Artificial Intelligence & Generative AI

Why organisations work with Samuel J Scott He argues the brand-versus-performance trade-off in CFO language, which is the conversation that actually decides marketing budgets in a downturn. He is a current Head of Marketing at a connected TV advertising platform, so the case studies are operating reality, not retrospective consulting. His Promotion Fix column in The Drum has run since 2017, giving senior marketers a reference point on advertising effectiveness most peers in the room already read. He holds a WARC Master of Advertising Effectiveness and Marketing Week Mini-MBAs, which is unusually formal training for a working marketer presenting to boards. He takes a public contrarian line on adtech and AI marketing hype, useful for leadership teams tired of vendor pitches dressed as keynotes. Biography highlights Head of Marketing, Adte, a connected TV advertising platform. Columnist of The Promotion Fix in The Drum since 2017; previously a contributing columnist for TechCrunch and Moz. Master of Advertising Effectiveness, WARC, UK. Mini-MBAs in Marketing and Brand Management, Marketing Week, London. 2019 juror, UK Advertising Association Young Lions, the UK Cannes Lions qualifier. Former Director of Marketing at Logz.io and Head of Marketing at Faddom in the Israeli B2B tech sector. Biography In a downturn, the marketing line is the easiest to cut and the most commonly mis-cut. Performance budgets get protected because they are measurable. Brand budgets get reduced because they are not. Within two years, the performance machine stops compounding because the brand has stopped feeding it. That is the argument Samuel J Scott has been making in The Drum’s Promotion Fix column since 2017, and in keynotes for marketing leadership teams across more than two dozen countries. He is one of the few speakers on this subject who is also a working operator, currently Head of Marketing at the connected TV advertising platform Adte, and previously a marketing director in the Israeli B2B technology sector at companies including Logz.io and Faddom. His credentials sit on the technical side of the discipline. A Master of Advertising Effectiveness from WARC, two Mini-MBAs in marketing and brand management from Marketing Week in London, and CIM certifications across marcom planning, copywriting and AI marketing tools. He served as a jury member for the UK Advertising Association’s 2019 Young Lions, the UK qualifier for Cannes. The editorial register is contrarian. Scott has built a reputation for arguing against marketing fashion, whether that is uncritical AI adoption, attribution theatre, or brand purpose campaigns that cannot survive a CFO’s scrutiny. Audiences leave with a sharper view of how to spend a marketing budget when growth gets harder, not a slide deck of trends. Key speaking topics Brand and performance advertising Marketing effectiveness and measurement Defending marketing budgets in downturns B2B marketing and brand-led growth AI in marketing communications Adtech and connected TV Marketing communications strategy Ideal for CMOs and marketing directors under pressure to justify brand spend to a CFO. B2B technology marketing leaders rebuilding a brand layer above lead-gen. Boards and executive teams reviewing marketing as a commercial function, not a cost line. Marketing communications and agency teams negotiating AI-era budget assumptions. Audience outcomes A working language for arguing brand investment in financial terms. A clearer split between what performance media can do and what only brand work delivers. A sceptic’s filter on AI marketing claims from agencies and adtech vendors. A defensible structure for marketing budgets through a downturn. Specific reference points from current B2B technology marketing practice.

Why organisations work with Salim Ismail He authored the reference text on exponential organisational design. Exponential Organizations and its 2023 sequel are the most widely cited corporate playbooks for moving from linear operating models to ones built on AI, data, and external leverage. The ExO Sprint, codified in Exponential Transformation, gives boards a 10-week structured method for testing exponential business models inside an existing P&L. It is a managed process, not a keynote concept. He brings the founding-era credibility of Singularity University, where he built the curriculum and faculty alongside Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil, then carried that thesis into operating practice through ExO Works and OpenExO. He sits on the XPRIZE Foundation board, giving him direct line of sight on which technology categories are about to compress in cost and capability, and what that means for incumbents in adjacent industries. He speaks to boards and CEOs in the language of organisational structure, not innovation theatre. The takeaway is a diagnostic on where the company will be outpaced and what to redesign first. Biography highlights Lead author, Exponential Organizations (Diversion Books, 2014); Frost & Sullivan Growth, Innovation, and Leadership Book of the Year. Lead author, Exponential Organizations 2.0 (2023), with Peter Diamandis, Michael Malone, and a foreword by Ray Kurzweil. Co-author, Exponential Transformation (Wiley, 2018), the ExO Sprint implementation handbook. Founding Executive Director of Singularity University, with Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil. Founder of ExO Works (2016) and Co-founder and Chairman of OpenExO. Board member, XPRIZE Foundation (since March 2017); previously Vice President and Head of Brickhouse, Yahoo’s internal incubator. Biography Most large companies are not slow because their leaders are slow. They are slow because their structure was designed for a linear world, where capability, headcount, and asset base scaled in step with revenue. The book that named this problem and offered an alternative model is Exponential Organizations, published in 2014 and updated in 2023. Its lead author is Salim Ismail. The framework came out of the founding years of Singularity University, where Ismail served as Executive Director alongside Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil. The question on the table was practical: if computing, sensing, biotech, and energy are all on cost curves that drop by orders of magnitude per decade, what does an organisation built to ride those curves actually look like. The answer became the 10 ExO attributes, including a Massive Transformative Purpose, staff on demand, community and crowd, algorithms, and leveraged assets. It is the reason the book has been picked up as a corporate operating reference rather than a futurist commentary. Through ExO Works and OpenExO, Ismail turned the framework into a transformation method. The ExO Sprint, documented in Exponential Transformation with Francisco Palao and Michelle Lapierre, is a 10-week board-level process for stress-testing existing business models against exponential disruption and building parallel ventures inside the company. He sits on the XPRIZE Foundation board, which keeps the diagnostic anchored to where technology cost curves are actually moving. His operating credentials sit underneath the writing. He led Brickhouse, Yahoo’s internal incubator, evaluating thousands of disruptive ideas and shipping four products. He co-founded PubSub Concepts and Angstro, the latter acquired by Google in 2010. He holds an honours degree in theoretical