Innovation och omvälvning

Why organisations work with Fatima Bhutto New Kings of the World (Columbia Global Reports, 2019) is a named, published, field-reported analysis of how non-Western cultural industries are displacing American soft power globally, giving leaders a specific, documented argument rather than a trend observation, backed by original reporting across three continents. Her personal biography; granddaughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s first democratically elected prime minister, and daughter of parliamentarian Murtaza Bhutto, who was killed by police in 1996, means her analysis of democratic fragility, political violence, and state power comes from inside those systems, not from a research library. As host of Reframe on Al Jazeera, she has conducted on-record interviews with heads of state and senior political figures, including former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, placing her among interlocutors of consequence rather than commentators at a remove. Her track record across the Financial Times, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Foreign Policy, and Granta, as well as her current column at Zeteo gives her geopolitical analysis a verifiable, editorially scrutinised body of work that self-published commentary cannot replicate. Selected as a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader in 2012 (one of 192 from 59 countries), she holds credibility simultaneously in Global South contexts and at the international forums where Western business leaders set agendas; a pairing that is genuinely rare on the geopolitics circuit. Biography highlights Author of seven books published by Oxford University Press, Jonathan Cape, Penguin, Columbia Global Reports, and Simon & Schuster, spanning poetry, memoir, fiction, and narrative reportage New Kings of the World (Columbia Global Reports, 2019) received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews and was reviewed by the Financial Times as «razor sharp»; described by Shelf Awareness as a «starred» account of a fundamental shift in global pop culture The Shadow of the Crescent Moon (Penguin, 2013) longlisted for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction; Songs of Blood and Sword (Jonathan Cape, 2010) a critically acclaimed memoir of Pakistani politics and political violence Host of Reframe on Al Jazeera (2024-2025), interviewing senior political figures including former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin World Economic Forum Young Global Leader (2012), one of 192 from 59 countries Writing published in the Financial Times, The Guardian, Granta, The New Statesman, and Foreign Policy; current columnist for Zeteo; BA from Barnard/Columbia University, MA in South Asian Government and Politics from SOAS Biography Bollywood is the world’s largest film industry by output. Turkish dizi, a form of serialised drama, reaches 200 million viewers across 43 countries. South Korean K-pop commands fan communities on six continents. Fatima Bhutto’s New Kings of the World (Columbia Global Reports, 2019) was among the first serious analyses to document what this redistribution of cultural power means for the assumptions that sit beneath most global business strategy. Her argument is specific: American soft power was not dismantled by geopolitical rivals, but outpaced by cultural industries that offered billions of consumers something Hollywood could not; familiarity, traditional values inside modern formats, and aspirational content that matched their actual self-image. The book drew on original reporting, exclusive interviews with figures including Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan, and field research across India, Turkey, and South Korea. The Financial Times called it «razor sharp.» Kirkus gave it a starred review. Fatima came to this argument through a life lived inside the geographies that Western strategy tends to flatten into abstractions. Born in Kabul and raised between Damascus and Karachi, she holds an MA in South Asian Government and Politics from SOAS and has reported from Pakistan, Iran, Lebanon, Cuba, and Israel. Her personal biography also gives her analysis of political risk a dimension that institutional research rarely carries. She is the granddaughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s first democratically elected prime minister, executed in 1979. Her father, Murtaza Bhutto, was an elected parliamentarian killed by police in Karachi in 1996. Her memoir Songs of Blood and Sword (Jonathan Cape, 2010) is as much a document of democratic fragility and state violence as it is a personal narrative. Her recent work has widened the frame. As host of Reframe on Al Jazeera (2024-2025), she has interviewed heads of state and senior political figures on record, including former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. Her writing appears in the Financial Times, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Granta, and Foreign Policy; she is a current columnist for Zeteo. Her 2026 memoir The Hour of the Wolf, published by Simon & Schuster, extends her work on power, coercion, and resilience into the personal register. Key speaking topics Western soft power and the rise of non-Western cultural industries Geopolitics of the Global South Democracy, political violence, and state fragility Women’s leadership in contested political environments Cultural identity in a multipolar world Press freedom and the politics of narrative South Asia and the Middle East Ideal for Senior leadership teams and boards navigating global market expansion in South Asia, the Middle East, and emerging economies Risk and strategy functions managing political instability, fragile democracies, and governance uncertainty in developing markets CHROs and DEI leads seeking perspectives on women’s leadership and voice from outside the Western corporate tradition International relations, communications, and policy teams at multinationals with significant exposure to the Global South Audience outcomes A specific, field-reported framework for understanding how cultural power has redistributed away from the West and what this means for where aspiration and consumer loyalty are actually formed A sharper reading of identity, aspiration, and brand relevance in South Asian, Middle Eastern, and emerging market contexts A more precise vocabulary for assessing political risk in environments where Western governance assumptions do not apply A first-hand account of navigating political violence, state failure, and democratic collapse that reframes organisational resilience beyond its corporate usage A challenge to the premise that Western cultural norms remain the universal benchmark for influence in global markets

