Business Model Innovation

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 Dija Ayodele She runs the clinic that beauty boards refer to when they need to understand what their products actually do on darker skin. The advisory work draws on operating reality, not theory. Black Skin: The Definitive Skincare Guide (HarperCollins, 2022) is the reference text on the subject in the UK market. Brands working with her are working with the author of the category’s commercial vocabulary. Advisory roles with the British Beauty Council, BABTAC, and Beauty Backed Trust give her direct sight of where the sector is heading on regulation, training standards, and inclusion benchmarks. A Vogue Business Top 100 Beauty Innovator listing places her among the small group of operators whose decisions are read as signals by the broader industry. Biography highlights Founder, Black Skin Directory (2018), a multi-award-winning platform connecting people of colour to professional skincare services. Founder, West Room Aesthetics, a London skin clinic with a focus on skin of colour. Author, Black Skin: The Definitive Skincare Guide, HQ / HarperCollins UK, foreword by Caroline Hirons. Advisory Board Member, British Beauty Council; Trustee, Beauty Backed Trust; advisor to BABTAC. Vogue Business Top 100 Beauty Innovator, 2024. Speaking and contribution credits include the House of Commons, the Financial Times, Cosmoprof, Refinery29, the British Association of Dermatologists, Oxford University, and the BBC. Biography Most large beauty brands cannot answer a simple operating question with confidence: what does our product do on darker skin, and who in our business owns the answer. The category has spent decades formulating, training, and marketing around a narrower customer than the one it now serves. Dija Ayodele has spent her career making that gap visible and commercially solvable. The Black Skin Directory, which she founded in 2018, started as a way to connect people of colour to clinicians who knew how to treat them. It has become a reference point for an industry trying to reposition. Her clinic, West Room Aesthetics in London, gave her the clinical evidence base that the wider sector did not have, and the platform to argue the commercial case. Black Skin: The Definitive Skincare Guide, published by HQ in 2022 with a foreword by Caroline Hirons, is the UK market’s first comprehensive consumer reference on the subject. The book reframed what was being treated as a marketing problem into a product, education, and training problem. That reframing is now reflected in her advisory work with the British Beauty Council, BABTAC, and the Beauty Backed Trust, where she sits on the bodies setting standards for the sector. Vogue Business named her among its Top 100 Beauty Innovators in 2024. She has spoken or contributed at the House of Commons, the Financial Times, Cosmoprof, Refinery29, Oxford University, and the British Association of Dermatologists. She co-founded CLICKED!, an AI-driven skincare personalisation platform, taking the same operating question into a new format. Key speaking topics Inclusive product and customer strategy in beauty and consumer goods Skin health and the underserved consumer Building category authority through a vertical platform Regulation, training standards, and advisory work in the beauty sector AI and personalisation in skincare Founder journey in a clinical and consumer category Ideal for Beauty, personal care, and consumer health CMOs and product leaders Retail and category buying teams reviewing assortment and own-brand strategy Industry bodies, regulators, and training providers in the beauty sector Investor and corporate audiences focused on inclusive consumer growth Audience outcomes A clear picture of where mainstream beauty product and marketing systems fail customers of colour, and where the commercial upside sits A working framework for auditing product, training, and education around skin of colour Specific examples of brands and platforms that have shifted strategy, and what changed in their operating model A read on the regulatory and training direction the sector is moving in, drawn from her advisory seats

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.

