Kian Gohar
Hybrid work and generative AI have arrived faster than the operating habits of most teams. Leaders are watching productivity tools multiply while collaboration, creativity, and trust quietly erode. The hard question is not which technology to adopt, but how to redesign the daily practice of teams so that adaptability becomes a built-in capability rather than a slogan.
Kian Gohar is a researcher and former XPRIZE executive who helps senior leaders rebuild how their teams collaborate, create, and adapt in the era of hybrid work and generative AI.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Kian Gohar
- Brings primary research, not commentary. The Ferrazzi-Gohar study of 2,000 leaders during the pandemic and his Stanford-partnered four-company experiment on AI-assisted brainstorming give boards an evidence base for decisions, not anecdote.
- Co-author of a Wall Street Journal bestseller, “Competing in the New World of Work” (Harvard Business Review Press, translated into seven languages), with a working framework for high-return team practices that leaders can apply directly.
- Operational track record from inside XPRIZE Foundation and Singularity University, where he ran innovation programmes for Fortune 500s and helped design corporate moonshot work, so the advice connects to how large organisations actually execute.
- Published in Harvard Business Review on the failure modes of generative AI in team creativity, with specific guidance on how to redesign ideation workflows so AI raises output rather than flattening it.
- Speaks five languages and has built innovation programmes across the US, Europe, and China, which translates into sharper sessions for global leadership teams than a US-only perspective offers.
Biography highlights
- Founder and CEO of Geolab, a research lab on Human-AI collaboration, future of work, and innovation.
- Co-author with Keith Ferrazzi of “Competing in the New World of Work” (Harvard Business Review Press, 2022), a Wall Street Journal bestseller in seven languages.
- Co-author of “Don’t Let Gen AI Limit Your Team’s Creativity,” Harvard Business Review, March-April 2024, with Jeremy Utley of Stanford.
- Former Executive Director, XPRIZE Foundation and Singularity University.
- Member, Council on Foreign Relations; Henry Luce Scholar in Shanghai; alumnus of Northwestern, London School of Economics, and Harvard Business School.
- Research and commentary featured in the Financial Times, NPR, and the Wall Street Journal.
Biography
Most teams adopted hybrid work and generative AI inside the same eighteen months, and most leaders are still guessing at what good looks like. Kian Gohar’s research sits in that gap. With Keith Ferrazzi he interviewed more than 2,000 leaders during the pandemic; the resulting book, “Competing in the New World of Work” (Harvard Business Review Press, 2022), became a Wall Street Journal bestseller and was translated into seven languages.
His more recent work moves the same lens onto AI. With Jeremy Utley of Stanford, he ran a four-company experiment on AI-assisted brainstorming and published the findings in Harvard Business Review in 2024. The headline is uncomfortable for vendors: teams using generative AI produced only modestly more ideas, and several underperformed. The article gives leaders a specific diagnosis of why and what to change in the ideation workflow.
Before Geolab, Gohar was Executive Director of the XPRIZE Foundation and Singularity University, where he built corporate moonshot and innovation programmes for Fortune 500 leadership teams. That operational background is why his keynotes carry weight in boardrooms; the advice is grounded in running real programmes, not modelling them. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Henry Luce Scholar, and a graduate of Northwestern, the London School of Economics, and Harvard Business School.
For a senior team trying to work out how to make hybrid actually productive and how to introduce AI without quietly degrading creativity, Gohar offers a rare combination of evidence and operating instinct.
Key speaking topics
- Radical adaptability and high-return team practices
- Human-AI collaboration in knowledge work
- Generative AI and team creativity
- Hybrid and remote workplace design
- Innovation strategy and corporate moonshots
- Future of work and workforce transformation
- Leadership through structural change
Ideal for
- CHROs and chief people officers redesigning hybrid operating models
- Chief strategy and chief innovation officers integrating generative AI into team workflows
- Executive teams running enterprise-wide transformation programmes
- Boards and senior leadership groups setting an AI and future-of-work agenda
Audience outcomes
- A clear read on what 2,000 leaders learned about hybrid work that actually raises team performance.
- Specific reasons teams underperform with generative AI and the workflow changes that reverse it.
- A working vocabulary for radical adaptability that senior teams can use to evaluate their own practices.
- Concrete examples from XPRIZE moonshot work showing how ambitious goals get organised inside large companies.
- A sharper sense of which AI and future-of-work investments will compound, and which will not.
Talks
A keynote drawn from his Wall Street Journal bestseller on the team practices that separate high-performing organisations in a hybrid world.
Key takeaways:
- The High Return Practices that emerged from interviews with more than 2,000 leaders during the pandemic.
- Where hybrid models break down and how leadership teams rebuild trust and collaboration.
- A framework for radical adaptability that boards can apply to their own operating model.
A research-led session on how generative AI is changing team ideation, based on his Harvard Business Review work with Stanford’s Jeremy Utley.
Key takeaways:
- Why AI-assisted teams often produce only modest creative gains, and sometimes lose ground.
- How to redesign brainstorming and ideation workflows for AI augmentation.
- The skills leaders need to build into teams to get real returns from generative AI.
A keynote on pursuing ambitious goals, drawn from his time leading XPRIZE Foundation programmes.
Key takeaways:
- How XPRIZE structures incentives and milestones for breakthrough innovation.
- The mindset shifts that distinguish moonshot teams from incremental ones.
- How established organisations adapt moonshot principles without breaking core business operations.
A scan of converging technologies, including AI, robotics, and quantum computing, and what they mean for strategy.
Key takeaways:
- The technology convergences most likely to reshape industries in the next decade.
- How to read weak signals in emerging technology before they become commercial inflection points.
- A practical method for senior teams to integrate foresight into strategic planning.