Business Strategy & Growth

Why organisations work with Michael Grade He has run three of the most scrutinised cultural institutions in Britain and turned each one around under public, political, and shareholder pressure. Few business leaders have a comparable record of operating in the spotlight. He brings the rare combination of operator and regulator. Having sat on both sides of the table at the BBC, Channel 4, ITV, and Ofcom, he can talk credibly to a board about how regulators actually think. He is a working authority on talent-led businesses. Grade built his career around commissioning, retaining, and managing creative talent at LWT, Channel 4, and ITV, and that perspective transfers directly to professional services and knowledge-economy firms. He sits in the House of Lords as Baron Grade of Yarmouth and chairs Ofcom, giving him a current view of the regulatory pressures shaping media, technology, and competition policy in the UK. He is a recognised figure of the Royal Television Society, a Fellow since 1991, and one of the most quoted commentators on the British broadcasting industry across four decades. Biography highlights Chairman of Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, since May 2022. Executive Chairman of ITV plc, 2007 to 2009, brought in to restructure the company through the financial crisis. Chairman of the BBC Board of Governors, 2004 to 2006, appointed in the aftermath of the Hutton Report. Chief Executive of Channel 4, 1988 to 1997, where he commissioned and acquired hits including Friends, Frasier, and ER. Controller of BBC One, 1984 to 1986, and Director of Programmes at London Weekend Television before that. Non-executive Chairman of Pinewood Shepperton Film Studios from 2000 to 2016, and Chairman of Camelot Group from 2002 to 2004. Created Baron Grade of Yarmouth in 2011, appointed CBE in 1998, and Fellow of the Royal Television Society since 1991. Author of the 1999 autobiography “It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time” (Macmillan). Biography The BBC was bruised, ITV was losing money in a recession, and Channel 4 was a young challenger looking for a commercial identity. At different points across forty years, Michael Grade was asked to fix each one. He is the only person to have run all three of Britain’s major public-service broadcasters and then ended up chairing their regulator, Ofcom. His operating record is specific. As Chief Executive of Channel 4 from 1988 to 1997, he gave the channel a commercial spine while protecting its public-service brief, acquiring Friends, Frasier, and ER and building the schedule that defined its 1990s identity. As Chairman of the BBC from 2004, he steadied an organisation under political fire after the Hutton Report. As Executive Chairman of ITV from 2007, he restructured the company through the financial crisis. The thread is the same: large, scrutinised, talent-driven organisations under pressure to perform commercially without losing legitimacy. That tension, between brand, regulator, shareholder, and creative workforce, is now the standard operating environment for many sectors beyond media. Grade has lived inside it for four decades. He sits in the House of Lords as Baron Grade of Yarmouth, was appointed CBE in 1998, became a Fellow of the Royal Television Society in 1991, and chairs Ofcom on a four-year term running to April 2026. His autobiography, “It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time,” was published by Macmillan in 1999. Key speaking topics Leadership of large institutions under public scrutiny Managing talent-driven businesses Media, broadcasting, and the regulatory landscape Crisis leadership and corporate restructuring The future of British public-service broadcasting Boardroom strategy in regulated industries Ideal for Chairs and CEOs of regulated, brand-sensitive businesses (financial services, media, telecoms, utilities) Boards facing reputational, political, or regulatory pressure Leadership audiences in talent-led professional services firms Audience outcomes A working frame for leading organisations whose performance is judged in public, not only on the P&L. A practitioner’s view of how regulators read a company, from someone who now sits in that chair. Concrete lessons from three of the most-watched corporate turnarounds in British media. A clear-eyed account of how to manage talent-driven cultures without losing commercial discipline.

Why organisations work with Michael G Jacobides He is the academic most directly associated with ecosystem strategy as a formal discipline. His Strategic Management Journal paper “Towards a Theory of Ecosystems” is one of the most-read articles the journal has published, and is the reference point others build on. He gives leadership teams a working language for a question they keep asking badly. Are we an orchestrator, a complementor, or a component, and what does each role earn under AI. His policy work gives the room a regulatory lens most strategy speakers cannot offer. He served as Chief Expert Advisor on the Digital Economy to the Hellenic Competition Commission and contributes to the World Economic Forum’s AI Governance Alliance. He has been ranked on the Thinkers50 list of the world’s top 50 management thinkers in four consecutive cycles since 2019, which is the credential boards recognise without needing to be briefed. His advisory base, BCG Henderson Institute and Evolution Ltd, keeps the content tested against live corporate decisions rather than against the conference circuit. Biography highlights Sir Donald Gordon Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Professor of Strategy, London Business School. Thinkers50 ranked management thinker in 2019, 2021, 2023 and 2025; Strategy Award shortlist, 2019. Co-Editor, Industrial and Corporate Change. Author of “Towards a Theory of Ecosystems” (Strategic Management Journal) and “How to Compete When Industries Digitize and Collide” (California Management Review, article-of-the-year). Academic Advisor to the BCG Henderson Institute; Lead Advisor of Evolution Ltd; contributor to the World Economic Forum’s AI Governance Alliance. Former Chief Expert Advisor on the Digital Economy, Hellenic Competition Commission. Visiting Scholar, Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Regular contributor to Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Financial Times and Forbes; commentator for BBC and CNN. Biography The boundary between industries is no longer the boundary between competitors. A bank now competes with a phone, a car company with a software platform, a retailer with an ad network. Jacobides has spent two decades building the academic framework that explains this, and turning it into language strategy teams can use. His paper “Towards a Theory of Ecosystems” in the Strategic Management Journal is the reference point most other ecosystem writing now builds on. The follow-up in California Management Review, on competing as industries digitise and collide, won the journal’s article-of-the-year and is widely used inside corporate strategy functions. The work is academic in origin and operational in