Business Model Innovation

Why organisations work with Cyril Jamelot He has launched products that reached scale inside the world’s most demanding FMCG marketing machines: Coke Light Lemon at Coca-Cola, Nalu, and Alpro Light at Danone Alpro. The storytelling discipline he teaches is the one he used on shelf, not a theoretical model. Two TEDx talks at TEDxULB, “Offering your soul, a disruptive marketing strategy” and “From silver to gold”, show him able to hold a serious commercial argument in a 15-minute format that translates directly to a keynote stage. His book I love marketing: The soul of tomorrow’s Marketing is yours sets out a thesis that brand love is built through specific narrative practice, not adjectives, and gives senior commercial teams a shared vocabulary for what their content is actually for. He delivers in French and English to international audiences, with more than 200 conferences across 10 countries; useful for European groups running cross-market brand or sales kick-offs. Through CECYDI and Morphoblue he is still operating as a consultant and researcher, so the material in the room is current commercial practice, not retrospective. Biography highlights Former marketing executive at Coca-Cola and Danone Alpro, with product launches including Coke Light Lemon, Nalu and Alpro Light. Founder of CECYDI, a marketing and communications agency, and principal of Morphoblue, a market research agency. Author of I love marketing: The soul of tomorrow’s Marketing is yours, Les secrets du Storytelling Stratégique and Ils étaient là. Two TEDx talks delivered at TEDxULB on marketing strategy and the senior consumer market. More than 200 conferences delivered across 10 countries in French and English. Marketing and communication faculty in business schools. Biography Coke Light Lemon, Nalu and Alpro Light all reached shelf because someone inside the marketing teams at Coca-Cola and Danone Alpro could explain, in a sentence a buyer would repeat, why the product mattered. Cyril Jamelot built that habit as an FMCG marketing executive before he ever called it storytelling. That operating background is what separates his work from agency-side storytelling consultancy. The argument running through his book I love marketing: The soul of tomorrow’s Marketing is yours is direct: brands earn attention by saying something specific about themselves, in language built for the customer, repeated across every channel the business actually controls. Adjectives and brand decks do not do this work. Narrative architecture does. He now runs two firms: CECYDI, a marketing and communications agency, and Morphoblue, a market research practice. He teaches marketing and communication in business schools, has delivered two TEDx talks at TEDxULB, and has spoken at more than 200 conferences across 10 countries in French and English. Les secrets du Storytelling Stratégique sets out the ten-step method behind the keynote material, used by sales, marketing and internal communication teams. The room he is most useful in is the commercial leadership offsite where the question is no longer what the brand says but whether anyone outside the building still recognises it. He gives marketing, sales and customer-experience teams a shared way of building a story the business can stand behind and the market will repeat. Key speaking topics Strategic storytelling for brands Brand positioning and differentiation Customer experience in retail and FMCG Sales narrative and social selling Internal communications and leadership communication Marketing innovation and product launch Ideal for CMOs and senior marketing leaders running brand refresh, repositioning or product launch programmes Sales leadership and customer-experience teams at consumer brands and B2B sellers building a narrative-driven commercial approach Internal communications leaders and HRDs needing senior leaders to communicate change more memorably European commercial offsites and kick-offs requiring a bilingual (French and English) keynote Audience outcomes A working definition of strategic storytelling that maps to commercial outputs: a launch, a campaign, a sales pitch, an internal message. A clearer view of what a brand story is for, and what it is not, with examples from Coca-Cola, Danone Alpro and other FMCG operators. A vocabulary the marketing, sales and internal communication teams can share when they argue about content. Specific moves senior leaders can use to make their own messages more repeatable.

