Business Model Innovation

Why organisations work with Gunter Pauli He has run the experiment himself. As CEO of Ecover he built the first fully ecological factory in Malle, Belgium in 1992, and grew the business into a category-defining consumer brand before turning to systems work. The Blue Economy is a named, published framework, not a talk. The 2010 report to the Club of Rome catalogues 100 nature-inspired innovations with business cases attached, and has been translated into more than 30 languages. He sits inside the conversation that shapes long-range policy. Elected member of the Club of Rome and former executive committee member, with advisory roles for governments in Spain, Argentina, Italy and Bhutan. He converts sustainability from a cost line into a portfolio of revenue opportunities. The argument boards respond to: waste streams and local resources are unbooked revenue if you redesign around them. He founded and still leads ZERI, a working network of scientists and entrepreneurs testing zero-emissions business models in the field, which keeps the content grounded in what has actually been built. Biography highlights Founder of ZERI (Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives), established in 1994 at the United Nations University in Tokyo. Former Chairman and CEO of Ecover, Belgium; led the design and launch of the Malle ecological factory in 1992. Author of The Blue Economy: 10 Years, 100 Innovations, 100 Million Jobs, commissioned as a report to the Club of Rome. Elected member of the Club of Rome; served on its executive committee. Recipient of the 2022 Goi Peace Award; honorary doctorate from the University of Pecs, Hungary. MBA, INSEAD Fontainebleau; economics, University of Antwerp. Biography Ecover was a detergent company when Gunter Pauli took it over in 1991. Four years later it was a global reference point for sustainable manufacturing, operating out of a wooden factory with a planted roof in Malle, Belgium, the first of its kind. The experience also taught him that a clean product built on palm oil was still destroying rainforest, and that the green movement of the early 1990s had not yet confronted the problem. That recognition is what produced the Blue Economy. Working from the United Nations University in Tokyo, Pauli founded ZERI in 1994 to test a different premise: that natural systems already solve most of the problems industry struggles with, and that redesigning around local resources and cascading waste streams produces better economics, not worse. The 2010 report to the Club of Rome set out 100 worked examples, from coffee-to-mushroom cultivation to stone paper, each with a business case. The framework has travelled. The Blue Economy has been translated into more than 30 languages, taught on MBA and policy programmes, and picked up by governments in Europe, Latin America and Asia as a basis for regional development strategy. Pauli was elected to the Club of Rome and served on its executive committee from 2017, and received the Goi Peace Award in 2022. What he brings to a senior audience is a practitioner’s account of how environmental and financial returns can be made to move together, with a portfolio of cases that have been built, sold and scaled. The argument is not that sustainability is a duty. It is that most industrial processes are inefficient on their own terms, and the companies that notice first will take the margin. Key speaking topics The Blue Economy Nature-inspired business model design Zero emissions manufacturing and circular supply chains Sustainable entrepreneurship Regional development and resource strategy ESG strategy and corporate sustainability Systems thinking for leaders Ideal for CEOs, CSOs and board directors setting sustainability and capital allocation strategy Heads of innovation, R&D and operations rethinking product and factory design Government and public-sector leaders shaping regional development and industrial policy Investor audiences evaluating circular and regenerative business models Audience outcomes A working understanding of the Blue Economy framework and how it differs from recycling, offsetting and conventional CSR Named examples of companies and regions that have used nature-inspired design to cut cost and emissions at the same time A sharper lens for spotting waste streams and local resources that can be turned into revenue Language to use with boards and investors when sustainability investments have to compete for capital A reading of where sustainability policy and markets are heading over the next decade, drawn from Club of Rome and government advisory work

Why organisations work with Geoff Colvin Four decades of reporting inside Fortune on how the best-run companies actually change, not a consultant’s framework imported from outside the room. The thesis behind Talent Is Overrated, a WSJ, BusinessWeek and New York Times bestseller, gives leadership teams a concrete answer to a question most duck: how do you actually build world-class performers instead of hoping you hire them. Humans Are Underrated reframes the AI conversation for executives. The argument is that empathy, group problem-solving and storytelling become the commercial differentiator, and it lands with boards that are tired of abstract automation talks. A career’s worth of on-stage interviews with Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen and Henry Paulson at the Fortune Global Forum translates directly into panel moderation and onstage CEO interviews that audiences remember. Read in dozens of languages and heard daily on CBS Radio, he arrives with an unusual combination of reach and specificity that senior audiences trust on first encounter. Biography highlights Senior Editor-at-Large at Fortune, where he has written the Value Driven column and covered leadership, economics and competition for four decades. Author of Talent Is Overrated, Humans Are Underrated, The Upside of the Downturn, and co-author of Angel Customers and Demon Customers. The Upside of the Downturn named Best Management Book of the Year by Strategy+Business. Former co-anchor of Wall Street Week with Fortune on PBS. Daily business commentator on the CBS Radio Network, with more than 10,000 broadcasts. Lead moderator at the Fortune Global Forum, with onstage interviews of CEOs, heads of state and central bankers including Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan and Janet Yellen. Biography Most organisations say they want world-class performance, and most fund it with selection rather than development. Talent Is Overrated took that contradiction apart. Drawing on research into elite performers across sport, music, chess and business, Colvin argued that what separates the best is deliberate practice, the willingness to work at the edge of capability, under feedback, for years. The book became a Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek and New York Times bestseller, and gave boards and chief people officers a language for building executive capability rather than buying it. Humans Are Underrated extended the argument into the automation decade. As machines absorbed more analytical and predictable work, Colvin’s case was that the commercial premium would shift to empathy, group problem-solving and persuasion, the deep human skills most leadership pipelines still treat as soft. Both books have shaped how serious HR and strategy functions think about what to develop in senior leaders. The credibility behind that writing is institutional. Colvin has spent his career at Fortune, currently as Senior Editor-at-Large, writing the Value Driven column and covering the forces reshaping competition. He co-anchored Wall Street Week with Fortune on PBS, and has broadcast daily for CBS Radio with well over 10,000 segments on air. The Upside of the Downturn, his book on