Teknologins framtid

Why organisations work with Brent Hoberman He has built and exited two unicorns, lastminute.com and Made.com, and can speak to scaling and to failure with equal credit. Through Founders Factory and firstminute capital, he has first-hand visibility of more than 400 early-stage companies and 12 seed-stage unicorns, giving corporate audiences a live read on where technology is moving. His corporate partner list at Founders Factory, including The Guardian, L’Oreal, easyJet, Aviva and Reckitt Benckiser, means he speaks the language of incumbent strategy as well as founder strategy. As Co-Chair of Enterprise Britain and an adviser to successive UK Prime Ministers, he frames growth inside the real policy and capital conditions leaders operate under. He is candid about what went wrong at Made.com, which gives senior audiences a working case study in IPO timing, governance and post-pandemic demand rather than a highlight reel. Biography highlights Co-founder and former CEO of lastminute.com; sold to Sabre for approximately $1.1bn in 2005. Co-founder of Made.com; founding chairman until shortly before its 2021 IPO. Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Founders Factory, Founders Forum and firstminute capital. Appointed CBE in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to entrepreneurship. Co-Chair of Enterprise Britain; has advised multiple UK Prime Ministers on entrepreneurship policy. Non-executive director roles have included Guardian Media Group, TalkTalk, Shazam, Time Out and The Economist. Biography Lastminute.com went public in March 2000, weeks before the dot-com market broke. The IPO was 43 times oversubscribed and remains one of the fastest company listings in European history. Brent Hoberman was its co-founder and CEO, and he ran the business through the crash and on to a $1.1bn sale to Sabre in 2005. That arc, from frenzy to survival to exit, sits under almost everything he says on stage. Since then he has built three platforms that back other founders. Founders Factory runs corporate-backed accelerators with partners including The Guardian, L’Oreal, easyJet, Aviva, Marks and Spencer and Reckitt Benckiser. firstminute capital is a global seed fund backed by more than 130 unicorn founders. Founders Forum is the community that connects the two. The combined portfolio gives him a working view across several hundred early-stage technology companies at once. He also co-founded Made.com in 2010 and was its founding chairman. He stepped down before the 2021 IPO, having questioned its timing, and the company later entered administration. He uses that outcome directly in corporate sessions on governance, category demand and IPO readiness, which is rare among founders at his level. Outside operating roles, he co-chairs Enterprise Britain with Stephen Fitzpatrick and has advised successive UK Prime Ministers on small business, scale-up and entrepreneurship policy. He was appointed CBE in 2015 for services to entrepreneurship. The policy work matters on the platform because it lets him connect founder behaviour, capital markets and government posture in a way most technology speakers cannot. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and founder psychology Scaling consumer internet and marketplace businesses Venture investing and early-stage capital Corporate innovation and startup partnerships AI and consumer technology trends UK and European tech policy Ideal for Boards and executive committees reviewing innovation strategy Corporate venture and M and A teams working with startups CEO and founder gatherings inside private equity and VC portfolios Senior leadership offsites at consumer, retail, media and financial services firms Audience outcomes A clear read on which early-stage technology categories are attracting serious capital and why A practical view of how corporates get useful work out of startup partnerships, from someone who structures them Frank lessons from a founder who has been through a record-breaking IPO, a billion-dollar exit and a public company collapse A sharper sense of how UK and European policy, capital and talent conditions shape what boards can realistically plan for

Why organisations work with Brett King He built one of the first mobile-only banks. Bank 4.0 is grounded in operating experience at Moven, not theory borrowed from outside the industry. He has briefed governments and regulators, including advising the Obama administration on fintech policy, and continues to advise central banks and regulators on technology transformation. Two of his books, Augmented and Bank 4.0, became sustained international bestsellers, with Bank 4.0 recognised as Top Book by a Foreign Author in Russia in 2019 under a PwC-audited process. Breaking Banks and The Futurists give him a continuous, current read on what fintech operators, regulators and technologists are actually doing, week by week, in more than 180 countries. His thesis stretches beyond banking. The Rise of Technosocialism, co-authored with Richard Petty, sets out four scenarios for an economy reshaped by AI, automation, inequality and climate, which makes him a useful voice for boards thinking beyond their own sector. Biography highlights Founder of Moven, an early mobile-only banking startup launched in New York in 2011. Author of Bank 4.0, Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane, Bank 2.0, Bank 3.0, Breaking Banks and The Rise of Technosocialism (with Dr. Richard Petty). Inducted into the Fintech Hall of Fame by CB Insights in 2020. Host of Breaking Banks on VoiceAmerica and co-host of The Futurists podcast. Advised the Obama administration on fintech policy; advises bank boards and regulators internationally. Keynote stages include TED, Web Summit, The Economist events, SIBOS, Singularity University, IBM World of Watson and CES. Biography Most large banks were designed around branches, products and quarterly earnings. The industry now competes with software companies, payments networks, embedded-finance providers and increasingly with AI agents that sit between customers and money. The question for boards is no longer whether to digitise. It is what kind of institution they want on the other side of the next decade. Brett King has been close to that question for fifteen years. He founded Moven in New York in 2011, one of the first mobile-only banks, and used the experience as the basis for Bank 4.0: Banking Everywhere, Never at a Bank, which mapped how value, distribution and trust move when the branch is no longer the unit of banking. The book was named Top Book by a Foreign Author in Russia in 2019, under a PwC-audited award process, and remains widely cited inside the industry. His range stretches further than banking. Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane tracked how AI, sensors, biotechnology and smart infrastructure compound into a different operating environment for business and society. The Rise of Technosocialism, co-written with Richard Petty, takes the argument forward, setting out four scenarios for a world in which automation, inequality and climate force political economies to rewire. That body of work is why central banks, regulators and global financial institutions invite him into rooms where the question is structural, not tactical. Two podcasts keep his perspective current. Breaking Banks, which he hosts on VoiceAmerica, has become a reference point for fintech operators worldwide. The Futurists, which he co-hosts, gives him a regular working dialogue with technologists and researchers across AI, space, biotech and energy. His induction into the Fintech Hall of Fame in 2020 reflects the operating record, not the podcast catalogue. Key speaking topics The future of banking and financial services Embedded finance and the platform economics of money Artificial intelligence and the automated economy Fintech, regulation and the role of central banks AI, inequality and climate as forces reshaping political economy Long-range technology foresight for boards and regulators Ideal for Bank, insurer and asset-manager boards and executive committees setting digital and AI strategy Central bankers, financial regulators and policy bodies working on payments, digital assets and AI governance Large enterprises whose business model is exposed to fintech, embedded payments or AI-driven disintermediation Conferences and summits in financial services, technology and futures-of-industry programmes Audience outcomes A sharper read on where banking, payments and customer trust are moving over the next decade. A grounded view, from an operator, of what works and what fails when incumbents try to digitise. Named scenarios for how AI, automation and climate may reshape labour markets, capital and policy. A practical agenda for board-level discussions on AI deployment, fintech partnerships and regulatory exposure.

