Business Strategy & Growth speakers

Why organisations work with Michael Wade He runs IMD’s AI Maturity Index, which evaluates the 300 largest companies in the Forbes Global 2000 on how they have actually embedded AI across executive support, infrastructure, operations, workforce and ethics. The data behind it gives him a view of corporate AI adoption that is not available to the wider speaker market. The Digital Vortex framework, introduced in his 2017 Axiom Business Book Award winner and updated through IMD’s ongoing research, gives strategy teams a way to map how fast each industry is being pulled toward digital disruption. His books work as operating manuals. Hacking Digital and Orchestrating Transformation give boards and Chief Digital Officers structured playbooks for sequencing change, drawn from custom programmes with Vodafone, AXA, Credit Suisse, Nestle and Cartier. He founded and directs Leading Digital and AI Transformation at IMD, Europe’s first and largest executive programme on digital and AI. Many of the leaders setting the agenda inside their own boards have already been through his classroom. Biography highlights Professor of Strategy and Digital at IMD Business School in Lausanne and holder of the TONOMUS Professorship in Digital and AI Transformation Director of IMD’s TONOMUS Global Center for Digital and AI Transformation, which publishes the annual AI Maturity Index of the largest companies in the Forbes Global 2000 Co-author of Digital Vortex (winner of the 2017 Axiom Business Book Award), Orchestrating Transformation, Hacking Digital, ALIEN Thinking, Twin Transformation and GAIN: Demystifying GenAI Published in Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, MIS Quarterly and Strategic Management Journal; regular contributor to Fortune and Forbes Inducted into the Swiss Digital Shapers Hall of Fame in 2021 by Bilanz, Handelszeitung, Le Temps and Digitalswitzerland; named one of Switzerland’s top 10 digital thought leaders in 2016, 2017 and 2020 Hosts the IMD podcasts Management Under the Microscope and Mike & Amit Talk Tech; has designed custom executive programmes for Vodafone, AXA, Credit Suisse, Nestle, Cartier and others Biography Most digital and AI transformations do not fail at the technology layer. Research at IMD puts the failure rate around 87%, and the bottleneck almost always sits elsewhere. It is in the gap between the system that has been bought and the operating model that has to absorb it. Wade has spent two decades inside that gap. He is Professor of Strategy and Digital at IMD Business School in Lausanne, where he holds the TONOMUS Professorship and directs the school’s Global Center for Digital and AI Transformation. The Center’s AI Maturity Index ranks the 300 largest companies in the Forbes Global 2000 on how they have embedded AI in production. It is one of the few public benchmarks that separates companies running AI at scale from those still in pilot. Digital Vortex, the 2017 Axiom Business Book Award winner, gave executives a way to measure how fast their industry was being pulled toward digital disruption. Orchestrating Transformation and Hacking Digital followed with playbooks for what to do once that velocity is clear. Twin Transformation and GAIN, both published in 2025, extend the same discipline into AI and sustainability. The pattern is consistent: books written for the executive who has to deliver the change. In 2021, the Swiss media consortium Bilanz, Handelszeitung, Le Temps and Digitalswitzerland inducted him into its Digital Shapers Hall of Fame. He had been named one of Switzerland’s top 10 digital thought leaders three times before that. Boards still book him because he has taught their peers and run custom programmes for companies they benchmark against, including Vodafone, AXA, Credit Suisse and Nestle. Key speaking topics Digital and AI transformation Enterprise AI adoption at scale Industry disruption and competitive strategy The AI-augmented executive Innovation and breakthrough thinking Organisational agility and resilience Ideal for Boards and executive committees overseeing digital and AI strategy Chief Digital Officers and Chief AI Officers responsible for end-to-end transformation CEOs and senior leadership teams making capital allocation decisions on AI and technology Strategy and innovation leaders inside companies that are mid-transformation and need to course-correct Audience outcomes A specific read on where their organisation sits on the AI maturity dimensions, and what separates companies running AI in production from those still in pilot A working language for the gap between digital ambition and execution that boards and senior leaders can use in their own conversations A revised view of which industries are most exposed to digital disruption, and where defensive strategy and offensive moves should sit in the response A way to frame AI investment as an organisational change problem, with the operating model and leadership decisions as the binding constraint

