Business Model Innovation

Why organisations work with Purna Virji At Microsoft and LinkedIn she worked the commercialization layer for emerging AI, shaping the strategy and market narratives that decide whether a new capability reaches and convinces a market. She speaks to the gap between what a product can do and what customers adopt from direct operating experience, not observation. She gives executive teams a way to measure AI by business outcomes rather than activity, replacing “time saved” and tokens used with quality lift, scope growth, and capability unlock, the language finance and boards will fund. Her Agent-Led Growth work maps a shift most leaders have not yet priced in: customers delegating discovery and purchase decisions to AI agents, and what that does to how brands get found and trusted. She wrote the award-winning High-Impact Content Marketing (Kogan Page), recognised as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title, which grounds her credibility in published, peer-recognised work rather than conference reputation alone. Biography highlights More than a decade across Microsoft and LinkedIn in AI commercialization, go-to-market, and customer engagement, including Senior Manager of Global Engagement at Microsoft and Principal Consultant, Content Solutions at LinkedIn. Author of High-Impact Content Marketing (Kogan Page, 2023), a Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title (2024) and Goody Business Book Award winner. Creator of the Agent-Led Growth newsletter, publishing original frameworks on agentic commerce, AI adoption, and trust as a ranking factor. Named the #1 Most Influential PPC Expert in the World (PPC Hero, 2016), an Adweek Young Influential (2018), and Search Personality of the Year (US Search Awards). Honoured Listee, Marquis Who’s Who in America (2023). Has keynoted in more than 20 countries; work featured in Adweek, The Drum, TNW, Search Engine Land, and Search Engine Journal. Biography Most AI initiatives do not fail in the lab. They fail in the gap between a working model and a customer who changes nothing about how they work. Purna Virji has spent her career inside that gap, at the point where AI commercialization, go-to-market strategy, and customer behaviour meet. That vantage point is unusual. She spent more than a decade at Microsoft and LinkedIn in commercialization and go-to-market work, latterly focused on emerging AI, where she shaped the strategy and market narratives that decide whether a new capability earns trust and gets adopted. She has seen the failure modes up close, from unclear value to a customer journey that asks too much too soon. Her published work carries the same argument. High-Impact Content Marketing (Kogan Page) was named a Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title, and her Agent-Led Growth newsletter tracks the next shift: customers handing discovery, comparison, and purchase decisions to AI agents acting on their behalf. The implication for brands is direct. Influence moves from catching a person’s eye to earning an agent’s confidence. What she brings to a leadership audience is a way to argue about AI in board language. She reframes success away from time saved and tasks completed toward quality lift, scope growth, and capability unlock, the outcomes that survive a finance review. Her Agent-Led Growth research names the real blocker directly: the Delegation Gap, the distance between what AI can technically do and what people are ready to hand over. For executives funding AI and seeing experimentation rather than impact, closing that gap is the work. Key speaking topics AI commercialization and adoption Agentic commerce and AI-led customer journeys Measuring AI business impact and ROI Go-to-market strategy for AI products Trust, discovery, and brand visibility in the AI era AI-driven sameness and competitive differentiation Ideal for Executive teams and boards funding AI initiatives and asking what return they are getting AI transformation leads, CTOs, and product leaders moving from pilot to deployment CMOs and revenue leaders facing the shift to agent-led discovery and commerce Enterprise B2B and SaaS organisations whose growth depends on AI adoption by customers Audience outcomes A framework for tying AI initiatives to outcomes a board will fund: quality lift, scope growth, capability unlock, rather than activity metrics. A clear picture of how agent-led customer journeys change discovery, trust, and where buying influence sits. A diagnosis of why specific AI initiatives stall at the pilot stage, and where the product-to-market handoff breaks. A way to spot where AI-driven sameness enters content and customer experience, and how to design for differentiation from the start.

Why organisations work with Tom Goodwin His 2015 observation that Uber owns no vehicles and Airbnb no real estate became the standard way executives describe asset-light competition. He gives a leadership team the same lens on its own business: where value is moving, and who is positioned to own the customer. He has made technology bets inside two of the world’s largest advertising and media groups, as EVP and Head of Innovation at Publicis-owned Zenith Media and before that as SVP of strategy and innovation at Havas Media. He advises others now on calls he has had to make himself. His read on AI cuts against both the hype and the gloom. Under the banner he calls “nowism,” he argues the technology to grow already exists and the constraint is nerve and imagination. Boards leave with something to act on, not another warning about the future. He has spent two decades translating technology for commercial audiences, as a columnist for The Guardian, TechCrunch, and Forbes and as host of the Euronews series The Edge. Operators follow the argument and can repeat it, without needing a specialist to decode it. Biography highlights Author of Digital Darwinism: Survival of the Fittest in the Age of Business Disruption, published by Kogan Page and translated into several languages Author of the 2015 TechCrunch essay “The Battle Is For The Customer Interface,” one of the most widely cited descriptions of platform business models Former EVP and Head of Innovation at Zenith Media, part of Publicis Groupe; earlier SVP, Strategy and Innovation at Havas Media Founder of the innovation consultancy All We Have Is Now, advising Fortune 500 companies and startups Named LinkedIn’s #1 Voice in Marketing Host of The Edge, a technology series for Euronews; columnist for The Guardian, TechCrunch, Forbes, Adweek, and Marketing Week Biography In 2015, a single paragraph in TechCrunch changed how executives talk about competition. It pointed out that Uber owned no vehicles, Airbnb no real estate, Alibaba no inventory, and Facebook made no content. The author was Tom Goodwin, then senior vice-president of strategy and innovation at Havas Media. The line stuck because it named something leaders could feel but had not put into words: value was moving from owning assets to owning the customer relationship. Goodwin had spent his career inside that shift, later running innovation at Publicis-owned Zenith Media and advising large companies on where to place their bets. His argument now centres on artificial intelligence, and it runs against the prevailing mood. Most organisations, he contends, use new technology to make the old business run more smoothly, when the real opportunity is to rebuild what the business does. He calls the practical version of this “nowism”: the tools to grow already exist, and the limit is nerve and imagination. That case reaches a wide audience. Goodwin hosts The Edge, a technology series for Euronews, and has been named LinkedIn’s #1 Voice in Marketing. He set out the full argument in his book Digital Darwinism, published by Kogan Page. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and business strategy Digital transformation Platform and asset-light business models The future of business Technology and consumer behaviour Marketing and the customer interface Ideal for CEOs and boards setting the direction of a digital or AI strategy Chief Marketing and Chief Digital Officers deciding where technology changes the customer relationship Innovation, strategy, and transformation leads under pressure to show a return on technology investment Senior leadership teams at large incumbents facing platform-native competitors Audience outcomes A way to judge which technologies change their business and which are noise A concrete test for their own model: what the company would look like if it were built today Language to explain asset-light and platform competition to their own teams and boards A more pragmatic read on AI that stays on what is usable today

Why organisations work with Trabucchi and Buganza The Platform Thinking Matrix gives strategy and transformation teams a structured instrument for identifying precisely where platform mechanisms can be applied to existing business models, built from a decade of research on established companies, not borrowed from startup literature. The Digital Phoenix Effect draws on analysis of 140 platform initiatives across S&P 500 companies, with detailed cases from Siemens, AXA, Eni, and Domino’s – the organisations their research is built around look like most audiences, not like Silicon Valley startups. With 100+ peer-reviewed publications in journals including the Journal of Product Innovation Management and Technovation, their frameworks can be tested against sustained evidence – not just a practitioner’s conviction codified into a model. As Scientific Directors of the Platform Thinking HUB within Politecnico’s Digital Innovation Observatories, they give organisations access to live, connected research, not a fixed set of frameworks. Shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Award in Digital Thinking: the body that the Financial Times has described as producing the Oscars of management thinking. Biography highlights Associate Professor of Platform Thinking (Trabucchi) and Full Professor of Leadership & Innovation (Buganza), School of Management, Politecnico di Milano Co-founders and Scientific Directors of the Platform Thinking HUB within Politecnico’s Digital Innovation Observatories, and of LEADIN’Lab; Buganza chairs the EIASM International Product Development Management Conference Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2024; shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Award, Digital Thinking category Co-authors of Platform Thinking: Read the Past. Write the Future (Business Expert Press, 2023) – shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2024 and translated into Italian and Chinese – and The Digital Phoenix Effect (Platform Thinking Publishing, 2025) 100+ peer-reviewed articles in journals including the Journal of Product Innovation Management, Technovation, and Information Systems Journal Co-founders of Symplatform (2018), the annual international conference on digital platforms connecting researchers and practitioners Biography Most digital transformation advice is written for companies that do not yet exist. Trabucchi and Buganza study the ones that do: established firms with legacy assets, existing customer relationships, and infrastructure they cannot simply abandon. Over more than a decade at Politecnico di Milano’s School of Management, they developed Platform Thinking as a named strategic framework. It is not a description of what Uber or Airbnb do. It is a method for how any established organisation can activate its existing assets to generate the multi-sided value that platform businesses create. The Platform Thinking Matrix formalises this as a practical instrument for strategy and transformation teams. Their 2025 book, The Digital Phoenix Effect, draws on 140 platform initiatives analysed across S&P 500 companies, with cases from Siemens, AXA, Eni, and Domino’s. The argument that incumbent firms cannot compete in the platform economy on their own terms is a common one. Trabucchi and Buganza make the opposite case, and back it with sustained empirical research. Both were included in the Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2024 and shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Award in Digital Thinking. As co-founders of Symplatform and Scientific Directors of the Platform Thinking HUB, they connect rigorous academic research to active practitioner communities. Their frameworks emerge from sustained, peer-reviewed inquiry – over 100 published articles across journals including the Journal of Product Innovation Management and Technovation – not from advisory work alone. Key speaking topics Platform thinking and business model transformation Legacy organisations in the platform economy The Platform Thinking Matrix Data as a platform asset GenAI and internal platform development Platform leadership and innovation management Multi-sided platforms and ecosystem strategy Ideal for Chief Strategy Officers and Chief Digital Officers leading platform transformation in established businesses CEOs and boards of legacy organisations facing disruption from platform competitors Innovation and transformation leads in non-digital-native companies Executive MBA and corporate learning audiences focused on digital business model innovation Audience outcomes A working definition of Platform Thinking and how it differs from conventional digital transformation advice The Platform Thinking Matrix as a practical framework for identifying where platform mechanisms apply to existing business models Real cases from established firms – Siemens, AXA, Eni, Domino’s – showing how legacy assets become platform advantages Clarity on the specific leadership conditions that enable platform-based change within established organisations A starting point for assessing their organisation’s platform potential against a research-backed framework

Why organisations work with Diana Verde Nieto She has built the operating substance behind two commitments most companies treat as comms exercises. Positive Luxury and the Butterfly Mark turned sustainability claims into an audited certification with periodic re-earn cycles. Edify is now doing the same work for AI-driven capability, turning brand standards and SOPs into something frontline teams actually use. “Reimagining Luxury” (Kogan Page, 2024) is built on direct contributions from chief sustainability officers at LVMH, Kering, and L’Oréal, alongside Harvard’s John P. Kotter and Paul Polman. The frameworks it sets out are drawn from how the major houses actually run sustainability, not how they describe it externally. Shortlisted, Business Book Awards 2025, Change and Sustainability category. Two founded-and-exited businesses (Clownfish, sold to Aegis-Dentsu in 2008; Positive Luxury) mean her thinking on commercial strategy has been tested by real investors and real markets, not consulting decks. Through Edify Collective, she is applying the same thesis to workforce capability, embedding policies and standards into the daily flow of work rather than relying on training events that fade within weeks. World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and Harvard Kennedy School graduate. Non-Executive Director at the British Beauty Council and Watts 1874. Former adviser to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the UN Conscious Fashion and Lifestyle Network, and La Prairie (Beiersdorf). Biography highlights Co-Founder and CEO of Edify Collective, an AI-native frontline performance support platform that embeds policies, SOPs, and brand standards into the daily flow of work, bridging board-level strategy and frontline execution. Co-founder of Positive Luxury (2011), creator of the Butterfly Mark, the luxury sector’s best-known independent ESG certification. Founder of Clownfish (2002), one of the world’s first dedicated sustainability communications consultancies; built to a presence in five markets and sold to Aegis-Dentsu Group in 2008. Author of Reimagining Luxury: Building a Sustainable Future for Your Brand (Kogan Page, 2024); shortlisted, Business Book Awards 2025, Change and Sustainability category. World Economic Forum Young Global Leader; degree in Global Leadership and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School. Non-Executive Director, British Beauty Council and Watts 1874; former adviser to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the UN Conscious Fashion and Lifestyle Network, and La Prairie (Beiersdorf). Biography Most organisations are excellent at deciding what needs to change. They write the policy, sign off on the strategy, brief the leadership team. The work that follows, embedding that decision into how thousands of people actually behave at the frontline, is where most of the value is either captured or lost. Diana Verde Nieto has spent two decades building businesses around this problem. In 2002 she founded Clownfish, one of the first dedicated sustainability communications consultancies, scaled it to five markets, and sold it to Aegis-Dentsu in 2008. In 2011 she co-founded Positive Luxury with Karen Hanton MBE and built the Butterfly Mark, an independent ESG certification now sought by over 100 brands across fashion, beauty, jewellery, and travel, awarded on demonstrated performance across nine criteria and re-earned every two years. Reimagining Luxury (Kogan Page, 2024), shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2025, draws directly on contributions from the chief sustainability officers of LVMH, Kering, and L’Oréal, alongside Harvard’s John P. Kotter and Paul Polman. As Co-Founder and CEO of Edify Collective, she is now applying the same thesis to workforce capability. Edify is an AI-native platform that embeds policies, SOPs, and brand standards directly into the flow of frontline work, replacing fragmented training tools with a single performance support layer. The argument is the same one she has been making for 25 years, but the domain has shifted: the strategy-execution gap is now also the gap between AI ambition and AI deployment, and the same operating disciplines apply. A World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and Harvard Kennedy School graduate, she serves as a Non-Executive Director at the British Beauty Council and Watts 1874. Her previous advisory work includes the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the UN Conscious Fashion and Lifestyle Network, and La Prairie (Beiersdorf). Key speaking topics Closing the Strategy-Action Gap: From Boardroom to Frontline The AI-Native Workforce: Augmentation, Not Replacement Operationalising Purpose: Building Standards That Survive Daily Operations Lessons from Luxury: How LVMH, Kering, and L’Oréal Run Sustainability as Commercial Strategy Trust as a Brand Asset: Why Operational Reality Determines Reputational Value The Entrepreneurial Journey: Building, Scaling, and Exiting Purpose-Driven Businesses Seeing Markets Before They Arrive: Strategic Foresight in Volatile Industries Ideal for CEOs and brand leaders responsible for bridging strategic intent and daily operational reality Chief Operating Officers and Chief Transformation Officers redesigning legacy systems and workflows for an AI-native workforce Boards and Non-Executive Directors whose governance responsibilities turn on whether operational substance backs board-level commitments Founders, investors, and venture partners examining purpose-driven businesses, scale-up discipline, and exit strategy Industry associations, regulators, and policy bodies operating at the intersection of corporate strategy and standards-based oversight Audience outcomes Diana’s focus is the final mile of leadership: the work between strategy being agreed and strategy being delivered through the daily behaviour of frontline teams. Her sessions are built for senior audiences who have already named the strategic problem and need to understand how to operationalise the answer. A working definition of The Action Gap, the space between board-level commitments and frontline reality, and the operating disciplines that close it. A direct view of how LVMH, Kering, and L’Oréal turn sustainability commitments into auditable commercial strategy, drawn from her book’s primary research with their CSOs. A reframing of AI in the workforce from substitution to augmentation: what it means to put expert-level judgement into the hands of frontline workers in real time, and what that requires of the operating model. A founder’s view of scale, exit, and the discipline of building purpose-driven businesses that hold their commercial integrity through investor scrutiny and global expansion. A practical map of where brilliant strategies fail at the point of work, and what board-level leaders can do about it before the failure becomes a reputational event.