Why organisations work with Brian Cox His work on the ATLAS experiment at CERN places him inside the research that underlies quantum computing, particle detection, and the most advanced engineering challenges of our time – not adjacent to it. The Quantum Universe, Why Does E=mc2?, and Universal have collectively sold over a million copies: evidence that he can make abstract, rigorous science genuinely comprehensible to non-specialist audiences at scale. His Horizons tour set two Guinness World Records for science communication, reaching over 400,000 people across three continents – a proof of audience engagement no management consultant or futurist can match. As UN Champion for Space (appointed October 2025), he connects scientific frontier thinking directly to global governance, sustainability, and long-term civilisational risk – giving boards a frame that goes well beyond conventional technology briefings. He has presented at the World Economic Forum in Davos and in China, and headlined Infosecurity Europe 2025, demonstrating that his material holds up to scrutiny from the most demanding professional audiences. Biography highlights Professor of Particle Physics, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester; Royal Society Professor for Public Engagement in Science Member, ATLAS collaboration, CERN Large Hadron Collider; formerly co-spokesperson, FP420 R&D project at CERN (2004–2009) Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS); CBE for services to the promotion of science Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize (2012); Institute of Physics Kelvin Medal and Prize (2010); Royal Television Society Best Presenter (2011) Author of six popular science books with collective sales exceeding one million copies, including The Quantum Universe and Why Does E=mc2? Guinness World Records holder for live science touring; Horizons: A 21st Century Space Odyssey reached over 400,000 people across three continents Appointed UN Champion for Space by UNOOSA, October 2025 Presenter of multiple Peabody and BAFTA-recognised BBC series including Wonders of the Solar System, Wonders of the Universe, and The Planets Biography Brian Cox holds a chair in particle physics at the University of Manchester and works on the ATLAS experiment at CERN – the collaboration responsible for some of the most significant experimental results in the history of physics. That grounding in active research is what separates him from science communicators who translate the work of others. He is doing the work himself. His books – Why Does E=mc2?, The Quantum Universe, Universal: A Guide to the Cosmos – have collectively sold over a million copies. Each one takes a genuine problem in physics, works through it without condescension, and arrives at implications that reward careful attention. The Royal Society awarded him the Michael Faraday Prize for exactly this quality: rigorous science made genuinely accessible. Live, Cox operates at a scale no other scientist in the world matches. His Horizons tour set two Guinness World Records, reaching over 400,000 people across the UK, North America, Australia, and Europe. These are not public lectures; they are full arena productions using state-of-the-art visual technology, exploring quantum theory, black holes, the origin of life, and the nature of time. In October 2025, the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs designated him UN Champion for Space – recognising his ability to connect frontier physics to the practical challenges of global governance and sustainability. For boards and senior leadership teams, Cox offers something specific: a working physicist’s account of where the science actually is, what it makes possible, and what it rules out. At the World Economic Forum, at Infosecurity Europe, at TED – the audiences are demanding, and the material holds. The value is not inspiration in the abstract; it is the kind of rigorous, first-principles framing that improves the quality of strategic decisions. Key speaking topics Particle physics and the Large Hadron Collider Quantum mechanics and its practical implications Space technology and global infrastructure The origin and structure of the universe Scientific reasoning and evidence-based decision-making The future of space exploration and governance Science communication and public understanding of technology Ideal for Boards and C-suite teams seeking first-principles scientific context for technology strategy CTOs, CIOs, and transformation leads navigating quantum computing and advanced physics-derived technologies Global leadership summits and flagship corporate conferences requiring authoritative, high-profile keynote presence Organisations in aerospace, defence, energy, financial services, or cybersecurity where physical science is directly relevant to competitive strategy Audience outcomes A clearer mental model of what quantum mechanics, particle physics, and space science actually mean for the technologies being built now Confidence in reasoning about scientific uncertainty and frontier research – rather than deferring entirely to technical specialists A broader frame for long-term strategic thinking, grounded in the timescales and constraints of physical reality rather than market cycles Greater appreciation of evidence-based reasoning as a decision-making discipline, not just a scientific one Understanding of how space-based infrastructure and emerging physics-derived technologies intersect with sustainability, governance, and geopolitical risk

Why organisations work with Brian Forde He briefed President Obama on bitcoin in 2014 and shaped the early federal posture on digital currency, so buyers get someone who understands how US policy actually gets made, not a commentator guessing at it. He built the MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative from the ground up, convening cryptographers, economists, and distributed systems researchers. Few speakers can explain the engineering and the regulatory stakes in the same sentence. He teaches the MIT Sloan blockchain curriculum alongside Christian Catalini and Simon Johnson, which keeps his material connected to current research rather than recycled decks. He has operated, not just advised: he co-founded a telecoms company that served a quarter of a million Nicaraguans, and now runs Numero, a campaign finance technology firm. He speaks about adoption from the perspective of someone who has shipped. He ran for US Congress on a crypto-funded campaign that drew legal and political attacks in real time. On questions of public trust, optics, and compliance, he brings direct scar tissue. Biography highlights Co-founder and former Director, Digital Currency Initiative, MIT Media Lab. Senior Lecturer, MIT Sloan School of Management, teaching blockchain technologies. Former Senior Advisor for Mobile and Data Innovation, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Young Global Leader, World Economic Forum; contributor to the WEF agenda. Co-founder and CEO of Numero; co-founder and former CEO of Llamadas, S.A. in Nicaragua. 