Why organisations work with Michael Yaziji He wrote the standard reference on NGO–corporate relations. NGOs and Corporations: Conflict and Collaboration (Cambridge University Press) carried cover endorsements from the chairmen of Nestlé, Unilever, Shell, and PepsiCo. He holds doctorates in both analytic philosophy (University of California) and management strategy (INSEAD), a combination that brings serious ethical reasoning into his work on AI governance and corporate ownership design. His leadership work draws on the world’s largest survey tying psychological drivers and psychological safety to organisational performance, giving him empirical depth most speakers in the field do not have. He co-directs IMD’s Stakeholder Management for Boards programme and has trained boards and executive teams at Microsoft, Shell, PepsiCo, Ericsson, and Maersk. He thinks ahead of the consensus: his 2008 Harvard Business Review piece on the structural flaws of shareholder capitalism predated the mainstream stakeholder capitalism debate by close to a decade. Biography highlights Professor of Strategy and Leadership at IMD, Lausanne Co-Director of IMD’s Stakeholder Management for Boards programme Author of NGOs and Corporations: Conflict and Collaboration (Cambridge University Press), endorsed at publication by the chairmen of Nestlé, Unilever, Shell, and PepsiCo Two doctorates: analytic philosophy (University of California) and management strategy (INSEAD) Published in Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review Gold Award, 2024 Chief Learning Officer Learning in Practice Awards (Excellence in Executive Education) for IMD’s Sprint programme with Bayer Biography Regulation and activist coalitions now shape more corporate outcomes than many of the competitive moves around which strategy frameworks are built. This nonmarket terrain is what Michael Yaziji has spent two decades mapping. He argues that political dynamics and stakeholder pressure are core variables of corporate strategy and should be treated as such by senior leaders. His training is unusual: a doctorate in analytic philosophy from the University of California, and a second in management and strategy from INSEAD. Both disciplines show up in the work. Yaziji treats ethical reasoning and institutional theory as practical tools, applied to live executive questions like AI governance and corporate ownership design. At the centre of his published work is NGOs and Corporations: Conflict and Collaboration (Cambridge University Press, 2009), co-authored with Villanova’s Jonathan Doh. The book carried cover endorsements from the chairmen of Nestlé, Unilever, Shell, and PepsiCo. It remains a standard reference for executives dealing with activist NGOs and contested social licence. His current research extends this work to artificial intelligence: who sets the rules, and who carries the cost of weak governance. He co-directs IMD’s Stakeholder Management for Boards programme. An executive education programme he co-led for the pharmaceutical group Bayer trained more than 12,000 leaders across ten months and won Gold at the 2024 Chief Learning Officer Learning in Practice Awards. Key speaking topics Nonmarket strategy and political risk NGO and stakeholder engagement Stakeholder management for boards AI governance and corporate strategy Corporate ethics and ownership design Psychological safety and organisational performance Sustainability and competitive advantage Ideal for Boards and chairs facing scrutiny on ESG and political risk C-suites in regulated or politically exposed industries (energy, pharma, financial services, extractives, technology platforms) Chief sustainability officers and corporate affairs heads building integrated nonmarket strategy Executive teams designing AI governance and stakeholder policy in large organisations Audience outcomes A working method that turns regulation and NGO pressure into variables leaders can shape Sharper thinking on how AI governance creates strategic risk and opportunity for their organisation Confidence in reading share ownership and stakeholder governance shifts as strategic variables A more direct vocabulary for talking to investors and regulators about the company’s social licence

Why organisations work with Michelle Stacy She has personally run the playbook she teaches. Keurig went from $200M to $2.5B in revenue on her watch, with category-defining partnerships built around Starbucks, Dunkin’, and Folgers. She brings sitting board director judgement, not retired-executive nostalgia. iRobot and Skullcandy are her current rooms; she speaks about commercial decisions she is still being held accountable for. She works with named operating frameworks, OGSM for strategic alignment and the Superconsumer model for customer prioritisation, so audiences leave with a structured way to attack the problem on Monday morning. Her 25 years inside P&G and Gillette give her a deep view on global brand building, including leading Gillette’s Oral Care across 70 countries and the launch of Mach3. She is one of a small group of speakers who can move credibly between a CEO offsite on growth