Scenarioplanering och strategisk framtidsanalys

Why organisations work with Dalia Marin Her peer-reviewed research links automation, trade-policy uncertainty, and reshoring in a single empirical model, giving leadership teams a defensible basis for supply-chain decisions rather than a narrative. She translates between the Brussels and Berlin policy worlds and the corporate boardroom, drawing on advisory work with the European Commission, the EBRD, and the IMF. Her Project Syndicate column is a running public reference point on deglobalisation, German deindustrialisation, and the labour-market consequences of AI, read by policy and business readers across Europe. She is one of the few senior economists who has tracked the German industrial model, and the Eastern European production network around it, continuously since the 1990s. That long view matters when companies are re-assessing the same geographies. Biography highlights Chair in International Economics, TUM School of Management, Technical University of Munich. Non-resident Fellow at Bruegel and Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research. Former Professor of International Economics at Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich (1998 to 2017). Co-editor of “The Organization of Firms in a Global Economy” (Harvard University Press, 2008) with Elhanan Helpman and Thierry Verdier. Co-author of “Global Value Chains in a World of Uncertainty and Automation”, Journal of International Economics, 2025. Visiting appointments at Harvard, Stanford, NYU Stern, the IMF, the NBER, and the European University Institute. Project Syndicate columnist on deglobalisation, industrial policy, and the future of the German economic model. Biography The reshoring debate has moved past the slogan stage. Firms are actually pulling production back to high-income economies, and the economic literature is starting to explain why. Trade-policy uncertainty and cheaper industrial robots, working together, are restructuring global supply chains in ways that a decade of offshoring logic did not anticipate. That is the core argument of Marin’s recent work, co-authored in the Journal of International Economics in 2025. Her research shows that exposure to uncertainty in developing-country suppliers pushes production back to high-income countries, but only where robots have made it economically feasible. For a senior operations or strategy audience, this is a usable frame: reshoring is not a political mood, it is a measurable response to two forces that can be modelled. The wider body of work runs through Bruegel, CEPR, and a sustained Project Syndicate column. She has written continuously on the German economic model, the Eastern European production network built around it, and the inflationary and labour-market consequences of a partial retreat from globalisation. Her advisory work with the European Commission, the EBRD, and the IMF sits alongside the academic record rather than replacing it. She was Chair in International Economics at Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich for almost two decades before moving to TUM. Visiting appointments at Harvard, Stanford, NYU Stern, the IMF, and the NBER place her inside the network of economists who set the terms of the trade-policy debate. The value for a corporate audience is that she can connect that technical conversation to the question actually on the table: what does the next decade of supply-chain strategy look like when the old globalisation assumptions no longer hold. Key speaking topics Deglobalisation and the restructuring of global supply chains Automation, robots, and reshoring The German economic model and European competitiveness International trade policy and geopolitical risk Multinational firms and the organisation of global production Industrial policy in Europe and the United States Inflation, labour markets, and the economics of deglobalisation Ideal for Boards and executive committees reassessing supply-chain footprint in light of tariffs, geopolitical risk, and automation CSOs, Heads of Strategy, and COOs responsible for manufacturing and sourcing decisions in industrial and export-led businesses Policy forums, investor conferences, and economic summits focused on Europe, Germany, and the future of global trade Senior leadership in financial institutions and multinational corporates with significant exposure to Eastern Europe and the German industrial base Audience outcomes A clear read of the empirical evidence on reshoring, automation, and trade-policy uncertainty, rather than the headline narrative A sharper view of where the German economic model is strong and where it is exposed, with implications for anyone doing business across the European industrial network A working framework for assessing which parts of a supply chain are candidates for reshoring and which are not A grounded perspective on the macro-economic consequences of deglobalisation, including effects on inflation and labour markets Language and evidence that senior leaders can use in their own board conversations on geopolitical and trade exposure

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 David Daokui Li His 2023 research found China’s local government debt to be 50% higher than IMF and World Bank estimates – using a new measurement methodology – making him one of the few analysts whose China numbers organisations have reason to trust over consensus figures He has attended high-level meetings with figures including Xi Jinping, giving him direct, first-person insight into how China’s senior leadership frames decisions – not inference from official statements His book «China’s World View» (W. W. Norton, 2024) frames Western misunderstanding of China as a systemic risk in itself – shifting the question from «what will China do?» to «why do we keep misreading it?» As a Harvard-trained economist who returned to lead China’s most prominent economic research centre, he can translate between two fundamentally different frameworks for economic reasoning – not just describe one to an audience fluent in the other His co-presidency of the Society for the Analysis of Government and Economics alongside Nobel Laureate Eric Maskin signals that his analytical framework for understanding state-driven economies is taken seriously at the highest level of the discipline Biography highlights Mansfield Freeman Chair Professor of Economics and Director of ACCEPT, Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management PhD in Economics, Harvard University; BS from Tsinghua University, 1985, as a member of the first graduating cohort of the School of Economics and Management Member, Monetary Policy Committee, People’s Bank of China (2016-2018); former external adviser to the International Monetary Fund; member, CPPCC (2008-2023) Founding Dean, Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University Co-President, Society for the Analysis of Government and Economics (SAGE), alongside Eric Maskin, 2007 Nobel Laureate in Economics Author, «China’s World View: Demystifying China to Prevent Global Conflict» (W. W. Norton, 2024), endorsed by Lawrence Summers, Jeffrey Sachs, Niall Ferguson, and Mark Leonard Regular contributor to Project Syndicate; cited in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Bloomberg, and New York Times; appears on CNBC and Bloomberg TV Named one of China’s 10 most influential economists by Wall Street Wire (2006) Biography China’s economy confounds Western observers not because it is opaque, but because it operates