Why organisations work with Fernando Trias de Bes He is the only Spanish author to have co-written books with Philip Kotler, and the frameworks in Lateral Marketing and Winning at Innovation give leadership teams a shared vocabulary for where their ideas actually come from. Winning at Innovation, with its A-to-F Model, won the CMI Innovation and Entrepreneurship category at the 2013 Management Book of the Year Awards, a credential that speaks directly to boards asking how innovation should be structured inside the firm. He runs Salvetti and Llombart, a Barcelona-based consumer research and innovation consultancy whose client list has included PepsiCo, Sony, Hewlett-Packard, Nestle and McKinsey, which means the classroom work is tested against paying clients. He bridges two registers most economists do not reach, serious academic marketing theory and popular business writing, and audiences that have read La buena suerte or El libro negro del emprendedor often arrive already familiar with his thinking. He presents in English and Spanish and has been delivering executive-level keynotes since 2003, with hundreds of international engagements behind him. Biography highlights Associate Professor of Marketing Management at ESADE Business School since 1994. Co-author with Philip Kotler of Lateral Marketing (Wiley, 2003) and Winning at Innovation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). CMI Management Book of the Year 2013, Innovation and Entrepreneurship category, for Winning at Innovation. Founder and President of Salvetti and Llombart, a consumer insight and innovation consultancy working with PepsiCo, Sony, HP, Nestle and McKinsey. Regular columnist for La Vanguardia, ARA and El Pais Semanal; author of more than twenty books of essay and fiction translated into more than thirty languages. Winner of the Premio Espasa de Ensayo (2015), Premio De Hoy de Ensayo (2009) and Shinpukai Prize (Japan, 2005). Biography Most innovation in large companies is lateral in name only. Teams segment further, tweak an existing product, and call it new. Fernando Trias de Bes spent two decades arguing, in books co-written with Philip Kotler, that this is the core reason corporate pipelines stall, and building methods that address it directly. Lateral Marketing, published by Wiley in 2003, set out a structured way to generate product concepts that do not come from narrower segmentation but from a different logical operation on the category itself. Winning at Innovation, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2011, took the argument further with the A-to-F Model, a step-by-step description of the roles and stages an organisation needs to convert ideas into launches. The Chartered Management Institute named it Innovation and Entrepreneurship Book of the Year at its 2013 awards. Trias de Bes has taught marketing and innovation at ESADE Business School since 1994 and runs Salvetti and Llombart, the Barcelona consumer research and innovation consultancy he co-founded in 1996. Clients have included PepsiCo, Sony, Hewlett-Packard, McKinsey and Nestle, which gives the academic frameworks a field of consumer goods and services to answer to. Beyond the business books he writes columns for La Vanguardia, ARA and El Pais Semanal, and has published essays and novels translated into more than thirty languages, including La buena suerte, co-written with Alex Rovira, and El libro negro del emprendedor. The Premio Espasa de Ensayo in 2015 sits alongside earlier recognition in Japan and Spain. That range, economist, consultant, columnist, novelist, is the unusual shape of the author, and it is what audiences tend to remember from the keynote. Key speaking topics Business model innovation Lateral marketing and creativity in commercial strategy The A-to-F Model for organising innovation Entrepreneurship and the economics of new ventures Economic trends and consumer behaviour Corporate reinvention and disruptive thinking Ideal for CMOs, CSOs and heads of innovation confronting commoditised categories and stalled pipelines. Executive committees running corporate strategy offsites on growth and reinvention. Business schools and management development programmes covering innovation, marketing and entrepreneurship. Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for lateral versus vertical innovation that a leadership team can use the next day. The A-to-F structure for assigning innovation roles and stages inside an organisation. Concrete examples, drawn from consumer goods and services, of where breakthrough ideas actually come from. A sharper read on why most corporate innovation produces line extensions rather than category moves.

Why organisations work with Freddy Wexler A working hit-maker, not a commentator. Ten Billboard number ones with Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Post Malone, BLACKPINK and others give him a verifiable claim on how popular taste actually moves. The Billy Joel case study. Coaxing a thirty-year creative silence into a Grammy-stage single, including the full marketing rollout and an AI-directed music video, is a rare example of cultural reactivation that buyers can study end to end. Talent identification with a track record. Wexler scouted and pitched Stefani Germanotta as a future Madonna while she was still unsigned, and signed Rachel Platten before “Fight Song”. Useful for audiences thinking about how to spot signal early. A view on AI and creative work shaped by shipping product. The “Turn the Lights Back On” video was a Webby-winning AI-led production, which gives him a practitioner’s read on where machine generation helps and where it does not. Commercial track record across formats. Founder of The Brain Music with joint ventures involving Disney, Scooter Braun Projects, Warner Chappell and Prescription Songs, plus a first-look television deal with Disney. Biography highlights Grammy-nominated songwriter and producer with ten Billboard number one contributions Co-writer and producer of Billy Joel’s “Turn the Lights Back On” (Columbia Records, 2024), the artist’s first new pop single in roughly thirty years Album of the Year Grammy nomination for Justin Bieber’s Justice (2022); credited contributor on Laufey’s Bewitched, a 2024 Grammy-winning album Co-wrote “Stuck with U” by Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande, a Billboard Hot 100 number one that raised over five million dollars for first responders’ families Founder of The Brain Music, with joint ventures involving Disney, Scooter Braun Projects, Warner Chappell and Prescription Songs; first-look television deal with Disney Webby Award (2024) for direction of the AI-led “Turn the Lights Back On” music video; Golden Globe nomination for “Forbidden Road” from the Robbie Williams biopic Better Man Biography Billy Joel had not released a new pop single for thirty years when “Turn the Lights Back On” arrived in February 2024 on Columbia Records. The song was co-written and produced by Freddy Wexler, who spent more than a year developing the material with Joel from a CD of unfinished sketches. The track debuted at number one on classic hits and classic rock radio, picked up a Grammy-stage performance, and was packaged with an AI-directed music video that later won a Webby. As a worked example of how a dormant creative voice gets reactivated and brought back to market, it is unusually complete. That collaboration sits inside a longer hit-making record. Wexler has ten Billboard number one contributions and Grammy nominations across three consecutive years, including Album of the Year for Justin Bieber’s Justice and contributor credit on Laufey’s Bewitched. He co-wrote “Stuck with U” for Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande, a Hot 100 number one that raised more than five million dollars for first responders’ families during the early pandemic. His writing and production credits span Post Malone, BLACKPINK, Selena Gomez, Halsey, Diana Ross and Celine Dion. He is also a builder of companies. The Brain Music, founded in 2012, runs joint ventures with Disney, Scooter Braun Projects, Warner Chappell and Prescription Songs. The Freddy Wexler Company holds a first-look television deal with Disney and a slate spanning Nickelodeon’s Kid Cowboy, a Broadway production of The Last Five Years, and a Hulu special with Sebastian Maniscalco. The Variety Family Entertainment Impact Report has recognised the operation. For organisations, the