2018 Democratic candidate for US Congress in California’s 45th District; raised a record sum in cryptocurrency donations. Biography Most boards hear about blockchain from a vendor or a lobbyist. Brian Forde is one of the few people who has been the White House official writing the early rules, the MIT researcher auditing the code, and the founder trying to raise money inside the regulatory grey zone. He briefed President Obama on bitcoin in 2014, when the federal government was still deciding whether to treat it as currency, commodity, or threat. At the MIT Media Lab he co-founded and led the Digital Currency Initiative, assembling cryptographers, economists, and distributed systems researchers to study how digital currencies could work at scale. The initiative seeded research that now underpins how central banks, custodians, and exchanges think about settlement risk. He now teaches the subject at MIT Sloan alongside Christian Catalini and Simon Johnson. His operator record matters as much as the policy work. He co-founded Llamadas, S.A., a low-cost internet phone company that served more than a quarter of a million Nicaraguans after his Peace Corps service. He currently runs Numero, building campaign finance software for political campaigns. In 2018 he ran for US Congress in California’s 45th District and accepted cryptocurrency donations, raising more in crypto than any previous American candidate and attracting a political attack campaign that tested how the mainstream handles digital-asset politics. The value he brings to a room is that combination. Audiences get engineering precision, Washington insight, and founder scar tissue from a single speaker who can answer the question most keynotes dodge: what does a serious organisation actually do on Monday morning. Key speaking topics Blockchain adoption in regulated industries Digital currency and central bank policy Bitcoin and the future of payments Emerging technology and public policy Government regulation of digital assets Innovation inside large institutions Ideal for Boards and executive committees at banks, asset managers, and payments firms weighing digital asset strategy. Chief technology officers, chief innovation officers, and heads of strategy assessing blockchain pilots. Chief compliance officers and general counsel preparing for evolving digital asset regulation. Government and public sector leaders building digital infrastructure and data policy. Audience outcomes A clear map of where blockchain is genuinely useful in financial services, healthcare, government, and supply chain, and where it is not. A working understanding of how US and global digital asset regulation is being shaped, and what that means for near-term decisions. Practical framing for how to evaluate and resource a blockchain or tokenisation pilot without over-committing. Perspective on the political and reputational dimensions of digital asset adoption, informed by direct campaign experience. Sharper questions to take back to internal technology, legal, and risk teams.

Why organisations work with Brian Keating His argument about incentive systems is not borrowed from management theory. He conceived a Nobel-contending experiment, experienced a public retraction, served as a Nobel nominator, and co-founded the Simons Observatory: a $100M project involving 380+ scientists across 40+ institutions. The authority is operational. Losing the Nobel Prize (W.W. Norton, 2018) makes a specific structural case that endorsers including Brian Greene and reviewers in Nature, Science, and Scientific American have engaged with seriously: the systems organisations use to reward individuals actively prevent the inclusive, rigorous, collaborative work that produces real discovery. Into the Impossible (2021) draws from first-person conversations with 11 Nobel laureates to identify the specific mental habits (disciplined curiosity, tolerance for failure, sustained collaboration), that distinguish people who achieve genuine breakthroughs from those who optimise for recognition. He gives boards and senior leaders a precise structural vocabulary for why innovation programmes underperform: not insufficient ambition or budget, but reward architecture that was never designed for collaborative, long-horizon work. As co-director of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for the Human Imagination at UC San Diego, he bridges frontier scientific thinking and the broader question of how organisations cultivate the conditions for original thought. Biography highlights Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics, Center for Astrophysics & Space Sciences, University of California San Diego Principal Investigator and co-founder, Simons Observatory – a four-telescope array in Chile’s Atacama Desert involving 380+ scientists and engineers from 40+ institutions, with approximately $100M in funding raised Inventor of the BICEP (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) telescope; co-leads the POLARBEAR2 and Simons Array experiments Author of Losing the Nobel Prize (W.W. Norton, 2018), reviewed in Nature, Science, and Scientific American, and endorsed by theoretical physicist Brian Greene Author of Into the Impossible (2021) and Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner (2025), drawing on first-person interviews with Nobel laureates across physics, economics, and beyond U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers; Fellow of the American Physical Society; Buchalter Cosmology Prize; 2022 Legend of Flight, International Air & Space Hall of Fame Host of the Into the Impossible podcast – long-form conversations with Nobel laureates, scientists, and technologists – with more than 200,000 subscribers Biography Organisations that fund innovation but reward speed tend to get neither. The dynamic is structural, not cultural: when recognition flows to individuals who move fast and announce loudly, the slow, rigorous, collaborative work that genuine breakthroughs require becomes a career liability. Brian Keating has spent more than two decades inside that tension. Not observing it from the outside, but navigating it at the frontier of experimental cosmology. Keating is the Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of California San Diego and Principal Investigator of the Simons Observatory, a four-telescope array in Chile’s Atacama Desert that he co-founded in 2016. The project grew to involve more than 380 scientists and engineers from over 40 institutions, with Keating raising approximately $100 million in funding from the Simons Foundation. Keating teaches undergraduate quantum mechanics at UC San Diego in the same weeks he records long-form conversations with Nobel laureates on the Into the Impossible podcast. Guests have included Roger Penrose, Frank Wilczek, Sara Seager, and Andrei Linde. Active experimental research alongside sustained engagement with the field’s most consequential thinkers is the working basis from which he addresses two questions senior audiences are now asking him directly: what AI does to the scientific method, and what is happening to the research university as a credentialing and funding institution. Managing that collaboration across disciplines, institutions, competitive pressures, and high-stakes scientific uncertainty is the practical foundation on which his speeches rest. That argument appears explicitly in Losing the Nobel Prize (W.W. Norton, 2018). Keating, who conceived the original BICEP telescope and was closely involved in the BICEP2 collaboration whose findings made global headlines before being retracted, uses the experience to make a case that extends well beyond physics: the Nobel Prize, as structured, rewards individual speed and competition while punishing the inclusive, methodical, collaborative work that real discoveries require. Reviewed in Nature, Science, and Scientific American, and endorsed by physicist Brian Greene, the book gives senior audiences a precise structural vocabulary for a problem most organisations recognise but struggle to name. The follow-up volumes, Into