Why organisations work with Chika Russell CHIKA’S Foods went from home production to listings in Waitrose, Holland & Barrett and Ocado, and then to a $9.8 million Series A – Russell’s perspective covers every stage of that journey, not just the origin story. Her management accounting background gives her a financially specific way of talking about growth decisions that most founder narratives avoid: she built her initial stock and order management systems in Excel before the business could afford software, and that discipline remained the foundation of the company’s commercial architecture. She navigated a reverse diaspora expansion – building a UK consumer brand first, then returning to Nigeria with a manufacturing operation producing 2.6 million units a week – which is a rare, documented case study in cross-border market entry that runs in the opposite direction to most internationalisation models. In 2015 she received offers from all five investors on BBC’s Dragons’ Den and declined them all; six years later she secured institutional PE from a fund backed by the European Investment Bank and the African Development Bank. For organisations thinking about strategic patience and investor fit, that sequence is evidence, not anecdote. Social impact is structurally embedded in her commercial model – a penny from every pack sold goes to World Vision’s Empowering Girls programme, and CHIKA’S Africa employs over 300 people, more than half of them women – making her a credible voice on what purpose-led growth actually costs and yields. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of CHIKA’S Foods, launched 2015; UK national retail distribution including Waitrose, Co-op, Holland & Barrett, Ocado and WH Smith Secured $9.8 million Series A from Alitheia IDF, a gender-lens private equity fund backed by the European Investment Bank and African Development Bank (December 2021) Qualified management accountant; ten years in banking and finance before founding CHIKA’S BBC Dragons’ Den (2015): received offers from all five investors; Deborah Meaden described it as one of the best pitches she had ever seen BBC Question Time panellist; regular contributor to BBC Radio’s Wake Up to Money Business Leader Top 30 Inspiring UK Entrepreneurs (2019); Consumer Business Rising Star, Black British Business Awards (2019) Biography CHIKA’S Foods began in a home kitchen in 2014 with hand-toasted peanuts and plantain crisps inspired by Nigerian street food. Within a decade it had secured institutional private equity backing and a Lagos manufacturing operation producing 2.6 million units a week. The path between those two points is what Chika Russell talks about. Her background shapes that conversation in an unusual way. She is a qualified management accountant who spent a decade in banking before founding CHIKA’S. Her instinct for financial architecture, investor narrative and cost control runs through every growth decision she describes – not as theory, but as method. In 2015, she appeared on BBC’s Dragons’ Den and received offers from all five investors. She turned them all down. Six years later, she secured $9.8 million from Alitheia IDF – a gender-lens private equity fund backed by the European Investment Bank and the African Development Bank. For organisations trying to understand what attracts the right institutional capital, that sequence is direct evidence. CHIKA’S Africa, launched in Lagos in 2022, now employs over 300 people – more than half of them women. The business donates a penny from every pack to World Vision’s Empowering Girls programme. Russell is a BBC Question Time panellist and a regular on BBC Radio’s Wake Up to Money: the standing of an operator who has built across markets, not one who has written about doing so. Key speaking topics Consumer brand building and retail distribution Access to growth capital and institutional investment Cross-border market entry and expansion into Africa Financial discipline in early-stage and scaling businesses Purpose-driven commercial growth Entrepreneurship and founder decision-making Gender-lens investing and impact-linked capital Ideal for Founders and entrepreneurs seeking institutional capital or retail distribution scale FMCG, CPG and consumer brand leaders exploring cross-border or emerging market growth Investment and private equity audiences focused on impact-linked or growth-market strategies Senior executives in corporate entrepreneurship, innovation, or commercial development programmes Audience outcomes A clearer understanding of how financial discipline – not product vision alone – determines whether a consumer brand crosses from traction to institutional scale Insight into what impact-linked institutional investors actually require, and how to construct a credible narrative for them A practical perspective on cross-border market entry drawn from real first-mover experience in both the UK FMCG market and Nigeria Greater clarity on how to embed social purpose into a commercial model without compromising financial performance A more honest account of the investor journey – including the strategic value of declining the wrong capital

