Artificial Intelligence & Generative AI

Why organisations work with Amy Webb Webb’s foresight methodology is not scenario-planning by another name – it applies quantitative modelling to emerging signals, giving boards an evidential basis for long-horizon technology decisions that is defensible rather than intuitive. Her annual Tech Trends Report tracks more than 700 emerging technology and science trends and is downloaded more than one million times a year; few advisory practices produce intelligence infrastructure at comparable scale or breadth. The Big Nine named and defined the “G-MAFIA” framework – the six American and three Chinese corporations Webb argues hold structural control over AI’s trajectory. Audiences gain a durable analytical vocabulary for a problem most organisations are still describing in generic terms. Her advisory relationships with the White House, European Union, United Nations, and World Economic Forum are ongoing, not project-based – her understanding of how governments are approaching AI governance and technology risk is primary source, not aggregated. Her latest concept, “living intelligence” – the convergence of artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and advanced sensors into a single technology supercycle – gives senior leaders a framework for thinking beyond current AI strategy before the convergence forces reactive decisions. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Future Today Strategy Group; ranked #3 most influential management thinker globally by Thinkers50 (2025) Adjunct Professor of Strategic Foresight, NYU Stern School of Business; Visiting Fellow, Oxford University’s Saïd Business School; former Nieman Fellow, Harvard University Author of The Big Nine (2019) – longlisted for the Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year, winner of the 2020 Gold Axiom Medal – and The Signals Are Talking (2016), winner of the Thinkers50 RADAR Award and 2017 Gold Axiom Medal The Genesis Machine (2022, co-authored with Andrew Hessel) named by The New Yorker as one of the year’s best nonfiction works; books translated into 23 languages Life member, Council on Foreign Relations; founding member, WEF Strategic Foresight Advisory Board; member, WEF Global Risks Board; AI Governance Alliance partner Contributor to Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review; TED Talk on algorithmic thinking viewed more than 8 million times, translated into 32 languages Biography The gap between sensing that a technology will reshape a sector and knowing when – and how – to act is where most long-range strategy breaks down. Amy Webb’s work is built around closing that gap. As founder and CEO of the Future Today Strategy Group, she pioneered a quantitative modelling approach to strategic foresight: one that applies the analytical rigour of economic forecasting to the identification of emerging technology signals, rather than relying on narrative scenarios or trend decks. Her books have given organisations specific frameworks for understanding the structural dynamics of technology change. The Big Nine named the six American and three Chinese corporations – the “G-MAFIA” and BAT – that Webb argues hold disproportionate control over AI’s development, and traced the geopolitical and commercial consequences of that concentration. The Genesis Machine, co-authored with biotechnologist Andrew Hessel, examined the organisational and governance implications of synthetic biology before the technology entered mainstream strategy conversations. Both were recognised externally: The Big Nine was longlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year; The Genesis Machine was named by The New Yorker as one of the year’s best nonfiction works. Her access to the rooms where technology governance is being decided is direct and ongoing. As an advisor to the White House, European Union, and United Nations, and as a founding member of the World Economic Forum’s Strategic Foresight Advisory Board, Webb’s work informs global technology policy – not as periodic input but as sustained engagement. Her annual Tech Trends Report, tracking more than 700 emerging technology and science developments, is downloaded more than one million times a year. Ranked third on Thinkers50’s 2025 list of the world’s most influential management thinkers, Webb teaches strategic foresight at NYU Stern’s MBA programme and holds a visiting fellowship at Oxford’s Saïd Business School. Her current framework, “living intelligence” – the convergence of artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and advanced sensors – maps the technology supercycle she argues is already underway. For organisations whose long-range strategy begins and ends with AI, it is a substantive challenge to the scope of their thinking. Key speaking topics Quantitative strategic foresight Artificial intelligence and the global technology power landscape Living intelligence: AI, biotechnology, and advanced sensors Technology supercycles and long-horizon planning Geopolitics of emerging technology Futures methodology and organisational decision-making Synthetic biology and the next frontier of disruption Ideal for C-suite and boards developing long-range technology and competitive strategy Chief Strategy Officers and innovation leads rethinking their approach to uncertainty and futures planning Government, regulatory, and policy audiences responsible for technology governance Risk, investment, and scenario-planning teams assessing the strategic implications of AI and converging technologies Audience outcomes A clear analytical method for distinguishing which emerging technology signals warrant a strategic response – and which represent noise Understanding of the “living intelligence” framework and why the convergence of AI, biotechnology, and advanced sensors represents a broader challenge than current AI strategy typically accounts for A structural vocabulary for the global AI power landscape – particularly the dynamics between major US and Chinese technology actors – that simplifies a complex geopolitical issue for non-specialist leaders Familiarity with the Tech Trends methodology: how to scan, filter, and prioritise signals across a large and rapidly evolving technology landscape Practical frameworks for building a long-horizon foresight capability internally, rather than depending on periodic external consultancy

Why organisations work with Vito Di Bari He has run the discipline at scale. As Innovation Designer for Milan’s Expo 2015 candidacy he turned futures thinking into a 25-project urban programme, the kind of translation work most futurist speakers never attempt. He carries genuine institutional weight: former Executive Director of UNESCO’s International Multimedia Institute, contract professor at Politecnico di Milano and Bocconi, founder of the Next Media Lab. He authored “The Neofuturistic City Manifesto” and is the named thought leader of the Neo-Futurism art and architecture movement, giving leadership teams a vocabulary for what comes after the current digital cycle. He is one of a small number of European voices the Financial Times has labelled a “guru of innovation,” which travels well in front of European boards and ministries. He works in English, Italian and across global stages, with TEDx and corporate keynotes spanning five continents, useful for groups planning multi-region leadership offsites. Biography highlights Innovation Designer for Milan’s Expo 2015 candidacy Former Executive Director, UNESCO International Multimedia Institute (IMI), Paris Former contract professor of Design and Management of Innovation, Politecnico di Milano; and of Cross Media Communication, Bocconi University Founder and Scientific Director, Next Media Lab; founder of Di Bari & Associates innovation design studio Author of more than ten books on innovation, including “The Neofuturistic City Manifesto” Described by the Financial Times as “the new European guru of innovation” Biography The hardest