operating through recession, was named Best Management Book of the Year by Strategy+Business. On stage, the work shows up differently. As lead moderator of the Fortune Global Forum he has conducted onstage interviews with Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Herb Kelleher, Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan, Janet Yellen and Henry Paulson, among many others. That experience is what corporate clients hire when they need a keynote that sets the terms of a CEO summit, or a moderator who can hold a room of chief executives to the substance. Key speaking topics Leadership in continuous disruption Executive performance and deliberate practice The human skills economy in an age of AI Business model reinvention Global economic outlook and competitive strategy Panel moderation and CEO onstage interviews Future of work and talent development Ideal for CEO, CHRO and chief learning officer audiences rethinking how senior leadership capability is built rather than bought. Boards and executive committees grappling with where automation leaves human advantage in their business model. Fortune-style CEO summits, leadership conferences and global forums that need a moderator with genuine authority across economics, technology and governance. Audience outcomes A defensible answer to how their organisation develops world-class performers, not just identifies them. A sharper read on which parts of the business automation makes cheaper, and which parts become more valuable as a result. Language for talking to boards and investors about human capability as a commercial asset, not an HR line item. Perspective from inside four decades of Fortune reporting on which leadership responses to disruption have actually worked.

Why organisations work with Eric Maskin He is one of three economists who built the field that now underpins auction design, procurement, and market regulation across the developed world. Few speakers can claim intellectual authorship of a discipline their audience already uses. His frameworks answer a concrete question boards wrestle with: when an incentive system fails, is the fault in execution, in the people, or in the design itself? Maskin’s work gives a disciplined way to tell the difference. On voting and collective decision rules, his recent work with Amartya Sen and Edward Foley offers leaders a sharper vocabulary for how groups should choose, directly relevant to governance, board process, and platform moderation. He brings the Harvard chair, the Nobel, and the former presidency of the Econometric Society, but speaks to business audiences in the register of a colleague reasoning through a problem, not a laureate delivering a lecture. Biography highlights 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, shared with Leonid Hurwicz and Roger Myerson, for the foundations of mechanism design theory. Adams University Professor and Professor of Economics and Mathematics at Harvard University. Albert O. Hirschman Professor of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 2000 to 2011. Past President of the Econometric Society and the Game Theory Society. Editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1984 to 1990. Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the British Academy, and the National Academy of Sciences; holder of 18 honorary doctorates. Biography Mechanism design is the branch of economics that asks a practical question: if you want a specific outcome from a group of people with different information and different interests, what rules will produce it? The Royal Swedish Academy cited that question when it awarded the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences to Leonid Hurwicz, Roger Myerson, and Eric Maskin. Maskin’s contribution, often called Maskin monotonicity, set the conditions under which a social goal can actually be implemented through the behaviour of self-interested agents. The theory now sits behind spectrum auctions, procurement design, matching markets, and a large share of modern regulatory economics. His institutional record follows the work. He taught at MIT from 1977 to 1984, at Harvard from 1985 to 2000, and held the Albert O. Hirschman chair at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton until 2012, when Harvard named him Adams University Professor. He edited the Quarterly Journal of Economics for six years and served as President of both the Econometric Society and the Game Theory Society. More recent work has turned to voting. With Amartya Sen in The New York Review of Books, and in subsequent papers with Edward Foley, Maskin has argued for Condorcet-style rules over plurality and ranked-choice systems on the grounds that they track majority preference more faithfully. For boards, regulators, and platform operators, the underlying question is the same as the one that won the Nobel: which rule produces the outcome the institution actually wants. Key speaking topics Mechanism design and the economics of incentives Auction design and market allocation Regulation, competition policy, and market power Voting rules and collective decision systems Governance and institutional design Innovation, patents, and intellectual property Ideal for Boards and executive committees redesigning incentive, compensation, or partnership structures Regulators, central banks, and policy leaders working on auctions, procurement, or market oversight Platform operators and market-makers setting allocation, pricing, or moderation rules Senior economics and strategy audiences at investor conferences and leadership summits Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for diagnosing when an incentive failure is a design problem, not a people problem Concrete examples of how auction and market-design choices change who wins and what is produced A sharper view of voting and decision rules for governance, board process, and group choice Direct exposure to the reasoning of one of the architects of modern economic theory, applied to questions leaders actually face

Why organisations work with Dirk Ahlborn He has operated, not theorised, one of the largest crowd-powered equity companies ever built, with hundreds of contributors working for future equity on a single transport moonshot. He took an open concept posted publicly by Elon Musk and turned it into an incorporated global venture with government-level feasibility partnerships, giving leaders a concrete template for converting ideas into companies. His JumpStartFund platform is studied as a Harvard Business School case on crowd-powered innovation ecosystems, which gives the argument institutional weight beyond bureau bios. He brings a specific point of view on how to structure incentives, intellectual property and contribution when the workforce is distributed, part-time and equity-aligned rather than payrolled. He speaks from direct operator experience in alternative energy, manufacturing and transport, not from consulting on innovation as an abstract discipline. Biography highlights Co-founder and Chairman of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, a company incubated on a crowd-powered equity model. Founder and CEO of JumpStarter Inc., operator of the JumpStartFund crowdsourcing platform. Subject of a Harvard Business School case study on crowd-powered innovation ecosystems. Keynote speaker at SXSW, the World Economic Forum, CES and the Smart Mobility World Congress. Featured in Forbes, Wired, Bloomberg, CNN, CNBC, Wall Street Journal and Boston Globe. Contributor to the Bosch Global thought leadership platform. Biography Hyperloop Transportation Technologies was set up in 2013 using a method almost no serious company had tried at that scale: hundreds of contributors working ten hours a week in exchange for stock options, coordinated through an online platform. The