Business Strategy & Growth

Why organisations work with Rasmus Ankersen He has actually built the model he talks about. As chairman of FC Midtjylland, the club won three Danish Superliga titles using a data-led recruitment and set-piece method that was later studied across European football. His book The Gold Mine Effect is grounded in seven months of field research inside the world’s most productive talent ecosystems, from Brazilian football academies to Ethiopian distance running, not a desk study of secondary literature. Through Sport Republic, he runs a multi-club investment platform now controlling Southampton FC and Goztepe SK, so the lens on capital allocation, scouting markets and downside management is operational, not theoretical. He gives boards a vocabulary for the awkward conversation about success: how organisations stop learning the moment results turn positive, and what to do about it before the next cycle. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of Sport Republic, owner of Southampton FC and majority owner of Goztepe SK. Co-director of football at Brentford FC, 2015 to 2020, the platform that produced Premier League promotion in 2021. Chairman of FC Midtjylland during a period that included Danish Superliga titles in 2015, 2018 and 2020. Author of The Gold Mine Effect (Icon Books, 2012) and Hunger in Paradise (2016). TEDxManchester speaker on football analytics applied to organisational decision-making. Has delivered keynotes for LEGO, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Boston Consulting Group, Roche, AstraZeneca, Coca-Cola and Cisco. Biography Brentford were a mid-table Championship club when Matthew Benham, Rasmus Ankersen and a small analytics team set out to build a Premier League squad without Premier League money. The same logic was applied at FC Midtjylland in Denmark. Both clubs went on to win, repeatedly, against opponents with bigger budgets and longer histories. That track record is the foundation of Ankersen’s argument to corporate audiences. The bias to overvalue established names and undervalue evidence is not a football problem. It is a recruiting problem, a capital allocation problem, and a strategy problem. His book The Gold Mine Effect, published in 2012 after seven months living inside elite training environments from Kenya to Brazil, makes the case that performance hotbeds are produced, not discovered. His second book, Hunger in Paradise, takes the harder question. Why do successful organisations stop learning. He frames complacency as the silent failure mode of a winning strategy, and argues that the work of leadership is to keep the system honest after the results turn good. The thesis has resonated with senior teams at LEGO, Google, BCG, Roche and others who have brought him in. Today he runs Sport Republic, the investment vehicle that acquired Southampton FC in 2022 and now operates a multi-club model across England, Turkey and Belgium. The day job means his frameworks are tested in real time, against real capital, in one of the most ruthless performance markets there is. Key speaking topics High-performance culture Talent identification and development Data-driven decision-making Avoiding complacency in successful organisations Performance environments and ecosystems Lessons from elite sport for business Leadership and decision-making under pressure Ideal for CEOs and executive teams in scaled organisations entering a new performance cycle CHROs and talent leaders rebuilding recruitment and assessment models Strategy and corporate development leaders responsible for capital allocation and M&A Boards examining why a winning strategy is starting to plateau Audience outcomes A sharper view of where the organisation is overpaying for proven names and underinvesting in evidence. A working definition of complacency that can be diagnosed in the business, not just lamented. Concrete examples of how data and judgement combine in high-stakes decisions, drawn from Brentford, Midtjylland and Southampton. A reframing of what a “performance environment” is, and why most attempts to import one fail.

Why organisations work with Ramon Vullings A named, written methodology for cross-industry innovation, set out in Not Invented Here (BIS Publishers, with Marc Heleven), that gives innovation teams a shared language and a repeatable process rather than a one-off creativity session. The ideaDJ framework: a specific operating model for combining and adapting external ideas across silos, used in executive programmes at Antwerp Management School, Fontys and IE Business School. A working bridge between corporate and academic practice. Former PwC Consulting and IBM operations leader, now executive professor at three European business schools, with material that holds up in front of senior practitioners. Chair of the European Association for Creativity and Innovation, with access to a peer network of innovation specialists across Europe and a long view on what is actually working in the field. A clear position on failure tolerance, framed through “nearlings” rather than abstract permission to experiment, that gives leadership teams something concrete to take into governance and incentive design. Biography highlights Author of four management books, including Not Invented Here: Cross-Industry Innovation (BIS Publishers, with Marc Heleven) and Creativity in Business. Executive Professor at Fontys University of Applied Sciences, Antwerp Management School, and IE Executive Education at IE Business School in Madrid. Chairman of the European Association for Creativity and Innovation (EACI). Advisor to the Global Innovation Institute (GInI). Former Global CRM Operations Manager at PwC Consulting and EMEA CRM Learning and Knowledge Lead at IBM Business Consulting Services. Founder of innovation consultancy Twinkeling and co-founder of innovation network 21 Lobsterstreet. Biography Most original ideas are not original. The strongest commercial innovations of the last twenty years are recombinations of methods, business models and design patterns lifted from one industry and reapplied in another. Ramon Vullings built a career arguing this point and turning it into a method that innovation teams can actually run. The argument is set out in Not Invented Here: Cross-Industry Innovation, co-authored with Marc Heleven and published by BIS Publishers. The book gives leaders a structured way to find working answers in adjacent sectors and translate them into their own context, and it has been translated into five languages and sold over 60,000 copies. Three further books, including Creativity in Business and Great Leaders Mix and Match, extend the same logic into idea generation, leadership behaviour and complex problem-solving. The credibility behind the method is operational, not only academic. Before founding his consultancy Twinkeling, Vullings ran global CRM operations at PwC Consulting and led EMEA CRM learning and knowledge at IBM Business Consulting Services after the IBM acquisition. That background shows up in the work: the focus is on processes leaders can sponsor, governance models that tolerate productive failure, and innovation as a managed discipline rather than a creativity workshop. He now teaches the method as Executive Professor at Fontys, Antwerp Management School and IE Business School, chairs the European Association for Creativity and Innovation, and advises the Global Innovation Institute. For senior teams trying to break a sector-bound innovation pattern, his contribution is a vocabulary, a framework, and a network that have all been pressure-tested on practitioners. Key speaking topics Cross-industry innovation The ideaDJ framework and remix strategy Innovation methodology and idea management Cross-silo leadership Creativity in business Risk tolerance and productive failure Ecosystems and innovation partnerships Ideal for Chief innovation officers, CSOs and corporate strategy leads running innovation portfolios that have plateaued. R&D and product leadership teams in mature industries seeking analogies from outside their sector. Executive education cohorts and leadership programmes in regulated or engineering-heavy industries. Heads of transformation looking to embed innovation as a managed discipline rather than an event series. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for cross-industry innovation, including ideaDJ, copy-adapt-paste, and “nearlings”. Examples of analogies transferred between sectors that audiences can map onto their own portfolio. A clearer test for which external ideas are worth importing and which break on contact with the operating model. Concrete governance and incentive moves to raise tolerance for productive failure without losing discipline. A method audiences can run inside their teams without external facilitation.

Why organisations work with Ram Charan The Leadership Pipeline gives boards and CHROs a six-passage diagnostic framework – built from research across more than 100 global corporations – for selecting, developing, and assessing leaders at each organizational level. Most leadership development programmes describe this kind of architecture in principle. Charan operationalized it. His co-authored book Execution made a specific argument that most organizations resist: strategy failure is a discipline failure, not a strategy failure. Spending 150 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list suggests the argument landed. The named disciplines it identifies – talent selection, operating reviews, and decision accountability – give executive teams something to act on, not just reflect on. Client relationships at GE (approximately four decades) and DuPont (approximately three) are not testimonials. They are evidence of how a working model holds up under repeated stress at the apex of large, complex organizations. He originated business acumen as a teachable, measurable organizational capability rather than an executive personality trait. The curriculum built around What the CEO Wants You to Know has been adopted at major corporations as a tool for developing commercial judgment across all levels of leadership. His work on corporate governance, including Boards That Lead (co-authored with Dennis Carey and Michael Useem), gives directors specific tools for managing the boundary between governance and management – one of the most contested and consequential relationships in any large organization. Biography highlights Harvard Business School MBA and DBA; graduated Baker Scholar with high distinction Former faculty member at Harvard Business School, Northwestern University (Kellogg School of Management), Wharton School, and GE’s Crotonville Leadership Institute Co-author of Execution (with Larry Bossidy, 2002) – number 1 Wall Street Journal bestseller and New York Times bestseller for 150 weeks Author and co-author of more than 30 books with over 4 million copies sold in more than twelve languages; publisher record via ram-charan.com Distinguished Fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources Contributor to Harvard Business Review, Fortune, BusinessWeek, Time, and Chief Executive; listed on Thinkers50 Long-term advisor to GE, DuPont, Bank of America, KLM, Verizon, Novartis, 3M, and the Tata and Aditya Birla Groups Biography Most organizations can articulate their strategy clearly. Fewer can explain why it consistently fails to arrive at the front line. Ram Charan has spent four decades working inside that gap – as an advisor to CEOs and boards at GE, DuPont, Bank of America, and some forty other major corporations across multiple continents. His 2002 book Execution, co-authored with former Honeywell CEO Larry Bossidy, made an argument that is still unsettling to senior teams: the problem is not the strategy, it is the absence of named disciplines for making it real. The book identified three of those disciplines – talent selection, operating reviews, and decision accountability at the CEO level – and spent 150 consecutive weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. The Leadership Pipeline, developed with Stephen Drotter and James Noel, pressed the argument further. It defined six discrete passages through which leaders must develop, with distinct skills, time allocation, and values required at each stage. The model is now used as a standard succession architecture at major corporations worldwide. Charan trained at Harvard Business School, graduating Baker Scholar with high distinction before joining its faculty. He later taught at Northwestern’s Kellogg School, at Wharton, and at GE’s Crotonville Leadership Institute. He left full-time academia in 1978 to consult – a decision shaped by a conviction, present from the start, that the real problems of business are not solved in classrooms but inside the operating decisions that organizations make every day. His body of work – more than thirty books, including What the CEO Wants You to Know, Boards That Lead, and Global Tilt – is structured around a single question: what does it actually take to build an organization that delivers? Directors, CHROs, and CEO teams use his frameworks not because they are theoretically elegant but because they name things that were previously unnameable – and give senior leaders something concrete to do on Monday morning. Key speaking topics Execution as organizational discipline Leadership Pipeline and succession architecture Business acumen as a teachable capability Corporate governance and board-CEO relationship Growth strategy and profitability fundamentals Global competition and emerging market strategy Talent development and leadership readiness Ideal for CEOs and board directors working on succession planning, governance accountability, or the gap between strategic intent and operational performance CHROs and talent leaders designing or overhauling leadership development and succession frameworks Senior executive teams where strategy is consistently better-articulated than delivered Leadership development programmes at global corporations seeking an established, research-backed architecture Audience outcomes A diagnostic framework for identifying where the leadership pipeline is blocked and what specific actions unblock it A clear distinction between strategy and execution, and the named disciplines – talent, decision-making, and operating process – that close the gap Practical tools for assessing leadership readiness at each stage of the organizational hierarchy A framework for structuring the board-CEO relationship and understanding when governance becomes leadership An understanding of business acumen as a measurable, developable skill applicable across organizational levels – not just at the top

Why organisations work with Pierre-Yves Gerbeau A first-hand operating account of one of the most public corporate rescues in modern British memory, told by the executive who took the role on day one of the crisis. A career built inside live consumer assets at scale, from Disneyland Paris park operations through the X-Leisure portfolio he grew from roughly 70 million pounds to more than 1.3 billion pounds before the sale to Land Securities. Practical content for boards facing a hostile press cycle, a sceptical workforce and demanding political stakeholders at the same time, drawn from the Dome and the London Resort theme park CEO seat. A teaching practitioner, lecturing on the London Business School MBA programme and as Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship and Corporate Rescue at Imperial College, so the operating stories carry an analytical frame. Biography highlights Chief Executive of the New Millennium Experience Company from February 2000, with the Millennium Dome reaching more than six million visitors during its year of operation. Vice-President of Park Operations and Attractions at Euro Disney, with operational ownership of ticketing, safety, maintenance and queue management. Co-founder and Chief Executive of X-Leisure, operator of the Xscape centres, sold to Land Securities after a decade of growth. Chief Executive of London Resort Company Holdings, June 2019 to December 2022, leading the Paramount IP licensing arrangement for the proposed Kent resort. President of the French Ice Hockey Federation, appointed October 2021 and re-elected in 2022. Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship and Corporate Rescue at Imperial College, lecturer on the London Business School MBA programme, MBA from Sciences Po. Biography The Millennium Dome in January 2000 was the most publicly mocked asset in Britain. Tony Blair’s flagship project had opened to negative press, queues that did not move and visitor numbers well below plan. On 5 February that year Pierre-Yves Gerbeau, recommended by Disney CEO Michael Eisner, took over as Chief Executive of the New Millennium Experience Company. The Dome went on to attract more than six million visitors before its scheduled close. The Dome story is the headline, but the operating CV underneath it is what makes the perspective unusual on a stage. Gerbeau ran park operations at Disneyland Paris through its difficult early years, with direct responsibility for the unglamorous mechanics of a theme park: ticketing, safety, maintenance, queue flow. He then built X-Leisure, the platform behind the Xscape indoor ski and entertainment centres, growing it from roughly 70 million pounds of assets under management in 2003 to more than 1.3 billion pounds by 2007, and eventually selling to Land Securities. Subsequent roles have kept him close to the same set of problems. As CEO of London Resort Company Holdings from 2019 to 2022, he led negotiations for the Paramount IP deal that anchored the proposed Kent theme park before resigning in December 2022. In 2021 he was elected President of the French Ice Hockey Federation, a return to the sport in which he competed professionally before an ankle injury ended his playing career. The teaching work sits alongside the operating one. Gerbeau lectures on the London Business School MBA programme and is Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship and Corporate Rescue at Imperial College, holding an MBA from Sciences Po. The argument he carries into a senior boardroom is built from the seat: turnaround is an operating discipline executed under public pressure, not a slide deck about resilience. Key speaking topics Corporate turnaround and rescue Transformational leadership under public scrutiny Change management in consumer-facing assets Entrepreneurial discipline at scale Customer experience in live-operations businesses Risk management and crisis response Stakeholder management with political and media exposure Ideal for Boards and executive committees inheriting a publicly criticised asset, brand or programme Operating leaders running large customer-facing platforms in leisure, retail, hospitality and travel CEOs and transformation directors managing a turnaround under regulatory or political stakeholder pressure Senior teams in scale-up businesses moving from founder energy to institutional operating discipline Audience outcomes A working model of how an incoming CEO sequences the first weeks of a public-asset turnaround A clear view of where operating discipline and brand recovery interact, drawn from the Dome and X-Leisure A sharper read on managing political, media and workforce stakeholders simultaneously Reusable lessons on building and selling a leisure property platform at scale Confidence to make unpopular operating calls when values and commercial reality both demand them

Why organisations work with Philip Hesketh A behavioural framework, the Seven Drivers of Motivation, published by Wiley and built specifically for sales, pricing, and client conversations, not generic influence theory. Direct operator credibility: he ran a 150-person advertising agency with clients including the BBC, Nestle, Disney, and HSBC, so the case studies come from his own P&L. A specific, repeatable answer to the pricing question. His “How to hold high prices and fees” session is built around what makes buyers concede on value rather than discount. Two Amazon number-one books on persuasion, giving the speaker a public reference point the audience can revisit, share with their teams, and use as a working text. Biography highlights Founder and managing partner of Advertising Principles, Leeds, grown over 17 years to £48m in billings with 150 staff and clients including the BBC, Nestle, Disney, and HSBC. Author of two Amazon UK number-one bestsellers on persuasion, “How to Persuade and Influence People” and “Persuade”, both published by Capstone/Wiley, and a third book, “The Golden Rules for a Happy Life”. Psychology graduate of Newcastle University and former Procter & Gamble salesperson, named P&G Salesman of the Year. Vistage UK “Outstanding Performer” and “Most Requested Speaker”; TEC Australia “Overseas Speaker of the Year” 2009. Visiting Fellow of Newcastle University. Has delivered keynote and training programmes for sales, professional services, and leadership audiences across more than 20 countries. Biography Most pricing pressure does not come from competitors. It comes from how sales and account teams handle the conversation when a client pushes back. The behavioural science of why people say yes, why they concede on value, and why they stay loyal sits at the heart of that conversation, and it is the territory Philip Hesketh has worked in for two decades. Hesketh is a Newcastle University psychology graduate who started in sales at Procter & Gamble, where he was named Salesman of the Year. In 1986 he founded Advertising Principles in Leeds and built it over 17 years into a £48m agency with 150 staff and clients such as the BBC, Nestle, Disney, and HSBC. The frameworks he now teaches were developed inside that business, not bolted on afterwards. His two Wiley books, “How to Persuade and Influence People” and “Persuade”, set out the Seven Drivers of Motivation: a working model of what moves buyers, decision-makers, and colleagues to act. Both reached number one on Amazon UK in their categories. The model is built for commercial use, with direct application to pricing, negotiation, and client relationship work. Vistage UK named him “Outstanding Performer” and “Most Requested Speaker”; TEC Australia named him “Overseas Speaker of the Year”. Beyond the awards, the practical proof is repetition: chief executive groups book him back, which only happens when the content moves the conversations leaders are actually having about value, fees, and customers. Key speaking topics Psychology of persuasion and influence Pricing and value negotiation Client acquisition and retention Sales performance and conversion Behavioural drivers of buyer decisions Customer experience and loyalty Ideal for CCOs, sales directors, and revenue leaders facing margin compression Professional services partners and client-facing leaders in agencies, law, accountancy, and consulting Account management and key client teams in B2B environments Leadership audiences at Vistage, YPO, EO, and similar peer-group settings Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the seven psychological drivers behind buyer decisions Specific techniques for holding price and defending fees in negotiation A sharper read on why clients defect, and what conversations keep them Practical questions and conversational moves teams can put to work the next day A clearer separation between price objections that are real and price objections that are tested

Why organisations work with Peter Thiel Zero to One gives leadership teams a concrete test for whether their strategy is genuinely new or a costly form of imitation – a distinction most strategy processes are designed to obscure rather than force. His operating record spans two structurally different technology businesses – PayPal in consumer finance and Palantir in national security data analytics – which gives his claims about technology-led company building an unusually wide evidential base. The “contrarian question” – what important truth do very few people agree with you on? – functions as a practical diagnostic for strategic differentiation, not a rhetorical warm-up. Leadership teams leave with a tool they can apply immediately. As the first outside investor in Facebook and a Founders Fund partner whose bets include SpaceX, Airbnb, and Stripe, his argument for backing unconventional ideas over consensus picks is grounded in pattern recognition, not theory. His argument that definite optimism – a concrete plan for the future – outperforms “optionality” as a leadership posture is a direct challenge to how most boards approach long-term planning. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of PayPal; led the company to its acquisition by eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002 Co-founder and Chairman of Palantir Technologies since 2003; the company went public in 2020 and reached a market capitalisation exceeding $300 billion First outside investor in Facebook, acquiring approximately 10% of the company for $500,000 in 2004; board member until 2022 Co-founder and partner at Founders Fund, with a portfolio including SpaceX, Airbnb, Stripe, and Lyft Author of Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future (2014) – #1 New York Times bestseller and widely adopted reference text in investor and founder communities Holds a BA in Philosophy and a JD from Stanford University; has taught at Stanford Law School and serves on the Hoover Institution’s Board of Overseers Founder of the Thiel Fellowship, which provides $100,000 grants to young entrepreneurs who forgo university to build companies World Economic Forum Young Global Leader; TechCrunch Crunchie Award, Venture Capitalist of the Year Biography The most expensive strategic mistake a leadership team can make is to compete at full intensity for something not worth fighting over. Most organisations never ask that question. Peter Thiel has spent three decades asking it – and the answer, across PayPal, Palantir, and Founders Fund, has been the same: the most valuable companies do not win competitions; they make them irrelevant. Thiel co-founded PayPal in 1998, led it as CEO through its 2002 acquisition by eBay for $1.5 billion, and then co-founded Palantir Technologies, a data analytics firm now serving governments and major institutions worldwide. He was also the first outside investor in Facebook, acquiring roughly 10% of the company for $500,000 in 2004. His Founders Fund portfolio – built on a philosophy of backing what others won’t – includes SpaceX, Airbnb, and Stripe. His 2014 book Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future made the underlying argument explicit. The most valuable businesses go from zero to one – they create something genuinely new rather than competing for a larger share of something that already exists. Going from one to n, Thiel argues, is replication. Competitive markets grind down returns until no one profits. The strategic question worth asking is not how to win – it’s whether to compete at all. Thiel chairs Palantir’s board and is a partner at Founders Fund. He holds a BA in Philosophy and a JD from Stanford, where he has taught at the law school and serves on the Hoover Institution’s Board of Overseers. He founded the Thiel Fellowship, which grants $100,000 to young founders who leave university to build companies – a direct expression of his conviction that conventional paths often foreclose the unconventional thinking that creates real value. Key speaking topics Creative monopoly and competitive strategy Technology company building and venture capital Contrarian thinking and differentiated investment Artificial intelligence and the future of technology Long-term strategic planning and definite optimism Entrepreneurship and company formation The stagnation of technological progress Ideal for Executive and board leadership teams examining competitive strategy and business model differentiation Chief Strategy Officers, transformation leads, and senior leadership forums in technology-intensive industries Founder and investor communities at the intersection of innovation and capital allocation C-suite audiences focused on AI, data infrastructure, and long-term technology strategy Audience outcomes A concrete framework – the zero-to-one distinction – for evaluating whether a strategy is genuinely new or a structured form of competitive imitation Understanding of why monopoly, correctly defined, is the goal of lasting business strategy, and what the four durable sources of monopoly advantage are A practical diagnostic tool – the contrarian question – for identifying differentiated insight in their own market or category A grounded perspective on how power-law logic in venture capital applies to internal resource allocation and portfolio thinking A clearer view of where technology is genuinely advancing, where it has stalled, and what that means for decisions made today

Why organisations work with Peter Sheahan A defined commercial framework. Matter and the Edge of Disruption give boards a concrete way to locate where their existing profits, reach, and reputation can be redeployed to create new markets, not just defend old ones. Operating credibility, not just theory. He has built three companies and runs Karrikins Group, advising leadership teams at Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Wells Fargo, Hyundai, Pfizer, and Cardinal Health on transformation execution. Authority recognised by his peers. The National Speakers Association ranked him among its 25 Most Influential Speakers and inducted him as the youngest member ever into its Hall of Fame. A clear thesis on commoditisation. He gives commercial and sales leadership a usable argument for moving organisations off price competition and onto value, trust, and indispensability. A senior-room voice on the human side of growth. His work on culture, attraction, and retention is grounded in the same commercial logic, treating people strategy as a driver of competitive position rather than an HR programme. Biography highlights Founder and Group CEO of Karrikins Group, a global growth and transformation consultancy. Author of seven books, including Matter, Flip, Generation Y, and Making it Happen; published by Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, and Amplify. Inducted into the National Speakers Association Hall of Fame as its youngest-ever member. Named one of the 25 Most Influential Speakers in the World by the National Speakers Association. 2,500+ keynote presentations delivered across more than 40 countries. Advisory and keynote client roster including Apple, Microsoft, IBM, AT&T, Wells Fargo, Hyundai, Pfizer, Cardinal Health, Chick-fil-A, and BP. Biography The companies that sustain growth do not protect what made them successful. They identify the place where their existing reach, reputation, and profits give them permission to build the next market, and they move before they have to. That place is what Peter Sheahan calls the Edge of Disruption. The thesis is laid out in Matter: Move Beyond the Competition, Create More Value, and Become the Obvious Choice, co-authored with Julie Williamson, PhD. The book studies more than thirty companies that achieved indispensability by leaning into disruption rather than defending against it. It is the intellectual spine of his consulting practice at Karrikins Group, where he advises Fortune 500 leadership teams on transformation, growth, and commercial repositioning. His earlier books cover the same terrain from different angles. Flip set out the case for counterintuitive thinking when markets refuse to behave predictably. Generation Y and Making it Happen addressed how the workforce side of a business has to evolve in step with its commercial ambitions. Across the work, the argument is consistent: growth comes from identifying where the most important problems are converging, then committing operational resources before the rest of the market sees them. The credibility behind the argument is operating, not academic. He has built three companies, delivered more than 2,500 presentations across 40+ countries, and counts Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Wells Fargo, Pfizer, and Cardinal Health among the leadership teams he has worked with. The National Speakers Association named him among its 25 Most Influential Speakers in the World and inducted him as the youngest-ever member of its Hall of Fame. Key speaking topics Growth strategy under disruption Business model innovation and the Edge of Disruption Competitive advantage when products and services commoditise Culture as a commercial driver Workforce attraction and retention Trusted-adviser positioning and winning on value Ideal for CEOs, chief strategy officers, and chief growth officers planning the next horizon of competitive position Boards and executive teams confronting margin compression or post-acquisition integration Chief commercial officers, sales leadership, and revenue teams shifting from price to value CHROs and chief people officers tying talent strategy to commercial outcomes Audience outcomes A defined view of where the organisation’s Edge of Disruption sits, and what would need to be true to commit to it A working argument for moving customers, talent, and internal narrative away from price as the basis of choice Sharper language for the leadership team on what genuine differentiation looks like in their category Renewed conviction in the commercial logic of culture, talent, and organisational design decisions

Why organisations work with Peter Hinssen His Never Normal concept and the seven transformation levers of The Uncertainty Principle give leadership teams a shared language for permanent disruption and a structured way to allocate innovation effort across multiple time horizons, a practical alternative to the generic instruction to “be more innovative.” His background runs the full organisational arc, from three technology exits (including a stock-exchange listing) to an Entrepreneur in Residence role at McKinsey & Company and a former non-executive board seat at Belfius Bank, which means he speaks with equal credibility to founders, operators, and board members. The Uncertainty Principle (Lannoo, 2025), endorsed by the Chairman of MIT CISR, gives boards seven concrete levers of transformation for treating systemic uncertainty as a strategic input. His client roster spans TSMC, Novo Nordisk, AstraZeneca, BMW, Unilever, PepsiCo, LVMH, Microsoft, and Bloomberg, which gives him cross-sector pattern recognition on how the innovation-operations tension shows up differently depending on industry structure and ownership context. Biography highlights Founder, nexxworks, an innovation company that runs masterclasses and innovation tours for established organisations Author of six books, including The Uncertainty Principle (Lannoo, 2025) Serial entrepreneur: founded e-COM (acquired by Alcatel-Lucent), Streamcase (acquired by Belgacom), and Porthus (listed on the stock exchange in 2006, acquired by Descartes) Entrepreneur in Residence, McKinsey & Company, focused on digital and technology strategy Visiting Lecturer, London Business School Former Non Executive Board Member, Belfius Bank; former board member, Mediahuis LinkedIn Top Voice Biography Most companies are built to deliver predictable results, which is precisely the wrong design when disruption becomes the climate rather than the weather. Peter Hinssen calls this state the Never Normal: a condition of permanent change in which the only constant is uncertainty. Budget cycles reward certainty. Governance structures penalise experiments that take longer than a financial year to pay off. The result is a structural gap between operational excellence and the capacity for genuine reinvention. His body of work is a sustained answer to that gap. The Never Normal reframes constant disruption as an operating condition to design for, not an exceptional period to wait out. The Day After Tomorrow, his 2017 book, introduced a now widely used way to think across three time horizons. Leaders fund today’s operations, tomorrow’s plans, and the reinvention