job inside a board agenda on AI is not deciding which tools to buy. It is deciding which technological trajectory the organisation is betting on. That is the territory Di Bari has worked in for two decades, first inside UNESCO’s IMI in Paris, then as Innovation Designer for Milan’s Expo 2015 candidacy, where his job was to translate a futures vision into a 25-project urban programme. His academic base is Italian and serious. He held contract chairs at Politecnico di Milano in design and management of innovation, and at Bocconi in cross-media communication. Around that he built Next Media Lab as an international research laboratory and Di Bari & Associates as a design studio, so the ideas he speaks about have been carried into installations, products and city projects, not only into print. The intellectual signature is Neo-Futurism. His 2007 “Neofuturistic City Manifesto” set out a vision of arts, architecture and urbanism after the digital turn, and he is widely credited as the thought leader of the movement. The Financial Times called him “the new European guru of innovation,” and bureau profiles routinely place him in the company of John Naisbitt and Alvin Toffler. For an executive audience, the value is concrete. He has authored more than ten books on innovation, contributed to outlets including Wired, and now anchors his keynote work in AI transformation, with talks such as “Welcome to the AI Transformation” and “A Day in the Future.” A board leaves the room with a structured view of how AI, IoT and emerging technologies will reshape its sector, and a sharper sense of which bets to place now. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and generative AI in business Innovation strategy and design Internet of Things and emerging technologies Future of work and organisational AI adoption Neo-Futurism, urbanism and the design of the future Long-range scenario thinking for leadership teams Ideal for Boards and executive committees stress-testing their AI and digital strategy CEOs, CIOs and chief innovation officers planning multi-year technology roadmaps Industry events in retail, manufacturing, financial services and the public sector commissioning a serious futures keynote Leadership offsites in Europe and globally that need a credible practitioner voice on innovation, not abstract trend commentary Audience outcomes A structured forward view of how AI, IoT and emerging technologies will reshape the audience’s sector A clearer language for talking about innovation as a design discipline, not a marketing label Specific examples of how futures thinking has been translated into urban-scale projects, including Expo 2015 Milan Concrete prompts for which AI and digital bets to prioritise inside the next planning cycle

Why organisations work with Viktor Mayer-Schönberger His research on data-sharing directly shaped the EU’s Digital Markets Act – when he talks about regulatory risk, he is describing a landscape he helped design. Big Data (co-authored with The Economist‘s Kenneth Cukier) sold over one million copies and set the terms of the enterprise data conversation for a decade; organisations benefit from the intellectual framework behind the book, not just its conclusions. As a member of Germany’s Digital Council, he advised Chancellor Merkel’s cabinet on digital policy (2018–2021) – giving him a rare dual perspective on both corporate strategy and governmental decision-making. His 2024 book Guardrails (with Urs Gasser, hailed in Science journal) offers the most current framework available for deciding which decisions to delegate to AI and which to retain – a live, unresolved question in most boardrooms. He holds the Oxford Chair as one of three statutory professors at the Oxford Internet Institute, combining research authority with over 250 keynote engagements across Fortune 500 companies and government bodies. Biography highlights Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute – one of three statutory chairs Ten years on the faculty of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government; continuing affiliate at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs Member of Germany’s Digital Council; personal adviser to Chancellor Angela Merkel on digital policy (2018–2021) Delete (Princeton University Press, 2009) won the 2010 Marshall McLuhan Award and the 2010 Don K. Price Award for Best Book in Science and Technology Politics Big Data (2013, with Kenneth Cukier) – NYT and WSJ bestseller; over one million copies sold; translated into more than 20 languages Research cited in, and proposals adopted by, the EU Digital Markets Act; covered by the New York Times, Financial Times, BBC, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, and Nature Biography Data governance is not a compliance function. It is, as Viktor Mayer-Schönberger has spent three decades arguing, the central strategic question of the digital economy, and most organisations are still treating it as a footnote. Mayer-Schönberger holds the Chair of Internet Governance and Regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute, one of three statutory professorships at the OII. Before Oxford, he spent a decade at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and three years at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore. That arc – from entrepreneurship to academic leadership across three continents – gives him a fluency in organisational, governmental, and market dynamics that few researchers in this space share. His books have not merely described the data economy; they have shaped it. Delete (Princeton, 2009) initiated the debate that produced the EU’s right to be forgotten. Access Rules (2022) and the earlier Reinventing Capitalism in the Age of Big Data proposed the data-sharing mandates that were subsequently enacted in the EU Digital Markets Act. His bestseller Big Data – co-authored with The Economist‘s Kenneth Cukier – sold over a million copies and remains the foundational text for enterprise data strategy. His most recent book, Guardrails (2024, with Urs Gasser), praised in Science journal, addresses the question now live in every boardroom: how to draw the line between AI delegation and human judgement. From 2018 to 2021 he served as a member of Germany’s Digital Council, advising Chancellor Merkel’s cabinet directly. He is a faculty affiliate at Harvard’s Belfer Center and has addressed senior audiences at IBM, SAP, Microsoft, and Roche, as well as regulatory and governmental forums across the EU, UK, and US. His advisory boards have included Microsoft and the World Economic Forum. Key speaking topics AI governance and the limits of delegation Data access, competition, and digital market regulation The strategic economics of data Information privacy and the right to be forgotten Human decision-making in the age of AI Digital policy and corporate regulatory risk The data-driven transformation of capitalism Ideal for Boards and executive leadership teams navigating AI governance and regulatory exposure Chief Data, Digital, and AI Officers building organisational data strategy General counsel, compliance, and risk functions in regulated industries Public policy and regulatory affairs teams across the EU and UK Audience outcomes A structured framework for distinguishing decisions that should be delegated to AI from those that must remain with humans Clarity on the regulatory direction of travel in the EU and UK, and what it means for data strategy An understanding of how data access and sharing mandates will reshape competitive dynamics in their sector Practical grounding in the governance failures that produce both legal exposure and strategic underperformance A shared language for board-level conversations about AI risk that moves beyond the abstract