company that emerged went on to sign feasibility agreements with multiple governments. The interesting argument is not the train. It is the operating model. That model came out of JumpStartFund, the crowdsourcing platform Ahlborn launched the same year in El Segundo. The platform was designed to solve a specific problem, which is that most ideas never become companies because the capital, talent and coordination to build them sit in separate silos. JumpStartFund compressed those into one process. Harvard Business School has published a case study on how that works. Ahlborn’s background is unusually operational for someone running a moonshot. He started in Berlin banking in 1993, moved to Italy and built alternative energy and interior design businesses through the 1990s, and joined the Girvan Institute of Technology in Southern California in 2009 to help commercialise early-stage tech linked to NASA’s Ames Research Center. That sequence matters because his argument is not theoretical. He has built, sold and scaled businesses across sectors that rarely share a playbook. What he offers serious organisations is a working thesis on how to mobilise contribution at scale without hiring at scale, tested against one of the most ambitious engineering projects of the last decade. The thesis is portable. The specifics, stock-for-time structures, advisory-point commissions, crowd-led IP generation, translate into any organisation trying to attempt something its existing headcount and budget were not designed to deliver. Key speaking topics Crowd-powered venture building New business models for the post-industrial economy Entrepreneurship and distributed equity The future of transportation Innovation ecosystems and platform design Leading moonshot projects inside and outside the corporation Ideal for CEOs and founders designing new venture models outside conventional VC structures. Innovation, strategy and corporate venture leads running moonshot or skunkworks programmes. Transport, infrastructure and mobility leaders tracking what comes after road and rail. Boards weighing how to structure equity, IP and contribution in distributed organisations. Audience outcomes A concrete framework for running a crowd-powered venture, drawn from an operating example rather than a theoretical model. A clearer view of when equity-for-time structures work, and when they break. Specific language for pitching non-standard venture models to boards and institutional partners. A sharper read on what the next decade of transport, mobility and infrastructure investment is likely to reward.

Why organisations work with Dietmar Dahmen Two decades inside the rooms where global brands are built, with senior creative leadership at DDB, Ogilvy and BBDO across Hamburg, New York, Los Angeles, Munich and Vienna. The reference points are operator reference points. A Chief Innovation Officer track record at ecx.io, the digital agency that scaled into an IBM acquisition, which gives him a working view of how creative ambition turns into delivered technology product. Author of “Transformation. BAMM!” with Marcus Bond, published by Murmann Verlag, with a specific thesis on the “volcano economy” and a working compass tool for leadership teams reshaping their business model. Recognised by the European Association of Communication Agencies as their expert on disruption and future marketing, which gives the perspective institutional weight beyond bureau marketing. A stage craft that lands the argument. The presentation is theatrical, with stage walls built and broken on cue, a flame thrower used to dramatise climate urgency, and custom animation cut for each event. Senior audiences who have seen too many slide decks remember the content because of how it is delivered. Biography highlights Senior creative leadership at DDB, Ogilvy and BBDO, including Chief Creative Officer and Managing Director roles. Chief Innovation Officer at ecx.io, the digital agency acquired by IBM. Founder and Managing Director of Brainkicks GmbH, his current consulting and keynote practice. Co-author of “Transformation. BAMM! Management in der Vulkanoekonomie” (Murmann Verlag, 2017) with Marcus Bond. Lecturer in disruptive advertising at Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg, with students collecting sixteen gold and silver awards at the Cannes Young Director Award during his tenure. Guest lecturer in marketing innovation at Boston University and LMU Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Honorary member of the Federal Association for AI Transformation in Germany (Bundesverband für KI-Transformation). Designated expert on disruption and future marketing for the European Association of Communication Agencies (EACA); member of Creative Club Austria and Art Directors Club Germany. Biography The category boundaries that organised global marketing for a generation are blurring. Customer journeys cross channels that did not exist five years ago, brand differentiation decays faster than media budgets can refresh it, and the parts of the business that used to be safe (distribution, pricing power, retail relationships) are the parts most exposed. Senior marketing and innovation teams know they are being asked to remake the commercial engine while it is still running. Dietmar Dahmen has worked that problem from inside the global creative system. He built his career as Creative Director at DDB, Executive Creative Director at Ogilvy, and Chief Creative Officer and Managing Director at BBDO, across Hamburg, New York, Los Angeles, Munich and Vienna. The agency seat is what gave him repeated exposure to the moment when a brand has to choose between defending the position that made it and committing to the position that might. He then took the operator turn that gives the work its current shape. As Chief Innovation Officer at ecx.io, he helped scale the digital agency that IBM later acquired, which moved his thinking from creative campaign output toward technology-enabled customer experience and commercial model design. His book with Marcus Bond, “Transformation. BAMM!” published by Murmann Verlag in 2017, sets out the “volcano economy” thesis: markets where new positions emerge and disappear at unexpected points, and where conventional planning logic is precisely the constraint to challenge. The institutional credentials sit alongside the practitioner record. He is the European Association of Communication Agencies’ designated expert on disruption and future marketing, lectured disruptive advertising at Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg for close to a decade, and his students collected sixteen gold and silver awards at the Cannes Young Director Award during that period. Boards bring him in when the question is not “what is the trend” but “what are we willing to break, and what do we keep, when the category we built around no longer holds.” Key speaking topics Disruption and business model reinvention Future of marketing and brand Customer centricity and experience design Innovation strategy Digital transformation in marketing organisations Change leadership in creative and commercial functions Ideal for CMOs, brand presidents and heads of marketing transformation Chief Innovation Officers and digital strategy leads Boards and executive committees navigating category disruption Senior creative and agency leadership groups Audience outcomes A working language for diagnosing where their category is fracturing and where their current strategy is exposed. A sharper view of which assumptions in the existing business model are now constraints rather than advantages. Specific provocations on customer-centric reinvention drawn from inside global agency and digital transformation work. Renewed willingness in the room to commit to changes that the operating plan has been deferring.

