Innovation och omvälvning

Why organisations work with Chris Heemskerk Operator credibility from inside Google, where he led Scaled Acquisitions for North America and advised the Sales Acceleration and Innovation Labs documented in the Harvard Business School case study by Linda Hill and Emily Tedards. A defined framework set, including The Innovation Scorecard and The Innovation Engine, that gives boards a way to assess innovation capability across culture, organisation, external posture and effectiveness, rather than relying on anecdote. Practical authority on AI deployment: he speaks as a practitioner who has built scaled sales and product operations, not as an external commentator on the technology. Faculty standing at the European Institute of Innovation for Sustainability, with formal innovation leadership credentials from Harvard Business School and design thinking certification from Stanford, supporting executive-level training and masterclass briefs. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, The Innovation Alliance Former Head of Scaled Acquisitions, Google North America Strategic advisor named in the Harvard Business School case “Innovation at Google Ads: The Sales Acceleration and Innovation Labs (SAIL) (A)” (Case 423-076) Faculty, European Institute of Innovation for Sustainability Author of The Innovation Scorecard and The Innovation Engine frameworks Executive Certification in Innovation Leadership, Harvard Business School; Design Thinking, Stanford University; MSc Marketing, London School of Business and Finance Biography Most large organisations now run innovation teams and AI working groups. Far fewer can name what those teams have shipped, retired, or scaled in the last year. The gap between activity and operating advantage is where senior leaders get exposed, and it is the gap Chris Heemskerk works in. His credibility on that question is operator credibility. As Head of Scaled Acquisitions for Google North America, he ran a large commercial operation inside one of the most studied innovation environments in business. He then helped initiate the partnership between Google Ads and Harvard Business School that produced the case “Innovation at Google Ads: The Sales Acceleration and Innovation Labs (SAIL) (A),” authored by Linda Hill and Emily Tedards, in which he is named as a strategic advisor on the bet-sourcing framework that vetted and accelerated new pipeline opportunities. That experience now sits behind two frameworks he uses with executive teams: The Innovation Scorecard, which assesses innovation capability across culture, organisation, external posture and effectiveness, and The Innovation Engine, which sets out the operating system for sustained innovation output. As Founder and CEO of The Innovation Alliance, and as faculty at the European Institute of Innovation for Sustainability, he works with senior teams on the same question he faced as an operator: how to turn ambition into a managed capability. For boards looking at their AI agenda, the value is specific. Heemskerk speaks as someone who has built scaled commercial operations and has the structured material to translate AI ambition into how a function actually runs, what it measures, and what it discards. Key speaking topics Innovation strategy Innovation culture AI deployment in large organisations Operating models for scaled innovation Digital transformation Executive masterclasses on innovation leadership Ideal for CEOs and C-suite leaders setting AI and innovation strategy Chief Innovation Officers and heads of strategy operationalising new capability Boards reviewing innovation governance and AI exposure Senior commercial and digital transformation leaders moving beyond pilots Audience outcomes A defined view of where the organisation sits on the four pillars of innovation capability Practical reference points from inside Google for how scaled operations adopt new technology A sharper distinction between innovation theatre and innovation that produces operating output Frameworks executives can return to after the keynote, including the Innovation Scorecard and Innovation Engine

Why organisations work with Chris Lyons Direct line into a16z’s deal flow across AI, Web3, and consumer technology, the same intelligence the firm uses to commit capital to companies like OpenAI, Airbnb, and Lyft. A named thesis on culture as a distribution channel for technology, built into the Cultural Leadership Fund, which moved this idea from observation to a fund structure with institutional limited partners. Operator credibility on Web3 specifically, in his role as President, Web3 Media at a16z crypto, at a moment when most boards still treat crypto and AI as separate strategic questions. A perspective on consumer adoption shaped by deep relationships with founders and cultural leaders, useful for brand, media, and consumer-facing organisations trying to understand what the next decade looks like. Biography highlights General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz; President, Web3 Media at a16z crypto. Founder of the a16z Cultural Leadership Fund, Silicon Valley’s first venture fund with 100% African American Limited Partners. Helped launch a16z’s first $400M Seed Fund in 2021. Board director at Yuga Labs, The James Beard Foundation, The Black Economic Alliance, and New Story Charity. Kauffman Fellow, Class of 2019. Closing keynote, Harvard Business School Black Investment Club Conference, on “Culture as an Asset Class.” Biography Most boards now have AI and Web3 on the agenda. Far fewer have a credible read on which companies and behaviours inside those categories will actually scale. That read is the working asset of a senior venture partner at Andreessen Horowitz, and it is what Chris Lyons brings into a room. Lyons joined a16z in 2013 as Chief of Staff to co-founder Ben Horowitz, with an internal mandate to build deep relationships with founders regardless of investment status. That work became the architecture for the firm’s later positions in companies including OpenAI, Airbnb, and Lyft. He was promoted to General Partner in 2021 and helped launch a16z’s first $400M Seed Fund the same year. In 2018 he founded the Cultural Leadership Fund, a vehicle built on the thesis that cultural leaders, athletes, entertainers, and executives, drive how new technology gets adopted. CLF was structured with 100% African American Limited Partners, with fees and carry directed to organisations advancing Black participation in technology. The fund made the cultural distribution argument institutional. He now leads Web3 Media at a16z crypto and sits on the boards of Yuga Labs, The James Beard Foundation, The Black Economic Alliance, and New Story Charity. The combination of operator inside the firm and connector across culture, capital, and consumer technology is rare at his level of venture seniority. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and generative AI Web3 and digital ownership Venture capital and emerging technology Consumer technology adoption Culture as a driver of technology distribution Entrepreneurship and scale Diversity in technology and capital Ideal for Chief executives, boards, and corporate development leaders setting strategy on AI, Web3, and consumer technology CMOs and brand leaders rethinking how cultural relevance translates into commercial advantage Investment committees and family office principals reading the next venture cycle Innovation, partnerships, and ventures teams scouting categories and founders Audience outcomes A clearer view of which AI and Web3 categories are attracting serious capital and why A working framework for thinking about cultural influence as a real distribution mechanism, not a marketing layer Specific examples from inside a16z’s portfolio that illustrate how consumer technology actually scales A more grounded read on where venture conviction sits today, set against media noise