Why organisations work with Vijay Govindarajan The Three-Box Solution gives leadership teams a concrete operating model for the hardest resource allocation decision in strategy: how much of the organisation’s attention, talent, and capital belongs to managing the present, letting go of outdated practices, and building the future – simultaneously, with different disciplines for each. His 2009 HBR article «How GE Is Disrupting Itself,» co-authored with GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt, introduced reverse innovation to the management canon; Harvard Business Review later named it one of the Great Moments in Management in the Last Century – a designation that marks a genuinely new idea rather than a refinement of an existing one. Fusion Strategy (HBR Press, 2024) gives leaders of industrial and asset-heavy companies a specific strategic answer to the AI competitive threat – not a general AI primer, but a framework for how manufacturers, infrastructure operators, and physical-product businesses can fuse operational excellence with real-time data intelligence. He developed these frameworks inside a Fortune 10 company: as GE’s first-ever Professor in Residence and Chief Innovation Consultant (2008–2010), he applied the ideas under operational conditions alongside a sitting CEO – a form of proof that most strategy academics cannot point to. Inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 2019, and the only thinker to win Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Awards in two separate categories, VG’s standing in the field is independently credentialed – not a function of self-promotion. Biography highlights Coxe Distinguished Professor, Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College – a Dartmouth-wide chair and the highest distinction awarded to Dartmouth faculty Inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame (2019); recipient of the Thinkers50 Distinguished Innovation Award (2019) and Breakthrough Idea Award (2011) – the only management thinker to win Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Awards in two categories Two-time McKinsey Award winner for best article in Harvard Business Review: «Engineering Reverse Innovations» (2015) and «Stop the Innovation Wars» (2010) Author of 15 books, including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller Reverse Innovation, The Three-Box Solution, and Fusion Strategy (HBR Press, 2024) First Professor in Residence and Chief Innovation Consultant at General Electric; former Marvin Bower Fellow at Harvard Business School Prior faculty at Harvard Business School, INSEAD (Fontainebleau), and the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad Inducted into the Academy of Management Journals’ Hall of Fame; HBR contributor with multiple all-time top-50 best-selling articles Biography Vijay Govindarajan has one central argument: that managing today’s performance and inventing tomorrow’s business require fundamentally different logic, and that running both inside one organisation is the hardest problem in strategy. His Three-Box Solution – now four decades in development at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business – gives executives a structural answer. Box 1 is the discipline of running the present core at peak efficiency. Box 2 is the harder discipline of letting go of practices, assumptions, and investments that made the organisation successful but will impede what comes next. Box 3 is the work of creating the future from genuinely non-linear ideas. The concept of reverse innovation, which VG introduced in his 2009 HBR article co-authored with GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt, extended this thinking to global strategy. Rather than adapting developed-world solutions for emerging markets, VG argued that innovation should begin in the developing world – where constraints force ingenuity – and then move upward. Harvard Business Review later named reverse innovation one of the Great Moments in Management in the Last Century. His most recent book, Fusion Strategy (HBR Press, 2024), addresses the AI disruption challenge directly – not in the abstract, but for a specific set of organisations. The three-quarters of global GDP produced by industrial and asset-heavy companies has yet to be transformed by digital technology. VG’s argument is that these companies must fuse their physical product strength with AI-powered, real-time data intelligence – or be eclipsed by digital-native rivals who will. It is the most commercially urgent application of his frameworks to date. VG served as GE’s first-ever Professor in Residence and Chief Innovation Consultant from 2008 to 2010, developing these ideas under operational conditions inside one of the world’s most complex industrial organisations. He is a two-time McKinsey Award winner in Harvard Business Review, a former Marvin Bower Fellow at Harvard Business School, and was inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 2019 – the only management thinker to receive Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Awards in two separate categories. Key speaking topics The Three-Box Solution: managing present, past, and future simultaneously Reverse innovation and emerging-market growth strategy Fusion Strategy: AI, real-time data, and the industrial competitive frontier Business model reinvention in established organisations Innovation execution inside large corporations Global strategy and cross-border competitive advantage Scenario planning and strategic foresight Ideal for CEOs and executive teams of established or asset-heavy industrial companies facing digital disruption Chief Strategy Officers and heads of corporate innovation managing tension between core business performance and growth investments Boards and senior leadership teams evaluating long-term portfolio strategy against near-term performance pressure Global organisations with significant emerging-market presence or expansion ambitions Audience outcomes A working understanding of the Three-Box Solution and how to apply its logic to their organisation’s specific resource allocation, governance, and portfolio decisions A clear framework for identifying which current practices are protecting value versus those quietly preventing the next phase of growth A strategic lens for evaluating how AI and real-time data can be fused with their company’s physical product or service base to generate competitive advantage Recognition of the specific organisational tensions – in staffing, structure, incentives, and culture – that prevent innovation from scaling inside established businesses Practical language for taking the strategy-versus-innovation conversation to board level with greater precision and less abstraction

Why organisations work with Tim Sanders He sits inside G2’s data on how millions of business buyers actually evaluate and adopt software, which gives his AI commentary an evidence base most keynote voices do not have. His Harvard Business School Digital Data Design Institute fellowship pairs that operator view with formal research on AI and digital innovation, so the argument lands with both the CIO and the CFO. He has run the playbook before: as Yahoo!’s Chief Solutions Officer through the original platform shift, and at Upwork on digital transformation and talent strategy, he has lived the gap between platform promise and operating reality. Five books, including the New York Times bestsellers “Love Is the Killer App” and “The Likeability Factor,” give him a thirty-year track record of translating shifts in how technology changes commercial behaviour into language operators can use. “Dealstorming” gives sales and revenue audiences a structured method for unsticking high-value deals, named in case studies at Yahoo!, CareerBuilder, Regus, and Conde Nast. Biography highlights Chief Innovation Officer at G2, the world’s largest software marketplace Executive Fellow, Digital Data Design Institute at Harvard Business School Former Chief Solutions Officer at Yahoo! and head of Yahoo’s in-house think tank Former Vice President of Client Strategy at Upwork Author of five business books, including New York Times bestsellers “Love Is the Killer App” and “The Likeability Factor” Author of “Dealstorming,” with referenced sales work at Yahoo!, CareerBuilder, Regus, and Conde Nast Biography The hard problem inside most AI programmes is no longer the model. It is the operating decision: which workflows to rebuild, which software to back, which vendors are quietly underdelivering. Tim Sanders works on exactly that question, with two unusual vantage points behind him. The first is G2, where he is Chief Innovation Officer. G2 holds the largest first-party dataset on how business buyers evaluate software, which gives him a live read on what is actually being bought, abandoned, and renewed across the SaaS and AI stack. The second is Harvard Business School’s Digital Data Design Institute, where he is an Executive Fellow translating research on AI and digital innovation into material business leaders can act on. Earlier in his career, he was Chief Solutions Officer at Yahoo! during the original web platform shift and led its internal think tank. He went on to serve as Vice President of Client Strategy at Upwork, working with enterprises on digital transformation and the talent side of technology change. That sequence of operator roles is what gives his keynote work its bite: he has been the executive on the receiving end of the slide that says “AI will change everything.” He has also written through every one of these shifts. “Love Is the Killer App” and “The Likeability Factor” became New York Times bestsellers and remain mainstays of corporate reading lists. “Dealstorming” is used by sales organisations as a structured method for breaking through high-value deal blockers, with named work at companies including CareerBuilder, Regus, and Conde Nast. Key speaking topics AI adoption and return on AI for the enterprise Software buying behaviour and the SaaS market Sales strategy and revenue collaboration Customer experience and modern buyer behaviour Digital transformation and the future of work Leadership in technology-driven organisations Ideal for CEOs, CIOs, CDOs, and Chief AI Officers running enterprise AI programmes CROs, CCOs, and sales leadership teams under pressure on revenue productivity Boards and ExCo sessions weighing AI capital allocation and software portfolio decisions SaaS, technology, and professional services organisations rethinking go-to-market in an AI buyer environment Audience outcomes A clear read on where enterprise AI adoption actually is, based on first-party SaaS buyer data rather than vendor narrative A sharper view of which AI use cases are creating measurable operating advantage and which are stuck in pilot Practical moves for sales and revenue teams to work with, not against, an AI-augmented buyer A repeatable method for breaking through stalled high-value deals through cross-functional collaboration Renewed confidence at the leadership level that AI strategy is a decision domain, not a technology domain

Why organisations work with Tim Cole He has been writing about the commercial internet since 1995, before most of the people now running digital programmes were in the workforce, and that long lens lets him separate genuine inflection points from cyclical hype. AI Means Business and The Power of Digital Transformation are written for non-technical managers, which is the constituency most companies actually need to move. He pitches at the board, not at the engineering org. As editor-in-chief of Smart Industry, he has continuous visibility into how Industry 4.0, IoT and cognitive computing are being deployed inside European manufacturers, which makes his examples concrete rather than aspirational. His “Wild Wild Web” argument on platform power and digital ethics gives boards a coherent way to think about regulation, sovereignty and the GAFA dependency without slipping into either techno-utopianism or moral panic. Bilingual operating fluency in English and German, with thirty years of context on the German Mittelstand and on European identity and security debates, where most American voices are weak. Biography highlights Editor-in-chief, Smart Industry – the IoT Business Magazine, since 2016. Former editor of Net Investor; long-running columnist for FAZ, VDI-Nachrichten, Der Standard and IX. Author of around a dozen books on the digital economy, including Success Factor Internet (Econ), Digital Enlightenment Now! with Ossi Urchs, The Power of Digital Transformation (Carl Hanser), Wild Wild West (2018) and AI Means Business (2020). One of Germany’s earliest internet journalists; began blogging in 1995, decades before most European business commentators took the medium seriously. Bilingual American journalist based in Germany for over four decades, working in English and German across keynotes, moderation and TV. Subject-matter focus across digital transformation, digital ethics, identity management, IT security, IoT and applied AI. Biography The questions European boards are asking about AI and digital transformation in 2026 are the questions Tim Cole has been writing about, in long form, since 1995. Success Factor Internet came out in 1999. The Power of Digital Transformation and AI Means Business came later, but the through line is the same: how does a real company, with a real cost base and real customers, actually change. That long view is the asset. As editor-in-chief of Smart Industry, the IoT business magazine, Cole has spent the last decade watching European manufacturers attempt the leap from connected sensors to operating advantage, and reporting on what worked and what stalled. The book Wild Wild West compares today’s platform giants to the 19th-century robber barons of the American frontier and argues that the absence of a digital social contract is now a board-level risk, not a policy abstraction. His audience is the non-technical manager. The books are written for executives who have to make capital allocation calls on AI, IoT and platform strategy without being engineers, and who need a clear-eyed account of what the technology can and cannot do. He is direct on limitations and risk, which is unusual in this field, and he writes from inside the European debate on identity, security and digital sovereignty rather than importing a Silicon Valley frame. Bilingual in English and German, Cole has worked across journalism, broadcasting and analyst-adjacent roles for more than thirty years. He brings to a board conversation the rare combination of an American writer’s directness, a German operator’s pragmatism, and three decades of accumulated context on what actually changes when technology meets a P&L. Key speaking topics Digital transformation for non-technical leaders Artificial intelligence in business Industrial IoT and Industry 4.0 Digital ethics and the social contract of the internet Platform power, GAFA and digital sovereignty IT security and digital identity management Cognitive computing and predictive analysis The future of the European Mittelstand in a digital economy Ideal for Boards and executive committees of European industrial and Mittelstand companies confronting AI and IoT investment decisions CIOs, CDOs and transformation leads who need a credible non-technical voice to align the rest of the executive team CISOs and identity-management functions briefing boards on cyber and digital sovereignty Industry conferences on manufacturing, IoT, Industry 4.0 and applied AI Audience outcomes A grounded read on which AI and digital transformation moves are real operating advantage and which are still vendor narrative. A working vocabulary for board-level conversations about platform power, digital ethics and digital sovereignty. Concrete examples drawn from European industrial and Mittelstand companies, not recycled Silicon Valley case studies. A clearer sense of where IoT and Industry 4.0 investment is actually paying back, and where it is stuck in pilot. A frame for talking about AI’s limits as well as its potential, in language a non-technical executive team can use.