Why organisations work with Diana Verde Nieto Diana is a rare leader who marries high-level strategic foresight with deep operational acumen. She has built a career on “seeing the markets before the markets arrive,” positioning her as a premier brand builder who doesn’t just predict trends but builds the infrastructure to capitalise on them. From pioneering sustainability consultancy in the early 2000s to defining luxury ESG standards, she excels at taking complex, future-leaning ideas and turning them into high-performing, reality-based business models. “Reimagining Luxury” (Kogan Page, 2024) was built on direct access to chief sustainability officers at LVMH, Kering, and L’Oreal, the frameworks it delivers are drawn from how the world’s major luxury houses actually run sustainability, not how they aspire to. Having founded and exited two ESG-focused businesses, Diana’s perspective on innovation and commercial strategy has been rigorously tested by real capital and real markets. She does not advocate for business transformation in theory; she has proven its commercial value in practice. Through Edify, she is now bridging the critical gap she identified during her previous ventures, the disconnect between board-level strategy and frontline workforce execution. By creating an AI-native productivity engine, she is providing the infrastructure necessary to turn high-level commitments into consistent, real-world action. She holds Non-Executive Director roles at the British Beauty Council and Watts 1874. She is a former adviser to United Nations DESA and La Prairie Biography highlights Co-Founder and CEO of Edify Collective, Edify is an AI-native frontline performance engine designed to replace fragmented legacy tools with a single, unified workflow. It is built to solve the “final mile” of business transformation by bridging the gap between board-level strategy and frontline execution. Co-founder of Positive Luxury (2011) and  Founded Clownfish (2002), one of the world’s first dedicated sustainability communications consultancies; 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; advisory roles, United Nations DESA and UN Conscious Fashion and Lifestyle Network. Biography Diana is a rare leader who marries high-level strategic foresight with deep operational grit. Throughout her career, she has demonstrated a unique ability to see markets before they arrive, anticipating the global shift toward sustainability decades before it became a boardroom mandate. This foresight has established her as a premier brand builder who excels at taking future-leaning ideas and transforming them into high-performing, reality-based business models. Having founded and exited two major ESG-focused businesses, Diana’s perspective on innovation and commercial strategy has been rigorously tested by real capital and global Through Edify, Diana is now bridging the critical gap she identified during her previous ventures, the disconnect between board-level strategy and frontline workforce execution. As Co-Founder and CEO, she has built an AI-native performance engine that embeds brand standards, SOPs, and sustainability mandates directly into the flow of work. By translating strategy into real-time, executable actions, Edify provides the infrastructure for consistent global execution. Global Leadership & Advocacy A World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and Harvard Kennedy School graduate, Diana serves as a Non-Executive Director for the British Beauty Council and Watts 1874. She also advises the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, addressing accountability from brand governance to international policy. Diana doesn’t just make the case for business transformation in theory; she provides the tools to prove it in practice. Key speaking topics Leadership in a Volatile World: Seeing Markets Before They Arrive Beyond Automation: The Future of Human Augmentation The AI-Native Workforce: Moving the conversation from “AI replacing people” to “AI empowering people” by embedding intelligence directly into the flow of work. Business Transformation: When Strategy Meets Reality OperationalizinhPurpose: Moving beyond “comms-heavy” transformation to create embedded operating standards that survive contact with daily operations. Lessons from the Luxury Sector: How the world’s leading houses (LVMH, Kering, L’Oreal) transform corporate culture to make social and environmental sustainability a core commercial strategy. Radical Accountability: Building Trust in a Transparent Age Trust as a Primary Asset: Why the gap between board-level commitments and operational reality is a brand’s greatest commercial and reputational risk. The Entrepreneurial Journey: Building, Scaling, and Exiting Purpose-Driven Entrepreneurship: How to build businesses that solve global problems while remaining attractive to real capital and competitive markets. Building for the Future: How to maintain a “founder’s mindset” while institutionalizing a company for global scale and long-term impact. Ideal for CEOs and Brand Leaders: Executives who need to bridge the gap between their strategic vision and the reality of their daily operations. Chief Operations & Transformation Officers: Leaders tasked with overhauling legacy systems to create a more agile, high-performing, and accountable workforce. Boards and Non-Executive Directors: Those responsible for governance and oversight who need to understand how operational failures create reputational and commercial liability including Venture Capital and Founders: Investors and entrepreneurs interested in market-entry strategies, building resilient brands, and the journey toward successful exits. Institutional Bodies & Industry Associations: Organizations like the UN or British Beauty Council where strategy, policy, and brand-level execution intersect. Audience outcomes Most speakers talk about what needs to change; Diana shows you how to change the way you work. She believes a business’s greatest liability isn’t a volatile market—it’s the integrity gap between the vision in the boardroom and the reality of the frontline. As a founder who has twice scaled and exited businesses in complex global markets, her focus is on the ‘final mile’ of leadership. She helps organizations move beyond ‘comms-heavy’ strategy to build the operational engines that deliver results. Audiences will learn to move beyond market trend reports and develop the “visionary operator” instinct to spot mandatory market shifts years before they become boardroom crises. You will learn how to institutionalize a founder’s grit into a global scale operation, ensuring the brand’s mission survives and thrives through every stage of the entrepreneurial journey. Shift the conversation from AI as a threat to AI as an ally. Audiences will understand how to embed intelligence directly into daily operations, turning the “AI-native workforce” into a high-performance reality. Learn how to use human augmentation to bridge the capability gap, putting the wisdom of your most experienced leaders into the hands of every frontline worker in real-time. Discover why brilliant strategies often die at the point of work and how to build the operational infrastructure that ensures board-level vision survives daily contact with reality. Drawing on the operational secrets of houses like LVMH and Kering, leaders will learn how to move beyond “comms-heavy” ESG to make responsibility a core, verifiable commercial strategy. Audiences will learn to identify the “Credibility Gap”, the space between corporate promises and frontline reality—and how to close it before it becomes a reputational or financial liability. Learn how to build a brand that doesn’t just ask for trust but proves it through radical accountability, turning transparency into a tool for premium market positioning.

