Chris Riddell

Why organisations work with Chris Riddell

• First Chief Digital Officer at Mars in Australia and New Zealand, with direct operator experience of building digital capability inside a Fortune-scale consumer business. Not a commentator who has never had to make the call.
• Inaugural Innovation Partner and current Strategic Advisor to the Australian Federal Police on emerging technology and global drivers. The same pattern-recognition applied in boardrooms is also informing national law enforcement strategy.
• Resident Global Affairs and Technology Expert for Channel Seven, and a regular commentator on The Project. Practised at translating complex technology into language a general audience will actually retain, which is what boards also need.
• Advisory work spans consumer goods, financial services, telecommunications and government, including Google, PepsiCo, Credit Suisse, EY, Jaguar Land Rover and Vodafone. The reference list signals pattern recognition across sectors, not a single-industry view.

Biography highlights

• First Chief Digital Officer at Mars Incorporated in Australia and New Zealand, with responsibility for digital strategy across Whiskas, Pedigree, Wrigley, Snickers, Starburst and Maltesers
• Inaugural Innovation Partner and current Strategic Advisor to the Australian Federal Police on emerging technology and global drivers
• Resident Global Affairs and Technology Expert for Channel Seven, and regular commentator on The Project (Network 10)
• Former director of the Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka (MADE)
• Presenter of the Tomorrow’s World technology and futures video series
• Advised organisations including Google, PepsiCo, Credit Suisse, EY, Jaguar Land Rover, Facebook, eBay and Macquarie Bank

Biography

Mars Incorporated is one of the largest consumer businesses in the world, with brands ranging from Snickers and Maltesers to Whiskas and Pedigree. Until the appointment of its first Chief Digital Officer in Australia and New Zealand, it had no single figure accountable for digital strategy across that portfolio. Chris Riddell held that role. The perspective he built in it is the foundation of everything he now tells leadership audiences about digital change.

Riddell’s argument from the Mars experience has a specific shape. Technology trends are only legible to people who have had to act on them with budgets and timelines on the line. Outside that pressure, trend-spotting becomes entertainment. The signals remain interesting but never connect to a decision a CEO actually has to make.

That operator background separates the work from conventional trend commentary. Beyond Mars, Riddell was the Australian Federal Police’s first Innovation Partner, and continues as its Strategic Advisor on emerging technology and global drivers. He is also the resident Global Affairs and Technology Expert for Channel Seven, and a regular commentator on The Project on Network 10. Television work forces a discipline most futurists avoid: complex technology has to be made intelligible in three minutes or it does not make air.

The work spans geographies most commentators never touch. Riddell has operated across the UK, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Kuwait, China, New Zealand and Australia. His advisory list includes Google, PepsiCo, Credit Suisse, EY, Jaguar Land Rover and Macquarie Bank. The through line in every engagement is a single question: which technology shifts will actually change the economics of this business, and which are a rounding error?

Key speaking topics

• Digital transformation and emerging technology strategy
• Artificial intelligence and its business implications
• The future of leadership in a disrupted economy
• Innovation and business model reinvention
• Consumer behaviour and customer experience in a digital economy
• Global technology trends and geopolitical drivers
• Organisational change in the face of rapid disruption

Ideal for

• Boards and executive committees of large organisations working through technology-led transformation
• Chief Strategy Officers, Chief Digital Officers and Chief Transformation Officers with accountability for the digital agenda
• Leadership conferences in consumer, financial services, telecommunications and government sectors
• Innovation leads and strategy teams responsible for identifying and acting on emerging technology trends

Audience outcomes

• A sharper filter for separating technology signal from noise in their own industry
• Named examples of how emerging technologies are already reshaping consumer behaviour and commercial models
• A frame for deciding which trends warrant investment, and which can safely be deferred
• Language for explaining complex technology shifts to boards and customers without losing the substance
• A clearer view of which internal questions about digital capability have not yet been asked