Why organisations work with Chris Riddell First Chief Digital Officer at Mars in Australia and New Zealand, with direct operator experience of building digital capability inside a Fortune-scale consumer business. Not a commentator who has never had to make the call. Inaugural Innovation Partner and current Strategic Advisor to the Australian Federal Police on emerging technology and global drivers. The same pattern-recognition applied in boardrooms is also informing national law enforcement strategy. Resident Global Affairs and Technology Expert for Channel Seven, and a regular commentator on The Project. Practised at translating complex technology into language a general audience will actually retain, which is what boards also need. Advisory work spans consumer goods, financial services, telecommunications and government, including Google, PepsiCo, Credit Suisse, EY, Jaguar Land Rover and Vodafone. The reference list signals pattern recognition across sectors, not a single-industry view. Biography highlights First Chief Digital Officer at Mars Incorporated in Australia and New Zealand, with responsibility for digital strategy across Whiskas, Pedigree, Wrigley, Snickers, Starburst and Maltesers Inaugural Innovation Partner and current Strategic Advisor to the Australian Federal Police on emerging technology and global drivers Resident Global Affairs and Technology Expert for Channel Seven, and regular commentator on The Project (Network 10) Former director of the Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka (MADE) Presenter of the Tomorrow’s World technology and futures video series Advised organisations including Google, PepsiCo, Credit Suisse, EY, Jaguar Land Rover, Facebook, eBay and Macquarie Bank Biography Mars Incorporated is one of the largest consumer businesses in the world, with brands ranging from Snickers and Maltesers to Whiskas and Pedigree. Until the appointment of its first Chief Digital Officer in Australia and New Zealand, it had no single figure accountable for digital strategy across that portfolio. Chris Riddell held that role. The perspective he built in it is the foundation of everything he now tells leadership audiences about digital change. Riddell’s argument from the Mars experience has a specific shape. Technology trends are only legible to people who have had to act on them with budgets and timelines on the line. Outside that pressure, trend-spotting becomes entertainment. The signals remain interesting but never connect to a decision a CEO actually has to make. That operator background separates the work from conventional trend commentary. Beyond Mars, Riddell was the Australian Federal Police’s first Innovation Partner, and continues as its Strategic Advisor on emerging technology and global drivers. He is also the resident Global Affairs and Technology Expert for Channel Seven, and a regular commentator on The Project on Network 10. Television work forces a discipline most futurists avoid: complex technology has to be made intelligible in three minutes or it does not make air. The work spans geographies most commentators never touch. Riddell has operated across the UK, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Kuwait, China, New Zealand and Australia. His advisory list includes Google, PepsiCo, Credit Suisse, EY, Jaguar Land Rover and Macquarie Bank. The through line in every engagement is a single question: which technology shifts will actually change the economics of this business, and which are a rounding error? Key speaking topics Digital transformation and emerging technology strategy Artificial intelligence and its business implications The future of leadership in a disrupted economy Innovation and business model reinvention Consumer behaviour and customer experience in a digital economy Global technology trends and geopolitical drivers Organisational change in the face of rapid disruption Ideal for Boards and executive committees of large organisations working through technology-led transformation Chief Strategy Officers, Chief Digital Officers and Chief Transformation Officers with accountability for the digital agenda Leadership conferences in consumer, financial services, telecommunications and government sectors Innovation leads and strategy teams responsible for identifying and acting on emerging technology trends Audience outcomes A sharper filter for separating technology signal from noise in their own industry Named examples of how emerging technologies are already reshaping consumer behaviour and commercial models A frame for deciding which trends warrant investment, and which can safely be deferred Language for explaining complex technology shifts to boards and customers without losing the substance A clearer view of which internal questions about digital capability have not yet been asked

Why organisations work with Chris Skinner His Intelligent Money thesis – that by 2030 AI will make money embedded, autonomous, and invisible within daily life – gives financial institutions a specific, time-bound structural challenge to test their strategy against, rather than a generic warning about disruption. Doing Digital draws on direct research inside transformation programmes at JP Morgan Chase, DBS, BBVA, ING, and China Merchants Bank – peer-level evidence on what structural change in banking actually requires, not what frameworks predict. The Finanser, updated daily for more than two decades, means organisations working with Skinner access a commentator whose knowledge base is built from continuous sector tracking rather than periodic research cycles. His advisory work spans the World Economic Forum, World Bank, United Nations, and White House – a perspective tested by global regulators and policymakers alongside market practitioners. The 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award from The Payments Association, the largest payments professional community in the UK, represents recognition from peers within the sector rather than from the speaker circuit. Biography highlights Founder and Chair, the Financial Services Club – European financial industry network, founded 2004 Author of 18 books on digital banking and fintech, including Digital Bank, Doing Digital, Digital for Good, and Intelligent Money (Marshall Cavendish, 2024) 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award, The Payments Association Visiting lecturer, Cambridge University; TEDx speaker (TEDx Athens) Non-executive director, 11:FS (fintech consultancy firm) Former VP Marketing and Strategy, Unisys Global Financial Services; former Strategy Director, NCR Financial Services Fellow of the British Computer Society; Fellow of the Institute of Management Services; BSc Management Sciences, Loughborough University Regular commentator on BBC News, Sky News, CNBC, and Bloomberg; contributor to American Banker Named among the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology, Wall Street Journal’s Financial News Biography The Finanser, Chris Skinner’s daily blog on financial markets and technology, has run for more than two decades. His 18 books – from Digital Bank to Intelligent Money (Marshall Cavendish, 2024) – form a sustained body of analysis on how digital technology is restructuring banking and what that means for institutions built around managing money on behalf of customers. Intelligent Money argues that by 2030 AI will make money embedded, autonomous, and invisible within daily life. This is a structural challenge asking institutions to account for what purpose they serve when AI handles financial decisions on the customer’s behalf. Doing Digital draws on direct research inside transformation programmes at JP Morgan Chase, DBS, BBVA, ING, and China Merchants Bank. It is one of the few comparative analyses of large-scale banking transformation built from institutional access rather than external observation. Before establishing The Finanser, Skinner was VP of Marketing and Strategy at Unisys Global Financial Services and Strategy Director at NCR Financial Services. He founded the Financial Services Club in 2004. He holds a BSc in Management Sciences from Loughborough University and is a Fellow of the British Computer Society. He has advised on financial system transformation at the World Economic Forum, World Bank, United Nations, and White House, and appears regularly on BBC News, Sky News, CNBC, and Bloomberg. In 2023, The Payments Association awarded him its Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a visiting lecturer at Cambridge University. Key speaking topics Digital transformation in banking and financial services AI and generative finance: the future of money Fintech, payments, and the restructuring of banking models Central bank digital currencies and the digital payments landscape Future banking strategy in a platform-driven economy Technology and ESG in financial services Ideal for Chief executives, strategy directors, and transformation leads in banking and financial services Boards and executive committees of financial institutions navigating digital restructuring Fintech leaders and payments executives Financial regulators and policy teams examining digital money and AI in finance Audience outcomes A specific framework for understanding what AI-driven financial systems mean for existing banking models – not just what technology is changing, but what institutions need to become Case study evidence from major banks including JP Morgan Chase, DBS, and BBVA on what large-scale digital transformation actually requires at an institutional level Clarity on the distinction between digitising banking processes and restructuring banking as a business model A grounded view of where central bank digital currencies, decentralised finance, and AI-managed money systems fit within existing regulatory and institutional frameworks A time-bound analytical perspective on the future of financial services, grounded in two decades of continuous sector tracking

Why organisations work with Christer Holloman He built the playbook he now teaches. As founder and CEO of Divido, he scaled a white-label Buy Now Pay Later platform to 10 countries and an exit into NatWest, raising roughly $50 million from American Express and Sony along the way. His book “Transactional to Transformational: How Banks Innovate” is built on named case studies from Bank of America, BBVA, Citi, Deutsche Bank, ING, J.P. Morgan, Lloyds and Santander, not generic frameworks. He has been on the bank side as HSBC’s first Entrepreneur in Residence, so he speaks to incumbents from inside their own constraints, not as an outsider throwing stones. He works at the live edge of fintech: digital assets, open banking as a commercial play rather than a compliance exercise, and the shift from agentic AI into agentic commerce. Swedish by background, London and New York by career, multilingual, and at ease in a boardroom with both a retail CEO and a risk committee. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Divido (2014-2022); company acquired into NatWest in 2024. Author of “Transactional to Transformational: How Banks Innovate” (Wiley, 2021). Author of “The Social Media MBA” series and “How to Sell Online” (Wiley). Entrepreneur in Residence, HSBC (2022-2023). Co-founder and CEO of sustainable finance platform Credential. MBA, Said Business School, University of Oxford. Forbes contributor on fintech; former tech writer for Sky News. Biography Buy Now Pay Later looked like a retail feature before it looked like an asset class. Divido, the company Christer Holloman founded out of an Oxford MBA thesis in 2014, was one of the first platforms to treat it as infrastructure: a white-label product that banks and lenders could plug into any merchant, in any country, without rebuilding their own stack. By 2022 the business had raised around $50 million from investors including American Express and Sony, operated in 10 markets, and counted Mastercard, BMW and HSBC among its clients. In 2024 it became part of NatWest. That operator experience is the spine of everything he now teaches. After Divido, HSBC made him their first Entrepreneur in Residence, an unusual role that put a founder inside one of the world’s largest banks to challenge how it builds, buys and partners on new technology. It is also the reporting line behind his Wiley book “Transactional to Transformational: How Banks Innovate”, a collection of case studies drawn from named executives at Bank of America, BBVA, Citi, Deutsche Bank, ING, J.P. Morgan, Lloyds, Santander, Standard Chartered and others. The thesis is unsentimental: incumbents can innovate, but only when the operating model, not the PR team, gets redesigned. He has since moved to New York, co-founded the sustainable finance platform Credential, and continued to write for Forbes on fintech. Earlier in his career he launched Glassdoor in Europe for Rich Barton and ran digital product at The Times and The Sunday Times, which gives him a media-trained way of explaining complex regulated products to non-specialist audiences. What senior audiences get is someone who has raised the money, signed the bank partnerships, lived with the compliance questions and then written the book. He is particularly sharp on where AI, digital assets and embedded finance are about to collide inside balance-sheet businesses, and on the specific question of what serious incumbents should do about it. Key speaking topics Fintech and the future of banking Open banking as commercial strategy Digital assets and tokenisation Agentic AI and agentic commerce Buy Now Pay Later and embedded finance Innovation inside regulated industries Scaling a venture from founder to exit Ideal for Bank and insurance executive committees, innovation boards and retail banking leadership CDOs, CIOs and heads of innovation in financial services and large regulated enterprises Fintech, payments and retail finance conferences Corporate venture and M&A teams assessing fintech partnerships or acquisitions Audience outcomes A clear read on how incumbent banks are actually innovating right now, drawn from named case studies rather than consulting templates. Practical judgement on when to build, when to partner with a startup, and when to acquire. A working view of where open banking, digital assets and agentic commerce are converging into the next retail financial product. Founder-level honesty about what it takes to sell into, partner with and exit to a large bank.

Why organisations work with Christian Berg A Club of Rome author whose report mapped the structural barriers blocking sustainability across economy, politics, law, and technology, giving boards a diagnostic rather than a slogan. Direct experience translating sustainability strategy into corporate practice as Chief Sustainability Architect at SAP, not commentary from outside the firm. Advisory standing at federal government level through the Sustainable Economic Activity and Growth taskforce within Chancellor Merkel’s Future Dialogue. Live exposure to capital-allocation decisions as an investment committee member at GLS Bank, Germany’s first social and ecological bank. Academic authority across two German universities and a transdisciplinary base in physics, philosophy, theology, and engineering, which lets him connect technical and ethical questions in the same conversation. Biography highlights Author of Sustainable Action: Overcoming the Barriers (Routledge), published as a report to the Club of Rome. Former Chief Sustainability Architect at SAP, responsible for the sustainability consulting function. Honorary Professor of Sustainability and Global Change at Clausthal University of Technology. Visiting Professor for Corporate Sustainability at Saarland University. Co-founder and board member of Think Tank 30 within the German Chapter of the Club of Rome. Investment committee member at GLS Bank. Biography The 2030 Agenda set the targets. It offered little guidance on which structural barriers stop organisations from meeting them. Christian Berg’s Club of Rome report, Sustainable Action: Overcoming the Barriers, was written to answer that question across economy, politics, law, and technology in a single integrated frame. That frame is not theoretical. He spent more than a decade as Chief Sustainability Architect at SAP, leading the sustainability consulting function inside one of the largest enterprise software firms in the world. He has also led the Sustainable Economic Activity and Growth taskforce within Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Future Dialogue, putting him in the room where federal sustainability policy was negotiated. His academic base sits at Clausthal University of Technology and Saarland University, where he holds professorships in sustainability and corporate sustainability. The transdisciplinary training behind the work, in physics, philosophy, theology, and mechanical engineering, is what allows him to move between the technical, ethical, and economic registers a board conversation actually requires. The capital allocation question is live for him too. As an investment committee member at GLS Bank, Germany’s first social and ecological bank, Berg sits inside the decisions that test whether sustainability claims survive contact with credit and risk. Key speaking topics Corporate sustainability strategy Sustainable finance and capital allocation Barriers to sustainability transformation ESG operating substance Climate action and resilience Innovation under sustainability constraints Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting or reviewing ESG and net zero strategy Chief sustainability officers, CFOs, and treasury leads navigating capital allocation under transition Investor and banking audiences working at the intersection of finance and sustainability Innovation and strategy leaders translating sustainability commitments into product and operating decisions Audience outcomes A clearer map of the structural barriers blocking their sustainability commitments, from incentives to regulation Sharper criteria for which sustainability investments are likely to compound and which will stall A working vocabulary for connecting net zero ambition to capital allocation decisions Reference points from corporate practice at SAP, federal policy, and the GLS Bank investment committee

Why organisations work with Christian Byrge He treats creativity as a skill that can be coached into a team, not a culture project. Leaders leave with specific habits they can run on Monday morning, not a manifesto. He has a working position on AI in the creative process, grounded in current research, that goes beyond the prompt-engineering surface most innovation talks stop at. His research base is unusually deep for a speaker in this category: 70+ academic publications and a full professorship, paired with operational training inside LEGO, Maersk, Novo Nordisk, Grundfos, and the Danish Armed Forces. He is comfortable in front of an executive audience and inside a workshop room. Same content holds at both altitudes, which makes him useful when the brief is a keynote that has to seed follow-on internal work. Biography highlights Full Professor of Business Creativity, Vilnius University Business School. PhD in Creativity and Business, Aalborg University. Author of Everyday Innovator (BIS Publishers), How to Teach Creativity, and Enhancing Creativity for Individuals, Groups and Organizations. 70+ academic publications across creativity, team creativity culture, creative self-efficacy, and AI creativity. Worked with LEGO, Maersk, Novo Nordisk, Velux, Grundfos, Danfoss, Siemens, Kompan, TotalEnergies, and the Danish Armed Forces. Trained creative practice with practitioners across engineering, law, healthcare, software, education, and film production. Biography Innovation programmes inside large organisations tend to fail in the same way. They start with energy, produce a portfolio of pilots, and stall when the original sponsor moves on. The diagnosis is usually written as a cultural problem. Christian Byrge’s research argues something more precise: the failure point is that idea generation was never built as a team skill in the first place. That argument is the core of his three books and seventy-plus academic publications. Everyday Innovator, published by BIS Publishers, names four habits that turn creative output into a repeatable behaviour rather than a mood. How to Teach Creativity and Enhance Creativity for Individuals, Groups, and Organizations extends the same logic into education and organisational design. The thread across all three is treating creativity as a trainable capability with named components, not an ambient quality of the workplace. He holds a full professorship in Business Creativity at Vilnius University Business School and a PhD from Aalborg University. The academic base matters because his recent work on AI in the creative process is one of the few executive-level treatments grounded in current research rather than vendor framing. He has trained creative practice inside LEGO, Maersk, Novo Nordisk, Velux, Grundfos, Siemens, and the Danish Armed Forces, which gives the research weight in front of an operating audience. The room he is most useful in is the one where leadership has decided innovation matters, but cannot describe what their teams should actually do differently on Tuesday. He gives them the answer in specific behaviours, not in a vision deck. Key speaking topics Team creativity as a trainable discipline Innovation capability inside operating teams AI-supported creative process Creative confidence and self-efficacy Idea generation and development practice Creative culture in regulated and engineering environments Ideal for CHROs and L&D leaders building innovation capability across the workforce Heads of innovation, R&D directors, and transformation leads Executive teams in engineering, life sciences, and industrial sectors, where creativity is treated as soft Educators and learning system leaders are responsible for creative competence development Audience outcomes A working definition of team creativity is a set of named behaviours, not a personality trait The four habits from Everyday Innovator are mapped to the audience’s own operating context A grounded view of where AI helps and where it flattens the creative process Specific practices senior leaders can install in standing meetings to lift idea quality A clear separation between creative culture rhetoric and creative output discipline

Why organisations work with Christian Kromme He reads AI through the lens of biological evolution, not technology alone. His “seven wave patterns” framework maps how disruptive technologies develop along the same sequences nature follows. Leadership teams leave with a predictive tool for what is coming next. His institutional position does real work. As Senior AI Research Fellow at The Conference Board, he briefs Fortune 100 and 500 executives on AI’s societal and organisational impact on a continuous basis. The material he brings to a keynote is the same material he tests weekly on senior audiences. Two books form the spine of the argument: Humanification: Go Digital, Stay Human (a #1 Amazon bestseller in its category) and The Human Spark – Beyond AI, both published by Choir Press. A buyer gets a specific intellectual position they can interrogate before committing. He approaches AI without the usual binary. Most AI keynotes either sell the hype or sound the alarm. Kromme’s proposition is that technology becomes more human as it matures, and that an organisation’s commercial job is to get ahead of that curve. Operator credibility behind the analysis. He founded and ran the innovation agency Artificial Industry for over a decade before selling it to a multinational in 2014, and continues to build and advise tech companies. The result is a speaker who understands how change actually lands inside a commercial organisation. Biography highlights Author of the international bestseller Humanification: Go Digital, Stay Human (Choir Press), a #1 Amazon bestseller in the Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Leadership category. Author of The Human Spark – Beyond AI (Choir Press, 2026), launched at a sold-out event at Singer Theater in the Netherlands in January 2026. Senior AI Research Fellow at The Conference Board, with a dedicated AI content channel (“The Zone”) on the Conference Board platform. Founder of the innovation agency Artificial Industry (sold to a multinational in 2014) and founder of Symbiosys, an AI-powered organisation-as-a-service platform. Keynote speaker at Europol, Shell, BP, Cisco Systems, Philips, ManpowerGroup, Oracle, TEDx and TEDxINSEAD, among others. Recognised with the Shell LiveWIRE Young Business Award, the SAN Award, and the Broos van Erp Prize. Biography Every wave of disruptive technology rewires what an organisation needs from its people. The internet commoditised distribution. Mobile made attention the contested resource. AI is now absorbing the cognitive work most knowledge businesses are built on. The commercial question for leadership teams is what remains valuably human once the thinking layer is automated. That is the question Christian Kromme has spent a decade answering. His book Humanification: Go Digital, Stay Human set out the thesis. The evolution of human-made technology follows the same patterns as biological evolution. The most successful technologies are those that amplify what is most human about their users, not what is most mechanical. The book became a #1 Amazon bestseller in the Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Leadership category. His follow-up, The Human Spark – Beyond AI (Choir Press, 2026), sharpens the argument for the current moment. Drawing on evolution, neuroscience and real-world case work, Kromme maps a transition he calls Human 3.0 to Human 4.0. Human 3.0 was optimised for intellect and industrial output. Human 4.0 treats intuition, creativity, awareness and connection as the strategically decisive capabilities. He positions this as a commercial consequence of where machine intelligence is headed, not a cultural preference. The credibility behind the argument is institutional and operator-level at once. As Senior AI Research Fellow at The Conference Board, Kromme briefs Fortune 100 and 500 leadership teams on AI’s societal and organisational impact. He founded the innovation agency Artificial Industry in 2002 and sold it to a multinational in 2014. He now advises and builds tech companies, including Symbiosys, an AI-powered organisation-as-a-service platform he founded. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and the future of business Human-centred AI strategy Disruptive innovation and exponential technology Biological patterns of technological change The future of work in the age of AI Organisational agility in AI-driven markets Ideal for Boards and C-suite teams setting AI strategy where the question is commercial positioning, not just deployment. CHROs and heads of organisation design rethinking how work is structured when cognitive tasks become machine-native. Chief transformation officers, CTOs and CIOs building the case for AI adoption with human capability at the centre. Leadership offsites, innovation summits and industry congresses where the audience is responsible for the next three-to-five year horizon. Audience outcomes A predictive model for what the next wave of technological disruption looks like before it arrives, based on how biological and technological evolution move in parallel. A clear position on what AI can and cannot replace, and where the organisation’s human capability is commercially under-invested. A reframe of AI adoption as a human capability question, with implications for how teams, roles and strategy are designed. Shared vocabulary (Humanification, Human 3.0 to Human 4.0, the seven wave patterns of innovation) that leadership teams can use to continue the conversation after the session.

Why organisations work with Christian Stiegler He works at the rare junction of three constituencies that rarely speak the same language: regulators, corporates and creative-industry partners. His client list runs from the European Commission, UNICEF and GIZ to Björk, Phoebe Bridgers and the team behind #bravehood with Coldplay and The Rolling Stones. His MIT Press book, The 360° Gaze, gives him a peer-reviewed framework for immersive media that buyers can cite when justifying XR, metaverse or AI-content investments to a sceptical board. He has advised the European Commission, UNICEF and GIZ on algorithmic accountability and digital governance, which means his governance content reflects what regulators are actually pressing for, not a generic responsible-AI script. He runs Guiding Light, an organisation built specifically to convert ethics and sustainability principles into deployable technology programmes, so his keynotes connect to a delivery practice rather than ending at the slide deck. Biography highlights Director, Guiding Light (Organisation for Ethics and Sustainability in Technologies), Vienna and Berlin. Academic Director Design and faculty, IU International University of Applied Sciences, Germany; research focus on AI, XR, Metaverse and technology ethics. Former Wallscourt Associate Professor of Immersive Media, UWE Bristol; former Associate Professor / Senior Lecturer in Digital Media, Brunel University London. Author, The 360° Gaze: Immersions in Media, Society, and Culture (MIT Press, 2021); earlier monograph New Media Culture (transcript, 2015). Named advisor to the European Commission, UNICEF and GIZ on AI ethics, algorithmic accountability and digital governance. Speaker at SXSW, Cannes XR, Berlinale, International Film Festival Rotterdam, MIPTV Cannes and C21 Content Summit London. Biography Most organisations describe AI ethics as a principle and treat it as a compliance task. The decisions that decide outcomes, what training data is licensed, how a model is evaluated before release, who owns the recall trigger, sit several layers below the published policy. That is the operating gap Christian Stiegler works in. As Director of Guiding Light, the Vienna and Berlin organisation he founded for ethics and sustainability in technologies, he advises governments, multilateral bodies and corporates on translating governance principles into deployment decisions. Named advisory clients include the European Commission, UNICEF and GIZ, covering algorithmic accountability, AI ethics and digital policy. His academic anchor is The 360° Gaze: Immersions in Media, Society, and Culture (MIT Press, 2021), a peer-reviewed treatment of immersive media that underwrites his work on XR, the metaverse and AI-generated content. He holds faculty positions in technology ethics at IU International University of Applied Sciences in Germany, and was previously Wallscourt Associate Professor of Immersive Media at UWE Bristol and Senior Lecturer in Digital Media at Brunel University London. He also operates across the creative industries, an unusual range for an AI ethics voice. Through his #bravehood initiative with UNICEF and War Child he has worked with Coldplay, The Rolling Stones, Björk, Phoebe Bridgers and others on the technology-driven design of social-impact campaigns. That cross-sector reach is what buyers in regulated industries tend to remark on; he can move between a regulator’s framing, a CTO’s risk register and a brand team’s storytelling problem without losing the thread. Key speaking topics AI ethics and algorithmic accountability Digital policy and AI governance Extended reality and the metaverse Sustainable and human-centred innovation Immersive media and cultural impact of emerging technologies Tech for good and social-impact technology design Ideal for Boards and audit committees setting AI governance and assurance frameworks Chief AI officers, CDOs and CTOs moving from responsible-AI principles to deployed controls Government, regulator and multilateral teams shaping digital policy and AI regulation Brand, content and creative leadership teams evaluating XR, metaverse and generative-AI investments Audience outcomes A clearer map of where regulator attention is actually concentrating across AI governance and digital policy A working distinction between AI ethics as principle and AI ethics as operating practice Reference frames from The 360° Gaze that audiences can use to assess XR, metaverse and generative-content decisions Examples from European Commission, UNICEF and GIZ advisory work that show how governance language converts into named deployment decisions

Why organisations work with Christian Wehner He runs innovation strategy inside SAP Brand & Creative, so the perspective is from a serving operator at a Fortune 100 software company, not a former practitioner. His SPIEGEL bestselling book Alles, was du im Leben wissen musst, hast du schon im Kindergarten gelernt gives audiences a citable thesis on where adult organisational thinking has narrowed, and what to do about it. His “Kidult” framework reframes creativity as a recoverable adult capability, not a personality trait, which lands with executives who have written off creativity training. He is a LinkedIn TopVoice for Creativity and Innovation, with a public body of work that audiences can extend after the keynote. He works fluently in English and German, which matters for DACH-region leadership programmes and EU-headquartered corporate audiences. Biography highlights Senior Director, Innovation Strategy, SAP Brand & Creative. SPIEGEL bestselling author, Alles, was du im Leben wissen musst, hast du schon im Kindergarten gelernt (Conte Verlag). TEDx speaker on the “Kidult” mindset. LinkedIn TopVoice for Creativity and Innovation. Guest lecturer, Brand Academy, EBS University Oestrich-Winkel. Ambassador, School of Future Skills. Biography Most large companies are not short of intelligence. They are short of the willingness to ask naive questions inside rooms full of expertise. That gap is the one Christian Wehner has spent his career closing, first in radio and start-up environments, now as Senior Director of Innovation Strategy at SAP Brand & Creative. His thesis is direct. The skills that make organisations creative, curiosity, comfort with not-knowing, and the ability to be wrong out loud, are the skills most adults stop practising once they enter corporate life. His SPIEGEL bestselling book Alles, was du im Leben wissen musst, hast du schon im Kindergarten gelernt sets out the argument in book form. His TEDx talk gives it a name, the “Kidult” mindset. In keynote settings, he turns this into an executive question rather than a self-help one. What does an organisation lose when its senior people optimise for being right? Where in the operating model does