use. That dual register is the reason boards book him. He holds the Sir Donald Gordon Chair at London Business School, co-edits Industrial and Corporate Change, and has been ranked on the Thinkers50 list of the world’s top management thinkers across four cycles. He also advises the BCG Henderson Institute, leads the advisory boutique Evolution Ltd, and contributes to the World Economic Forum’s AI Governance Alliance. His former role as Chief Expert Advisor on the Digital Economy to the Hellenic Competition Commission means he reads platform and AI regulation as a participant, not a spectator. What a senior buyer gets in the room is a strategist who can take an executive team from “AI is reshaping our industry” to a specific decision about where in the new value architecture the firm should sit, what it should orchestrate, what it should cede, and what regulators will let it own. Key speaking topics Ecosystem strategy and value migration Generative AI and competitive advantage Digital platforms and industry convergence Orchestrator, complementor and component positioning AI governance and competition policy Business model reinvention under digital disruption Boardroom strategy in technology-driven industries Ideal for Boards and group executive committees redrawing strategy as AI and platforms reshape their industry Chief Strategy Officers, Chief Digital Officers and Heads of Corporate Development assessing ecosystem positioning Banking, telecommunications, FMCG, healthcare and industrial leadership teams facing convergence pressure Private equity and investor audiences pricing platform exposure and ecosystem risk Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for ecosystem roles: orchestrator, complementor, component, and what each earns A clearer view of where AI shifts value inside the audience’s specific industry, not in general A framework for testing current strategy against the way industry boundaries are actually moving Sharper questions for the next board strategy session on platform exposure and regulatory risk A read on how competition policy and AI governance will constrain the playing field

Why organisations work with Michael Cusumano He wrote the book leaders cite when they argue about platform strategy. The Business of Platforms, with Gawer and Yoffie, is the reference text for how Apple, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft built their positions, and where new entrants can still find leverage. He has spent three decades studying how software companies actually make money, from Microsoft Secrets through The Business of Software to current work on generative AI as the next platform layer. He bridges Western and Japanese industry. Two Fulbright Fellowships, ten years working in Japan, and a former dean role at Tokyo University of Science give him a working view of competitive dynamics across both markets. He is operator-adjacent. Roughly 100 consulting engagements with organisations including NASA, the World Bank, and the Bank of England, plus a dozen public-company board seats, mean the framework is pressure-tested against real strategic decisions. Biography highlights SMR Distinguished Professor of Management at MIT Sloan; Faculty Director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship; Co-Director of the MIT System Design and Management Program. Author or co-author of 14 books, including The Business of Platforms (2019), Strategy Rules (2015), Staying Power (2010), Platform Leadership (2002), and Microsoft Secrets (1995). Strategy Rules has been translated into 18 languages; Microsoft Secrets into 14. Writes the Technology Strategy and Management column for Communications of the ACM; former editor-in-chief and chairman of MIT Sloan Management Review. Recipient of the 2019 Abbie Griffin High Impact Award from the Journal of Product Innovation Management; IEEE Software 25th-Anniversary Top Pick. Princeton (BA), Harvard (PhD); two Fulbright Fellowships; former Special Vice President and Dean of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Tokyo University of Science. Biography Platform businesses follow a different physics from product businesses. The companies sitting at the top of every market-cap league table, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta, did not get there by selling better products. They built two-sided markets, opened controlled access to complementors, and used network effects to compound advantage. Cusumano’s work, with Annabelle Gawer and David Yoffie, is the reference scholarship on why this works and when it does not. His position at MIT Sloan reflects three decades of close study of the software industry. Microsoft Secrets, written with Richard Selby in 1995, was the first inside account of how a software company actually shipped product at scale. Platform Leadership followed in 2002, naming the pattern Intel, Microsoft, and Cisco had used to organise entire industries around themselves. The Business of Platforms, in 2019, extended the argument into the era of Amazon, Google, and Apple, separating what worked from what failed. He is also one of the few strategy scholars who can credibly write about Silicon Valley and Tokyo in the same paragraph. Two Fulbrights, ten years working in Japan, a former dean role at Tokyo University of Science, and fluent Japanese have produced a comparative view of how Western and Asian firms approach scale, software, and ecosystem competition. The 2019 Abbie Griffin High Impact Award and an IEEE Software 25th-Anniversary Top Pick recognise the influence of that work inside the academic and engineering communities. The current focus is generative AI as a new platform for applications development, which he argues will redraw competitive lines in software again, this time around model providers, infrastructure layers, and application developers. For boards trying to read where value will sit in the next stack, that is the live question, and the framework he has spent thirty years sharpening is the one being applied to it. Key speaking topics Platform strategy and ecosystem competition The economics of software businesses Generative AI as a platform layer Digital strategy in winner-take-most markets Innovation and entrepreneurship inside large firms Competing across US and Japanese technology markets Lessons from Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs Ideal for Boards and executive committees stress-testing platform or ecosystem strategy CSOs and corporate development leaders evaluating how generative AI reshapes competitive position Technology and product leadership at firms moving from product to platform models CEO summits and senior leadership programmes covering digital strategy and software economics Audience outcomes A working framework for deciding when to compete as a product and when to open a platform. A clear read on why some platforms compound and others collapse, with the named cases that prove the pattern. Sharper questions to bring to AI strategy debates, focused on where value accrues across the stack. A comparative view of how leading US and Japanese firms have built and defended platform positions.

