Business Model Innovation

Meet Rachel Treece Rachel is the best-selling author of “The Henka Effect” and hosts the popular podcast “Flex and the City,” which focuses on leadership in the financial services sector. With a strong background in global financial services, Rachel has extensive experience leading multicultural teams for prestigious FTSE and Fortune 100 companies. In 2012, she was honoured as one of the Most Inspiring Women in Entrepreneurship and cofounded the charity Dress for Success (Luxembourg). A respected lecturer at the University of London and University of Newcastle (London), Rachel contributes to MBA and entrepreneurship programs and mentors young women on various international platforms. As a thought-leader, speaker, writer, and executive coach, Rachel is recognised as an expert in organisational health, employee engagement, communication, and inclusion. A fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, Rachel helps business leaders innovate, adapt, and communicate in today’s ever-evolving world, characterized by disruptive and unpredictable changes. Originally from the UK, she became a naturalized Luxembourgish citizen in 2014. Fluent in four languages, Rachel is married to Keith and has a teenage daughter. Based in Luxembourg, she enjoys living near the airport, which fuels her passion for travel—though current circumstances have temporarily limited her adventures.

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.

About Ömer Atiker A charming entertainer, a bit of a nerd and driven by curiosity: Ömer builds bridges between people and technology. With a M.Sc. in Business Engineering, he founded one of the very first web design agencies in the Netherlands, back in 1996. In 2005, he moved back to Germany and into digital marketing with his own agency, which he still runs. Ever curious, he continued into innovation, change and digital transformation. He became an international keynote speaker, wrote several books, he offers both consulting and coaching as a trusted advisor, has recorded a dozen online courses in both English and German and is a lecturer at several universities.

Why organisations work with Yan Lefort He has done the work commercial teams are usually only theorising about: replacing a category that funded an entire industry, in his case tobacco in Formula 1, with sponsors that pass modern scrutiny. As Commercial & Marketing Director of Sauber Motorsport from 2018 to 2022, he sat on the management board and was directly responsible for landing the long-term Alfa Romeo partnership and the Orlen title sponsorship that anchored the team’s finances. He has run the partner side and the rights-holder side of the same deal. At IWC Schaffhausen he built the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 partnership during the Hamilton era; at Sauber he sold the property. Few speakers can credibly describe both seats. His operating context is one of the most commercially exposed environments in business, where every quarter the product performs in public and sponsors decide whether to renew. That discipline transfers to any organisation whose revenue depends on relationship renewals under pressure. Biography highlights Commercial & Marketing Director, Sauber Motorsport AG, 2018 to 2022, and member of the Alfa Romeo Racing F1 management board Global Head of Partnerships, PR and CSR at IWC Schaffhausen, leading the IWC partnership with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 team Global PR Manager for the Lucky Strike F1 programme with BAR Honda Six years at Rothmans managing the sponsorship of the Williams F1 team Ran an independent commercial and sponsorship consultancy serving OEM automotive clients including Toyota’s F1 team, sponsors, rights holders and F1 drivers Speaker, International Sports Convention, Geneva Biography When tobacco sponsorship was banned from Formula 1 in 2005, the sport lost the category that had paid most of its bills for thirty years. Teams, rights holders and agencies had to rebuild their commercial books from scratch. Yan Lefort had spent the previous decade inside that commercial machine, six years at Rothmans on the Williams F1 sponsorship and seven as Global PR Manager of the Lucky Strike F1 programme with BAR Honda. He set up his own consultancy and spent the next five years rewiring sponsorship strategies for OEM clients including Toyota’s F1 team, plus a range of sponsors, rights holders and drivers. In 2011 he joined IWC Schaffhausen as Global Head of Partnerships, PR and CSR, where he ran the luxury watchmaker’s partnership with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 team through the period of Lewis Hamilton’s dominance. That gave him the brand-side view of the most demanding partner relationship in motorsport. At the start of 2018 he moved to Sauber Motorsport as Commercial & Marketing Director and joined the team’s management board. The team had no title sponsor and a weak commercial position. By the time he left in 2022 he had landed the long-term Alfa Romeo partnership that rebranded the team and the title sponsorship from the Polish energy company Orlen. During those years he worked closely with World Champion Kimi Raikkonen and ten-time Grand Prix winner Valtteri Bottas. That sequence, rights-holder to sponsor to rights-holder, agency to brand to team, gives him a practical reading of how partnership revenue is actually built and defended. He speaks to that work directly, drawing on named deals and named counterparts rather than abstractions about engagement or storytelling. Key speaking topics Sponsorship and partnership strategy Commercial leadership in Formula 1 Sports marketing and brand activation Rebuilding revenue after category disruption Luxury brand partnerships in regulated environments High-performance team commercial operations Ideal for CCOs, CMOs and heads of partnerships at sponsors and rights holders Boards of sports properties, federations and motorsport teams Brand and partnership leaders inside luxury, automotive and energy companies Commercial leadership teams whose revenue model relies on long-cycle partner renewals Audience outcomes A working view of how a modern F1 team builds and defends its sponsorship book A specific account of how a banned-category sport rebuilt its commercial model, with lessons for any industry facing regulatory or reputational disruption to its revenue base The brand-side and rights-holder-side perspectives on the same partnership, drawn from IWC’s relationship with Mercedes-AMG F1 and Sauber’s relationship with Alfa Romeo and Orlen A clearer test for whether a partnership is commercial substance or marketing decoration

