Vito Di Bari
Most leadership teams cannot tell which emerging technologies will reshape their business and which are noise. They commission AI pilots, IoT proofs of concept and digital programmes without a coherent picture of how these pieces will sit together five years out. The gap is not capacity to experiment. It is the absence of a credible long-range view that operating decisions can be anchored to.
Vito Di Bari is an Italian futurist and innovation designer who helps leadership teams turn AI, IoT and emerging technology trends into a coherent forward operating view, drawing on his work as Innovation Designer for Milan’s Expo 2015 candidacy and former Executive Director of UNESCO’s IMI.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Vito Di Bari
- He has run the discipline at scale. As Innovation Designer for Milan’s Expo 2015 candidacy he turned futures thinking into a 25-project urban programme, the kind of translation work most futurist speakers never attempt.
- He carries genuine institutional weight: former Executive Director of UNESCO’s International Multimedia Institute, contract professor at Politecnico di Milano and Bocconi, founder of the Next Media Lab.
- He authored “The Neofuturistic City Manifesto” and is the named thought leader of the Neo-Futurism art and architecture movement, giving leadership teams a vocabulary for what comes after the current digital cycle.
- He is one of a small number of European voices the Financial Times has labelled a “guru of innovation,” which travels well in front of European boards and ministries.
- He works in English, Italian and across global stages, with TEDx and corporate keynotes spanning five continents, useful for groups planning multi-region leadership offsites.
Biography highlights
- Innovation Designer for Milan’s Expo 2015 candidacy
- Former Executive Director, UNESCO International Multimedia Institute (IMI), Paris
- Former contract professor of Design and Management of Innovation, Politecnico di Milano; and of Cross Media Communication, Bocconi University
- Founder and Scientific Director, Next Media Lab; founder of Di Bari & Associates innovation design studio
- Author of more than ten books on innovation, including “The Neofuturistic City Manifesto”
- Described by the Financial Times as “the new European guru of innovation”
Biography
The hardest job inside a board agenda on AI is not deciding which tools to buy. It is deciding which technological trajectory the organisation is betting on. That is the territory Di Bari has worked in for two decades, first inside UNESCO’s IMI in Paris, then as Innovation Designer for Milan’s Expo 2015 candidacy, where his job was to translate a futures vision into a 25-project urban programme.
His academic base is Italian and serious. He held contract chairs at Politecnico di Milano in design and management of innovation, and at Bocconi in cross-media communication. Around that he built Next Media Lab as an international research laboratory and Di Bari & Associates as a design studio, so the ideas he speaks about have been carried into installations, products and city projects, not only into print.
The intellectual signature is Neo-Futurism. His 2007 “Neofuturistic City Manifesto” set out a vision of arts, architecture and urbanism after the digital turn, and he is widely credited as the thought leader of the movement. The Financial Times called him “the new European guru of innovation,” and bureau profiles routinely place him in the company of John Naisbitt and Alvin Toffler.
For an executive audience, the value is concrete. He has authored more than ten books on innovation, contributed to outlets including Wired, and now anchors his keynote work in AI transformation, with talks such as “Welcome to the AI Transformation” and “A Day in the Future.” A board leaves the room with a structured view of how AI, IoT and emerging technologies will reshape its sector, and a sharper sense of which bets to place now.
Key speaking topics
- Artificial intelligence and generative AI in business
- Innovation strategy and design
- Internet of Things and emerging technologies
- Future of work and organisational AI adoption
- Neo-Futurism, urbanism and the design of the future
- Long-range scenario thinking for leadership teams
Ideal for
- Boards and executive committees stress-testing their AI and digital strategy
- CEOs, CIOs and chief innovation officers planning multi-year technology roadmaps
- Industry events in retail, manufacturing, financial services and the public sector commissioning a serious futures keynote
- Leadership offsites in Europe and globally that need a credible practitioner voice on innovation, not abstract trend commentary
Audience outcomes
- A structured forward view of how AI, IoT and emerging technologies will reshape the audience’s sector
- A clearer language for talking about innovation as a design discipline, not a marketing label
- Specific examples of how futures thinking has been translated into urban-scale projects, including Expo 2015 Milan
- Concrete prompts for which AI and digital bets to prioritise inside the next planning cycle
Talks
A keynote on how AI is reshaping operating models across sectors and what leadership teams need to do now to stay ahead.
Key takeaways:
- A clear map of where AI is moving from pilot to operating reality
- The leadership decisions that determine whether AI delivers value or stalls
- Sector-specific examples of organisations that have already crossed the line
A time-travel storytelling format that walks the audience through a typical day twenty years from now, anchored in current technological trajectories.
Key takeaways:
- A vivid, concrete picture of the technological horizon
- Identification of the trends most likely to shape the audience’s industry
- Strategic prompts for which capabilities to build now
A keynote on the post-pandemic business renaissance and the role of emerging technologies in resetting how value is created.
Key takeaways:
- The structural shifts behind the current reset
- Where new sources of competitive advantage are emerging
- How innovation as a discipline can be embedded into operating practice