that decides who is still relevant a decade out. That argument carries weight because Hinssen has lived the full arc of a company’s life. He founded and scaled three technology firms, including Porthus, which listed on the Belgian stock exchange in 2006 before Descartes acquired it. He served as Entrepreneur in Residence at McKinsey & Company, was a Non Executive Board Member at Belfius Bank, and today runs nexxworks, the innovation company he founded. He is a Visiting Lecturer at London Business School. His sixth book, The Uncertainty Principle (Lannoo, 2025), makes the case most directly: uncertainty is not a risk to hedge but the raw material from which bold organisations build advantage. The book works through seven levers of transformation, including strategy, foresight, organisational design, culture, innovation, risk appetite, and the changing nature of work. Dr Peter Weill, Chairman of MIT CISR, calls it a guide to navigating between the forces of pessimism and possibility. Key speaking topics Innovation strategy and multi-horizon investment The Never Normal and permanent disruption The Uncertainty Principle and decision-making under uncertainty Organisational reinvention and the Phoenix model Artificial intelligence and augmented intelligence Digital transformation and business-model change Leadership under permanent uncertainty Ideal for Boards and C-suite teams steering established businesses through structural disruption Chief Innovation Officers and transformation leads who own the innovation-operations tension Strategy teams that need a shared basis for multi-horizon investment decisions Large incumbents across consumer goods, healthcare, financial services, technology, and industrials facing a reinvention mandate Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for investing across three time horizons: today, tomorrow, and the bolder reinvention beyond A way to treat uncertainty as a strategic input rather than a threat, drawn from The Uncertainty Principle A reframing of AI as a structural accelerant of the innovation-operations challenge, not a standalone technology decision Clarity on the organisational design and governance choices that separate companies that reinvent from those that get disrupted

Why organisations work with Peter Fischer Brown He brings an operator’s view of brand strategy. Years inside Orange Business and KPMG mean he reads brand as a P&L and procurement question, not a marketing artefact. He teaches B2B value creation at Esade Business School, so the frameworks he uses in the room have been pressure-tested with MBA and executive cohorts who push back hard. His membership of the Medinge Group gives him a serious intellectual home for “brands with a conscience” arguments, separate from the agency circuit that usually owns the topic. He works in English, German and Spanish across Europe, the Middle East and Latin America, which makes him useful for groups whose brand and culture questions cross those markets. His coaching qualification from Henley and his executive coaching practice mean he can move between keynote framing and small-group leadership work in the same engagement. Biography highlights Founder of FischerBrown, an international brand and corporate strategy consultancy. Former Director of Strategy for Orange Business and Ambassador of Strategic Branding for the Orange Group; former Manager and Consultant at KPMG. Academic Collaborator at Esade Business School, Barcelona, teaching MBA and Executive programmes on B2B value creation and leadership with conscience. Member of the Medinge Group; contributing author on the Slow Food Movement in “Brands with a Conscience” (Medinge Group, 2016). Contributor to the Radix think tank on European centre-ground politics and democratic participation. MA in Modern Languages and Literature and MPhil in International Relations, both University of Cambridge; Professional Certificate in Executive Coaching, Henley Business School. Biography Most “purpose” programmes break the moment they hit procurement, pricing or a difficult supplier decision. The brand line survives in the campaign and disappears in the operating model. Peter Fischer Brown works at exactly that seam, where a values-led brand position has to be defended in B2B negotiations, capital allocation and the everyday behaviour of senior leaders. He spent the formative part of his career inside the operating side of two demanding environments. At KPMG he advised on corporate and marketing strategy. At Orange he was Director of Strategy for the B2B business and Ambassador of Strategic Branding for the wider France Telecom group, running brand and strategy across European, Middle Eastern and Latin American markets. That history is why his brand frameworks read as commercial first and editorial second. Today he runs FischerBrown and teaches at Esade Business School in Barcelona, where his MBA and Executive sessions focus on B2B value creation and on leadership with conscience. The Medinge Group, of which he is a long-standing member, gives him a serious intellectual home for the latter; his chapter on the Slow Food Movement in the group’s 2016 book “Brands with a Conscience” is a worked example of how a values-led proposition can become a category position. The work that sits outside the brand spine sharpens it. As a Radix contributor he writes on the “radical centre” in European politics; he is a qualified executive coach through Henley; his linguistic and musical training (Cambridge, Trinity College London) feeds the cross-disciplinary keynotes he gives on cosmopolitanism and the art of business. Senior teams book him when they need someone who can argue brand and purpose in the same register as a CFO, and then sit with the leadership team afterwards. Key speaking topics Brand and corporate strategy Brands with a conscience and purpose-led positioning B2B value creation Leadership with conscience Sustainability and the brand promise Cosmopolitanism and cultural identity as competitive advantage The art of business: learning from the creative and performing arts Ideal for CMOs and brand directors in B2B and consumer businesses under pressure to make a purpose claim operational CEOs and strategy leads working through a brand or positioning reset Boards and leadership teams wrestling with ESG and purpose credibility HR and executive development leads commissioning leadership-with-conscience programmes for senior cohorts Audience outcomes A sharper view of where brand sits in the operating model, not only in marketing A vocabulary for discussing purpose in front of a sceptical CFO or procurement audience Specific examples of values-led brands that have held up commercially, and ones that have not A clearer framing of leadership credibility when a business is being asked to behave consistently across markets