on a different logic – one shaped by two thousand years of Confucian governance philosophy, decades of directed industrial policy, and a political system with incentives that bear little resemblance to liberal democratic models. David Daokui Li is the Mansfield Freeman Chair Professor of Economics at Tsinghua University and Director of the Academic Center for Chinese Economic Practice and Thinking (ACCEPT). He holds a PhD from Harvard and was a member of the first graduating cohort from Tsinghua’s School of Economics and Management in 1985. Li’s career has been built at the intersection of academic economics and active policy. He served on the Monetary Policy Committee of the People’s Bank of China from 2016 to 2018, was a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference for fifteen years, and was an external adviser to the IMF. He has attended high-level government meetings with figures including Xi Jinping. The founding dean of Schwarzman College at Tsinghua, he also co-presides over the Society for the Analysis of Government and Economics alongside Nobel Laureate Eric Maskin – a pairing that reflects where his intellectual ambition sits: building a rigorous framework for understanding economies in which the state is a primary actor. His 2023 research, conducted at ACCEPT with co-author Zhang He, concluded that China’s local government debt stood 50% higher than IMF and World Bank estimates – a finding that challenged the methodologies on which most international assessments of China’s fiscal position rely. His 2024 book, «China’s World View: Demystifying China to Prevent Global Conflict,» published by W. W. Norton, makes the case that Western strategic miscalculation on China stems not from a lack of information but from a failure to understand how China’s leadership thinks. The book was endorsed by Lawrence Summers, Jeffrey Sachs, Niall Ferguson, and Mark Leonard. For organisations navigating decisions about China – whether on investment exposure, supply chain design, or geopolitical positioning – Li offers something genuinely rare: the analytical rigour of a Harvard-trained economist, direct access to China’s senior policy deliberations, and the ability to articulate what China’s government actually believes about its own economic model and its place in the world. Key speaking topics China’s economic strategy and the logic of state-directed capitalism US-China economic competition and the risks of strategic misreading China’s local government debt and systemic financial risk The internationalisation of the RMB and China’s role in global finance Geopolitical risk and its economic consequences for multinationals China’s governance model – history, incentives, and decision-making Global economic rebalancing and the future of multilateral institutions Ideal for Boards and C-suites of multinationals with significant China exposure or supply chain dependencies Chief Risk Officers and Chief Strategy Officers navigating US-China decoupling scenarios Investment committees and asset managers with emerging market or Asia-Pacific mandates Senior government and policy audiences working on trade, geopolitical risk, or international economic governance Audience outcomes A clearer model for how China’s senior leadership actually frames economic decisions – not derived from official statements alone A more accurate picture of China’s structural fiscal risks, including the scale and composition of local government debt A framework for distinguishing between China’s stated policy positions and the underlying strategic logic that drives them A calibrated view of where US-China economic tension is most likely to produce disruption, and where convergence remains possible Practical reference points for pressure-testing internal assumptions about China in investment, supply chain, and strategic planning contexts

Why organisations work with David Mattin Trend-Driven Innovation (Wiley) gives the organisations Mattin works with a named, repeatable method for identifying which emerging trends will reshape customer expectations – built on the counter-intuitive argument that the best signal is not in what customers say they want but in what leading businesses are already doing. His central argument – that human needs are fundamentally stable across decades even as technology accelerates – transforms trend analysis from a speculative exercise into a discipline with clear criteria, and gives leaders a reliable filter for deciding which AI-driven changes will actually matter. As Technology Lead at Global Macro Investor, his analysis of emerging technology is read and acted on by institutional investors including hedge funds, pension funds, and family offices – which subjects his commercial judgements about which technology shifts matter to a level of scrutiny that most trend and foresight work never encounters. The 30,000-subscriber New World Same Humans community – spanning business leaders, academics, and policymakers – means his frameworks are continuously tested against the exact professionals organisations are trying to anticipate and influence. Biography highlights Co-author, Trend-Driven Innovation: Beat Accelerating Customer Expectations (Wiley) – a structured framework for turning emerging trends into innovation strategy Former Global Head of Trends and Insights, TrendWatching Member, World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Consumption Technology Lead, Global Macro Investor; co-founder of The Exponentialist research service with macro investor Raoul Pal Founder, New World Same Humans – weekly newsletter on trends and technology with 30,000+ subscribers across business, academia, and policy Opening keynote at the NEXT Conference (Accenture Song) on multiple occasions; over 150 keynotes across five continents and 40+ countries Writing published in The Times, Quartz, Wired, Fast Company, the Guardian, and Google Think Quarterly; documentary work for BBC Radio 4 Graduate, University of Cambridge; began career at the features desk of The Times Biography Most organisations study their own customers closely. David Mattin’s core argument, developed during a decade leading trends intelligence at TrendWatching, is that the more useful signal lies elsewhere – in the moves leading businesses and disruptive startups are making to redefine what those customers consider normal. That argument found its fullest expression in Trend-Driven Innovation (Wiley), which made a counter-intuitive case: to anticipate what customers will want next, stop looking at customers and start tracking the businesses already reshaping their expectations. The underlying framework rests on a philosophical claim that runs through all of his work: human needs are fundamentally stable across decades, even as technology accelerates. New trends emerge when a technology or business innovation unlocks a new way to serve a need that was always there. Track those needs, observe which innovations are serving them, and the expectation gaps that matter become visible before competitors act. His current work extends that discipline into the era of AI. At Global Macro Investor, one of the world’s leading independent research services for institutional allocators, he serves as Technology Lead; he co-founded The Exponentialist alongside macro investor Raoul Pal. That institutional context means his analysis of emerging technology is regularly tested against the demands of hedge funds, pension funds, and family offices – not just conference audiences. The NEXT Conference (Accenture