Mark van Rijmenam
Boards are being asked to make ten-year commitments on technologies that change every six months. Most leadership teams lack a decision architecture for this: they either freeze, or they pilot endlessly without operational deployment. The unresolved question is how to commit capital and reorganise work around AI without betting the firm on a single forecast.
Mark van Rijmenam is a strategic futurist and author of Now What? who helps leadership teams build a decision architecture for AI and other exponential technologies, drawing on a PhD in management and six published books on emerging tech.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Mark van Rijmenam
- He gives boards a named decision framework, WAVE (Watch, Adapt, Verify, Empower), from his book Now What?, and a diagnostic built on it. The Intelligence Age Scorecard rates an organisation from Reactive to Architect across the four pillars, with a separate score for exposure to what comes next.
- His research base spans AI, blockchain and the metaverse across six books, so the technology view is not a single-trend pitch but a structured map of how these layers interact for an operating business.
- Salesforce named him one of 16 human voices shaping the future of AI, which gives buyers an external credibility marker beyond bureau ranking.
- He arrives having done the homework. For a leadership team he runs briefing calls with the executives first, and with the Scorecard he has a confidential read from the client’s own people before he writes the keynote. He has built the platforms behind that work himself, Datafloq and Futurwise.
- He delivered the first TEDx talk in virtual reality and a TEDx in Athens through a digital twin, and speaks in person, virtually, or as a life-size hologram.
Biography highlights
- PhD in Management, University of Technology Sydney, and co-author of peer-reviewed research on strategy under uncertainty in Long Range Planning
- Author of six books, including Step into the Metaverse (Wiley) and Now What? How to Ride the Tsunami of Change (Dean Publishing)
- Certified Speaking Professional, and Global Speaking Fellow conferred by the Global Speakers Federation in 2023 through Professional Speakers Australia
- Ranked #3 on the Global Gurus Top 30 Futurists in 2026, and #1 in 2025
- Recognised by Salesforce as one of 16 human voices shaping the future of AI
- Founder of Datafloq and Futurwise, and of the Intelligence Age Scorecard
Biography
The hardest question for a board right now is not whether AI matters. It is what to commit to, when most of the technology in front of them will be obsolete in eighteen months. Van Rijmenam works on that question. His latest book, Now What? How to Ride the Tsunami of Change, sets out the WAVE framework: Watch, Adapt, Verify, Empower. The framework is built to be used by an executive team in a planning cycle, not admired from a stage.
The credibility behind that work is structural. A PhD in management from the University of Technology Sydney sits alongside six published books that span big data, blockchain, the metaverse and now generative AI. Step into the Metaverse was published by Wiley in 2022. Future Visions, written in five days as an experiment in human-AI co-authorship with ChatGPT, came the following year. The body of work treats each technology layer as part of a connected operating reality, not as standalone trends.
He builds the tools he talks about. Datafloq curates emerging-technology intelligence for executives. Futurwise is an AI-powered learning environment he founded to give organisations a structured way to track signal across technology, regulation and culture. WAVE has since become the Intelligence Age Scorecard, which asks an organisation’s own people, in confidence, how ready it is, and rates it from Reactive to Architect across the four pillars. Every participant keeps a personal report and a 90-day plan. A second score, held deliberately apart from the first, measures exposure to what comes after. Salesforce named him one of 16 human voices shaping the future of AI, and the Global Speakers Federation conferred its Global Speaking Fellow designation on him in 2023 through Professional Speakers Australia.
The format choices reinforce the argument. He delivered the first TEDx Talk in virtual reality in 2020, and a TEDx in Athens in 2023 through a digital twin. For a buyer, the relevant signal is not the novelty. It is that the speaker is using the technologies he is asking leadership teams to make decisions about.
Key speaking topics
- Generative AI and enterprise deployment
- Strategic foresight and scenario planning
- Decision architecture under exponential change
- Organisational readiness for AI
- AI ethics and governance
- Future of work and human-machine collaboration
- Convergence of AI, robotics, quantum computing and synthetic biology
Ideal for
- Boards and executive committees setting AI and emerging-technology strategy
- The CEO’s office and Chief of Staff planning a leadership retreat, offsite or board meeting
- Strategy, innovation and transformation leaders moving from pilots to operational deployment
- CTO, CIO and Chief Digital Officer audiences
Audience outcomes
- Four questions their own organisation should be able to answer with evidence, covering foresight, speed of response, verification and decision rights
- A separate question about exposure, covering what happens to their workforce and their revenue model if software does most knowledge work
- A read on where leadership perception and operational reality diverge, with the option of measuring that gap inside their own organisation rather than in survey averages
- A clearer view of where to commit capital now and where to keep optionality
- Named cases of organisations that moved early and organisations that did not, including Netflix, Klarna, Nokia and Chegg
Talks
Introduces the WAVE framework and leaves an executive team with a way of deciding that holds for the next technology wave as well as this one.
Key takeaways:
- The four WAVE pillars, as a shared vocabulary for judging any emerging technology
- A way to separate signal from noise in claims made about AI and automation
- One commitment per attendee: what they do differently from tomorrow
Deals with the leadership side of AI deployment, from responsible experimentation to governance that keeps pace with capability.
Key takeaways:
- Where AI creates opportunity for the business, and where it creates fragility
- AI-leadership habits that fit inside a weekly routine
- What responsible innovation asks for beyond regulatory compliance
Looks past AI to the convergence of spatial computing, tokenisation, climate technology and longevity science, read through the WAVE framework.
Key takeaways:
- A map of the technology forces that will reshape business over the next decade
- Scenario methods for planning when the range of outcomes is wide
- How strategy built at the intersections differs from strategy built one technology at a time