Why organisations work with Tawfik Jelassi He has run digital transformation from three vantage points most speakers only write about: as an IMD professor teaching the OWP programme, as a national minister responsible for ICT policy, and as the UNESCO executive overseeing the global agenda on information and knowledge societies. His textbook Strategies for e-Business, now in its fourth edition with Springer, is used in business schools worldwide, which means his frameworks on value creation and digital business models are not improvised for the stage, they are stress-tested in classrooms. The policy lens is hard to replicate. On questions of AI governance, disinformation, platform regulation and digital inequality, he speaks from inside the UN system, not as an outside commentator. His case-writing record, recognised repeatedly by the European Foundation for Management Development, the Society for Information Management and the Case Centre, produces sessions anchored in named companies and decisions rather than abstractions. He moves credibly across corporate, government and multilateral audiences, which is what most digital and AI briefs now require when the room includes a regulator or a chief of staff. Biography highlights Professor of Strategy and Technology Management at IMD Business School; Co-Director of IMD’s flagship Orchestrating Winning Performance programme UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information, 2021 to 2025 Former Minister of Higher Education, Scientific Research and ICT in Tunisia’s Jomaa government, 2014 to 2015 PhD in Information Systems, New York University (Stern); former faculty at INSEAD and Indiana University (Kelley); former Dean of the Business School at École des Ponts ParisTech Co-author of Strategies for e-Business, Springer, fourth edition Multiple case-writing awards from EFMD, SIM and the Case Centre; two Tunisian national decorations for service in education and science Biography Digital transformation is no longer a technology programme. It is a choice about the business model, the regulator’s next move, and the kind of society an organisation wants to operate in. Tawfik Jelassi’s authority comes from having run that choice at three levels at which most leaders only experience one. He teaches it at IMD as Professor of Strategy and Technology Management and Co-Director of Orchestrating Winning Performance, the institute’s largest executive programme. Before IMD, he spent thirteen years as Dean of the Business School at École des Ponts ParisTech, with earlier faculty posts at INSEAD and Indiana University’s Kelley School, and a PhD in Information Systems from NYU Stern. His case writing on digital business and technology management has been recognised repeatedly by the European Foundation for Management Development, the Society for Information Management and the Case Centre. The co-authored Springer textbook Strategies for e-Business is in its fourth edition. The second stream is policy. Jelassi served as Minister of Higher Education, Scientific Research and ICT in Tunisia’s post-revolution government under Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa. From 2021 to 2025 he was UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information, responsible for the organisation’s global programmes on freedom of expression, digital transformation, AI governance, information integrity and ICT in education. Few academics working on digital strategy have held the pen on multilateral regulation of the platforms they teach about. That dual vantage point is the point of the work. Jelassi can tell a board how a generative AI deployment looks from the inside of a UN agency drafting rules for it, and tell a ministry how a platform chief executive reasons about compliance. For organisations whose strategy now runs through regulation, geopolitics and public trust as much as technology, that is an unusually useful seat at the table. Key speaking topics Digital business transformation and value creation AI governance and platform regulation Leadership in technology-driven organisations Information integrity, trust and freedom of expression Inclusive knowledge societies and the digital divide Public-private cooperation on technology policy Ideal for CEOs and executive committees setting direction on digital and AI strategy in regulated industries Boards and chairs working through the governance implications of AI, data and platform policy Government, multilateral and public-sector leadership teams shaping national digital agendas International conferences and cross-sector forums where business, policy and civil society share a room Audience outcomes A clearer read of how digital and AI strategy is being reshaped by policy and multilateral regulation in real time Practical frameworks for evaluating digital business models and value creation, drawn from the Springer textbook used in business schools worldwide Specific reference points from named corporate cases and from inside UN and ministerial decision-making A more confident vocabulary for discussing trust, information integrity and the social licence of technology in boardroom terms

Why organisations work with Steven van Belleghem His Diamond in the Rough framework addresses a specific, documented paradox: Bain research shows 80% of CEOs consider their company customer-centric; only 8% of customers agree. Van Belleghem gives executive teams a precise diagnosis for this failure and a structured path out of it, not a motivation to try harder. His six books spanning the shift from social commerce (The Conversation Manager) through AI’s impact on customer relationships (Customers the Day After Tomorrow) to the execution problem (A Diamond in the Rough) mean audiences arrive with context. The keynote becomes a working session rather than a first exposure. His investor position in Hello Customer, an AI-driven customer experience platform, means his claims about AI and CX come from operational skin in the game, not conference-circuit commentary. He makes AI relevant to commercial and marketing leaders without requiring a technology background, situating AI investment specifically in terms of what it does to customer expectations and competitive differentiation. His thinking has been tested in front of organisations where customer experience is not an internal initiative but a revenue-critical priority: Disney, Mastercard, Heineken, Rabobank, Airbus and Salesforce are among his documented client base. Biography highlights Adjunct Professor of Marketing at Vlerick Business School; guest lecturer at London Business School Author of six international bestselling books on customer experience, including When Digital Becomes Human, Customers the Day After Tomorrow, The Offer You Can’t Refuse, and A Diamond in the Rough: over 150,000 copies sold in seven languages A Diamond in the Rough featured by Forbes as the #1 pick in its Top 10 must-read business books for 2024 Co-founder of Nexxworks, a global innovation and inspiration agency, and Snackbytes, a creative content agency Investor in Hello Customer (AI-driven CX platform) and iO