relevant point is access to a practitioner who can describe how a cultural moment actually gets made, including the writing room, the artist relationship, the rollout, and the use of AI in production. Few speakers on creativity can point to a specific commercial artefact and walk a senior audience through the craft behind it. Wexler can. Key speaking topics Creativity as a working practice Storytelling across music, film and brand AI in creative production and music video direction Talent identification and early-signal spotting Cultural moments and the commercial rollout behind them Resilience and creative reinvention Philanthropy embedded in creative product Ideal for Marketing, brand and CMO leadership teams thinking about cultural relevance Creative and content function heads inside media, entertainment and consumer companies Innovation and product groups exploring AI-assisted creative production Senior offsites and leadership conferences looking for a practitioner perspective on craft Audience outcomes A working framework for how cultural moments are constructed, drawn from a specific recent case A practitioner’s read on AI in creative production, anchored in a Webby-winning video A more concrete sense of what early signal looks like in talent and ideas, before they are obvious Reference points from a hit-making catalogue that audiences can apply to their own creative briefs

Why organisations work with Freek Vermeulen He has built a specific, named argument that “best practices” are frequently bad practices in disguise. Leaders leave with a method for stress-testing the practices their company has stopped questioning. His book Breaking Bad Habits, published by Harvard Business Review Press, is built on empirical research across industries from newspapers to IVF clinics to West End theatre. The examples carry, because they are not from the usual case-study roster. He bridges academic rigour and operating language better than most. Published in Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science and Strategic Management Journal, but read in the boardrooms of Bosch, BP, Goldman Sachs, Maersk and Vodafone. He was the first recipient of LBS’s Excellence in Teaching Award and named to the 2016 Thinkers50 Radar. The audience signal: he is among the management thinkers actively shaping how strategy is taught at senior level. Biography highlights Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, London Business School. PhD, Tilburg University. Author of Breaking Bad Habits (Harvard Business Review Press) and Business Exposed (FT Prentice-Hall). Translated into seven languages. Named to the Thinkers50 Radar list, 2016. First recipient of the LBS Excellence in Teaching Award; also recipient of the school’s Best Teacher Award. Regular contributor to Harvard Business Review; one of his 2025 HBR articles was named among HBR’s Most Popular Articles of 2025. Academy of Management Journal Best Paper Award; INFORMS/ISA Best Paper Award; Vienna University of Economics and Business Theory-to-Practice Award. Biography Industries inherit habits. A newspaper prints on broadsheet because newspapers print on broadsheet. A consultancy charges by the day because that is what consultancies do. Most of these habits started with a reason. Most have outlived the reason. Almost none are questioned, because everyone in the industry is still doing them. This is the territory Freek Vermeulen has spent his academic career mapping. His book Breaking Bad Habits, published by Harvard Business Review Press, argues that the most damaging strategic mistakes are not bold moves that fail. They are conventions that nobody is auditing. The same logic appears across his Harvard Business Review writing, where he has been a regular contributor, including a 2025 piece with a London Business School colleague that was named among HBR’s Most Popular Articles of 2025. Vermeulen is Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at London Business School, where he has chaired the Strategy and Entrepreneurship department and served on the school’s Management Board and Board of Governors. He was the first person to receive the school’s Excellence in Teaching Award, and the 2016 Thinkers50 Radar list identified him as one of the management thinkers most likely to shape the next decade of organisational practice. The work is academic in origin, with Best Paper Awards from the Academy of Management Journal and INFORMS, and it has translated into a client list that includes Bosch, BP, GE, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Lufthansa, Maersk, Novartis, Roche, Toshiba and Vodafone. The reason for the breadth is the angle. Vermeulen does not tell senior leaders what to do next. He tells them which of the things they are already doing have stopped earning their place. Key speaking topics Strategic innovation and corporate transformation Why “best practices” become bad practices Strategy execution and making strategy happen Profitable growth and international expansion Acquisitions, alliances and corporate scope Organisational learning and industry evolution Ideal for CEOs, CSOs and corporate strategy teams in mature industries facing flatlining growth Board and ExCo audiences re-examining what their company does because it has always done it M&A, post-acquisition integration and corporate development leaders Strategy and transformation conferences at multinational scale Audience outcomes A specific method for distinguishing practices that create value from practices that have simply been inherited A sharper view of how industry conventions form, persist and quietly damage performance Worked examples drawn from research across multiple industries, not the usual handful of case studies A frame for strategy execution that treats the deletion of bad habits as seriously as the launch of new initiatives

Why organisations work with Frits van Paasschen Two Fortune 500 CEO seats, Coors Brewing and Starwood Hotels and Resorts, give him a perspective most disruption speakers do not have: he has actually run the kind of company being disrupted, with shareholders, a board, and a quarter to report. Author of The Disruptors’ Feast, a book built from travel to more than 100 countries and interviews with operators rather than academics, which gives board conversations a concrete evidence base rather than a theoretical one. Still sits inside the rooms he advises. Current directorships at Amadeus, Williams-Sonoma, dsm-firmenich, and Sonder mean his view of governance under disruption is current, not retrospective. Credible on the international dimension in a way US-centric speakers are not. Dutch-American, ran Nike’s EMEA business out of the Netherlands, speaks five languages, led Starwood during its China expansion. A Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute fellowship and a Harvard MBA Teaching Fellowship in Economics signal the same thing his book does: he treats the CEO job as an intellectual problem, not a performance. Biography highlights President and CEO, Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, 2007 to 2015 President and CEO, Coors Brewing Company, 2005 to 2007 Corporate Vice President and General Manager, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Nike Author, The Disruptors’ Feast: How to Avoid Being Devoured in Today’s Rapidly Changing Global Economy Current directorships at Amadeus IT Group, Williams-Sonoma (Chair, Audit and Finance Committee), dsm-firmenich, and Sonder Holdings Fellow, Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute; MBA, Harvard Business School; BA Economics and