the Impossible (2021) and Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner (2025), draw on first-person interviews with Nobel laureates across physics and economics to identify the working habits that distinguish genuine breakthrough thinkers from those who optimise for recognition. Keating is also co-director of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for the Human Imagination at UC San Diego, a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and a 2022 Legend of Flight inductee at the International Air & Space Hall of Fame. His podcast, also titled Into the Impossible, has reached more than 200,000 subscribers and has hosted over 11 Nobel Prize winners. Key speaking topics Incentive systems, innovation culture, and the structural conditions for breakthrough Large-scale scientific collaboration and high-stakes research leadership AI and the future of scientific discovery, peer review, and the research workflow The structural future of higher education and the research university Cosmology, the cosmic microwave background, and the science of the early universe The culture of ambition and discovery in high-performance environments Failure, resilience, and the creative habits of exceptional thinkers The future of curiosity-driven research in an era of AI and data Ideal for Chief Innovation Officers, R&D leaders, and boards wrestling with why innovation programmes underdeliver Senior executive teams in science- and technology-intensive industries (pharma, aerospace, deep tech, energy) where collaboration at scale is a strategic challenge University presidents, provosts, and trustee boards addressing the AI-driven restructuring of higher education and the legitimacy questions facing research institutions Foundations, philanthropic funders of science, and policy bodies designing the next generation of research grants, prizes, and incentive structures Audience outcomes A clear structural diagnosis of why incentive systems that reward individual speed and visibility tend to suppress the collaborative, rigorous work that genuine breakthroughs require Practical examples – drawn from one of the most ambitious scientific projects of the past decade – of how large, distributed collaborations can be designed and sustained under uncertainty A set of mental habits and working practices, sourced from conversations with Nobel laureates, that distinguish breakthrough thinkers from those who optimise for recognition A more precise vocabulary for discussing innovation culture with boards and leadership teams – one grounded in evidence, not aspiration Perspective on how organisational ambition can be redirected from visible short-term wins toward the patient, inclusive work that produces durable results

Why organisations work with Brian Solis Operator and analyst in one seat. He runs ServiceNow’s global Innovation and Executive Briefing Centers while writing and researching, so the frameworks he presents are stress-tested on live enterprise engagements. Twenty-plus year track record naming shifts early. His “digital Darwinism” argument, developed across The End of Business as Usual, WTF and X, forecast customer-behaviour-led disruption before most boards were discussing it. Anthropological lens on AI and technology. He frames innovation around how customers and employees are actually behaving, not around the technology stack, which gives CX, marketing and transformation leaders usable material rather than vendor abstractions. Published thesis on the current executive question. Mindshift (Wiley, 2024) sets out how leaders move from reactive management to visionary direction in an AI-first operating environment, making him directly relevant to transformation and CEO agendas right now. Credible with both technology and customer experience audiences. His work is regularly cited across ServiceNow, Salesforce alumni networks, and customer-experience publications, which lets a single booking land with CIO, CMO and CXO communities. Biography highlights Head of Global Innovation, ServiceNow, overseeing Innovation and Executive Briefing Centers in Silicon Valley, New York, London, Paris, Sydney and Singapore. Former Global Innovation Evangelist, Salesforce. Former Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group, covering digital transformation, customer experience and disruption. Author of eight business books including Mindshift (Wiley, 2024), Lifescale (Wiley, 2019), X: The Experience When Business Meets Design, What’s the Future of Business and The End of Business as Usual. Ranked in Thinkers360 Top 50 Metaverse Thought Leaders, 2023. Hosts the (r)evolution video series and the WTF podcast, with a combined following of more than 700,000 across social platforms. Biography Digital transformation has been oversold and under-delivered inside most large enterprises. Programmes launch, dashboards light up, and the underlying operating model stays the same. Brian Solis has been writing about this gap for two decades and now sits inside it, as Head of Global Innovation at ServiceNow, running Innovation and Executive Briefing Centers across Silicon Valley, New York, London, Paris, Sydney and Singapore. His argument across eight books is consistent. Customer and employee behaviour shifts first, technology amplifies the shift, and organisations that treat innovation as a theatre of announcements get outrun by the ones that rewire how decisions are made. He captured this as “digital Darwinism” in The End of Business as Usual and sharpened it in X: The Experience When Business Meets Design and What’s the Future of Business. Mindshift, published by Wiley in October 2024, reframes the same question for an AI-first environment. It is aimed at executives who need to move their teams from reactive management to a visionary posture, spot trends early and convert them into prioritised innovation bets. Before ServiceNow, Solis was Global Innovation Evangelist at Salesforce and, before that, Principal Analyst at Altimeter Group, where he built much of the public research base he still draws on. He is one of the few voices in this space who operates at the intersection a senior buyer actually cares about: the analyst who names the shift, the author who frames it for a boardroom, and the operator responsible for making it real inside a global enterprise. Key speaking topics Digital transformation and digital Darwinism AI-era leadership and the mindshift from reactive to visionary Innovation strategy and the future of the enterprise Customer experience and behavioural change Disruption and emerging technology trends The future of work and employee experience Ideal for CEO, CIO, CDO and transformation leads responsible for enterprise-wide digital and AI strategy. CMO, Chief Customer Officer and CX leads rebuilding the customer model around new behaviour. Innovation, R&D and strategy leaders moving from proof-of-concept to operating-model change. Board and executive offsites framing the next three to five year technology and experience agenda. Audience outcomes A sharper read on which behavioural and technology shifts are material for their sector right now. A working definition of the difference between innovation theatre and innovation that changes the operating model. Language to argue internally for a move from reactive programmes to a visionary, trend-led agenda. A framework from Mindshift for spotting, prioritising and acting on emerging opportunities in an AI-first environment. Specific cues for aligning customer experience, employee experience and technology investment around the same thesis.