Why organisations work with Sir Michael Arthur He has sat on both sides of the table that boards now worry about: thirty-eight years inside the British Foreign Office at the most senior level, then eight years inside Boeing as a vice president and council member. He led the Maastricht Treaty negotiating team and the EU Single Market legislation team. When he speaks about how European policy is actually made, he is describing rooms he was in. As President of Boeing International he was the first non-American on the Executive Council, with operational responsibility for Boeing in 65 countries. That is rare ground for a former diplomat to occupy. His four years as High Commissioner in New Delhi give boards a Europe specialist who is also fluent on India, at a moment when very few people credibly cover both. He speaks German and French and held the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. On Berlin, he is read inside Berlin. Biography highlights British Ambassador to Germany, 2007 to 2010. British High Commissioner to India, 2003 to 2007. Director General for Europe and Economic Affairs, Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Led the Maastricht Treaty negotiating team and the EU Single Market legislation team. Senior Vice President of Boeing and President of Boeing International, 2019 to 2023; first non-American member of the Boeing Executive Council. Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG); recipient of the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Board of Directors, Stimson Center; Non-Executive Director of a Tata Consultancy Services UK subsidiary; co-founder of The Ambassador Partnership LLP. Biography Most boards are now exposed to political decisions they cannot price. Tariffs, sanctions, industrial policy, export controls, the next German coalition, the next Indian budget. The standard inputs (bank research, consultant briefings, the FT) tell you what happened. They rarely tell you what the people who made the decision were trying to achieve, and what they will do next. Sir Michael Arthur has spent his career on the inside of those rooms. As British Ambassador to Germany from 2007 to 2010 and High Commissioner to India from 2003 to 2007, he ran two of the UK’s most consequential bilateral relationships at a moment when both countries were redefining their place in the global economy. Earlier he led the Maastricht Treaty negotiating team and the team that wrote the EU Single Market legislation. The European architecture that companies now operate inside is partly his handiwork. What sets him apart from the diplomatic-speaker norm is what came next. In 2014 he joined Boeing as President of Boeing UK and Ireland; in 2019 he became Senior Vice President of Boeing and President of Boeing International, the first non-American on the Boeing Executive Council. For four years he carried operational responsibility for the company in 65 countries and 18 regional offices. He left the diplomatic register and learned the executive one. The result is a speaker who can move between a board’s geopolitical question and its commercial answer without losing precision in either direction. He sits on the Board of Directors of the Stimson Center, on the board of a Tata Consultancy Services UK subsidiary, and co-founded The Ambassador Partnership LLP. He is a fluent German and French speaker and holds the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Key speaking topics Germany, the Eurozone and the European political economy UK and EU relations after Brexit India as a strategic partner for Western business Transatlantic relations and the US-Europe-China triangle International negotiation and corporate diplomacy Political risk inside global supply chains Ideal for Boards and executive committees with material exposure to Europe, India, or transatlantic policy. Heads of strategy, government affairs, and corporate affairs at multinationals. Industrial, aerospace, defence, and financial services leadership teams managing political risk. Investor and partner gatherings where senior decision makers want a credible read on Berlin, Brussels, New Delhi, and Washington in the same room. Audience outcomes A grounded read on what Berlin and Brussels are likely to do next, from someone who has been on both sides of those negotiations. A clearer view of India as a commercial partner, drawn from four years running the UK’s mission in New Delhi. A useful frame for thinking about political risk as an operational variable, not a footnote in the strategy deck. A sharper sense of how diplomatic and commercial logic interact inside large international firms.

Why organisations work with Martin McCourt He has run the playbook most boards are still arguing about: taking a single-product, single-market business into more than 60 international markets while protecting the founder’s creative engine. He grew Dyson profits past £300m and crossed £1bn in revenue in 2011, with 80% of the business coming from outside the UK by the time he left. He is one of very few British CEOs who has personally established subsidiaries in the US, Japan, Switzerland, Austria and Germany, and won market leadership in most of them, including the US. He chairs Joseph Joseph and COMPO and sits on the board of Weber, which keeps him close to live boardroom decisions in the design-led consumer and homewares businesses he spent his career scaling. Named UK Business Leader of the Year at the 2010 National Business Awards, recognised for running a company described as the standout performer of the recession. Biography highlights CEO of Dyson for 15 years, leading the move from a single-product UK operation into more than 60 international markets. Took Dyson revenue past £1bn in 2011, with profits above £300m and 80% of revenue from outside the UK. Established Dyson subsidiaries in the US, Japan, Switzerland, Austria and Germany, winning market leadership in most including the US. Earlier senior commercial roles at Mars, Duracell, Toshiba and Pelikan across more than 40 years in manufacturing, design, sales and marketing. UK Business Leader of the Year, 2010 National Business Awards. Currently Chairman of Joseph Joseph and COMPO, a non-executive director of Weber, and a Visiting Professor at Aston Business School. Earlier chair and board roles include Glen Dimplex, the world’s largest electrical heating manufacturer, alongside Tharsus, Lightfoot, Pure Electric, FreeFlow Technologies and Learning Curve Group, several taken through to successful exit. Biography Dyson was a British engineering business with one famous product and one home market when Martin McCourt joined as CEO. Fifteen years later, 80% of the revenue was coming from outside the UK, profits had passed £300m, and the company had crossed £1bn in sales for the first time in 2011. That outcome did not happen by accident. McCourt designed and ran the international strategy that took Dyson into more than 60 markets, building subsidiaries from scratch