Why organisations work with Dhar Mann He has done what most CMOs are still trying to do: build a content engine that earns ten billion views a year without buying media, and is willing to explain the mechanics behind it. He is one of two entrepreneurs ever ranked #2 on Forbes’ Top Creators list two years running, and he runs it from a 125,000 sq ft Los Angeles studio with a full production staff. Buyers get a working operator, not a personal brand. He was named to the inaugural TIME100 Creators list and dubbed the “Moral Philosopher of YouTube” by The New York Times, which makes him uniquely credible on values-led content as a commercial strategy, not as a CSR talking point. He scaled LiveGlam from $600 of starting capital to eight-figure subscription revenue before founding the studio, which means his commentary on customer acquisition and creator-led growth comes from two successful builds, not one. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Dhar Mann Studios; the world’s #1 digital scripted creator, with more than 140 million followers and over 10 billion annual views across platforms. Named to the inaugural TIME100 Creators list, 2025. Ranked #2 on Forbes’ Top Creators list in 2024 and 2025. Three-time Telly Award winner; Shorty Award for Best YouTube Presence; multiple Kids’ Choice Awards nominations for Favourite Male Creator. Founder of LiveGlam, the cruelty-free cosmetics subscription business he grew from $600 to eight-figure annual revenue. Confirmed 2026 keynote at NATPE Global and the Realscreen Summit, Miami, alongside Dhar Mann Studios CEO and former MTV president Sean Atkins. Biography The creator economy is now worth more than $250 billion, and most large organisations are still trying to work out how to participate in it without losing their brand to it. Dhar Mann Studios is one of the clearest answers in market. From a 125,000 sq ft production base in Los Angeles, the company publishes scripted shorts that have generated over 10 billion views a year and a following of more than 140 million people, built without traditional media spend. The studio model is what distinguishes the proposition. Dhar Mann is the founder and CEO, but the business is run as a vertically integrated production house, with a full writers’ room, actors, post-production and distribution discipline. The New York Times called him the “Moral Philosopher of YouTube” for the values-led structure of the content; Forbes ranked him #2 on its Top Creators list in both 2024 and 2025; TIME named him to the inaugural TIME100 Creators list in 2025. The relevant point for organisations is that values, in his work, are an operating choice that drives retention and reach, not a brand veneer. Before the studio, he founded LiveGlam, a cruelty-free cosmetics subscription business he grew from $600 of starting capital to eight-figure annual revenue, an early proof that he can build a customer-acquisition engine inside a category he did not previously operate in. The same instinct, treating storytelling and community as the primary product, has carried into partnerships with MTV, Amazon, Universal and Instagram, and into a confirmed 2026 keynote at NATPE Global and the Realscreen Summit, where the brief is the convergence of creator economics and traditional media. For senior commercial leaders, the value sits in three places: how to think about content as a customer asset, how to structure a studio rather than a campaign function, and how to use values-led narrative as a loyalty mechanism in categories where awareness no longer converts. Key speaking topics Purpose-driven storytelling and brand loyalty The creator economy and the studio model Building customer acquisition at scale Entrepreneurship and category entry Empathy and values as commercial strategy Culture inside fast-scaling creative businesses Ideal for CMOs and brand leadership teams rebuilding their content function Founders and CEOs scaling consumer or subscription businesses Innovation, marketing and customer experience teams looking to act on creator economics Media, entertainment and platform organisations navigating the convergence with creators Audience outcomes A working view of how a scripted-content studio earns ten billion views a year, and which parts of that model port into a corporate brand function A specific take on values-led content as a commercial choice, with the loyalty and retention evidence to back it up The operating logic behind taking a business from a few hundred dollars to eight-figure revenue inside a new category A clearer read on where the creator economy and traditional media are actually converging, and what that means for marketing spend

Why organisations work with John Mackey He took one Austin store to 540 locations and $22B in annual sales over four decades, so his account of stakeholder strategy is operating evidence, not theory. He co-authored the book, Conscious Capitalism (HBR Press, 2013), that gave the stakeholder argument its working vocabulary inside boardrooms and business schools. Few founders have lived the full arc he describes: IPO, activist investor pressure, a $13.7B sale to Amazon, and a second venture built on the same philosophy. His Love.Life venture applies the same conscious-business model to preventative healthcare, giving audiences a current case in a different sector. He speaks to capitalism’s critics from inside the system, useful for boards under pressure on purpose, ESG credibility and the social licence to operate. Biography highlights Co-founded Whole Foods Market in 1978; served as CEO until September 2022, growing the business to 540 stores in the US, UK and Canada and over $22B in annual sales. Co-author of Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013), New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. Author of Conscious Leadership: Elevating Humanity Through Business (2020) and the memoir The Whole Story: Adventures in Love, Life, and Capitalism (2024). Co-founder and CEO of Love.Life, an integrated preventative healthcare and wellness venture, with its flagship centre in El Segundo, California. Inducted into the World Retail Congress Hall of Fame (2022); recognised by Fortune as one of the “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders” and Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year US Overall Winner. Board roles include Conscious Capitalism Inc., The Motley Fool, Cato Institute, Institute for Cultural Evolution and Students for Liberty. Biography Whole Foods Market began in 1978 as a single store on a side street in Austin, Texas. Forty-four years later, when John Mackey stepped down as CEO, it had 540 stores, 105,000 team members and $22 billion in annual sales. That trajectory is the spine of his authority on stakeholder capitalism. The argument he co-built around it became Conscious Capitalism (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013), a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller co-authored with Raj Sisodia. The book set out four operating tenets, higher purpose, stakeholder integration, conscious leadership, conscious culture, that boards and business schools now use as a working vocabulary for purpose-led business. Mackey has also lived the harder parts of the case. He took Whole Foods through an IPO, public clashes with critics on both left and right, sustained activist investor pressure from Jana Partners, and the $13.7 billion sale to Amazon in 2017. His 2024 memoir The Whole Story sets out what those moments cost and what they confirmed. He now runs Love.Life, a preventative healthcare and wellness company he co-founded with former Whole Foods executives, applying the same conscious-business model to a sector he argues is structurally set up to manage disease rather than prevent it. The work