Why organisations work with Bruno Giussani His book Our Minds Under Siege (2026) gives leadership teams a structured framework for understanding how AI systems reshape human judgment from within; a diagnosis of a risk that most governance frameworks do not yet address and that most AI ethics conversations skip entirely. Nearly twenty years as TED’s Global Curator, working with more than 1,000 speakers, including His Holiness Pope Francis (twice), Prince William, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres, gives him a practitioner’s map of how ideas move through organizations and societies, and what stops them. He operates at the intersection of AI, geopolitics, and economics rather than inside any single discipline, which allows him to frame cognitive risk as a question of power and governance, not a technology-management problem. His analytical position is explicitly non-alarmist: shaped by three decades of pragmatic, no-hype technology journalism across the New York Times, The Economist, and Wired UK. Organizations that have moved past the introductory AI conversation find this register useful. Biography highlights Former Global Curator and European Director, TED (2005–2024); curated more than 1,000 TED Talks, including two by His Holiness Pope Francis and one by Prince William Author, Our Minds Under Siege: How to Avoid Being Manipulated in the Age of AI (University of Chicago Press / Scheidegger & Spiess, 2026); also author of Roam: Making Sense of the Wireless Internet (Random House, 2001) Host, Deftech Podcast («La menace cognitive»), 2025 – six episodes on cognitive sovereignty and the threats posed by AI and neurotechnology JSK Fellow, Stanford University; Affiliated Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies Wired UK «Wired 100» (100 most influential Europeans): 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015; SwissAward Person of the Year 2015, Economy category Internet columnist, New York Times (1996–2000); contributor to The Economist, Wall Street Journal Europe, and Wired UK Biography The dominant AI conversation in most organizations is about automation, efficiency, and competitive disruption. The question of whether the same technology is simultaneously reshaping the judgment of the people making those decisions has largely been set aside. Bruno Giussani challenges that omission. Its argument: cognitive sovereignty – the capacity to think and decide independently – is the governance challenge organizations are not yet naming. Giussani was TED’s Global Curator and European Director for nearly twenty years, curating more than 1,000 talks, including two by His Holiness Pope Francis and one by Prince William, as well as leading figures in geopolitics, economics, and climate. That curatorial role, at the centre of the global ideas economy, built a practitioner’s understanding of how information environments shape what people believe and how they decide: not through force, but through design. Before TED, he wrote about technology for the New York Times (as its European internet columnist), The Economist, the Wall Street Journal Europe, and Wired UK. The consistent position across that work was pragmatic and non-alarmist; skeptical of both utopian and panic framings of technology. That editorial discipline anchors Our Minds Under Siege, which treats AI manipulation not as a consumer protection question but as a structural challenge to organizational thinking and governance. His Deftech Podcast (2025), produced in French, German, and Italian, explored cognitive threats from AI and neurotechnology before the book appeared in print. He advises public organizations and private companies and brings this analysis to boards and leadership teams where technology strategy, geopolitical risk, and organizational decision-making converge. Key speaking topics Cognitive sovereignty and AI manipulation The social and political impacts of algorithmic technologies How ideas spread in organizations and societies Technology, geopolitics, and the future of power AI governance beyond automation and compliance Curation and knowledge management in an era of information abundance The intersection of AI, neurotechnology, and human decision-making Ideal for Boards and senior leadership teams examining AI governance beyond operational and compliance risk CEOs, CSOs, and Chief AI Officers building strategic frameworks for AI’s cognitive and societal impacts Corporate affairs and communications leaders whose organizations operate in algorithmically shaped information environments Executive conferences and thought leadership forums requiring a moderator or host with demonstrated experience interviewing heads of state, Nobel laureates, and global institutional leaders Audience outcomes A clear framework for distinguishing operational AI risk (automation, disruption) from cognitive AI risk (the manipulation of judgment and belief) A working vocabulary for cognitive sovereignty; what it means at the organizational level, how it differs from AI ethics, and why it is becoming a governance issue Insight into how information environments are architecturally designed to shape attention and belief, drawn from twenty years of curating the world’s most-watched ideas platform A practitioner’s understanding of how consequential ideas are built, communicated, and adopted, and what makes organizations resistant or receptive to them A non-alarmist, analytically grounded perspective on AI’s social and political impacts, suited to senior teams that have already moved past the introductory conversation

Why organisations work with Byron Reese He places today’s AI moment inside a 100,000-year arc of technology shifts, giving senior leaders a framework for long-range decisions that vendor briefings cannot supply. As CEO of Gigaom, he sits at the intersection of independent technology analysis and operating leadership, which lets him speak to both the engineering reality and the boardroom question. His five books, published by Simon & Schuster and BenBella, take positions on machine consciousness, automation, and the future of work that are specific and contestable, not generic optimism. He addresses AI without the doom-or-hype binary that dominates the speaking circuit, which is what most leadership audiences are quietly asking for. Biography highlights CEO and publisher of Gigaom, an independent technology research firm. Author of five books, including The Fourth Age (Simon & Schuster, 2018), described by The New York Times as “entertaining and engaging”. Founder of multiple technology companies, with two NASDAQ IPOs and several US patents to his name. Hosts podcasts on artificial intelligence, including Voices in AI and The Agora Podcast. Featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Bloomberg Businessweek, USA Today and the Financial Times. Bloomberg Businessweek credited him with “quietly pioneer[ing] a new breed of media company”. Biography Most futurists work in five-year horizons because that is what corporate planning cycles demand. The cost is that the most important question, which is what AI actually does to the