Artificial Intelligence & Generative AI speakers

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 Riaz Shah He has run reskilling at a scale almost no academic or consultant has matched: more than 400,000 employees and 24 million hours of learning a year inside EY. He built the EY Tech MBA, one of the first corporate degree programmes to put technology fluency at the centre of professional services training, and can speak about what it took to make it work. His authority on the future of work rests on operating responsibility, not research alone. He has been the executive on the hook for the budget, the platform choices and the outcomes. He chairs One Degree Academy, a free school for children in an underserved part of London now ranked among the world’s top ten in the Overcoming Adversity category of the World’s Best School Prizes. His argument that learning design matters at scale is supported by results, not theory. His OBE for Services to Education, awarded by HM King Charles III in 2023, signals that the credibility is recognised beyond the corporate audience. Biography highlights Professor of Practice for Innovation & Leadership, Hult International Business School. 27 years as a partner at EY, including Global Learning Leader, Managing Partner of London Assurance and Chief Operations Officer for EMEIA Markets. Architect of the EY Tech MBA, deployed across a workforce of more than 400,000 professionals. OBE for Services to Education, 2023. Founder and Chair of One Degree Academy, a Top 10 finalist for the World’s Best School Prize in the Overcoming Adversity category. Non-executive director, Genius Group (appointed July 2024). Biography Most large organisations have an AI strategy. Very few have a learning strategy capable of delivering it. That gap, between what a workforce is being asked to do next year and what it knows how to do today, is the specific problem Riaz Shah has spent the last decade inside. At EY, as Global Learning Leader, he carried operating responsibility for how more than 400,000 professionals were equipped for a market reshaped by automation, AI and digital platforms. His team delivered more than 24 million hours of learning a year and built the EY Tech MBA, a full corporate degree programme that put technology fluency at the centre of a professional services career. He had previously been Managing Partner of London Assurance and Chief Operations Officer for EMEIA Markets, so the work was anchored in commercial reality, not in the learning department’s preferences. He now teaches at Hult International Business School as Professor of Practice for Innovation & Leadership, where his sessions with senior executives concentrate on global megatrends, digital disruption and how organisations rebuild capability fast enough to keep up. He also chairs One Degree Academy, a state-funded free school for children aged 4 to 18 in an underserved part of London. The school is a Top 10 finalist in the Overcoming Adversity category of the World’s Best School Prizes, and is the practical expression of his argument that learning design, done seriously, scales. In 2023, King Charles III awarded him the OBE for Services to Education. He sits on the board of Genius Group, a Nasdaq-listed education business, and is a member of YPO. Key speaking topics AI and the future of work Reskilling and workforce transformation at scale Corporate learning as a strategic capability Innovation and growth mindset inside large organisations Generational shifts in the workplace Demographics and changing consumer attitudes Leadership in conditions of digital disruption Ideal for CHROs and Chief Learning Officers commissioning a workforce transformation tied to AI and automation. CEOs and executive committees of large services and knowledge businesses where the talent base is the product. Boards reviewing the capability assumptions inside a digital or AI strategy. Senior leadership conferences where the brief is to make the case for serious, not cosmetic, reskilling. Audience outcomes A sharper view of where the gap between AI ambition and workforce capability is biggest, and which gaps matter most commercially. A clearer picture of what corporate learning has to look like to keep pace with technology, drawn from running it at EY scale. An honest read on what worked and what did not in building the EY Tech MBA, with the operational detail intact. A more confident sense of how to talk to a workforce about AI without losing trust.