positions him as a serious voice on stakeholder strategy, board-level purpose, and the next test of conscious capitalism in healthcare. Key speaking topics Conscious Capitalism and stakeholder strategy Founder-led growth and scaling a category-defining business Purpose, culture and the operating model behind them Leadership through activist pressure, acquisition and succession Preventative healthcare and the future of wellness Higher-purpose leadership at board level Entrepreneurship and long-horizon company building Ideal for Boards and CEOs reframing purpose as an operating model rather than a communications layer Founders and senior leaders scaling mission-led businesses through institutional capital and public-market pressure Retail, consumer, grocery and health sector leadership teams Conferences on capitalism, ESG credibility and the social licence to operate Audience outcomes A working account of how stakeholder strategy held together through four decades of growth, IPO, activism and acquisition The four-tenet architecture of Conscious Capitalism applied to current board and executive decisions A founder’s view of when to fight activist investors and when to sell A live case on building a second purpose-led business, this time in healthcare Sharper language for explaining purpose to investors, employees and customers without losing credibility on either side

Why organisations work with Arunjay Katakam He has spent over a decade inside the GSMA and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation portfolios building the financial infrastructure that brought a billion people into the formal economy, so he speaks about inclusion as an operating problem, not a values statement. His book Generation Hope sets out a five-principle model (growth, participation, opportunity, stability, sustainability) that boards can map directly onto strategy, pricing, and product decisions. He has co-founded three startups, mentored 20-plus emerging-market fintechs through DFS Lab, and built ventures at Catalyst Fund, which gives him real authority on scale-up economics rather than commentary. He brings operator credibility on cross-border payments, digital public infrastructure, and zero-fee payment design, all areas where boards now face direct regulatory and competitive pressure. Biography highlights Author, Generation Hope: How Inclusive Economics Can Help Us All Thrive (Otterpine, 2024). Author, The Power of Micro Money Transfers, a practitioner guide to profitable money-transfer operators. Strategic Advisor, Interledger Foundation. Founder and CEO, Yooz, a cross-border remittance company. Founder, Inclusive Action Lab, a non-profit incubating ventures aimed at poverty alleviation by 2030. Co-author of two GSMA State of the Industry reports on mobile financial services for the unbanked; former EY consultant; mentor to 20-plus inclusive fintech startups via DFS Lab. Biography Most organisations describe inclusion as a values problem. After a decade inside the GSMA and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, building the rails that brought a billion people into the formal economy, the case is sharper than that. Inclusion is an operating problem, with measurable consequences for pricing, distribution, and risk. That is the argument behind Generation Hope (Otterpine, 2024), which sets out five principles: growth, participation, opportunity, stability, and sustainability. The book gives senior leaders a usable frame for redesigning commercial strategy when the extractive model is running out of road, not a moral lecture. The operator background is what makes the case credible. Arunjay Katakam co-founded three startups, including one acquired by Twitter, ran cross-border remittance company Yooz, mentored more than 20 emerging-market fintechs at DFS Lab, and built ventures with Catalyst Fund. His earlier book, The Power of Micro Money Transfers, is a working manual for building profitable payment operators on zero-fee economics. He now advises the Interledger Foundation on open payments infrastructure and runs Inclusive Action Lab, a non-profit incubating moonshot ventures aimed at ending extreme poverty by 2030. The throughline is consistent: commercial discipline applied to inclusive design, with the numbers to support it. Key speaking topics Inclusive economics as a commercial operating model Cross-border payments and digital public infrastructure Open and decentralised finance Scale-up leadership in emerging-market fintech Zero-fee payment design and unit economics Generation Hope: rebuilding growth around participation and sustainability Ideal for Boards and ExCos rethinking growth strategy under regulatory, customer, and capital pressure Financial services leaders (CEO, COO, Chief Strategy Officer, Chief Sustainability Officer) navigating cross-border payments, fintech disruption, and inclusion mandates Innovation and venture-building teams inside large institutions backing inclusive products Foundation, development finance, and policy audiences working on financial inclusion Audience outcomes A five-principle model audiences can apply to their own pricing, product, and strategy decisions A clearer view of where inclusive economics changes unit economics rather than just narrative Specific examples from cross-border payments and digital public infrastructure that show what works at scale A practical agenda for boards on how to position growth strategy for the next decade

Why organisations work with Tim Calkins A practical authority on defensive strategy, a discipline most marketing teams do not formally teach. Defending Your Brand was named 2013 Marketing Book of the Year by Expert Marketer Magazine and remains one of the few named texts on how incumbents respond to competitive attack A decade of operating credibility at Kraft Foods running brands including Miracle Whip, DiGiorno, Taco Bell and A.1. Steak Sauce, with responsibility for more than two dozen new product launches A teaching record that boards take seriously: twice-winner of Kellogg’s Lavengood Outstanding Professor of the Year Award, one of six faculty to do so in its 40-plus year history Direct, current consulting work with Abbott, Amgen, Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly and Kraft Heinz through Class 5 Consulting, which keeps the frameworks tested against live commercial pressure A specialism in biomedical and healthcare marketing that makes him useful to pharmaceutical and medtech leadership teams that find generic brand keynotes irrelevant Biography highlights Clinical Professor of Marketing and Associate Chair of the Marketing Department, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University Almost 11 years at Kraft Foods leading brands including Miracle Whip, DiGiorno, Taco Bell, Parkay and A.1. Steak Sauce; responsible for more than two dozen new product launches Author of Defending Your Brand (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and Breakthrough Marketing Plans (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, 2012); co-editor of Kellogg on Branding (Wiley, 2005) and Kellogg on Branding in a Hyper-Connected World (Wiley, 2019) How to Wash a Chicken: Mastering the Business Presentation (Page Two, 2018) won Top Business Book at the IndieReader Discovery Awards and the Gold Prize for Business and Economics at the Foreword Indies Two-time winner of Kellogg’s Lawrence G. Lavengood Outstanding Professor of the Year Award (2006, 2013); also recipient of the Sidney J. Levy Teaching Award and the Kellogg-WHU Top Professor Award Founder of Class 5 Consulting, advising Abbott, Amgen, Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, Kraft Heinz and Hearst on brand and growth strategy BA History (cum laude), Yale; MBA, Harvard Business School Biography Most marketing teams