Why organisations work with Dino Sofos He has built category-leading shows in two different genres, launching Dua Lipa’s At Your Service as Persephonica’s first title and co-creating The News Agents, which hit 24 million downloads in seven months. He ran BBC News Podcasts for long enough to learn what works at scale: 85 million downloads across Brexitcast, Americast and Newscast during his tenure as editor. He understands the commercial crossover between audio and broadcast, having been the first editor to transfer a current affairs podcast, Brexitcast, onto BBC One in 2019. He speaks from operator experience, not commentary, which makes him useful to executives weighing real decisions about content, talent and audience strategy. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Persephonica, an independent audio production company established in 2021. Former Editor of BBC News Podcasts, with 14 years at the BBC. Creator of Brexitcast, Americast and Newscast for the BBC. Brexitcast won the Listeners’ Choice award at the British Podcast Awards 2019. Co-creator of The News Agents with Emily Maitlis, Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall, produced in partnership with Global. Producer of Dua Lipa: At Your Service, featuring guests including Elton John, Amal Clooney and Pedro Almodovar. Biography Brexitcast started inside the BBC as an experiment in how political reporters talked to each other when the cameras were off. Dino Sofos was the editor who turned that informal energy into a format, then into a habit, then onto BBC One in 2019, the first time a current affairs podcast had crossed over to television. That move, and the 85 million downloads accumulated by BBC News Podcasts during his editorship, gave him a specific kind of knowledge. He understands how audio formats work commercially, how much of audience loyalty is structural rather than topical, and why most attempts to manufacture habit fail in the first six weeks. He left the BBC in 2021 to found Persephonica. The company launched with Dua Lipa’s At Your Service, featuring guests from Elton John to Pedro Almodovar, and followed with The News Agents, co-created with Emily Maitlis, Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall in partnership with Global. The News Agents became the UK’s most downloaded daily news podcast, reaching 24 million downloads in seven months. For organisations trying to build their own audience, his value is less about podcasting as a channel and more about the operating discipline behind it: choosing the right voices, designing formats that reward return listening, and running the commercial side of attention without losing the editorial instinct that attracted people in the first place. Key speaking topics Podcasting and digital audio strategy Building loyal audiences at scale Creative entrepreneurship and independent production Talent identification and format design Editorial innovation in news and current affairs Commercial models for original content Ideal for CMOs and communications directors weighing investment in owned audio and content formats Media, publishing and broadcasting leaders considering how to adapt for a podcast-first audience Founders and heads of content designing subscriber or listener strategies HR and internal comms leaders looking at audio for employee engagement and leadership storytelling Audience outcomes A clearer sense of what separates shows that build habit from content that merely accumulates views. Practical reference points from launching chart-topping podcasts in both celebrity and news formats. Specific lessons from editorial formats such as Brexitcast, Americast and The News Agents on pairing talent with structure. A working view of the commercial and talent economics of independent production.

Why organisations work with Jack Stratten Pattern recognition grounded in fieldwork. Insider Trends runs retail safaris in London, New York, Tokyo and Seoul, which means his examples come from stores he has physically been inside, not slide decks recycled from conference circuits. A named RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer in both 2023 and 2024, giving buyers a third-party signal of standing in the retail community. Direct experience advising Nike, LVMH, Ikea, Marks and Spencer, Jaguar Land Rover and Microsoft on retail formats and customer experience, so the frame of reference fits enterprise decision-makers. Works across the full retail stack, from store roles and staff models to omnichannel, supply chain and sustainability, which lets a single session connect teams that usually plan in silos. Format flexibility. Keynote, boardroom session, trend workshop or guided retail safari, all drawn from the same underlying research base. Biography highlights Head of Trends, Insider Trends, a London-based retail futures agency advising C-suite clients globally. Selected for RETHINK Retail’s Top Retail Influencers list in 2023 and 2024. Clients include Nike, Johnson and Johnson, Converse, Ikea, Shell, Marks and Spencer, Jaguar Land Rover, Costa Coffee, Diageo, Microsoft, LVMH, Nespresso, Twilio, The National Trust and Galeries Lafayette. Has run trend seminars for senior business audiences in partnership with the British Library. Media commentator on retail change, including appearances on Channel 4 and BBC Radio 5. Published author on Insider Trends and contributor to industry outlets including Retail Technology Innovation Hub. Biography Physical stores, e-commerce, app, social commerce, marketplace listings, supply chain footprint. For most retailers these are still governed as separate projects with separate owners, even though a single customer now moves across all of them inside one buying decision. That gap between how customers shop and how retailers are organised is the core tension Jack Stratten’s work addresses. As Head of Trends at Insider Trends, a London-based retail futures agency, he sits on top of a continuous research engine that tracks new store formats, brand experiences and commercial models in the cities where retail is evolving fastest. The agency’s client list spans Nike, LVMH, Ikea, Marks and Spencer, Jaguar Land Rover, Microsoft and Galeries Lafayette, and the work typically lands as a keynote, a boardroom session, a workshop, or a guided retail safari through live stores. The value to a leadership team is diagnostic as much as inspirational. Stratten is good at naming which shifts are real signals versus which are noise, which store formats actually drive commercial outcomes, and where omnichannel investment translates into loyalty rather than cost. RETHINK Retail named him one of its Top