Why organisations work with Barjis Chohan A 25-year operator’s view of brand discipline. She has run a designer label long enough to have seen the failure modes of growth, dilution, and trend-chasing, and to speak credibly about the cost of each. Hard-won sustainability substance. Seven years rebuilding supply chains, materials, and product lifecycles inside a working business, not a sustainability practice attached to a marketing function. A bicultural commercial perspective most boards do not have access to. She has financed and sold into the GCC, manufactured in the UK, and served Muslim, Western, and luxury hospitality clients inside one operating model. Verifiable entrepreneurial credentials, including Designer in International Trade from the Financial Mail on Sunday, Entrepreneur of the Year (London), and the Global MSME Champion Award from the Global Council for the Promotion of International Trade. Inclusion content with a practitioner’s edge. Her work on gender and cultural difference is shaped by running a multicultural business, not by a corporate DEI mandate. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of BARJIS London, established 1999, with bespoke luxury rugs preceding the womenswear line launched in 2011. BA Fashion Design, London College of Fashion, 1995; further study at Central Saint Martins. Worked under Vivienne Westwood and with a French fashion house in Monte Carlo before founding her business. Award record includes Designer in International Trade (Financial Mail on Sunday), Entrepreneur of the Year (London), Fashion Brand of the Year, and the Global MSME Champion Award from the Global Council for the Promotion of International Trade. Founder of The Barjis Initiative (2018), supporting creative entrepreneurship and enterprise education in schools. Speaking engagements include JP Morgan, the London School of Economics, Fonterra, Aston University, University of Surrey Students Union, and the Ministry of Culture of Colombia. Biography Most fashion businesses that survive their first decade do not survive their second with the same ethos intact. BARJIS London is an exception. Founded in 1999 with bespoke luxury rugs, the brand extended into womenswear in 2011 and has operated continuously across UK manufacturing, GCC investment, and luxury hospitality clients, with a sustainability programme rebuilt inside the business rather than added to its marketing. Chohan trained at London College of Fashion, graduating in 1995, and studied at Central Saint Martins. She interned with Vivienne Westwood and worked with a French fashion house in Monte Carlo before founding her own label. The Guardian described her as a Westwood prodigy. Her early commercial decisions, including writing to oil companies for investment at seventeen and travelling to the Middle East with a young family, set the bicultural pattern her business has followed since. Recognition has come from credible bodies. She holds the Financial Mail on Sunday Designer in International Trade award, Entrepreneur of the Year (London), Fashion Brand of the Year, and the Global MSME Champion Award from the Global Council for the Promotion of International Trade. The Barjis Initiative, launched in 2018, supports creative entrepreneurs and enterprise education in schools. Boards and leadership audiences book her for the operator’s lens, not the celebrity-founder presentation. Her talks examine brand erosion under growth pressure, creativity as a managed discipline rather than a slogan, and the specific commercial value of cultural fluency in markets where most British brands struggle to operate. Audiences at JP Morgan, the London School of Economics, Fonterra, and the Ministry of Culture of Colombia have heard versions of the same argument: ethos is a commercial asset, but only if it is defended structurally as the business scales. Key speaking topics Brand integrity and ethos at scale Creativity as a growth discipline Sustainability in product, supply chain, and operations Founder-led entrepreneurship and scale-up Cultural fluency in international markets Gender equity and inclusive workplaces Modest fashion and bicultural consumer markets Ideal for Founders, CEOs, and senior brand leaders in consumer-facing businesses CMOs and creative directors managing brand dilution risk under growth Heads of sustainability, procurement, and product development in fashion, retail, and luxury DEI and people leaders looking for practitioner-led content on gender and cultural inclusion Audience outcomes A working definition of brand ethos that holds up under commercial pressure A founder’s view of where sustainability programmes succeed and where they stall Practical reference points for entering GCC and modest-fashion markets without misreading them A reframing of gender and cultural inclusion as commercial capability rather than compliance Confidence to interrogate where their own organisation is trading long-term brand value for short-term growth

About Trevor Williams Trevor Williams served as Chief Economist at Lloyds Bank for over a decade. Now an author, academic and consultant, he analyses the key trends and policies that shape the economy and markets. From energy and climate to how companies use their data to understand the wider economy, he brings clarity and relevance to an often complex and abstract field. Trevor worked for the civil service whilst studying for his economics PhD, after which he went on to work for over 30 years as an economist in the City, most notably at Lloyds. His professional life has encompassed equity and foreign exchange, forecasting and financial analysis. Today he provides clear insight into how politics, demographics and trade shape economies and economic trends. From earnings and inflation to stock markets and trade deals, Trevor explores what is going on in the economy and what it means to organisations and individuals. Looking at both the global and the local, the long and short term, he explains what the numbers really reveal. With a focus on interpreting the information as it is, not as people might think or wish it was, he considers the effects of disruptions like Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic, and how (and how quickly) economies can recover and what actions influence that recovery. Trevor also studies what risks businesses and government face and how the economy will react. In particular, he looks at the political economics of climate change, including the risks for investors, insurers and the general population that this existential challenge could impose. He examines the economics of energy; the likelihood, causes and potential effects of energy shortages and what decisions and policies have increased the risk of energy reserves running low, as well as the cost to businesses and consumers. Alongside the global market in energy, he looks wider to the globalised economy, the sometimes fragile interdependences, the impact of trade policies and what it all means for prices and growth. As rotating Chair of the Institute of Economic Affairs’ Shadow Monetary Policy Committee Trevor keeps a close eye on Bank of England decisions and direction of travel. He unpicks the impact of interest rates, monetary policy and quantitative easing and translates them into useful intelligence businesses can use to inform strategy. He also reveals how companies can use their own big data sets to reveal insights into the broader economy and their place within it. Trevor runs his own consultancy and is co-founder of FXGuard, a fintech based risk management tool for SMEs to manage foreign exchange risk exposure.Along with his own blog, Trevor writes regularly on financial and market matters, including a regular column in the personal finance magazine Moneyfacts. He is the co-author of Trading Economics, a clear guide to the statistics and indicators that underpin market economics. He is a Professor at St Mary’s University, London and Visiting Professor at the University of Derby.

Why organisations work with Rafe Offer He has run brand portfolios at the scale most marketers only study, including a $1.2 billion Coca-Cola business and a Disney adult merchandise category that grew from $50m to $800m under his marketing leadership. He turned a single concert in a North London flat into Sofar Sounds, a venture-backed live music network operating in over 300 cities, with $40 million raised and partnerships with Airbnb and Uber. He works on the seam between brand and community, which is where most companies now have to compete and where most marketing leaders lack practical playbooks. His career spans the corporate brand machine and the founder seat, so the same talk holds up in front of a CMO at a listed business and a scale-up CEO with a board to convince. Biography highlights Founder and Founder-Chair of Sofar Sounds, the global live music community founded in London in 2009. Former Director of Global Marketing, Disney Consumer Products, leading worldwide marketing for a $12bn licensing business. Former Global Marketing Director, The Coca-Cola Company, with responsibility for $1.2bn in stores, attractions, events and licensed merchandise. Former Director of Innovation, Diageo. Founder of “this & that,” a community and tech start-up focused on the practice of dialogue. Sofar Sounds named “one of the top new brands in America” by New York Magazine and described as a “quiet revolution” by The Guardian. Biography A live concert in a North London flat in 2009, eight friends invited to listen to a single performer, became the seed of Sofar Sounds. From that evening, Rafe Offer built a global live music network now operating in more than 300 cities, with about $40 million raised across three funding rounds and partnerships with Airbnb and Uber. New York Magazine called it one of the top new brands in America. The unusual part of his career is the route in. Before Sofar, Offer ran the Mickey Unlimited adult merchandise programme at Disney, where the “having fun never goes out of style” campaign helped grow that category from $50m to $800m. He went on to lead worldwide marketing for Disney Consumer Products’ $12bn licensing business, then ran a $1.2bn Coca-Cola portfolio of stores, events and licensed merchandise as Global Marketing Director, before taking a Director of Innovation role at Diageo. That sequence, big-brand operator turned founder, is what gives his perspective its weight. He has built community-led growth from scratch and run brand P&Ls at industrial scale. He talks credibly to a CMO worried about declining ad efficiency and to a founder trying to convert a passionate audience into a fundable business. His more recent venture, this & that, is a community and tech start-up built around the practice of dialogue. It extends the through-line of his work: how organisations earn the right to people’s attention, and how that attention becomes commercial substance. Key speaking topics Brand building in the era of community Customer experience as a growth engine Scaling a start-up from idea to global brand Marketing and innovation inside large organisations Company culture in entrepreneurial businesses Fundraising and commercialising a community brand Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders rebuilding marketing for a low-trust, low-attention environment Founders and scale-up CEOs converting community traction into investable growth Customer experience and innovation leads inside large consumer businesses Boards reviewing brand and growth strategy in consumer-facing categories Audience outcomes A clearer view of why community has become the central question for consumer brands, with examples from Sofar, Disney and Coca-Cola Specific lessons on running a global brand portfolio at scale, drawn from leading $1.2bn at Coca-Cola and $12bn licensing at Disney A founder’s account of what investors actually fund in a community-led business Practical detail on how culture and customer experience interact in fast-growing companies

James Hardy: Expert in Retail Globalisation and Digital Growth James Hardy is an authority on retail globalisation, ecommerce and online growth strategies, and works with brands to future-proof their online expansion across diverse trading platforms (from Amazon and Alibaba to boutique marketplaces and own-brand sites). Currently Head of Global Retail & Market Development at Flutterwave, Africa’s largest Fintech, James previously served as Head of Europe, Middle-East and Africa for Alibaba and co-founded the UKs largest China-ecommerce exporter – an award winning, high growth platform operating across Europe to help brands build market share in mainland China. James has worked on international ecommerce strategies for multiple public and private companies, identifying how brands can maximise their value to external, private, and public markets. He explores what the largest global conglomerates can learn from startup methodology, and what smaller companies can learn from brands such as Alibaba about scaling their business. James’s is a regular contributor to the press and media, appearing in The Financial Times, The Huffington Post, The Journal du Net and on the BBC and China Daily News.