are trained to launch and to build. Very few are trained to defend. That asymmetry is what Tim Calkins has spent two decades teaching against, first as a brand operator at Kraft Foods, then at Kellogg, where he holds the Associate Chair of the Marketing Department and is Clinical Professor of Marketing. His book Defending Your Brand (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) is one of the few named texts on how incumbents respond to a credible competitive attack. Expert Marketer Magazine called it the 2013 Marketing Book of the Year. The thinking sits on top of close to 11 years inside Kraft, running brands including Miracle Whip, DiGiorno, Taco Bell and A.1. Steak Sauce, and launching more than two dozen new products. Through Class 5 Consulting, his current clients include Abbott, Amgen, Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, Kraft Heinz and Hearst, work that keeps his frameworks tested against live margin and share pressure. At Kellogg he teaches Marketing Strategy, Strategic Marketing Decisions, Biomedical Marketing and Marketing Strategy for Growth and Defense, and co-edited the school’s flagship branding texts, Kellogg on Branding (Wiley, 2005) and Kellogg on Branding in a Hyper-Connected World (Wiley, 2019). His standing inside the school is itself a credential. He is one of only six faculty in the 40-plus year history of Kellogg’s Lavengood Outstanding Professor of the Year Award to have won it twice, in 2006 and 2013. His later book, How to Wash a Chicken: Mastering the Business Presentation (Page Two, 2018), took Top Business Book at the IndieReader Discovery Awards and the Gold Prize for Business and Economics at the Foreword Indies, and is read inside Fortune 500 communications and commercial teams as a practical text on how senior executives lose, and win, the room. Key speaking topics Brand strategy and brand building Defensive strategy and competitive response Marketing planning and growth strategy Brand portfolio management Healthcare and biomedical marketing Business presentations and senior executive communication Lessons from Super Bowl advertising Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and category leaders inside established consumer, healthcare and B2B brand businesses Pharmaceutical, medtech and biotech commercial leadership teams running launch or defence on a regulated product Senior executives preparing for high-stakes internal and external presentations Executive education and leadership programmes inside Fortune 500 marketing and commercial functions Audience outcomes A working framework for defending a brand position against a credible competitive attack, drawn from Defending Your Brand A clearer view of how to allocate marketing investment across the brand portfolio under pressure on margin Specific, named tactics for sharper marketing plans, applicable inside the audience’s own planning cycle Practical correction on the recurring failure modes of senior executive presentations, drawn from How to Wash a Chicken Sector-specific application for healthcare and biomedical audiences, where most generic brand content does not land

Why organisations work with Joerg Niessing He teaches inside the C-suite of the brands most boards benchmark against, Google, L’Oréal, Roche, Walmart, Marriott, Diageo and Samsung among them, and brings that pattern recognition into the room. Before INSEAD he was a Partner at Prophet, the brand and customer experience consultancy, after more than a decade in strategy consulting. That operating background plus a senior faculty role is a combination very few digital strategy speakers credibly hold. His book The Definitive Guide to B2B Digital Transformation is built around a specific argument that customer centricity, not technology stack, is the variable that separates growth from stalled programmes. The Case Centre’s 2025 Outstanding Case Teacher award recognises a rare ability to make complex transformation cases land with senior executives, which translates directly into keynote and workshop work. Most AI and digital advice fixates on the technology. Niessing co-directs INSEAD’s Leading AI and Digital Marketing Strategy programme and leads instead with the question executive teams actually own: how do we turn AI and data investment into profitable growth? Biography highlights Senior Affiliate Professor of Marketing, INSEAD. Former Partner, Prophet. Co-author of The Definitive Guide to B2B Digital Transformation (2020) with Fred Geyer. Winner, Outstanding Case Teacher Competition 2025 (The Case Centre); previous Best Marketing Case award winner. Co-director, INSEAD executive programmes including Leading Digital Marketing Strategy and Leading AI and Digital Marketing Strategy. Has authored 30+ executive cases on companies including Google, Jaguar Land Rover, AccorHotels, BMW Startup Garage and Majid Al Futtaim. Has delivered executive education and keynotes in more than 40 countries for over 200 global organisations. Biography Digital transformation programmes do not usually fail on technology. They fail because the strategy, the culture and the data operating model are not aligned, and the customer experience that results is incoherent. That gap between investment and commercial outcome is the territory Joerg Niessing has spent his career on. At INSEAD, he is a Senior Affiliate Professor of Marketing and co-directs flagship executive programmes including Leading Digital Marketing Strategy, Leading AI and Digital Marketing Strategy and B2B Marketing Strategies. His research and teaching focus on digital customer experience, marketing analytics, brand management and the strategic implications of AI for commercial leaders. Before moving to full-time faculty work he was a Partner at Prophet, the brand and customer experience consultancy, where he led client engagements with global businesses across consumer goods, automotive, healthcare and B2B technology. That operating background sits underneath his 2020 book with Fred Geyer, The Definitive Guide to B2B Digital Transformation, which argues that growth comes from prioritising customers over technology, an argument that has aged well as more transformation budgets are scrutinised. The Case Centre named him Outstanding Case Teacher in 2025, recognition of a 30-strong case portfolio on companies including Google, Jaguar Land Rover, AccorHotels, BMW Startup Garage and Majid Al Futtaim. For a senior buyer, that body of work is the substance behind the keynote: he is testing these arguments on executives from the world’s largest brands every week. Key speaking topics Customer-centric digital transformation B2B digital transformation and growth AI strategy and transformation AI and data in marketing, brand and customer experience Brand building in a digital and AI-driven world Data and analytics as a commercial capability Business model innovation from product to solution Culture and leadership of transformation programmes Ideal for CMOs, Chief Customer Officers and Chief Digital Officers running enterprise transformation programmes. CEOs and boards reviewing the commercial return on multi-year digital and AI investment. B2B leadership teams shifting from product-led to customer-led and solution-led growth. Senior marketing, brand and customer experience teams inside large consumer and B2B businesses. Audience outcomes A sharper view of where customer centricity, not technology, is the binding constraint on growth. A working framework for connecting strategy, culture and data inside a transformation programme. Practical reference points from named global brands, not generic case study language. A clearer commercial agenda for AI in marketing, customer experience and brand. Confidence to challenge the technology-first defaults in their own transformation plans.