physics and computing from the University of Waterloo. The biography matters because the framework is not abstract; it is the synthesis of someone who built inside large companies, founded outside of them, and then taught both groups how to think about the next decade. Key speaking topics Exponential organisational design Disruptive convergence of AI, biotech, and energy Business model innovation under exponential cost curves Corporate venturing and the ExO Sprint Future of entrepreneurship and scale-up leverage Strategic foresight for boards Technology-driven workforce redesign Ideal for Boards and CEOs are evaluating whether the current operating model can survive the next decade of technology compression Chief strategy officers and corporate development leads are designing exponential ventures alongside the core business Innovation and digital transformation leaders are moving past pilots into operating-model change Industry forums in financial services, energy, life sciences, and industrials, where incumbents face exponential challengers Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the 10 ExO attributes and a way to score the audience’s own organisation against them A clearer view of which technology cost curves are about to bend in their industry and on what timeline Specific examples of incumbents that have applied the ExO Sprint and what changed in the P&L A diagnostic on where structural drag, not technology, is the actual constraint on exponential growth A point of view on what to centralise, what to distribute, and what to externalise as AI capability deepens

Why organisations work with Rowan Gibson He is the author of a named ideation methodology, the 4 Lenses of Innovation, that gives an entire organisation a common language for spotting breakthrough opportunities rather than relying on isolated creative teams. His book Innovation to the Core, published by Harvard Business School Press with Peter Skarzynski, is one of the few practitioner texts focused specifically on building enterprise-wide innovation systems, not on innovation as a mindset. He has worked directly with senior teams at Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Bayer, Mars, Philips, P&G, Dell and Haier, giving him a working comparison set across most major industries. He was shortlisted for the 2015 Thinkers50 Innovation Award, alongside Vijay Govindarajan and Scott Anthony, marking peer recognition from the field’s primary ranking body. His current keynote work integrates AI tools directly into the innovation method, so audiences leave with a view of generative AI as a creative engine inside a structured process, not as a separate technology agenda. Biography highlights Author of Rethinking The Future (1996), Innovation to the Core (Harvard Business School Press, 2008) and The Four Lenses of Innovation (Wiley, 2015), translated into 25 languages. Originator of the 4 Lenses of Innovation methodology, taught and applied inside Fortune 500 innovation programmes. Cofounder of InnovationExcellence.com, a long-running practitioner portal in the innovation field. Shortlisted for the 2015 Thinkers50 Innovation Award. Founder and President of Imagination Bridge, a strategy innovation and digital transformation consultancy. Has advised and lectured at Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Bayer, Coca-Cola, Mars, Philips, P&G, Dell, Haier, Heineken, Siemens and Toyota, among others. Biography Most companies do not have an innovation problem. They have an innovation system problem. Ideas surface and stall, breakthrough projects depend on a particular leader, and the next pipeline always starts from scratch. Rowan Gibson built his career around fixing exactly that gap. Rethinking The Future, his 1996 anthology with contributions from Charles Handy, Michael Porter, C.K. Prahalad, Stephen Covey and Peter Senge, set the early frame. Innovation to the Core, written with Peter Skarzynski for Harvard Business School Press in 2008, took the next step and laid out how an enterprise builds a sustained innovation capability rather than running isolated programmes. The Four Lenses of Innovation, published by Wiley in 2015, distilled the underlying ideation method into something a working team can actually use: four perspectives, Challenging Orthodoxies, Harnessing Trends, Leveraging Resources and Understanding Needs, that produce new strategic options on demand. That method is now the spine of his keynote and consulting work as President of Imagination Bridge. He has run innovation engagements for Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Bayer, Mars, P&G, Coca-Cola, Philips, Dell and Haier, which is a working comparison set across consumer goods, technology, pharma and industrials. The 2015 Thinkers50 Innovation Award shortlist placed him alongside Vijay Govindarajan and Scott Anthony, the field’s most cited contributors. His current work folds generative AI into the same method, which is the most useful version of the AI-and-innovation conversation a senior team can have. The question is not whether AI changes innovation. It is whether the organisation has a disciplined process strong enough for AI to accelerate, instead of one that AI only makes faster at producing the wrong ideas. Key speaking topics Enterprise innovation capability The 4 Lenses of Innovation methodology AI in the innovation process Business model innovation Strategy under disruption Creative thinking for senior teams Digital transformation Ideal for Chief Strategy Officers, Chief Innovation Officers and CTOs running enterprise innovation programmes Executive committees are redesigning the innovation operating model around AI tools Heads of R&D, product and growth in consumer, industrial and technology businesses Boards are weighing how to make innovation a measurable capability rather than a sponsored activity Audience outcomes A working version of the 4 Lenses of Innovation method that teams can apply to a current strategic question A clearer view of where AI fits inside an innovation process, and where it does not Specific examples of how named global companies have built innovation capability at scale A vocabulary for distinguishing one-off creative wins from a repeatable enterprise capability Concrete prompts for the orthodoxies, trends, resources and unmet needs in the audience’s own market