Why organisations work with Rich Mulholland He runs a working AI agency, Too Many Robots, alongside a presentation business, so the advice on staying relevant in an AI-saturated market comes from someone deploying the tools, not commenting on them. Legacide gives him a precise argument that flips the standard innovation conversation: the constraint is not new ideas, it is the old behaviour that keeps surviving every restructure. Here Be Dragons codifies “storyselling” as a discipline for commercial teams, useful for sales leaders trying to move buyers without resorting to feature lists or discounting. Missing Link has shaped the presentation craft of corporate leaders across South Africa and beyond for over two decades, which means he speaks to senior executives about communication as someone who has trained the room rather than just spoken in it. Biography highlights Founder of Missing Link, described by multiple sources as South Africa’s largest presentation and communication training firm. Founder of Too Many Robots, an AI agency advising clients on practical AI deployment. Co-founder of 21Tanks, a problem-identification consultancy positioned as South Africa’s first perspective lab. Author of four books: Legacide, Boredom Slayer, Here Be Dragons, and Relentless Relevance. Guest lecturer at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business and the Gordon Institute of Business Science. TEDx speaker at TEDxJohannesburg and TEDxCapeTown; has delivered keynotes in 50 countries across six continents. Biography Innovation programmes rarely fail at the idea stage. They fail at the legacy stage, where the existing way of doing things absorbs the new initiative and digests it back into business as usual. This is the territory Rich Mulholland has spent two decades working in, first through Missing Link, the South African presentation and communication firm he founded, and then through the writing that made Legacide a reference point for executives trying to understand why their change programmes keep stalling. His thesis is direct. Innovation does not happen when an organisation starts doing something new. It happens when it stops doing something old. That distinction reframes the senior team’s job from generating ideas to clearing space, and it is the spine that connects his work across innovation, sales, and communication. In Here Be Dragons he applies the same logic to commercial teams, treating storytelling not as a soft skill but as the operating discipline that decides whether a deal moves. The AI dimension is the more recent layer. Through Too Many Robots, the agency he founded to help clients deploy AI tactically rather than rhetorically, Mulholland has been working inside the question that most boards are still asking from the outside: what remains a human advantage when expectation, attention, and execution can all be automated. His answer, set out in the Humanity’s Unfair Advantage keynote, is that relevance is the perpetual play, not a position you achieve once. He is a guest lecturer at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business and at GIBS, has spoken in 50 countries across six continents, and has appeared on TEDx stages including TEDxJohannesburg and TEDxCapeTown. Before any of this he was a touring roadie running lights for Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, and Bon Jovi, which is where the obsession with what makes a room respond actually started. Key speaking topics Relentless relevance and the discipline of staying useful to customers Legacy thinking as the silent constraint on innovation Storyselling and persuasion for commercial teams Humanity’s unfair advantage in an AI-driven market Leadership communication and executive presence Strategy for autonomous and purpose-driven organisations Ideal for Chief commercial officers, chief revenue officers, and sales leadership audiences working on storytelling and buyer persuasion Innovation leads, transformation heads, and strategy teams trying to dismantle legacy behaviour rather than add new initiatives Executive communicators and senior leaders preparing for high-stakes platforms, investor days, and town halls Boards and leadership teams scoping where AI substitutes human work and where human relevance still holds Audience outcomes A working definition of what legacy thinking looks like inside their own organisation, and where it is absorbing innovation effort A sharper framing for sales and commercial narratives that moves beyond feature lists into customer-centred story A clearer view of which parts of their work AI will eat and which parts depend on human relevance A practical standard for what a senior executive presentation should do, drawn from someone who has trained presenters for two decades

Why organisations work with Richard Foster-Fletcher Richard tests the latest AI systems at the limits of their reasoning and judgement. He works across models from leading AI labs and is regularly invited to evaluate new releases. His research examines the distance between frontier capability, the AI available inside companies, and what those organisations can then decide and do. Through MKAI, Richard publishes independent empirical studies on how advanced AI changes organisations, including an analysis of 150 SEC 10-K filings across 50 US public companies. His work is independent of technology vendors and consulting firms. His research identifies seven recurring Structural Dynamics of enterprise AI adoption. He has advised UK Parliament and sits on the United Nations Environment Programme Resilience Frontiers Advisory Group, and has spoken for Salesforce, Telefónica, Oracle, and ARM, and at LSE, Imperial College London, UCL, and the University of Oxford. Biography highlights Author of the forthcoming The AI Gap (Kogan Page, June 2027). Chair of MKAI, the independent AI research organisation he founded in 2019. Author of the seven-pattern framework on the Structural Dynamics of enterprise AI adoption. Published a working paper on SSRN, The First Annual Reports of the LLM Era, analysing 150 SEC 10-K filings across 50 US public companies. Publishes What Still Matters, a weekly essay series read by over 6,000 subscribers. Has advised UK Parliament and sits on the United Nations Environment Programme Resilience Frontiers Advisory Group. Has spoken for Salesforce, Telefónica, Oracle, and ARM, and at LSE, Imperial College London, UCL, and the University of Oxford. Named among Favikon’s UK Top 20 AI Researchers and Entrepreneurs in 2026, and a LinkedIn Top Voice in AI. Biography Advanced AI systems can now reason and make judgements that go well beyond the tools most companies have in daily use. That gap is the subject of Richard Foster-Fletcher’s research and of his forthcoming book, The AI Gap. One of the UK’s leading independent researchers in the field, his talks examine what the gap means for the decisions organisations make and the commitments those decisions rest on. The AI Gap, to be published by Kogan Page in June 2027, examines the distance between the capability a company has placed into use, the capability its commitments require, and the evidence connecting the two. Richard works directly with the latest systems from leading AI labs. He tests their reasoning and judgement, and compares how they perform from one release to the next. He also studies what changes when those systems enter governed organisational environments. He chairs MKAI, founded in 2019, which publishes independent empirical research on AI and organisations. Recent studies have examined corporate capability reporting, the effect of organisational instructions on AI judgement, responsibility for AI-assisted decisions, and the visibility of controls placed around enterprise systems. One analysed 150 SEC 10-K filings across 50 US public companies. His research identifies seven recurring Structural Dynamics of enterprise AI adoption. Richard has advised UK Parliament and sits on the United Nations Environment Programme Resilience Frontiers Advisory Group. He has given talks for Salesforce, Telefónica, Oracle, and ARM, and at LSE, Imperial College London, UCL, and the University of Oxford. He was named among Favikon’s UK Top 20 AI Researchers and Entrepreneurs in 2026 and is a LinkedIn Top Voice in AI. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and organisational capability Executive decision-making and judgement Organisational strategy under advanced AI AI governance and capability constraints Risk, responsibility, and evidence Frontier AI and enterprise availability Workforce capability and the future of work Ideal for Main-stage audiences seeking an evidence-based account of what leading AI systems can now do. Boards and executive committees examining commitments that depend upon AI capability. P&L holders responsible for results whose delivery assumes that AI can perform specific work. Governance, risk, and audit audiences examining the evidence behind organisational AI decisions. Audience outcomes An evidence-based account of where leading AI systems have reached. A basis for separating material advances from repackaged capability and unsupported claims. A clear distinction between the result being promised, the system being used, and the evidence connecting them. A view of the distance between frontier capability and the AI available inside companies. What remains untested when a financial or strategic commitment depends on AI.

Why organisations work with Richard van Hooijdonk He maps the intersection of multiple converging technologies – AI, robotics, quantum computing, biotech, autonomous systems – in a single strategic framework. Most technology speakers go deep on one domain; van Hooijdonk shows how these forces compound, which is where the strategic risk and opportunity actually sits. His material comes from an active research operation. Trendforce.one (Futurezone.ai) runs a permanent international research team, meaning his content reflects current technological trajectories rather than the publication date of a book or the half-life of a conference circuit. He speaks credibly across both commercial and institutional mandates. Clients range from Interpol, the European Commission, and NATO to Google, Deloitte, and Heineken – giving him a grounded view of how the same technology behaves under different regulatory, security, and commercial conditions. His RFID chip implants – used in daily life to open doors and operate his vehicle – are a verifiable, concrete expression of a research philosophy built on direct experience rather than observation. It is unusual, and it is documented. His Dutch-language bestseller De wereld van morgen and his multi-year recognition as the most sought-after futurist in the Netherlands demonstrate a sustained public credibility that extends well beyond the conference stage. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Trendforce.one / Futurezone.ai, a future intelligence agency with a permanent international research team tracking emerging and disruptive technologies Author of De wereld van morgen (The World of Tomorrow), a Dutch bestseller published by Bertram + De Leeuw Uitgevers (2017); author of 2,000+ articles and 60+ books, e-books, and whitepapers Delivered presentations to more than 600,000 attendees across 30+ countries since 2014 Clients include Google, Microsoft, IBM, Gartner, Interpol, NATO, the European Commission, PwC, Deloitte, Heineken, Unilever, and Nike Guest lecturer at Nyenrode University and Erasmus University Regular television contributor on RTL (RTL Late Night, RTL Boulevard, RTLZ) and former host of Mindshift on BNR Nieuwsradio Voted most sought-after trendwatcher and futurist in the Netherlands for multiple consecutive years from 2015 Biography Technology leaders have been warning organisations about AI and automation for years. What has changed is the simultaneity: AI, robotics, quantum computing, and biotech are not a sequence of challenges to address in turn – they are arriving together, and their combined effect on business models is harder to read than any single technology in isolation. Richard van Hooijdonk has built his practice around exactly this problem. His research base is institutional rather than individual. As founder and CEO of Trendforce.one – now operating as Futurezone.ai – he leads a permanent international research team that tracks emerging technologies across sectors, geographies, and regulatory environments. Where many futurists work from published sources and their own networks, van Hooijdonk’s content is generated from ongoing intelligence work. The material he brings to a board conversation reflects the current state of the field. His client base spans both sides of the public-private boundary. Organisations including Interpol, NATO, the European Commission, and Dutch Customs sit alongside Google, Deloitte, Heineken, and Samsung in his client history. That cross-sector exposure matters: the same autonomous system or generative AI application functions differently under a security mandate than under a commercial growth brief, and van Hooijdonk can articulate both. His public platform extends his research reach beyond the executive audience. De wereld van morgen (The World of Tomorrow), a Dutch-language bestseller, brought his frameworks to a wider readership. Regular appearances on RTL television and BNR Nieuwsradio – where he hosted the Mindshift programme – and guest lectureships at Nyenrode University and Erasmus University have established him as a sustained public voice on technological change, not simply a conference circuit presence. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and generative AI Robotics and autonomous systems Quantum computing and frontier technologies Technology-driven sector transformation The organisation of the future Cybercrime, security, and technology-enabled risk The future of work and human-machine collaboration Ideal for Boards and executive leadership teams making technology investment decisions with long strategic horizons Chief Digital Officers, Chief Technology Officers, and Chief Innovation Officers Strategy and innovation functions within large enterprises navigating multi-technology disruption Public sector, government, and law enforcement organisations managing the security and governance implications of emerging technology Audience outcomes A framework for assessing multiple converging technologies simultaneously, rather than evaluating each in isolation Sector-specific perspective on how AI, robotics, and adjacent technologies will alter competitive dynamics in their industry Practical orientation on where to begin with AI adoption – which processes are immediately affected, and how to sequence the transition Awareness of the security and governance risks created by emerging technologies, including AI-enabled crime and deepfakes Strategic clarity on the leadership behaviours and organisational structures required to adapt continuously, not reactively

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 Robert Tercek He has run the digital businesses he now advises on. President of Digital Media at OWN, first SVP of Digital Media at Sony Pictures, Creative Director at MTV. That operating record gives his framing weight that pure analysts cannot match. Vaporized won the 2016 International Book of the Year at the Frankfurt Book Fair from a field of 10,000 titles. The thesis, that whole categories of physical product and intermediary dissolve into software, has held up across a decade of platform and AI shifts. He works in long horizons. General Creativity, his advisory firm, is built around scenario work and ten-year strategic planning, not next-quarter trend commentary, which suits boards making capital-allocation decisions on AI, metaverse and infrastructure. He treats emerging technology as a governance problem, not a hype cycle. His current speaking on the industrial metaverse, digital twins and platform power foregrounds the questions executives and policymakers actually have to answer. Biography highlights Author of Vaporized: Solid Strategies for Success in a Dematerialized World, named 2016 International Book of the Year by getAbstract at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Former President of Digital