Artificial Intelligence & Generative AI

Why organisations work with Mark Esposito He brings a named foresight framework, DRIVE, that gives leadership teams a shared vocabulary for the five megatrends shaping their markets, rather than a generic “future of” briefing. His positions sit on both sides of the AI conversation. He advises the World Economic Forum’s Global AI Alliance on policy while running Nexus FrontierTech as an operator, so the board hears how regulation and deployment actually meet. He has built the institutional access most academic speakers cannot. Harvard Kennedy School, Hult, Cambridge Judge, Georgetown, and government advisory roles across the GCC and Eurasia. The work is current and published. Two Amazon bestsellers, The Great Remobilization with MIT Press, and forthcoming titles with Routledge and Penguin Random House give a senior buyer a reading list to brief their team from. Biography highlights Professor of Business and Economics at Hult International Business School, with appointments at Harvard Kennedy School (Center for International Development), Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science, and Harvard Law School’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society Co-founder and Chief Learning Officer of Nexus FrontierTech, an AI venture, and co-founder of the AI Native Foundation, the Circular Economy Alliance, and The Chart ThinkTank Co-developer of the DRIVE megatrends framework with Terence Tse Author or co-author of 13 books, including two Amazon bestsellers, plus The Great Remobilization (MIT Press, 2023) and Digitizing the Emerging Economies (Cambridge University Press, 2024) Named to the Thinkers50 Radar of 30 thinkers most likely to shape the future; recognised by MIT Technology Review and Thinkers360 for AI influence Member of the World Economic Forum’s Global AI Alliance and policy advisor to governments across the GCC and Eurasia Biography The hard part of governing AI is not writing the principles. It is keeping a strategy coherent while the technology, the regulation, and the workforce implications all change inside the same planning cycle. That is the gap Mark Esposito’s work has occupied for the past decade, first through strategic foresight, now through applied AI policy and deployment. The intellectual anchor is DRIVE, the megatrends framework he developed with Terence Tse and laid out in Understanding How the Future Unfolds. DRIVE gives leadership teams five named forces, from demographic change through enterprising dynamics, that organise the noise of long-range planning into something a board can actually use. The framework underpins his teaching at Hult International Business School, where he is Professor of Business and Economics, and his research affiliations at Harvard Kennedy School, the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, and the Berkman Klein Center. He pairs that academic base with an operator’s vantage point. As co-founder and Chief Learning Officer of Nexus FrontierTech, an AI venture, he works inside the commercial reality of deploying AI at scale. The AI Native Foundation, which he also co-founded, extends that into capability building for institutions trying to become genuinely AI-native rather than AI-curious. His seat on the World Economic Forum’s Global AI Alliance connects both sides to the policy conversation. The body of work is now substantial. Thirteen books, two Amazon bestsellers, The Great Remobilization with MIT Press, and forthcoming titles with Routledge and Penguin Random House. Thinkers50 named him to its Radar of thinkers most likely to shape the future; MIT Technology Review and Thinkers360 have recognised his AI influence. For boards trying to make defensible decisions on AI while the ground moves under them, that combination of foresight discipline, policy access, and operating experience is rare in a single voice. Key speaking topics AI strategy and AI-native organisations Strategic foresight and megatrends The DRIVE framework AI policy and governance Fourth Industrial Revolution and emerging economies Circular economy and resource strategy Geopolitics of technology Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting AI strategy and governance posture CSOs, transformation leads, and chief strategy officers running long-range planning under technological uncertainty Government and public sector leaders shaping AI policy and industrial strategy Senior leadership teams in emerging markets navigating the Fourth Industrial Revolution Audience outcomes A shared, named vocabulary (DRIVE) for the five megatrends reshaping their sector A clearer view of where their AI agenda is running ahead of, or behind, their operating model Specific examples of how governments and large enterprises are translating AI policy into deployment A reading map across his published work for follow-up briefing inside the organisation

Why organisations work with Marco Tempest He works inside the technology he talks about. NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, MIT Media Lab and ETH Zurich Space are his day-to-day environments, not credentials borrowed for the stage. He treats perception as the strategic variable. Audiences leave with a sharper sense of how attention, framing and trust are engineered, which is the part of technology adoption most leadership conversations skip. His material is built with the tools clients want to understand: drones, robots, augmented reality, generative systems. The demonstration is the explanation. Seven TED talks and keynotes at SIGGRAPH, Davos, Cannes Lions and IBC give him a tested vocabulary for translating complex systems into language a board can act on. He has the rare standing to brief a NASA mission team in the morning and headline a Fortune 100 leadership offsite in the evening, and to make the same argument in both rooms. Biography highlights Director’s Fellow, MIT Media Lab. Creative Technologist and Consultant, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory; NASA Honor Award recipient. Director, Pi Innovation Hub, ETH Zurich Space. Founder and Director, MagicLab, New York. Seven-time TED speaker; SIGGRAPH 2020 keynote. Merlin Award for Best Contemporary Magician (2010); World Magic Award for Best Contemporary Magic (2009); Mandrakes d’Or (1994); Special Fellowship, Academy of Magical Arts. Biography A drone swarm performing in formation looks like a technology demo until you watch how an audience reacts to it. The reaction is the product. That is the lens Tempest brings to every emerging technology conversation: not what the system can do, but what it does to the person watching. He holds the working credentials to make that argument seriously. He is a Director’s Fellow at the MIT Media Lab, a Creative Technologist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory with a NASA Honor Award for his contribution to COVID-19 ventilator work, and director of the Pi Innovation Hub at ETH Zurich’s Space division. He also runs MagicLab, a New York consortium that prototypes illusion and digital technology together. The performance work is the testing ground for the ideas. Seven TED talks and keynotes at SIGGRAPH, Davos, Cannes Lions and IBC have used robots, AR, drones and generative systems as live material, not slideware. The Merlin Award, World Magic Award and Mandrakes d’Or sit alongside the academic and engineering affiliations because the discipline is the same one: engineering perception with precision. For executive audiences, the value is specific. Tempest gives leadership teams a working model of how attention, trust and belief actually behave around new technology, drawn from the labs where that technology is being built. A board that has heard him is better equipped to ask the second-order questions about adoption, narrative and human response that strategy decks routinely miss. Key speaking topics Emerging technology and human perception Robotics, drones and autonomous systems Augmented and mixed reality Generative AI and creativity Innovation storytelling Space technology and exploration The psychology of attention and trust Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting AI, robotics or XR strategy CTO, CIO and chief innovation leaders shaping emerging-technology roadmaps Marketing and brand leadership rethinking customer attention in saturated channels Leadership offsites and innovation summits where the technology argument needs to land with non-technical executives Audience outcomes A working mental model for how attention and trust shift when new technology enters a customer relationship Specific examples, drawn from NASA JPL, MIT Media Lab and live performance, of how robots, drones, AR and generative systems behave in front of real audiences Sharper questions to put to internal technology and innovation teams about adoption and human response A reframing of innovation storytelling as a discipline with rules, not a soft skill

Why organisations work with Ken Hughes His Blue Dot Consumer framework gives leadership teams a named model for the modern consumer – one who places themselves at the centre of every interaction and expects brands to be instant, personal, and emotionally authentic. It replaces vague customer-centricity language with a concrete diagnostic tool. Taylormaking, his 2025 book, uses Taylor Swift’s 12 studio albums as a structured analytical framework for brand intimacy – demonstrating how emotional loyalty, tribal belonging, and values-led branding operate in practice and what that requires from commercial strategy. A career spanning strategy consulting at Accenture, consumer insight at Nielsen, and 25 years as CEO of Glacier Consulting gives him a rare combination: analytical training in how consumers behave and sustained practical experience of what actually shifts in boardrooms. Named by CX Network among the Top 50 CX Leaders to Follow in 2025 and the Top 50 AI Leaders in CX to Follow in 2026, he brings an externally validated, current perspective on where consumer expectations are heading – not where they have been. His interdisciplinary base – consumer psychology, behavioural economics, digital anthropology, and cyberpsychology – lets him explain brand decisions as outcomes of human behaviour, not just marketing choices. That distinction is particularly valuable in conversations with senior leaders who have grown sceptical of CX as a function. Biography highlights CEO and founder of Glacier Consulting, a consumer insight agency whose clients include Coca-Cola, IKEA, AXA, Unilever, Walmart, Google, Microsoft, and PayPal Former Strategy Consultant at Accenture and Manager of Consumer Insight at Nielsen Part-time lecturer in Consumer Behaviour at University College Cork Author of Taylormaking: A New Era of Modern Branding and Customer Connection (2025), a CX strategy book structured around Taylor Swift’s 12 studio albums TEDx speaker at TEDxUniversityofNicosia; talk has received more than 100,000 online views Named by CX Network among the Top 50 Customer Experience Leaders to Follow in 2025 and Top 50 AI Leaders in CX to Follow in 2026 Biography Customer loyalty has become harder to earn as the expectations of consumers – particularly Gen Z and Gen Alpha – have shifted from satisfaction to emotional belonging. Ken Hughes built Glacier Consulting around one persistent question: why do people buy, and what does that mean for how brands should behave? After earlier careers as a strategy consultant at Accenture and a consumer insight manager at Nielsen, he has spent more than two decades embedding behavioural science into commercial practice. His named concept, the Blue Dot Consumer, gives organisations a specific model for the modern customer – one who treats themselves as the centre of every interaction, expecting brands to be instant, personal, and emotionally intelligent. That framework, rooted in consumer psychology, digital anthropology, and behavioural economics, underpins both his consultancy work and his keynote practice across five continents. His 2025 book, Taylormaking, extends that argument into a structured analysis of brand intimacy, using Taylor Swift’s 12 studio albums as a framework for understanding emotional loyalty, tribal community, and values-led leadership. It is a useful index of how Hughes works: making the mechanisms of consumer psychology legible and commercially actionable for leadership audiences well beyond the CX function. A part-time lecturer in Consumer Behaviour at University College Cork and named by CX Network among the Top 50 CX Leaders to Follow in both 2025 and 2026, Hughes speaks more than 80 times annually. His client roster – spanning Coca-Cola, Unilever, Walmart, Google, Microsoft, and PayPal – reflects both the breadth of sectors in which his behavioural arguments apply and the seniority of the audiences he typically addresses. Key speaking topics Consumer psychology and shopper behaviour Customer experience strategy Brand connection and emotional loyalty Generational consumer shifts – Gen Z and Gen Alpha AI and the future of customer experience Creativity and innovation in commercial culture Ideal for CMOs and marketing leaders focused on building brand loyalty in a competitive, AI-influenced landscape Customer experience leaders navigating the shift from transactional to emotionally driven consumer relationships Senior commercial and retail leaders seeking behavioural insight into how younger consumer cohorts make brand decisions Transformation and innovation leads rethinking how brands earn and sustain connection with modern audiences Audience outcomes A named model – the Blue Dot Consumer – for diagnosing how modern consumers make brand decisions and what they expect from every brand interaction Practical understanding of how emotional loyalty differs from satisfaction, and what organisations must do differently to build it Insight into how Gen Z and Gen Alpha are reshaping brand expectations and what that requires from commercial and marketing strategy Clarity on AI’s role in the future of customer experience – where automation strengthens brand connection and where it risks eroding it A framework, drawn from Taylormaking, for building tribal brand belonging through authenticity, community, and values-led leadership

Why organisations work with Kaihan Krippendorff He runs Outthinker, a working peer network of chief strategy, innovation and growth officers from Fortune 500 companies. The research that feeds his keynotes is drawn from sitting CSOs, not desk study. His IDEAS process, Outthinker Playbook, and 9Ps business model framework give strategy teams a structured way to surface non-obvious options. These are taught inside Wharton Executive Education, NYU, and FIU. Proximity, co-authored with Robert Wolcott of Kellogg, is the most developed business-side thesis on what just-in-time production, AI, and on-demand services mean for where value is created. It earned Thinkers50 recognition and a Next Big Idea Club endorsement. He bridges strategy and internal entrepreneurship. Driving Innovation from Within (Columbia Business School Publishing) addresses the operational problem of getting new ideas through a corporate immune system, the issue most CSOs actually wrestle with. Biography highlights Founder of Outthinker, a peer network of chief strategy, innovation, growth and transformation officers from Fortune 500 and large private organisations. Former McKinsey consultant; senior fellow at Wharton; teaching roles at NYU School of Professional Studies and Florida International University. Author of six books including Outthink the Competition, Driving Innovation from Within, and Proximity (co-authored with Robert Wolcott, 2024). Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2019; shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Innovation Award (2019) and Strategy Award (2023). Host of three podcasts: Outthinkers, The Chief Strategy Officer Podcast, and Strategy at Scale Podcast. Contributor to Harvard Business Review and Fast Company. Biography Competitive advantage in most large companies is built on assumptions that quietly stop holding. The Outthinker network was set up to surface those assumptions early. It is a working group of chief strategy, innovation, growth and transformation officers from Fortune 500 and large private companies, convened by Kaihan Krippendorff to pressure-test where their industries are actually moving. Krippendorff trained at McKinsey before founding Outthinker. His doctorate is in economics and business; his engineering degree comes from the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering, with further study at Wharton, Columbia Business School, and London Business School. He is a senior fellow at Wharton Executive Education and teaches at NYU School of Professional Studies and Florida International University. His published work has the same emphasis. Outthink the Competition sets out the strategic patterns disruptors use that incumbents rarely consider. Driving Innovation from Within, published by Columbia Business School Publishing, addresses the harder operational problem of moving an idea through a corporate immune system. Proximity, co-authored with Robert Wolcott of Kellogg, argues that AI, on-demand production, and digital infrastructure are collapsing the distance between supply and demand, and that this shift, rather than any single technology, is what redraws competitive position. He hosts three podcasts aimed at the same audience: Outthinkers, The Chief Strategy Officer Podcast, and Strategy at Scale Podcast. Thinkers50 has ranked him on its Radar list and shortlisted him for both its Innovation and Strategy awards. Key speaking topics Strategy under accelerating disruption Business model innovation Corporate innovation and internal entrepreneurship AI and the proximity economy Outside-in strategic foresight Chief strategy officer practice Growth strategy for Fortune 500 organisations Ideal for CSOs, chief innovation officers, and chief growth officers running strategy refresh cycles Boards and executive teams reassessing competitive position in an industry under structural change Corporate transformation leads building internal innovation pipelines Audience outcomes A clearer view of which assumptions underpinning the current strategy have already expired A working vocabulary, drawn from the Outthinker Playbook and 9Ps, for generating non-obvious strategic options A framework for thinking about AI and on-demand technology as a shift in where value is created, not a productivity tool Sharper questions for the next strategy offsite, informed by what sitting CSOs in the Outthinker network are actually working on

Why organisations work with Jonathan Reichental He has run the work he now speaks about. As CIO of the City of Palo Alto and CIO of O’Reilly Media, he owned budgets, projects and consequences, which is a different proposition to commenting on them from a research desk. The Palo Alto tenure produced a first-place category ranking in the Digital Cities Survey, a verifiable outcome rather than a claim of impact. His book catalogue, led by Smart Cities For Dummies with multiple follow-on titles across data governance, analytics and cryptocurrency, gives audiences accessible reference material they can share inside their own teams after the session. His adjunct teaching positions at UC Berkeley and the University of San Francisco, combined with LinkedIn Learning courses and a Forbes column, mean his explanations of emerging technology are built for non-specialist audiences without losing technical accuracy. He covers the breadth of the current executive agenda, quantum, AI, blockchain, smart cities, data governance, with the same pragmatic framing, which suits leadership audiences that need one session to cover multiple priorities. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Human Future Former Chief Information Officer, City of Palo Alto, California; Palo Alto achieved first-place category ranking in the Digital Cities Survey during his tenure Former Chief Information Officer of O’Reilly Media; senior technology leadership at PricewaterhouseCoopers Adjunct professor at UC Berkeley and the University of San Francisco Author of Smart Cities For Dummies, Data Governance For Dummies, Data Analytics & Visualization All-in-One For Dummies and Cryptocurrency QuickStart Guide Forbes contributor; LinkedIn Learning course creator; recognised on CXOTalk’s 20 Influential CIOs list Biography Smart cities is one of the most hyped categories in public-sector technology and one of the hardest to deliver. Jonathan Reichental’s credibility starts with the fact that he did the delivery job. As Chief Information Officer of the City of Palo Alto, he led the technology work that produced a first-place category ranking in the Digital Cities Survey, on a public-sector budget and under the accountability that comes with it. The book that followed, Smart Cities For Dummies, is now one of the most widely used introductions to the field. His private-sector track record sits alongside. Earlier roles include CIO of O’Reilly Media and senior technology leadership at PricewaterhouseCoopers. The combination, public-sector, publishing-and-tech, and global consulting, is the reason his framing on digital transformation holds up in front of different audiences. He now runs Human Future, the advisory, investment and education firm he founded to focus on emerging technology strategy. The writing and teaching extend the same thesis. Alongside the smart cities titles, he has authored or co-authored Data Governance For Dummies, Data Analytics & Visualization All-in-One For Dummies, Cryptocurrency QuickStart Guide and The Apps Challenge Playbook, teaches as an adjunct professor at UC Berkeley and the University of San Francisco, contributes a column to Forbes and creates LinkedIn Learning courses. His recognition on CXOTalk’s 20 Influential CIOs list and Government Technology’s Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers places him inside the peer group his corporate and public-sector audiences consult anyway. For boards, city governments, utilities and enterprise CIOs trying to make real decisions about AI, quantum computing, blockchain and smart-infrastructure investment, Reichental brings the unusual combination of an operator’s record, a teacher’s clarity and a published author’s reference library. Key speaking topics Smart cities and digital government Emerging technology strategy (AI, quantum, blockchain) Data governance, analytics and the CIO agenda Public-sector technology leadership Digital transformation for enterprise and city organisations Ethics in technology leadership Ideal for CIOs, CDOs and chief transformation officers setting or refreshing digital strategy City governments, utilities and public-sector organisations running smart-city or digital-services programmes Executive committees and boards needing a single session to level-set on emerging technologies Technology conferences and industry summits requiring an author-led keynote with operator credentials Audience outcomes A structured view of which emerging technologies are production-ready, which are near-term, and which are further out Specific reference cases from Palo Alto and other smart-city programmes on what actually works in public-sector digital delivery A clearer executive framing of data governance, analytics and AI choices, grounded in the relevant For Dummies material Practical prompts for translating emerging-tech strategy into a 12- to 24-month roadmap A shareable reading list and follow-on LinkedIn Learning courses for leadership teams

Why organisations work with Jonathan Gabay He writes the textbooks the field uses. Brand Psychology (Kogan Page) and Practical Digital Marketing and AI Psychology (Routledge) are professional references, not bureau-circuit titles. He reads brand crises in real time on BBC, CNN, Bloomberg and Sky, which means his commercial diagnosis comes from sustained exposure to live reputational damage, not case-study retrospectives. He treats AI in marketing as a trust problem, not an automation problem, and connects ethics, prompt engineering and consumer psychology in one argument senior marketers can act on. His Saatchi & Saatchi Direct origin is creative, not academic, so the strategic frame stays tied to what actually moves a customer. Biography highlights Author of Brand Psychology (Kogan Page) and Practical Digital Marketing and AI Psychology (Routledge, 2024), professional textbooks used by marketing students and practitioners. Former Group Creative Head, Saatchi & Saatchi Direct. Senior lecturer in crisis management and prompt engineering; teaching record at the London School of Economics, Management Centre Europe and Newport University. Course leader on digital psychology programmes for the Chartered Institute of Marketing and the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California. Regular media commentator on branding, political PR and AI for BBC (including Newsnight), CNN, Bloomberg, Sky, Channel 5 and ABC. Biography Most brands now compete on a question they have not faced before. Not how to reach an audience, but whether anyone still believes the message when they get it. Generative AI has industrialised marketing output and consumers have responded with a sharper, quieter scepticism that no media spend can buy past. Jonathan Gabay has spent three decades on the inside of that question. He started in creative work at Saatchi & Saatchi Direct, where he became Group Creative Head, then moved into the analytical side of the same problem. Brand Psychology (Kogan Page) sets out how social psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience explain why consumers trust some brands and abandon others, and what CEO reputation does to both. His 2024 Routledge textbook Practical Digital Marketing and AI Psychology extends the argument into the AI era. The book is used as a professional reference by marketing students and practitioners, and treats AI not as a productivity tool but as a force that changes the psychological contract between brand and buyer. He teaches the same material as a senior lecturer in crisis management and prompt engineering, with course work at the London School of Economics, the Chartered Institute of Marketing and the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California. The commentary record matters because it is unusually current. BBC Newsnight, CNN, Bloomberg, Sky and Channel 5 use him to read live brand and political PR crises as they unfold, which is why the keynote material is closer to a working diagnostic than a finished case study. Key speaking topics Brand psychology and consumer trust AI ethics in marketing communications Digital trust and online consumer behaviour Crisis communications and brand reputation Political PR, propaganda and persuasion Prompt engineering for marketers CEO reputation and brand storytelling Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and marketing leadership teams rebuilding trust under AI Communications, PR and corporate affairs leaders facing reputational risk Boards and executive teams of consumer-facing brands Marketing and brand functions integrating AI into customer-facing work Audience outcomes A working model of how consumers form trust in brands and what AI changes about it A clearer view of where AI use crosses the ethical line that customers actually punish Sharper diagnosis of brand and reputation crises drawn from live media cases A practical reading of where prompt engineering and marketing psychology meet Confidence to make defensible commercial calls on AI in marketing communications

Why organisations work with Jim Harris Direct strategic counsel on enterprise AI deployment from a consultant who advises CEOs at IBM, SAP, Walmart, American Express and the UK Cabinet Office on the same decisions A peer-validated authority signal: named 2024 Speaker of the Year by TEC Canada, the Canadian arm of Vistage, an audience of operating chief executives who book speakers for utility, not entertainment An evidence base built across industries undergoing structural disruption, from autonomous vehicles and insurance to retail, financial services and energy, applied to the specific competitive context of the client A clear analytic frame separating product innovation (where most executive attention sits) from business model, process and customer experience innovation (where most of the value sits) Biography highlights #1 international bestseller Blindsided!, published in 80 countries and selected by Soundview Executive Summaries as a best business book of the year TEC Canada Speaker of the Year, February 2024, recognising AI keynotes to chief executives Closing keynote speaker, World Future Society conference Consulting and keynote client roster including Walmart, IBM, SAP, American Express, Barclays, Munich Re, Swiss Re, Zurich Insurance and the UK Cabinet Office Trained personally by former US Vice President Al Gore to deliver An Inconvenient Truth BA in English and Politics, Queen’s University; former representative of the Covey Leadership Center teaching The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People Biography Most enterprise AI investment has produced pilot projects, not operating advantage. The boards funding those pilots increasingly want to know which ones will move the P&L, which ones should be killed, and which competitor’s business model will collapse first as generative AI matures. That is the brief Jim Harris is working against when he sits with an executive team. His authority is built on the consulting side of his career, not the publishing side. Walmart, IBM, SAP, American Express, Barclays, GM, Canon, Munich Re, Swiss Re and the UK Cabinet Office have all retained him for strategic work on disruption and innovation. TEC Canada, part of the Vistage peer network of operating CEOs, named him Speaker of the Year in 2024 specifically for his AI keynotes. The award is meaningful because the audience is buying decision-grade content, not motivation. His core analytic argument is simple. Product innovation gets the budget and the headlines, but reimagining the business model, the process stack and the customer experience is where most of the value moves. Blindsided!, a #1 international bestseller distributed in 80 countries and summarised by Soundview to 80,000 executives, traced that pattern across industries. The current generative AI cycle is the most concentrated test of that argument so far. Harris was trained personally by Al Gore to deliver An Inconvenient Truth and has been the closing keynote speaker at the World Future Society conference. He read English and Politics at Queen’s University and spent the early 1990s representing the Covey Leadership Center, teaching The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People before the consulting practice took over. Key speaking topics Generative AI in the enterprise Disruptive innovation across industries Business model and process redesign Digital transformation strategy Leadership through technological disruption Strategic foresight and scenario planning Sustainability and the energy transition Ideal for CEO, COO and board audiences setting AI and digital strategy Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers and Chief Digital Officers responsible for enterprise AI rollout Strategy and transformation leaders working on business model redesign Executive offsites and senior leadership retreats where the brief is to set direction, not workshop tactics Audience outcomes A sharper view of where in the business AI investment is most likely to convert into margin and where it is being wasted Industry-specific examples of how disruption cascades from a single technology shift into adjacent sectors A working distinction between product, process, business-model and customer-experience innovation, applied to live competitive questions A defensible answer to the question a board will ask next: which of our current bets are pilots, and which are operating commitments

Why organisations work with Jim Al-Khalili He is an active research physicist with a publication record in quantum biology and nuclear theory, which means his account of quantum computing, sensing, and adjacent technologies comes from inside the field, not summarised from press coverage. As presenter of BBC Radio 4’s The Life Scientific since 2011, he has interviewed several hundred working scientists, which gives him a rare cross-disciplinary read on where genuine breakthroughs are forming and where they are not. Co-author of Life on the Edge with Johnjoe McFadden, the book widely credited with bringing quantum biology to a mainstream readership and shortlisted for the Royal Society Winton Prize. Holds a Chair in the Public Engagement in Science at the University of Surrey, and has built a career-long discipline of translating technical material for non-specialist senior audiences without losing precision. Recognised by his peers as much as by the public: Royal Society Michael Faraday Medal, Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication, OBE and CBE for services to science. Biography highlights Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics, University of Surrey, with a PhD in theoretical nuclear physics from Surrey (1989). Fellow of the Royal Society (2018); Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Presenter of BBC Radio 4’s The Life Scientific since October 2011. Author or co-author of more than a dozen popular science books, including Life on the Edge, The World According to Physics, and The Joy of Science (Princeton University Press). Royal Society Michael Faraday Medal, Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Medal, IOP Kelvin Medal, Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication. OBE (2007) and CBE (2021) for services to science; past President of the British Science Association. Biography The hardest scientific decisions facing senior leaders today are the ones the leaders themselves are least equipped to make. Quantum computing, AI, synthetic biology, and the next wave of physics-driven technology demand a level of judgement that confident vendor decks cannot provide. What organisations need is someone who can read the underlying science, place a claim in context, and tell them where the field actually is. That is the role Jim Al-Khalili has built across forty years. A theoretical physicist with a PhD from the University of Surrey and now Distinguished Professor Emeritus there, he has published more than 150 peer-reviewed papers in nuclear reaction theory, quantum mechanics, and quantum biology. With Johnjoe McFadden he co-authored Life on the Edge, the book that did more than any other to bring quantum biology into mainstream scientific conversation, shortlisted for the Royal Society Winton Prize. Since 2011 he has presented The Life Scientific on BBC Radio 4, conducting hundreds of interviews with working scientists across every discipline. Few people in the UK have a sharper sense of where genuine breakthroughs are forming and where the noise outpaces the substance. His books with Princeton University Press, including The World According to Physics and The Joy of Science, frame how non-specialists can think clearly about evidence, uncertainty, and modern physics. Recognition from his peers tracks the public profile: Fellow of the Royal Society, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Royal Society Michael Faraday Medal, Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication, OBE and CBE for services to science. He has chaired the British Science Association and continues to advise government, industry, and the public on the science that will shape the next decade of technology. Key speaking topics Quantum mechanics and the science behind quantum computing Quantum biology and the frontiers of life science Scientific reasoning and rational decision-making The history and future of physics Science communication for senior audiences Public trust in science and technology Ideal for Boards and executive teams making capital allocation decisions on quantum, AI, or deep-tech ventures R&D leaders, CTOs, and CSOs who want a credible outside read on where the science actually stands Conferences in pharma, finance, technology, and energy where audiences need a serious scientific keynote rather than a vendor pitch Awards, gala evenings, and high-profile panels needing a hosting or moderating presence with genuine scientific authority Audience outcomes A clearer view of what quantum technologies can plausibly deliver in the next decade and what remains speculative The vocabulary and mental models to question scientific claims without becoming dismissive Exposure to the live debates inside physics and biology that will reshape adjacent industries A renewed sense of why scientific thinking, not just scientific findings, matters for leadership judgement

Why organisations work with Jeremy Heimans His intellectual authority is built on a named thesis. New Power, co-authored with Henry Timms, was shortlisted for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year, featured as the “Big Idea” in the Harvard Business Review, and accompanied by a TED talk viewed over 1.5 million times. The operating credentials are rare. As co-founder of GetUp!, Avaaz and All Out, and CEO of Purpose, he has built some of the most successful campaigning organisations and social movements of the last two decades, so he reasons about participation from live product experience. His framework, (Product + Purpose) × Participation, gives brand and marketing leaders a concrete equation rather than a worldview, which makes it easier to translate into campaign design and consumer engagement strategy. His recent work on AI participation, autonomous agents and governance scaffolding brings the New Power thesis into the question most executive teams are now actually wrestling with, how to build legitimacy around AI systems that are already in the building. The institutional recognition, Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum, Chair of its Global Agenda Council on Civic Participation, the Ford Foundation’s 75th Anniversary Visionary Award, means he opens doors for the organisations he speaks to as well as the audiences he addresses. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of Purpose, a public-benefit corporation building social movements for brands, NGOs and philanthropies Co-founder of GetUp!, Avaaz and All Out Co-author of New Power with Henry Timms (Penguin Random House); FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year shortlist; HBR Big Idea feature TED talk on new power with over 1.5 million views World Economic Forum Young Global Leader; Chair of the WEF Global Agenda Council on Civic Participation; Ford Foundation 75th Anniversary Visionary Award Educated at the University of Sydney and Harvard; earlier career at McKinsey Biography Power has changed shape. The argument that Jeremy Heimans built over two decades of campaigning and writing is that the organisations, brands and leaders who will matter in this century are the ones who understand participation as a structural force, not a communications channel. New Power, his book with Henry Timms, turned that argument into one of the most cited frames in contemporary leadership thinking, shortlisted for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year, featured as the Big Idea in Harvard Business Review, and anchored by a TED talk now viewed over 1.5 million times. The credibility behind the frame is operational. Heimans co-founded GetUp! in Australia in 2005, a political organisation that grew to more members than all of Australia’s political parties combined, and was a co-founder of the global campaigning platforms Avaaz and All Out. His company, Purpose, is the public-benefit corporation he built to carry that expertise into brands, NGOs and philanthropies, helping them design the participation models that command-and-control marketing no longer produces. Academically, he is a McKinsey alumnus with degrees from the University of Sydney and Harvard. Institutionally, he has been recognised as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, chaired its Global Agenda Council on Civic Participation, and received the Ford Foundation’s 75th Anniversary Visionary Award. His framework, (Product + Purpose) × Participation, is the simplest expression of what his advisory work delivers for consumer brands. The current edge of the work is artificial intelligence. Heimans’ thesis on how participation builds legitimacy is increasingly being applied to AI deployment, autonomous agents and the governance scaffolding companies are building for large-scale AI use. For leadership teams trying to work out how to retain brand trust, employee commitment and regulatory standing as AI reshapes their operating model, he is one of the few commentators whose framework was already built for this shift. Key speaking topics New power and the shift from broadcast to participation AI, autonomous agents and the governance of participation Brand building and consumer engagement under (Product + Purpose) × Participation Movement design for organisations, NGOs and advocacy Leadership and influence in hyperconnected systems The future of work and distributed authority Ideal for CEOs, CMOs and communications leaders redesigning brand and stakeholder strategy for a participatory environment Chief AI officers, governance leads and executive committees building legitimacy around AI systems NGO and philanthropy leadership teams scaling movements and civic participation programmes World Economic Forum, public affairs and policy forums where civic and corporate power converge Audience outcomes A working grasp of the New Power frame and how it changes marketing, leadership and governance decisions Concrete examples of brands, movements and platforms that have applied (or failed to apply) new power mechanics A clearer view of how participation can be designed into AI deployment and governance rather than retrofitted Practical models for civic, employee and customer engagement that work with the grain of hyperconnected systems