Why organisations work with Rohit Talwar His “Very Human Future” argument that the central strategic task is keeping human outcomes at the centre of AI and technology adoption, not merely managing adoption itself gives leadership teams a framing that is both commercially grounded and defensible at board level. He edits and contributes to multi-author research books that aggregate the work of 60+ futurists and practitioners across a single question; this publishing model means his content draws on current collective intelligence rather than a single perspective frozen at a point in time. As Co-Chair of the UK Node of The Millennium Project, he sits inside a global futures research network. His material reflects active scenario-building methodology, not retrospective trend commentary. He builds entire talks around sector-specific strategic implications: financial services, aviation, local economies, rather than delivering a generic future-of-technology keynote with surface-level industry references. Ranked among the Global Gurus Top 30 Futurist Professionals for 2025, he is a verifiably credentialled figure in an industry where credibility is difficult to assess. Biography highlights CEO and founder of Fast Future, a foresight research, publishing, and advisory firm Editor or lead contributor to more than eight books including A Very Human Future, Beyond Genuine Stupidity: Ensuring AI Serves Humanity, and The Future of Business Co-Chair of the UK Node of The Millennium Project, a global futures research organisation Ranked in the Global Gurus Top 30 Futurist Professionals for 2025; previously profiled by The Independent as a top 10 global futurist MBA from London Business School; BA in Electronics and Computer Science from the University of Keele; early career at British Telecom on AI research and at Andersen Consulting Delivered more than 1,500 keynotes and workshops across 70+ countries on six continents; regular contributor to international news networks on technology and innovation Biography Fast Future is not a typical consultancy. Rohit Talwar built it as a research and publishing operation, an ongoing mechanism for aggregating the work of futurists, practitioners, and emerging thinkers into books and advisory frameworks. That structural choice shapes the quality of what he brings to a leadership conversation. His central argument, developed across titles including A Very Human Future and Beyond Genuine Stupidity: Ensuring AI Serves Humanity, is specific: the question organisations are not asking clearly enough is not whether to adopt AI, but what kind of organisation they want to be when the adoption is complete. Strategy that treats AI as a technical problem consistently misses the governance, cultural, and human-capital decisions that determine whether the investment pays off. Talwar holds an MBA from London Business School and began his career in AI research at British Telecom before moving into management consulting. His foresight work is grounded in structured methodology: he serves as Co-Chair of the UK Node of The Millennium Project, a global futures research body, and brings scenario-building rigour to topics that, in other hands, often remain speculative. The Global Gurus research organisation ranked him among the Top 30 Futurist Professionals for 2025. The effect on senior audiences evidenced consistently across client feedback is a specific one: not inspiration, but productive disruption of existing strategic assumptions. His talks are built to destabilise complacent planning rather than to validate it. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and exponential technologies Strategic foresight and scenario planning Human-centred responses to digital transformation Business model innovation in the face of disruption Global megatrends and drivers of change The future of financial services and fintech Long-range futures and organisational resilience Ideal for Executive leadership teams and boards stress-testing long-range strategy Chief Strategy Officers and Chief Innovation Officers building foresight capability Financial services leadership navigating AI and platform disruption Conference and association audiences in technology, aviation, professional services, and public sector Audience outcomes A structured vocabulary for discussing AI strategy that goes beyond adoption and automation Practical scenario-thinking tools that can be applied directly in strategy workshops Clearer understanding of which emerging technologies require immediate strategic response versus longer-horizon monitoring A sharper framing of the organisational and human-capital implications of accelerating technological change Reduced gap between awareness of disruption and the leadership confidence to act on it

Why organisations work with Roger Bootle He runs the institutional view, not a commentator’s view. Capital Economics, which he founded in 1999, is one of the largest independent macroeconomic research firms in the world, and senior leaders get the house perspective directly from the source. He has been right on inflation when the consensus was wrong. The Death of Inflation, published in 1996, called the structural fall in inflation a decade before central banks adjusted their thinking, and his subsequent inflation work continues to set the contrarian benchmark. He won the 2012 Wolfson Economics Prize, the largest cash prize in economics after the Nobel, for the most credible plan to manage a eurozone exit. Boards exposed to euro-denominated risk get a serious answer, not a hot take. He sat for nearly two decades inside UK economic policymaking as Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Treasury Committee and as a member of the Chancellor’s “Wise Men” panel. He explains the policy process from the inside. The AI Economy, his Axiom Award-winning book, gives leadership teams a proper economic reading of AI: productivity, wages, employment and welfare, not vendor narrative. Biography highlights Founder of Capital Economics, an independent macroeconomic research consultancy, which he started in 1999 Former Group Chief Economist of HSBC; earlier roles at Lloyds Bank and Capel-Cure Myers Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Treasury Committee, 1998 to 2017 Member of the Chancellor’s panel of Independent Economic Advisers, the “Wise Men.” Winner, with the Capital Economics team, of the 2012 Wolfson Economics Prize for a eurozone exit plan Author of The Death of Inflation, The Trouble with Markets, Making a Success of Brexit, and The AI Economy (Gold, 2020 Axiom Business Book Awards) Weekly economics columnist for The Daily Telegraph; named Economics Commentator of the Year at The Comment Awards 2012 Biography The Death of Inflation appeared in 1996 and argued that the inflationary regime built into Western economies since the 1970s was structurally finished. The book sold widely, was translated into nine languages, and became the reference point for a generation of contrarian inflation analysis. It also established its author as an economist willing to take a position years before the policy consensus caught up. That author is Roger Bootle. He founded Capital Economics in 1999 and built it into one of the largest independent macroeconomic research firms in the world, serving banks, asset managers, corporates, and policymakers. Before that, he was Group Chief Economist of HSBC, with earlier roles at Lloyds Bank and Capel-Cure Myers. His public-policy work runs in parallel. He served as Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Treasury Committee from 1998 to 2017, and was appointed to the Chancellor’s panel of Independent Economic Advisers known as the Wise Men. In 2012, he and a team from Capital Economics won the 250,000 pound Wolfson Economics Prize for the most credible plan to manage a country leaving the eurozone, and he was named Economics Commentator of the Year at The Comment Awards the same year. His more recent books extend the same approach to Brexit and AI. Making a Success of Brexit set out the economic conditions for the UK outside the EU. The AI Economy: Work, Wealth and Welfare in the Age of the Robot, which won Gold at the 2020 Axiom Business Book Awards, treats artificial intelligence as a question about productivity, wages and welfare rather than a technology story. He writes a weekly column for The Daily Telegraph. Key speaking topics Global macroeconomic outlook Inflation and monetary policy Eurozone and European economic policy Brexit and the UK economy The economics of artificial intelligence Capital markets and the policy environment Long-run productivity and growth Ideal for Boards and investment committees setting capital allocation against a volatile macro backdrop CFOs, treasurers and CIOs in financial services and corporates with rate and currency exposure Asset management and private capital firms are briefing LPs on the macro outlook Senior policy and government-relations audiences working on UK, EU and monetary policy Audience outcomes A clear reading of where inflation, rates and growth are heading, and the reasoning behind it A direct view from one of the few economists with a public track record of contrarian calls that proved right A grounded economic framing of AI’s effect on productivity, employment and wages A working understanding of how UK and European economic policy is actually made, from someone who advised inside it A perspective on the eurozone and Brexit risk that buyers can defend in front of their own committees

