Diego Gilardoni
Boards built their growth strategies for a world that no longer exists. The China relationship is now a board-level risk, supply chains have to be re-engineered around political fault lines, and reputation in one capital can damage the licence to operate in another. Decisions taken with last decade’s mental model now produce the wrong answers faster than ever.
Diego Gilardoni helps senior leadership teams read geopolitical, cultural and reputational risk in a fragmented global economy, and translate that reading into commercial decisions on China, supply chains and corporate diplomacy.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Diego Gilardoni
- He reads China the way a board needs it read: as a commercial relationship shaped by political signalling, cultural code and reputational exposure, not as a marketing opportunity that can be project-managed.
- He held a seat on the International Advisory Board of the National Image Research Centre at Tsinghua University, which gave him direct line of sight into how Chinese institutions think about Western corporate behaviour, a vantage point few external advisors actually have.
- His Oxford postgraduate work focused specifically on global reputation and corporate diplomacy, so he can move a leadership team from “we have a public affairs problem” to “we have an operating-model problem” without the usual translation costs.
- His strategic foresight training spans the Institute for the Future, Kairos Future, the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies and the Oxford Scenarios Programme, which means scenarios for the room are built on recognised methodology rather than improvised futures language.
- Former broadcast journalist, current advisor, working trilingually across English, French and Italian, with lived professional experience across Europe, the US and China. The geopolitical reading carries the texture of someone who has actually operated inside these systems.
Biography highlights
- Author, Decoding China: Cross-cultural strategies for successful business with the Chinese (2017).
- Former member, International Advisory Board, National Image Research Centre, Tsinghua University, Beijing.
- Former Visiting Professor in global business and corporate diplomacy, University of International Business and Economics (UIBE), Beijing.
- Postgraduate Diploma in Global Business, University of Oxford; Oxford Scenarios Programme, Saïd Business School.
- Strategic foresight certifications from the Institute for the Future (Palo Alto), Kairos Future Academy (Stockholm) and the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies.
- Contributor to the South China Morning Post and TEDx speaker on cross-cultural business.
Biography
The rules-based global economy that European and North American boards were trained inside no longer holds. China is a strategic relationship, not a market. Supply chains are political instruments. Reputation in one jurisdiction now creates legal and commercial exposure in another. Senior teams are still making capital decisions with a mental model from a different era.
Diego’s work sits inside that gap. His Oxford postgraduate diploma in global business focused on reputation and corporate diplomacy, his subsequent foresight training runs through the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, Kairos Future in Stockholm and the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies. The methodology is recognised. The application is commercial.
China is the spine of his expertise. He served on the International Advisory Board of the National Image Research Centre at Tsinghua University and was Visiting Professor in global business and corporate diplomacy at UIBE in Beijing. Decoding China (2017) is the working manual for executives who need to operate inside the Chinese commercial system rather than perform competence at distance.
Before the advisory work, he spent the first 15 years of his career as a journalist with Switzerland’s national broadcaster, reporting from Europe and the United States. He writes for the South China Morning Post and has authored two earlier books in Italian, one on the reputational fallout of the Swiss banks’ WWII assets crisis, one on US foreign policy in a multipolar world. The reputation thread runs the length of the career.
Key speaking topics
- Geopolitics and global business in a fragmented order
- China strategy and cross-cultural commercial decision-making
- Corporate diplomacy and reputation across jurisdictions
- Strategic foresight and scenario thinking for boards
- Cultural intelligence as a board-level capability
- Strategic narrative and executive communication
Ideal for
- CEOs, boards and executive committees with material China or wider Asia exposure
- Heads of strategy, corporate affairs and public affairs in multinational organisations
- Risk, supply chain and corporate development leaders re-pricing geopolitical exposure
- Leadership programmes inside global financial services, industrials, luxury and hospitality groups
Audience outcomes
- A sharper read of where the China relationship is going and what that means for specific commercial decisions in the room.
- A working vocabulary for corporate diplomacy that closes the gap between public affairs, strategy and operations.
- Scenario logic the leadership team can take back into capital allocation and supply chain decisions.
- Concrete cross-cultural cues for negotiating, partnering and managing reputation across the China-West divide.
Talks
A working session on how senior teams use strategic foresight to stress-test current strategy against multiple plausible futures.
Key takeaways:
- A method for separating noise from signal in the geopolitical and technological environment.
- A scenario frame the executive team can use to challenge current strategic assumptions.
- A view of where current commercial bets break under plausible future conditions.
A reading of the geopolitical recession and what it means for multinational strategy, supply chains and capital allocation.
Key takeaways:
- Where the rules-based order is actually fracturing and what that does to specific industries.
- How political risk is now embedded inside commercial decisions, not adjacent to them.
- Practical implications for China exposure, supply chain redesign and corporate diplomacy.
Cultural intelligence treated as a strategic capability rather than a soft-skills topic.
Key takeaways:
- The specific cultural codes that shape commercial outcomes across the China-West axis.
- How leadership teams build cultural intelligence as an organisational capability.
- Where cross-cultural failure produces the most expensive commercial errors.
A case for cognitive and cultural diversity as a decision-making advantage in complex international environments.
Key takeaways:
- The link between diversity of perspective and the quality of strategic decisions.
- How leadership teams convert demographic diversity into cognitive diversity.
- Where homogeneous teams systematically misread global commercial environments.
Language and narrative as instruments of strategic alignment inside complex organisations.
Key takeaways:
- How senior leaders use narrative to align organisations behind a strategic direction.
- The difference between corporate communication and strategic narrative.
- Practical models for building narrative that holds across stakeholder groups.