About John Ridding John Ridding is the Chief Executive Officer of the FT Group, one of the world’s leading news organisations recognised internationally for its authority, integrity and accuracy and for its global perspective. Under his stewardship, the FT has expanded its global operations and transformed itself into a digital business, pioneering the reader-revenue subscription model now widely-adopted across news media. Despite the disruption in the news media sector, the FT has reached record levels of readership, passing the milestone one million subscriber mark in 2019 and continuing robust growth since then. In his 35 years at the FT, John has held a wide range of roles on both the editorial and business side of the organisation. As an award-winning foreign correspondent, he was based in Hong Kong, Paris and Seoul and regularly reported from mainland China, Japan, India and Indonesia. He was managing editor, features editor and deputy editor before joining the business side of the organisation. He led the launch of the FT’s Asia edition in 2003, steering it to commercial and editorial success. John also led the development of the FT’s Chinese language website, which now has more than 2m users and is the leading international source of business news in China. John was appointed Chief Executive Officer of the FT Group in May 2006. He managed the acquisition of the FT by Nikkei of Japan in 2015 and serves as a Special Executive Director of Nikkei. He is co-chair of Nikkei’s Digital Strategy Committee and sits on Nikkei’s Global Investment Committee. The FT now attracts the largest paying readership in its 135-year history, with more than three quarters of its readers coming from digital channels. The FT is recognised as an industry leader in innovation and digital development and a champion of quality journalism. John has held a number of non-executive board positions, including the Economist, and FTSE (the joint venture between the FT and the London Stock Exchange). He currently sits on the board of Bonnier News, part of the international media conglomerate Bonnier AB and on the board of Wilshire, the US based investment and index company. In addition to his business roles, John is on the board of Room to Read, a San-Francisco based global charity that supports learning and literacy in low income countries – with a focus on girls’ education. He graduated from Oxford University with a first class honours degree in philosophy, politics and economics. John lives with his family in London. His other interests include music, running, surfing and scuba diving.

