Andrew Grant
Organisations are investing heavily in innovation programmes while simultaneously building the conditions that make genuine innovation less likely. The pressure to accelerate output is producing cultures where creative thinking – the prerequisite for any real innovation – is in measurable decline. Boards are funding the solution to a problem their own management practices are making worse.
Andrew Grant, founder of innovation consultancy Tirian and co-author of The Innovation Race, helps organisations diagnose and reverse the cultural conditions that cause innovation investment to fail.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Andrew Grant
- His central argument – that the organisational push to innovate faster actively undermines the creative capacity required for innovation – inverts the standard case most leadership teams are making internally, and is backed by three decades of research across more than 40 cultures.
- The Innovation Climate Indicator (iCLi) and Dynamic Polar Positioning (DPoP) tool give leadership teams validated instruments to assess their actual innovation readiness – scored diagnostic outputs, not a conceptual model to discuss.
- His books draw on the concept of “creativogenic cultures” – the specific conditions under which creativity can survive organisational pressure – giving the cultural argument cross-cultural evidence that few other innovation speakers can produce.
- Clients including Google, Goldman Sachs, Boeing, Disney, PwC, and Salesforce have engaged Tirian at C-suite and country manager level, not just for conference keynotes – the repeat and depth of engagement reflects the consultancy proposition, not the speaker circuit.
- As a facilitator for Duke University Corporate Education and consistently the top-rated speaker at YPO (9.6/10) and APEC CEO Summit, Grant operates credibly across executive development, board-level strategy conversations, and large-scale conference formats.
Biography highlights
- Founder and director of Tirian Innovative Solutions, an international innovation and culture consultancy
- Co-author of Who Killed Creativity?…And How Do We Get It Back? (Wiley, 2012), an international bestseller, and The Innovation Race: How to Change a Culture to Change the Game (2016)
- Developer of the Innovation Climate Indicator (iCLi) and Dynamic Polar Positioning (DPoP) tool – validated instruments for assessing innovation readiness and leadership ambidexterity
- TEDx speaker; opening keynote at the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) Global Leadership Conference; keynote speaker at the APEC CEO Summit, Danang
- Educator and facilitator for Duke University Corporate Education; top-rated YPO global facilitator (9.6/10)
- Featured in Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, the Wall Street Journal, BBC, Reuters, and ABC TV; clients include Google, Goldman Sachs, Boeing, Disney, PwC, and Salesforce
Biography
Most organisations treat innovation and creativity as interchangeable – investing in sprints, programmes, and processes designed to produce new output faster. Andrew Grant’s research, conducted across more than 40 cultures over three decades, points to a different problem: the management behaviours used to accelerate innovation are measurably suppressing the creative thinking that makes innovation possible. His co-authored book Who Killed Creativity? names the specific culprits – seven “creativity killers” that emerge under organisational pressure – and maps the conditions required to reverse the decline.
Grant founded Tirian to convert that research into tools leadership teams can actually use. The Innovation Climate Indicator (iCLi) profiles a team’s innovation readiness against validated criteria. The Dynamic Polar Positioning (DPoP) tool helps organisations surface the leadership paradoxes – between speed and stability, exploration and execution – that determine whether a creative culture can be sustained under commercial pressure. The output is a management conversation grounded in data, not a framework to be filed after the conference.
His second book, The Innovation Race, extends the argument through cross-cultural evidence, examining which societies and organisations have built genuinely enduring innovation capacity – and why. Developed in collaboration with Dr. Gaia Grant, whose PhD research at the University of Sydney Business School provides the academic foundation, the book identifies cultural prerequisites that most innovation investment bypasses entirely. Clients including Google, Goldman Sachs, Boeing, and PwC have engaged Tirian at C-suite level to work through those prerequisites in practice.
Grant has delivered the argument at the APEC CEO Summit, the YPO Global Leadership Conference, and through Duke University Corporate Education. His sessions consistently receive the highest ratings at international forums – a pattern most visible in leadership teams navigating the specific tension between the urgency of digital change and the creative culture their strategies ultimately depend on.
Key speaking topics
- Innovation culture and creativogenic conditions
- The creativity-innovation paradox
- Leadership behaviours that enable or block creative thinking
- Organisational culture diagnosis and transformation
- Innovation readiness assessment and diagnostics
- Collaborative intelligence in competitive environments
- AI adoption and the leadership paradoxes of digital change
Ideal for
- CEOs and senior leadership teams investing in innovation capability and not seeing returns on that investment
- CHROs and culture leads responsible for diagnosing the conditions that either enable or suppress creative thinking
- Strategy and transformation leads managing the tension between innovation acceleration and organisational stability
- Corporate learning and development functions building innovation leadership programmes for senior executive cohorts
Audience outcomes
- A specific diagnosis – through the iCLi and DPoP tools – of where their organisation currently sits on the creativity-to-innovation continuum
- Understanding of the four key innovation paradoxes that shape leadership decision-making under pressure, and how to navigate them without defaulting to either extreme
- A reframe of what innovation investment should target – cultural conditions rather than programme outputs – that shifts how senior leaders plan and measure culture change
- Identification of the specific leader behaviours that either enable or shut down creative thinking in teams under pressure
- Clarity on the distinction between creativity and innovation – and why conflating them is one of the most common reasons innovation programmes underperform
Talks
Examines the leadership paradox created by rapid AI adoption, exploring how leaders can balance technological exploration with organisational stability and long-term value.
Key takeaways:
- Understand the specific leadership tensions created by rapid AI adoption
- Explore the balance between pursuing new opportunities and preserving what already works
- Gain practical perspectives on navigating competing leadership responses to technological change
Drawing on The Innovation Race, this keynote examines what dgetermines which organisations win, lose, or are eliminated in a period of exponential technological change – and what cultural prerequisites make the difference.
Key takeaways:
- Explore how organisations can respond effectively to accelerating technological disruption
- Understand the four innovation paradoxes and how leaders can navigate competing demands
- Apply diagnostic tools for assessing and strengthening organisational innovation readiness
A forensic examination of why creative thinking is in measurable decline inside organisations – and what leaders can do to rebuild the cultural conditions that make innovation genuinely possible.
Key takeaways:
- Identify the seven specific creativity killers operating inside their own organisation
- Understand why adult creative capacity falls so far below childhood potential – and what that means for leadership practice
- Leave with the seven evidence-based rescue strategies for rebuilding a culture where creative thinking can return
A gamified simulation exploring the real conditions under which people and teams genuinely cooperate – and what actually produces collaborative behaviour inside competitive organisational environments.
Key takeaways:
- Understand the behavioural forces that shape collaboration – and suppress it – in competitive environments
- Identify the non-collaborative behaviours that emerge under pressure and the specific conditions that counteract them
- Explore evidence-based actions that encourage genuine cooperation and reduce the siloed thinking that undermines innovation
Videos
Testimonials
Books
Fees
| EUR | GBP | USD | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home Country | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Asia Pacific | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Europe | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Middle East & Africa | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| South America | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| United Kingdom | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| US East Coast | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| US West Coast | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Virtual | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |