Innovation och omvälvning

Why organisations work with Clay Shirky He is running one of the most closely watched AI transitions inside a major research university, giving leaders a live view of how a complex institution is actually absorbing the technology, not a theoretical account. His 2008 book Here Comes Everybody is still the reference text for how networks dismantle hierarchical coordination. He brings two decades of that argument to the current question of what AI does to professional work. He has spent his career identifying the moment a technology stops being a tool and starts changing who gets to do the job. Leaders use him to pressure-test where that line sits inside their own organisation. He writes and speaks in plain language. Senior teams come away with a sharper vocabulary for decisions they had been circling: about integrity, expertise, and the parts of the business that AI makes cheaper to replace than to defend. Named originator of the Shirky Principle, which is quoted back at boards more often than most of them realise: institutions try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution. Biography highlights Vice Provost for AI and Technology in Education, New York University. Associate professor at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and Tisch School of the Arts Interactive Telecommunications Program. Former Chief Information Officer, NYU Shanghai. Author of Here Comes Everybody, Cognitive Surplus, and Little Rice, published by Penguin. Edward R. Murrow Visiting Lecturer, Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center. Contributor to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and Wired. TED speaker with multiple talks on collaboration, cognitive surplus, and the politics of networked media. Biography The question most organisations are now quietly asking about AI is not technical. It is institutional. If the tools available to a junior employee can produce output that used to require a senior one, what happens to the rungs of the ladder in between? That is the terrain Clay Shirky has been working on for twenty years, first as a theorist of digital networks, now as the person running AI strategy inside one of the largest research universities in the world. At NYU he is Vice Provost for AI and Technology in Education, with responsibility for how the university teaches, examines, and credentials students in an environment where a generative tool can write a plausible essay in seconds. Before that he was Chief Information Officer of NYU Shanghai. He holds faculty positions at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and the Tisch School of the Arts Interactive Telecommunications Program. Here Comes Everybody, published in 2008, set out the argument that group action no longer requires a formal organisation to coordinate it. Cognitive Surplus extended the case into what people do with the time that television used to absorb. Little Rice looked at the same dynamics through the smartphone industry in China. The through-line is consistent: when the cost of coordination falls, the shape of every institution that depended on that cost changes. The Shirky Principle, named by Kevin Kelly, captures the argument leaders take back to their own boards: institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution. He has made that case to audiences at TED, at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center as Edward R. Murrow Visiting Lecturer, and in the pages of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and Wired. The current application, and the reason senior teams are booking him, is AI. Key speaking topics AI and the future of knowledge work Institutional change in the age of generative AI Networked collaboration and the economics of group action The future of education, credentialing, and academic integrity Digital disruption of professional expertise Technology policy and the public internet Organisational design for a post-hierarchical era Ideal for Boards and executive teams working through AI strategy beyond productivity use cases. University, publishing, media, and professional services leaders whose business model depends on credentialed expertise. CHROs and learning leaders rethinking how people are trained, assessed, and promoted when AI can do parts of the job. Policy and public sector leaders examining how digital networks and AI are reshaping institutional trust. Audience outcomes A sharper reading of which parts of their organisation AI makes cheaper to replace than to defend. A working vocabulary for the decisions leaders are already making about integrity, authorship, and expertise. A clearer sense of what a major research university is actually doing about AI, from someone running the work. A framework for thinking about institutional change that does not collapse into either hype or fatalism. Concrete examples of networked coordination and AI adoption drawn from two decades of original research and current practice.

Why organisations work with Collin Croome Thirty years of operator experience spanning the first websites in 1994 through generative AI and Apple Vision Pro rollouts, which lets him pressure test a digital strategy against what actually ships. Direct Apple lineage: over a decade as multimedia evangelist and trainer for Apple Germany, including co-developing the first German multimedia seminar for Apple in 1992. Founder and long-time owner of coma2 e-branding, where he delivered digital projects for premium international brands including Audi, Hugo Boss, Microsoft, Deutsche Telekom, Nespresso and Triumph. Author of two GABAL Verlag titles on the metaverse (Praxisbuch Metaverse, 30 Minuten Metaverse) and a regular on-air digital expert for ProSiebenSat.1 and RTL. Bilingual delivery in English and German with deep DACH market fluency, useful for organisations briefing European leadership audiences. Biography highlights Co-founder and long-time owner of coma2 e-branding, Munich, delivering 800 plus digital projects for international brands over 22 plus years. Multimedia evangelist and trainer for Apple Germany from 1991, co-developer of the first German Apple multimedia seminar in 1992. Author of Praxisbuch Metaverse (GABAL Verlag, 2023) and 30 Minuten Metaverse (GABAL Verlag, 2022). Certified Professional Speaker and Professional Member of the German Speakers Association (GSA). Recurring digital expert on ProSiebenSat.1 and RTL covering AI, metaverse and platform economics. Client list includes Audi, Hugo Boss, Microsoft, Siemens, Deutsche Telekom, TUI, Nespresso, KPMG and Triumph. Biography The first wave of corporate digital work in Germany ran through a small group of practitioners who knew both the technology and the brands that had to use it. Collin Croome was one of them. From 1991 he worked inside Apple Germany as multimedia evangelist and trainer, co-developing the country’s first Apple multimedia seminar in 1992 and spending more than a decade translating new hardware into tools that marketing and communications teams could actually run. In 1997 he co-founded coma2 e-branding in Munich and built it into a long-running digital agency for premium international brands. Over 22 plus years the agency delivered work for Audi, Hugo Boss, Microsoft, Deutsche Telekom, Nespresso, Triumph and TUI, covering the full arc from early websites to social platforms, e-commerce and immersive formats. That operator history is the spine of his credibility on stage. Since 2021 his keynote work has concentrated on generative AI, the metaverse and Apple Vision Pro as commercial tools, not as futurology. He has written two GABAL Verlag books on the metaverse, appears regularly as a digital expert on ProSiebenSat.1 and RTL, and holds Certified Professional Speaker status with the German Speakers Association. The consistent thread across three decades is the same question he puts to boards now: which of the digital tools on the table will move revenue, customer experience or brand equity inside the next year, and what has to change in the organisation to make that happen. Key speaking topics Generative AI and ChatGPT in the enterprise Apple Vision Pro and immersive business applications Metaverse and Web3 strategy Digital transformation and megatrends Platform economics and the power of the internet giants Digital marketing and brand in an AI world Ideal for C-suite and board audiences making capital allocation decisions on AI, immersive and digital platform bets. CMOs, brand and customer experience leads translating AI and immersive tools into campaigns and products. DACH-market leadership groups that need a bilingual keynote in English or German. Premium consumer and lifestyle brands looking at AR, VR and platform-native commerce. Audience outcomes A clearer read on which AI and metaverse initiatives are ready for commercial use and which are still hype. A practical view of Apple Vision Pro and adjacent immersive tools as enterprise assets, grounded in early-adopter use. Reference points from named brand work (Audi, Hugo Boss, Microsoft, Deutsche Telekom) that leaders can map to their own organisation. Sharper questions to put to internal teams and external agencies on digital and AI roadmaps.

Why organisations work with Cornel Amariei Operator credibility on both sides of the innovation question: ran innovation as Head of Innovation at Continental Automotive with patents adopted across European electric vehicles, then built .lumen from research project to a venture-backed company. Built the first Romanian company to receive EIC Accelerator funding, with a €9.7M blended finance package and a €5M January 2025 round led by Catalyst Romania alongside the EIC Fund. The story is a working playbook on European deep-tech capital formation. Working at the intersection of autonomous driving, robotics and assistive technology, with a defensible patent portfolio. Useful to leadership teams thinking about how to convert AI and sensor capability into a product proposition with a real customer. Recognition from credible institutions, not bureau awards: Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe, JCI Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World, Global Business Hall of Fame. A personal stake that travels well into corporate audiences. Grew up in a family where every member had a disability, and built a company that addresses an underserved global market of 40 million blind people. Authority on social impact ventures without the activist framing. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, .lumen. Pedestrian Autonomous Driving technology, first deployed in glasses for blind users. Former Head of Innovation, Continental Automotive. Patents applied in European electric vehicles. First Romanian inductee, Global Business Hall of Fame, 2021. Innovators category, alongside Canva’s Melanie Perkins. Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe; JCI Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World. Author, “Arduino Development Cookbook” (Packt Publishing, 2015). Alumnus, Constructor University (formerly Jacobs University Bremen). Biography A research project inside a Romanian engineering team in 2018 became, by early 2020, a venture called .lumen. By 2025 the company had closed a €5M round led by Catalyst Romania with the European Innovation Council Fund and Tigrim Capital alongside it, the latest tranche in a €9.7M blended finance package that made it the first Romanian startup to take EIC Accelerator capital. The product, Pedestrian Autonomous Driving, was first demonstrated in glasses that replicate and extend the function of a guide dog. The global addressable problem is concrete: roughly 40 million blind people, fewer than 20,000 guide dogs. The biography behind the company matters because it explains the design choice. Cornel Amariei grew up in a family where every member had a disability: parents with locomotor conditions, a sister with cerebral palsy. The motivation is not a brand layer on top of a venture. It is the reason the venture exists. Before .lumen, Amariei was Head of Innovation at Continental Automotive, where his patent work was integrated into European electric vehicles. That experience matters for boards thinking about innovation governance. He has run the discipline inside a multinational tier-one and built it from scratch as a founder, which is rare in a market where most speakers have done only one. The recognition is from named institutions: Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe, JCI’s Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World, and induction into the Global Business Hall of Fame in 2021 as the first Romanian laureate, in the innovators category alongside Canva founder Melanie Perkins. He is also a published technical author with Packt and an alumnus of Constructor University in Bremen. Key speaking topics Deep-tech entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership Innovation management inside multinationals Assistive technology and accessibility ventures Autonomous driving and robotics applied to consumer products Patent strategy and IP-led product development European deep-tech capital and the EIC Accelerator route Social impact through technology commercialisation Ideal for Innovation, R&D and CTO leadership inside industrials, automotive and consumer technology Boards and executive committees reviewing how invention is governed and converted to product ESG, accessibility and inclusion programmes seeking a credible technology voice rather than an activist one Entrepreneurship summits, deep-tech investor events and scale-up programmes across Europe Audience outcomes A working view of how a research prototype becomes a regulated, funded, commercial product A founder’s account of building patent value inside both a multinational and a startup A grounded reference point for what European deep-tech capital, including EIC blended finance, actually requires of a company A clearer sense of where assistive and accessibility technology is going as autonomous driving capabilities scale down to wearables A reset on what social impact looks like when it is a product proposition rather than a corporate programme

Why organisations work with Costas Andriopoulos He has built one of the most cited academic foundations for organisational ambidexterity, the discipline of running exploitation and exploration in parallel, and translates it into language a leadership team can act on rather than admire. His 2009 Organization Science paper with Marianne Lewis is on most senior reading lists in the field, which gives the boardroom conversation a defensible reference point when innovation budgets come under pressure. “Purposeful Curiosity” gives leaders a working method for the awkward middle of an innovation cycle, where the question is not whether to explore but how to keep the inquiry productive when results are slow. As founder of Bayes X, he runs a live research programme on disruption with corporate partners, so the case material he brings to a session is current rather than historical. He has acted as thematic advisor on the Amundi (Lyxor) MSCI Disruptive Technology ETF, giving him a working view of how capital markets currently price the very disruption that operating leaders are trying to manage. Biography highlights Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Bayes Business School, City, University of London Associate Dean for MBA Programmes, Bayes Business School Founder and Director, Bayes X, the school’s Research Centre for Innovation and Disruption Director, Avyssos Advisors Ltd., innovation management consultancy Author, “Purposeful Curiosity” (Yellow Kite/Hachette, 2022), endorsed by Adam Grant Co-author, “Managing Change, Creativity and Innovation” (5th edition, Sage, 2024) Research published in Organization Science, Human Relations, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Long Range Planning, and California Management Review Thematic advisor to the Amundi (Lyxor) MSCI Disruptive Technology ETF Biography The hardest problem inside an established firm is not whether to innovate. It is how to keep the innovation agenda alive against the gravitational pull of the existing business. Costas Andriopoulos has spent two decades building the academic and practical answer to that question. His 2009 paper with Marianne Lewis in Organization Science set out how ambidextrous firms hold exploitation and exploration in productive tension rather than collapsing one into the other. The work has become a reference point for how senior teams discuss the paradox of running today’s business while building tomorrow’s. He has continued that line of research through articles in Human Relations, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Long Range Planning and California Management Review. At Bayes Business School he holds the chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, serves as Associate Dean for MBA Programmes, and founded the Bayes X Centre for Innovation and Disruption. Through Avyssos Advisors he works with founders and corporate leadership teams; through the Amundi (Lyxor) MSCI Disruptive Technology ETF advisory work he sees the same disruption priced by capital markets. “Purposeful Curiosity,” published by Yellow Kite in 2022 and endorsed by Adam Grant, took that research base to a wider audience. Its argument is operational rather than inspirational: curiosity becomes useful only when it is structured, directed, and protected against the day-to-day demands that crowd it out. That is the brief he brings into a leadership room. Key speaking topics Organisational ambidexterity Disruptive innovation in established firms Purposeful curiosity as a leadership discipline Innovation portfolio management Entrepreneurial mindset inside corporates Leading creative teams The paradox of exploitation and exploration Ideal for CEOs and executive committees holding both a profitability and a growth mandate Chief Innovation Officers and heads of R&D under board pressure to show returns from exploration CHROs and learning leaders building leadership development programmes that include innovation capability Founders and senior leadership teams of scale-ups moving from a single product to a portfolio Audience outcomes A clear vocabulary for the paradox of running today’s business while building the next one A defensible reference framework, drawn from peer-reviewed research, for protecting the exploration agenda inside an established firm A working method for converting individual curiosity into a managed organisational practice Examples of how ambidextrous firms structure decisions, incentives and team design to hold both modes at once

Why organisations work with Cristiana Pace She has translated FIA environmental accreditation, ISO 14001, ISO 20121, and carbon footprint methodologies into delivery work for Williams Racing, Haas, Scuderia AlphaTauri, Silverstone Circuit, and AS Roma. Her Sustainable Motorsport Index is the first independent benchmark of motorsport stakeholders against UN SDGs and ESG criteria, which gives buyers a defensible reference point when their own disclosures are scrutinised. She built a doctoral research base at Coventry University on low-carbon socio-technical transitions in motorsport, so her advice to boards is grounded in evidence, not sector folklore. Enovation Consulting won the 2025 King’s Award for Enterprise in International Trade, the first sports sustainability agency to receive it, an indicator of operational scale across more than 60 organisations worldwide. She speaks credibly to engineers, commercial leadership, and federation governance in the same room, which matters when sustainability decisions cut across all three. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Enovation Consulting, B Corp certified and FIA environmentally accredited sustainability agency for sport. PhD in Sustainability and Strategic Management, Coventry University; Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Business in Society. First woman to work trackside with the FIA’s technical departments in Formula 1. Former Business Development Manager at Williams Advanced Engineering, where she led work on Formula E battery supply. Member of the FIA Environment and Sustainability Commission and Chair of the eSC Sustainability Commission. Board member of BASIS, the British Association for Sustainable Sport, and Visiting Professor at Bologna Business School. Recognised by The Guardian and the Women’s Engineering Society among the UK’s Top 50 Women in Engineering, 2021. 2025 King’s Award for Enterprise in International Trade, awarded to Enovation Consulting. Biography The motorsport industry has spent two decades building safety as an engineering discipline. Sustainability is the next system to build, and the methods are not yet settled. Cristiana Pace has spent her career inside that transition, first trackside with the FIA, then on battery technology at Williams Advanced Engineering, then in doctoral research on how the sector decarbonises. Enovation Consulting, which she founded in 2018, is the operating expression of that work. The agency advises Formula 1 teams, federations, and circuits on FIA environmental accreditation, ISO 14001 and ISO 20121 certification, carbon footprint calculation, and ESG reporting. Clients include Williams Racing, Haas, Scuderia AlphaTauri, Silverstone Circuit, Motorsport UK, and AS Roma, with services now spanning football, tennis, sailing, and athletics. Her Sustainable Motorsport Index sits behind a lot of that work. It benchmarks motorsport stakeholders against UN SDGs and ESG criteria, using only public disclosures, which puts disclosure pressure on the sector itself. In 2025, Enovation Consulting won the King’s Award for Enterprise in International Trade, the first sports sustainability agency to do so, recognising scale across more than 60 organisations. She holds a PhD from Coventry University on low-carbon socio-technical transitions in motorsport, sits on the FIA Environment and Sustainability Commission, chairs the eSC Sustainability Commission, and serves on the BASIS board. The technical depth means she can sit in front of an engineering team or a federation board and be useful in both rooms. Key speaking topics Sustainability strategy for sport and motorsport ESG reporting and disclosure in sport The decarbonisation of motorsport and the energy transition Technology transfer from motorsport to industry Diversity and STEM in engineering Purpose-driven leadership in high-performance environments Innovation under regulatory and competitive pressure Ideal for Boards and CEOs of sports rightsholders, federations, and clubs facing ESG and net zero scrutiny Heads of sustainability, ESG, and corporate affairs in consumer brands, mobility, and energy companies Senior engineering and operations leaders responsible for translating sustainability commitments into delivery Sponsorship and partnership leadership teams at brands aligning marketing spend with credible sustainability narratives Audience outcomes A clearer view of what credible sustainability looks like once you remove the marketing layer A framework for moving from net zero pledges to disclosed operating data Direct examples of how Formula 1 teams, federations, and circuits are turning ESG into engineering and procurement decisions A sharper sense of where sport sits inside the wider energy transition and what stakeholders will demand next A practical reference point for benchmarking sustainability performance using the Sustainable Motorsport Index

Why organisations work with Dan Sobovitz Five years inside the cabinet of a European Commission Vice-President, writing speeches and running digital for the institution that regulates much of Europe’s technology agenda. That is a view of how policy communication actually works that external consultants rarely have. Runs spreadable.io, the agency behind interactive programmes for the European Commission, European Parliament, UNESCO, Michelin, Groupe RATP, and Viva Tech. Clients hire him when a standard panel format will not hold the room. Chief communications role at the European Startup Prize for Mobility, Europe’s largest acceleration programme for clean mobility startups, gives him a working feed of what is actually happening in European mobility and climate tech rather than a reading of it. Hosts and moderates in English and French across tech, mobility, and sustainability events including Viva Tech, ChangeNow, and Michelin’s Movin’On Challenge, with a hosting style built around live audience interaction rather than scripted Q and A. Civil society work through DemoCrisis and Fondation Ceci n’est pas une crise gives him a serious, non-promotional voice on how digital platforms are changing democratic participation. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, spreadable.io, Brussels Chief Communications Officer, European Startup Prize for Mobility Senior Adviser, Digital Communications, BCW Former speechwriter and digital communications strategist, cabinet of European Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic TEDx speaker, “Can technology make democracy great again?” (TEDxAUEB) MA, Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs; MPP, Hertie School of Governance Biography Inside the European Commission, the problem was not a shortage of policy. It was that the policy was not reaching anyone outside Brussels. Dan Sobovitz spent five years in the cabinet of Vice-President Maros Sefcovic working on exactly that, writing speeches and running digital channels that tried to turn technical EU work into something recognisable to citizens, journalists, and founders. The methods were unusual for an institution. Live interactive interviews from a self-driving car. VR footage of EU satellites going into orbit. Crowdsourcing policy input from youth and climate activists through digital platforms. Live audience voting at EU startup pitches. Most of it came out of a single idea: the Commission had interesting things to say and was burying them under procedural language. He now runs spreadable.io, the interactive-events agency he founded after leaving the Commission, with clients including the European Parliament, UNESCO, Michelin, Groupe RATP, and Viva Tech. Alongside this he is Chief Communications Officer at the European Startup Prize for Mobility, the EU’s largest acceleration programme for clean mobility startups, and a Senior Adviser on Digital Communications at BCW. His civic work through DemoCrisis and Fondation Ceci n’est pas une crise addresses a narrower question that runs under everything else he does: what happens to democratic participation when the public conversation moves onto platforms none of the participants control. He writes and speaks on that question in English and French, and has given a TEDx talk, “Can technology make democracy great again?” Key speaking topics Digital communications and institutional storytelling Technology, democracy, and civic participation Sustainable mobility and clean transport innovation European startup ecosystems and innovation policy Interactive conference formats and audience engagement Public policy communication in the age of platforms Ideal for Corporate and institutional communications leaders rethinking how they talk about technology and regulation Innovation, mobility, and sustainability programmes looking for a bilingual host who can run a serious technical room Public affairs and policy teams operating at the EU level CEO and C-suite audiences planning flagship innovation or transformation events Audience outcomes A sharper read on how European institutions and corporates are actually communicating technology and policy, and where that is breaking down Concrete examples of formats that move an audience out of passive listening, drawn from live EU and corporate programmes A working understanding of how the European clean mobility and startup landscape fits together across Commission, Parliament, and industry A more honest view of what digital platforms are doing to public debate and what institutions can do about it

Why organisations work with Dan Waldschmidt He has run the turnaround himself. As CRO then CEO of Panzura, he led 150% year-on-year customer base growth and 288% three-year revenue expansion, which gives the speaking material a current operator’s authority. The Edgy Conversations thesis is research-based, drawing on 1,000 case studies of outlier performers across business, science, and sport, and gives audiences a defensible argument for unconventional commercial choices. He speaks credibly to enterprise technology buyers. The Panzura mandate sits in hybrid cloud storage and ransomware resilience, which makes him useful for boards balancing growth ambition with infrastructure risk. His work travels well from sales kickoffs to executive offsites because the same framework is applied to revenue, talent, and brand positioning. The voice is direct and confrontational by design. Senior teams that are tired of motivational keynotes tend to respond to a speaker willing to name what is not working in the room. Biography highlights Chief Executive Officer of Panzura, appointed January 2024, having joined as reFounder and Chief Revenue Officer in 2020. Author of Edgy Conversations: How Ordinary People Can Achieve Outrageous Success, published 2014. Founder of Waldschmidt Partners International, a strategy consultancy active 2010 to 2018. Wall Street Journal listed his Edgy Conversations blog among the top sales blogs online. Contributor at Entrepreneur.com; featured in Forbes, CNBC, and Business Insider. Ultra-endurance athlete with multiple 100-mile race finishes, including the Everest Marathon course. Biography The hardest part of a turnaround is not the diagnosis. It is doing the work while the business is still running. Revenue targets do not pause for restructuring, customers do not wait for a refreshed value proposition, and the sales team needs a story to tell on Monday morning. Most strategy advice does not survive contact with that pressure. Dan Waldschmidt’s career has been built inside that pressure. At Panzura, the hybrid cloud storage company, he joined in 2020 as reFounder and Chief Revenue Officer, rebuilt the commercial engine, and was appointed CEO in January 2024. The published numbers, 150% year-on-year customer base growth, 288% three-year revenue expansion, 125% net retention, and Inc. 5000 recognition, came from a deliberate repositioning into the enterprise market and a tightening of the sales motion around ransomware resilience and data security. The intellectual backbone is Edgy Conversations, his book based on the stories of 1,000 outlier performers across business, science, mathematics, and sport. The argument is that breakthrough commercial outcomes come from a small number of unfashionable behaviours: deliberate focus, willingness to refuse the conventional path, and a narrow definition of what counts as success. Before Panzura, he ran Waldschmidt Partners International, advising leadership teams on revenue strategy, and his columns and blog have been cited by the Wall Street Journal and Entrepreneur.com. For senior buyers, the practical relevance is the combination of operator and author. The frameworks are not abstract. They are the same frameworks he is currently applying to a public-stage enterprise technology business with real customers and real quarterly numbers. Key speaking topics Revenue turnaround and commercial repositioning Sales transformation in enterprise technology High-performance behaviour in commercial teams Brand and category differentiation under pressure AI and data security as growth narratives Leadership of restructured commercial functions Ideal for Chief Revenue Officers and sales leadership teams resetting commercial strategy CEOs and boards navigating a turnaround or strategic repositioning Founders and scale-up leadership teams in enterprise technology Sales kickoffs, partner summits, and executive offsites where the audience is operators rather than observers Audience outcomes A direct read on which commercial behaviours predict outlier results and which do not A framework for tightening sales motion and customer focus during a strategy reset Specific operating examples from a current enterprise technology turnaround Language for repositioning a business in a contested category A challenge to the default assumption that incremental change will deliver step-change growth

Why organisations work with Danah Zohar She gave the field two of its named ideas. Spiritual Intelligence (SQ) and Quantum Management are her frameworks, not borrowed labels, and they sit on a substantial body of published work. Her management thinking is built on physics and complexity science, not from organisational behaviour. That gives her a different starting point from most leadership voices, and a model that holds up when the operating environment becomes genuinely non-linear. The Haier group in China rebuilt its management system around her concept of “zero distance” between employee and customer, giving her work a named operating reference at one of the world’s largest appliance manufacturers. She brings credentials that are hard to assemble in one speaker: MIT, Harvard, Oxford’s Strategic Leadership Programme, Cranfield, Tsinghua, and induction into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 2022. Biography highlights Inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame, 2022. Named in the 2002 Financial Times Prentice Hall Business Minds anthology of the world’s 50 greatest management thinkers. Teaches in the Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme at Oxford University’s Said Business School; Visiting Fellow at Cranfield School of Management. Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management and the China Academy of Art; entrepreneurial mentor at Haier. Author of The Quantum Self, ReWiring the Corporate Brain, SQ: Spiritual Intelligence, Spiritual Capital, The Quantum Leader, and Zero Distance: Management in the Quantum Age. Educated in Physics and Philosophy at MIT, with postgraduate work in Philosophy, Religion and Psychology at Harvard. Biography Newtonian management assumes that organisations behave like machines: predictable parts, fixed structures, control flowing from the top. The physics it is built on was superseded a hundred years ago. Danah Zohar has spent her career arguing that the management model needs to catch up, and showing senior leaders what a quantum and complexity-based alternative looks like in practice. Her two named contributions, Spiritual Intelligence (SQ) and Quantum Management, treat organisations as complex adaptive systems and treat people as carriers of meaning and purpose, not units of labour. The 12 Principles of SQ, set out in SQ: Spiritual Intelligence, the Ultimate Intelligence and developed further in Spiritual Capital, are drawn directly from the properties of living quantum systems. The work has been picked up where it matters. Haier, one of China’s largest industrial groups, restructured its management system around Zohar’s concept of “zero distance” between employee and customer, the basis of Zero Distance: Management in the Quantum Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). She teaches in the Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme, holds a visiting fellowship at Cranfield, and visiting professorships at Tsinghua and the China Academy of Art. For boards and executive teams, the practical question is how to lead a workforce and a strategy when the old assumptions of stability, hierarchy and pure financial logic no longer carry the weight they once did. Zohar offers a coherent answer, built from physics rather than rhetoric, and tested at scale inside one of the most ambitious corporate reorganisations of the last decade. Key speaking topics Quantum Management and the post-Newtonian organisation Spiritual Intelligence (SQ) and the 12 Principles Spiritual capital and purpose-driven leadership Complex adaptive systems applied to corporate strategy Meaning, motivation and the future of work Sustainable capitalism and the role of business in society Leading transformation at scale, with reference to the Haier model Ideal for CEOs and executive teams are redesigning operating models for higher autonomy and faster customer response Boards and senior leaders working through purpose, values and the social licence of the business Transformation leads and CHROs running culture and structure change in parallel Strategy and innovation leaders looking for a complexity-based alternative to classical planning Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for treating the organisation as a complex adaptive system, with concrete implications for structure, decision rights and information flow. A clearer link between purpose, meaning and commercial performance, beyond statement-of-values exercises. The Haier “zero distance” case as a worked reference for radical decentralisation at scale. Sharper questions for the executive team about where Newtonian assumptions still shape their planning, structure and incentives. An informed view of where Spiritual Intelligence sits alongside IQ and EQ in leadership development.

Why organisations work with Daniel Bobroff He has invested retail’s money on retail’s behalf. As co-founder of ASOS Ventures he ran due diligence on the technologies retail boards are now being asked to buy, which is a different vantage point from the consultant or analyst. He built a category from scratch. Pioneering in-game advertising through Microtime gives him a working understanding of how a new commercial medium emerges, scales and is monetised, which transfers directly to current arguments about immersive commerce and gamified retail. He operates inside the engineering layer. His role at HTEC Group means his views on AI in retail are grounded in actual implementation work on customer experience, cloud and supply chain, not in keynote abstraction. He covers the full retail tech stack in one voice. Boards rarely find a speaker who can talk credibly about ad-tech, VR, visual search, ecommerce platforms and corporate venture in the same session, and link them to a single commercial argument. Biography highlights Founder, Coded Futures, retail and consumer technology advisory firm. Special Advisor, HTEC Group, advising on retail digitalisation, AI and customer experience. Co-founder and former Investment Director, ASOS Ventures, the venture capital arm of ASOS. Founder of Microtime, the first digital agency dedicated to in-game advertising, credited with starting a now multi-billion-dollar category. Founder of Deibus Studios, video games developer with combined platform sales reported above 50 million units across PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo. Has delivered keynotes for Google, Facebook, Salesforce, Mastercard and the Retail Institute. Biography Retail has spent two decades arguing about whether technology is a channel, a function or a strategy. The argument is now closed by capital allocation. Personalisation engines, generative AI, gamified loyalty and immersive commerce are all sitting in the operating plan, often without a clear test for which of them pays back and which is a costly experiment in brand theatre. Daniel Bobroff has worked on both sides of that question. At ASOS he co-founded the company’s venture capital arm and was directly responsible for identifying and backing the technologies the retail sector is now being sold. Before that he founded Microtime, the first digital agency dedicated to in-game advertising, and Deibus Studios, an independent games developer whose titles for PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo achieved combined platform sales above 50 million units. Today he runs Coded Futures, a retail and consumer technology advisory firm, and sits as Special Advisor to HTEC Group, the global engineering business, where he advises on AI, cloud and customer experience programmes. The combination matters: he sees retail technology from the investor’s underwriting position, the founder’s product position and the engineering partner’s delivery position. That is an unusual sightline for a speaker on this subject. His keynote work, including engagements for Google, Facebook, Salesforce, Mastercard and the Retail Institute, focuses on the same question a board is wrestling with after the third AI vendor presentation of the quarter: which of these bets is real, what does the customer experience actually look like once they land, and how does the commercial model hold up at scale. Key speaking topics AI in retail and consumer-facing operations Gamification of loyalty, engagement and commerce Immersive commerce, VR and the metaverse in retail Hyper-personalisation and predictive analytics Corporate venture capital and retail innovation pipelines Customer experience redesign in fashion and consumer brands Supply chain optimisation through AI and emerging technologies Ideal for Retail and consumer brand boards weighing major AI and digital investment decisions CMOs, Chief Digital Officers and Chief Customer Officers redesigning customer journeys around AI and personalisation Innovation, venture and corporate development teams inside large retailers and consumer goods groups Retail technology vendors and platform partners briefing their senior client audiences Audience outcomes A working sense of which retail AI use cases have shown commercial returns and which are still in the demonstration phase A sharper read on where gamification, immersive commerce and generative AI fit inside an existing retail operating model A vocabulary for discussing personalisation, loyalty and experience investments with credibility at board level A reference set of named retailers, technologies and venture-backed companies to anchor internal strategy debates

Why organisations work with Daniel Burrus He offers a named, tested method for distinguishing Hard Trends (future certainties) from Soft Trends (future possibilities), giving executive teams a shared vocabulary for strategic bets. The Anticipatory Organization model has been implemented inside the Pentagon’s Joint Service Provider, Deloitte, Lockheed Martin and IBM, so the framework has been stress-tested inside institutions where the cost of being wrong is high. He has tracked exponential technology shifts since the early 1980s, which means his AI commentary is grounded in four decades of pattern recognition rather than recent opinion. He sits inside the NSA CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame, a credential held by fewer than 300 speakers worldwide, which is a meaningful signal of platform craft alongside the intellectual content. Seven books with two New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers give buyers a body of work to pre-read and align their teams around before the engagement. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Burrus Research Associates, operating since 1983. Author of seven books including Flash Foresight (New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller) and The Anticipatory Organization. Inductee, National Speakers Association CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame. Founding member of the Department of Defense Joint Services Futures Group. Contributor to Harvard Business Review, Wired and Huffington Post; LinkedIn Top Voice with more than 1.2 million followers. Creator of the Hard Trend Methodology, adopted inside Deloitte, Lockheed Martin, IBM and the Pentagon’s Joint Service Provider. Biography Strategy teams spend most of their planning time on things that might happen. The harder question is which parts of the future are already fixed. The Hard Trend Methodology, developed by Daniel Burrus over more than thirty years of research at Burrus Research Associates, is built to answer that question in a way executive teams can actually use. The method separates Hard Trends, which are projections grounded in measurable demographic, technological and regulatory change, from Soft Trends, which are projections that look solid but can be influenced. Deloitte, Lockheed Martin, IBM and the Pentagon’s Joint Service Provider have applied the framework to reshape how they forecast and plan. The Anticipatory Organization, his 2017 book, is the public statement of that model and was an Amazon number one new business release. Burrus started tracking exponential technology shifts in the early 1980s, long before AI became a boardroom topic. That long arc gives his current work on artificial intelligence, automation and digital transformation a pattern-recognition quality that newer commentators cannot match. Flash Foresight, his 2011 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, set out the underlying cognitive approach for senior leaders working without a futures team. His platform credentials match the intellectual ones. He is a CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame inductee, a LinkedIn Top Voice with more than 1.2 million followers, and a contributor to Harvard Business Review, Wired and Huffington Post. He is a founding member of the Department of Defense Joint Services Futures Group, which is how a serious foresight practitioner signals that the work has been tested in environments where the cost of strategic surprise is highest. Key speaking topics Hard Trend Methodology and Anticipatory Organization Artificial intelligence strategy for senior leaders Disruptive innovation and exponential technology Digital transformation Strategic foresight and long-horizon planning Future of business and technology-driven growth Competitive advantage through anticipation Ideal for CEOs, COOs and strategy leaders running multi-year planning cycles under accelerating technology change Board directors and executive committees assessing AI and technology bets Transformation and innovation leads inside regulated or capital-intensive industries Government and defence leadership teams building foresight capability Audience outcomes A working distinction between Hard Trends and Soft Trends they can apply to their own strategic bets A shared vocabulary for anticipating disruption before it lands, rather than reacting after it does A concrete read on the exponential technologies most likely to reshape their industry in the next planning cycle A clearer view of where AI investment produces durable competitive advantage and where it produces noise Practical moves for shifting an organisation from reactive to anticipatory posture

Why organisations work with Daniel Hulme He runs AI inside a FTSE 100 holding company. When he talks about deployment at scale he is describing decisions he is currently making across WPP’s operating businesses, not modelling them from the outside. He sold the AI consultancy he founded, Satalia, to WPP after building it across clients including Tesco, Unilever, PwC, BT and the BBC. The deployment track record is operational, not slideware. As founder of Conscium, the first commercial research organisation on machine consciousness, he can address AI safety and the frontier governance questions that boards are starting to ask, without retreating into philosophy. His UCL credentials are substantive, an EngD in AI, the former directorship of the Applied AI MSc, and a current Entrepreneur-in-Residence role. The science behind the commercial advice is real. He signed the 2017 open letter to the United Nations on autonomous weapons alongside Musk, Hinton, Russell and Hassabis. He has been in the public AI governance conversation for almost a decade, well before it became fashionable. Biography highlights Chief AI Officer, WPP plc, coordinating AI strategy across the group since the 2021 acquisition of Satalia. Founder and former CEO of Satalia, the UK AI company named to Gartner’s Cool Vendors list for data science in 2016. Founder and CEO, Conscium, a London-based commercial research organisation studying machine consciousness and neuromorphic AI, founded 2024. EngD and Master’s in Artificial Intelligence, University College London. Computer Science Entrepreneur-in-Residence at UCL. Faculty member, Singularity University, on AI, ethics, innovation and organisational design. Founding Fellow, Academy for the Mathematical Sciences (2026). Co-author, Stories from 2045 (Economic Singularity Foundation, 2019). Signatory, 2017 open letter to the United Nations on lethal autonomous weapons. Biography WPP acquired Satalia in 2021 and made its founder its Chief AI Officer across the group. That move put one person in charge of AI strategy across a FTSE 100 advertising and marketing holding company, with operating brands that touch most of the world’s largest consumer businesses. The job is what most boards are now wrestling with on a smaller scale. Daniel Hulme founded Satalia in 2008 out of his AI research at University College London, where he earned his EngD and went on to direct the Applied AI MSc programme. Satalia’s work for clients including Tesco, Unilever, PwC, BT and the BBC sat at the unglamorous end of AI, optimisation, decision intelligence and operational decision-making, which is where deployment usually succeeds or fails. In 2024 he co-founded Conscium, a commercial research organisation focused on machine consciousness and neuromorphic AI. The work matters commercially because the next set of AI governance questions, around verification, autonomy and accountability, are not solved by the current generation of large language models. He was a signatory to the 2017 open letter to the United Nations on autonomous weapons, alongside Musk, Hinton, Russell and Hassabis, which placed him in the public AI safety conversation long before it reached boardrooms. He remains UCL’s Computer Science Entrepreneur-in-Residence, holds Singularity University faculty status, and was elected a Founding Fellow of the Academy for the Mathematical Sciences in 2026. The combination matters for one practical reason. When he discusses how AI is being deployed inside a FTSE 100 company, the technical claims are coming from someone with a research apparatus underneath them. Key speaking topics Applied AI in large enterprises AI strategy and the Chief AI Officer role AI ethics, safety and governance Machine consciousness and frontier AI research Decision intelligence and optimisation The future of work under AI Organisational design through technology Ideal for Boards and executive committees making AI investment and governance decisions Chief AI Officers, CTOs, CIOs and Chief Data Officers shaping enterprise AI strategy Risk, audit and compliance leaders working out AI accountability Innovation, transformation and digital leaders moving AI beyond pilots Audience outcomes A clearer view of what AI can realistically deliver inside their own organisation in the next 18 months, separated from vendor narrative. Working language for the governance and safety questions their board will be asked, including where the limits of current AI sit. A more honest read on which AI use cases are commercially defensible and which are not yet. Exposure to frontier research questions, including machine consciousness, that will shape the next wave of AI regulation.

Why organisations work with Dave Noll He brings a working television creator’s instinct for what survives a pitch room, drawn from selling 60-plus series and more than 3,500 episodes to global networks. The Chopped origin story is a usable case study in persistence. The format was rejected by Food Network before becoming one of the longest-running cooking competitions on US television and earning a James Beard Award. His credentials sit outside the usual corporate speaker pool, which makes the message about creative risk land differently with sales and innovation audiences who have heard the standard versions. He frames innovation as a commercial discipline rather than an ideation exercise, focused on what gets bought, what gets renewed, and what scales internationally. Biography highlights Co-creator of Chopped (Food Network, 2009 to present); franchise inducted into the Culinary Hall of Fame. Two-time Emmy Award winner and two-time Gracie Award winner. Chopped won the James Beard Award for Best Television Series in 2012. Co-founder of Keller Noll, a New York-based format development company with international productions across Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, South Africa, Turkey and the United States. Creator of America Says (Game Show Network), No Kitchen Required (BBC America), Rocco’s Dinner Party (Bravo), Beat the House (HGTV), Face The Truth (CBS) and Punchline (FOX). Signed a first-look deal with Boat Rocker in 2021, reported in Deadline. Biography Chopped was rejected by Food Network the first time it was pitched in 2007. The same concept, brought back months later, became one of the longest-running cooking competition formats on US television, has aired since 2009, was inducted into the Culinary Hall of Fame and won the 2012 James Beard Award for Best Television Series. The producer behind it is Dave Noll, co-founder of Keller Noll, a New York-based format development company he runs with Cleve Keller. Together, they have created and sold more than 60 television series and produced over 3,500 episodes, with productions filmed across eight countries and a 2021 first-look deal with Boat Rocker. His value to a commercial audience is the working knowledge of what it takes to get an idea past the people who say no for a living. That includes America Says on Game Show Network, No Kitchen Required on BBC America, Rocco’s Dinner Party on Bravo, Face The Truth on CBS, and the wider game-show and competition portfolio that the partnership has built since 2007. For sales, marketing and innovation teams, his contribution is closer to a master class in commercial creativity than a leadership talk. He works in an industry where every pitch is graded on what audiences will actually choose to watch, and brings that discipline into rooms where corporate innovation often loses contact with the customer. Key speaking topics Innovation as a commercial discipline Creative persistence and pitch resilience Turning rejected ideas into market-ready products Storytelling and format thinking for brand teams Sales performance and customer-centred creativity Team-level creative culture in deadline-driven environments Ideal for Sales and revenue leadership audiences working on creative differentiation Marketing, brand and innovation teams inside consumer-facing organisations Corporate offsites and annual kick-offs that want a non-corporate voice on creativity and commercial risk Higher education and association audiences focused on entrepreneurship and media Audience outcomes A concrete example of how a category-defining product survives repeated rejection before reaching the market A working producer’s perspective on what makes a creative idea commercially durable Practical reference points from inside one of television’s most successful format development partnerships Renewed conviction in pushing creative work through internal gatekeepers without diluting it