Why organisations work with Robert Cringely Four decades of first-person reporting on Silicon Valley, from the InfoWorld “Notes from the Field” column (1987 to 1995) through PBSs “Triumph of the Nerds” and “NerdTV” to the long-running I, Cringely site, give him a pattern memory across every major computing wave that few other speakers can match. He runs a public, self-graded annual technology prediction column, which forces a level of accountability about where the industry is heading that most futurists avoid. His book “Accidental Empires” remains a reference text on how the personal computer industry actually got built, used by leaders who want to understand the cultural mechanics of Silicon Valley rather than the press-release version. He has written for The New York Times, Forbes, Newsweek and Worth on technology business, so the framing he brings to a corporate audience is editorial and argument-led, not a vendor pitch. Biography highlights Author of the 1992 best-seller “Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition and Still Can’t Get a Date”. Wrote the “Notes from the Field” column at InfoWorld for eight years, 1987 to 1995. Host and writer behind the PBS documentary series “Triumph of the Nerds” (1996) and “Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet” (1998). Producer and host of “NerdTV” on PBS (2005 to 2006); wrote the “I, Cringely: The Pulpit” column on PBS.org through 2008. Bylines as Cringely have appeared in The New York Times, Forbes, Newsweek and Worth. M.A. in Communication Research from Stanford University; B.A. from the College of Wooster. Biography Silicon Valley keeps selling boards a story that the next wave will look nothing like the last one. The track record says otherwise. The same patterns of overfunding, platform consolidation, and quiet operating change show up in the PC era, the internet era, the cloud era, and now in generative AI. Robert Cringely has been writing those patterns down in real time since 1987. His column “Notes from the Field” ran in InfoWorld through the formative years of the PC industry, and the 1992 book “Accidental Empires” turned that reporting into the canonical account of how Silicon Valley actually behaves under pressure. PBS adapted the book into the three-part series “Triumph of the Nerds” in 1996, followed by “Nerds 2.0.1” on the rise of the internet, and later the “NerdTV” interview series. As Cringely, he has written for The New York Times, Forbes, Newsweek and Worth. What sets the work apart is the prediction discipline. Each January he publishes specific calls on where computing, networks and now AI are heading, and each year he goes back and grades the prior years record in public. Few commentators in the field do this; almost none have done it for as long. For a corporate audience, the value is editorial judgement on a noisy market. Cringely will tell a leadership team which AI claims are doing real operating work, which look like the dot-com years repeating, and where the durable economics of compute, data and platforms actually sit. Key speaking topics Generative AI and the next phase of enterprise computing The economics and geopolitics of cloud and compute Silicon Valley business models and platform consolidation Annual technology predictions and the discipline of forecasting The history of the PC, internet and cloud as a guide to the AI cycle Cybersecurity and infrastructure risk in a connected economy Ideal for Boards and executive committees forming a view on AI investment and platform exposure Strategy, technology and innovation leaders responsible for the corporate AI agenda Industry conferences and offsites in technology, financial services, telecoms and media Investor and analyst audiences seeking an editorial read on Silicon Valley signals Audience outcomes A clearer read on which AI and platform claims are durable and which are cycle-driven Pattern recognition across the PC, internet, cloud and AI waves applied to the audience’s own bets Sharper questions for vendors, partners and internal technology teams A practical framework for tracking and grading technology predictions over time

Why organisations work with Ray Kurzweil A documented forecasting record stretching from 1990’s The Age of Intelligent Machines through to The Singularity Is Nearer in 2024, allowing leaders to test their own planning assumptions against predictions that have already been scored against reality. Foundational practitioner credibility: Kurzweil invented the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the Kurzweil 250 synthesiser, and the first commercially viable large-vocabulary speech recognition. He is a technologist who built the technology he describes. Thirteen years at Google leading work on natural language understanding, ending in 2025, give audiences direct insight into how today’s frontier AI labs actually think about machine intelligence. The Law of Accelerating Returns is the most cited framework for why technology trajectories defeat linear planning, giving boards a structured way to argue about long-range bets. Currently Chief AI Officer at Beyond Imagination, the humanoid robotics company he co-founded in 2018, which puts him inside the operating problems of deploying AI into physical industrial environments rather than at a remove from them. Biography highlights Recipient of the 1999 U.S. National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the highest U.S. honour in technology, awarded by President Clinton. 