Why organisations work with Peter Diamandis He has built the institutions that defined modern moonshot thinking. XPRIZE, Singularity University and the International Space University are his, not references he cites. Diamandis turned a USD 10 million prize into the catalyst for a private space industry now valued in the hundreds of billions. Boards get a practitioner view of how incentive design unlocks markets. His three New York Times bestsellers with Steven Kotler give executives a shared vocabulary, abundance, exponential, convergence, that travels easily into strategy offsites and board reviews. Through Abundance360 and BOLD Capital Partners he is in continuous contact with the founders building the next wave of AI, longevity and space companies, which keeps the content current rather than retrospective. He frames technology as a commercial and human opportunity, not a threat narrative, which lands with leadership teams that need their organisation to move from caution to considered ambition. Biography highlights Founder and Executive Chairman, XPRIZE Foundation, originator of the Ansari XPRIZE won by SpaceShipOne in 2004. Co-founder and Executive Chairman, Singularity University, with Ray Kurzweil. Co-founder, International Space University, 1987. New York Times bestselling author of Abundance, BOLD and The Future Is Faster Than You Think, with Steven Kotler. Named by Fortune in 2014 as one of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders. Founder or co-founder of more than 25 companies across space, longevity, venture capital and education, including Planetary Resources, Human Longevity Inc, Celularity, Space Adventures and Zero Gravity Corporation. Holds degrees in molecular genetics and aerospace engineering from MIT and an MD from Harvard Medical School. Biography Most boards plan five years ahead while the technologies reshaping their markets are doubling in capability every eighteen months. The result is strategy that ages faster than it ships. This is the territory Peter Diamandis has spent three decades mapping, first as the entrepreneur who built XPRIZE to prove that private teams could reach space, then as the co-founder of Singularity University with Ray Kurzweil to teach leaders how to think about what compounds. The Ansari XPRIZE, announced in 1996 and won in 2004 by SpaceShipOne, was an early demonstration of his core thesis. A well-designed incentive can move a market faster than a government programme. That logic now sits behind the private space industry and a generation of XPRIZE competitions in fields from carbon removal to longevity. Boards meet a practitioner who has used the same mechanism repeatedly at scale, not a commentator describing it. His three bestsellers with Steven Kotler, Abundance, BOLD and The Future Is Faster Than You Think, give leadership teams a working language for AI, robotics, biotech and the convergence between them. Through Abundance360, his community of founders and investors, and BOLD Capital Partners, he keeps a direct line to the companies operationalising these technologies. The keynote draws on what he is funding and seeing now, not on case studies that have already cycled through the business press. His training is unusual for a futurist. Molecular genetics and aerospace engineering at MIT, an MD from Harvard Medical School, and the co-founding of the International Space University while still in medical school. That depth is what allows him to talk credibly to a healthcare board about longevity and to an industrials executive about space, in the same week, without the content collapsing into generality. Key speaking topics Exponential technologies and business strategy Artificial intelligence and convergence with robotics, biotech and energy Innovation, moonshot thinking and incentive prize design Future of work and leadership in accelerating environments Longevity, healthspan and the science of human performance Space, frontier industries and new commercial markets Entrepreneurship and the building of category-defining ventures Ideal for CEO and board audiences setting strategy under exponential technology pressure Innovation, R and D and corporate venture leaders rethinking how bets are made Healthcare, life sciences and longevity leadership teams Founders, scale-up CEOs and investors at private capital and family office gatherings Audience outcomes A working sense of which technologies are converging, on what timeline, and what that means for their industry A vocabulary for moonshot thinking and 10x targets that survives the trip back to the executive team Concrete examples of how incentive design and prize mechanisms have unlocked markets that traditional R and D could not A clearer view of where AI, longevity and space are creating new revenue categories rather than only disrupting existing ones Renewed appetite among senior leaders for ambition that is grounded in what is now technically achievable

Why organisations work with Pedro Moneo Structural early sight of emerging technology. As publisher of MIT Technology Review in Spanish and Portuguese since 2008, he sees breakthrough research before it reaches mainstream corporate strategy. A working model for moving innovation out of pilot. Opinno has executed digital transformation, AI, and innovation programmes for large enterprises across Europe and Latin America since 2008. The work shows what survives contact with the corporate operating model. Engineering rigour applied to commercial decisions. His training as a nuclear engineer at the French Atomic Energy Commission, followed by reactor research at Argonne National Laboratory, gives him a system-design lens on technology adoption. Direct exposure to innovation markets outside the usual US-UK circuit. Opinno operates from offices across Spain, Italy, France, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Argentina, giving him client experience that few speakers can offer. Biography highlights CEO and founder of Opinno, a global innovation consultancy with more than 230 consultants and twelve offices across Europe and Latin America. Publisher of MIT Technology Review in Spanish and Portuguese since 2008; former online publisher of Harvard Business Review in Spanish. Senior Advisor to NASA on cross-industry innovation summits. World Economic Forum Young Global Leader (2016), Eisenhower Innovation Fellow (2014), and Aspen Institute Adler Fellow (2016). Co-founder of the Madrid chapter of the XPrize Foundation. Member of the Board of Advisors at ESCP Business School. Featured as a published case study at IESE Business School. Biography Opinno was founded in Silicon Valley in 2008, the week Lehman Brothers collapsed. Pedro Moneo’s bet was that the crisis would force every large company to reckon with technologies they had been avoiding. He was right. The firm now operates from twelve offices across