organisations work with Brian Brackeen He has run a face recognition company at commercial scale and publicly refused to sell that technology to law enforcement, which gives his arguments on AI governance a credibility most consultants cannot match. He can speak to algorithmic bias from inside the engineering stack, not from the outside as a critic, because he has shipped the models and seen where the failure modes sit. As General Partner of a $50M fund backing underrepresented founders, he brings a capital-allocation lens to questions of inclusion that boards typically hear framed only as workforce or culture issues. His 2018 TechCrunch op-ed against police use of facial recognition shaped industry debate ahead of formal regulation. Boards weighing AI policy get a practitioner who set a market precedent, not a commentator describing one. Biography highlights Founder and former CEO of Kairos, a face recognition AI company named to the Wall Street Journal’s Top 25 Startups list in 2013. General Partner at Lightship Capital, a $50M Cincinnati-based venture fund backing women, founders of colour, LGBTQ+ founders, and founders with disabilities. Author of a June 2018 TechCrunch op-ed arguing that commercial facial recognition should not be sold to government or police use. Returned to Kairos in 2021 as chair of the scientific advisory board, focused on eliminating racial bias in face recognition datasets. Earlier career: Senior Project Manager at Apple and Senior Managing Consultant at IBM. Co-founder of Lightship Foundation, which owns Black Tech Week. Biography Face recognition is one of the few AI categories where a founder has publicly walked away from a commercial market on principle. In June 2018, the CEO of Kairos published an op-ed in TechCrunch refusing to sell the company’s technology to law enforcement, citing the accuracy gap for people of colour and the consequences of misidentification. The argument landed before the broader regulatory conversation caught up. That founder is Brian Brackeen. He had built Kairos from 2012, with prior operating roles at Apple as a Senior Project Manager and at IBM as a Senior Managing Consultant. Under his leadership, Kairos was named to the Wall Street Journal’s Top 25 Startups list in 2013 and positioned alongside Microsoft and Face++ in the global face recognition market. A board dispute removed him as CEO in 2018; he returned in 2021 to chair the scientific advisory board, with a specific mandate on algorithmic bias. The work since has been about capital, not code. As General Partner at Lightship Capital, a $50M fund he runs with co-founder Candice Matthews Brackeen, Brackeen invests in underrepresented founders and in regions outside the coastal venture hubs. Lightship Foundation, the family’s parallel non-profit, owns Black Tech Week. The investing thesis treats inclusion as a market inefficiency, not a values exercise. For senior leaders, the value of his perspective is the combination of these two operating experiences. He can describe where bias enters an AI system at the dataset level, why a vendor might be the wrong place to outsource that judgement, and what the capital signal looks like when an entire founder population is being underwritten by the same narrow set of pattern-matching investors. Key speaking topics AI ethics and algorithmic bias Facial recognition and surveillance technology Responsible AI governance Venture capital and underrepresented founders Diversity in technology Entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting AI governance policy CTOs, CDOs, and Chief AI Officers responsible for deployment decisions Investors, LPs, and corporate venture teams reviewing portfolio inclusion Innovation and DEI leaders working at the intersection of product and people Audience outcomes A practitioner’s account of where bias actually enters AI systems, and why surface-level audits miss it A defensible framework for deciding which AI use cases an organisation should refuse, not just constrain A clearer view of how capital allocation patterns shape which technologies get built and by whom Direct exposure to the trade-offs faced by founders deploying AI in regulated and sensitive contexts

Why organisations work with Brian Cox His work on the ATLAS experiment at CERN places him inside the research that underlies quantum computing, particle detection, and the most advanced engineering challenges of our time – not adjacent to it. The Quantum Universe, Why Does E=mc2?, and Universal have collectively sold over a million copies: evidence that he can make abstract, rigorous science genuinely comprehensible to non-specialist audiences at scale. His Horizons tour set two Guinness World Records for science communication, reaching over 400,000 people across three continents – a proof of audience engagement no management consultant or futurist can match. As UN Champion for Space (appointed October 2025), he connects scientific frontier thinking directly to global governance, sustainability, and long-term civilisational risk – giving boards a frame that goes well beyond conventional technology briefings. He