in the US, Japan, Switzerland, Austria and Germany and winning market leadership in most of them. He moved manufacturing to Asia while increasing skilled UK jobs, and he kept the commercial machine running so that James Dyson could stay focused on inventing. The career underneath that work matters. Before Dyson, McCourt spent more than two decades in senior commercial roles at Mars, Duracell, Toshiba and Pelikan, learning how branded consumer businesses scale and where they break. That history is why he can speak to the practical mechanics of growth, not just the headline outcome. In 2010 he was named UK Business Leader of the Year at the National Business Awards, recognised for running what was described as the standout business of the recession. That work continues at board level. In September 2025 he became Chairman of Joseph Joseph, the British design-led homewares brand, having advised co-founder Richard Joseph in the company’s early years. He also chairs COMPO, the European organic gardening business, sits on the board of Weber in Chicago, and holds a Visiting Professorship at Aston Business School. Key speaking topics International scaling of product-led businesses Building consumer brands across multiple markets The CEO and founder relationship British manufacturing and global competitiveness Innovation-driven growth Leadership through rapid expansion Clean-technology and industrial investment Ideal for CEOs and boards of founder-led or product-led businesses planning international growth Chief Commercial Officers and international MDs scaling consumer brands Industrial and manufacturing leadership teams considering global market entry Leadership programmes for senior operators in product, design and engineering-led companies Audience outcomes A clear-eyed view of what it actually takes to move a single-market business into 60-plus markets A working model for the CEO and founder partnership in inventor-led companies Specific lessons on entering and winning major international markets, drawn from the US, Japan and Europe A sharper sense of where British manufacturing competes and where it does not Boardroom-grade thinking on innovation, capital allocation and long-horizon growth

Why organisations work with Martin Lindstrom He built his reputation on primary research, not commentary. The fMRI study behind Buyology covered 2,000 consumers across five countries; the fieldwork behind Small Data covered 2,000 families across more than 70 countries. He gives senior teams a method, not a slogan. Small data is a working approach for finding the unspoken consumer signal that quantitative research routinely misses. He has advised brands across categories most consultants never touch in the same year, from Pepsi and Nestle to Burger King, Lowe’s, LEGO, and Disney, which means his diagnoses translate across very different commercial contexts. He treats internal bureaucracy as a brand problem. The Ministry of Common Sense names a tension every CEO recognises: the gap between what the company promises customers and what its own processes allow employees to deliver. His authority is independently signalled. TIME’s 100 Most Influential People, repeated Thinkers50 rankings, and a Wall Street Journal verdict on Brand Sense as one of the five best marketing books ever written are not bureau claims; they are matters of public record. Biography highlights Founder and chairman of Lindstrom Company, advising Fortune 500 clients including Pepsi, Nestle, Google, Burger King, Lowe’s, LEGO, Disney, and Unilever. Named to TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in the Scientists and Thinkers category. Multiple-time Thinkers50 ranked thinker, including positions of #18, #36, and #20 in successive listings. Author of seven New York Times bestsellers, translated into roughly 60 languages, including Buyology, Brandwashed, Small Data, Brand Sense, and The Ministry of Common Sense. Columnist for TIME, Fast Company, and Harvard Business Review; recurring contributor on NBC’s TODAY show. Featured in Morgan Spurlock’s documentary The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (2011). Biography The fMRI study behind Buyology scanned the brains of 2,000 consumers across five countries to test what advertising and branding actually do inside the human head. Most of what the marketing industry believed about why people buy did not survive the data. That study, and the books that followed, made Martin Lindstrom one of the few branding voices senior leaders take seriously on the science of consumer decision-making. He runs Lindstrom Company, a brand and culture transformation firm whose client list reads as a cross-section of the global economy: Pepsi, Nestle, Google, Burger King, Lowe’s, LEGO, Disney, Unilever. The work is not pitch theatre. It is rebuilding brand strategy around evidence drawn from ethnographic fieldwork, neuroscience, and the unguarded behaviour of real customers in their own homes. His Small Data method came out of more than a decade visiting families in over 70 countries, looking for the small inconsistencies that point to unmet consumer needs. The thesis is direct. Big data tells you what is happening at scale. Small data tells you why, and where the next product or positioning idea actually lives. It is a working method, used inside the Lindstrom Company practice, not a publishing concept. The Ministry of Common Sense extends the same instinct inward. Lindstrom argues that most large companies have engineered themselves into a state where employees cannot do the obvious right thing for a customer without breaching a process. Strip the bureaucracy, restore common sense, and brand performance follows. Buyers who book him for the marketing thesis often find the organisational thesis is the one their executive team keeps quoting back six months later. Key speaking topics Brand strategy and consumer neuroscience Small data and ethnographic customer insight Culture transformation and corporate common sense Customer experience and behavioural decision-making Marketing effectiveness in the AI era Future of retail and physical-digital strategy Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders rebuilding propositions around customer evidence rather than category convention. CEOs and COOs whose internal processes are eroding the customer experience their brand promises. Strategy, innovation, and customer insight teams looking for a working method to find unmet needs. Global leadership conferences and senior offsites where the brief is commercial reinvention. Audience outcomes A clearer reading of why current consumer research keeps producing the wrong answers, and what to use instead. A practical introduction to small data as a method for surfacing unmet customer needs. A direct view of where internal bureaucracy is quietly killing brand and commercial performance. Named examples from Fortune 500 engagements that translate into questions a leadership team can ask the next morning.