Retail Influencers in both 2023 and 2024, a practitioner-voted signal that buyers in the sector recognise his read on the category. What separates his sessions from a standard retail trends talk is the grounding. The examples are stores he has walked, brands his team has studied in depth, and commercial decisions he has watched play out, which makes the content usable inside a planning cycle rather than a year-end inspiration slot. Key speaking topics Retail trends and customer behaviour Omnichannel strategy Store of the future and new retail formats Customer experience in consumer brands Retail innovation and business model change Sustainability in retail and supply chain Direct to consumer and brand experience Ideal for Retail and consumer goods executive teams setting store, channel and format strategy. Heads of customer experience, digital and e-commerce aligning on a single commercial plan. Property, leasing and shopping centre leadership rethinking the role of physical space. Senior marketing and brand leaders in consumer categories adjacent to retail. Audience outcomes A clearer view of which retail shifts are material signals and which are surface noise. Concrete examples of store formats, brand experiences and omnichannel models that are working in 2025, with the commercial logic behind them. A shared vocabulary across store, digital, marketing and supply chain teams for the next planning cycle. Specific prompts for where to test, invest or pull back in the next 12 to 24 months. A sharper sense of how consumer brands and retailers are redefining the role of the store.

Why organisations work with Lars Ulrich He has run, with three bandmates, one of the most commercially successful independent creative businesses of the last forty years, with more than 125 million albums sold and full ownership of the master recordings. He led the Napster confrontation in 2000, the first artist-led legal challenge to peer-to-peer file sharing, which set much of the licensing groundwork that streaming platforms operate on today. He speaks from inside a band whose business model has been rebuilt at least three times, from major-label act to self-owned record company to direct-to-fan operator across a 60 million-strong social following. He chairs, with his bandmates, the All Within My Hands Foundation, which runs the Metallica Scholars Initiative with the American Association of Community Colleges and partners with Feeding America and World Central Kitchen. He is a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and a Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog, useful only as evidence that the work has been recognised by serious institutions outside the music industry. Biography highlights Co-founder and drummer of Metallica, formed in Los Angeles in 1981. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009, the first Danish artist to receive the honour. Ten Grammy Awards from 26 nominations, including six Best Metal Performance wins. Testified before the US Senate Judiciary Committee in Metallica v. Napster, 11 July 2000. Co-founder of the All Within My Hands Foundation, established 2017, supporting workforce education, food security and disaster relief. Awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of the Dannebrog by Queen Margrethe II of Denmark in 2017. Biography Metallica has outsold most of the labels it has ever worked with. The band Lars Ulrich co-founded in 1981 has shipped more than 125 million records, won ten Grammy Awards, and now owns its entire master catalogue. It has done all of that without ever softening its sound to fit the commercial moment, and without ever being acquired, merged or absorbed. The interesting business question is how. Ulrich is one of the few people who can answer it from the inside. His account covers the decisions that mattered: refusing to chase trends with the Black Album, suing Napster in 2000 when the rest of the industry was paralysed, eventually buying back the masters, and rebuilding the band as its own record company, touring operation and direct-to-fan platform across more than 60 million followers. The Napster confrontation in particular is studied in business and law schools as a case in how an independent creative business defends its commercial rights against a technology shift. Ulrich’s Senate testimony in July 2000 became the artist-side argument that streaming services were eventually built around. He is candid about what the band got wrong in the public framing of that fight, and clear about what it preserved. Outside the band, he co-founded the All Within My Hands Foundation in 2017, which runs the Metallica Scholars Initiative with the American Association of Community Colleges and partners with Feeding America and World Central Kitchen. He was made a Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog by Queen Margrethe II in 2017, the same year the foundation launched. Key speaking topics Independent brand longevity Creative discipline at scale Business model reinvention Artist rights and the economics of digital distribution Partnership selectivity and brand integrity Philanthropy and foundation governance Team longevity and creative conflict Ideal for CEOs and founders running owner-led creative or brand-driven businesses CMOs and brand leads navigating partnership decisions and licensing Boards considering long-horizon brand strategy and succession Senior leadership offsites where the agenda is reinvention without losing identity Audience outcomes A concrete account of how a four-person creative business has stayed commercially independent for four decades. The reasoning behind Metallica’s decision to sue Napster, and what it produced for the wider industry. A clearer view of when to say no to brand partnerships, even profitable ones. A working sense of how creative conflict inside a senior team can be managed without breaking the team.