has presented at the World Economic Forum in Davos and in China, and headlined Infosecurity Europe 2025, demonstrating that his material holds up to scrutiny from the most demanding professional audiences. Biography highlights Professor of Particle Physics, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester; Royal Society Professor for Public Engagement in Science Member, ATLAS collaboration, CERN Large Hadron Collider; formerly co-spokesperson, FP420 R&D project at CERN (2004–2009) Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS); CBE for services to the promotion of science Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize (2012); Institute of Physics Kelvin Medal and Prize (2010); Royal Television Society Best Presenter (2011) Author of six popular science books with collective sales exceeding one million copies, including The Quantum Universe and Why Does E=mc2? Guinness World Records holder for live science touring; Horizons: A 21st Century Space Odyssey reached over 400,000 people across three continents Appointed UN Champion for Space by UNOOSA, October 2025 Presenter of multiple Peabody and BAFTA-recognised BBC series including Wonders of the Solar System, Wonders of the Universe, and The Planets Biography Brian Cox holds a chair in particle physics at the University of Manchester and works on the ATLAS experiment at CERN – the collaboration responsible for some of the most significant experimental results in the history of physics. That grounding in active research is what separates him from science communicators who translate the work of others. He is doing the work himself. His books – Why Does E=mc2?, The Quantum Universe, Universal: A Guide to the Cosmos – have collectively sold over a million copies. Each one takes a genuine problem in physics, works through it without condescension, and arrives at implications that reward careful attention. The Royal Society awarded him the Michael Faraday Prize for exactly this quality: rigorous science made genuinely accessible. Live, Cox operates at a scale no other scientist in the world matches. His Horizons tour set two Guinness World Records, reaching over 400,000 people across the UK, North America, Australia, and Europe. These are not public lectures; they are full arena productions using state-of-the-art visual technology, exploring quantum theory, black holes, the origin of life, and the nature of time. In October 2025, the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs designated him UN Champion for Space – recognising his ability to connect frontier physics to the practical challenges of global governance and sustainability. For boards and senior leadership teams, Cox offers something specific: a working physicist’s account of where the science actually is, what it makes possible, and what it rules out. At the World Economic Forum, at Infosecurity Europe, at TED – the audiences are demanding, and the material holds. The value is not inspiration in the abstract; it is the kind of rigorous, first-principles framing that improves the quality of strategic decisions. Key speaking topics Particle physics and the Large Hadron Collider Quantum mechanics and its practical implications Space technology and global infrastructure The origin and structure of the universe Scientific reasoning and evidence-based decision-making The future of space exploration and governance Science communication and public understanding of technology Ideal for Boards and C-suite teams seeking first-principles scientific context for technology strategy CTOs, CIOs, and transformation leads navigating quantum computing and advanced physics-derived technologies Global leadership summits and flagship corporate conferences requiring authoritative, high-profile keynote presence Organisations in aerospace, defence, energy, financial services, or cybersecurity where physical science is directly relevant to competitive strategy Audience outcomes A clearer mental model of what quantum mechanics, particle physics, and space science actually mean for the technologies being built now Confidence in reasoning about scientific uncertainty and frontier research – rather than deferring entirely to technical specialists A broader frame for long-term strategic thinking, grounded in the timescales and constraints of physical reality rather than market cycles Greater appreciation of evidence-based reasoning as a decision-making discipline, not just a scientific one Understanding of how space-based infrastructure and emerging physics-derived technologies intersect with sustainability, governance, and geopolitical risk