Why organisations work with Eric Ries He authored the operating method most used by modern product teams. When a CFO asks how an innovation portfolio should be measured and governed, the answer most large companies reach for is his. He has tested the method inside GE, IBM, Intuit, and the US federal government, not just early-stage startups, so the case studies he draws on are at enterprise scale. He founded the Long-Term Stock Exchange, a SEC-approved national securities exchange. That gives him a working perspective on how ownership structure and reporting cadence shape executive behaviour, well beyond a consultant’s view. His new book Incorruptible reframes corporate governance as a strategic act, addressing why successful companies drift from the principles that built them. Useful for boards under pressure on mission, accountability, and long-term value. Biography highlights Author of The Lean Startup, The Startup Way, and Incorruptible (Authors Equity, distributed by Simon & Schuster, 2026). Founder and Executive Chairman of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, approved by the SEC in 2019. Architect of GE’s FastWorks program under CEO Jeff Immelt, applied across thousands of GE executives. Former Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Harvard Business School and IDEO Fellow; advisor to Pivotal. Ranked #12 on the Thinkers50 list (2019); The Lean Startup on the Thinkers50 Management Classics Booklist (2023). Biography Most large companies are excellent at running the business they already have and unreliable at building the next one. The systems that govern the core business, budgets, milestones, quarterly review, were not designed for ventures whose value is mostly unknown at the point of funding. Eric Ries spent two decades turning that mismatch into a working method. The Lean Startup, published in 2011, codified validated learning, the minimum viable product, and innovation accounting as a portable management discipline. The book has been translated into more than thirty languages and now sits on the Thinkers50 Management Classics Booklist. Its follow-up, The Startup Way, captured what happens when those ideas are pushed into established companies. The case studies are drawn from inside GE, where Ries worked with CEO Jeff Immelt on the FastWorks program, alongside engagements with IBM, Intuit, and the US federal government. The governance question runs through all of his work. In 2015 he proposed the Long-Term Stock Exchange in The Lean Startup; the SEC approved LTSE as a national securities exchange in 2019, and Ries serves as Executive Chairman. His 2026 book Incorruptible, published by Authors Equity and distributed by Simon & Schuster, argues that good companies fail predictably because ownership, incentives, and accountability quietly reshape behaviour as they scale. The book was selected for the Thinkers50 Best New Management Booklist. What separates Ries from other innovation speakers is range. He has authored the methodology, run the corporate transformations that test it, and built a regulated capital-markets venue to address the structural problem his books diagnose. For senior teams that want innovation handled as a portfolio discipline, not a culture programme, he is the source. Key speaking topics Lean Startup methodology Innovation accounting and the management of internal ventures Entrepreneurial management inside established companies Corporate governance and long-term value AI applied to product validation and customer acquisition The Long-Term Stock Exchange and capital-markets reform Ideal for CEOs and boards of public companies wrestling with quarterly pressure versus long-horizon investment. Chief innovation, strategy, and transformation officers responsible for portfolios of new ventures inside large organisations. Founders and senior leaders of scale-up companies preparing for institutional ownership. Corporate development and venture teams looking to apply validated-learning discipline to internal investment decisions. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for measuring new ventures separately from the core business, drawn directly from innovation accounting. A clear diagnosis of why most corporate innovation programmes fail at the governance layer rather than the creativity layer. A view of how ownership structure, board cadence, and reporting rules quietly shape executive behaviour over time. Specific case material from GE, IBM, Intuit, and US federal agencies that audiences can map onto their own structures.