Song) has invited him to open the event on multiple occasions; he has delivered over 150 keynotes across five continents for clients including Meta, McKinsey, Google, Mastercard, Unilever, and Audi. His writing has appeared in The Times, Quartz, Wired, and Google Think Quarterly, and he has produced documentary work for BBC Radio 4. He read at Cambridge and began his career at the features desk of The Times. Key speaking topics AI and emerging technology strategy Consumer trends and expectation gap analysis Innovation strategy in a technology-driven market Scenario planning and strategic foresight Brand strategy and organisational culture in a transparent world The future of business and society in an era of exponential technology change Ideal for Strategy and innovation leadership teams evaluating medium-to-long-term technology bets CMOs and heads of customer experience navigating AI-driven shifts in consumer behaviour Boards and senior executive teams requiring a disciplined framework for separating technology signal from noise Investment professionals and corporate allocators seeking technology intelligence with commercial rigour Audience outcomes A named, replicable framework for identifying which emerging trends are likely to reshape customer expectations before competitors recognise them Clearer criteria for distinguishing technology-driven shifts that will prove durable from those that will not Industry-specific examples of how leading businesses have used expectation gap analysis to create competitive advantage A working understanding of how AI is changing the landscape of customer expectations – and which human needs remain stable enough to anchor innovation decisions A conceptual map of the technology convergences most likely to generate new commercial opportunities over the next five to ten years

Why organisations work with David McWilliams He publicly forecast the 2008 financial crisis, Brexit, and the rise of US trade nationalism – while the institutional consensus pointed elsewhere. That track record changes how boards receive his analysis. Money: A Story of Humanity was named Economics Book of the Year by the Financial Times and Book of the Year by The Economist in the same year. That combination of endorsements is rare and signals intellectual authority, not just popular appeal. He frames monetary and economic forces as historical and civilisational patterns rather than cyclical fluctuations, giving leadership teams a much longer analytical lens than conventional macro forecasting provides. His podcast has passed 40 million downloads across 130 countries – which means his frameworks have already been tested against non-economist audiences, and translate directly into board conversations without requiring prior economic knowledge. His festival Kilkenomics was described by the Financial Times as “simply, the best economics conference in the world” – a peer endorsement that signals the quality of dialogue he convenes and the seriousness with which other economists take his work. Biography highlights Adjunct Professor of Global Economics, Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin; Masters in Economics, College of Europe, Bruges Former economist at the Central Bank of Ireland; subsequently Senior European Economist at UBS and Head of Emerging Markets Research at Banque Nationale de Paris Author of six books, including Money: A Story of Humanity – named Economics Book of the Year by the Financial Times, Book of the Year by The Economist and The Observer, Waterstones Non-Fiction Book of the Year, and an international No.1 bestseller (2024) Weekly columnist, The Irish Times; regular contributor, Financial Times; contributor to TIME magazine TED2023 main stage speaker; “The Power of Unconventional Thinking” has exceeded one million views Founder of Kilkenomics; co-founder of the Dalkey Book Festival; World Economic Forum Young Global Leader Biography When organisations need economic foresight, they typically turn to the same institutions – banks, consultancies, research houses – whose consensus forecasts missed the 2008 crash, Brexit, and the rise of trade nationalism. David McWilliams, Adjunct Professor of Global Economics at Trinity College Dublin, was among the very small group who called all three in advance. He trained at Trinity College Dublin and the College of Europe in Bruges, and worked as an economist at the Central Bank of Ireland before moving to UBS and Banque Nationale de Paris, where he held senior roles in European and emerging markets research. His most recent book, Money: A Story of Humanity, argues that money is not a financial instrument but a civilisational technology – the primary force shaping power, politics, and social structure across five millennia of human history. Named Economics Book of the Year by the Financial Times and Book of the Year by The Economist in 2024, it became an international No.1 bestseller translated into 21 languages. Its central argument – that the stability of today’s monetary system is largely illusory, built on mechanisms most decision-makers do not understand – speaks directly to organisations navigating interest rate risk, currency exposure, or fiscal stress. A weekly columnist in The Irish Times and regular contributor to the Financial Times, McWilliams has built one of the broadest non-specialist economics audiences of any working economist. His podcast has passed 40 million downloads across 130 countries. His TED2023 main stage talk has exceeded one million views. The reach matters in leadership settings: his frameworks have been tested against audiences who are not economists, which means they translate directly into board conversations. He founded Kilkenomics on the premise that the best economic thinking happens when it is challenged from outside the discipline – a view the Financial Times endorsed by calling it “simply, the best economics conference in the world.” The same argument runs through his TED talk, “The Power of Unconventional Thinking”: that institutions which reward consensus produce the overconfidence that precedes every major economic failure. For leadership teams navigating the current period of monetary, geopolitical, and structural instability, that is not an abstract point. Key speaking topics Monetary systems and the history of money Global macroeconomic trends and forecasting Geopolitics and the political economy of trade Financial market dynamics and systemic risk The future of currencies and digital money Economic nationalism and the fracturing of global trade Unconventional thinking and institutional groupthink Ideal for Board-level and C-suite leadership conferences focused on strategic risk, long-range planning, or capital allocation in conditions of macro uncertainty Financial services and banking audiences navigating monetary policy, interest rate cycles, and regulatory change Corporate strategy and scenario planning forums requiring grounded macroeconomic and geopolitical context Economic policy and public affairs conferences where eurozone dynamics, EU-UK relations, or global trade architecture are on the agenda Audience outcomes A structured understanding of how monetary systems and debt cycles create predictable patterns of economic stress – and what indicators to watch for A longer historical lens for interpreting current macro conditions, including inflation, currency risk, and fiscal instability Practical context for the geopolitical and structural forces driving trade nationalism, eurozone tensions, and dollar dependency Confidence in interrogating economic consensus rather than deferring to it uncritically A framework for communicating economic complexity to non-specialist boards, investors, or stakeholders