Biology, Amherst College Biography Starwood Hotels and Resorts was acquired by Marriott in 2016. In the years immediately before that, the company was navigating Airbnb, the rise of China as its fastest-growing market, a mobile-first guest, and an activist investor. Frits van Paasschen ran it through most of that period, from 2007 to 2015, having arrived from the CEO seat at Coors Brewing and, before that, Nike’s EMEA business. Three different consumer industries, three different disruption stories, one operator. That operating lineage is what makes his view on disruption unusual. The Disruptors’ Feast, his 2017 book, is not a consultant’s map of “the future of” anything. It is reporting, drawn from more than 100 countries he has worked in or travelled to, on how the combination of connectivity, demographic shift, and capital flows actually lands inside companies. The argument is that most incumbents do not lose to a single disruptor; they lose to the compounding of several forces they treated as separate problems. He remains inside the governance conversation rather than outside commentating on it. He chairs the Audit and Finance Committee at Williams-Sonoma, sits on the boards of Amadeus, dsm-firmenich, and Sonder, and recently completed a two-year fellowship at the Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute. That combination matters for a speaking audience of directors and C-suite leaders: when he talks about how a board should read a strategic threat or a management succession under pressure, he is describing the seat he is currently in. The value for a serious leadership audience is not the disruption taxonomy. It is watching a former public-company CEO think out loud about the decisions he got right, the ones he did not, and what a director should actually be asking when the operating model starts to strain. Key speaking topics Leadership under disruption Global strategy and international expansion Board governance in volatile markets Consumer and hospitality business transformation CEO decision-making and accountability Cross-cultural leadership of global organisations Ideal for Boards and non-executive directors working through strategic threats to the core business CEO and C-suite offsites where the agenda is how to lead an incumbent through sustained disruption Global consumer, retail, hospitality, and travel-industry leadership audiences Senior strategy, transformation, and corporate development teams inside multinationals Audience outcomes A sharper read on which disruptive forces compound inside an incumbent and which are noise A working vocabulary for how boards and CEOs should talk about risk, governance, and pace of change together rather than separately Specific, named examples from Starwood, Coors, Nike, and the companies he now sits on the boards of, rather than generic case studies A more honest framework for what a global leadership role actually requires, from someone who has run one on three continents

Why organisations work with Garry Golden He is a credentialled futurist, M.S. in Futures Studies from the University of Houston and former board member of the Association of Professional Futurists, not a trend commentator. The discipline behind the talk is the product. He has applied foresight inside Microsoft, Accenture, American Express, Disney, CVS Aetna, Fidelity, and Boston Scientific, which means executives hear method tested against their own scale of complexity. His work concentrates on the two infrastructure shifts most likely to reset competitive position this decade, energy and transportation, paired with the demographic and AI dynamics that pull on them. He teaches the future of energy and environment at the University of Houston, so his framing of the energy transition carries technical detail rather than generic sustainability framing. Clients use him to install foresight as an internal capability, not as a one-off keynote: he leaves teams with a process for thinking about long-range change after he leaves the room. Biography highlights M.S. in Futures Studies, University of Houston Foresight programme. Adjunct Lecturer on the Future of Energy and Environment, University of Houston. Past Board of Directors, Association of Professional Futurists. Foresight and strategy work delivered for Microsoft (Bing/Cortana), Accenture, American Express, Disney, CVS Aetna, Fidelity, Dell, Boston Scientific, Verizon Wireless. Civic and cultural foresight engagements with AARP, the Kennedy Center, Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Walker Arts Center, and the American Alliance of Museums. Recurring focus on energy system decarbonisation, fuel cells, AI-driven software disruption, and global demographic transitions. Biography Most strategy decks treat the next decade as a longer version of the last one. The discipline of futures studies exists because that assumption has stopped holding, particularly in industries where AI, energy systems, and demographic structure are all shifting at the same time. Golden was trained inside that discipline. He holds an M.S. in Futures Studies from the University of Houston, one of the few graduate programmes in the field, and served on the Board of Directors of the Association of Professional Futurists. He now teaches the Future of Energy and Environment at Houston as an Adjunct Lecturer, which keeps his work close to the technical detail of the energy transition rather than the marketing version of it. The client list reflects the breadth of where structured foresight earns its place. Microsoft has used him inside the Bing and Cortana groups; Accenture, American Express, CVS Aetna, Disney, Fidelity, Dell, and Boston Scientific have brought him in to stretch leadership horizons on AI, infrastructure, financial services, and talent. He works the civic side as well, with AARP, the Kennedy Center, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the American Alliance of Museums commissioning work on demographic and cultural shifts. The pattern across those engagements is consistent. Leaders arrive with a planning process built for incremental change and leave with a method, drivers, signals, scenarios, decisions, that lets them treat exponential change as something to plan around rather than react to. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and long-range scenario planning The future of energy systems and decarbonisation AI and software-driven industry transitions The future of transportation and mobility infrastructure Demographic change and its strategic implications Future of work, learning, and talent development The future of civic and cultural institutions Ideal for CEO and executive teams running long-range strategy reviews in energy, financial services, healthcare, and technology. Chief Strategy Officers and corporate development leads building scenario capability inside the planning function. Boards and investment committees pressure-testing capital allocation against ten and twenty year horizons. Innovation, R&D, and learning leaders responsible for connecting talent and capability plans to coming infrastructure shifts. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for distinguishing trend, driver, and signal, and using each appropriately in strategic conversation. A clearer view of which shifts in AI, energy, and demographics are likely to reshape their specific industry within the planning horizon. A repeatable scenario method the team can run again without external facilitation. Sharper questions for the next strategy cycle, in particular where current assumptions are most likely to fail.