Why organisations work with Fernando Trias de Bes He is the only Spanish author to have co-written books with Philip Kotler, and the frameworks in Lateral Marketing and Winning at Innovation give leadership teams a shared vocabulary for where their ideas actually come from. Winning at Innovation, with its A-to-F Model, won the CMI Innovation and Entrepreneurship category at the 2013 Management Book of the Year Awards, a credential that speaks directly to boards asking how innovation should be structured inside the firm. He runs Salvetti and Llombart, a Barcelona-based consumer research and innovation consultancy whose client list has included PepsiCo, Sony, Hewlett-Packard, Nestle and McKinsey, which means the classroom work is tested against paying clients. He bridges two registers most economists do not reach, serious academic marketing theory and popular business writing, and audiences that have read La buena suerte or El libro negro del emprendedor often arrive already familiar with his thinking. He presents in English and Spanish and has been delivering executive-level keynotes since 2003, with hundreds of international engagements behind him. Biography highlights Associate Professor of Marketing Management at ESADE Business School since 1994. Co-author with Philip Kotler of Lateral Marketing (Wiley, 2003) and Winning at Innovation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). CMI Management Book of the Year 2013, Innovation and Entrepreneurship category, for Winning at Innovation. Founder and President of Salvetti and Llombart, a consumer insight and innovation consultancy working with PepsiCo, Sony, HP, Nestle and McKinsey. Regular columnist for La Vanguardia, ARA and El Pais Semanal; author of more than twenty books of essay and fiction translated into more than thirty languages. Winner of the Premio Espasa de Ensayo (2015), Premio De Hoy de Ensayo (2009) and Shinpukai Prize (Japan, 2005). Biography Most innovation in large companies is lateral in name only. Teams segment further, tweak an existing product, and call it new. Fernando Trias de Bes spent two decades arguing, in books co-written with Philip Kotler, that this is the core reason corporate pipelines stall, and building methods that address it directly. Lateral Marketing, published by Wiley in 2003, set out a structured way to generate product concepts that do not come from narrower segmentation but from a different logical operation on the category itself. Winning at Innovation, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2011, took the argument further with the A-to-F Model, a step-by-step description of the roles and stages an organisation needs to convert ideas into launches. The Chartered Management Institute named it Innovation and Entrepreneurship Book of the Year at its 2013 awards. Trias de Bes has taught marketing and innovation at ESADE Business School since 1994 and runs Salvetti and Llombart, the Barcelona consumer research and innovation consultancy he co-founded in 1996. Clients have included PepsiCo, Sony, Hewlett-Packard, McKinsey and Nestle, which gives the academic frameworks a field of consumer goods and services to answer to. Beyond the business books he writes columns for La Vanguardia, ARA and El Pais Semanal, and has published essays and novels translated into more than thirty languages, including La buena suerte, co-written with Alex Rovira, and El libro negro del emprendedor. The Premio Espasa de Ensayo in 2015 sits alongside earlier recognition in Japan and Spain. That range, economist, consultant, columnist, novelist, is the unusual shape of the author, and it is what audiences tend to remember from the keynote. Key speaking topics Business model innovation Lateral marketing and creativity in commercial strategy The A-to-F Model for organising innovation Entrepreneurship and the economics of new ventures Economic trends and consumer behaviour Corporate reinvention and disruptive thinking Ideal for CMOs, CSOs and heads of innovation confronting commoditised categories and stalled pipelines. Executive committees running corporate strategy offsites on growth and reinvention. Business schools and management development programmes covering innovation, marketing and entrepreneurship. Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for lateral versus vertical innovation that a leadership team can use the next day. The A-to-F structure for assigning innovation roles and stages inside an organisation. Concrete examples, drawn from consumer goods and services, of where breakthrough ideas actually come from. A sharper read on why most corporate innovation produces line extensions rather than category moves.