2001 Lemelson-MIT Prize ($500,000) and inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002. Author of The Age of Intelligent Machines (1990), The Age of Spiritual Machines (1999), The Singularity Is Near (2005), How to Create a Mind (2012), and The Singularity Is Nearer (2024). Co-founder of Singularity University at NASA Ames Research Center; co-founder and Chief AI Officer of Beyond Imagination, valued at $500 million in its 2025 Series B. Director of Engineering, then Principal Researcher and AI Visionary at Google from 2012 to 2025, focused on natural language understanding. Named to the Time 100 AI list (2024); holds 21 honorary doctorates and a Technical Grammy Award. Biography By 2009, computers were supposed to be in our pockets, recognising speech well enough to take dictation and reading text aloud to blind users. They were. The predictions came from a 1999 book that struck many of its original readers as fanciful. The inventor who wrote it had already built the first three of those technologies himself. That inventor is Ray Kurzweil. His Law of Accelerating Returns, articulated in that 1999 book and elaborated in The Singularity Is Near in 2005, holds that information technologies progress along smooth exponential curves. As one paradigm exhausts itself, capital and talent flow toward whatever comes next, and the underlying curve continues. The authority comes from rare breadth. Kurzweil invented omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the Kurzweil 250 synthesiser, and the first commercial large-vocabulary speech recognition. President Clinton awarded him the 1999 National Medal of Technology. He spent thirteen years at Google leading work on natural language understanding, ending in 2025 as Principal Researcher and AI Visionary. The 2024 sequel The Singularity Is Nearer revisited those predictions in light of the AI advances of the preceding decade and concluded that human-level AI by 2029 still held. Since 2025 he has served as Chief AI Officer at Beyond Imagination, the humanoid robotics company he co-founded, which raised $100 million in Series B funding at a $500 million valuation that year. The work places him inside the operational reality of deploying AI into physical industrial environments. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and the path to AGI The Law of Accelerating Returns and exponential technology Long-range AI and computing forecasts Human-machine convergence and brain-computer integration Biotechnology, longevity, and the merging of biology with computation Innovation cycles and the economics of technological disruption Ideal for CEOs, CTOs, and chief strategy officers planning multi-year technology investments Boards and executive committees stress-testing long-range corporate plans Innovation, R&D, and AI leadership teams inside large enterprises Industry conferences on AI, future of technology, healthcare innovation, and technology strategy Audience outcomes An empirical map of how computing power, gene sequencing speed, and AI capability have actually doubled over recent decades, against which to test internal forecasting assumptions. Concrete forecast dates for human-level AI, brain-computer integration, and the Singularity, with the reasoning behind each. A view of which earlier Kurzweil predictions have been validated by the current AI moment and which remain open. Sharper instincts for spotting linear extrapolations sitting inside long-range corporate plans. A common reference point for boards and leadership teams arguing about long-range technology investment.

Why organisations work with Ravin Jesuthasan He gives boards and executive teams an actual blueprint for moving from jobs to skills, not a slide about why it matters. The Work Without Jobs framework, developed with John Boudreau, is the reference text on the subject and is taught inside MIT Sloan and Kellogg. His day job is doing this work. As Mercer’s Global Leader of Transformation Services, he advises some of the largest employers in the world on workforce redesign, so the keynote is built on live engagements, not theory. He sits where AI, automation and human capital actually intersect. His four-step framework for applying automation to work, from Reinventing Jobs, has become a standard tool for HR and operations leaders trying to decide what to automate, what to augment, and what to leave alone. He brings institutional authority that buyers can verify. World Economic Forum Steering Committee on Work and Employment, Thinkers50 Radar, FT Book of the Month, fifteen pieces in HBR and MIT Sloan Management Review. His material is built for the CHRO and the CEO in the same room. Many future-of-work speakers pitch to one or the other. He frames the work redesign question as a board-level operating decision, which is how it now needs to be sold internally. Biography highlights Global Leader of Transformation Services at Mercer. Executive Fellow and Adjunct Lecturer of Executive Education, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Author of five books including Work Without Jobs (MIT Press, 2022) and The Skills-Powered Organization (MIT Press, 2024). Wall Street Journal bestseller; Financial Times Book of the Month, October 2024. Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2020; shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Talent Award 2023. World Economic Forum Steering Committee member on Work and Employment. Over 200 published articles, including 15 in Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review; regular Forbes contributor. CFA charterholder and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA). Biography The job, as a unit of organisational architecture, is starting to look obsolete. Roles are static, skills inside them decay in months rather than years, and AI is now capable of doing chunks of work that used to define entire functions. Most large employers know this. Very few know what to replace the jobs-based model with. This is the territory Ravin Jesuthasan has spent two decades mapping. As Global Leader of Transformation Services at Mercer, he advises multinational employers on how to rebuild their workforce architecture around skills and tasks rather than fixed job descriptions. The same body of work runs through Work Without Jobs, written with John Boudreau and published by MIT Press in 2022, and its 2024 follow-up, The Skills-Powered Organization, written with Tanuj Kapilashrami and named Financial Times Book of the Month in October 2024. The institutional credentials match the intellectual claim. He sits on the World Economic Forum’s Steering Committee on Work and Employment, holds an Executive Fellow and Adjunct Lecturer appointment at the Kellogg School of Management, and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2020 before being shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Talent Award in 2023. He has written more than 200 articles, including fifteen pieces for Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review, and contributes regularly to Forbes. For boards now being asked how AI will reshape headcount, productivity and capability, his contribution is not a forecast. It is an operating model: a structured way of deciding what work gets deconstructed, which tasks get automated or augmented, and how the organisation acquires the skills it will actually need next year, not the jobs it posted last year. Key speaking topics The skills-powered organisation Reinventing jobs through automation and AI The future of work and the work operating system Workforce transformation and human capital strategy Human-AI collaboration in the enterprise The future of the Chief People Officer role Sustainable digital transformation Ideal for CHROs and Chief People Officers rebuilding the workforce model around skills and AI. CEOs and boards making capital-level decisions on AI, automation and headcount. Transformation, operations and strategy leaders responsible for redesigning how work gets done. Executive teams preparing for skills-based talent markets and post-jobs operating models. Audience outcomes A working definition of the skills-powered organisation and how it differs from a jobs-based model. A four-step method for deciding what to automate, what to augment, and what to leave to humans. A board-ready argument for treating work design as a strategic operating decision, not an HR programme. Specific case examples from global employers already deconstructing jobs into tasks and skills.