human story, gets answered by analogy and anecdote rather than by argument. Byron Reese works in a different timeframe. In The Fourth Age, published by Simon & Schuster in 2018, he argues that technology has reshaped humanity three times: fire and language, agriculture and cities, the wheel and writing. Artificial intelligence and robotics, he argues, are now driving the fourth. The book reframes machine consciousness, automation and the future of work as questions of philosophy and history rather than software roadmaps, and The New York Times called it “entertaining and engaging”. His credibility is operational as well as intellectual. As CEO and publisher of Gigaom, he runs one of the better-known independent technology research firms. Before that he founded and sold multiple companies, took two through NASDAQ IPOs, and built consumer internet platforms that Bloomberg Businessweek described as “a new breed of media company”. He holds several US patents in crowdsourcing and content technology. Reese is, by his own description, the “Future of” guy: he has written and spoken on the future of AI, work, banking, education, agriculture, and the planet. His later books, Stories, Dice, and Rocks That Think and We Are Agora, extend the same long-range argument into how humans forecast and how human collectives behave. The thread that connects all of it, and the reason boards keep booking him, is that he is willing to take a position on where this is going. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and the future of work The long arc of technology and human civilisation Automation and workforce redesign Machine consciousness and AI ethics Innovation in conditions of rapid technological change Reasoned optimism as a leadership stance on technology The future of education, banking and agriculture Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting long-range AI and automation strategy CHROs and workforce planners redesigning roles around AI capability Innovation and strategy leaders in financial services, education and industrial sectors Conference audiences looking for a substantive counterweight to AI hype and AI doom Audience outcomes A clearer mental model of where AI sits in the longer history of human technology Sharper questions for internal AI strategy conversations, particularly on workforce and capital allocation A credible counter-position to the dominant doom-or-hype framing of AI in the press A specific account of how automation reshapes employment, drawn from Reese’s published argument rather than generic forecasts Renewed confidence that leadership decisions on technology can be made with intellectual rigour, not faith

Why organisations work with Calum Chace He has built two books and two operating ventures around the same argument: that AI changes capability, then labour, then the structure of the economy. Boards hear a coherent thesis, not a trend update. He coined the term “economic singularity” and wrote the book on it. Leadership teams trying to think clearly about technological unemployment get the original framing, not a recycled version. Through Conscium, the AI safety company he co-founded in 2024, and the linked PRISM research non-profit, he speaks from inside the live debate on machine consciousness and agent evaluation, not from the sidelines. Thirty years across BBC journalism, Financial Times writing, KPMG strategic intelligence and CEO roles mean he frames AI for commercial audiences in language they already use. Biography highlights Co-founder of Conscium (2024), an AI safety company working on neuromorphic computing, AI agent evaluation, and machine consciousness. Co-founder of the Economic Singularity Foundation, a think tank on the future of jobs in an AI economy. Author of Surviving AI and The Economic Singularity, plus the techno-thrillers Pandora’s Brain and Pandora’s Oracle. Co-host of the London Futurist Podcast and the PRISM Podcast on sentient machines. Read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford; trained as a journalist with the BBC; contributed to the Financial Times. Former director of KPMG’s strategic and commercial intelligence media practice and CEO of several businesses before moving to full-time writing and speaking in 2012. Biography Artificial intelligence is two distinct strategic questions for a board, not one. The first is what AI does to the products and services a business sells. The second is what it does to the labour the business buys. Calum Chace has spent a decade arguing that the second question is the one most organisations are underprepared for, and that the gap between AI as a capability story and AI as an economic story is where the strategic risk sits. His two non-fiction books frame that gap. Surviving AI deals with the long-term safety question once machines start to match and then exceed human capability. The Economic Singularity gave a name to the moment when technological unemployment becomes the dominant labour reality, and made the case that this is a question of decades, not centuries. The economic singularity is now a term other writers use; he wrote the book it came from. The work has continued into operating ventures. In 2024 he co-founded Conscium, an AI safety company developing neuromorphic computing, agent evaluation methods and research on machine consciousness. Conscium has since seeded PRISM, a non-profit researching sentient machines, which he co-hosts as a podcast. Earlier, he co-founded the Economic Singularity Foundation, a think tank on the future of jobs. Before any of that, Chace read PPE at Oxford, trained as a BBC journalist, wrote for the Financial Times, ran the media practice at KPMG’s strategic and commercial intelligence group, and held several CEO roles. That commercial background is why his talks for senior audiences sound like strategy conversations rather than technology briefings, and why he can argue both sides of the AI question, capability and consequence, in the same room. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and the two singularities The economic singularity and the future of jobs AI safety, alignment and machine consciousness Digital transformation and AI in the enterprise AI in healthcare AI in education The philosophy of AI Ideal for Boards and executive committees building a long-range AI strategy CHROs and people leaders facing workforce redesign around AI capability Conferences for technology, financial services, healthcare and professional services leadership Government, regulator and policy audiences working on AI governance and labour-market policy Audience outcomes A clearer separation between AI as a product question and AI as a labour question, and a sense of which one their organisation is more exposed to. A working definition of the economic singularity and a view on whether the case for serious technological unemployment is credible. A more informed position on AI safety, machine consciousness and agent evaluation as governance issues, not laboratory topics. Language and reference points senior leaders can use in their own board and investor conversations about AI.