Why organisations work with Bernardo Hernandez Operator credibility on both sides of the Atlantic: a senior Google product role through the Zagat acquisition, then running Flickr at Yahoo, then founding and selling Verse to Block. Few European speakers have lived that arc. Investor pattern recognition across a portfolio that includes Wallapop, Glovo, Fever, Paack, Citibox and Stripe. He talks about scaling consumer tech from inside the cap table, not from the outside. A working view of what AI is doing to product organisations through Pensero AI, his current company, which applies AI to engineering performance and management. Direct experience of the moves that matter to corporates: M&A integration at Google, platform repositioning at Yahoo and fintech exit to a US strategic acquirer. Biography highlights Co-founder of Idealista, Spain’s leading real estate platform. Director of Product Management at Google, 2005 to 2013; led the Zagat acquisition and team. Head of Flickr and Senior Vice President of Product at Yahoo, 2013 to 2015. Founder and CEO of Verse, the European payments app acquired by Block (Square) in 2020. Co-founder and Co-CEO of Pensero AI in New York. Board of Directors, Mapfre USA; trustee, Fundacion Princesa de Girona; jury member, Princess of Asturias Awards for Science and Technology. Recipient of Spain’s National Innovation and Design Award (2023, Ministry of Science). Biography Idealista was a small Madrid property site when Bernardo Hernandez co-founded it in 2000. Today it is the dominant real estate platform in southern Europe. That first venture set the template for a career spent building consumer internet businesses, then teaching incumbents how to think about the same problem. After five years as a portfolio manager at Fidelity, BBVA and Putnam, he joined Google in 2005 as Director of Product Management. He spent eight years inside the company, including leading the Zagat acquisition and integration. He then ran Flickr at Yahoo as Senior Vice President of Product before founding Verse, the European payments app that Block acquired in 2020. The operator track is matched by an investor track. He has backed Wallapop, Glovo, Fever, Paack, Citibox and Stripe, among others, and was an early investor in Tuenti before its sale to Telefonica. He sits on the board of Mapfre USA and is a trustee of the Fundacion Princesa de Girona under the Spanish Royal House. In 2023 he received Spain’s National Innovation and Design Award from the Ministry of Science. His current company, Pensero AI, applies AI to engineering management, giving him a live operating view of what generative AI is doing to product organisations rather than a theorist’s view. For corporate audiences this matters: he is currently building inside the technology shift he is invited to speak about. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and the scale-up playbook Digital business models and platform economics Consumer fintech and mobile payments AI in product and engineering organisations Corporate venturing, M&A and integration Innovation portfolios and angel investing Building between Europe and the United States Ideal for CEOs and board directors weighing build, buy or back decisions on new digital businesses. Chief Strategy, Chief Innovation and Corporate Development leaders running venture and M&A activity. Banks, insurers and retailers facing fintech and platform challengers. Leadership groups at European corporates with US ambitions, or US groups expanding into Europe. Audience outcomes A clearer sense of how founders make speed and capital decisions that corporate processes typically slow down. A working framework for evaluating new business models against existing P&L economics. Concrete reference points from Idealista, Google, Flickr, Verse and the current Pensero AI build. A sharper read on where AI is creating leverage inside product and engineering teams right now.

Why organisations work with Aimee Connolly She has grown a cosmetics brand from one product to more than 100, and from a founder-led startup to around EUR 32.6 million in revenue in 2024 without external investment, giving her a concrete view on capital discipline most consumer founders do not have. She has worked every stage of modern beauty distribution in person: independent pharmacies, Boots, Brown Thomas, Dunnes Stores, Selfridges, airport retail, direct-to-consumer and standalone stores in Kildare Village, Belfast and London. Her team has scaled from her alone to more than 100 staff across Ireland and the UK, which makes her credible on the operational and cultural shifts a founder has to make to stop being the bottleneck. She is preparing a US launch for Q4 2026 and speaks openly about how AI is being used inside the business to lift productivity and support that expansion, which is unusually specific for a consumer-brand founder. Her awards are from credible named bodies (EY Entrepreneur of the Year Ireland 2021 in the Emerging category, IMAGE PwC Businesswoman of the Year 2025, UCD Alumni Award in Business 2025), so her authority does not rest on a single category or year. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Sculpted by Aimee; founded the business at age 23 while finishing her degree. Scaled the brand to EUR 32.6 million in 2024 revenue, 47% year-on-year growth, with more than 100 staff and over 500 stockists across Ireland, the UK and the Middle East. Retail footprint includes Boots, Brown Thomas, Dunnes Stores and Selfridges, plus own-brand stores in Kildare Village, Belfast and London. EY Entrepreneur of the Year Ireland 2021, Emerging category. IMAGE PwC Businesswoman of the Year 2025; Young Businesswoman of the Year 2022; Business and Finance Elevation Award 2024. University College Dublin Alumni Award in Business 2025; BComm International (first-class honours), UCD. Founder of Sculpted: The Academy, a professional training business for makeup artists. Biography Sculpted by Aimee did not exist in 2016. By 2024 it was turning over EUR 32.6 million, growing 47% year on year, and sitting on shelves in Boots, Brown Thomas, Dunnes Stores and Selfridges. It got there without outside investors. That single fact changes the conversation about what a bootstrapped consumer brand can realistically do inside a category dominated by multinationals. Aimee Connolly built the business at 23, while finishing a first-class BComm International at University College Dublin. The first product was a three-pan sculpting palette, which is where the name came from. The range is now past 100 SKUs, the team past 100 people, and the retail footprint covers Ireland, the UK and the Middle East, with own-brand stores in Kildare Village, Belfast and London and a US launch planned for the fourth quarter of 2026. Her credibility on growth is not theoretical. She has