David Smith’s Background David Smith has been Economics Editor of The Sunday Times since 1989, where he writes a weekly column. He is also a leader-writer, an assistant editor and policy adviser. Since 2016 he has also been writing a weekly column for The Times, where he worked from 1984 to 1989. David Smith is the author of several books, including The Rise and Fall of Monetarism; Mrs Thatcher’s Economics; North and South; From Boom to Bust; UK Current Economic Policy; Eurofutures; Will Europe Work?; Free Lunch: Easily Digestible Economics; The Dragon & the Elephant: China, India and the New World Order; The Age of Instability: The Global Financial Crisis and What Comes Next, and – in 2015 – Something Will Turn Up; Britain’s Economy Past, Present and Future. He is a visiting professor at both Cardiff University and Nottingham University. He has won a number of awards, including the Harold Wincott Senior Financial Journalist of the Year Award, the Economics Commentator of the Year Award, the Business Journalist of the Year Award in the London Press Awards and Property Columnist of the Year.

About David Selves David Selves, “The Professor of Life” who draws on an incredibly broad experience of all walks of life, business, social, political, charitable and media, to inform, entertain, interview, chair, moderate and present. He is also a highly acclaimed charity auctioneer who has raised over £1million for good causes. A 15 year old dyslectic school leaver who despite then being considered stupid and lazy, who believes he was born to work, born to meet the next challenge, David is an initiator who makes things happen. His energy and enthusiasm for life shine from his every word and action and almost whatever the topic or situation, he will have a story to tell! As Justin Glass, Trustee and Former Director, European-Atlantic Group, Founding Principal, the Institute of Reflection, Publisher and former major events promoter said, “For decades I have respected David Selves as a highly skilled organiser and more than savvy as an entrepreneur, broadcaster, interviewer and moderator of character, but speaking at THE NETWORK, his speech showed a rare skill mixing humour with serious international political issues in a nonpartisan manner. It held and engaged the audience for an hour. “I have been to thousands of speeches over the decades, some of which have been entertaining, some deeply thought provoking, but never before to one that so skilfully and seamlessly achieved both.” A highly experience small businessman and former national board member and regional chairman of the Small Business Bureau, he has experience across many sectors and disciplines. He is a Freeman of the Company of Entrepreneurs and a regular lecturer to business student at the CAPA Institute in London. As an audience host and facilitator, David Bedford of the County Club, Guildford said, “After lunch David took to the floor and hosted and facilitated a 90 minute session on all sorts of topics. Some controversial, some heated, some amusing and all highly entertaining and enjoyable. Debate with David and members went on for a fair few hours in the bar after the main event with David not leaving until 6pm. He had stimulated thought.” His interview style is more akin to Jimmy Young than Jeremy Paxman which results in people saying things they didn’t mean to, perhaps most famously when Henry Bolton, former leader of UKIP, said “I’ve made myself look stupid, haven’t I?”. Whatever the scenario, David will have a story to tell and that back catalogue of experiences runs through the four political faction books that he has written, one of which, Life Goes on Forever, was in the top 40 and some of its prophesies made in the mid eighties have sadly come to pass. As a charity auctioneer Phillipa Mack of the Save the Children Fund said, “What can I say about your performance as an auctioneer at Eastwater House, except sheer brilliance?” A man at ease with himself in all situations, be it interviewing the American Ambassador, chairing an industry conference, raising money for good causes, hosting a discussion, comparing an event or delivering a speech for whatever reasons in venues large and small, palatial or modest – a consummate professional. He brings every event in which he is involved to life and inspires participation. David Selves – Career Summary Entrepreneur – Award Winning Businessman – Company Advisor – Non Executive Director – Risk and Equity Fund Raiser -Angel Investor – Broadcaster – Interviewer – Discussion and Event Chairman – After Lunch and Dinner Speaker – Charity Fund Raiser, having raised over £1m as a charity auctioneer – Event organiser – Serial Networker -Author. Former Chamber of Commerce President – Founding Director Small Business Bureau, set up by David Trippier, Minster for Small Business under Margaret Thatcher – Former Regional Chairman Small Business Bureau – Freeman of the Company of Entrepreneurs – Former Councillor and Parliamentary Candidate – Deputy Chairman London Press Club – Development Ambassador – founder Selves Group David Selves has been an entrepreneur for over 70 years and shows no sign of slowing up. He says “R” is for reinvention not retirement! His first organised business was climbing on a friend’s shoulders to get cigarettes out of a machine on the outside wall of a London greasy spoon cafe, breaking the packets up and selling the cigarettes one by one, for a profit, making his friend his first employee, who he paid in cigarettes! He was just short of his 5th birthday! He learnt a valuable lesson as they became taller and he lost customers! When he left school at 15, he simply knew he wasn’t able to read and write properly, no-one had heard of dyslexia. He was constantly accused of being lazy and stupid; he knew he wasn’t lazy and by the time he talked his way though the 11 plus, interviewed because he got the lowest mark every recorded and the Headmaster of the all-boys school was curious to meet him, he knew he wasn’t stupid. Teaching himself to read using children’s rag books while locked in the loo on his daily 45-minute commute to work, he has