Ian Khan
Boards have approved the AI budget. What they cannot answer is which initiatives on the deck will compound, and which will absorb six quarters of funding without reaching production. Deciding that requires a measured view of where the organisation stands, and most leadership teams are working from opinion.
Ian Khan is a futurist and the creator of the Future Readiness Score, a diagnostic that shows leadership teams where they stand on AI before they commit budget.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Ian Khan
- He arrives with the audience already measured. The Future Readiness Score, built from research across more than 750 organisations, scores a business on seven pillars: engagement, learning, collaboration, people, culture, innovation, and execution.
- Undisrupted (Wiley, 2025) was shortlisted for the inaugural Thinkers50 Future Readiness Award, on a list of eight that included Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, Rita McGrath of Columbia Business School, Amy Webb of NYU Stern, and Howard Yu of IMD.
- His sessions can end with a decision on paper. Leaders complete the assessment beforehand, watch the collective result build on screen during the session, and each leave with a personalised ninety-day plan. The leadership team receives the aggregate report.
- He collects his own primary material. Interviews with senior leaders, filmed through the year, are produced as The Futurist on Amazon Prime Video and published as annual State of Industry reports.
Biography highlights
- Author of Undisrupted (Wiley, 2025), a USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestseller, which sets out the Future Readiness Score and the seven pillars of future readiness.
- Shortlisted for the inaugural Thinkers50 Future Readiness Award, presented with the Royal Academy of Management at the 2025 Awards Gala in London.
- Future Readiness Score built from research across more than 750 organisations.
- Executive producer and host of The Futurist, a documentary series on Amazon Prime Video across more than 45 regions.
- Author of Metaverse For Dummies (Wiley) and director of the documentary Blockchain City.
- Bronze Medal, Business Leadership and Management, 2025 North American Book Awards; on-record technology commentator for CNN and Forbes.
Biography
Most AI strategy sessions end with agreement that the technology matters and no agreement on what to do next. The Future Readiness Score was built for that gap. It scores an organisation on seven pillars, engagement, learning, collaboration, people, culture, innovation, and execution, and returns a ranked view of where readiness is thin.
The Score comes out of research across more than 750 organisations and is set out in Undisrupted, published by Wiley in February 2025. Thinkers50 shortlisted the book for the inaugural Future Readiness Award, presented with the Royal Academy of Management. The list of eight also carried Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, Rita McGrath, Amy Webb, and Howard Yu.
Sessions can be built on the client’s own data. The audience completes a readiness assessment ahead of the event. The collective result appears on screen during the session, benchmarked against organisations already measured, and the room ranks its own priorities. Attendees leave with a personalised ninety-day plan and the leadership team receives the aggregate report.
The material behind the content is first-hand. Interviews with scientists, operators, founders, regulators, and investors are filmed through the year and produced as The Futurist on Amazon Prime Video. The same research is published as annual State of Industry reports. Khan also wrote Metaverse For Dummies for Wiley, directed Blockchain City, and comments on technology for CNN and Forbes.
Key speaking topics
- Artificial intelligence and generative AI strategy
- Future readiness and organisational diagnostics
- Digital transformation and enterprise technology adoption
- Emerging technology and disruption
- AI governance and responsible deployment
- Leadership in an AI-driven operating environment
Ideal for
- CEOs, CIOs, and CTOs sponsoring AI strategy across business units
- Boards and executive committees setting technology investment priorities
- Transformation and digital leaders responsible for moving pilots into production
- Government and public-sector leaders assessing AI readiness and governance
Audience outcomes
- A scored readiness position for their own team, from the assessment completed before the session.
- A personalised ninety-day plan with named owners and dates.
- A ranked list of which AI initiatives to fund and which to close.
- A benchmark against the organisations already measured on the same seven pillars.
- Criteria for AI governance decisions, from data quality through to adoption.
Talks
The audience scores its own organisation on seven readiness dimensions while the session runs.
Key takeaways:
- Where the room sits on each of the seven pillars, against the organisations already measured
- The readiness gaps carrying the most risk for the business
- A personalised ninety-day plan for each attendee
A working session on why AI programmes stall before production, and what the organisations that got past it did differently.
Key takeaways:
- Criteria for scoring current initiatives on readiness instead of enthusiasm
- Which initiatives deserve funding, and which are quietly absorbing budget
- A sequence for closing and consolidating the rest
Built for workforce and practitioner audiences, without the executive strategy framing.
Key takeaways:
- What agentic systems do in practice today, and where they break inside processes designed for people
- Which parts of a role AI takes over first, and which it does not
- How individuals build the capability that keeps them ahead of the tooling