lived each transition that breaks most consumer founders: from practitioner to operator, from single-market to multi-market, from independent stockists to listings with Boots and Selfridges, from founder-led decisions to a structured team. She has been named EY Entrepreneur of the Year Ireland in the Emerging category, IMAGE PwC Businesswoman of the Year 2025, and received the University College Dublin Alumni Award in Business 2025. What she brings into a room is unusually specific for a consumer founder: the mechanics of self-funded scaling, retail buyer relationships, product discipline under rapid range expansion, and, more recently, how AI is being embedded inside the business to support the US move. She is the operator buyers want when the brief is how to grow without losing the brand, and without giving it away. Key speaking topics Scaling a self-funded consumer brand Founder to CEO transition Retail and omnichannel strategy in beauty Direct-to-consumer and e-commerce growth International market entry AI in operations and brand building Building and retaining a high-growth team Ideal for Founders and CEOs of consumer and beauty brands preparing for a step-change in scale. Retail, buying and category leadership teams looking at how challenger brands are winning shelf space. Women’s leadership and entrepreneurship programmes in large corporates. Marketing and e-commerce leadership teams in founder-led or founder-adjacent businesses. Audience outcomes A concrete sense of what self-funded scaling actually demands, from working capital to retail terms. A clearer view of the decisions that break founders at the EUR 10 million to EUR 50 million transition. Practical perspective on how a challenger brand gets and keeps listings at Boots, Brown Thomas and Selfridges. A grounded read on where AI is genuinely moving the needle in a consumer business today. Renewed confidence in the case for patient, brand-led growth over capital-heavy expansion.

Why organisations work with Jan Peter Balkenende Eight years leading a G20 economy through financial crisis, EU enlargement and the 2004 Dutch Presidency of the Council of the European Union gives him a view from inside the machine that almost no executive adviser can match. His book with Govert Buijs, “Capitalism Reconnected” (Amsterdam University Press, 2024), sets out a specific European alternative to both Chinese state capitalism and American shareholder capitalism, which boards can use as a reference point for their own strategy. As chair of the Dutch Sustainable Growth Coalition he convenes AkzoNobel, dsm-firmenich, FrieslandCampina, Heineken, KLM, Philips, Shell and Unilever around common sustainability positions, so he speaks with current standing, not archive authority. Minister of State status in the Netherlands and membership of Club de Madrid keep him close to working heads of government, which gives audiences a read on political risk that goes beyond press coverage. He pairs the institutional authority of a former PM with the working vocabulary of a senior adviser at EY and Hague Corporate Affairs, so corporate audiences get policy insight translated into commercial language. Biography highlights Prime Minister of the Netherlands 2002 to 2010, across four cabinets. Held the Presidency of the Council of the European Union in the second half of 2004. Professor Emeritus of Governance, Institutions and Internationalisation, Erasmus University Rotterdam. Minister of State, Kingdom of the Netherlands, since October 2022. Chair of the Dutch Sustainable Growth Coalition; Chair of the Noaber Foundation; Executive Board member, Global Center on Adaptation; Member, Club de Madrid. External Senior Advisor to EY; Associate Partner at Hague Corporate Affairs. Co-author, “Capitalism Reconnected: Toward a Sustainable, Inclusive and Innovative Market Economy in Europe” (Amsterdam University Press, 2024). Biography European economies are being asked to reinvent themselves at the same time as they govern themselves. Jan Peter Balkenende has spent more than two decades inside that tension, first as Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 2002 to 2010 and then as an adviser, academic and convenor of corporate leaders. Four successive cabinets and the 2004 Dutch Presidency of the Council of the European Union gave him direct experience of how EU decisions are actually made, from enlargement to financial crisis response. That institutional memory now sits alongside a current role as Minister of State and as a member of Club de Madrid, the association of former heads of government. His intellectual contribution is set out in “Capitalism Reconnected,” co-written with political philosopher Govert Buijs and published by Amsterdam University Press in 2024. The book argues that Europe should stop defending its model defensively and instead frame a sustainable, inclusive and innovative market economy as a distinct offer, positioned between Chinese state capitalism and American shareholder capitalism. The argument is not theoretical for him. As chair of the Dutch Sustainable Growth Coalition he works with the CEOs of AkzoNobel, dsm-firmenich, FrieslandCampina, Heineken, KLM, Philips, Shell and Unilever on shared positions around climate, circularity and social equality, supported by VNO-NCW and facilitated by Accenture. Erasmus University Rotterdam, EY and Hague Corporate Affairs provide the academic and advisory base. The through-line, across government, campus and corporate rooms, is the same: Europe can only lead on sustainability if its companies and its institutions work from the same playbook. Key speaking topics European market-economy reform Sustainable and inclusive growth strategy Governance and public-private collaboration ESG and corporate responsibility in European context Geopolitical and policy risk for business Institutional leadership and long-term decision making Climate adaptation and the role of business Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting European sustainability and ESG strategy CEOs and CFOs navigating EU regulation, climate policy and geopolitical risk Public-sector and multilateral audiences working on public-private cooperation Leadership and strategy summits with a European or transatlantic agenda Audience outcomes A concrete reference framework, drawn from “Capitalism Reconnected,” for positioning a European business between state-led and shareholder-led models. A clearer read on how EU-level decisions are made, and where corporate influence actually lands. Live examples of how eight Dutch multinationals translate sustainable growth commitments into joint positions. A sharper sense of which political risks matter for strategy, and which are noise. Direct perspective from a former head of government on leading through crisis with contested public trust.