subsequently enjoyed a career and life of excitement and fun while overcoming challenge after challenge, always with his cheeky young London smile! His commercial experiences are vast and broad, a lending banker, FTSE 100 Corporate Planner, start-up businessman, business Angel, equity raiser, company adviser and NED. Equally at home in a greasy spoon cafe under the arches, the hustle and bustle of his native London or the peace and quiet of his adopted Dorset, the corridors of power, a London boozer, business settings large and small, sophisticated social events, TV and Radio studios, public platforms and even royal palaces. Once at a small reception at Clarence House for people who had done charitable work, to the astonishment of those around, he casually asked the then Duchess of Cornwall out to lunch! She went. He has written four factional thrillers, one making the top forty, and is currently working with a friend from a successful sixties rock group, on a musical. He has always been sector agnostic, successfully working in many during his career, and having stepped back from front line business management and ownership, he spends his time helping and advising young companies across the board, raising corporate finance, speaking, chairing, running events and raising money for good causes as a charity auctioneer. The most exciting thing in his life is tomorrow, the next, but not last, and unknown challenge!

Why organisations work with Daniel Ek Ek’s solution to the music industry’s piracy crisis was structural, not technical: he gave the major labels equity in Spotify, turning potential vetoes into aligned interests. That approach to neutralising incumbent opposition through deal design is directly applicable to any organisation entering a two-sided or multi-sided market. Spotify’s 2018 NYSE listing was conducted as a Direct Public Offering rather than a traditional IPO – a deliberate challenge to standard investment banking practice that gave existing shareholders more direct liquidity and attracted sustained attention from boards and capital markets executives examining alternatives to conventional listing structures. His perspective on scaling is grounded in nearly two decades of building a single global platform from startup to €1.4 billion operating profit – not advisory work, not a theoretical framework, but a continuous operational record in one of the most contested commercial markets of the past twenty years. Via Prima Materia, Neko Health, and Helsing, Ek is an active participant in how AI is being deployed in sectors – preventative health and defense – where error tolerance is low and the design and governance challenges are substantially different from consumer technology. That gives him a perspective on high-stakes AI implementation that most platform founders do not have. He built Spotify from Stockholm into a company that outcompeted Apple, Amazon, and Google in its core market – making him a directly relevant voice for European and non-US organisations arguing that global technology leadership does not require a Silicon Valley address. Biography highlights Co-founded Spotify with Martin Lorentzon in Stockholm in 2006; platform launched October 2008 across eight European markets including the UK, Germany, and France Served as Spotify CEO for nearly two decades; transitioned to Executive Chairman in January 2026 with co-CEOs reporting to him on long-term strategy and capital allocation Oversaw Spotify’s growth to over 600 million monthly active users and its first full year of operating profit (€1.4 billion) in 2024 Led Spotify’s unconventional NYSE listing via Direct Public Offering in April 2018, bypassing traditional IPO underwriting Named most powerful person in the music industry by Billboard in 2017 Co-founded Neko Health (2018), an AI-driven preventative health scanning company with clinics in Stockholm and London; raised $260 million Series B Founder of Prima Materia (2021), pledging €1 billion in European technology; Chairman of Helsing, a defense AI company valued at €12 billion after Prima Materia led a €600 million funding round in 2025 Early career included CTO at Stardoll, senior technology leadership at Tradera (acquired by eBay), and founding of Advertigo (acquired by TradeDoubler); briefly served as CEO of µTorrent Biography The music industry spent the early 2000s in litigation – chasing peer-to-peer platforms through courts as recorded revenues fell. Daniel Ek’s diagnosis was different: piracy persisted because no legal alternative was good enough to justify paying for it. His answer was Spotify, co-founded with Martin Lorentzon in Stockholm in 2006 and launched across European markets in 2008. Building the platform required resolving a structural problem that most technology founders prefer to avoid: persuading the rights-holders whose content made the platform valuable to participate in their own disruption. Ek structured licensing deals that gave the major labels equity in Spotify, turning potential opponents into financially aligned stakeholders. That decision – contested at the time by both sides of the music industry – was central to Spotify’s ability to secure the agreements it needed to grow. By 2024, the platform had reached 600 million monthly active users and recorded its first full year of operating profit at €1.4 billion. Ek’s approach to public markets was equally unconventional. Rather than a traditional IPO, Spotify listed on the NYSE in April 2018 via a Direct Public Offering, giving existing shareholders more direct access to liquidity and bypassing standard underwriting practice. The move drew sustained attention from boards and capital markets practitioners examining what governance and ownership alternatives actually look like in practice. Since transitioning to Executive Chairman of Spotify in January 2026, Ek has directed his investment vehicle Prima Materia toward a €1 billion commitment to European technology companies. His portfolio includes Neko Health, an AI-powered preventative health company operating clinics in Stockholm and London, and Helsing, a defense AI firm valued at €12 billion