Why organisations work with David Roberts His Exponential Leadership framework draws a hard diagnostic line between revolutionary and truly disruptive technology – giving senior teams a structured method for a decision most organisations currently make by instinct. He holds an MIT degree in Artificial Intelligence alongside a Harvard MBA, and built ventures backed by Kleiner Perkins, Vinod Khosla, and In-Q-Tel – his understanding of technology disruption is operational, not theoretical. As Vice President and two-time Director of Singularity University’s Graduate Studies Program, he has stress-tested these frameworks with senior leaders across sectors and geographies at scale. His background spans classified U.S. government programs – satellite systems, drone development, intelligence fusion centers – giving him credibility on high-stakes technological complexity that most innovation speakers cannot claim. Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley Business Schools have written and taught case studies on his leadership and decision-making – a level of academic scrutiny that validates the substance of the framework, not just its presentation. Biography highlights MIT B.S. Computer Science and Engineering, Distinguished Graduate, majored in Artificial Intelligence and Bio-Computer Engineering Harvard MBA Vice President and two-time Director of Singularity University’s Graduate Studies Program; Distinguished Faculty member Coined the term Exponential Leadership in 2010; founder of Exponential Leadership organisation Co-founder and President of FireDrop and Zaplet, acquired by MetricStream; ventures backed by Kleiner Perkins, Vinod Khosla, Cisco, Oracle, Accenture, and In-Q-Tel Chairman of 1QBit, one of the world’s first quantum computing software companies Career U.S. government officer: Air Force officer, decorated Special Agent; led development of satellite programs and the U.S. Drone Program; received personal citation from the Director of the FBI Media coverage in the Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine, USA Today, The New York Times, and CNN Biography Roberts studied AI at MIT before the term had reached the boardroom – under the guidance of Joseph Weizenbaum, creator of ELIZA and one of the discipline’s founding figures. That technical grounding was followed by a Goldman Sachs M&A posting and then a career in the U.S. government, where he led the development of satellite systems and the U.S. Drone Program across multiple national agencies. By the time he entered Silicon Valley, he had spent years building the technologies that other people were still learning to name. His venture career – FireDrop and Zaplet, backed by Kleiner Perkins and In-Q-Tel and ultimately acquired by MetricStream – gave him a second operational lens: what it takes to build and fund companies around genuinely disruptive technology, not merely competitive ones. That distinction became the foundation of his intellectual contribution. In 2010, working in a government context, he coined the term Exponential Leadership – a framework built on a single, testable claim: that the leadership models most organisations rely on were engineered for incremental change, and that they structurally fail when technologies start compressing competitive timelines from decades to years. Roberts went on to serve as Vice President and two-time Director of Singularity University’s Graduate Studies Program, reaching senior leaders across sectors with that framework. His talks do not stop at diagnosing the gap between technology speed and leadership capability – they give organisations a structured method for distinguishing truly disruptive technologies from merely revolutionary ones, and a leadership model calibrated to act on that distinction. Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley Business Schools have used his leadership and decision-making as the basis for case studies. His technology ventures have been covered by the Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine, and CNN. Key speaking topics Exponential Leadership Technology disruption and disruptive innovation theory Artificial intelligence and emerging technologies Quantum computing and advanced technology platforms Entrepreneurship and high-growth venture strategy Strategic decision-making in exponential environments Leadership development for technology-driven organisations Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership teams navigating technology-driven transformation Strategy and innovation leaders in sectors facing accelerating competitive disruption Corporate leadership development programmes seeking a framework for exponential change Boards and executive committees assessing long-term technology risk and strategic positioning Audience outcomes A working distinction between revolutionary and genuinely disruptive technology, with a framework for applying it to current strategic decisions Understanding of why traditional leadership models underperform in exponentially changing environments, and what a more effective model looks like in practice Clearer organisational language for discussing exponential change – moving beyond general awareness to specific, actionable diagnostic categories Exposure to emerging technologies – including AI, quantum computing, synthetic biology, and autonomous systems – framed through their leadership and strategic implications A practical foundation for aligning leadership behaviour and decision-making with the actual pace of technology change

Why organisations work with Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter His named frameworks – the “micromort” (a one-in-a-million unit of risk) and “microlife” – give non-technical leaders a usable vocabulary for discussing probability and relative risk. That vocabulary changes how organisations communicate uncertainty internally, not just in a keynote room. The Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, which he chaired at Cambridge, ran controlled experiments on how different ways of presenting uncertainty affect trust and decision quality. His approach is built on tested research into what actually changes how audiences respond to evidence. His two Pelican bestsellers, The Art of Statistics (2019) and The Art of Uncertainty (2024) – named Best Book of the Year by both Forbes and The Economist – demonstrate an unusually rare ability: making genuinely complex statistical argument accessible to any senior audience, not just specialists. He played a leading statistical role in several of the UK’s most consequential public inquiries, including the Shipman murders, the Bristol Royal Infirmary children’s heart surgery case, and the Infected Blood Inquiry. He understands firsthand what happens when statistical evidence is ignored, contested, or misread at institutional level. As a Non-Executive Director of the UK Statistics Authority, he operates at the intersection of regulatory scrutiny, data quality, and public accountability – experience that is directly relevant to any board discussion about evidence governance or public reporting. Biography highlights Emeritus Professor of Statistics, University of Cambridge; former Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk (2007-2018) Knighted 2014 for services to medical statistics; OBE 2006; Fellow of the Royal Society (elected 