Why organisations work with Raffaello D’Andrea He has built two commercially-deployed autonomous systems from the ground up – Kiva Systems, now the architecture powering over a million Amazon Robotics units across 300+ facilities, and Verity, whose autonomous indoor drones operate at nearly 200 sites worldwide. Most technology speakers have observed others build at scale; D’Andrea has done it twice. His account of the gap between academic research and industrial deployment is not speculative. He moved from Cornell professor to co-founder to chief technical advisor to ETH faculty, and back to founder again – carrying hands-on engineering responsibility at every stage. That trajectory gives organisations a rare, inside view of what makes autonomous systems fail or succeed in practice. The Kiva story – a $775M acquisition that became the operational backbone of the world’s largest e-commerce company – is a fully documented, publicly available case study in redesigning an entire industry’s logistics model around autonomous systems. D’Andrea can speak to that case from the inside, as the architect of the core system. His ongoing research at ETH Zurich, through platforms like CyberRunner, Cubli and the Flying Machine Arena, sits at the frontier of autonomous learning and control. Audiences hear what is actually being solved in research today, not what is being forecast by analysts. Elected to the National Academy of Engineering, inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for the Kiva system, and recognised by the Logistics Hall of Fame – D’Andrea holds formal peer recognition across engineering, invention and industry simultaneously, a combination that is rare among technology speakers. Biography highlights Professor of Dynamic Systems and Control, ETH Zurich; founder of ETH’s Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control Co-founder of Kiva Systems, acquired by Amazon in 2012 and now operating as Amazon Robotics, the autonomous fulfilment system at the core of Amazon’s global warehouse operations Founder and CEO of Verity, autonomous indoor drone company deployed at nearly 200 sites worldwide, with clients including IKEA, Maersk and UPS Elected member, National Academy of Engineering (2020); National Inventors Hall of Fame inductee (2022); Logistics Hall of Fame inductee (2024) IEEE Fellow; IEEE Robotics and Automation Award (2016); Engelberger Robotics Award (2015); Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2001); named on more than 40 US patents TED Global 2013 and TED 2016 speaker; TED and research videos with tens of millions of views New media artworks held in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada and France’s FRAC Centre; exhibited at the Venice Biennale Biography The systems running inside Amazon’s warehouses today – more than a million autonomous robots across over 300 facilities – trace their core architecture directly to Raffaello D’Andrea. As co-founder of Kiva Systems, D’Andrea designed the navigation logic, fleet coordination algorithms and adaptive control systems that made warehouse automation economically viable at commercial scale for the first time. When Amazon acquired Kiva in 2012, it rebranded the company as Amazon Robotics and made it the operational foundation of its global fulfilment network. That work was built on a research track record with real competitive stakes. Before Kiva, D’Andrea was at Cornell University, where he led the Robot Soccer Team to four consecutive RoboCup world championships – using autonomous multi-agent competition as a proving ground for the kinds of coordination and real-time decision-making that large-scale robotics deployments require. The move from academic research to commercial deployment, and back to academic research, is the defining pattern of his career. At ETH Zurich, where he founded the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control, D’Andrea leads research through hands-on experimental platforms – CyberRunner, Cubli, the Flying Machine Arena, the Distributed Flight Array – that probe the real limits of autonomous learning, not its theoretical promise. In 2014, he co-founded Verity, whose autonomous indoor drone systems now operate at nearly 200 sites worldwide, automating inventory tracking and operational data collection for clients including IKEA, Maersk and UPS. The company raised a $43M Series B in 2023 with Qualcomm Ventures among the investors. Elected to the National Academy of Engineering and inducted into both the National Inventors Hall of Fame and the Logistics Hall of Fame, D’Andrea holds formal peer recognition across engineering, invention and industry – a combination that reflects a career built on closing the distance between what autonomous systems can do in a laboratory and what they can sustain across an industrial operation. Key speaking topics Autonomous systems design and commercial-scale deployment AI, machine learning and physical intelligence Warehouse automation and supply chain operations Deep-tech entrepreneurship and venture building Autonomous flight and drone systems The gap between robotics research and real-world application The future of human-machine collaboration in physical operations Ideal for COOs, heads of supply chain and logistics leaders evaluating or scaling autonomous operations CTOs and technology leadership teams making investment decisions in robotics and AI deployment Boards and executive committees setting autonomous systems strategy Innovation and transformation leadership forums focused on operational technology Audience outcomes A practitioner’s framework for distinguishing autonomous systems that create genuine operational value from those that stall between proof of concept and deployment Concrete understanding of the systems design conditions that make robotics reliable and economically viable at industrial scale An insider account of how Kiva Systems redesigned warehouse operations – and what that process reveals about the real requirements of large-scale autonomous deployment A more accurate picture of where AI and robotics are heading, grounded in what is already working at commercial scale rather than in market speculation Sharper criteria for evaluating autonomous technology partnerships, vendor claims and investment priorities

Why organisations work with Piers Linney He is running an AI-agent business while he speaks about one. Implement AI has rolled out managed digital workforces inside more than 120 UK companies, so the deployment patterns he describes are ones he is shipping. His finance and policy lens is unusual for an AI speaker. Former Non-Executive Director of the British Business Bank during the GBP 90 billion Covid loan programmes, with prior careers in M&A at Credit Suisse and venture capital. He has been on both sides of the cap table. Co-CEO of Outsourcery through AIM listing and administration, then Dragon on BBC Two’s Dragons’ Den, then investor and co-founder again. He is a credible voice on diversity and social mobility without using the word as a slogan. MBE 2026, European Diversity Champion 2024, founding trustee of the Powerlist Foundation. He works on stage in the register a senior buyer needs: operator, not analyst. Mainstage keynotes at Tech Show London, AI and Big Data World, DTX, ICAEW and Elite Business Live. Biography highlights Co-founder and Executive Chairman, Implement AI, winner of AI Startup of the Year (London), UK Startup Awards 2025. Investor on BBC Two’s Dragons’ Den, series 11 and 12, and subject of Channel 4’s The Secret Millionaire. Former Non-Executive Director, British Business Bank, appointed 2017. MBE, King’s New Year Honours 2026, for services to small business, entrepreneurship, banking, diversity and social mobility. Chairman