strategy and a women’s leadership keynote without changing register. Biography highlights Former President, Keurig: grew revenue from $200M to $2.5B and built partnerships with Starbucks, Dunkin’, and Folgers 25 years at Procter & Gamble and Gillette, including leadership of Global Oral Care across 70+ countries and the launch of Gillette Mach3 Current board director: iRobot, Skullcandy, Milton’s Baking Company Prior board roles: Coravin, Hydrafacial, Tervis Tumblers, Young Innovations Advisor to growth-stage brands including Bellwether Coffee and Adventure Ready Brands MBA, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern; BA, Dartmouth College Biography Keurig was a $200M business when Michelle Stacy took over as President. Five years later it was a $2.5B category leader, with Starbucks, Dunkin’, and Folgers running their coffee through its system. That story is the basis of nearly every keynote she gives, but it is not nostalgia. It is the case study she uses to teach portfolio choice, partnership design, and the operating decisions that separate growth from scale. Before Keurig she spent 25 years inside Procter & Gamble and Gillette, including a global Oral Care role across more than 70 countries and the launch of Mach3, one of the most successful product introductions in shaving category history. That background gives her a view of consumer business most speakers cannot match: how a global parent operates, how a category challenger competes, and where the two playbooks differ. She is still in the rooms where these decisions get made. As a current board director at iRobot, Skullcandy, and Milton’s Baking Company, with prior service at Coravin, Hydrafacial, Tervis Tumblers, and Young Innovations, she works on live commercial questions every quarter. Her advisory clients, including Bellwether Coffee and Adventure Ready Brands, get the same operating lens. What she brings to a stage is named, structured method. OGSM as a strategic planning tool. The Superconsumer model to find the 10% of customers driving most of the value. A view of engagement built on the premise that disengaged teams cannot execute a growth plan, regardless of how good the plan is. Senior audiences leave with a playbook they recognise, because she has run it. Key speaking topics Scaling consumer brands Strategic partnerships and category creation Superconsumer segmentation Innovation portfolio management Engagement-driven leadership Board-level commercial judgement Women in senior commercial roles Ideal for CEOs and commercial leaders of consumer, retail, and CPG businesses scaling past $200M Boards and executive teams setting innovation and growth strategy Heads of marketing and customer experience working on segmentation and brand prioritisation Senior women’s networks inside large commercial organisations Audience outcomes A clearer view of which customer segments warrant the largest share of investment and why A structured strategic planning approach (OGSM) audiences can apply to their own businesses Specific lessons from category-defining partnerships, told from the inside of the deal A practical model for how engaged leadership translates into commercial execution

Why organisations work with Mickey Wilson She runs a working brand consultancy, not a speaking practice with an agency name attached. The frameworks she presents are the same ones Firestarter applies inside Tesco, Samsung, CIMA and Ocado engagements. The DARE Formula gives leadership teams a shared vocabulary for brand decisions: Differentiation, Authenticity, Resonance, Expression. It replaces the design-led conversation most boards default to with a commercial one. She works the B2B scale-up problem specifically. The advice is calibrated to founders who have product-market fit and need brand to do the next stage of commercial lifting, not to consumer giants polishing an existing position. Paired with co-founder Dr Chris Endersby, a business psychologist, she brings behavioural insight into brand decisions where most agencies bring only aesthetic judgement. Biography highlights CEO and founder, Firestarter (est. 2015), a London-headquartered brand consultancy with a studio in Cape Town 30+ years in brand strategy and creative leadership; launched her first agency at twenty-one Client engagements include Tesco, Samsung, CIMA and Ocado Creator of the DARE Formula and Firestarter’s Brand Maturity Model Co-author of forthcoming book BRANDFIRE with Dr Chris Endersby Featured in Authority Magazine, Startups Magazine, BMmagazine, WeAreTheCity and Talented Ladies Club Biography Most B2B scale-ups treat brand as a downstream problem. They build the product, win early customers, then commission a logo refresh when sales plateau. Mickey Wilson’s argument is that the plateau is the brand problem, and that treating it cosmetically is what causes it to harden. Firestarter, the consultancy she founded in 2015, sells against that pattern. Working with clients including Tesco, Samsung, CIMA and Ocado, the firm built a proprietary framework, the DARE Formula, around four