Joerg Niessing
Most large companies have spent a decade investing in digital, data and AI, and the commercial return is still uneven. The hard question is no longer whether to transform, but how to convert that investment into customer experiences, brands and business models that actually grow revenue. The answer sits at the intersection of strategy, culture and data, and very few leadership teams have a coherent view across all three.
Joerg Niessing is an INSEAD Senior Affiliate Professor of Marketing who helps boards and executive teams turn digital, data and AI investment into customer-centric growth, brand strength and new business models.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Joerg Niessing
- He teaches inside the C-suite of the brands most boards benchmark against, Google, L’Oréal, Roche, Walmart, Marriott, Diageo and Samsung among them, and brings that pattern recognition into the room.
- Twenty-five years of advisory work at Prophet plus a senior INSEAD faculty role gives him both the operator’s view of transformation and the academic’s discipline. Few digital strategy speakers credibly hold both.
- His book The Definitive Guide to B2B Digital Transformation is built around a specific argument that customer centricity, not technology stack, is the variable that separates growth from stalled programmes.
- The Case Centre’s 2025 Outstanding Case Teacher award recognises a rare ability to make complex transformation cases land with senior executives, which translates directly into keynote and workshop work.
- He co-directs INSEAD’s flagship Leading AI and Digital Marketing Strategy programme, so his content reflects what CMOs and CEOs are actually being taught at the frontier, not what was written eighteen months ago.
Biography highlights
- Senior Affiliate Professor of Marketing, INSEAD.
- Former Partner, Prophet.
- Co-author of The Definitive Guide to B2B Digital Transformation (2020) with Fred Geyer.
- Winner, Outstanding Case Teacher Competition 2025 (The Case Centre); previous Best Marketing Case award winner.
- Co-director, INSEAD executive programmes including Leading Digital Marketing Strategy and Leading AI and Digital Marketing Strategy.
- Has authored 30+ executive cases on companies including Google, Jaguar Land Rover, AccorHotels, BMW Startup Garage and Majid Al Futtaim.
Biography
Digital transformation programmes do not usually fail on technology. They fail because the strategy, the culture and the data operating model are not aligned, and the customer experience that results is incoherent. That gap between investment and commercial outcome is the territory Joerg Niessing has spent his career on.
At INSEAD, he is a Senior Affiliate Professor of Marketing and co-directs flagship executive programmes including Leading Digital Marketing Strategy, Leading AI and Digital Marketing Strategy and B2B Marketing Strategies. His research and teaching focus on digital customer experience, marketing analytics, brand management and the strategic implications of AI for commercial leaders.
Before moving to full-time faculty work he was a Partner at Prophet, the brand and customer experience consultancy, where he led client engagements with global businesses across consumer goods, automotive, healthcare and B2B technology. That operating background sits underneath his 2020 book with Fred Geyer, The Definitive Guide to B2B Digital Transformation, which argues that growth comes from prioritising customers over technology, an argument that has aged well as more transformation budgets are scrutinised.
The Case Centre named him Outstanding Case Teacher in 2025, recognition of a 30-strong case portfolio on companies including Google, Jaguar Land Rover, AccorHotels, BMW Startup Garage and Majid Al Futtaim. For a senior buyer, that body of work is the substance behind the keynote: he is testing these arguments on executives from the world’s largest brands every week.
Key speaking topics
- Customer-centric digital transformation
- B2B digital transformation and growth
- AI and digital marketing strategy
- Brand building in a digital and AI-driven world
- Data and analytics as a commercial capability
- Business model innovation from product to solution
- Culture and leadership of transformation programmes
Ideal for
- CMOs, Chief Customer Officers and Chief Digital Officers running enterprise transformation programmes.
- CEOs and boards reviewing the commercial return on multi-year digital and AI investment.
- B2B leadership teams shifting from product-led to customer-led and solution-led growth.
- Senior marketing, brand and customer experience teams inside large consumer and B2B businesses.
Audience outcomes
- A sharper view of where customer centricity, not technology, is the binding constraint on growth.
- A working framework for connecting strategy, culture and data inside a transformation programme.
- Practical reference points from named global brands, not generic case study language.
- A clearer commercial agenda for AI in marketing, customer experience and brand.
- Confidence to challenge the technology-first defaults in their own transformation plans.
Talks
A keynote on what genuinely changes in commercial strategy under digital and AI, and what stays the same.
Key takeaways:
- A clearer line between digital fashion and durable strategic principles.
- The customer-centric tests that decide whether a transformation creates value.
- How leading brands hold the balance between innovation and consistency.
A senior-leader session on the strategy, culture and data shifts required to make transformation commercial.
Key takeaways:
- The three shifts in engagement, experience and business model that anchor real transformation.
- Where most programmes stall, and the leadership behaviours that unblock them.
- A readiness diagnostic for executive teams running multi-year programmes.
A keynote on turning data and AI capability into customer-facing commercial advantage.
Key takeaways:
- A blueprint for a data strategy that connects to commercial outcomes.
- The cultural conditions under which AI investment translates into growth.
- Reference cases from global brands on what good looks like.
A session on shifting B2B and consumer businesses from product-led to solution-led economics.
Key takeaways:
- The strategic logic for moving from products to solutions.
- How data and AI change the unit of customer value.
- The internal capability and pricing implications leaders need to plan for.
A keynote on brand strategy when channels, content and customer interaction are all reshaped by AI.
Key takeaways:
- What stays constant in brand building, and what needs reworking.
- The role of data and AI in brand decision-making.
- How leading brands are reorganising marketing functions around AI.