Alex Connock

Why organisations work with Alex Connock

• He runs the AI for Executives module on the Oxford Executive MBA and co-directs Oxford’s postgraduate course in Artificial Intelligence for Business, so the content has been pressure-tested with senior leaders before it reaches a corporate audience.
• He spent two decades running media businesses at scale, including thirteen years as co-founder and CEO of Ten Alps with Bob Geldof and five as Managing Director of Endemol Shine North, which means his framing of AI is grounded in production economics, not vendor narrative.
• His Routledge textbook on media business models in the AI age is a teaching reference at multiple business schools and has been translated into Korean and Turkish, giving him a coherent published argument rather than a deck of demos.
• He moves credibly between a board conversation about AI strategy and a creative team session on generative tools, which is rare in a topic dominated by either technologists or policy commentators.

Biography highlights

• Senior Fellow, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford; co-director of Oxford’s postgraduate course in Artificial Intelligence for Business.
• Professor of Media and Artificial Intelligence, University of Exeter.
• Head of Department, Creative Business, National Film and Television School.
• Author of three Routledge titles, including “Media Management and Artificial Intelligence” (2022), “Media Management and Live Experience” (2024), and “Entrepreneurship in Media and Entertainment” (2025).
• Co-founder and former CEO of Ten Alps (now Zinc Media) with Bob Geldof; former Managing Director of Endemol Shine North.
• Education: PPE (Oxford), Journalism (Columbia), MBA (INSEAD), PhD in video optimisation for e-commerce.

Biography

Generative AI has reordered the cost base of every business that produces content, software, or marketing, and the question for leadership teams is no longer whether to engage but where the operating model actually changes. That question is harder to answer well than the public debate suggests. It needs someone who has run a production company through a previous wave of digital disruption, and who teaches the underlying technology to senior executives now.

That is the position Alex Connock occupies. At Saïd Business School in Oxford he co-directs the postgraduate course in Artificial Intelligence for Business and runs the AI for Executives module on the Executive MBA. He holds a Professorship in Media and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Exeter and leads the Creative Business department at the National Film and Television School.

Before the academic work he spent two decades as an operator. He co-founded Ten Alps with Bob Geldof in 1998 and ran it as chief executive for thirteen years, producing programming for UK and international broadcasters and the UK government’s Teachers TV. He then ran Endemol Shine North as Managing Director through a period of substantial growth.

His three Routledge titles, including the 2022 textbook “Media Management and Artificial Intelligence” with Korean and Turkish translations, give the talks a published spine. The result is a speaker who can take a board conversation from generative AI as topic to specific decisions about content, channel, and capital, with a vocabulary that holds up in front of both the strategy team and the creative team.

Key speaking topics

• Generative AI and the media business
• AI for executives and the corporate operating model
• AI applied to marketing and brand
• The economics of synthetic content and creator platforms
• AI, national strategy and creative industries policy
• Entrepreneurship and growth in media and entertainment

Ideal for

• Boards and executive committees commissioning an AI strategy session that goes beyond capability demos.
• CMOs, CSOs, and content leaders in media, entertainment, publishing, advertising, and marketing.
• Executive education and senior leadership programmes inside large corporates.
• Industry conferences in media, technology, and creative industries seeking a credentialed academic voice with operator history.

Audience outcomes

• A clear read on where generative AI changes the unit economics of content, marketing, and customer-facing operations.
• A structured view of the AI tooling landscape, anchored to specific business decisions rather than vendor categories.
• Reference points from media businesses already running AI in production, including platforms, broadcasters, and creator economies.
• A working vocabulary for the boardroom conversation on AI strategy that holds up with both technical and commercial colleagues.