Why organisations work with Martin Glenn He has run the P&L at four large consumer businesses and a national governing body, so brand arguments arrive with operator credibility, not agency theory. The Walkers story is a working case study, not an anecdote: he took share from roughly 30 percent to over 60 percent and built the Lineker campaign that still defines the category. He has done the hard version of culture change at the FA, including a 40 percent revenue lift and a record commitment to women’s football, while the senior England teams reached the 2018 World Cup semi-final. He led the United Biscuits turnaround through to a clean exit to Yildiz Holdings in 2014, which gives boards the rare combination of brand instinct and a private-equity-grade financial outcome. He is one of the few UK CEOs to have reached the top through marketing, which makes him useful when a board needs to rewire how the marketing function is positioned and resourced. He chairs PGMOL through one of the most publicly scrutinised reform programmes in English sport, and chaired Chapel Down through its admission to AIM and 2025 strategic review. Biography highlights Former Chief Executive of The Football Association, 2015 to 2019. Former CEO of United Biscuits, Birds Eye Iglo, and President of PepsiCo UK and Ireland. Architect of the Walkers crisps growth story, including the Gary Lineker advertising campaign. Chair of Professional Game Match Officials Limited since January 2024, the body that runs every referee in English professional football; Chair of the Football Foundation since 2020. Former Chair of Chapel Down Group, England’s largest winemaker, 2020 to 2025; oversaw the company’s admission to AIM in December 2023. Author of “The Best Job in the World”; President of The Marketing Society, 2014 to 2017; PPE graduate of Merton College, Oxford. Biography Walkers was a regional crisps brand in 1992. By the time Martin Glenn finished with it, it held more than 60 percent of the UK market and the Gary Lineker campaign had become the longest running advertising property in the country. That growth story is the spine of his career and the reason boards still bring him in. He spent fifteen years at PepsiCo, ending as President of PepsiCo UK and Ireland, before moving into private equity as CEO of Birds Eye Iglo and then United Biscuits, which he sold to Yildiz Holdings in December 2014. Each role asked the same question in a different setting: how do you grow a mature consumer business when distribution is solved and the next point of share has to come from the brand. In 2015 he answered a different version of the question at The Football Association. Over four seasons he restructured the organisation, oversaw a 40 percent rise in revenue, put a record investment behind the women’s game, and worked on the culture at St George’s Park that fed England’s run to the 2018 World Cup semi-final. He left at the end of the 2018-19 season into a portfolio of board roles. As Chair of Chapel Down from 2020 to 2025 he refocused the business onto premium sparkling wine and took it through its admission to AIM in December 2023. Since January 2024 he has chaired Professional Game Match Officials Limited, the body responsible for every referee in English professional football, helping the executive modernise an organisation that operates under permanent public scrutiny. He also chairs the Football Foundation, the UK’s largest sports charity. He is a PPE graduate of Merton College, Oxford, a former President of The Marketing Society, and the author of “The Best Job in the World”, which sets out the Walkers playbook in detail. The through-line is unusual: a CEO who came up through marketing and treats brand as the operating system of the business rather than a downstream function. Key speaking topics Brand-led growth in mature consumer markets Marketing as a route to general management Turnarounds and private equity exits Culture change inside national institutions The CEO operating model for FMCG businesses Leading governance reform under public scrutiny Ideal for CMOs, CEOs and boards in FMCG, retail and consumer health weighing brand investment against margin pressure. Chairs and CEOs of sports bodies, federations and member organisations facing structural reform. Private equity portfolio companies preparing for a brand-led value creation plan or exit. Senior marketing leaders being positioned for general management or P&L roles. Audience outcomes A clear view of how brand investment shows up in market share and enterprise value, drawn from the Walkers and United Biscuits numbers. A working model for the marketer-to-CEO transition, including what marketing leaders typically have to unlearn. A candid account of leading culture change inside a national institution under public scrutiny. Specific lessons on turnaround sequencing, from cost discipline through to brand reinvestment and exit.

Why organisations work with Martin Baily He has held the chair that briefs a US president on the economy. Few speakers can describe how macro policy, financial regulation and productivity actually intersect from inside that seat. His current Brookings work with Federal Reserve Board economists on generative AI as a general-purpose technology gives boards a sober, evidence-led read on the productivity case, distinct from vendor and consultancy framing. Twenty years inside the McKinsey Global Institute on cross-country productivity research means he can tell a European board how its growth problem differs from the US one, with the data to back it. As co-chair of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Financial Regulatory Reform Initiative and a member of the Squam Lake Group, he reads the financial regulation agenda the way an operator does, not the way a lobbyist does. His written record, from “Innovation and the Productivity Crisis” to “Transforming the European Economy”, gives clients a referenceable thesis, not a deck. Biography highlights Chairman, President’s Council of Economic Advisers, 1999 to 2001, and Cabinet member under President Bill Clinton. Senior Fellow Emeritus, Brookings Institution; Bernard L. Schwartz Chair in Economic Policy Development. Co-author, “Transforming the European Economy” (Peterson Institute, 2004), Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2005. Co-author, “Innovation and the Productivity Crisis” (Brookings Institution Press, 1988). Principal, McKinsey & Company’s Global Institute (1996 to 1999); senior advisor to the McKinsey Global Institute since 2002. Co-chair, Financial Regulatory Reform Initiative, Bipartisan Policy Center; senior advisor, Albright Stonebridge Group. Biography Productivity growth is the variable that decides whether wages can rise, debt is sustainable, and capital earns a return. It has been weak across most advanced economies for two decades, and the explanation is contested. Martin Baily has spent his career inside that contest, from the White House, from McKinsey’s Global Institute, and from Brookings. He chaired President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1999 to 2001 and sat on the Council from 1994. He holds the Bernard L. Schwartz Chair in Economic Policy Development at Brookings and is a senior advisor to the McKinsey Global Institute, where he was a principal in the late 1990s during the Institute’s foundational comparative productivity work. His co-authored books, “Innovation and the Productivity Crisis” with Alok Chakrabarti and “Transforming the European Economy” with Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, set out a consistent thesis: productivity weakness is rarely a single mechanical problem; it is the cumulative drag of weak innovation diffusion, protected incumbents and policy that subsidises stasis. The European book was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title in 2005. Recent work at Brookings, with