Aidan McCullen

Why organisations work with Aidan McCullen

• A working library of change thinking. The Innovation Show has put him in long-form conversation with hundreds of named authors and practitioners on transformation, which feeds directly into the frameworks he brings into a room.
• A book with institutional weight. Undisruptable is a Wiley title with a foreword by Visa founder Dee Hock, and sits on a defined three-part argument about reinvention rather than a generic change pitch.
• Credentialled by Thinkers50. The 2025 Innovation Award places him among a small group of named voices that the management research community treats as serious on this topic.
• A practitioner seat at Trinity. He built and teaches the Emerging Technology Trends module at Trinity Business School, which forces his material to hold up under repeated MBA-level scrutiny.
• Reinvention as lived experience. A decade as an Ireland international rugby player, then digital lead at Bauer Media, then Head of Innovation at RTE, then author and board director, gives him standing to talk about personal reinvention without it sounding theoretical.

Biography highlights

• Author of Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention for Individuals, Organisations and Life, Wiley, with a foreword by Dee Hock, founder of Visa.
• Recipient of the Thinkers50 Innovation Award in 2025.
• Host and creator of The Innovation Show, broadcast on RTE Ireland and Finland’s Business FM.
• Adjunct Professor at Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin, where he developed the Emerging Technology Trends module.
• Non-Executive Director at National Broadband Ireland.
• Former Ireland rugby international with more than 100 senior appearances for Leinster, Toulouse and London Irish.

Biography

Reinvention is the part of change leadership that organisations consistently underprice. Strategy decks are easy. Sustaining the personal and cultural shift after the deck is signed off is where most transformation programmes quietly break, which is the territory Aidan McCullen has spent the last decade mapping.

His book Undisruptable, published by Wiley with a foreword by Visa founder Dee Hock, sets out a three-part argument: change as opportunity, the cognitive biases that block it, and the language leaders need to carry an organisation through it. The book sits alongside The Innovation Show, his interview platform, where he has worked through the material in long-form conversation with several hundred named authors, founders and academics on change and innovation.

That output earned him the Thinkers50 Innovation Award in 2025 and an adjunct seat at Trinity Business School, where he built the Emerging Technology Trends module. He also serves as a Non-Executive Director at National Broadband Ireland, which keeps the work close to live infrastructure decisions rather than pure commentary.

His own track record is the unusual part of the case. A decade as an Ireland rugby international with Leinster, Toulouse and London Irish, followed by digital ecosystem work at Bauer Media, the Head of Innovation role at RTE, and now author, broadcaster and board director, gives him direct experience of the cost of reinvention, which is what senior audiences tend to want to interrogate when the topic is on the agenda.

Key speaking topics

• Permanent reinvention as a leadership discipline
• Change management and transformation programmes
• Cognitive bias and decision-making under change
• Emerging technology trends for senior leaders
• Innovation culture and operating models
• Personal reinvention and career transitions
• Communicating change inside large organisations

Ideal for

• CEOs, COOs and transformation leads running multi-year change programmes
• CHROs and senior HR leaders responsible for leadership development and culture
• Boards and executive committees stress-testing the organisation’s capacity to keep changing
• Innovation, strategy and digital leaders who own the operating-model side of reinvention

Audience outcomes

• A working model for treating reinvention as a continuous capability, not a one-off programme
• Specific named cases (including Fujifilm) of organisations that survived structural disruption, and what they did differently
• A clearer view of the cognitive biases that stall senior teams during change
• Language and analogies leaders can use to carry their own organisations through reinvention
• A short reading list of the most useful change thinkers, drawn from his interview catalogue