2005) President, Royal Statistical Society, 2017-2018; Non-Executive Director, UK Statistics Authority Author of The Art of Statistics (Pelican, 2019), published in eleven languages, and The Art of Uncertainty (Pelican, 2024), named Best Book of the Year by Forbes and The Economist Presented BBC Four documentaries Tails You Win: The Science of Chance and the award-winning Climate Change by Numbers; appeared on BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs (2022) Guest columnist for The Times, The Guardian, and New Scientist; host of podcast Risky Talk; leading statistical contributor to the Shipman, Bristol Royal Infirmary, and Infected Blood public inquiries Biography Statistical evidence routinely gets stripped of its uncertainty before it reaches the people who need to act on it. By the time a risk figure reaches a boardroom, its limitations have usually been smoothed over. David Spiegelhalter has spent his career examining why this happens, and what it costs. As Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk at Cambridge from 2007 to 2018, and then as Chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, Spiegelhalter ran research programmes designed to test how different ways of presenting uncertainty affect trust and decision quality. His framework treats the communication of uncertainty not as a messaging problem but as an evidence question – one with measurable consequences for how organisations are perceived and trusted. His work has extended into the most consequential institutional settings. He played a leading statistical role in the public inquiries into Harold Shipman’s murders, the Bristol Royal Infirmary children’s heart surgery case, and the Infected Blood Inquiry. As a Non-Executive Director of the UK Statistics Authority, he sits at the intersection of regulatory oversight, data quality, and public accountability. His two Pelican bestsellers – The Art of Statistics (2019) and The Art of Uncertainty (2024), named Best Book of the Year by Forbes and The Economist – show that serious statistical argument can reach a mainstream audience without dilution. The Art of Statistics has been published in eleven languages. Knighted in 2014 for services to medical statistics and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, Spiegelhalter brings a combination of research depth, regulatory experience, and communication skill that is genuinely rare. Key speaking topics Risk communication and statistical evidence Communicating uncertainty to non-technical audiences Data literacy and probabilistic thinking Trust in numbers and institutional credibility Statistical evidence in public policy Evidence-based decision-making Medical statistics and health data Ideal for Boards and non-executive directors with risk oversight responsibilities C-suite and senior leadership teams navigating complex evidence and forecasting Risk, compliance, and regulatory affairs functions Public sector leaders and policy teams that rely on statistical evidence Audience outcomes A clearer understanding of how to read and challenge statistical claims in briefings and reports Practical frameworks for communicating uncertainty to boards, regulators, or the public without losing credibility Sharper awareness of the specific ways risk data gets misrepresented, and the capacity to detect it A reframing of uncertainty as a communicable, manageable fact rather than a weakness to conceal Better questions to bring to any high-stakes decision that rests on probabilistic or statistical evidence

Why organisations work with David Thomas He lives in Cebu and works on active cross-border deal flow through Mabuhay Capital Corporation, the Philippines M&A advisory firm, so what he says about emerging Asia is being tested in live transactions rather than retrieved from a desk in London. His reading of Hong Kong and Greater China carries family proximity that other Asia speakers cannot match. His father, Michael Thomas QC CMG, was Attorney General of Hong Kong from 1983 to 1988 and contributed to the Sino-British Joint Declaration. His stepmother, Baroness Lydia Dunn, sat on Hong Kong’s Executive and Legislative Councils and went on to sit in the UK House of Lords. He has spent two decades running capital and investment delegations across emerging Asia, including the BRIC+ Program he co-founded (Brazil, Russia, India and China), so when he points at a corridor opening, he is usually already moving founders or capital through it. His North-South Corridor framework maps how capital and supply chains are moving between the Greater Bay Area, Hong Kong, ASEAN, Australia and New Zealand. It is the lane that most of the cross-border activity of the next decade will be priced along, and it is the lane that most Western strategy decks still skip. His Three Cups of Tea framework, drawn from the book of the same name, gives Western leaders a working method for how commercial trust actually builds in Asian markets: Stranger, Friend, Family, in that order. Biography highlights Author of Three Cups of Tea: A 3 Step Guide to Doing Business in China and Year of the Rat, alongside further writing on Asian commerce. Lived and worked in Hong Kong through the 1980s and 1990s; ran his own wealth management firm there from 1988 to 1995. Father Michael Thomas QC CMG, Attorney General of Hong Kong (1983–1988); stepmother Baroness Lydia Dunn, senior unofficial member of Hong Kong’s Executive Council and Legislative Council, and a UK House of Lords cross-bencher. Co-founder of the BRIC+ Program (2005–2010), running five years of Australian investment study tours into Brazil, Russia, India and China. Consultant to Mabuhay Capital Corporation (Philippines) on cross-border M&A and ASEAN capital flows. Founding President of the Australia China SME Association. Founder/CEO of Think Global Consulting. Graduate of the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business CEO Program in Beijing (2019). Has spoken at corporate events for Deloitte, Westpac, Telstra, DHL, BT Financial Group, RMA Australia and others across Asia, Australia, Europe and the UK. Biography Western boards are still reading Asia through a US-China lens. The next two decades of cross-border capital and supply chain activity will move along a different lane: the corridor connecting the Greater Bay Area and Hong Kong, down through the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia and broader ASEAN, to Australia and New Zealand. That lane is what David Thomas calls the North-South Corridor, and he has spent three decades inside it. That perspective begins with family. His father, Michael Thomas QC CMG, was Hong Kong’s Attorney General from 1983 to 1988 and contributed to the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration that determined the territory’s future. His stepmother, Baroness Lydia Dunn, was a senior member of Hong Kong’s Executive Council and went on to sit as a cross-bencher in the UK House of Lords from 1990 to 2010. David lived in Hong Kong through the 1980s and 1990s and ran his own wealth management firm there from 1988 to 1995. He made his first trip to Beijing in 1989. What followed was three decades of running capital and trade work across emerging Asia. He co-founded the BRIC+ Program, an Australian investment delegation that ran for five consecutive years into Brazil, Russia, India and China and gave senior financial advisers structured access to all four markets simultaneously. His book Three Cups of Tea introduced a model now used by Western executives entering Asian markets: relationships build through three stages, Stranger, Friend and Family, and the real commercial work begins only at the third. He served as founding President of the Australia China SME Association and founded Think Global Consulting. He works with Mabuhay Capital Corporation on active cross-border M&A and capital flows across the Philippines and ASEAN. He is a graduate of the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business CEO Program in Beijing, and recent client work has included executive briefings for senior freight and logistics teams gathered in Ho Chi Minh City and curated investor introductions for Australian and New Zealand founders raising into Asia-Pacific capital. Key speaking topics Geopolitics and the North-South Corridor ASEAN as the next commercial growth axis Cross-border capital flow between developed markets and emerging Asia Supply chain repositioning under US-China decoupling Cross-cultural negotiation and trust architecture in Asian markets Strategic foresight on Asia for Western boards Ideal for CEOs, CSOs and board directors with current or planned commercial exposure to Hong Kong, Greater China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia or broader ASEAN. Investment committees, family offices and venture firms allocating capital across the Greater Bay Area, ASEAN and Australia/New Zealand. Corporate development, M&A and market entry teams running cross-border transactions or joint ventures in emerging Asia. Industry associations and trade bodies briefing members on supply chain risk and the capital corridor connecting developed markets to ASEAN. Audience outcomes A working map of the North-South Corridor and where capital, supply chains and political risk are actually being repriced. A method for building commercial trust in Asian markets (Stranger, Friend, Family), and a clear view of why transactional Western approaches consistently fail there. A sharper read of US-China-ASEAN dynamics and where they intersect with their own organisation’s market and supplier exposure. An applied frame for market entry, joint venture and capital partner decisions across the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia and broader ASEAN.

Why organisations work with Dean van Leeuwen His Grey Elephant framework gives boards a named, structured radar for seven megatrends – distinguishing the forces that demand a strategic response from background noise and positioning leaders to act before disruption arrives, not after His McKinsey consulting background means the output of his foresight work is strategic choices, not predictions – he applies commercial strategy discipline to futures thinking in a way that most futurists do not His book “Quest: Competitive Advantage and the Art of Leadership in the 21st Century” codifies a three-quality leadership model drawn from case research on high-performing organisations, giving teams a shared model they can apply after the event He teaches in executive leadership programmes at Saïd Business School, Henley Business School, and CEDEP, Fontainebleau – his frameworks are tested against senior leadership cohorts, not developed solely for conference stages He co-hosts the “Elephants in the Boardroom” podcast, a named monthly research output that applies the Grey Elephant framework to live signals – keeping his content current and substantiated rather than recycled from a fixed talk Biography highlights Co-founder of TomorrowToday Global, a futurist and strategy consultancy operating across more than 50 countries; founder of TomorrowToday UK Former consultant at McKinsey and Company, with work that included advising on South Africa’s largest bank merger Executive lecturer at Saïd Business School (University of Oxford), Henley Business School, and CEDEP, Fontainebleau Author of “Quest: Competitive Advantage and the Art of Leadership in the 21st Century” (self-published, available on Amazon) TEDx speaker MSc in Business Strategy, Henley Management College; undergraduate background in economics and law Named clients include L’Oreal, Anglo American, BNP Paribas, GSK, John Lewis Partnership, and Deloitte Biography Most organisations have access to trend data. What they are missing is a structured way to turn that data into decisions their boards will commit to and their teams will execute. Dean van Leeuwen, co-founder of TomorrowToday Global, has spent two decades building exactly that – a practical bridge between foresight and strategic action. His most distinctive intellectual contribution is the Grey Elephant framework, a proprietary megatrend radar developed by TomorrowToday and built around seven named forces identified as highly probable, high-impact, and consistently underacted upon. The framework helps leadership teams name the forces they can already see coming and design responses before the window closes. He also applies the BANI diagnostic – Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible – as a lens for teams operating in conditions where cause and effect no longer follow predictable patterns. Earlier in his career, he worked at McKinsey and Company, where his work included advising on South Africa’s largest bank merger. That grounding in commercial strategy discipline is what separates his foresight practice from abstract futurism where the output is decisions and trade-offs, not trend catalogues. He now teaches in senior executive programmes at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, Henley Business School, and CEDEP in Fontainebleau. He is the author of “Quest: Competitive Advantage and the Art of Leadership in the 21st Century,” which decodes what leaders at high-performing organisations actually do through a three-quality model grounded in case research. He co-hosts the “Elephants in the Boardroom” podcast with Graeme Codrington, applying the Grey Elephant framework monthly to live signals across geopolitics, technology, and the global economy. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and megatrend analysis Leadership decision-making under uncertainty Innovation as organisational capability Strategic transformation and competitive advantage The BANI operating environment Antifragility and organisational resilience Human-technology collaboration Ideal for Boards and C-suite leadership teams facing strategic inflection points, technology shifts, or competitive disruption Strategy, transformation, and innovation directors responsible for long-range planning Organisations navigating sector disruption, regulatory change, or structural market shifts Executive education cohorts focused on future-ready leadership and strategic foresight Audience outcomes A named framework for distinguishing megatrends that demand a strategic response from trends that can safely be monitored Shared language for leading teams in conditions where cause and effect are nonlinear and outcomes are hard to predict Practical tools for converting trend intelligence into decisions that commit direction and resources A clearer view of the specific forces most likely to reshape their competitive environment in the near and medium term Improved confidence in making strategic choices under uncertainty without waiting for conditions to stabilise