Why organisations work with Carl Leighton-Pope He has sustained a boutique agency relationship with artists like Bryan Adams, Michael Bublé and Billy Ocean across decades of contractual and technological upheaval, which is rare evidence of how to keep large clients inside a small business. The catalogue of names is its own form of credibility: the Marquee Club in 1964, Dire Straits and Simple Minds at NEMS, The Chippendales as a touring product, WWE and Harlem Globetrotters in Europe. Few speakers can draw on a working roster of this length. He is, in commercial terms, an entrepreneur who diversified beyond his core: from agency work into management, into theatre production with Carnaby Street The Musical and LOVE, and into international touring across genres outside music. The delivery is built for audiences who want a senior business story told with humour and specific characters, not a framework deck. Useful for after-dinner, leadership offsites, and entrepreneurial events where the room wants substance carried by narrative. Biography highlights Founder and Managing Director, Leighton-Pope Organisation, London (incorporated 1991, Companies House 02634876). Career began in 1964 at the Marquee Club in Soho, working in an environment that included Rod Stewart, The Who and Eric Clapton. Former agent at NEMS, where he signed Dire Straits, Simple Minds, Patti Smith, The Motors, UFO and Camel. Signed Bryan Adams as an agency client in 1984 and has subsequently represented Michael Bublé, Billy Ocean, Van Morrison, Bonnie Tyler, Chris Rea, Keith Urban and Jeff Healey. Producer and international tour operator for The Chippendales, and his agency has handled WWE and Harlem Globetrotters tours. Writer and producer of Carnaby Street The Musical and the West End play LOVE (2023). Biography The music business has been rebuilt three times in a single working lifetime. Vinyl gave way to CDs, CDs to downloads, downloads to streaming, and the contractual and revenue logic underneath each change tore through agency businesses that could not adapt. The Leighton-Pope Organisation, founded in London in 1991, has carried the same artists across most of that turbulence. That continuity is the credential. Bryan Adams, signed in 1984 while Carl was still building his agency career, remains a client. Michael Bublé and Billy Ocean sit on the current roster alongside historical clients like Van Morrison, Bonnie Tyler, Chris Rea and Keith Urban. Earlier in his career, working at NEMS, he signed Dire Straits, Simple Minds, Patti Smith, The Motors, UFO and Camel. The names matter because they are the proof of an agency model that has held under load. The career began in 1964 at the Marquee Club in Soho. By 1972 he was running a recording studio in Cardiff and managing the band Sassafras on Chrysalis Records. The Leighton-Pope Organisation followed in 1991 and has since extended beyond music into international touring for The Chippendales, WWE and the Harlem Globetrotters, and into theatre production with Carnaby Street The Musical and the West End play LOVE in 2023. The speaking work draws directly on that operating history. The substance is entrepreneurship inside a creative industry, told through specific decisions, specific clients and specific deals over six decades. Audiences leave with named cases and the texture of how a small business keeps very large clients. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship in the entertainment industry Talent identification and long-term client retention Building a boutique business with global clients Diversification beyond a core service line Music industry reinvention across format cycles Business storytelling for leadership audiences Ideal for Entrepreneurs and founder-led businesses scaling around a small senior team. CEO and board offsites where the brief is business reflection through narrative rather than framework. After-dinner and gala audiences at industry conferences and corporate events. Leadership programmes covering client relationship longevity and creative industry commercial models. Audience outcomes A working understanding of how a boutique agency retains top-tier clients across decades and format changes. Specific cases on signing, developing and managing globally commercial artists. A view on diversification decisions taken across music, live entertainment and theatre. Material on entrepreneurial judgement under industry-wide disruption, drawn from a six-decade career.