Federal Reserve Board economists David Byrne and Eugenio Soto and Brookings colleague Aidan Kane, examines whether generative AI qualifies as a general-purpose technology and where, in finance and other sectors, the productivity dividend will actually land. He co-chairs the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Financial Regulatory Reform Initiative and sits in the Squam Lake Group of financial economists who write on systemic risk and reform. Key speaking topics US and global productivity growth Financial regulation and systemic risk The macroeconomic case for generative AI US economic policy and the Federal budget outlook European competitiveness and structural reform Social Security and pension reform Ideal for Boards and audit committees pricing financial regulation and macro risk into strategy CFOs and chief economists at banks, insurers and asset managers Senior policy and government affairs leadership tracking US economic policy Strategy and transformation leaders building the AI productivity business case Audience outcomes A clear read on where productivity growth is actually coming from, and where it is not A grounded view on which generative AI productivity claims are supported by evidence and which are not An informed perspective on the live US financial regulatory agenda and its implications for capital and risk A comparative frame for European versus US growth performance and the policies that move it

Why organisations work with Mark Roe His published research identifies the specific political forces – interest groups, legislative bargaining, regulatory path-dependence – that determine how corporations are governed in different national systems, giving boards and investors a structural map that economic analysis alone does not provide. Missing the Target (Oxford, 2022) dismantled the dominant short-termism narrative with economy-wide data, offering executives and policymakers a corrected diagnosis of why corporate investment patterns have changed – and where the real policy levers sit. His analysis of too-big-to-fail dynamics explains how implicit government guarantees distort corporate structure and shield management from market discipline, a framework directly relevant to financial institutions, their regulators, and the firms exposed to systemic counterparty risk. Two decades of commentary in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and Project Syndicate means his arguments have been tested in public, not just in academic journals – the positions he takes in a boardroom are the same ones he defends in the financial press. His current research on the transformation of US public firms (fewer companies, greater concentration of profit and market power) reframes a debate that directly affects M&A strategy, capital allocation, and regulatory risk. Biography highlights David Berg Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, since 2001 Author of four books published by Oxford University Press, Princeton University Press, and Foundation Press, including Missing the Target (2022) and Strong Managers, Weak Owners (1994) Ranked among SSRN’s top 50 most-cited law professors, with a career high of #10 Elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy; Fellow of the European Corporate Governance Institute Recipient of the ECGI Allen & Overy Working Paper Prize (2015) for research on structural corporate degradation in too-big-to-fail finance Regular contributor to Project Syndicate since 2004, with commentary published in the Financial Times, Forbes, and Wall Street Journal Biography Corporate governance is usually treated as a design problem: get the incentives right, align the board with shareholder interests, and the structure should optimise itself. Mark J. Roe’s research at Harvard Law School has spent three decades demonstrating that this view is incomplete. His books Strong Managers, Weak Owners (Princeton, 1994) and Political Determinants of Corporate Governance (Oxford, 2003) established a now widely cited argument: governance structures in the United States and across major economies are shaped as much by political forces as by market logic. The practical implications are specific. In the US, fragmented share ownership is not merely an outcome of deep capital markets. It reflects a century of political decisions that prevented financial institutions from accumulating concentrated ownership stakes. In continental Europe, the postwar political settlement empowered labour and entrenched blockholding structures that persist long after the conditions that created them. Roe’s work traces these connections with data and institutional detail, giving corporate leaders and policymakers a framework for understanding why governance reform so often stalls or produces unintended consequences. His most recent book, Missing the Target (Oxford, 2022), challenged the prevailing consensus that stock market short-termism is crippling corporate investment and R&D. Using economy-wide data, Roe showed that corporate R&D spending has been rising, not falling, and that the real culprits behind declining investment are political uncertainty, accelerating technological change, and a collapse in government research funding. The Wall Street Journal called it essential reading for anyone concerned with markets and policy. Before entering academia, Roe worked at the Federal Reserve System and at Cahill Gordon & Reindel on Wall Street. He held faculty positions at Rutgers, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia before joining Harvard in 2001. His paper on too-big-to-fail finance won the ECGI Allen & Overy Prize in 2015. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has published over 160 scholarly papers, with more than 10,000 citations tracked by ResearchGate. Key speaking topics Political economy of corporate governance Financial regulation and systemic risk Corporate short-termism and long-term investment Too-big-to-fail finance and structural corporate degradation Shareholder activism and corporate purpose Bankruptcy, restructuring, and creditor bargaining The transformation of US public markets Ideal for Boards, chairs, and non-executive directors assessing governance structures in a politicised regulatory environment CFOs, general counsel, and heads of corporate strategy at firms navigating financial regulation, M&A, or capital structure decisions Institutional investors, sovereign wealth funds, and asset managers evaluating governance risk across jurisdictions Policy audiences, regulators, and central bankers examining the intersection of political economy and financial stability Audience outcomes A structural explanation of why corporate governance rules differ across major economies and why convergence has been slower than predicted A data-grounded reframing of the short-termism debate that separates genuine investment constraints from politically convenient narratives An understanding of how too-big-to-fail dynamics distort corporate structure and create hidden risks for counterparties and investors A framework for assessing how political uncertainty, interest-group pressure, and regulatory path-dependence affect capital allocation and strategic planning Specific examples from US and European corporate history that make abstract governance debates concrete and applicable to current board-level decisions