Media, OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network. Sony Pictures Entertainment’s first Senior Vice President of Digital Media. Creative Director at MTV, where he helped launch the network across more than 20 international markets. Founder and CEO of General Creativity, advising Fortune 500 clients including AT&T, IBM, Microsoft, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and NBC Universal. Strategic Advisor to the Johnny Carson Foundation and the Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; taught the first interactive media course at USC School of Cinematic Arts. Biography Whole categories of business have already been replaced by software, and most boards still treat that as a channel question. Retail shelves, classroom hours, hotel desks, broadcast schedules, payment rails: each one has been thinned out or absorbed into a platform layer. The pattern Tercek named “dematerialisation” in 2015 is the same pattern now driving the AI and platform conversation in 2026. That naming is documented. Vaporized: Solid Strategies for Success in a Dematerialized World won the 2016 International Book of the Year at the Frankfurt Book Fair, selected by getAbstract editors from a field of 10,000 business titles. A decade on, the book reads less like prediction and more like a manual that incumbents wish they had taken seriously when it landed. The credibility comes from operating, not commentary. Tercek was Creative Director at MTV when the network launched into more than 20 international markets, Sony Pictures Entertainment’s first SVP of Digital Media when multiplayer games first ran in a browser, and President of Digital Media at OWN when Oprah Winfrey’s 2009 webcasts pulled the largest live online education audience on record. He now runs General Creativity, advising Fortune 500 clients on digital transformation and long-horizon strategy. His current work focuses on the industrial metaverse, digital twins and the governance questions sitting underneath platform power: who owns the rules, who carries the risk, and what serious organisations should be building rather than buying. He is also a Strategic Advisor to the Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and holds, with collaborators, 12 US patents covering decentralised entertainment and cryptocurrency systems. Key speaking topics Dematerialisation and the virtual economy Industrial metaverse and digital twins Digital transformation strategy Platform power and technology governance AI, automation and the future of work Long-range scenario planning under exponential change Decentralised systems and Web3 Ideal for Boards and CEOs setting ten-year capital allocation against AI, platform and infrastructure shifts Chief Strategy Officers, Chief Digital Officers and transformation leads in incumbent industries facing software-driven disruption Industrial, energy and infrastructure leaders evaluating digital twin and industrial metaverse investments Policy, regulatory and public-sector audiences working on platform governance and technology risk Audience outcomes A working model for spotting which parts of a business are most exposed to dematerialisation, and on what time horizon A clear read on where the industrial metaverse and digital twins create real operating advantage, and where they do not A sharper framework for ten-year scenario planning that survives short-term hype cycles Specific reference points from MTV, Sony, OWN and current Fortune 500 advisory work, not generic futurist commentary

Why organisations work with Roberta Lucca She has built a multi-million dollar VC-backed business from scratch and won a BAFTA doing it. Few speakers in the innovation category can show that operational record. As a Venture Partner at Octopus Ventures, she sees what an early-stage company that actually has traction looks like, and translates that pattern recognition into how corporates should evaluate their own internal bets. Her AI material is shaped by founding BOLDR, an AI-powered coaching product, not by commentary at a distance. She speaks about deployment, user behaviour and product reality. She works fluently across gaming, AI and consumer technology, which lets her unpack why game-industry mechanics (engagement loops, iteration speed, distributed teams) increasingly apply to non-games businesses. Visible UK platform credibility through BBC One’s The Apprentice and Amazon Prime’s Ready Set StartUP makes her recognisable to senior internal audiences and easy to position to a wider all-hands. Biography highlights Co-founder of Bossa Studios, the London games studio behind BAFTA-winning Monstermind, Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread BAFTA Games Award winner (Online-Browser category, 2012) Venture Partner at Octopus Ventures, the UK fund whose portfolio includes Zoopla, Cazoo and Depop Co-founder and CEO of BOLDR, an AI-powered virtual coaching product Judge and angel investor on BBC One’s The Apprentice; mentor on Amazon Prime’s Ready Set StartUP Forbes Top 50 Women in Tech; named London’s Most Influential in Creative Arts by the Evening Standard Biography Bossa Studios was a blank canvas in 2010. A decade later it was a VC-backed multi-million dollar games business with a BAFTA on the shelf for Monstermind and global hits in Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread. Roberta Lucca was the co-founder and CMO who shaped that arc, and the