Why organisations work with Gary Hamel He gives leadership teams the vocabulary to see their own bureaucracy. Terms he co-introduced, core competence, strategic intent and now humanocracy, are the language many boards already use to argue about strategy and design. He pushes past the innovation-theatre version of transformation. His work with Michele Zanini on Humanocracy is a data-backed argument that most large companies are organised to slow people down, and it offers a specific model for dismantling that. He sits at the intersection of strategy and organisation design that few thinkers occupy. Most strategists stop at the market; most organisation specialists stop at culture. Hamel argues the two are the same problem. He brings credentials senior buyers recognise on sight: more than three decades on the London Business School faculty, the most reprinted author in Harvard Business Review, Thinkers50 Hall of Fame inductee. Biography highlights Visiting Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, London Business School, for more than 30 years Most reprinted author in Harvard Business Review history Thinkers50 Hall of Fame, inducted 2022; ranked inside the global top 30 management thinkers across five successive Thinkers50 lists Co-author with C.K. Prahalad of “Strategic Intent” (1989) and “The Core Competence of the Corporation” (1990), two of the most cited HBR articles ever published Author or co-author of Competing for the Future, Leading the Revolution, The Future of Management, What Matters Now and Humanocracy Founder of Strategos and the Management Lab; Fellow of the Strategic Management Society and the World Economic Forum Biography Strategy schools teach leaders to study their markets. Hamel’s career has been a long argument that the harder problem sits inside the building. Competing for the Future, written with C.K. Prahalad in 1994, reframed competitive advantage around distinctive capability rather than market position, and the HBR articles behind it, “Strategic Intent” and “The Core Competence of the Corporation”, remain fixtures on executive reading lists three decades later. That work made him one of the defining strategy voices of the 1990s. What he did next is the part senior leaders tend to value most now. Across The Future of Management and Humanocracy, written with Michele Zanini, he has turned the same analytical lens on the management model itself, arguing that the structures most companies rely on were built for compliance and control and are actively hostile to the initiative, agility and judgement those same companies say they want. Humanocracy is the sharp edge of that argument. Drawing on data from more than 10,000 employees and a set of named case companies, the book sets out what it takes to replace bureaucratic routines with a model in which people are the point rather than the resource. It became a Wall Street Journal bestseller and anchors his current speaking work with boards and executive committees. The credentials behind that argument are unusually thick. Hamel has been on the London Business School faculty for more than thirty years, is the most reprinted author in HBR’s history, and was inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 2022. Fortune has called him the world’s leading expert on business strategy; the Financial Times calls him a management innovator without peer. Key speaking topics Management innovation and the future of the management model Humanocracy and post-bureaucratic organisation design Strategic intent and core competence in contested markets Organisational agility and resilience at scale Building innovation capability inside large incumbents Leadership for strategic renewal Ideal for CEOs and executive committees wrestling with strategy-to-execution drift CHROs and chief transformation officers redesigning operating models Board conversations on long-horizon competitiveness and management capability Leadership programmes inside large, bureaucratic incumbents Audience outcomes A sharper read on where their own management model is costing them speed and initiative Specific language, core competence, strategic intent, humanocracy, that senior teams can use to argue about strategy the next morning Named case examples of companies that have dismantled bureaucratic routines and what it took A clearer line between strategy work and organisation design, and why treating them as separate projects fails A view of innovation capability as a systems problem, not a culture slogan

Why organisations work with Gary Pisano He gives leaders a framework for diagnosing why innovation investment is not compounding, and a language for fixing it at the level of strategy rather than process. His work on industrial commons, developed with Willy Shih in Producing Prosperity, explains how manufacturing and R and D decisions shape long-term competitive capacity, a lens most strategy advisors do not carry. The thesis of Creative Construction reframes scale as a potential innovation asset, which is directly relevant to incumbents under pressure from smaller, faster rivals. The 1997 Dynamic Capabilities paper he co-authored is foundational reading in corporate strategy; buyers get the person whose ideas their strategy team has already been citing. Board experience at Axcella Health and Celixir, plus advisory work across aerospace, biotech, pharma, medical devices, semiconductors and financial services, grounds the academic argument in operator reality. Biography highlights Harry E. Figgie, Jr. Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School; on faculty since 1988. Former Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Promotion and Tenure at HBS (2018 to 2023). Author of Creative Construction: The DNA of Sustained Innovation (PublicAffairs, 2019) and Science Business (HBS Press, 2006); co-author of Producing Prosperity (HBS Press, 2012). Won the 2009 McKinsey Award for best HBR article for Restoring American Competitiveness with Willy Shih. Co-author of Dynamic Capabilities and Strategic Management (1997), one of the most cited papers in the management literature. PhD from UC Berkeley; BA in Economics from Yale. Biography Innovation spend in large organisations often grows faster than any measurable return on it. The reason is rarely a failure of execution. It is a failure to define what innovation is supposed to do for the business in the first place. This is the problem Gary Pisano has spent three decades unpicking at Harvard Business School. As the Harry E. Figgie, Jr. Professor of Business Administration, Pisano has published over 100 scholarly articles and case studies and written six books. Creative Construction, his 2019 book, argues that large firms are not condemned to be outrun by start-ups. Scale is an asset when strategy, systems, and culture are set up to use it. The argument cuts directly against the disruption orthodoxy that has shaped a generation of boardroom thinking. His earlier work reaches further back into the industrial architecture of competitiveness. Producing Prosperity, co-written with Willy Shih, shows