Why organisations work with Mark Greeven He brings a working model of ecosystem competition built on close study of Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi and other Asian firms, not a Silicon Valley template. He has spent two decades inside Chinese innovation, which lets him translate what is happening in Asia into specific implications for European and North American boards. His “dual transformation” frame gives leadership teams a way to fund and govern the next growth engine without starving the current business. He has built what he advises others to build. He founded IMD China in Shenzhen, scaled it into a multi-million-dollar executive education business in three years, and co-directs IMD’s Future-Ready Enterprise programme with MIT Sloan. Thinkers50 has ranked him in 2023 and 2025 and described him as their “oracle for innovation in China,” and his recent HBR co-authored piece on Chinese AI was a finalist for the 2025 HBR Prize. Both give buyers a defensible third-party signal. Biography highlights Professor of Management Innovation at IMD; founder of the IMD China Initiative and of IMD China in Shenzhen. Co-director of three IMD programmes: Building Digital Ecosystems, Strategy for Future Readiness, and Future-Ready Enterprise (the last delivered jointly with MIT Sloan School of Management). Author of Pioneers, Hidden Champions, Changemakers, and Underdogs (MIT Press, 2019), The Future of Global Retail (Routledge, 2021), and Business Ecosystems in China (Routledge, 2018). Co-author of “How Savvy Companies Are Using Chinese AI” (HBR, 2025), named a finalist for the 2025 HBR Prize. An earlier HBR piece was selected for HBR’s 10 Must Reads 2023. Ranked on the Thinkers50 list in 2023 and 2025; Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2017. Founder of cross-border programmes earlier in his career, including the Chinese Economy and Business Programme at Erasmus University Rotterdam and the Global Entrepreneurship Programme at Zhejiang University. PhD in Innovation Management from Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. Biography Most established companies are organised to defend a position they already hold. The harder problem is running that business at full performance while building a different one beside it, in markets where competitors do not play by the same rules. Mark Greeven’s work sits squarely on that problem. He is Professor of Management Innovation at IMD and Director of the IMD China Initiative, with earlier faculty positions at Zhejiang University and Rotterdam School of Management, where he also took his PhD in Innovation Management. Two decades of fieldwork in China give his arguments an empirical base that most innovation speakers do not have. His three books, Business Ecosystems in China (Routledge, 2018), Pioneers, Hidden Champions, Changemakers, and Underdogs (MIT Press, 2019), and The Future of Global Retail (Routledge, 2021), trace how named Asian firms, including Alibaba, Tencent, and Xiaomi, organise around platforms, partners, and continuous reinvention. He writes regularly for Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review. One of his HBR pieces was selected for HBR’s 10 Must Reads 2023; a more recent HBR co-authored piece on how companies are using Chinese AI was named a finalist for the 2025 HBR Prize. His current ecosystem research at IMD is supported by a three-year corporate sponsorship from AVEVA, Schneider Electric’s industrial software business. He also publishes Red Thread, a bi-weekly LinkedIn newsletter on China and global strategy. Greeven has also built what he writes about. He founded the IMD China Initiative in 2019 and established IMD China in Shenzhen, growing it into a multi-million-dollar executive education business within three years. He has launched cross-border programmes at four institutions, from the Chinese Economy and Business Programme at Erasmus and the Global Entrepreneurship Programme at Zhejiang to IMD’s Future-Ready Enterprise Programme with MIT Sloan. In parallel, he has founded private companies in cross-border e-commerce, technology scouting, and management innovation advisory. Thinkers50 has ranked him in 2023 and 2025, calling him their “oracle for innovation in China.” That mix of research, programme-building, venture creation, and direct access to Chinese firms is what gives his counsel weight for boards trying to read what Asian competition means for their next five years, and for executives trying to build a credible second growth engine without breaking the first. Key speaking topics Business ecosystems and platform competition Innovation in China and Asia Dual transformation and second growth engines Future of retail and digital business models Strategy under sustained uncertainty Organising for innovation in large incumbents US-China commercial and technology dynamics Ideal for CEOs and strategy leaders setting a multi-year growth agenda in the face of Asian competition. Boards and executive committees deciding how to fund and govern a second growth engine alongside the core. CSOs, CIOs, and innovation leads designing partner ecosystems rather than standalone product roadmaps. Multinationals with material exposure to China who want a clear read on competitive moves and policy direction. Audience outcomes A clear read on how Chinese and Asian incumbents are competing, with named firms and specific moves. A working language for ecosystem strategy that boards can use without retreating to platform jargon. A practical view of how to run today’s business and build the next one in parallel, with the trade-offs named. Sharper questions for the next strategy cycle on innovation governance, partner choice, and capital allocation.

Why organisations work with Marcel Corstjens His research in MIT Sloan Management Review demonstrated that the largest FMCG companies (i.e. those spending over a billion dollars annually on R&D) see no appreciable sales return from that investment; only marketing spend correlates with revenue. This directly challenges how most consumer goods leadership teams allocate their growth budgets. The Mindspace and Shelfspace framework from Store Wars gives manufacturers and retailers a shared, precise language for the power dynamics that determine who controls the end consumer: still the most widely adopted conceptual map of that relationship, translated into five languages. His Harvard Business Review research showed that retail internationalisation does not reliably improve revenue or profit margins, and that home market strength is the primary driver of commercial performance: a finding that reshapes how boards evaluate international expansion decisions. His “Newtonian versus Lorenzian” innovation typology distinguishing companies that invest heavily in broad R&D from those that make small, targeted bets, gives commercial leaders a practical diagnostic for where innovation spending is being wasted at scale. He has consulted directly for Unilever, Heineken, Novartis, Roche, PepsiCo, and Cadbury Schweppes, giving him practical fluency across both FMCG and pharmaceutical commercial strategy that few academics can match. Biography highlights Emeritus Professor of Marketing and the Unilever Chaired Professor of Marketing, Emeritus, at INSEAD; visiting professor at Cornell and Stanford universities PhD, University of California, Berkeley; doctoral dissertation awarded first prize by the American Marketing Association Author of Store Wars: The Battle for Mindspace and Shelfspace (J. Wiley & Sons, 1995; second edition 1999; translated into French, Japanese, Russian, Portuguese, and Spanish) Co-author of “Retail Doesn’t Cross Borders” (Harvard Business Review, 2012) and “The Promise of Targeted Innovation” (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2019) Research published in Marketing Science, Management Science, Journal of Marketing, and Journal of Marketing Research; featured in The Economist Creator and director of the INSEAD Storewars senior executive programme for the consumer goods industries Biography The commercial relationship between consumer goods manufacturers and retailers is contested, high-stakes, and widely misread. Marcel Corstjens, Unilever Chaired Professor of Marketing Emeritus at INSEAD, has spent four decades researching where that contest is actually won and lost, and his findings consistently challenge what companies believe about their own growth strategies. His