Why organisations work with Jay Samit His framework for disruption is derived from operating on both sides of it: he led digital transformation at EMI and Sony when their core business models were collapsing, then went on to build and advise companies that were doing the disrupting. That dual vantage point is not common among innovation speakers. Disrupt You! provides a replicable method for identifying where value will migrate in a given industry, applicable at both the organisational and individual leadership level, giving teams a shared vocabulary and process, not just inspiration. His Deloitte advisory work means the framework has been stress-tested against the specific constraints of large, publicly accountable organisations, not just start-up environments. He translates exponential technology trends including AI, spatial computing, blockchain, automation into commercial and competitive decisions, rather than presenting technology as the end in itself. His Fortune column and WSJ documentary series give him a current, credible public presence that amplifies the authority he brings into a room; senior audiences have typically encountered his thinking before the engagement begins. Biography highlights Former Independent Vice Chairman, Deloitte Digital; led enterprise consulting across AI, robotics, IoT, and digital transformation Author of Disrupt You! (Flatiron Books, 2015), published in 12 languages, and Future Proofing You (2021) Global President of Digital Distribution, EMI / Capitol Records; led the label from negligible digital presence to industry benchmark for digital transition Creator and General Manager, Sony Connect; Executive Vice President, Sony Regular contributor to Fortune (bi-weekly column on exponential technologies), Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review Adjunct Professor, USC Viterbi School of Engineering; UCLA Presidential Fellowship graduate, magna cum laude Advised LinkedIn and eBay pre-IPO; CEO of NASDAQ-listed SeaChange International Biography Most organisations understand disruption as something that happens to them. The harder strategic question is whether an organisation can develop the internal capability to anticipate market shifts and capture value from them before competitors or new entrants do, and what that requires structurally, culturally, and at the leadership level. Jay Samit has occupied both sides of that problem. As Global President of Digital Distribution at EMI and as the executive brought in to lead Sony’s digital transformation, he operated inside institutions whose core revenue models were being destroyed by technologies they could see but could not commercialise fast enough. Those experiences inform Disrupt You!, his internationally published framework for applying disruptor logic inside established organisations, which argues that the methods used to build new markets are the same methods available to incumbents willing to challenge their own assumptions. His subsequent role as Independent Vice Chairman of Deloitte Digital extended that work across industries and at scale, applying AI, robotics, and data analytics to the operational and competitive challenges of major global enterprises. That trajectory – from operator to adviser to author to investor – gives his arguments about disruption an empirical base that distinguishes them from frameworks developed in academic or consultancy settings alone. His writing appears regularly in Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review, and he teaches innovation at USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering. Senior leadership teams engaging with his work gain not only a model for reading competitive environments, but a practical method for building the internal conditions that allow large organisations to act on what they see. Key speaking topics Disruption strategy for established enterprises Business model innovation and value migration Entrepreneurial thinking inside large organisations Exponential technologies and commercial strategy AI, automation, and competitive positioning Data analytics as competitive advantage Future-proofing careers and leadership capability Ideal for CEOs and executive leadership teams navigating competitive disruption or industry transition Chief Strategy Officers and Chief Innovation Officers building internal innovation capability Boards and senior leadership in media, financial services, retail, and technology sectors facing structural change Transformation leads and digital strategy functions tasked with operationalising change at enterprise scale Audience outcomes A structured way of thinking about where value will migrate in their industry, and how to position ahead of it rather than responding after the fact Practical methods drawn from Samit’s Disrupt You! framework for identifying market gaps and turning internal constraints into innovation triggers Clearer understanding of how exponential technologies (AI, automation, spatial computing) translate into specific commercial and competitive decisions A reframe of disruption as a strategic tool available to incumbents, not just start-ups – with examples from Samit’s own operational experience Greater confidence in communicating a growth and innovation agenda internally, using a common language and set of principles

Why organisations work with Jay Baer He has built first-party research, not opinion, into the link between speed and revenue, including the finding that customers will pay up to 50% more to avoid waiting. He treats complaints as a growth channel, with a working method (Hug Your Haters) used by service and CX teams inside large consumer and B2B brands. He gives marketing and CX leaders a named framework for engineering word of mouth on purpose, drawn from Talk Triggers and case studies including DoubleTree, Five Guys, and The Cheesecake Factory. He has advised more than 700 companies through Convince & Convert, including roughly 30 of the FORTUNE 500, so the boardroom examples are first hand, not borrowed. He is one of a small group of speakers in this category to hold both CSP and CPAE Hall of Fame recognition from the National Speakers Association, which is a useful signal for buyers booking high-stakes general sessions. Biography highlights Founder of Convince & Convert, a customer experience and marketing strategy firm advising 700+ brands since 2008. Author of seven business books, including the New York Times bestseller Youtility, Hug Your Haters, Talk Triggers, and The Time to Win. Inducted into the CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame by the National Speakers Association, holds CSP designation. Clients cited across his consulting and advisory work include Nike, Oracle, Salesforce, Caterpillar, Allstate, and the United Nations. Author of the proprietary Time to Win research on customer responsiveness, including the finding that customers will pay up to 50% more to avoid waiting. Co-founder and editor of The Tequila Report, with a subscriber base above 50,000 and a substantial second-career media presence. Biography Most companies still treat customer service as a cost centre and word of mouth as a happy accident. Both assumptions are wrong, and both are expensive. The work that defines Jay Baer’s career has been to convert each of them into something a leadership team can actually manage. Through Convince & Convert, the strategy firm he founded in 2008, Baer has advised more than 700 companies on customer experience and marketing, including around 30 of the FORTUNE 500. Named clients include Nike, Oracle, Salesforce, Caterpillar, and the United Nations. The books carry the same operating logic into a wider audience: Youtility on help-as-marketing reached number three on the New York Times business list, Hug Your Haters reframed complaints as a retention asset, and Talk Triggers, written with Daniel Lemin, set out a structured method for engineering word