AI-era automation make childlike thinking more valuable, not less? Audiences leave with a defensible reason to protect curiosity inside performance cultures, and language to do it with their own teams. The credentials read as a portfolio of platforms rather than titles: a serving SAP innovation role, a guest lectureship at EBS University’s Brand Academy, an ambassadorship with the School of Future Skills, and a steady editorial presence on LinkedIn that has earned him TopVoice status in both Creativity and Innovation. The combination is unusual: an operator inside one of Europe’s largest software companies who writes and speaks publicly about how big companies stop being creative. Key speaking topics Innovation culture and creative recovery in established organisations The “Kidult” mindset: curiosity as an executive capability Future skills in the age of AI Leadership and intuition under algorithmic decision-making Brand and creative strategy inside large enterprises Collaboration and the transparency revolution Ideal for Chief innovation, strategy and brand officers responsible for the next product cycle Executive leadership teams confronting AI-driven workforce redesign Corporate transformation, learning and culture lead inside DACH and EU-headquartered organisations Sales, marketing and customer experience leadership programmes looking for a creative-strategy keynote rather than a tools session Audience outcomes A working argument for why creative capability is a board-level concern in the AI era A language and framework (“Kidult”) for protecting curiosity inside performance-driven cultures A clearer view of which adult corporate habits suppress innovation and which can be retrained Concrete prompts for leaders to use with their own teams the next working day A bilingual perspective from inside a Fortune 100 European software company, useful for cross-border programmes

Why organisations work with Christopher Howell He makes creativity visible as a method, not a mood. Magic gives the audience a direct experience of being wrong about what they just saw, which is a short route into discussions of assumption, bias and fixed thinking. His Project Illusions workshops have been booked into hard commercial environments, including a session for 25 senior leaders at Linklaters, then recognised as the FT’s most innovative law firm. He combines performer craft with coaching training, which means the content lands as a workshop, not a cabaret. Participants leave with techniques they can rehearse, not a memory of a show. His client list spans regulated professional services, global consumer brands and technology, including KPMG, Google, Procter and Gamble, BBC, Volkswagen, Danone and Arup. The material travels across sector and seniority. The format is unusually memorable in a category where most innovation keynotes blur together. For audiences that have sat through too many decks on disruption, his session is the one they still quote a year later. Biography highlights Member of The Magic Circle and Equity, trained under Jeff McBride and the late Eugene Burger, two of the most influential figures in late twentieth century stage magic. Founder of Project Illusions, a creativity and innovation programme delivered to BBC, Google, KPMG, Procter and Gamble, Volkswagen, Arup, Danone and Linklaters. Delivered a senior leadership workshop at Linklaters during the firm’s tenure as the Financial Times’ most innovative law firm, with a named endorsement from its Director of Strategy. Co-producer of the touring variety show Norvil and Josephine with Guinness World Record acrobat Desiree Kongerod. Performed at The Magic Castle (Hollywood), Wintergarten (Berlin), Hackney Empire and the Houses of Parliament. Holds a BA in Theatre Arts from Richmond University, London, classical singing training from Accademia Filarmonica, Bologna, and a Diploma in Life Coaching from Newcastle College. Supporter of Breathe Arts Health Research, which uses magic as occupational therapy for children with hemiplegia. Biography Creativity is the word every strategy deck asks for and every operating model quietly punishes. The gap between what leadership says it wants and what the working week actually rewards is where innovation programmes tend to die. Howell’s work starts in that gap. Project Illusions, the enterprise he founded, is built on a simple claim that is harder than it sounds: creativity is a skill, not a personality trait, and skills can be taught. The method uses magic as the teaching instrument. A trick lands because the audience held an assumption the performer quietly reframed. That mechanic, made explicit, becomes a workable model for how people get stuck on problems at work and how they get unstuck. The material has been delivered inside some of the less forgiving rooms in corporate life. BBC, Google, KPMG, Procter and Gamble, Volkswagen, Arup, Danone and Linklaters have all booked it. The Linklaters session, run for twenty-five senior leaders during the firm’s tenure as the Financial Times’ most innovative law firm, produced a named on-record endorsement from its Director of Strategy. Howell brings the training of a Magic Circle performer with mentors including Jeff McBride and Eugene Burger, a classical theatre and singing background, and a coaching qualification that keeps the sessions oriented around participant practice rather than spectacle. What separates his sessions from the usual innovation keynote is the evidence of change in the room. People who have just watched an assumption of their own dismantled in front of colleagues tend to hold their next assumption more lightly. That is the point. The magic is the teaching aid. The outcome is a group that leaves with a rehearsed way to question how they think. Key speaking topics Creativity as a trainable skill Innovation and change Problem solving under constraint Creative leadership Assumption and bias in decision making Personal and professional development Performance and presence Ideal for Senior leadership groups running innovation, transformation or strategy offsites Partners and directors in professional services firms facing commoditisation pressure Communications, marketing and brand teams looking for a culture-shifting plenary session Conferences and internal events where the brief is to make creativity stick rather than sound good Audience outcomes A working definition of creativity as a skill, with techniques that can be practised rather than admired. A shared language in the room for spotting assumptions, biases and default patterns in how teams approach problems. Specific methods for breaking fixed thinking, drawn from the craft of stage illusion and tested in coaching practice. A memorable shared experience that anchors follow-up work on innovation and change long after the session ends.