Europe and Latin America, working in the gap between emerging technology and the corporate operating model. His route to that role is less obvious than the bio of most innovation consultants. He trained as a mechanical engineer at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, then as a nuclear engineer at the French Atomic Energy Commission. He started his career on reactor research at Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago. Strategy consulting at Accenture and a deputy directorship at FEDIT, Spain’s largest private R&D network, followed before he started the company. Two adjacent roles anchor his view of emerging technology. Since 2008 he has been the publisher of MIT Technology Review’s Spanish and Portuguese editions. The role gives him sustained early sight of the research that eventually reaches corporate strategy. Since 2016 he has advised NASA on cross-industry innovation summits. The World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader in 2016, and the Eisenhower Foundation made him an Innovation Fellow in 2014. Inside a corporate boardroom, the question he keeps asking is the one most innovation programmes avoid. What does the operating model need to look like for this technology to generate revenue? The answers come from Opinno’s enterprise work across Spain, Italy, France, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Argentina. Key speaking topics Innovation as a managed corporate discipline Digital transformation in established enterprises Artificial intelligence in the operating model Open innovation and ecosystem design Emerging technology and corporate strategy The Iberian and Latin American innovation landscape Ideal for Boards and CEOs trying to operationalise AI and emerging technology beyond pilot stage Chief Innovation Officers, CTOs, and transformation leads inside large corporates Executive teams in Spanish and Portuguese-speaking markets who need a credible local voice Industry bodies and ecosystem builders shaping national innovation policy Audience outcomes Which emerging technologies are close to commercial maturity, and which are not The specific reasons most corporate innovation programmes fail at the transition from lab to operating model Worked examples from Opinno’s enterprise engagements across Europe and Latin America The texture of corporate innovation in Spanish and Portuguese-speaking markets, where most US and Northern European speakers cannot offer first-hand evidence

Why organisations work with Paolo Scaroni He has run two of Europe’s largest energy companies, Enel from 2002 to 2005 and Eni from 2005 to 2014, through privatisation, restructuring and the early phase of the energy transition. He brings a working view of natural gas as a transition fuel from inside the boardrooms that bought, sold and shipped it, not from the outside as an analyst. His current chairmanship of Enel and nine years as Deputy Chairman of Rothschild & Co give him an unusually current read on capital allocation, M&A and governance in the European energy sector. He has sat on the boards of Veolia, BAE Systems, ABN AMRO, Alstom, Assicurazioni Generali and the London Stock Exchange, which gives him cross-sector reference points few energy speakers can offer. Discussions are pragmatic rather than ideological, useful for boards trying to reconcile net zero commitments with capital, supply and political reality. Biography highlights CEO of Enel from May 2002 to May 2005 and CEO of Eni from 2005 to 2014. Chairman of Enel since May 2023; Chairman of A.C. Milan since July 2018. Deputy Chairman of Rothschild & Co Group from May 2014 to May 2023. CEO of Pilkington plc in London from 1997 to 2002, leading the turnaround of one of the world’s largest flat glass manufacturers; earlier CEO of Techint from 1985 to 1996. Past non-executive director at Veolia Environment, BAE Systems, ABN AMRO, Alstom and Assicurazioni Generali; former Vice Chairman of the London Stock Exchange. Cavaliere del Lavoro (2004) and member of the Légion d’honneur (2007); Bocconi graduate and Columbia Business School MBA. Biography European energy is being asked to do three things at once: decarbonise, stay secure and remain affordable. Few executives have made those trade-offs at the scale Paolo Scaroni has. As CEO of Enel from 2002 and then of Eni from 2005 to 2014, he ran Italy’s two largest energy companies through privatisation, restructuring and the first wave of the climate agenda. At Enel he abandoned the multi-utility model and pushed the group back into core energy, set up a dedicated wind business, and brought the company into the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. At Eni he tilted the portfolio away from oil toward natural gas, framing gas as a transition fuel, and the group’s net worth rose from EUR 39 billion to EUR 61 billion over his tenure. Eni was added to the Carbon Performance Leadership Index in 2012. After Eni he spent nine years as Deputy Chairman of Rothschild & Co, advising on European deals across the energy and industrial sectors, before being appointed Chairman of Enel in May 2023. He has chaired A.C. Milan since 2018, including through the club’s 2022 Scudetto and the change of ownership to RedBird Capital. Past non-executive seats at Veolia, BAE Systems, ABN AMRO, Alstom, Assicurazioni Generali and the London Stock Exchange give him a working view of governance across regulated industries. His public position on the energy transition is unusually direct: renewables alone will not get Europe to its CO2 targets, energy efficiency and nuclear have to be part of the answer, and gas is the realistic bridge. That argument carries weight because he had to allocate capital against it, not just write about it. Key speaking topics Energy transition and energy security Geopolitical and regulatory risk in energy markets Natural gas, nuclear and the realistic path to net zero Large-scale transformation in legacy industries Board governance and stakeholder management in regulated sectors Capital allocation in capital-intensive industries European industrial competitiveness Ideal for Boards and executive committees in energy, utilities, industrials and infrastructure CFOs, heads of strategy and corporate development weighing transition capex Investor and lender audiences focused on European energy and industrial credit Senior leadership teams reframing decarbonisation strategy against geopolitical risk Audience outcomes A grounded read on where European energy security and the transition timetable actually meet. A sharper view of how natural gas, nuclear and renewables fit together in a credible decarbonisation plan. Boardroom-tested judgement on geopolitical and regulatory risk in capital-intensive industries. A reference frame from someone who has chaired and run companies on both sides of the energy table.