Why organisations work with Deborah Nas Her book Design Things That Make Sense sets out a codified methodology: 24 strategies to strengthen what technology offers users and 13 to reduce the resistance that causes adoption to fail. It gives innovation teams a structured diagnostic rather than a set of principles to interpret on their own. She founded the Centre for Quantum and Society at QuantumDelta NL – making her one of very few people who can address quantum technology’s ethical, legal, and organisational implications in terms senior teams can act on before the technology reaches commercial scale. Her position leading multidisciplinary research teams at TU Delft – on mobility futures, quantum societal readiness, and energy transition – means her perspective is shaped by live scientific frontier work, not commentary on published trends. She is on the investment committee of InnovationQuarter Capital, a €143 million deep tech fund, and on the supervisory board of Hardt Hyperloop – direct sight lines into where deep tech investment is moving, not just where it currently stands. Her starting point is the psychology of technology resistance – the reason most implementation initiatives stall – which is the question most organisations have not structured an answer to and the one that most directly explains expensive innovation failures. Biography highlights Professor of Strategic Design for Technology-based Innovation, Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, TU Delft Initiative Lead and founder, Centre for Quantum and Society, QuantumDelta NL Author, Design Things That Make Sense (BIS Publishers) – a practitioner framework of 37 named design strategies for technology-based product innovation Visiting professor, Politecnico di Milano Investment committee member, InnovationQuarter Capital (€143 million deep tech fund); supervisory board member, Hardt Hyperloop MSc Industrial Design Engineering with honours, TU Delft; 16 years co-founding and running a strategic innovation agency Biography Technology that works and technology that people will actually use are two different achievements. Deborah Nas, Professor of Strategic Design for Technology-based Innovation at TU Delft’s Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, has spent 25 years studying the gap between them. She began at Philips and KPN, then spent 16 years co-founding and running a strategic innovation agency before anchoring her work in research and teaching at TU Delft. Her core contribution is a codified methodology: 24 design strategies to strengthen what a technology product offers and 13 to reduce the user resistance that causes adoption to fail. Published in Design Things That Make Sense (BIS Publishers), the framework draws on consumer psychology and is structured for direct use by product teams and innovation managers. She also teaches it as a visiting professor at Politecnico di Milano. She has extended this work into the next generation of technology adoption challenges. As founder and Innovation Lead of the Centre for Quantum and Society at QuantumDelta NL, she is developing the ethical, legal, and societal frameworks organisations will need before quantum technology reaches commercial scale. She is also on the supervisory board of Hardt Hyperloop and on the investment committee of InnovationQuarter Capital, a €143 million deep tech fund. Organisations that work with her are not typically looking for enthusiasm about what emerging technology can do. They want a structured answer to why technology investments fail at the point of adoption – and a methodology that gives their teams a way to act on it. Key speaking topics Technology adoption and consumer resistance Human-centred design for technology-based innovation AI strategy and organisational readiness Quantum technology and societal implications Deep tech ecosystem and investment landscape Future of work and intelligent systems Innovation strategy for established organisations Ideal for Chief Innovation Officers, R&D leads, and product strategy teams working with emerging technologies Boards and senior leadership teams making investment decisions on AI, quantum, or deep tech Corporate innovation functions examining why technology projects stall or fail at adoption Government and public sector bodies engaging with the organisational and societal implications of advanced technologies Audience outcomes A clear framework for understanding why technology-based products fail at adoption – and what design decisions change that outcome Working familiarity with the Tech Design Strategies methodology: 24 strategies to strengthen product benefits and 13 to reduce user resistance Practical orientation to how AI and quantum technologies will affect their specific industry or sector Ability to separate technological capability from technology adoption as distinct strategic problems requiring different organisational responses Insight into how organisations and investors at the deep tech frontier are currently making decisions about technology bets

Why organisations work with Diana Renner Her book Not Knowing (CMI Management Book of the Year, translated into 15+ languages) makes a specific, counterintuitive argument: that the pressure to project expertise and have answers actively impairs leadership in genuinely complex situations. This is a diagnosis most leadership development programmes avoid, and a conversation senior leadership teams rarely have with rigour. She works at the intersection of three distinct bodies of knowledge – adaptive leadership, adult development theory, and process oriented psychology – a combination that addresses not only what organisations need to do differently, but how leaders must develop as people. This is not available from single-discipline practitioners. Her guest faculty roles at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and the University of Texas LBJ School of Government confirm that her frameworks hold up in rigorous, peer-reviewed executive education settings alongside practitioner application. Through the Uncharted Leadership Institute and programme partnerships with Melbourne Business School, Monash Business School, the University of Adelaide, and the Australian Institute of Police Management, she has built and tested leadership development approaches across commercial, government, and community contexts at scale. Her personal biography – leaving Romania in 1987, professional reinvention across law, refugee advocacy, and leadership development – gives the Not Knowing framework lived authority that purely academic treatments of the same topic cannot match. Biography highlights Co-author of Not Knowing: The Art of Turning Uncertainty into Opportunity (LID Publishing) – CMI Management Book of the Year 2015; translated into 15+ languages Co-author of Not Doing: The Art of Effortless Action (LID Publishing, 2018) Director and co-founder, Uncharted Leadership Institute (est. 2016); creator, Not Knowing Lab Senior Lecturer, Monash University; adjunct lecturer, University of Adelaide; associate, Melbourne Business School Guest faculty, Harvard University Kennedy School of Government and University of Texas LBJ School of Government 2017 Monash University Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award (Global Challenges Honours Program teaching team) Biography Diana Renner’s book Not Knowing: The Art of Turning Uncertainty into Opportunity, co-written with Steven D’Souza, won the Chartered Management Institute’s Management Book of the Year in 2015. Its thesis is direct: the pressure to project expertise and certainty is often what makes complex adaptive challenges harder to navigate, not easier. Translated into more than fifteen languages, it has become a reference for leadership development practitioners and senior teams working with genuine strategic uncertainty. The book draws