experience defines the perspective she brings to corporate audiences. She has since repeated the founder cycle. WonderLuk was an early move into on-demand 3D-printed consumer goods. BOLDR, her current company, is an AI-powered coaching product where she sits as co-founder and CEO. The pattern matters: she has built across gaming, consumer hardware-adjacent commerce and applied AI, which is unusual range for a speaker booked into innovation slots. As a Venture Partner at Octopus Ventures, she sees the deal flow from inside one of the UK’s most active early-stage funds. That vantage point sharpens her view of what genuine traction looks like and how corporates routinely misread it. It also gives her language that lands with executive teams trying to decide whether their innovation programmes are working. She is visible on the UK platforms that senior internal audiences recognise, BBC One’s The Apprentice as a judge and angel investor, and Amazon Prime’s Ready Set StartUP as a mentor. Forbes named her in its Top 50 Women in Tech list, and the Evening Standard named her among London’s Most Influential in Creative Arts. The recognition matters less than the operating record behind it: she is, demonstrably, someone who has built the kind of company most corporate innovation teams say they want to learn from. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and scale-up discipline Applied AI and emerging technology Innovation inside large organisations High-performance team building Creative industries and gamification Diversity in technology and venture Futurism, Web3 and the metaverse Ideal for Boards and ExCos shaping innovation portfolios and corporate venture programmes CMOs, CDOs and product leaders facing decisions on AI and emerging tech investment CHROs and talent leaders rethinking team composition and entrepreneurial capability Conferences and internal summits in technology, media, financial services and consumer goods Audience outcomes A working definition of what early traction looks like inside a new venture, drawn from venture capital deal flow A sharper view of which corporate innovation pilots are worth doubling down on and which are quietly stalling Specific examples of how gaming mechanics and AI products are built, taken from companies she has founded Language to use with boards about risk, capital allocation and team design for innovation bets A more confident point of view on where AI is genuinely changing product, and where it is hype

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 Roger Dooley A 20-year published track record applying neuromarketing to commercial problems, not a recent rebrand into the topic. Friction gives commercial leaders a single operational lens for finding the small frictions that quietly suppress revenue, conversion, and loyalty. Brainfluence translates academic behavioural research into 100 specific tactics marketing and CX teams can deploy, which is why the book has been translated into eleven languages. The Persuasion Engine (Wiley, 2026) gives buyers a published account of how AI is moving neuromarketing tools out of Fortune 500 research budgets and into reach of ordinary commercial teams, a shift most CX functions have not yet built a working view of. Forbes column and 400-plus episodes of the Brainfluence podcast keep him in active dialogue with the field’s leading researchers, from Robert Cialdini to Dan Ariely. Biography highlights Author of Brainfluence (Wiley, 2011), translated into eleven languages. Author of Friction (McGraw Hill, 2019), named a Top 3 Management Book and Best Business Book of 2019 by PwC’s strategy+business. Author of The Persuasion Engine (Wiley, 2026), on AI applied to behavioural science and neuromarketing. Forbes contributor on neuromarketing, customer experience and behavioural science. Host of the Brainfluence podcast, with guests including Robert Cialdini, Dan Ariely, Dan Pink, Tom Peters, Rory Sutherland, Nir Eyal and BJ Fogg. Named a Top 50 Global Thought Leader and Influencer on Customer Loyalty by Thinkers360. Biography Most marketing plans assume customers behave rationally. They do not. The gap between what a brand believes its customers are doing and what their brains are actually doing is where Roger Dooley has built his work for two decades. His 2019 book Friction (McGraw Hill) argues that the small unnecessary frictions inside a buying journey, an employee process, or a product experience are usually more powerful than the bigger strategic levers leaders prefer to discuss. PwC’s strategy+business named it a Top 3 Management Book and Best Business Book of 2019. The earlier Brainfluence (Wiley, 2011) compresses academic behavioural research into 100 marketing-grade tactics, and has been translated into eleven languages. That commercial frame is what separates Dooley from purely academic behavioural-economics voices. The Neuromarketing blog he started in 2005, his Forbes column, and 400-plus episodes of the Brainfluence podcast keep him in continuous dialogue with Robert Cialdini, Dan Ariely, Rory Sutherland, BJ Fogg and Nir Eyal, then translated for marketing, CX, and growth teams who need to ship decisions on Monday. The Persuasion Engine (Wiley, 2026) turns to AI: how language models and behavioural analytics are pushing tools once held inside Fortune 500 research budgets into the hands of much smaller commercial teams, and the governance and customer-trust