Why organisations work with Brian Forde He briefed President Obama on bitcoin in 2014 and shaped the early federal posture on digital currency, so buyers get someone who understands how US policy actually gets made, not a commentator guessing at it. He built the MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative from the ground up, convening cryptographers, economists, and distributed systems researchers. Few speakers can explain the engineering and the regulatory stakes in the same sentence. He teaches the MIT Sloan blockchain curriculum alongside Christian Catalini and Simon Johnson, which keeps his material connected to current research rather than recycled decks. He has operated, not just advised: he co-founded a telecoms company that served a quarter of a million Nicaraguans, and now runs Numero, a campaign finance technology firm. He speaks about adoption from the perspective of someone who has shipped. He ran for US Congress on a crypto-funded campaign that drew legal and political attacks in real time. On questions of public trust, optics, and compliance, he brings direct scar tissue. Biography highlights Co-founder and former Director, Digital Currency Initiative, MIT Media Lab. Senior Lecturer, MIT Sloan School of Management, teaching blockchain technologies. Former Senior Advisor for Mobile and Data Innovation, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Young Global Leader, World Economic Forum; contributor to the WEF agenda. Co-founder and CEO of Numero; co-founder and former CEO of Llamadas, S.A. in Nicaragua. 2018 Democratic candidate for US Congress in California’s 45th District; raised a record sum in cryptocurrency donations. Biography Most boards hear about blockchain from a vendor or a lobbyist. Brian Forde is one of the few people who has been the White House official writing the early rules, the MIT researcher auditing the code, and the founder trying to raise money inside the regulatory grey zone. He briefed President Obama on bitcoin in 2014, when the federal government was still deciding whether to treat it as currency, commodity, or threat. At the MIT Media Lab he co-founded and led the Digital Currency Initiative, assembling cryptographers, economists, and distributed systems researchers to study how digital currencies could work at scale. The initiative seeded research that now underpins how central banks, custodians, and exchanges think about settlement risk. He now teaches the subject at MIT Sloan alongside Christian Catalini and Simon Johnson. His operator record matters as much as the policy work. He co-founded Llamadas, S.A., a low-cost internet phone company that served more than a quarter of a million Nicaraguans after his Peace Corps service. He currently runs Numero, building campaign finance software for political campaigns. In 2018 he ran for US Congress in California’s 45th District and accepted cryptocurrency donations, raising more in crypto than any previous American candidate and attracting a political attack campaign that tested how the mainstream handles digital-asset politics. The value he brings to a room is that combination. Audiences get engineering precision, Washington insight, and founder scar tissue from a single speaker who can answer the question most keynotes dodge: what does a serious organisation actually do on Monday morning. Key speaking topics Blockchain adoption in regulated industries Digital currency and central bank policy Bitcoin and the future of payments Emerging technology and public policy Government regulation of digital assets Innovation inside large institutions Ideal for Boards and executive committees at banks, asset managers, and payments firms weighing digital asset strategy. Chief technology officers, chief innovation officers, and heads of strategy assessing blockchain pilots. Chief compliance officers and general counsel preparing for evolving digital asset regulation. Government and public sector leaders building digital infrastructure and data policy. Audience outcomes A clear map of where blockchain is genuinely useful in financial services, healthcare, government, and supply chain, and where it is not. A working understanding of how US and global digital asset regulation is being shaped, and what that means for near-term decisions. Practical framing for how to evaluate and resource a blockchain or tokenisation pilot without over-committing. Perspective on the political and reputational dimensions of digital asset adoption, informed by direct campaign experience. Sharper questions to take back to internal technology, legal, and risk teams.

Why organisations work with Brian Keating His argument about incentive systems is not borrowed from management theory. He conceived a Nobel-contending experiment, experienced a public retraction, served as a Nobel nominator, and co-founded the Simons Observatory: a $100M project involving 380+ scientists across 40+ institutions. The authority is operational. Losing the Nobel Prize (W.W. Norton, 2018) makes a specific structural case that endorsers including Brian Greene and reviewers in Nature, Science, and Scientific American have engaged with seriously: the systems organisations use to reward individuals actively prevent the inclusive, rigorous, collaborative work that produces real discovery. Into the Impossible (2021) draws from first-person conversations with 11 Nobel laureates to identify the specific mental habits (disciplined curiosity, tolerance for failure, sustained collaboration), that distinguish people who achieve genuine breakthroughs from those who optimise for recognition. He gives boards and senior leaders a