ingredients its analysts argue brand-led growth depends on: Differentiation, Authenticity, Resonance and Expression. It is the spine of how the firm diagnoses why a B2B business is not converting at the rate its product would predict. What separates her work from generic brand consultancy is the partnership with co-founder Dr Chris Endersby, a business psychologist whose background sits in behavioural change rather than design. Together they pair brand strategy with cognitive insight into why buyers respond, hesitate, or commit. That joint authorship runs through Firestarter’s BrandSight:360 assessment and through BRANDFIRE, the book the two are preparing for publication. Wilson started her first agency at twenty-one and has spent more than three decades in brand strategy and creative leadership. The corporate client list is the credential most senior buyers will check first. The more telling proof is that scale-up founders, who tend to be sceptical of agency theatre, hire her to turn brand from a marketing line item into a commercial growth lever. Key speaking topics B2B brand strategy Differentiation in saturated markets Brand-led growth for scale-ups The DARE Formula Behavioural psychology in branding Brand resonance and emotional connection Founder-led brand building Ideal for Founders and CEOs of B2B scale-ups in series A through C CMOs and brand directors at mid-market businesses Sales and marketing leadership teams aligning on positioning Industry conferences in B2B technology, professional services and SaaS Audience outcomes A diagnostic for where their brand is losing commercial ground to competitors The DARE Formula as a working vocabulary for cross-functional brand decisions A clearer view of how psychology shapes B2B buyer commitment Practical pointers on translating founder conviction into a brand position buyers remember A challenge to the assumption that brand is a marketing function rather than a commercial one

Why organisations work with Mike Harris He has done the actual job, twice. First Direct (1989) and Egg (1998) were both built from scratch into category-defining UK consumer brands while sitting inside or alongside incumbent institutions, Midland Bank and Prudential. That kind of new-business creation inside a large organisation is rare among innovation speakers. He took Egg from concept to a £1bn flotation in under two years. When he talks about pace of execution, it is from a CEO who delivered it under public-market scrutiny. As Chairman of Group Innovation at RBS (2005-2009), he has worked both sides of the innovation problem: building the new business, and governing the innovation portfolio at scale inside a major bank. His operating framework comes directly from First Direct: customer-led, and built around how distinct segments actually want to be served. It is set out in Find Your Lightbulb (Wiley, 2008) and applied through the IconicShift programme across companies in FinTech, pharmaceuticals and consumer health. As co-founder of Monument Partners and a non-executive chairman at FinTech ventures including Monolith, he is still active at the investor and founder edge of financial services. The material is current. Biography highlights Founding CEO of First Direct (1989), the world’s first major 24/7 telephone bank, launched as a subsidiary of Midland Bank Founding CEO of Egg (1998); floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2000 at a £1.3bn valuation Chief Executive of Mercury Communications (1991-1995), the first major competitor to BT in UK telecoms Chairman of Group Innovation at Royal Bank of Scotland, 2005 to 2009 Co-founder and Chairman of Garlik, sold to Experian in 2011; Tim Berners-Lee on its advisory board Author of Find Your Lightbulb (Wiley/Capstone, 2008); winner of the BT Flagship Award for Innovation, 2008 Co-founder of Monument Partners (2012), a FinTech-focused advisory firm; regular speaker at the MIT Sloan School mid-career MBA programme between 1996 and 2008 Biography First Direct launched in 1989 as a 24/7 telephone bank, owned by Midland but kept far enough away from it to behave differently. The result was a brand that has spent decades at or near the top of UK customer service rankings across every industry. The CEO who built it was Mike Harris. He left Midland to run Mercury Communications, the first major competitor to BT in UK telecoms, where turnover grew from £1bn to £1.6bn during his tenure. In 1995 he founded Prudential Banking, which became Egg in 1998. Egg floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2000 at a £1.3bn valuation, less than two years from launch. After leaving Egg, he turned to innovation governance. As Chairman of Group Innovation at Royal Bank of Scotland from 2005 to 2009, he built a group-wide innovation programme inside an institution then under acute strategic pressure. His book Find Your Lightbulb (Wiley, 2008) set out the operating principles. The IconicShift mentoring programme has since applied them across companies in FinTech, pharmaceuticals, food, fashion, law and consumer health. Most innovation