Why organisations work with Jochen Wirtz He wrote the textbook the global services marketing field teaches from. Services Marketing: People, Technology, Strategy, co-authored with Christopher Lovelock, has sold over a million copies and shaped how MBAs are taught the discipline in more than 26 countries. He has paired that academic authority with two operator-facing AI books, Intelligent Automation and Agentic Artificial Intelligence, written with Pascal Bornet. Few service strategy voices can speak as fluently to both a CMO and a Chief Automation Officer. His Christopher Lovelock Career Contributions Award from the American Marketing Association and the Gronroos Service Research Award are the two most senior honours in the global services research community. Boards get a recognised authority, not a generalist. He has been Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in economics and business in 2022, 2023, and 2024, which means his frameworks are the ones other researchers and practitioners are actively building on. He spent fifteen years running the UCLA-NUS Executive MBA Programme as founding director, so the audiences he addresses most naturally are senior leaders, not students. Biography highlights Vice Dean of MBA Programmes and Professor of Marketing, NUS Business School, National University of Singapore. Co-author of Services Marketing: People, Technology, Strategy (9th edition) with the late Christopher Lovelock, adapted for over 26 countries. Co-author of Intelligent Automation (2021) and Agentic Artificial Intelligence (2025) with Pascal Bornet, with contributors including Thomas H. Davenport. Christopher Lovelock Career Contributions Award (AMA, 2019) and Christian Gronroos Service Research Award (2024). Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in economics and business, 2022, 2023, and 2024; over 200 academic articles and six features in Harvard Business Review. Academic Scholar at Cornell Institute for Healthy Futures; International Fellow at Karlstad University Service Research Center; Global Faculty at Arizona State University Center for Services Leadership. Biography Service businesses are where AI is hitting the operating model first. Customer interactions, advisory work, claims handling, hospitality, healthcare reception, professional services delivery: all of it is being rewired around intelligent agents, and very few people on the academic side have stayed close to that shift in practical terms. Jochen Wirtz has. He is Vice Dean of MBA Programmes and Professor of Marketing at NUS Business School, and the co-author, with the late Christopher Lovelock, of Services Marketing: People, Technology, Strategy. The textbook is now in its ninth edition, has sold over a million copies, and has been adapted for more than 26 countries. It is the spine of the discipline globally. What makes him useful in a leadership room rather than a classroom is the second body of work. With Pascal Bornet he wrote Intelligent Automation in 2021 and Agentic Artificial Intelligence in 2025, with contributions from Thomas H. Davenport and others. Both are written for operators making real choices about where to put AI inside their service architecture and where not to. The credentials line up behind that: the Christopher Lovelock Career Contributions Award from the American Marketing Association, the Christian Gronroos Service Research Award, three consecutive years as a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in economics and business, and fifteen years as founding director of the UCLA-NUS Executive MBA Programme. Boards get an academic with the authority to set the agenda and the operator literacy to follow it through. Key speaking topics Services marketing and service management AI agents and intelligent automation in service organisations Service strategy and organisational redesign Customer experience in AI-enabled service Platform business models Corporate digital responsibility and governance Cost-effective service excellence Ideal for CEOs, COOs, and CMOs of service-led businesses redesigning operations around AI agents. Chief Digital, Transformation, and Automation Officers building the AI-and-services roadmap. Boards and executive committees in financial services, professional services, hospitality, healthcare, and telecoms working through service productivity and customer impact at the same time. Audience outcomes A clearer view of where AI agents create durable advantage in a service business and where they create new risk. A working vocabulary for the service strategy choices behind automation programmes, drawn from the field’s leading textbook. Frameworks from Intelligent Automation and Agentic Artificial Intelligence that translate AI investment into service design decisions. A sharper sense of corporate digital responsibility as service interactions become increasingly machine-mediated. Confidence that the operating model conversation and the customer experience conversation are the same conversation.

Giuseppe Stigliano: A global marketer with a mediterranean soul and a passion for business innovation A recognized thought leader and sought-after advisor and keynote speaker on Marketing, Management, Leadership, Business Transformation, and Corporate Innovation. Giuseppe is an entrepreneur and manager with over two decades of international marketing and communication experience. He has served three times as CEO at international agencies, including leading a WPP EMEA team dedicated to FCA, J. Walter Thompson, and Spring Studios, partnering with more than 300 companies globally. With a Ph.D. in Marketing and Economics, Giuseppe has co-authored three business books with Philip Kotler: ‘Retail 4.0’, ‘Onlife Fashion’, and the most recent ‘Redefining Retail’. His books have been translated into eight languages, reaching a total readership of over 100,000 people worldwide. As a keynote speaker, he has been invited to give talks in more than 30 countries to both B2B and B2C audiences across various industries. As an advisor and board member, he leverages his international cross-industry experience to help business leaders assess the status of their organizations against market benchmarks and develop actionable marketing & sales strategies that exceed customer expectations and maximize ROI. Giuseppe is also an active angel investor and an Adjunct Professor of Marketing at prestigious international universities and business schools. His TEDx talk, ‘How To Become a Marketing Superhero,’ has garnered over 1 million views worldwide. A member of the Advisory Council of HBR, a regular contributor to Forbes and a LinkedIn Top Voice, Giuseppe was recognised by Thinkers50 in 2024 as one of the most inspiring global leaders whose ideas are set to make a significant impact on management thinking.