how outsourced manufacturing hollows out the capability to invent. Science Business, his study of biotech, explains why a whole industry built on extraordinary science has struggled to translate it into sustained commercial performance. The 1997 Dynamic Capabilities paper, written with David Teece and Amy Shuen, is one of the most cited in the history of strategic management. That research base is matched by three decades of direct advisory work across aerospace, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, semiconductors, software, and financial services, plus board seats at Axcella Health and Celixir. Leaders come to him when the innovation portfolio looks busy but the competitive position is not improving, and they leave with a sharper account of why. Key speaking topics Innovation strategy Sustained innovation in large organisations Competitive strategy and dynamic capabilities Growth and the limits of scale Manufacturing, industrial commons and national competitiveness Science-based business models R and D and intellectual property strategy Ideal for CEOs, CSOs and heads of strategy in incumbent firms losing ground on innovation Boards overseeing large R and D portfolios that are not compounding into advantage Executive teams in biotech, pharma, medical devices and advanced manufacturing Policy and industry leaders working on national competitiveness and supply chain capability Audience outcomes A sharper diagnosis of why innovation spending is not producing durable advantage A working definition of innovation strategy that ties R and D choices to business strategy An argument for when scale helps innovation and when it quietly kills it A clear view of how manufacturing and process capability feed, or starve, future product innovation Language senior teams can use to challenge an innovation portfolio without defaulting to start-up envy

Why organisations work with George Nagle He built his innovation method inside oil and gas water chemistry, one of the most conservative industrial sectors there is, and used it to launch 19 products in 14 months across a portfolio worth more than $352 million. His Breakthrough Thinking series gives leadership teams a named, codified methodology to use after the keynote, not a set of slogans to remember. He is a certified FORTH method instructor with black and green belt credentials in Innovation and Growth Systems, Green Belt for Growth, and Value Innovations. The toolset is academically accredited, not invented for the stage. He has applied the same approach across more than 24 industries, which makes him a credible voice for boards and executive teams that want innovation discipline transferred into their context, not borrowed from a single sector. Biography highlights Former global executive and strategy lead at a multi-billion-dollar industrial services company, with portfolio responsibility above $352 million. Launched 19 products in 14 months in the oil and gas water chemistry sector. Founder of The Ideation Emporium of Creativity, LLC, and author of the Breakthrough Thinking series. MS in Biology and MBA in Marketing and Management from Duquesne University; BS in Biology with honours from the University of Pittsburgh. Certified online instructor in the FORTH method; black belt and multiple green belt certifications in academically accredited innovation systems. Published interviews with Authority Magazine on communication, attention, and creative habits. Biography Innovation in heavy industry is hard for a reason. The cultures are engineered for safety, repeatability, and risk avoidance, which are exactly the traits that make new ideas die quietly in a meeting. George Nagle spent his executive career inside that environment, in oil and gas water chemistry, and built a method to move past it. As a global executive, he carried a portfolio of more than $352 million and led the launch of 19 products in 14 months in a sector where most launches take years. That operating record sits behind everything else he does. He went on to found The Ideation Emporium of Creativity, codifying the approach into the Breakthrough Thinking series, including “The Five Letter F Word”, “Miserable At Work? Why? You Don’t Have To Be”, and “How Are Kids Innovating Faster Than You?”. His credentials are unusual for an innovation speaker. He holds an MS in Biology and an MBA from Duquesne University, a BS in Biology with honours from the University of Pittsburgh, and academically accredited certifications in Innovation and Growth Systems, Green Belt for Growth, and Value Innovations. He is also a certified FORTH method instructor. The toolkit is borrowed, tested, and labelled, not improvised. What distinguishes him is the breadth of application: more than 24 industries have used the same set of ideation tools, from industrial chemistry to consumer-facing services. For leadership teams that want innovation treated as a managed discipline rather than a creative-culture initiative, that record makes him a practical voice. Key speaking topics Innovation as a managed discipline Creative ideation and the FORTH method Commercial product launch under operating constraint Strategy communication across organisational levels Breakthrough Thinking methodology Workplace engagement and creative culture Ideal for Chief innovation officers, R&D leaders, and product portfolio executives looking to convert pilots into shipped revenue CEOs and executive teams in mature, process-heavy industries trying to install repeatable ideation Strategy and transformation leads responsible for cross-functional innovation programmes Senior HR and culture leaders pairing innovation capability with employee engagement work Audience outcomes A named, repeatable ideation method audiences can put into a project the next week A clearer view of why innovation efforts stall in conservative organisations and which mechanisms unblock them Specific tools for separating real strategic priorities from organisational noise Practical examples of how a structured innovation cadence produced 19 product launches in 14 months Language for connecting creativity, engagement, and commercial outcomes in a single business case