questions that follow. Key speaking topics Neuromarketing and consumer neuroscience Friction in customer experience and operations Behavioural economics applied to marketing and sales AI-enabled behavioural science and persuasion Customer loyalty and brand trust Persuasion and decision architecture Ideal for CMOs and marketing leadership teams redesigning customer journeys Heads of customer experience and digital product leaders working on conversion and retention Sales leaders rebuilding playbooks around buyer psychology Growth and innovation teams testing AI-enabled behavioural tools Audience outcomes A working definition of where friction is suppressing revenue inside their own customer and employee journeys A vocabulary of behavioural mechanisms drawn from named research, not generic persuasion tropes A current read on how AI is changing the cost and access economics of behavioural research Specific, testable changes to marketing, sales or CX practice they can run inside their teams

Why organisations work with Roger Spitz His background gives him unusual commercial authority. Before Techistential and the Disruptive Futures Institute, he led Technology M&A at BNP Paribas globally, where he advised on more than 50 transactions with a combined value over $25 billion. That record matters to boards and institutional investors whose advisers often lack operating experience. His book Disrupt With Impact won the 2024 Chanticleer International Book Awards first place in Business and Enterprise, and the four-volume Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption is used as a practitioner reference on strategic foresight. The AAA Framework (antifragility, anticipation, agility) gives leadership teams a concrete lens to apply to their own operating environment rather than another abstract call to “embrace change”. Techistentialism, the concept he coined, is specifically about human agency and decision-making under AI, which is the question most executive teams are quietly asking themselves about the technology their organisations are deploying. Institutional anchors at the World Economic Forum’s Global Foresight Network, Thinkers360 Top 10 for Management Leadership and the AI Council of the Indian Society for Artificial Intelligence place him inside the forums his audiences either belong to or want to. Biography highlights President of Techistential and Chair of the Disruptive Futures Institute, San Francisco Former Global Head of Technology M&A at BNP Paribas; 50-plus transactions with a combined value exceeding $25 billion Author of Disrupt With Impact and the four-volume Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption 2024 Chanticleer International Book Awards first place in Business and Enterprise Non-Fiction Thinkers360 Top 10 for Management Leadership WEF Global Foresight Network member; AI Council, Indian Society for Artificial Intelligence Biography Traditional strategy runs on prediction. The trouble is that the systems senior leaders now operate in, AI, geopolitics, climate, capital markets, are non-linear in ways prediction cannot catch. Roger Spitz’s work is built around the alternative: a discipline of antifragility, anticipation and agility that allows organisations to benefit from volatility rather than simply endure it. His authority starts in finance. He was Global Head of Technology M&A at BNP Paribas, where he advised on more than 50 transactions with combined value over $25 billion, which is a different foundation to most futurists and is visible in how he handles boards. He now runs Techistential, the climate and foresight strategy advisory he founded, and chairs the Disruptive Futures Institute in San Francisco, where he coined the term “Techistentialism” to describe human agency and decision-making in an AI-mediated world. The body of published work is substantial. Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World won first place in Business and Enterprise Non-Fiction at the 2024 Chanticleer International Book Awards, and the four-volume Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption is used as a practitioner reference on strategic foresight. He sits in the World Economic Forum’s Global Foresight Network, ranks in the Thinkers360 Top 10 for Management Leadership, and serves on the AI Council of the Indian Society for Artificial Intelligence. For CEOs, boards, institutional investors and policy leaders, what Spitz offers is both specific and operational. The AAA Framework gives them a lens. The AI and techistentialism work gives them a language for what autonomous systems are doing to their operating model. And the M&A record gives them a speaker who has been on the other side of the capital-markets conversation they are probably also having. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and the AAA Framework (antifragility, anticipation, agility) AI, techistentialism and human agency in an automated world Non-linear disruption and scenario thinking Geopolitical and technological risk Boardroom strategy under unpredictability Building antifragile organisations Ideal for Boards, CEOs and executive committees revisiting strategic planning assumptions under accelerating disruption Chief strategy officers, chief AI officers and heads of corporate development Institutional investors, asset managers and private equity leadership teams Policy leaders and central banks running foresight and resilience briefs World Economic Forum and high-level industry forums Audience outcomes A clearer view of why linear forecasting is failing and what replaces it in current conditions A working grasp of the AAA Framework and how to apply it to the audience’s own strategy cycle Specific framing for human-AI decision-making drawn from Disrupt With Impact and the techistentialism work Case material from M&A, frontier technology and foresight consulting usable in the audience’s own sector Reference material from the published books that leadership teams can circulate after the session