Why organisations work with Alex Connock He runs the AI for Executives module on the Oxford Executive MBA and co-directs Oxford’s postgraduate course in Artificial Intelligence for Business, so the content has been pressure-tested with senior leaders before it reaches a corporate audience. He spent two decades running media businesses at scale, including thirteen years as co-founder and CEO of Ten Alps with Bob Geldof and five as Managing Director of Endemol Shine North, which means his framing of AI is grounded in production economics, not vendor narrative. His Routledge textbook on media business models in the AI age is a teaching reference at multiple business schools and has been translated into Korean and Turkish, giving him a coherent published argument rather than a deck of demos. He moves credibly between a board conversation about AI strategy and a creative team session on generative tools, which is rare in a topic dominated by either technologists or policy commentators. Biography highlights Senior Fellow, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford; co-director of Oxford’s postgraduate course in Artificial Intelligence for Business. Professor of Media and Artificial Intelligence, University of Exeter. Head of Department, Creative Business, National Film and Television School. Author of three Routledge titles, including “Media Management and Artificial Intelligence” (2022), “Media Management and Live Experience” (2024), and “Entrepreneurship in Media and Entertainment” (2025). Co-founder and former CEO of Ten Alps (now Zinc Media) with Bob Geldof; former Managing Director of Endemol Shine North. Education: PPE (Oxford), Journalism (Columbia), MBA (INSEAD), PhD in video optimisation for e-commerce. Biography Generative AI has reordered the cost base of every business that produces content, software, or marketing, and the question for leadership teams is no longer whether to engage but where the operating model actually changes. That question is harder to answer well than the public debate suggests. It needs someone who has run a production company through a previous wave of digital disruption, and who teaches the underlying technology to senior executives now. That is the position Alex Connock occupies. At Saïd Business School in Oxford he co-directs the postgraduate course in Artificial Intelligence for Business and runs the AI for Executives module on the Executive MBA. He holds a Professorship in Media and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Exeter and leads the Creative Business department at the National Film and Television School. Before the academic work he spent two decades as an operator. He co-founded Ten Alps with Bob Geldof in 1998 and ran it as chief executive for thirteen years, producing programming for UK and international broadcasters and the UK government’s Teachers TV. He then ran Endemol Shine North as Managing Director through a period of substantial growth. His three Routledge titles, including the 2022 textbook “Media Management and Artificial Intelligence” with Korean and Turkish translations, give the talks a published spine. The result is a speaker who can take a board conversation from generative AI as topic to specific decisions about content, channel, and capital, with a vocabulary that holds up in front of both the strategy team and the creative team. Key speaking topics Generative AI and the media business AI for executives and the corporate operating model AI applied to marketing and brand The economics of synthetic content and creator platforms AI, national strategy and creative industries policy Entrepreneurship and growth in media and entertainment Ideal for Boards and executive committees commissioning an AI strategy session that goes beyond capability demos. CMOs, CSOs, and content leaders in media, entertainment, publishing, advertising, and marketing. Executive education and senior leadership programmes inside large corporates. Industry conferences in media, technology, and creative industries seeking a credentialed academic voice with operator history. Audience outcomes A clear read on where generative AI changes the unit economics of content, marketing, and customer-facing operations. A structured view of the AI tooling landscape, anchored to specific business decisions rather than vendor categories. Reference points from media businesses already running AI in production, including platforms, broadcasters, and creator economies. A working vocabulary for the boardroom conversation on AI strategy that holds up with both technical and commercial colleagues.