precise structural vocabulary for why innovation programmes underperform: not insufficient ambition or budget, but reward architecture that was never designed for collaborative, long-horizon work. As co-director of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for the Human Imagination at UC San Diego, he bridges frontier scientific thinking and the broader question of how organisations cultivate the conditions for original thought. Biography highlights Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics, Center for Astrophysics & Space Sciences, University of California San Diego Principal Investigator and co-founder, Simons Observatory – a four-telescope array in Chile’s Atacama Desert involving 380+ scientists and engineers from 40+ institutions, with approximately $100M in funding raised Inventor of the BICEP (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) telescope; co-leads the POLARBEAR2 and Simons Array experiments Author of Losing the Nobel Prize (W.W. Norton, 2018), reviewed in Nature, Science, and Scientific American, and endorsed by theoretical physicist Brian Greene Author of Into the Impossible (2021) and Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner (2025), drawing on first-person interviews with Nobel laureates across physics, economics, and beyond U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers; Fellow of the American Physical Society; Buchalter Cosmology Prize; 2022 Legend of Flight, International Air & Space Hall of Fame Host of the Into the Impossible podcast – long-form conversations with Nobel laureates, scientists, and technologists – with more than 200,000 subscribers Biography Organisations that fund innovation but reward speed tend to get neither. The dynamic is structural, not cultural: when recognition flows to individuals who move fast and announce loudly, the slow, rigorous, collaborative work that genuine breakthroughs require becomes a career liability. Brian Keating has spent more than two decades inside that tension. Not observing it from the outside, but navigating it at the frontier of experimental cosmology. Keating is the Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of California San Diego and Principal Investigator of the Simons Observatory, a four-telescope array in Chile’s Atacama Desert that he co-founded in 2016. The project grew to involve more than 380 scientists and engineers from over 40 institutions, with Keating raising approximately $100 million in funding from the Simons Foundation. Keating teaches undergraduate quantum mechanics at UC San Diego in the same weeks he records long-form conversations with Nobel laureates on the Into the Impossible podcast. Guests have included Roger Penrose, Frank Wilczek, Sara Seager, and Andrei Linde. Active experimental research alongside sustained engagement with the field’s most consequential thinkers is the working basis from which he addresses two questions senior audiences are now asking him directly: what AI does to the scientific method, and what is happening to the research university as a credentialing and funding institution. Managing that collaboration across disciplines, institutions, competitive pressures, and high-stakes scientific uncertainty is the practical foundation on which his speeches rest. That argument appears explicitly in Losing the Nobel Prize (W.W. Norton, 2018). Keating, who conceived the original BICEP telescope and was closely involved in the BICEP2 collaboration whose findings made global headlines before being retracted, uses the experience to make a case that extends well beyond physics: the Nobel Prize, as structured, rewards individual speed and competition while punishing the inclusive, methodical, collaborative work that real discoveries require. Reviewed in Nature, Science, and Scientific American, and endorsed by physicist Brian Greene, the book gives senior audiences a precise structural vocabulary for a problem most organisations recognise but struggle to name. The follow-up volumes, Into the Impossible (2021) and Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner (2025), draw on first-person interviews with Nobel laureates across physics and economics to identify the working habits that distinguish genuine breakthrough thinkers from those who optimise for recognition. Keating is also co-director of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for the Human Imagination at UC San Diego, a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and a 2022 Legend of Flight inductee at the International Air & Space Hall of Fame. His podcast, also titled Into the Impossible, has reached more than 200,000 subscribers and has hosted over 11 Nobel Prize winners. Key speaking topics Incentive systems, innovation culture, and the structural conditions for breakthrough Large-scale scientific collaboration and high-stakes research leadership AI and the future of scientific discovery, peer review, and the research workflow The structural future of higher education and the research university Cosmology, the cosmic microwave background, and the science of the early universe The culture of ambition and