and co-founder, Atherton Bikes, additive-manufactured mountain bikes used to win the 2023 UCI Downhill World Championships. Former Co-CEO of Outsourcery (AIM-listed cloud and communications business) and former Trustee of Nesta. Biography Implement AI now runs managed digital workforces inside more than 120 UK businesses, from manufacturers to marketing agencies. It is the latest company built by Piers Linney, who co-founded it in 2023 with Dr Aalok Shukla and serves as Executive Chairman. The work sits at the practical edge of the AI conversation: not whether to use it, but how to get agents into the operating model and measure what they return. That operator stance is reinforced by an unusually wide finance and policy track record. Linney trained as a solicitor at SJ Berwin, moved into M&A investment banking at Credit Suisse, then ran the buyout that became Outsourcery, taking the cloud and communications business onto AIM in 2013 in a GBP 13 million flotation. He was later appointed Non-Executive Director of the British Business Bank, where he sat through the design of the UK government’s Covid SME loan programmes. Audiences know him from Dragons’ Den, where he invested as a Dragon for series 11 and 12, and from Channel 4’s The Secret Millionaire. He chairs Atherton Bikes, the additive-manufactured mountain bike maker whose frames carried Atherton siblings to UCI Downhill World Championship titles in 2023. He sits on Sky’s Diversity Advisory Council and was a founding trustee of the Powerlist Foundation. The MBE in the 2026 New Year Honours captured the through-line: small business, entrepreneurship, banking, diversity and social mobility. For boards trying to convert AI ambition into deployed capability, the value he brings is the rare combination of someone who has built and sold a tech business, sat on the board of a development bank, picked winners on national television, and is now shipping an AI-agent platform. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and the digital workforce AI agent deployment and operating model redesign Entrepreneurship and scaling technology businesses Future of work and workforce transformation Access to capital and SME financing Diversity, social mobility and inclusion in business Ideal for Boards and executive committees moving from AI pilots to deployed agent capability. CEOs, COOs and transformation leads redesigning operations around digital workers. Entrepreneur and scale-up audiences, including investor networks and chamber of commerce events. CHROs and learning leaders preparing workforces for AI-augmented roles. Audience outcomes A working picture of what an AI-agent operating model looks like, with concrete examples from live deployments. Sharper questions for vendors, internal teams and investors about where AI does and does not pay back. A perspective on the capital environment shaping technology investment, drawn from a former development-bank director. Confidence in framing AI as an operating decision, not an IT project.

Why organisations work with Philippe Dewost He has run digital transformation from inside the state. As director of a €4.25 billion programme at Caisse des Dépôts, he is one of the few practitioners who can speak to public capital, regulation, and operating execution as a single problem. He authored the 2013 report that produced La French Tech. Leaders briefing him on ecosystem strategy are talking to the person who designed one. He built LaBChain, the 27-partner blockchain consortium at Caisse des Dépôts, before most boards had a working vocabulary for distributed ledgers. His material on blockchain is mechanism-first, not hype. He has operated at every layer of the stack: co-founder of Wanadoo, CEO of a Cambridge startup acquired by Apple, head of Leonard at VINCI, director general of a French engineering school. The same person has shipped consumer products, sold technology to Apple, and built a national policy instrument. Biography highlights Co-founder of Wanadoo, France Telecom’s consumer internet service, which became Europe’s leading ISP at peak. Former CEO of imSense (Cambridge), the image-processing company acquired by Apple in 2010. Director of a €4.25 billion digital programme at Caisse des Dépôts under France’s Programme d’Investissements d’Avenir. Author of the 2013 report to the French Prime Minister that gave rise to La French Tech, announced in January 2014. Founder of LaBChain, a 27-partner blockchain R&D consortium led from Caisse des Dépôts. Director of Leonard, VINCI Group’s corporate innovation and foresight programme; led EPITA, the IT and cybersecurity engineering school; author of “De Mémoire Vive” (2022), preface by Cédric Villani. Biography Wanadoo was an internal France Telecom project in 1995 when Philippe Dewost helped build its product management. Four years later it was Europe’s leading internet service provider with over a million subscribers. That early experience set the pattern: technology only matters when it reaches operating scale and the institutions around it learn to govern it. After running imSense, the Cambridge image-processing company acquired by Apple in 2010, he joined Caisse des Dépôts in 2011 to direct a €4.25 billion digital investment package under France’s Programme d’Investissements d’Avenir. In 2013 he authored the report to the Prime Minister that became the design document for La French Tech, the initiative launched in January 2014 with €215 million of public funding. He then built LaBChain, a 27-partner blockchain consortium that became one of Europe’s earliest serious cross-sector experiments in distributed ledgers. At VINCI Group from 2017 he ran Leonard, the corporate innovation and foresight programme, leading exploration across autonomous vehicles, climate resilience, AI and four other long-horizon topics. The intrapreneurship engine he built there is now a reference model for other large corporates. From October 2021 he ran EPITA, the IONIS Group engineering school, focusing it on cybersecurity and on a presence at the cyber campus in La Défense. He is also Operating Partner at C4 Ventures, Pascal Cagni’s consumer high-tech fund, and sits on the board of agritech firm SunR. His 2022 book “De Mémoire Vive”, with a foreword by mathematician Cédric Villani, is a personal history of the digital revolution by someone who was inside several of its turning points. It was published with 42 unique NFT-numbered first editions, an editorial choice that says something about the author’s instinct for where the technology is going next. Key speaking topics Digital sovereignty Blockchain as institutional infrastructure Corporate innovation and intrapreneurship at scale Building national technology ecosystems Cybersecurity as a strategic capability Artificial intelligence in operating environments Smart cities and autonomous mobility The history and trajectory of the digital revolution Ideal for Board members and CEOs setting digital, AI or sovereignty strategy at a European scale CIOs, CTOs and Chief Innovation Officers moving from pilots into operating deployment Public sector leaders and policy teams designing ecosystem or industrial policy in technology Corporate venture and innovation leads building intrapreneurship and partnership engines Audience outcomes A working mental model of how digital ambition translates into operating capability, with named examples from French and European programmes. A clear-eyed read on blockchain as a coordination mechanism between institutions, not as a product category. A senior practitioner’s view of where corporate innovation programmes succeed and where they stall. A specific framing of digital sovereignty that boards can use to interrogate vendor, infrastructure and talent dependencies.