on a distinction most leadership frameworks collapse: technical problems can be solved with existing expertise, while adaptive challenges require new thinking and development. Renner’s work through the Uncharted Leadership Institute, which she co-founded in 2016, is built around helping senior leaders recognise which they are facing – and develop the capacity to engage productively with the latter. Her practice draws on three distinct disciplines: adaptive leadership, adult development theory, and process oriented psychology. Together, these address not only what organisations need to do differently, but how leaders need to develop as people to lead well in conditions of genuine uncertainty. Programme partnerships with Melbourne Business School, Monash Business School, the University of Adelaide, and the Australian Institute of Police Management have tested these frameworks across commercial, government, and community contexts. Renner holds a Senior Lectureship at Monash University and has served as guest faculty at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and the University of Texas LBJ School of Government. Her second book, Not Doing: The Art of Effortless Action (2018), extends the Not Knowing argument into the territory of executive effectiveness – examining how excessive busyness and compulsive doing undermine the quality of leadership in complex environments. Key speaking topics Adaptive leadership in uncertainty and complexity Not Knowing – leading beyond expertise Not Doing – effortless action and the limits of busyness Distinguishing adaptive from technical challenges Adult development theory and leadership growth Deliberately developmental organisational cultures Complexity theory and strategic resilience Ideal for CEOs and C-suite executives leading organisations through complex change or strategic inflection points CHROs and heads of leadership development designing senior leadership programmes Senior executives and leadership teams in government and public sector organisations Board-level strategy and scenario planning forums Audience outcomes A clear distinction between technical problems and adaptive challenges, with practical language for applying it in real organisational conversations Greater self-awareness about how the pressure to have answers shapes individual leadership behaviour and team dynamics Practical frameworks from Not Knowing and Not Doing for leading through uncertainty without forcing premature resolution A more explicit understanding of how adult development theory applies to the daily practice of leadership Approaches to building team and organisational cultures that can hold complexity and sustain productive engagement over time

Why organisations work with Diego Gilardoni He reads China the way a board needs it read: as a commercial relationship shaped by political signalling, cultural code and reputational exposure, not as a marketing opportunity that can be project-managed. He held a seat on the International Advisory Board of the National Image Research Centre at Tsinghua University, which gave him direct line of sight into how Chinese institutions think about Western corporate behaviour, a vantage point few external advisors actually have. His Oxford postgraduate work focused specifically on global reputation and corporate diplomacy, so he can move a leadership team from “we have a public affairs problem” to “we have an operating-model problem” without the usual translation costs. His strategic foresight training spans the Institute for the Future, Kairos Future, the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies and the Oxford Scenarios Programme, which means scenarios for the room are built on recognised methodology rather than improvised futures language. Former broadcast journalist, current advisor, working trilingually across English, French and Italian, with lived professional experience across Europe, the US and China. The geopolitical reading carries the texture of someone who has actually operated inside these systems. Biography highlights Author, Decoding China: Cross-cultural strategies for successful business with the Chinese (2017). Former member, International Advisory Board, National Image Research Centre, Tsinghua University, Beijing. Former Visiting Professor in global business and corporate diplomacy, University of International Business and Economics (UIBE), Beijing. Postgraduate Diploma in Global Business, University of Oxford; Oxford Scenarios Programme, Saïd Business School. Strategic foresight certifications from the Institute for the Future (Palo Alto), Kairos Future Academy (Stockholm) and the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies. Contributor to the South China Morning Post and TEDx speaker on cross-cultural business. Biography The rules-based global economy that European and North American boards were trained inside no longer holds. China is a strategic relationship, not a market. Supply chains are political instruments. Reputation in one jurisdiction now creates legal and commercial exposure in another. Senior teams are still making capital decisions with a mental model from a different era. Diego’s work sits inside that gap. His Oxford postgraduate diploma in global business focused on reputation and corporate diplomacy, his subsequent foresight training runs through the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, Kairos Future in Stockholm and the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies. The methodology is recognised. The application is commercial. China is the spine of his expertise. He served on the International Advisory Board of the National Image Research Centre at Tsinghua University and was Visiting Professor in global business and corporate diplomacy at UIBE in Beijing. Decoding China (2017) is the working manual for executives who need to operate inside the Chinese commercial system rather than perform competence at distance. Before the advisory work, he spent the first 15 years of his career as a journalist with Switzerland’s national broadcaster, reporting from Europe and the United States. He writes for the South China Morning Post and has authored two earlier books in Italian, one on the reputational fallout of the Swiss banks’ WWII assets crisis, one on US foreign policy in a multipolar world. The reputation thread runs the length of the career. Key speaking topics Geopolitics and global business in a fragmented order China strategy and cross-cultural commercial decision-making Corporate diplomacy and reputation across jurisdictions Strategic foresight and scenario thinking for boards Cultural intelligence as a board-level capability Strategic narrative and executive communication Ideal for CEOs, boards and executive committees with material China or wider Asia exposure Heads of strategy, corporate affairs and public affairs in multinational organisations Risk, supply chain and corporate development leaders re-pricing geopolitical exposure Leadership programmes inside global financial services, industrials, luxury and hospitality groups Audience outcomes A sharper read of where the China relationship is going and what that means for specific commercial decisions in the room. A working vocabulary for corporate diplomacy that closes the gap between public affairs, strategy and operations. Scenario logic the leadership team can take back into capital allocation and supply chain decisions. Concrete cross-cultural cues for negotiating, partnering and managing reputation across the China-West divide.