Digital Board director of Plan International Belgium Clients include Disney, Mastercard, Heineken, Booking.com, Rabobank, Airbus, Salesforce and Google; regular keynote speaker at Oslo Business Forum Biography Research by Bain puts a number on one of the most persistent problems in commercial strategy: 80% of CEOs describe their company as customer-centric; only 8% of customers agree. Steven van Belleghem has spent twenty years studying that gap: why it exists, why it persists despite genuine investment, and what it actually takes to close it. His six books trace the problem across different phases of digital change. The Conversation Manager addressed the shift toward social and conversational commerce. When Digital Becomes Human made the case that automation, done right, creates more space for meaningful human contact, not less. Customers the Day After Tomorrow mapped how AI would reshape customer expectations before most organisations had an AI strategy to speak of. A Diamond in the Rough, recommended by Forbes as the #1 business book of 2024, takes the execution problem head-on: over 100 concrete actions for organisations that have the ambition but are stuck at the intention stage. Van Belleghem is Adjunct Professor of Marketing at Vlerick Business School and a guest lecturer at London Business School. He co-founded Nexxworks, an inspiration agency that runs global innovation tours for executive teams, and is an active investor in Hello Customer, an AI-driven customer experience platform. These are not decorative credentials, they place his arguments in direct contact with the operational realities he describes. His work is directly relevant to organisations facing a specific commercial pressure: AI is accelerating the baseline of what customers expect, and the companies that win on experience do so through culture and execution discipline, not technology spend alone. That argument has been made in front of audiences at Oslo Business Forum and tested with client organisations including Disney, Mastercard, Heineken, Rabobank, Airbus and Salesforce. Key speaking topics Customer experience strategy and execution Customer-centric culture and organisational behaviour AI and the future of customer relationships Digital transformation and competitive baseline The gap between CX ambition and CX delivery Long-term customer value and loyalty strategy Human experience in an automated world Ideal for Chief Marketing Officers and Chief Customer Officers leading experience transformation Commercial leadership teams where customer retention and loyalty are revenue-critical Executive and board-level audiences shaping digital and AI investment strategy Organisations that have invested in CX programmes and are not seeing the returns they expected Audience outcomes A specific framework for diagnosing the gap between customer-centric intention and customer-felt reality Clearer understanding of how AI is raising the competitive baseline for customer expectations – and what that means for strategy now Concrete, actionable steps for embedding customer culture at an organisational level, beyond the leadership team A reframe of digital investment: technology as a means to better human relationships, not a substitute for them A shared language for leadership teams to discuss CX execution failure without attributing it to effort or intent

Why organisations work with Stefan Hyttfors He translates AI, climate and geopolitical signals into the specific operating choices a board actually has to make, rather than leaving leaders with a trend deck. His thesis in Yoga for Leaders connects disruptive technology to human behaviour, which gives the room a usable language for the cultural side of transformation, not just the technology side. Two-time Swedish Speaker of the Year, with more than 1,000 engagements across 40+ countries, including IKEA, Microsoft, H&M, Spotify, Deloitte and AstraZeneca. A journalist’s instinct for narrative means complex foresight content lands with senior, mixed-discipline audiences without being diluted. Nordic register, low on hype, high on argument, which suits boards that have already heard the standard Silicon Valley futurism pitch and want something sharper. Biography highlights Author of Yoga for Leaders: How to manage self-disruption in a world of self-destruction, LID Publishing, 2016. Twice named Swedish Speaker of the Year by Talarforum. TEDx speaker, including “We don’t need jobs” (TEDxArendal) and “Can we really trust human intelligence?” (TEDxStockholm). Former photo journalist at Expressen and Photo Editor-in-Chief at a Swedish daily; trained economist. Co-founder of Swedish PR agency Wenderfalck. Client roster includes IKEA, Microsoft, Klarna, Spotify, H&M, Deloitte, AstraZeneca, Gartner, Ericsson, BMW, Toyota, Unilever, Nike, Skanska and E.ON. Biography Most organisations still treat foresight as a forecasting exercise. The default question is what is going to happen, and the default output is a slide of trends. The harder question, what kind of organisation can keep deciding well when the trend lines stop being reliable, is the one Stefan Hyttfors works on with leadership teams across Europe. His thesis is that disruption is misread when it is treated as a purely technological event. In Yoga for Leaders: How to manage self-disruption in a world of self-destruction, published by LID in 2016, he sets technology alongside human behaviour and argues that the binding constraint on adaptation is rarely the tool, it is the mind of the leader using it. That argument has carried into his current work on AI, climate, and geopolitical instability, where he frames the leadership task as composure under accelerating change rather than mastery of any single trend. The credibility sits on volume and range. More than a thousand keynotes across forty-plus countries, twice named Swedish Speaker of the Year by Talarforum, TEDx talks at Arendal and Stockholm, and a client list that runs from IKEA, H&M and Spotify to Microsoft, Deloitte and AstraZeneca. His training as a journalist and economist shows in how the material is built: trend data on one side, behavioural and cultural argument on the other, no filler in between. What buyers tend to single out is the tone. Hyttfors is sceptical of futurism that sells inevitability, and equally sceptical of leadership content that ignores the technology shift underneath. The talk lands as a working brief for the next twelve months, not a prediction about 2035. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight under accelerating change Artificial intelligence and the future of work Digital transformation and behavioural change Leadership in unstable conditions Sustainability and climate as strategic variables Disruptive technology and business model change Trust as a commercial differentiator Ideal for Board and ExCo offsites setting direction under AI, climate and geopolitical uncertainty CHRO and CPO audiences re-scoping workforce strategy around AI capability CSO and strategy leadership teams refreshing planning assumptions for the next cycle Industry conferences in financial services, technology, industrials and consumer where future-of-business framing anchors the programme Audience outcomes A working language for distinguishing signal from noise across AI, climate and geopolitical shifts A clearer view of where their own organisation is over-indexed on predictability and under-indexed on adaptive capacity A behavioural read on why transformation programmes stall, beyond the usual technology or governance explanations Specific prompts for the conversations the leadership team should be having internally in the next two quarters