discovery in high-performance environments Failure, resilience, and the creative habits of exceptional thinkers The future of curiosity-driven research in an era of AI and data Ideal for Chief Innovation Officers, R&D leaders, and boards wrestling with why innovation programmes underdeliver Senior executive teams in science- and technology-intensive industries (pharma, aerospace, deep tech, energy) where collaboration at scale is a strategic challenge University presidents, provosts, and trustee boards addressing the AI-driven restructuring of higher education and the legitimacy questions facing research institutions Foundations, philanthropic funders of science, and policy bodies designing the next generation of research grants, prizes, and incentive structures Audience outcomes A clear structural diagnosis of why incentive systems that reward individual speed and visibility tend to suppress the collaborative, rigorous work that genuine breakthroughs require Practical examples – drawn from one of the most ambitious scientific projects of the past decade – of how large, distributed collaborations can be designed and sustained under uncertainty A set of mental habits and working practices, sourced from conversations with Nobel laureates, that distinguish breakthrough thinkers from those who optimise for recognition A more precise vocabulary for discussing innovation culture with boards and leadership teams – one grounded in evidence, not aspiration Perspective on how organisational ambition can be redirected from visible short-term wins toward the patient, inclusive work that produces durable results

Why organisations work with Brian McBride He has actually done the job a board is usually asking about: scaled Amazon UK as CEO, then chaired ASOS and Trainline through listed-company growth. His view on digital disruption is operator-grade, not commentator-grade, grounded in P&L decisions inside a pure-play digital business. He has governed at national scale as President of the CBI and as Lead Non-Executive on the UK Ministry of Defence Board, which gives him a rare read on the business-state interface. He speaks the language of chairs, non-executives, and regulators fluently, because those are the roles he still holds. He is credible with both traditional boards and digital-native leadership teams, and comfortable translating between them. Biography highlights CEO of Amazon.co.uk, 2006-2011 Chairman of ASOS plc, 2012-2018 Current Chair of Trainline plc President of the Confederation of British Industry, 2022-2024 Lead Non-Executive Director, UK Ministry of Defence Board, 2020-2025 Independent non-Executive, KPMG UK Public Interest Committee Honorary Doctorate, University of Glasgow; Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Biography Amazon UK was still a challenger in the British market when Brian McBride took over as CEO in 2006. By the time he left in 2011, it had become the default reference point for what digital retail looked like in the UK, and the benchmark every high-street incumbent was measured against. That experience sits underneath almost everything he has done since. After Amazon he moved into chairing listed digital businesses. He chaired ASOS plc from 2012 to 2018 through its expansion as a global online fashion retailer, and he currently chairs Trainline plc, the UK-listed online rail and coach platform. Chairing digital-first companies at public-market scale is a narrow skill, and his track record in it is unusually deep. His governance reach runs well beyond any single company. He served as President of the CBI from 2022 to 2024, a period that included the most serious institutional crisis in the organisation’s recent history, and as Lead Non-Executive Director on the UK Ministry of Defence Board from 2020 to 2025. He is now an Independent non-Executive on KPMG UK’s Public Interest Committee and a senior adviser at Scottish Equity Partners. Earlier in his career he ran Dell’s UK and Northern Europe business and was Managing Director of T-Mobile UK, where he led the UK launch of 3G. Glasgow University awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2024 for services to business and philanthropy, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh elected him a Fellow in 2025. Key speaking topics Digital business leadership at scale E-commerce strategy and platform competition Board governance in listed digital companies Transformation inside traditional businesses Public and private sector leadership The UK business and policy environment Ideal for Chairs, CEOs and board directors of listed companies facing digital-era competition Executive teams inside traditional businesses running a transformation programme Senior leaders in public sector and government-adjacent institutions working with private sector partners CBI-level industry bodies, banks, professional services firms and large retailers Audience outcomes A working view of how a pure-play digital business actually makes decisions, from someone who ran one A sharper sense of what effective board governance looks like when the business model is still changing A clearer read on where leadership styles break down in the shift from traditional to digital-native operating models A grounded perspective on the UK business environment from a former CBI President Practical reference points from Amazon, ASOS and Trainline rather than abstract case studies