book Store Wars: The Battle for Mindspace and Shelfspace, co-authored with Judith Corstjens and published by J. Wiley & Sons, introduced the Mindspace and Shelfspace framework: the idea that the strategic contest between manufacturers and retailers is a battle for control of two distinct assets, these being the consumer’s mental availability and the product’s physical presence in store. Translated into five languages and taught through the INSEAD Storewars senior executive programme he created and directed, the framework became the most widely adopted analytical tool for understanding manufacturer-retailer power dynamics in FMCG. His research has repeatedly overturned the conventional logic of large consumer goods companies. Work published in MIT Sloan Management Review with Gregory Carpenter of Kellogg and Tushmit Hasan of UT Austin showed that the biggest FMCG brands (i.e. those investing more than a billion dollars annually in R&D) see no measurable sales return from that outlay. Research published in Harvard Business Review with Rajiv Lal of Harvard Business School demonstrated that retail internationalisation does not reliably improve revenue or profit margins; home market performance is the primary driver. Both findings run counter to assumptions embedded in how most FMCG leadership teams set strategy. Corstjens holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, where his doctoral dissertation received first prize from the American Marketing Association. He has been a visiting professor at Cornell and Stanford, and has consulted for Unilever, Heineken, Novartis, Roche, PepsiCo, and Cadbury Schweppes, among others. His research has appeared in Marketing Science, Management Science, Journal of Marketing, and Journal of Marketing Research, and has been featured in The Economist. Key speaking topics Manufacturer-Retailer Power Dynamics Marketing Strategy in FMCG Innovation Investment and Commercial Return Brand Strategy and Private Label Competition Retail Internationalisation and Global Growth Marketing Resource Allocation Marketing Strategy in the Pharmaceutical Industry Ideal for Chief Marketing Officers and commercial strategy leaders in consumer goods companies Senior executive teams in FMCG and pharmaceutical businesses facing stalled revenue growth Retail leadership teams navigating the competitive dynamics of private label and supplier relationships Executive education programmes for senior FMCG, retail, or pharmaceutical audiences Audience outcomes A clear analytical framework under both Mindspace and Shelfspace for diagnosing where control of the manufacturer-retailer relationship is being lost and what to do about it Evidence-based reappraisal of whether current R&D and innovation investment is actually driving revenue, or consuming capital without commercial return Practical criteria for assessing whether a retail internationalisation strategy is likely to deliver or destroy shareholder value Sharper understanding of how private label competition is reshaping the power balance between retailers and brand manufacturers, and what manufacturers can do to respond A working distinction between “Newtonian” and “Lorenzian” approaches to innovation investment, and which is appropriate at which scale

Why organisations work with Marc Randolph He did not study the Netflix founding from the outside – he ran it. The decisions, the wrong turns, and the business model that eventually disrupted an entire industry are first-hand material, not case-study reconstruction. His central argument challenges a reflex most leadership teams share: that the quality of an idea determines whether it deserves to be pursued. His counter – that testing discipline matters more than idea quality – is specific, actionable, and uncomfortable in the right way. The Netflix founding includes the Blockbuster meeting, where Netflix was offered for $50 million and turned down. That episode alone reframes how organisations should think about incumbent advantage, competitive threat, and the cost of certainty. “That Will Never Work” is not a memoir dressed as business advice. It is a structured argument about how good companies are actually built – through iteration, testing, and the willingness to be wrong in public, not in a boardroom. He runs an active mentorship programme with working founders, which means his frameworks are tested against current entrepreneurial reality – not fixed in the past. Biography highlights Co-founder and first CEO of Netflix, which he helped build from a dismissed DVD-by-mail startup into the foundation of the platform that redefined global entertainment Author of “That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea” (Little, Brown and Company, 2019) Serial entrepreneur with multiple companies founded across direct marketing, software, and technology Former senior marketing executive at Borland International and Macromedia Guest on NPR’s “How I Built This” and other leading entrepreneurship platforms Active mentor to early-stage founders through a structured programme he runs directly Biography Netflix was not an overnight success. In its early years it was dismissed by almost everyone – including, famously, the executives at Blockbuster, who were offered the company for $50 million and said no. Marc Randolph was in that room. He co-founded Netflix in 1997 and served as its first CEO, navigating the business from an idea most people thought would never work to the foundation of what became one of the most disruptive companies in modern business history. His book, “That Will Never Work,” published by Little, Brown in 2019, does not simply recount that journey. It makes a specific argument: that entrepreneurial success has less to do with the quality of an idea than with the discipline of testing it. Most organisations spend considerable energy debating whether an idea is good enough to act on. Randolph’s contention is that the debate itself is the problem – that deciding in advance kills more valuable ideas than the market ever would. That argument is not abstract. It comes from years of direct experience – not only co-founding Netflix, but building and failing at other companies before it, and mentoring hundreds of founders since. Randolph runs an active programme for early-stage entrepreneurs, which means his frameworks are under continuous pressure from people trying to apply them in real conditions today. For organisations wrestling with innovation culture, the fear of failure, or the gap between strategy and action, Randolph offers something most speakers in this space cannot: a first-hand account of what it actually took, and a framework built from that experience rather than written about it. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and the discipline of idea-testing Business model innovation and iteration Innovation culture in established organisations Risk, failure, and commercial decision-making Leadership in early-stage and high-growth companies The Netflix founding – strategy, competition, and disruption Mentorship and building founder capability Ideal for CEOs and senior leadership teams building or renewing innovation culture Chief Strategy Officers and heads of new ventures or corporate innovation labs Entrepreneurship conferences and startup ecosystem events Leadership development programmes focused on commercial risk-taking and decision-making under uncertainty Audience outcomes A reframe of how ideas should be evaluated – replacing debate with testable hypotheses Practical language for separating idea quality from execution discipline A clearer understanding of what distinguishes organisations that build new things from those that discuss them Direct exposure to the decision-making logic behind one of the most studied company-founding stories in modern business A more honest framework for thinking about failure as evidence rather than verdict