Why organisations work with Simon Johnson The Nobel Prize-cited research demonstrates, with causal rigour, that institutions shape economic outcomes more decisively than market forces alone, giving boards a framework for evaluating political and regulatory risk that goes beyond scenario planning or macro-forecasting Power and Progress argues that AI and major technologies historically concentrate gains in the hands of those who direct their development, not those who use them – a counter-argument to standard innovation optimism that risk committees and executive teams are increasingly required to engage with His time as IMF Chief Economist during the 2007–08 financial crisis positions his analysis of systemic risk as empirical rather than theoretical: he was inside the global institutional response as it happened Named a UK Government AI Ambassador in December 2025, Johnson is an active participant in policy formation on AI and productivity – organisations engaging him access thinking that is shaping government strategy in real time, not retrospectively His analytical method – using historical variation in colonial institutions as a natural experiment – gives him an unusually precise way of explaining why structural constraints persist, cutting through ideological framing on both left and right Biography highlights 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, shared with Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, “for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity” – Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship, MIT Sloan School of Management; head of the Global Economics and Management group Chief Economist (Economic Counsellor) and Director of Research, International Monetary Fund, 2007–08 Co-author of Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle over Technology and Prosperity (2023, with Acemoglu); 13 Bankers (2010); Jump-Starting America (2019) Named UK Government AI Ambassador, December 2025 Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research; Fellow, Centre for Economic Policy Research; board of directors, Fannie Mae Project Syndicate contributor since 2007; undergraduate PPE, Corpus Christi College, Oxford; PhD Economics, MIT Biography The question of why some economies generate broad prosperity while others stagnate – despite access to similar technologies and capital – occupied Simon Johnson, Daron Acemoglu, and James Robinson for more than two decades. Their answer: institutions. The political and economic rules that determine who can participate in growth are not neutral infrastructure – they are the primary driver of long-term economic outcomes. That conclusion, now validated by the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, has a direct implication for how senior leaders should read structural risk. Johnson’s position as IMF Chief Economist during the 2007–08 global financial crisis adds a dimension that academic credentials alone cannot. He was at the centre of the institutional response to a systemic collapse in real time. 13 Bankers, written in its aftermath, argued that the US financial sector’s political capture had created the conditions for catastrophic failure – a thesis that has since shaped how regulators, boards, and risk professionals think about the relationship between financial power and institutional design. His most recent major work, Power and Progress (co-authored with Acemoglu), extends the institutions framework to technology. The central argument is that technological progress – from the printing press to AI – does not automatically distribute its gains. Who benefits depends on who holds the power to direct how a technology is built and deployed. For organisations navigating AI investment decisions, that argument reframes the question: not “what will AI do?” but “who will AI benefit, and why?” Since December 2025 Johnson has served as a UK Government AI Ambassador, working on initiatives to direct AI development towards productivity gains that are broadly shared. He is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, and contributes regularly to Project Syndicate. He holds degrees from the University of Oxford, the University of Manchester, and MIT. Key speaking topics Institutions, political economy, and long-term prosperity Systemic financial risk and banking reform AI, technology, and economic inequality Global economic governance and policy design Innovation-led growth and its distributional consequences Geopolitical risk and institutional resilience The political economy of financial crises Ideal for Board directors and executive leadership teams navigating political and regulatory risk Financial services organisations and risk committees Government, central bank, and public policy forums Chief Strategy Officers and scenario planning teams at global organisations Audience outcomes A research-grounded framework for understanding why institutions – not market dynamics alone – determine where economic value concentrates A clearer model for evaluating political and regulatory risk as a structural, not episodic, factor in long-term strategy A more critical lens on AI investment decisions, grounded in the historical pattern of how technologies distribute – or fail to distribute – their gains Direct insight into how systemic financial risk forms, drawn from IMF experience during the 2007–08 crisis Context for the current policy environment on AI and productivity, including where government thinking is heading