after Prima Materia led a €600 million funding round in 2025. Across these ventures, his perspective spans platform economics, AI deployment in high-stakes sectors, and the structural argument that building globally competitive technology companies outside Silicon Valley is achievable – and worth investing in deliberately. Key speaking topics Platform business model design and subscription economics Scaling consumer technology companies at global scale Digital disruption and incumbent stakeholder management AI applications in audio, health, and defense technology Unconventional paths to public markets and capital structure European technology ecosystems and tech sovereignty Leadership transitions in founder-led organisations Ideal for CEOs and founders navigating platform entry or subscription model transformation Boards and executive teams examining capital markets strategy and unconventional listing structures Technology and media executives managing rights, licensing, and platform dependency relationships Chief Strategy Officers and investment leads exploring European deep tech and AI deployment in high-stakes sectors Audience outcomes A first-hand account of how to convert incumbent opposition into platform participation through deal structure – applicable to any organisation entering a two-sided market Practical understanding of what subscription model scaling actually requires: licensing logic, pricing architecture, and the sequencing of market entry across international territories Direct insight into Spotify’s Direct Public Offering – what it was designed to achieve, what it required from the board, and what it means for organisations rethinking conventional listing assumptions A cross-sector perspective on AI deployment in sectors where the consequences of failure are material – health diagnostics, defense technology, and audio personalisation at scale Grounded perspective on building technology businesses in Europe: the structural conditions, the competitive realities, and the case for investing in European tech sovereignty as a deliberate strategy rather than a default

Why organisations work with Costas Markides His “Fast Second” argument runs directly counter to first-mover advantage orthodoxy: established firms should let small entrepreneurial companies take the risk of discovering new markets, then move in as consolidators once a market has been validated. That counter-intuitive thesis – developed with Paul Geroski and shortlisted for the FT/Goldman Sachs Management Book of the Year – changes how organisations think about where to place innovation investment. His framework for “playing two business models at the same time” addresses a structural problem that most strategy advice sidesteps: how a firm competes in its existing market while also contesting the model that is disrupting it. He identifies specific conditions under which this works, and the organisational reasons why it usually fails. A UK Research Excellence Framework impact case study credits his work as the first to identify the “business model” as a concept distinct from product innovation – a distinction that gives organisations a more precise lens for analysing competitive threats and deciding which type of response a given disruption actually demands. His ideas on business model innovation have been formally adopted by Nestlé, Roche, and If Insurance as the basis for executive transformation programmes – documented in the REF 2014 public record, not claimed from a speaker circuit. He has appeared on the Thinkers50 list of the world’s top management thinkers every year since 2005, and was ranked 31st in 2011 – a sustained peer recognition that reflects a body of work rather than a single book cycle. Biography highlights Robert P. Bauman Chair of Strategic Leadership; Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, London Business School (since 1990) MBA and DBA, Harvard Business School; BA (Distinction) and MA in Economics, Boston University Thinkers50 listing every year since 2005; ranked 31st in 2011; named in Forbes.com “Most Influential Management Gurus” 2009 Author of six books including Fast Second (shortlisted FT/Goldman Sachs Management Book of the Year 2005) and All the Right Moves (shortlisted Igor Ansoff Strategic Management Award 2000) Published in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, and Academy of Management Journal Board of Directors, Strategic Management Society; World Economic Forum participant, Davos Biography The hardest question for an established company facing disruption is not whether to respond – it is which response will not destroy the model that made it successful. Costas Markides has spent three decades at London Business School studying exactly that problem, building a body of research that challenges the accepted wisdom on disruption at almost every point. His most counter-intuitive contribution is the “Fast Second” thesis, developed with Paul Geroski: large established companies are structurally poor at discovering radical new markets and should not try to be first. Their role is to move in once a market has been validated – as consolidators, not pioneers. That argument, shortlisted for the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Management Book of the Year, reframes how organisations think about where innovation investment belongs. His subsequent research sharpened the strategic question further. Game-Changing Strategies (2008) and Business Model Innovation (2023) identify the conditions under which an established firm can disrupt its own disruptor – and the structural reasons most firms fail when they try. A UK Research Excellence Framework impact assessment credits his work as the first to distinguish “business model innovation” from product innovation as a separate strategic concept – a distinction now embedded in how companies like Nestlé and Roche have approached their own transformation programmes. Markides holds the Robert P. Bauman Chair of Strategic Leadership and has held a faculty position at LBS since 1990. His appearance on the Thinkers50 list every year since 2005 reflects continuity of