Why organisations work with Claudia Bechstein A working chair for high-stakes technology and AI conversations, with the subject fluency to interrogate engineers, regulators and CEOs in the same panel without losing the room. Around 150 live appearances per year across IAA Mobility, GreenTech Festival, Bitkom AI & Data Summit and the German Federal Government Digital Summit, which means she walks into a tech main stage already knowing the room and the operators in it. Bilingual delivery in German and English at the level required for a Bundesregierung digital summit and an English-language CEO panel on the same brief, with no drop in confidence between the two. Co-creator of the KI Palooza Festival, the Stuttgart AI platform for mid-market companies, which gives her a working view of where AI is actually being deployed below the FAANG and DAX 40 level. A trained business psychologist, so the moderation is built around how people answer under pressure, not around a presenter script. Biography highlights MSc in Business Psychology, FOM University of Applied Sciences Berlin and University of San Diego (2020). Co-creator of KI Palooza, a Stuttgart AI festival for mid-market companies. Moderates approximately 150 live events per year, in German and English, across congresses, fireside chats, press conferences and hybrid formats. Recurring chair for IAA Mobility, GreenTech Festival Berlin, Bitkom AI & Data Summit, the German Federal Government Digital Summit, ABB Robotics and the Lobster Data Hero Summit. Worked with Bosch, Salesforce, Porsche, BMW, Dell Technologies, Vodafone, Telekom, Volkswagen, Samsung, Hyundai, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, UBS, Julius Bär, Handelsblatt and ZDF. Investor in HealthTech and shareholder in a media production company. Biography The chair of a serious technology conference is doing real work. They are deciding which question gets asked, which answer gets pushed back on, and which CEO is allowed to retreat into talking points. Claudia Bechstein has built a fifteen-year career around that specific craft, in German and English, at the level of IAA Mobility, the GreenTech Festival, the Bitkom AI & Data Summit and the German Federal Government Digital Summit. Her route into the role is unusual. She trained as a business psychologist, completing an MSc at FOM Berlin and the University of San Diego in 2020, and the discipline shows in how she runs a panel. She is interested in how people answer under pressure, where they get vague, and where the room stops believing them. That is a different toolkit from broadcast presenting, and it is the reason she is booked repeatedly for technical panels where executives have rehearsed answers and operators have unrehearsed ones. The subject base is technology, AI, mobility and the energy transition. She is co-creator of KI Palooza, a Stuttgart festival built around how mid-market German companies actually deploy AI, and an active investor in HealthTech. The work for Bosch, Salesforce, Porsche, BMW, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, Dell, Vodafone, Telekom, ABB Robotics, Volvo and Hyundai is in the same territory: industrial, automotive, data, transformation. For organisations running an AI conference, a transformation summit or a board-level mobility conversation, the practical question is whether the chair can hold the room. Bechstein’s commercial proposition is that she has done so, in two languages, at roughly 150 events a year, for the German industrial economy and a growing list of international clients. Key speaking topics Conference and panel moderation for technology and AI events Artificial intelligence and digital transformation Future of mobility and the automotive industry Sustainability, climate and the energy transition Industry 4.0 and industrial transformation Innovation in mid-market and DAX companies Data and digitalisation HealthTech and FinTech Ideal for Conference organisers running technology, AI, mobility or sustainability summits who need a working chair, not a presenter DAX and mid-market communications and event leads commissioning bilingual (German and English) main-stage hosting Industry associations and federal bodies running policy-and-industry events where the chair has to credibly interrogate ministers and CEOs Boards and executive teams running internal AI, transformation or leadership conferences that include external operators and regulators Audience outcomes A conference programme that runs to time and reads as a strategic conversation, not a series of vendor pitches Panels where the senior speakers are pushed past their prepared answers without the room losing them Bilingual coverage of the same brief, in German and English, without a drop in pace or precision A working AI, mobility or sustainability discussion that the in-house team can use as source material after the event