Why organisations work with Paul Polman A ten-year CEO run at Unilever with documented results. Shareholder returns rose 290 percent during his tenure while the company held the top global sustainability ranking. Operator credibility on long-term strategy under activist pressure. Polman ended quarterly earnings guidance on day one as CEO and defended Unilever against Kraft Heinz’s 2017 hostile takeover bid. Co-architect of the UN Sustainable Development Goals as one of 27 members of Ban Ki-moon’s High Level Panel. He helped build the framework boards now report against. Direct line into how sophisticated long-term capital thinks about sustainability. Polman co-chairs EQT’s Future Mission Board alongside Jacob Wallenberg and advises boards at Temasek, Allianz and SMBC. Net Positive, co-authored with Andrew Winston, was named a Financial Times Business Book of the Year. The pair ranked first in the 2025 Thinkers50 list of the world’s most influential management thinkers. Biography highlights CEO of Unilever, 2009 to 2019. Succeeded Patrick Cescau and was succeeded by Alan Jope. 27 years at Procter & Gamble in senior roles including Group President, P&G Europe. Chief Financial Officer at Nestlé from 2006, then VP and Head of Americas. Member of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s High Level Panel that developed the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. Continues as a UN SDG Advocate. Co-founder and Chair Emeritus of IMAGINE. Chair of Oxford Saïd Business School, The Valuable 500 and One Young World. Vice-Chair of the UN Global Compact. Co-author of Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take (2021), a Financial Times Business Book of the Year and Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award winner. Ranked first in the 2025 Thinkers50 list with Andrew Winston. Recipient of a UK Knighthood, France’s Légion d’honneur and the UN’s highest environmental honour. Biography Between 2009 and 2019, Unilever delivered a 290 percent shareholder return while holding the top global sustainability ranking and the title of one of the world’s best places to work. The period included the defeat of a $143 billion hostile bid from Kraft Heinz in 2017. The decade is the empirical case sitting underneath everything Paul Polman argues about business today. He wrote the case up with Andrew Winston. Net Positive, published in 2021, argues that companies should improve the wellbeing of everyone they affect, including the planet, and build financial strength in the process. The Financial Times named it a Business Book of the Year, and Thinkers50 gave it the Breakthrough Idea Award the same year. Polman’s operator background predates Unilever. He spent 27 years at Procter & Gamble, rising to Group President for Europe, before joining Nestlé as Chief Financial Officer in 2006. That background matters to the argument. The book comes from someone who ran the P&L while making the sustainability case. Today he chairs Oxford Saïd Business School, The Valuable 500 and One Young World. He co-chairs EQT’s Future Mission Board alongside Jacob Wallenberg and sits on advisory boards at Temasek, Allianz and SMBC. A UK knighthood and France’s Légion d’honneur sit alongside the UN’s highest environmental honour. In 2025, Thinkers50 placed him and Andrew Winston first in its biennial ranking of the world’s most influential management thinkers. Key speaking topics Sustainable business and the Net Positive framework Purpose-driven leadership and long-term value creation ESG strategy and commercial performance Climate change and the role of business The UN Sustainable Development Goals Corporate governance and stakeholder capitalism Systems change and industry coalitions Ideal for Boards and executive teams deciding whether to hardwire sustainability into growth strategy, as a commercial question rather than a reputation function. CEOs, CFOs and strategy leads under pressure to reconcile long-term ESG commitments with quarterly capital markets expectations. CHROs, Chief Sustainability Officers and purpose leads building the internal case for investment in systems-level change. Investors and IR functions working on how to communicate sustainability as a commercial argument. Audience outcomes The empirical case, with the Unilever numbers, for why purpose-driven models outperform shareholder-primacy ones over a decade. A sharper line between sustainability as compliance cost and sustainability as commercial strategy, and how boards tell the difference in practice. The Net Positive architecture: how to build a company that profits by solving the world’s problems instead of creating them. A working reframe of the UN Sustainable Development Goals as commercial opportunity, grounded in the industry coalitions Polman has helped build. The operator’s view on defending long-term strategy to activist investors, drawn from the defeat of the Kraft Heinz takeover and the decision to end quarterly earnings guidance.