Why organisations work with Brian Solis Operator and analyst in one seat. He runs ServiceNow’s global Innovation and Executive Briefing Centers while writing and researching, so the frameworks he presents are stress-tested on live enterprise engagements. Twenty-plus year track record naming shifts early. His “digital Darwinism” argument, developed across The End of Business as Usual, WTF and X, forecast customer-behaviour-led disruption before most boards were discussing it. Anthropological lens on AI and technology. He frames innovation around how customers and employees are actually behaving, not around the technology stack, which gives CX, marketing and transformation leaders usable material rather than vendor abstractions. Published thesis on the current executive question. Mindshift (Wiley, 2024) sets out how leaders move from reactive management to visionary direction in an AI-first operating environment, making him directly relevant to transformation and CEO agendas right now. Credible with both technology and customer experience audiences. His work is regularly cited across ServiceNow, Salesforce alumni networks, and customer-experience publications, which lets a single booking land with CIO, CMO and CXO communities. Biography highlights Head of Global Innovation, ServiceNow, overseeing Innovation and Executive Briefing Centers in Silicon Valley, New York, London, Paris, Sydney and Singapore. Former Global Innovation Evangelist, Salesforce. Former Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group, covering digital transformation, customer experience and disruption. Author of eight business books including Mindshift (Wiley, 2024), Lifescale (Wiley, 2019), X: The Experience When Business Meets Design, What’s the Future of Business and The End of Business as Usual. Ranked in Thinkers360 Top 50 Metaverse Thought Leaders, 2023. Hosts the (r)evolution video series and the WTF podcast, with a combined following of more than 700,000 across social platforms. Biography Digital transformation has been oversold and under-delivered inside most large enterprises. Programmes launch, dashboards light up, and the underlying operating model stays the same. Brian Solis has been writing about this gap for two decades and now sits inside it, as Head of Global Innovation at ServiceNow, running Innovation and Executive Briefing Centers across Silicon Valley, New York, London, Paris, Sydney and Singapore. His argument across eight books is consistent. Customer and employee behaviour shifts first, technology amplifies the shift, and organisations that treat innovation as a theatre of announcements get outrun by the ones that rewire how decisions are made. He captured this as “digital Darwinism” in The End of Business as Usual and sharpened it in X: The Experience When Business Meets Design and What’s the Future of Business. Mindshift, published by Wiley in October 2024, reframes the same question for an AI-first environment. It is aimed at executives who need to move their teams from reactive management to a visionary posture, spot trends early and convert them into prioritised innovation bets. Before ServiceNow, Solis was Global Innovation Evangelist at Salesforce and, before that, Principal Analyst at Altimeter Group, where he built much of the public research base he still draws on. He is one of the few voices in this space who operates at the intersection a senior buyer actually cares about: the analyst who names the shift, the author who frames it for a boardroom, and the operator responsible for making it real inside a global enterprise. Key speaking topics Digital transformation and digital Darwinism AI-era leadership and the mindshift from reactive to visionary Innovation strategy and the future of the enterprise Customer experience and behavioural change Disruption and emerging technology trends The future of work and employee experience Ideal for CEO, CIO, CDO and transformation leads responsible for enterprise-wide digital and AI strategy. CMO, Chief Customer Officer and CX leads rebuilding the customer model around new behaviour. Innovation, R&D and strategy leaders moving from proof-of-concept to operating-model change. Board and executive offsites framing the next three to five year technology and experience agenda. Audience outcomes A sharper read on which behavioural and technology shifts are material for their sector right now. A working definition of the difference between innovation theatre and innovation that changes the operating model. Language to argue internally for a move from reactive programmes to a visionary, trend-led agenda. A framework from Mindshift for spotting, prioritising and acting on emerging opportunities in an AI-first environment. Specific cues for aligning customer experience, employee experience and technology investment around the same thesis.

