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), drawn from his book Now What?, now built into an operating diagnostic that scores a leadership team’s AI readiness against its own industry and regulatory context. The framework translates futurist material into something a planning cycle can actually use.
- 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 has built and run technology platforms himself, Datafloq and Futurwise, and has turned the WAVE framework into the Intelligence Age Scorecard, so the perspective is informed by building the tools, not only commenting on them.
- Format range is unusually wide for a futurist: he delivered the first TEDx talk in virtual reality and a TEDx in Athens via digital twin, and runs sessions in person, virtually and as holographic delivery when the brief calls for it.
Biography highlights
- PhD in Management, University of Technology Sydney
- Author of six books, including Step into the Metaverse (Wiley) and Now What? How to Ride the Tsunami of Change
- Founder of Datafloq and of Futurwise, an AI-powered insights platform
- Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) and Global Speaking Fellow
- Recognised by Salesforce as one of 16 human voices shaping the future of AI
- Delivered the first TEDx Talk in virtual reality (2020) and a TEDx talk in Athens via digital twin (2023)
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. He has since turned WAVE into the Intelligence Age Scorecard, a diagnostic that scores a leadership team’s AI readiness, surfaces the gap between what the C-suite believes and what management experiences, and returns a 90-day action plan. Salesforce named him one of 16 human voices shaping the future of AI, and the Global Speakers Federation has admitted him as a Global Speaking Fellow, a designation held by fewer than fifty people worldwide.
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
- The metaverse and immersive business models
- Blockchain and distributed-ledger applications
- AI ethics and governance
- Future of work and human-machine collaboration
Ideal for
- Boards and executive committees setting AI and emerging-technology strategy
- Strategy, innovation and transformation leaders moving from pilots to operational deployment
- CTO, CIO and Chief Digital Officer audiences
- Leadership offsites and planning cycles where a structured foresight method is needed
Audience outcomes
- A working decision architecture (WAVE) that an executive team can apply to its own AI and technology bets, with the option of a structured readiness diagnostic that benchmarks the team against its industry
- A structured map of how AI, blockchain and immersive technologies interact across the operating model
- A clearer view of where to commit capital now and where to keep optionality
- A read on where leadership perception and operational reality diverge on AI, including early preparedness for AGI-level systems
- Specific examples of organisations that have moved from technology pilots into operational advantage
Talks
A keynote on what executive leadership looks like when AI, deepfakes and synthetic media reshape the operating environment.
Key takeaways:
- The leadership behaviours that hold up when synthetic content is everywhere
- How to govern AI decisions across a leadership team, not just a tech function
- Practical guardrails for trust, identity and reputation risk
A board-level session on where generative AI creates real operating advantage and where it introduces risk that needs governing now.
Key takeaways:
- A map of high-value generative AI use cases versus high-risk ones
- The governance and ethics decisions a board cannot defer
- How to move from experimentation to deployment without overcommitting
A working session on how to redesign an organisation around AI capability rather than bolt AI onto existing processes.
Key takeaways:
- Where AI changes the operating model, not just the workflow
- How to redesign roles, decision rights and incentives around AI
- A structured approach to moving past pilot purgatory