Why organisations work with Gerd Leonhard The androrithms concept – Leonhard’s term for the human qualities (empathy, ethical reasoning, creative judgment) that algorithms cannot replicate – gives leadership teams a governance vocabulary that most AI advisors skip. It moves the conversation from “what can we automate?” to “what must we protect, and why is that a strategic decision?” He co-authored The Future of Music (Berklee Press, 2005), correctly forecasting that streaming would displace ownership as the dominant music model years before the industry accepted it. That verifiable prediction track record is what distinguishes his current AI arguments from speculation that cannot be tested against outcomes. The Ten Megashifts framework – mapping ten concurrent technological forces including digitisation, intelligisation, automation and robotisation as a compound system – gives strategy and transformation teams a tool for testing whether their roadmaps account for the full scope of disruption, not just the most visible trend. The HellVen scenario construct frames technology futures as a governance choice between radically different outcomes rather than as a prediction. It is a practical tool for boards running scenario planning exercises on AI strategy and long-term institutional risk. His 2016 argument that digital ethics would become a mandatory boardroom governance issue was published before AI regulation appeared on any major policy agenda. That argument has since been validated, lending weight to his current positions on AI accountability and corporate responsibility. Biography highlights Author of Technology vs Humanity: The Coming Clash Between Man and Machine (2016), published in 12 languages; co-author of The Future of Music (Berklee Press, 2005) Founder and CEO, The Futures Agency, Zurich; Visiting Professor, Fundação Dom Cabral, São Paulo Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts (FRSA), London Listed by Wired UK as one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in Europe; named by The Wall Street Journal as “one of the leading media futurists in the World” (2006) Views and interviews published in or featured by The Guardian, Harvard Business Review, Business Insider and Wired UK; TV appearances on BBC, CNN, ARTE and ZDF Berklee College of Music alumnus; Quincy Jones Award recipient (1985); former professional guitarist, composer and digital media entrepreneur, San Francisco Biography When Technology vs Humanity appeared in 2016, it arrived with a central claim: decisions about what to automate are fundamentally ethical decisions, not just operational ones. Boards mostly disagreed. They are now being forced to revisit that judgment. As CEO of The Futures Agency in Zurich, Gerd Leonhard has spent the intervening years building the frameworks leadership teams are now looking for. His most distinctive contribution is the distinction between algorithms and androrithms. Algorithms are the machine rules that govern digital systems. Androrithms – his term – are the human qualities that organisations risk losing when they optimise purely for efficiency: empathy, ethical reasoning, creative judgment, intuition. His Ten Megashifts framework maps ten concurrent technological forces as a compound system rather than a sequence of isolated disruptions. It gives boards a structured analytical lens rather than a single-trend narrative. The credibility of this perspective rests partly on record. Leonhard co-authored The Future of Music (Berklee Press, 2005), arguing that streaming would replace ownership as the dominant music model years before the industry accepted it. That early, accurate forecast – made when conventional wisdom pointed elsewhere – distinguishes his current AI arguments from commentary that arrives after the fact. A Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts in London and Visiting Professor at Fundação Dom Cabral in São Paulo, Leonhard operates between the academic and advisory worlds. Wired UK lists him among the Top 100 Most Influential People in Europe. His perspective is shaped as much by his career as a professional musician and digital entrepreneur as by any institutional affiliation – a background that gives him a track record of having correctly called the trajectory of technological disruption before it became obvious. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and the future of business Digital ethics and AI governance Technology and human values Digital transformation strategy Scenario planning for technological disruption Human-machine relationships and organisational decision-making Sustainability and the future of capitalism Ideal for Boards and C-suite teams setting AI governance policy or approving digital transformation roadmaps Chief Digital Officers, CTOs and technology leadership teams seeking frameworks for responsible AI adoption Strategy and foresight functions building scenario plans around the compound impact of technological disruption Corporate governance, risk and legal teams navigating emerging AI regulation and digital ethics requirements Audience outcomes A practical governance vocabulary for deciding which organisational capabilities should and should not be automated, grounded in the androrithms/algorithms framework A structured map of ten concurrent technological forces (the Megashifts) reshaping strategy, operations and competitive positioning simultaneously Understanding of how digital ethics is transitioning from a values conversation to a governance and regulatory requirement – and what that means for corporate accountability A scenario framework (HellVen) for stress-testing whether current AI strategies are likely to produce outcomes boards would endorse under scrutiny A more calibrated perspective on AI’s near-term trajectory, distinguishing intelligent assistance from AGI and assessing which predictions about the next decade are well-grounded

Why organisations work with Ghislaine Boddington She coined the Internet of Bodies, a named research concept now cited in academic and policy work on biometric data and human enhancement. Few speakers in this space own a defined intellectual territory of their own. Three decades of hands-on practice in body-responsive technology, telepresence, motion capture and immersive design. She speaks from inside the discipline, not from a desk review of it. A long-running co-presenter slot on BBC Digital Planet (BBC World Service) gives her a working week of structured exposure to global technology stories and the ethics around them. Sits inside formal advisory infrastructure: UK Government College of Experts via DCMS, advisory board of the Springer journal AI & Society, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Brings the inclusion dimension to technology conversations without losing the technical thread. Founder of Women Shift Digital, trustee at Stemettes Futures, former lead mentor on Deutsche Bank’s Women Entrepreneurs in Social Tech accelerator. Biography highlights Reader in Digital Immersion, University of Greenwich, School of Design and Creative Industries. Co-founder and Creative Director, body>data>space, an internationally exhibited interactive design collective. Co-presenter, BBC Digital Planet, BBC World Service. Author of “The Internet of Bodies, alive, connected and collective” in AI & Society (Springer, 2021). Adviser, UK Government College of Experts (DCMS); Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Recipient of the IX Immersion Experience Visionary Pioneer Award (2017), Society for Arts and Technology, Montreal. Biography Biometric data, immersive interfaces and human enhancement are moving from research labs into mainstream products, and most leadership teams are catching up in real time. Boddington has spent thirty years working inside that shift, first as a practitioner in body-responsive design, then as a research voice on what it means for identity, intimacy and consent. Her concept, the Internet of Bodies, sets out how physical