Why organisations work with Carl Miller He coined the term SOCMINT (social media intelligence) in 2012 with David Omand and Jamie Bartlett, which means a room gets the person who defined the field of online influence analysis, not someone summarising it second-hand. His method is first-person and investigative. He has been on cyber-crime raids and spent five years tracing a dark-web murder-for-hire marketplace, so his account of how digital threats actually operate comes from inside them, not from a slide of statistics. He connects technology to power in terms a board can act on, explaining how a tweet moves a stock, how bots reach an electorate, and how disinformation lands on a brand before the communications team sees it coming. He has led more than forty research projects on extremism, electoral interference, and cyber-crime, giving him a span across the threats most organisations encounter only one at a time. Biography highlights Co-founder and Research Director, Centre for the Analysis of Social Media (CASM) at Demos, the first UK think tank institute dedicated to the digital world. Coined “social media intelligence” (SOCMINT) in 2012 with David Omand and Jamie Bartlett. Author of The Death of the Gods: The New Global Power Grab (Penguin Random House, 2018), joint winner of the 2019 Transmission Prize. Host of Kill List (Wondery/Novel), The Guardian’s best podcast of 2024 and Broadcast Press Guild Podcast of the Year 2025, reaching #1 in seven countries. Visiting Fellow, Department of War Studies, King’s College London; founder of CASM Technology. Contributor to The Economist, Wired, the Financial Times, The Sunday Times, and The Guardian; former presenter on the BBC’s Click. Biography More crime now happens online than offline, and most organisations are still structured to defend a perimeter that no longer exists. Carl Miller has spent over a decade documenting where control has actually moved. In 2012, working with David Omand and Jamie Bartlett, he coined the term social media intelligence, SOCMINT, and built the discipline that now sits behind how governments and companies read online influence. That work is grounded in an institution he helped create. He co-founded the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos, the first UK think tank dedicated to the digital world, and has run more than forty research projects on extremism, electoral interference, radicalisation, and cyber-crime as its Research Director. What separates him from most technology commentators is that he goes to the places he writes about. His book The Death of the Gods: The New Global Power Grab traced power from a suburban cyber-crime raid to the engine rooms of Silicon Valley and won the 2019 Transmission Prize. The reporting is immersive, evidenced, and built from direct encounters with hackers, police units, and disinformation operators. His Kill List podcast came from a five-year investigation into a dark-web marketplace selling murder for hire, where he raced to warn targeted strangers while authorities hesitated. The series topped charts in seven countries and was named The Guardian’s best podcast of 2024. It is the clearest demonstration of his core argument: digital systems now hold real power over real lives, and the people who understand that power are rarely the ones in charge of it. Key speaking topics Disinformation and information warfare The transformation of power in the digital age Social media intelligence (SOCMINT) Digital crime and cyber-security Threats to democracy and elections Artificial intelligence and control The future of digital business risk Ideal for Boards and CEOs setting strategy under digital, reputational, and information risk CISOs and heads of security reframing cyber as a leadership issue, not a compliance one Communications, public affairs, and risk leaders facing disinformation and online influence Government, policy, and institutional audiences working on democracy, security, and tech governance Audience outcomes A clear map of where power has moved in the digital age and who now holds it A working grasp of how disinformation and online influence operations are built and deployed Front-line examples of how digital crime and cyber-threats actually function, drawn from direct investigation A sharper sense of which digital risks reach the balance sheet, and how early they become visible

Why organisations work with Cassie Kozyrkov She built the Decision Intelligence function inside Google from scratch and ran it for five years, which means leaders get advice from someone who has already solved, at scale, the problem they are trying to solve. She named and codified the field itself. When a CEO asks what Decision Intelligence is and why their AI investment should sit inside it, she is the primary source, not an interpreter of someone else’s framework. She personally trained more than 20,000 Googlers across every function in data-driven decision-making and AI, so she knows how to make the material land with non-technical executives as well as engineers. She translates AI and statistics into decision-language that boards and operators can use. Her Making Friends with Machine Learning course, originally built only for Google, is now the reference explainer for thousands of leaders outside the company. She advises at the level the material requires. Her Federal Reserve Bank of New York Innovation Advisory Council seat and her work with Forbes on AI signal that her analysis is taken seriously by policy and media institutions, not only by corporate buyers. Biography highlights Google’s first Chief Decision Scientist (2018 to 2023), leading the firm’s decision intelligence practice inside Research and Machine Intelligence. Founder and CEO of Kozyr, an AI advisory and education business serving senior leaders and their teams. Personally trained more than 20,000 Googlers in data-driven decision-making and AI, and guided over 500 decision intelligence projects inside Google. Creator of Making Friends with Machine Learning, originally an internal Google course, now a free public course on YouTube. Author of the Decision Intelligence Substack and LinkedIn Top Voice for six consecutive years; writing has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Fast Company, WIRED, and The Wall Street Journal. Member of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Innovation Advisory Council (2023 to 2024); Duke University Few-Glasson Distinguished Alumna. Biography Most companies do not have a data problem, they have a decision problem. The dashboards, pipelines, and models are in place, and yet senior leaders still cannot say which decisions are demonstrably better because of any of it. That gap is the subject Cassie Kozyrkov has been working on for a decade, first inside Google and now with leaders across industries. At Google, she became the company’s first Chief Decision Scientist in 2018 and held the role until 2023. She built a new function that sat between Research and Machine Intelligence on one side and the operating business on the other, and used it to run AI and data through a discipline she calls Decision Intelligence. By the time she left, she had personally trained more than 