Why organisations work with Bruce Dickinson The “customers into fans” argument is drawn from 40 years of evidence. Iron Maiden has sold over 90 million albums across four decades without a conventional radio or streaming strategy. Dickinson frames this as the product of an operating philosophy – not a marketing achievement – giving commercial leaders a different lens on audience loyalty that few speakers can offer with this level of firsthand verification. His aviation credentials are professional-grade, not supplementary. Dickinson holds an Airline Transport Pilot’s Licence and flew commercial Boeing 757s for Astraeus Airlines. He then founded, lost money on, restructured, and turned around a real aviation MRO business to profitability. His commentary on risk as a managed discipline – rather than a constraint to minimise – comes from the cockpit and the boardroom, not a consulting brief. His memoir is a documented argument, not a celebrity anecdote. What Does This Button Do?, published by HarperCollins and No.1 on the Sunday Times Bestseller list, is a first-person account of running two demanding professional careers simultaneously. It gives audiences and event organisers a readable reference point for the claims he makes on stage. He has lived a business turnaround, not studied one. Caerdav went from pre-tax losses of over £2 million to generating £400,000 net monthly profit after a restructure Dickinson led personally. This gives him direct credibility in conversations about founding companies, operational failure, and the discipline required to reverse course. His Honorary Group Captaincy of 601 Squadron RAF, his ranking as no.7 in Britain at fencing, and his eight-year BBC Radio 6 Music presenting career are all independently verifiable. They give the polymath narrative an evidential foundation that separates him from lifestyle speakers using the same positioning without the credentials to support it. Biography highlights Lead vocalist of Iron Maiden since 1981; the band has sold over 90 million albums and performed more than 2,000 shows worldwide Airline Transport Pilot’s Licence holder; former Boeing 757 captain for Astraeus Airlines; personally piloted Iron Maiden’s Boeing 747-400 Ed Force One on multiple world tours Founder and Chairman of Caerdav (formerly Cardiff Aviation Ltd., founded 2012), a certified aircraft maintenance, repair, overhaul and pilot training company at St Athan, South Wales, operating with EASA, FAA and UK CAA approvals Author of What Does This Button Do? (HarperCollins, 2017) – No.1 Sunday Times Bestselling Autobiography and New York Times Bestseller Honorary Group Captain, 601 (County of London) Squadron, Royal Air Force – appointed January 2020 Ranked no.7 in Great Britain at fencing (foil); named a living polymath by Intelligent Life magazine (2009) BBC Radio 6 Music presenter, 2002–2010 Biography Building a global fanbase and selling over 90 million records across four decades – without conventional radio airplay – looks like a creative achievement. Bruce Dickinson frames it differently: as the outcome of an operating philosophy applied consistently, in which giving an audience something they cannot get elsewhere becomes a structural principle rather than a marketing ambition. Dickinson is Iron Maiden’s lead vocalist, a role he has held since 1981. He is also a qualified commercial airline captain holding an Airline Transport Pilot’s Licence, who flew Boeing 757s for Astraeus Airlines and piloted the band’s Boeing 747-400, Ed Force One, on multiple world tours. When Astraeus collapsed in 2011, he founded Cardiff Aviation – later restructured as Caerdav – a certified aircraft maintenance, repair, overhaul and pilot training company operating from a former RAF base in South Wales. Holding EASA, FAA and UK CAA approvals, the company now generates £400,000 net monthly profit after a turnaround Dickinson led personally following years of losses. His memoir, What Does This Button Do?, published by HarperCollins in 2017, reached No.1 on the Sunday Times Bestseller list and became a New York Times bestseller. It is a first-person account of running two demanding professional careers simultaneously – not a retrospective on fame, but a practical argument for how creative ambition and operational discipline coexist. The specific commercial lesson he draws from that experience – turning customers into fans, not merely buyers – is developed through Iron Maiden’s documented business model and translates directly to organisations trying to build durable audience commitment in any sector. Appointed Honorary Group Captain of 601 (County of London) Squadron RAF in 2020, ranked no.7 in Britain at fencing, and named a living polymath by Intelligent Life magazine in 2009, Dickinson brings to speaking engagements a range of firsthand disciplines that give his arguments about performance, precision and resilience direct evidential weight. Key speaking topics Turning customers into fans Entrepreneurship and business building Risk management and business turnaround Creative discipline in commercial performance Team cohesion under sustained pressure Corporate culture and long-duration performance Aviation and the travel industry Ideal for CEOs, commercial directors, and senior leadership teams working on customer loyalty and brand differentiation Entrepreneur and business founder audiences seeking firsthand perspective on building and restructuring real companies under pressure Marketing and brand strategy events where the relationship between internal culture and customer commitment is the central theme Aviation, travel, and logistics sector conferences Audience outcomes A reframed understanding of customer loyalty as an operating and cultural outcome rather than a marketing result Practical principles from commercial aviation and four decades of global touring enterprise applied directly to business discipline and team performance A firsthand account of business failure, restructuring, and turnaround drawn from Caerdav’s trajectory – directly applicable to leaders navigating operational difficulty Specific language and argument for what it means to build an audience that is genuinely committed rather than merely transactional A concrete case study in how creative ambition and operational rigour function as complementary rather than competing forces in high-performance organisations