Why organisations work with Rodney Williams He has built two venture-backed fintech companies from concept to scale, including SoLo Funds, the only Black-led Certified B Corp fintech in the US, with over 1 million loans funded for 1.5 million users. He raised more than $40M for LISNR with clients including Visa, Ticketmaster, Jaguar Land Rover, and Lenovo, giving him operating experience inside the commercial functions of global brands rather than a venture-capital perspective from the outside. He brings a working operator’s view of financial inclusion that does not collapse into advocacy, anchored in his testimony to federal regulators and direct experience designing products for working and middle-class consumers. Named to the CNBC Disruptor 50 list five times across nine years, a recurrence that is unusual and signals durable founder relevance rather than one moment of attention. Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute, with the framing capacity that programme selects for, which translates to a keynote that argues rather than just narrates. Biography highlights Co-founder and President, SoLo Funds, the largest community finance platform in the US, with over 1 million loans funded since 2018. Founder and Chair, LISNR, an ultrasonic data-transmission company backed by Visa with over $40M raised. Former Brand Manager, Procter & Gamble, leading digital strategy and ecommerce for Pampers North America. 2019 Henry Crown Fellow, Aspen Global Leadership Network. CNBC Disruptor 50 honouree in 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019, and 2023. Cannes Gold Lion (2015); Ad Age 40 Under 40 (2012); Black Enterprise Tech Entrepreneur of the Year (2016); Ebony Power 100 (2018). Biography SoLo Funds has facilitated more than a million loans to working and lower-middle-class Americans since 2018, and it did so by treating its users as both borrowers and lenders to each other. The business depends on a functioning peer community, not on a marketing community. That distinction sounds semantic until a leadership team tries to operationalise it. Rodney Williams co-founded SoLo Funds after building LISNR, an ultrasonic data-transmission platform he scaled to over $40M in funding with commercial deployments at Visa, Ticketmaster, Jaguar Land Rover, and Lenovo. Before LISNR, he ran digital and ecommerce strategy for Pampers North America at Procter & Gamble, which is where he learned how large consumer organisations actually think about customer acquisition, retention, and brand economics. That sequence matters. He has built community-led commercial models inside a $300B consumer goods business, inside a B2B technology company selling to global brands, and inside a fintech that has become the only Black-led Certified B Corp in its category. The arguments he makes about community as a commercial mechanism are operating arguments, not theoretical ones. He has been named to the CNBC Disruptor 50 list five times across nine years, including 2023, and is a 2019 Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute. His most pointed contribution for a corporate audience is on what financial inclusion actually requires from product, regulatory, and capital partners once advocacy ends and operations begin. SoLo’s growth has placed him in direct conversation with federal regulators, congressional offices, and tier-one investors including Serena Ventures, ACME Capital, and Endeavor Catalyst, and he speaks from inside those conversations rather than from a panel about them. Key speaking topics Community as commercial operating model Founding and scaling venture-backed fintech Financial inclusion and the underserved consumer Brand building inside large consumer organisations Inclusive capital raising and founder ecosystems Disruptive product strategy in regulated markets Black entrepreneurship and category creation Ideal for CMOs, brand leaders, and growth executives at consumer-facing organisations rethinking community as a commercial channel. Boards and leadership teams of banks, fintechs, and financial services firms reassessing the underserved-consumer opportunity. Founders, venture investors, and corporate venture units focused on inclusive innovation and scale-up discipline. DEI, ESG, and impact leaders looking for a founder-operator voice on inclusive commercial outcomes rather than advocacy framing. Audience outcomes A concrete view of how community functions as an operating mechanism inside a commercial business, not as a brand layer. A founder-operator perspective on building, financing, and defending an inclusive product inside a regulated category. Arguments and case material on why the working and lower-middle-class consumer is structurally underserved, and what product responses actually move the market. Direct experience and pattern recognition from raising capital as a Black founder, applicable to inclusive investment and founder-development programmes.

Why organisations work with Sheena Allen She built and ran a venture-backed US digital bank to closure and is willing to talk in detail about what the regulatory environment, capital cycle, and category timing did to it. Practitioner perspective, not commentary. She bootstrapped a five-app mobile studio to millions of downloads before raising a dollar, so her view of fundraising versus self-funding comes from having done both. She is a credible voice on financial inclusion grounded in market reality, not advocacy posture, having designed product for banking-desert communities and seen what compliance and unit economics impose. She speaks to the non-technical founder problem with authority because she has built tech companies as a psychology and film major, including her current AI-product work through MindFull AI. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of CapWay, a Y Combinator Summer 2020 fintech and digital bank backed by Backstage Capital, Fearless Fund, and Khosla Ventures. Founder of Sheena Allen Apps, a bootstrapped mobile studio with five apps and millions of downloads. Currently leads CREAM Factory, a fintech venture studio and research organisation, and builds AI-native products through MindFull AI. Co-host of the Rich Lessons podcast with Sevetri Wilson Taylor. Forbes 30 Under 30 honouree. Featured in Google’s Webby Award-winning documentary series Black Women in Tech and in the film She Started It; author of The Starting Guide. Biography CapWay was a venture-backed US digital bank built to serve customers in banking deserts. It raised from Backstage Capital, Fearless Fund, and Khosla Ventures, went through Y Combinator’s Summer 2020 cohort, and closed in 2024 after the wider fintech regulatory environment turned against companies that depended on partner banks. Sheena Allen ran it from founding to wind-down. That arc is the spine of her work as a speaker. She talks about fintech not as a category to admire but as a category that punishes founders who underestimate compliance cost, capital cycles, and the dependency on infrastructure they do not own. After the Synapse collapse and the Evolve Bank breach, she was direct in the press about why the business could not raise another round. Before CapWay, she bootstrapped Sheena Allen Apps from her dorm room at the University of Southern Mississippi into a five-app mobile studio with millions of downloads. She studied psychology and film, not computer science, and she has built every venture since by assembling technical teams around her rather than coding herself. That is the perspective behind her current work at CREAM Factory, a fintech venture studio, and at MindFull AI, where she ships AI-native products as a non-technical founder. She is a Forbes 30 Under 30 honouree, co-hosts the Rich Lessons podcast with Sevetri Wilson Taylor, and was featured in Google’s Black Women in Tech series and the film She Started It. Her book, The Starting Guide, walks first-time founders through the operational decisions she made early and would now make differently. Key speaking topics Building venture-backed companies in regulated categories Financial inclusion and the economics of banking deserts Bootstrapping versus venture capital as founder strategies Non-technical founders and how they actually ship product AI tools for small teams and solo operators Mobile product strategy and pre-development planning Women and underrepresented founders in fintech Ideal for Founder programmes, accelerators, and venture studios looking for an operator who has built and closed a regulated business. Financial services, fintech, and banking conferences seeking a practitioner voice on financial inclusion and partner-bank risk. Diversity and inclusion programmes inside banks, payment networks, and large tech companies that want substance over symbolism. Innovation and product audiences inside non-technical industries that want to hear how non-technical founders ship. Audience outcomes A clearer view of how capital cycles and regulatory shifts decide which fintechs survive. Specific lessons from inside a Y Combinator-backed digital bank that closed, including what she would do differently. A grounded read on financial inclusion as a market problem, not a campaign theme. Concrete examples of how a non-technical founder builds and runs product teams, including with AI tooling. A useable mental model for choosing between bootstrapping and venture capital at different stages.