20,000 Googlers and influenced over 500 projects against that framework. The reason her work travels beyond Google is that she made the material legible. Her course Making Friends with Machine Learning, built inside Google and later released in full on YouTube, is one of the few genuinely plain-English explainers of how machine learning actually fits into business decisions. Her writing in Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Fast Company, WIRED, and The Wall Street Journal has done the same for non-technical executives, and her Decision Intelligence Substack has become a working reference for practitioners. Today she runs Kozyr, advising leadership teams on AI strategy and decision design, and sits on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Innovation Advisory Council on AI and financial markets. The through-line is consistent. She is the rare AI voice who starts with the decision the organisation is trying to get right, and works backwards to the technology, rather than the other way round. Key speaking topics Decision Intelligence AI strategy and adoption Data-driven decision-making Machine learning for business leaders Responsible and effective use of AI AI literacy for executives Bias and judgement in AI systems Ideal for CEOs, boards, and executive teams setting AI strategy and capital allocation against it Chief Data, Analytics, and AI Officers building a decision-intelligence operating model Transformation and strategy leaders responsible for turning AI pilots into business results Leadership programmes and offsites that need genuine AI literacy, not a vendor pitch Audience outcomes A working definition of Decision Intelligence and where it sits relative to data science, analytics, and AI investment. A sharper diagnostic for why AI projects stall: wrong decision scoped, wrong owner, or wrong question asked of the model. Shared language across technical and non-technical leaders for debating AI initiatives without defaulting to buzzwords. Specific techniques for pressure-testing decisions against common biases, including outcome bias and confirmation bias. A realistic read on what current AI systems can and cannot be trusted to decide without human judgement in the loop.

Why organisations work with Chloe Colliver She has run live detection work across the German, European Parliamentary, UK, Swedish and US elections, which means she can speak to election interference and coordinated inauthentic behaviour from operational experience rather than commentary. She has sat on both sides of the table, as a lead investigator at ISD naming tactics used against platforms, and in senior online safety policy at Ofcom shaping how UK regulation will actually be enforced. Her testimony to the UK Home Affairs Select Committee, the International Grand Committee on Disinformation and the Swedish, Canadian, French, German and New Zealand governments gives boards a direct line into how legislators are thinking about tech regulation. She co-authored the ISD reports that set the methodological vocabulary for this field, including Hoodwinked, Spin Cycle and Click Here For Outrage, cited by journalists, regulators and platform policy teams. She is fluent on camera, with sustained appearances on CNN, BBC Newsnight, Sky News and Channel 4, which translates into a keynote register that works for mixed executive and technical audiences. Biography highlights Head of Digital Research and Policy at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, leading a global team of analysts on disinformation and online extremism. Now in senior online safety policy at Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, building the evidence base behind the Online Safety Act. Co-author of ISD reports including Hoodwinked, Spin Cycle, The 101 of Disinformation Detection and Click Here For Outrage. Expert witness to the UK Home Affairs Select Committee and the International Grand Committee on Disinformation, and to the Swedish, New Zealand, Canadian, French and German governments. Contributor to the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism alongside Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and Google. BA History, Clare College, Cambridge; MA History, Yale, as a Mellon Fellow. Biography Coordinated manipulation online is no longer a fringe concern for communications teams. It is an operating risk that touches elections, public health, brand safety and regulatory exposure all at once. The field that studies it seriously is small, and Chloe Colliver has been at the centre of it for most of the last decade. At the Institute for Strategic Dialogue she led a global team mapping disinformation, hate speech and extremist content across major platforms. Her team ran live analysis during the German, European Parliamentary, UK, Swedish and US election cycles, and co-authored the research reports that shaped how journalists, regulators and platform policy staff now talk about coordinated inauthentic behaviour, including Hoodwinked, Spin Cycle and Click Here For Outrage. She has given expert evidence to the UK Home Affairs Select Committee and the International Grand Committee on Disinformation, and advised the Swedish, New Zealand, Canadian, French and German governments on tech regulation. She also contributed to the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, the cross-platform body that includes Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and Google. She now holds a senior online safety role at Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, where she leads work on the evidence base for the Online Safety Act. That shift from platform-level investigator to regulator-side policy lead is what makes her rare on a stage: she has named the tactics, tested the interventions, and now sits inside the body writing the rules. Key speaking topics Disinformation and information integrity Online safety regulation and the Online Safety Act Election interference and coordinated inauthentic behaviour Platform governance and content moderation Digital policy and tech regulation Extremism and online radicalisation Crisis communications in a manipulated information environment Ideal for Boards, CEOs and comms leaders preparing for regulatory, reputational or election-year information risk. Chief Risk Officers, General Counsel and Heads of Trust and Safety navigating the Online Safety Act and wider platform regulation. Policy, public affairs and government relations teams tracking how UK, EU and G7 legislators are moving on disinformation and online harms. Security, intelligence and threat teams integrating platform-level signals into enterprise risk reporting. Audience outcomes A clearer picture of how coordinated disinformation is actually built, distributed and monetised, with named examples from recent election cycles. A grounded read on where UK and EU online safety regulation is heading and what it will require from platforms, advertisers and large employers. A working vocabulary for discussing information integrity at board level, separating genuine risk from noise. A sense of which interventions have been tested and which have not, drawn from ISD research and regulator-side evidence work.