of mouth using case studies from DoubleTree, Five Guys, and The Cheesecake Factory. His most recent book, The Time to Win, is the sharpest expression of the argument. It is built on proprietary research showing that two thirds of customers now rate speed as important as price, that more than half hire the first company to respond, and that customers will pay up to 50% more to avoid waiting. For CX and commercial leaders, the implication is direct: response time is a pricing variable. Recognition tracks the substance. Baer was inducted into the CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame by the National Speakers Association in 2018 and holds the CSP designation, two credentials held simultaneously by a small minority of working speakers. The practical consequence for buyers is reliability under pressure: he is one of the relatively few keynote choices in this category that large general sessions and senior leadership audiences both tend to find credible. Key speaking topics Customer experience strategy Customer responsiveness and speed to revenue Word of mouth as a managed marketing discipline Complaint handling and customer retention Practical AI for customer-facing teams Marketing as customer help, not interruption Ideal for Chief Marketing Officers, Chief Customer Officers, and Chief Experience Officers setting CX or growth agendas Sales, service, and contact-centre leaders being asked to convert responsiveness into commercial outcomes Franchise, hospitality, retail, and B2B brands where word of mouth is a material growth lever Annual conferences and leadership offsites that need a senior keynote with general-session range Audience outcomes A defensible position on why response time should be treated as a commercial metric, not a service KPI A working method for converting customer complaints into a retention and acquisition channel A repeatable approach to engineering word of mouth, with named operational examples to adapt A clearer view of where AI plausibly belongs inside customer-facing workflows, and where it does not Specific, named case studies the audience can quote in their own internal conversations the next week

Why organisations work with James Lyne He runs the world’s most respected cybersecurity training and research institution, so the material he brings into a boardroom reflects what SANS instructors and researchers are seeing in live incidents, not a curated deck of last year’s case studies. Twenty years of frontline work across red teaming, malware reverse engineering, incident response and intelligence support. He speaks to boards, regulators and technical teams in the same briefing and holds credibility with all three. Live demonstration is his signature. He hacks IoT devices, runs social engineering against willing volunteers and walks audiences through real ransomware. Leaders leave with a felt sense of the risk, not a slide on it. Founder of CyberStart, which put 400,000-plus students through hands-on cyber challenges before closing after nine years. That gives him a specific, tested view on the talent gap most organisations are trying to solve. TED main-stage, NBC Nightly News, BBC, CNN, Bill Maher, John Oliver. The booking converts into a communications asset as well as a keynote. Biography highlights Chief Executive Officer, SANS Institute, appointed from the Office of the CEO after years of strategic and operational leadership inside the organisation. Certified SANS Instructor specialising in offensive operations, with more than two decades in cybersecurity across offensive, defensive and forensic work. Former Global Head of Security Research at Sophos, where he led public threat research and commentary via the Naked Security platform. Founder of CyberStart, a gamified cyber skills programme that ran nine years and engaged over 400,000 students in more than 200 hands-on challenges. TED main-stage speaker on everyday cybercrime, plus TEDx talks including Hacking With Words and Smiles. Recipient of the SANS Difference Makers Award for contribution to the UK cybersecurity community. Media regular across NBC Nightly News, CNN, BBC News, Real Time with Bill Maher and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Biography Most cybersecurity briefings for senior audiences fail in the same way. They are either too abstract to act on, or too technical to follow. Lyne built his career working the gap between those two failure modes, first as Global Head of Security Research at Sophos, then as a long-standing Certified Instructor at SANS Institute, and now as its Chief Executive Officer. Twenty years on the frontline shapes the material. He has reverse engineered malware, red teamed high-security organisations, supported intelligence efforts against adversaries and sat inside the response to major breaches. That work is the reason his keynotes do not rely on slides. He demonstrates. Hacking an IoT device on stage, walking a room through a live phishing capture, pulling apart a ransomware sample in real time. The threat stops being theoretical. Lyne’s argument as CEO of SANS is that human expertise, curious and mission-driven, is the decisive advantage in cybersecurity, including against AI-enabled attackers. That belief sits behind CyberStart, the gamified cyber skills programme he founded, which ran for nine years and pulled over 400,000 students through hands-on challenges in cryptography, forensics and ethical hacking. It is also why leadership teams book him when they want their people to leave a session with a sharper instinct, not a longer reading list. The media footprint reinforces rather than replaces the substance. TED main-stage on everyday cybercrime, appearances on NBC Nightly News, CNN, BBC, Bill Maher and John Oliver, and a SANS Difference Makers Award for his contribution to the UK cyber community. Boards get a speaker who can hold a technical room and translate for a non-technical one in the same afternoon. Key speaking topics Cybersecurity as a board-level risk AI-enabled threats and the future of cyber defence Ransomware economics and incident response Social engineering and the human attack surface Internet of Things and connected device risk The cyber skills gap and building security talent Threat intelligence and the live threat landscape Ideal for Boards, CEOs and audit committees setting cyber risk appetite and oversight CISOs, CIOs and CTOs briefing executive teams on threat and resilience posture Financial services, critical infrastructure and regulated industries with concentrated cyber exposure Leadership summits, customer events and partner conferences where a live demonstration reframes the conversation Audience outcomes A concrete, demonstrated view of how modern attackers actually operate, from ransomware crews to social engineers A clearer sense of where AI is shifting the economics of both attack and defence Named examples of IoT, identity and supply chain vulnerabilities that map onto the audience’s own environment A shared language for boards and technical teams to talk about cyber risk without talking past each other A sharper read on where cyber talent and training investment actually move the needle