Why organisations work with Sebastian Thrun He has shipped autonomous AI at production scale. The Stanford team he led won the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005, and the Google self-driving project he co-founded became Waymo. He built the playbook that boards now ask about. Google X, founded under his leadership, codified moonshot methodology for capital-intensive technology bets. He has direct experience reskilling enterprise workforces in AI, data and cloud through Udacity, including programmes for IBM, Mercedes-Benz and Google before the 2024 acquisition by Accenture. He explains AI without dumbing it down. Senior audiences leave with a working sense of what current systems can and cannot do, and where the real operational risk sits. Biography highlights Co-founder of Google X and the Google self-driving car project that became Waymo Led the Stanford Racing Team whose vehicle Stanley won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge; Stanley now sits in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History Co-founder and chairman of Udacity, acquired by Accenture in 2024 to power the LearnVantage reskilling platform Co-founder and former CEO of Kitty Hawk, the eVTOL “flying car” company backed by Larry Page Member of the National Academy of Engineering and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina; Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award (Education, 2012) Co-author of Probabilistic Robotics (MIT Press), the standard graduate text on the mathematics behind autonomous systems Biography Stanley crossed the finish line of the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge after 132 miles of desert, the first autonomous vehicle to do so. The Stanford Racing Team that built it was led by Sebastian Thrun, then director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Stanley now sits in the Smithsonian. The technology grew into Waymo and the modern autonomous vehicle industry. That arc, from research lab to production AI, is what makes his perspective valuable to senior teams. He gave up tenure at Stanford to become a Google Fellow, co-founded Google X, and built the moonshot model that boards now reference when they talk about long-horizon technology bets. Probabilistic Robotics, the textbook he co-authored with Wolfram Burgard and Dieter Fox, remains the standard graduate reference in the field. The second half of his career addresses the constraint that most boards now feel acutely. Talent. Udacity, which he co-founded in 2012, built the Nanodegree model with employers including IBM, Mercedes-Benz and Google, then sold to Accenture in 2024 to anchor the LearnVantage reskilling platform. He also co-founded Kitty Hawk with Larry Page to commercialise eVTOL aircraft. Audiences get something specific from him. A clear read on what current AI systems do well, where they fail, what production deployment actually requires, and how to build a workforce that can operate the technology rather than admire it. Key speaking topics Production AI and autonomous systems Moonshot methodology and long-horizon technology bets AI workforce reskilling and the talent constraint The future of mobility and self-driving vehicles AI for the board and the executive committee Online learning and the economics of education Ideal for Boards and executive committees moving from AI strategy to operating deployment CHROs and CLOs commissioning enterprise reskilling at scale Automotive, mobility and industrial leadership teams facing autonomy CTOs and chief AI officers benchmarking moonshot and R&D portfolios Audience outcomes A working mental model of where current AI systems succeed and where they fail in production A concrete view of the workforce capability required to run AI inside a large organisation A read on how moonshot bets are structured, governed and shut down inside a serious technology company A clearer sense of where autonomy is heading in mobility, logistics and adjacent sectors

Why organisations work with Scott Steinberg A method for foresight that produces decisions, not predictions. The POP FUTURE workshop format converts trend analysis into specific moves on product, talent, and customer strategy. A working library of 30 published books across futurism, innovation, change, and digital transformation, which means buyers can match a programme to a specific board agenda rather than a generic keynote. Direct advisory exposure to Fortune 500 operators and US defence leadership, including IBM, PwC, Intel, Microsoft, and the US Department of Defense, with the language and pace that environment demands. A trends franchise visible through CNBC, BBC, NPR, and Forbes, which gives senior audiences confidence that the speaker on stage is the same voice they have heard analysing the market elsewhere. Biography highlights CEO of FutureProof Strategies and of BIZDEV, the International Association for Business Development and Strategic Partnerships. Author of Make Change Work for You (Perigee/Penguin) and Think Like a Futurist, part of a published catalogue of more than 30 books. Named Master of Innovation by Fortune magazine. Contributor and on-air expert for CNBC, BBC, CNN, NPR, ABC, CBS, and Fox Business; columnist for Forbes and Reader’s Digest. Advisory and consulting work with IBM, PwC, Intel, Sony, Microsoft, MTV, ESPN, American Express, and the US Department of Defense. Creator of the POP FUTURE methodology and the What’s the Future of…? and The Future is Yours applied foresight tools. Biography Most foresight work stops at the trend chart. Boards see the slide on AI, demographics, or customer behaviour, agree it matters, then return to the operating decisions in front of them. Scott Steinberg’s work is built around closing that gap. His POP FUTURE methodology and the What’s the Future of…? workshop tools are designed to take a leadership team from “this trend is real” to “this is what we do on Monday”. That bias toward decision shows up across his published catalogue. Make Change Work for You, published by Perigee, frames future-proofing as a set of practical disciplines for individuals and teams. Think Like a Futurist extends the same logic to enterprise planning. Across more than 30 books, the through-line is the same: foresight as an operating capability, not a corporate trend report. The credentials behind that argument are unusually broad. He runs FutureProof Strategies and BIZDEV, advises IBM, PwC, Intel, Microsoft, and the US Department of Defense, and was named Master of Innovation by Fortune. CNBC, BBC, NPR, and Forbes use him as a recurring voice on technology, work, and consumer behaviour, which means his audiences arrive already familiar with how he reasons. For senior buyers, the practical value is range. Boards working on AI adoption, generational change, customer experience, or change fatigue can put him in front of any of those audiences and get the same disciplined translation from trend to decision. That is what makes him useful when the brief is wide, the audience is mixed, and the agenda is more than a single topic. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and future-proofing Artificial intelligence and the future of business Change leadership and innovation Digital transformation Customer experience and consumer trends Generational shift and future of work Organisational culture and resilience Ideal for Board and executive committee strategy offsites setting a multi-year agenda Transformation, innovation, and digital leaders running enterprise-wide change programmes CMOs and customer experience leaders planning around generational and behavioural shift Industry events where a mixed senior audience needs a single integrating view of technology, work, and customer trends Audience outcomes A working definition of what futurism is and is not, and how to use it inside an existing planning cycle A short list of the trends most likely to reshape the audience’s industry over the next planning horizon A method for translating trend analysis into specific decisions on product, customer, and workforce Language and frames that make foresight defensible to a sceptical board or investment committee