Why organisations work with Huy Nguyen Trieu Two decades inside tier-one banks (Citi, Royal Bank of Scotland, Société Générale) paired with co-founding CFTE, a capability platform that has reached more than 200,000 professionals across 130 countries, gives him a view neither pure bankers nor pure technologists can offer. His work names the specific mechanisms by which AI is reshaping institutions, drawing on frameworks developed at CFTE including the AI Capability Engine, the Performance Hexagon, the CDE Innovation Prism and the SHIME skills model. Boards and policymakers use him to pressure-test AI strategy against what is actually deployable, including a strategy briefing for the senior leadership of a top-five global financial institution and a full-day executive programme for a major central bank with over 100 senior leaders. Author of “The AI-fication of Jobs” (2024) and co-author of “The Fintech Job Report” (2022), both of which set out workforce impact in numbers executives can use for planning. Council Member of the ADI Foundation, Industry Fellow at Imperial College Business School, and former member of the World Economic Forum’s Fintech Advisory Board, so his work holds up in front of regulators and sovereign actors as well as operators. Biography highlights Co-founder, Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CFTE), reaching more than 200,000 professionals across 130 countries. Council Member, ADI Foundation, contributing to sovereign blockchain infrastructure including national stablecoins and digital public infrastructure. Former Managing Director at Citi, with earlier roles at Royal Bank of Scotland and Société Générale; founding partner of Supercharger, one of Asia’s largest fintech accelerators; former CEO of Ukibi, a venture-backed US technology start-up. Graduate of MIT and École Polytechnique; first Fintech Resident at Oxford Saïd Business School; Industry Fellow at Imperial College Business School; former member of the World Economic Forum’s Fintech Advisory Board. Author of “The AI-fication of Jobs” (2024); co-author of “The Fintech Job Report: Technology is eating Finance” (2022). Commentary on AI in financial services featured in international business media including the Financial Times, Bloomberg and CNBC. Biography Most banks have been running digital transformation programmes for a decade. The harder question now reaches further than banking. Governments, central banks and financial institutions all face the same problem: translating AI from pilots into operating capability that holds up under regulation and talent constraints. That is the terrain Huy Nguyen Trieu has worked on from both sides. He spent years at Citi, finishing as a Managing Director, with earlier roles at Royal Bank of Scotland and Société Générale. Before banking he was CEO of Ukibi, a venture-backed US technology start-up, and was later a founding partner of Supercharger, one of Asia’s largest fintech accelerators. The mix means he reads an institution’s P&L the way an operator does and reads a technology bet the way an investor does. He co-founded CFTE, the Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship. It now reaches more than 200,000 professionals across 130 countries and works with governments, central banks and financial institutions on AI capability at scale. CFTE’s frameworks, including the AI Capability Engine, the Performance Hexagon, the CDE Innovation Prism and the SHIME skills model, are the spine of that work. He was the first Fintech Resident at Oxford Saïd Business School and is an Industry Fellow at Imperial College Business School. He also serves as a Council Member of the ADI Foundation, contributing to sovereign blockchain infrastructure for emerging markets. Recent engagements illustrate the scope. He delivered a keynote on the third wave of AI in the presence of H.E. the President of the Republic of Cyprus. Other engagements include a strategy briefing for a top-five global financial institution and a full-day executive programme for a major central bank with more than 100 senior leaders. His book “The AI-fication of Jobs” (2024) explains why AI breaks the historical assumption that new technology creates more jobs than it destroys. Key speaking topics Fintech and the future of financial services AI in banking and capital markets Digital business models in regulated industries Platform economics and hyperscalable finance Future of work in financial services Digital assets and tokenisation Venture capital and fintech investment trends Ideal for Governments and central banks building AI capability across regulated sectors Bank and insurer boards setting AI and fintech strategy CEOs, COOs and CIOs of financial institutions running transformation agendas Heads of innovation, strategy and HR grappling with workforce impact of AI Audience outcomes A clearer read on which fintech and AI shifts are structural and which are overstated. Specific examples of business-model change from inside banks, fintechs and big tech, not generic case studies. A workforce view: which roles in finance shrink, which expand, and what skills leaders should build now. A sharper frame for board-level conversations on AI risk, digital assets and platform strategy.