and digital selves are merging through telepresence, biometric sensing, wearables and AI-enabled enhancement. The work appears as a peer-reviewed paper in the Springer journal AI & Society and runs through her keynote programme. The argument is not speculative. It is built from three decades of practice at body>data>space, the design collective she co-founded and still directs. The institutional footprint sits alongside the practice. Reader in Digital Immersion at the University of Greenwich, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, adviser to the UK Government’s College of Experts through DCMS, advisory board member at AI & Society. On BBC World Service she co-presents Digital Planet, which keeps her working through global technology stories week by week. Inclusion runs through the work as a technical condition, not a tone. She founded Women Shift Digital, mentors with Stemettes Futures and led Deutsche Bank’s Women Entrepreneurs in Social Tech accelerator. Her case is that immersive and biometric systems built without diverse human input encode the bias from the day they ship. Key speaking topics The Internet of Bodies Biometric data and digital identity Immersive technology and virtual presence Human enhancement and the body as interface AI ethics and embodied technology Inclusion and diversity in emerging tech Future human studies Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting policy on biometric data, AI ethics and immersive customer experience. Technology, product and R&D leaders building wearable, sensor-based or immersive products. Innovation, foresight and strategy functions inside regulated industries (financial services, healthcare, telecoms, media). Conferences and corporate events on the future of work, future human and responsible technology. Audience outcomes A working definition of the Internet of Bodies and what it means for organisations handling biometric, behavioural or sensor data. A sharper view of the ethical and consent issues that sit underneath immersive, wearable and AI-enabled products. A picture of where body-responsive technology is heading over the next five to ten years and which sectors are moving first. A specific argument for why inclusive design is a technical requirement in immersive and biometric systems, not a values statement.

Why organisations work with Giuseppe Stigliano Co-author with Philip Kotler of three books on the future of retail and marketing, including Redefining Retail: 10 Guiding Principles for a Post-Digital World, giving boards a tested framework rather than a point of view. Sits on both sides of the table: Global CEO of Spring Studios, former CEO of Wunderman Thompson Italy, and Adjunct Professor at UCL, so the same person who teaches the framework has run the P&L it applies to. Named to the Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2024, the bench of emerging thinkers the Thinkers50 community expects to shape management practice. Works directly with CMOs and retail leadership on the operating consequences of AI, omnichannel and changing consumer behaviour, not the headline trends. Delivers keynotes in English, Italian, Spanish and French, with a substantial and growing share now in Spanish for audiences across Spain and Latin America. Platform experience spans more than thirty countries and both B2B and B2C audiences. Biography highlights Co-author with Philip Kotler of Retail 4.0, Onlife Fashion and Redefining Retail (Wiley, 2024); books translated into eight languages. Global CEO of Spring Studios; former CEO of Wunderman Thompson Italy; previously led a WPP EMEA team across FCA, J. Walter Thompson and Spring Studios. Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2024. Adjunct Professor of Retail and Consumer Entrepreneurship at UCL School of Management, with prior teaching at Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and POLIMI Graduate School of Management. Ph.D. in Marketing and Economics; Forbes columnist and LinkedIn Top Voice. TEDx talk How To Become a Marketing Superhero with over one million views. Biography Retail used to be a question of channel. It is now a question of operating model. Consumer businesses run physical stores, e-commerce, marketplace, social commerce and emerging virtual touchpoints in parallel, often with separate leadership, separate metrics and separate technology stacks. The customer sees one brand. The organisation behaves like several. Redefining Retail, co-authored with Philip Kotler and published by Wiley in 2024, sets out ten principles for running the commercial model of a consumer business when the digital age is no longer the destination but the baseline. The argument behind the book is operational: sustainability, inclusion, working policy and AI are no longer brand topics, they are inputs into the value chain. The book sits alongside two earlier Kotler co-authorships, Retail 4.0 and Onlife Fashion, and together the three are translated into eight languages. The credibility on the operating side comes from three CEO tenures at international marketing agencies. As Global CEO of Spring Studios, Stigliano leads a creative platform with offices in London, New York, Los Angeles and Milan, serving fashion, beauty, luxury, hospitality and lifestyle clients. Before that he was CEO of Wunderman Thompson Italy and led a WPP EMEA team across FCA, J. Walter Thompson and Spring Studios. The academic side is held at UCL School of Management, where he is Adjunct Professor of Retail and Consumer Entrepreneurship. Thinkers50 named him to its Radar Class of 2024. He writes a Forbes column, holds a LinkedIn Top Voice designation, and his TEDx talk on marketing has passed a million views. In a boardroom on retail or consumer strategy, the most useful thing he brings is the dual standing: the framework being discussed is one he wrote, and the operating problem in the room is one he has had to solve as CEO. Key speaking topics The future of retail and the post-digital consumer Marketing and brand transformation Customer experience and commerce across physical, digital and virtual channels The business implications of AI for consumer-facing organisations Post-digital leadership Innovation in fashion, beauty and luxury Scaling consumer businesses internationally Ideal for CMOs and Chief Customer Officers redesigning the marketing and commerce operating model Retail, fashion, beauty, luxury and hospitality executive teams and boards Heads of digital and e-commerce inside consumer businesses moving past pilot-stage AI Innovation, transformation and strategy leads in consumer industries Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the post-digital retail model and where it breaks current operating assumptions A framework, taken from Redefining Retail, for prioritising the ten shifts that matter most Sharper questions about where AI changes the customer-facing P&L and where it does not A clear read on how leading consumer brands are restructuring around omnichannel commerce Concrete examples drawn from his client work and CEO experience across luxury, fashion and beauty