contribution rather than a single publication; his most recent book, Diversification in the World of Data and AI (2025), extends his long-running framework into the context of AI-driven market change. Key speaking topics Business model innovation for established firms Strategic response to disruption Corporate entrepreneurship and innovation culture Strategic innovation and new market creation Growth strategy for incumbents Managing two business models simultaneously Diversification strategy in the age of AI Ideal for Chief Strategy Officers and strategy leadership teams at large established companies facing competitive disruption Boards and senior executive teams evaluating major decisions about business model change or market entry Executive education cohorts focused on corporate strategy, innovation leadership, and competitive positioning Transformation leads and heads of innovation at organisations initiating enterprise-wide strategic renewal Audience outcomes A framework for categorising the type of disruption the organisation faces and the range of available responses Understanding of why the most commonly reached-for responses to disruption tend to fail, based on documented research rather than case-study selection bias A practical structure for assessing when and how to pursue two business models simultaneously without fracturing the existing one Clearer distinction between business model innovation and product innovation as strategic challenges requiring different organisational approaches A more accurate mental model of when large established firms can realistically pioneer new markets – and when they should not try

Why organisations work with Christer Holloman He built the playbook he now teaches. As founder and CEO of Divido, he scaled a white-label Buy Now Pay Later platform to 10 countries and an exit into NatWest, raising roughly $50 million from American Express and Sony along the way. His book “Transactional to Transformational: How Banks Innovate” is built on named case studies from Bank of America, BBVA, Citi, Deutsche Bank, ING, J.P. Morgan, Lloyds and Santander, not generic frameworks. He has been on the bank side as HSBC’s first Entrepreneur in Residence, so he speaks to incumbents from inside their own constraints, not as an outsider throwing stones. He works at the live edge of fintech: digital assets, open banking as a commercial play rather than a compliance exercise, and the shift from agentic AI into agentic commerce. Swedish by background, London and New York by career, multilingual, and at ease in a boardroom with both a retail CEO and a risk committee. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Divido (2014-2022); company acquired into NatWest in 2024. Author of “Transactional to Transformational: How Banks Innovate” (Wiley, 2021). Author of “The Social Media MBA” series and “How to Sell Online” (Wiley). Entrepreneur in Residence, HSBC (2022-2023). Co-founder and CEO of sustainable finance platform Credential. MBA, Said Business School, University of Oxford. Forbes contributor on fintech; former tech writer for Sky News. Biography Buy Now Pay Later looked like a retail feature before it looked like an asset class. Divido, the company Christer Holloman founded out of an Oxford MBA thesis in 2014, was one of the first platforms to treat it as infrastructure: a white-label product that banks and lenders could plug into any merchant, in any country, without rebuilding their own stack. By 2022 the business had raised around $50 million from investors including American Express and Sony, operated in 10 markets, and counted Mastercard, BMW and HSBC among its clients. In 2024 it became part of NatWest. That operator experience is the spine of everything he now teaches. After Divido, HSBC made him their first Entrepreneur in Residence, an unusual role that put a founder inside one of the world’s largest banks to challenge how it builds, buys and partners on new technology. It is also the reporting line behind his Wiley book “Transactional to Transformational: How Banks Innovate”, a collection of case studies drawn from named executives at Bank of America, BBVA, Citi, Deutsche Bank, ING, J.P. Morgan, Lloyds, Santander, Standard Chartered and others. The thesis is unsentimental: incumbents can innovate, but only when the operating model, not the PR team, gets redesigned. He has since moved to New York, co-founded the sustainable finance platform Credential, and continued to write for Forbes on fintech. Earlier in his career he launched Glassdoor in Europe for Rich Barton and ran digital product at The Times and The Sunday Times, which gives him a media-trained way of explaining complex regulated products to non-specialist audiences. What senior audiences get is someone who has raised the money, signed the bank partnerships, lived with the compliance questions and then written the book. He is particularly sharp on where AI, digital assets and embedded finance are about to collide inside balance-sheet businesses, and on the specific question of what serious incumbents should do about it. Key speaking topics Fintech and the future of banking Open banking as commercial strategy Digital assets and tokenisation Agentic AI and agentic commerce Buy Now Pay Later and embedded finance Innovation inside regulated industries Scaling a venture from founder to exit Ideal for Bank and insurance executive committees, innovation boards and retail banking leadership CDOs, CIOs and heads of innovation in financial services and large regulated enterprises Fintech, payments and retail finance conferences Corporate venture and M&A teams assessing fintech partnerships or acquisitions Audience outcomes A clear read on how incumbent banks are actually innovating right now, drawn from named case studies rather than consulting templates. Practical judgement on when to build, when to partner with a startup, and when to acquire. A working view of where open banking, digital assets and agentic commerce are converging into the next retail financial product. Founder-level honesty about what it takes to sell into, partner with and exit to a large bank.