Why organisations work with Rohit Bhargava He brings a decade of annual trend research, distilled into the Non-Obvious and Megatrends book series, into a board or strategy off-site as a working method, not a slide deck. The SIFT framework gives marketing, innovation and strategy teams a shared language for separating durable shifts from passing noise, which most trend keynotes leave unresolved. His client list (NASA, Disney, World Bank, Intel, American Express) signals a track record with organisations that have to make capital decisions on long horizons, not just generate quarterly campaigns. Beyond Diversity, co-authored with Jennifer Brown, gives him a credible second register on inclusion as a commercial and cultural question, useful when a single keynote needs to cover both growth strategy and people. He works as a trained marketer (15 years at Ogilvy and Leo Burnett), which means innovation and trend content lands with sales, brand and customer leaders rather than staying at the level of abstract foresight. Biography highlights 3-time Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of ten books, including #1 WSJ bestseller Non-Obvious Megatrends. Adjunct professor of marketing and storytelling at Georgetown University. Co-founder of Ideapress Publishing and founder of the Non-Obvious Company. Co-author of Beyond Diversity with Jennifer Brown (Simon & Schuster / Ideapress); WSJ bestseller. Keynote and workshop work for NASA, Disney, Intel, American Express, World Bank, Coca-Cola, Microsoft. Featured speaker at five SXSW events; keynote at SXSW Sydney 2023, the first SXSW outside the United States. Biography Trend forecasting is crowded. Most of what circulates inside large organisations is a recycled version of the same six themes: AI, sustainability, hybrid work, generational change, geopolitics, the consumer. The harder question for a senior team is which of those headlines actually changes how they should allocate capital next year, and which signals further out are not yet on anyone’s deck. That gap is the work Rohit Bhargava has built a decade-long research practice around. His Non-Obvious book series, published annually from 2015 and culminating in the WSJ and USA Today #1 bestseller Non-Obvious Megatrends in 2020, reached more than a million readers. The follow-up, The Future Normal, co-authored with Henry Coutinho-Mason and launched at SXSW in 2023, covers thirty shifts shaping the next decade, from generative AI to biophilic design. The 2024 book Non-Obvious Thinking, written with Ben duPont, formalises the SIFT method, a four-step habit for curating ideas that audiences can take into their own teams. Before becoming a full-time author and speaker, Bhargava spent 15 years in brand strategy roles at Ogilvy and Leo Burnett, advising consumer brands on behaviour and storytelling. He teaches marketing and storytelling at Georgetown University as an adjunct professor, and writes a monthly column for Inc. on books that matter. With Jennifer Brown he co-authored Beyond Diversity, a Wall Street Journal bestseller published by Simon & Schuster and Ideapress, which examines inclusion across twelve domains including workplace, leadership and technology. The client list, NASA, Disney, the World Bank, Intel, American Express, Microsoft, signals where the work lands hardest: organisations that need to translate cultural and technological signals into product, capital and brand decisions on multi-year horizons. The point is not to predict the future but to teach a working team to spot it earlier than the competition. Key speaking topics Trend forecasting and the non-obvious method Innovation as a research discipline Marketing and brand in low-trust markets AI and the future of trust The Future Normal: thirty shifts reshaping commerce Inclusive growth and Beyond Diversity Storytelling for senior leaders Creative thinking and curation as a managed habit Ideal for Chief marketing officers, brand teams and customer experience leads navigating attention and trust in saturated markets Chief strategy officers, innovation leads and corporate development teams setting multi-year direction Boards and executive committees commissioning a sharper view of how cultural and technological shifts will hit their category Sales and partner kickoffs where a strategy team wants a working method, not a trend slide Audience outcomes A working knowledge of the SIFT method and how to use it inside a team A named set of cultural and commercial shifts that are relevant to the audience’s specific industry, not generic trend lists A shared vocabulary for separating durable signals from passing noise Practical examples of how organisations including NASA, Disney and World Bank have translated trend research into operating decisions Confidence that trend work can be a repeatable internal habit, not a one-off external report