Why organisations work with Peter Thiel Zero to One gives leadership teams a concrete test for whether their strategy is genuinely new or a costly form of imitation – a distinction most strategy processes are designed to obscure rather than force. His operating record spans two structurally different technology businesses – PayPal in consumer finance and Palantir in national security data analytics – which gives his claims about technology-led company building an unusually wide evidential base. The “contrarian question” – what important truth do very few people agree with you on? – functions as a practical diagnostic for strategic differentiation, not a rhetorical warm-up. Leadership teams leave with a tool they can apply immediately. As the first outside investor in Facebook and a Founders Fund partner whose bets include SpaceX, Airbnb, and Stripe, his argument for backing unconventional ideas over consensus picks is grounded in pattern recognition, not theory. His argument that definite optimism – a concrete plan for the future – outperforms “optionality” as a leadership posture is a direct challenge to how most boards approach long-term planning. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of PayPal; led the company to its acquisition by eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002 Co-founder and Chairman of Palantir Technologies since 2003; the company went public in 2020 and reached a market capitalisation exceeding $300 billion First outside investor in Facebook, acquiring approximately 10% of the company for $500,000 in 2004; board member until 2022 Co-founder and partner at Founders Fund, with a portfolio including SpaceX, Airbnb, Stripe, and Lyft Author of Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future (2014) – #1 New York Times bestseller and widely adopted reference text in investor and founder communities Holds a BA in Philosophy and a JD from Stanford University; has taught at Stanford Law School and serves on the Hoover Institution’s Board of Overseers Founder of the Thiel Fellowship, which provides $100,000 grants to young entrepreneurs who forgo university to build companies World Economic Forum Young Global Leader; TechCrunch Crunchie Award, Venture Capitalist of the Year Biography The most expensive strategic mistake a leadership team can make is to compete at full intensity for something not worth fighting over. Most organisations never ask that question. Peter Thiel has spent three decades asking it – and the answer, across PayPal, Palantir, and Founders Fund, has been the same: the most valuable companies do not win competitions; they make them irrelevant. Thiel co-founded PayPal in 1998, led it as CEO through its 2002 acquisition by eBay for $1.5 billion, and then co-founded Palantir Technologies, a data analytics firm now serving governments and major institutions worldwide. He was also the first outside investor in Facebook, acquiring roughly 10% of the company for $500,000 in 2004. His Founders Fund portfolio – built on a philosophy of backing what others won’t – includes SpaceX, Airbnb, and Stripe. His 2014 book Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future made the underlying argument explicit. The most valuable businesses go from zero to one – they create something genuinely new rather than competing for a larger share of something that already exists. Going from one to n, Thiel argues, is replication. Competitive markets grind down returns until no one profits. The strategic question worth asking is not how to win – it’s whether to compete at all. Thiel chairs Palantir’s board and is a partner at Founders Fund. He holds a BA in Philosophy and a JD from Stanford, where he has taught at the law school and serves on the Hoover Institution’s Board of Overseers. He founded the Thiel Fellowship, which grants $100,000 to young founders who leave university to build companies – a direct expression of his conviction that conventional paths often foreclose the unconventional thinking that creates real value. Key speaking topics Creative monopoly and competitive strategy Technology company building and venture capital Contrarian thinking and differentiated investment Artificial intelligence and the future of technology Long-term strategic planning and definite optimism Entrepreneurship and company formation The stagnation of technological progress Ideal for Executive and board leadership teams examining competitive strategy and business model differentiation Chief Strategy Officers, transformation leads, and senior leadership forums in technology-intensive industries Founder and investor communities at the intersection of innovation and capital allocation C-suite audiences focused on AI, data infrastructure, and long-term technology strategy Audience outcomes A concrete framework – the zero-to-one distinction – for evaluating whether a strategy is genuinely new or a structured form of competitive imitation Understanding of why monopoly, correctly defined, is the goal of lasting business strategy, and what the four durable sources of monopoly advantage are A practical diagnostic tool – the contrarian question – for identifying differentiated insight in their own market or category A grounded perspective on how power-law logic in venture capital applies to internal resource allocation and portfolio thinking A clearer view of where technology is genuinely advancing, where it has stalled, and what that means for decisions made today