Why organisations work with Chris Anderson He wrote the book that gave retail, media and platform strategists a working vocabulary for digital assortment. The Long Tail is still the reference point senior teams reach for when they debate hits versus niches. Three separate books, three separate business-model arguments. Few speakers have published a sustained thesis on assortment, pricing and manufacturing in sequence, each rooted in named cases and data. He ran Wired through its most commercially important decade, winning the National Magazine Award for General Excellence three times. That is an operator’s view of how digital economics hit an established media business, not a consultant’s. He built a drone company out of an open-source community and took it to meaningful commercial scale. Leaders get a first-hand account of how distributed, software-led manufacturing actually works, not a slide about it. His framing has been adopted by boards and strategy teams well beyond technology, from publishing and retail to industrial products, because the underlying economics travel. Biography highlights Editor-in-chief of Wired from 2001 to 2012; the magazine won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2005, 2007 and 2009. Author of The Long Tail (2006), Free (2009) and Makers: The New Industrial Revolution (2012); The Long Tail won the 2007 Gerald Loeb Award for Business Book. Named on Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2007. Co-founder and former CEO of 3D Robotics; founder of the DIY Drones community and founding chairman of the Linux Foundation’s Dronecode Project. Seven years at The Economist covering business and technology from London, Hong Kong and New York; earlier editorial roles at Nature and Science. Physics at George Washington University, graduate study in quantum mechanics and science journalism at UC Berkeley, with research time at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Biography The Long Tail began as a Wired article in 2004 and, by 2006, had become the language strategy teams used to argue about assortment. Anderson’s point was simple and consequential. When shelf space is effectively free, the economics of selling a little of a lot start to rival the economics of selling a lot of a little. Retail, media and platform businesses have been adjusting to that argument ever since. Free and Makers extended the same pattern into pricing and production. Free looked at what happens to revenue models when the marginal cost of a digital copy is close to zero. Makers argued that cheap fabrication, open-source design and online distribution would move parts of manufacturing into the hands of smaller, faster firms. Both books sit on the reading lists of serious commercial strategists for the same reason. They name the mechanism, not just the trend. Anderson is not only a writer about these shifts. He ran Wired for eleven years, the period when the magazine won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence three times, while its print model had to adapt to the internet it was covering. He then co-founded 3D Robotics, built out of the DIY Drones open-source community he started in 2007, and chaired the Linux Foundation’s Dronecode Project. That sequence, from The Economist and Wired to an open-source manufacturing business, is why his view of digital economics is operator-grade. For commercial leaders, the value is a single coherent argument applied to three of the levers they still own: what they sell, how they price it, and where it gets made. Time magazine listed him among its 100 most influential people in 2007; The Long Tail won the Gerald Loeb Award the same year. The recognition matters less than the fact that his frameworks are still the ones boards use to test their strategy in digital markets. Key speaking topics The Long Tail and digital assortment strategy Pricing and revenue models in zero-marginal-cost markets Distributed manufacturing and the Makers economy Open-source communities as commercial engines Drones, autonomous systems and the commercial robotics market Media and content business models in digital markets Technology-led entrepreneurship Ideal for Boards, CEOs and chief strategy officers testing assortment, pricing and production choices against digital economics. Chief commercial, marketing and digital officers in retail, media, publishing and platform businesses. Heads of innovation, product and manufacturing in industrial firms exploring distributed production and open-source hardware. Corporate venture, R&D and transformation leaders assessing drones, autonomous systems and community-driven technology markets. Audience outcomes A sharper read on where long-tail economics do and do not apply in a given business, and what that means for range and merchandising decisions. A working framework for pricing when the marginal cost of the digital component is near zero. A clearer picture of how open-source communities, cheap fabrication and distributed production change the shape of a manufacturing strategy. Named cases from retail, media and hardware that leaders can bring directly into their own board and strategy conversations. A realistic operator’s view of how incumbent businesses adjust when digital distribution reorganises their market.

Why organisations work with Carlos Munoz Two airline company builds from scratch, not one. Vueling taken to IPO in 2006, then Volotea launched in 2011 on a deliberately different commercial model. Few entrepreneurship speakers can point to repeat, verifiable company-building at that scale. Operator credibility on a contrarian model that worked. Volotea targets secondary and medium-sized European cities that the major low-cost carriers avoid, and has scaled to c.2,000 employees and EUR 800 million plus in revenue on that thesis. First-hand perspective on founder-board disagreements about strategy. His 2007 Vueling exit came over a merger he opposed, and he went on to build a second business. Useful material for leadership audiences thinking about conviction, governance and when to walk. Fluent in the strategic language of serious buyers. ICADE undergraduate, Harvard MBA, ex-McKinsey; the commercial arguments land with finance, strategy and board audiences without needing translation. Biography highlights Founder of Vueling Airlines; CEO 2002-2007; took the company public on the Spanish stock market in 2006. Co-founder and CEO of Volotea since 2011, the airline connecting secondary and medium-sized European cities. Volotea has carried more than 55 million passengers since operations began in 2012. Former McKinsey and Company management consultant, San Francisco office, 1998-2000. MBA, Harvard Business School; undergraduate degree in Business Administration, ICADE (Universidad Pontificia Comillas), Madrid. Subject of a Harvard Business School teaching case on Vueling Airlines. Biography Most low-cost carriers in Europe compete for the same hub airports and the same passenger flows. Volotea does not. The airline, co-founded by Carlos Munoz in 2011, was built around the cities the majors had written off: medium-sized and secondary European airports, point to point, bypassing the main hubs. The bet worked. Volotea operates from around 20 bases across France, Italy and Spain, employs roughly 2,000 people, and reported revenue in the EUR 800 million plus range in 2024. More than 55 million passengers have flown the airline since it began operations in 2012. It is his second airline, not his first. Munoz founded Vueling in 2002, served as CEO through its IPO in 2006, and left in 2007 after opposing a merger with Clickair that the shareholders backed. Vueling is today part of IAG and one of the largest low-cost carriers in Europe. The career arc gives him a rare vantage point: two distinct commercial models, one exit driven by strategic disagreement, and a second company built on a thesis the first did not address. The earlier credentials explain how the commercial arguments are structured. A business degree from ICADE in Madrid, a Harvard MBA, and two years at McKinsey in San Francisco analysing low-cost carrier economics; Vueling and Volotea are applied versions of that analysis. The Vueling build has since become a Harvard Business School teaching case. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and founding companies at scale Business model innovation in commoditised industries Challenger strategy against entrenched incumbents Growth strategy in the airline and travel sector Customer experience as a commercial lever Founder conviction, governance and strategic disagreement Ideal for CEOs and founders of challenger businesses competing against scaled incumbents Strategy and commercial leaders rethinking where the company plays Boards and executive teams of travel, transport and consumer services companies Leadership and management development programmes focused on entrepreneurial decision-making Audience outcomes A clearer view of where incumbents are structurally unable to defend, and what that implies for positioning. A worked example of a contrarian commercial model, from thesis through to operational scale. Honest framing of the founder-board tension points that decide whether a strategy actually gets executed. Practical reference points from two separate company builds, not one, for leaders weighing a second act.