speakers have either built a new business or governed innovation portfolios. Harris has done both, and continues to do both. He is co-founder of FinTech advisory firm Monument Partners, and a non-executive chairman at FinTech ventures including Monolith. Key speaking topics Innovation strategy and execution Customer-led growth Building new businesses inside large organisations Brand and proposition design FinTech and financial services innovation Entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership Digital identity and consumer trust Ideal for CEOs and group strategy leads in financial services and telecoms wrestling with category disruption Chief Innovation Officers and heads of new ventures who need to sponsor breakthrough propositions inside legacy structures Boards and ExCos of established consumer-facing organisations under pressure to reinvent the customer relationship FinTech founders and corporate venture investors looking for current operating perspective Audience outcomes A clearer view of why most innovation programmes produce activity instead of new customers, and what to do about it Operating principles for taking a new proposition from concept to revenue at speed, drawn from First Direct, Egg and Garlik A diagnostic for whether the current organisation can house the new business it is trying to build, and what to change if it cannot How chairmen and CEOs can use innovation governance to back the right bets without smothering them

Why organisations work with Misiek Piskorski His proprietary multi-step framework reduces digital transformation to five or six sequenced decisions – giving leadership teams a replicable process to own and implement, not a theory to absorb and interpret. A Social Strategy (Princeton University Press, 2014) – the first book to use large-scale proprietary platform data to explain how companies build competitive advantage from social platforms – introduced three named diagnostic tests (social utility, social solution, and business value) that practitioners can apply to any platform investment decision. His transformation programmes are designed to span the full organisational hierarchy: CEO-level strategic advisory, top-team execution, middle-management education, and organisation-wide capability building – which means transformation logic does not stop at the boardroom door. As Co-Director of IMD’s AI Strategy and Implementation programme, he connects AI adoption directly to competitive strategy rather than treating it as a technology or operations question – giving executive teams a frame that boards can act on. Custom programmes delivered for organisations including Johnson & Johnson, Bayer, and the Asian Development Bank mean his frameworks have been stress-tested across industries and geographies, not built in one sector and applied to others by analogy. Biography highlights Professor of Digital Strategy, Analytics and Innovation and Dean of Executive Education, IMD Business School, Lausanne Previously Associate Professor of Business Administration in the Strategy Unit, Harvard Business School (ten years); prior faculty appointment at Stanford University Graduate School of Business Author of A Social Strategy: How We Profit from Social Media (Princeton University Press, 2014) – winner of the Axiom Business Book Awards Gold Medal, 2015 Research published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Harvard Business Review, Management Science, MIT Sloan Management Review, American Journal of Sociology, and Social Forces EFMD Excellence in Practice Gold Award 2019, Organisational Development category, for the Siam Commercial Bank digital transformation programme Co-Director, AI Strategy and Implementation programme, IMD; Programme Director, Developing Digital Transformation Strategies (IMD online) Associate Editor, Journal of Organization Design; editorial board member, Administrative Science Quarterly, Management Science, and Organization Science Biography Misiek Piskorski spent two decades studying why digital transformation succeeds or stalls – working first at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and then at Harvard Business School before joining IMD in Lausanne in 2014. The answer, he argues, is almost never about technology. It is about the sequence of strategic decisions that determines how digital capabilities translate into competitive advantage. His book A Social Strategy (Princeton University Press, 2014) was the first to draw on proprietary data from platforms including Facebook and LinkedIn to explain the commercial mechanism behind social platforms. The argument – that companies must first help users meet social needs that cannot be satisfied offline before asking for any commercial return – won the Axiom Business Book Awards Gold Medal in 2015. Three diagnostic tests introduced in the book (social utility, social solution, and business value) give executive teams a practical tool for evaluating any platform investment. At IMD, his work is deliberately structured to span the full organisation. Custom programmes for Johnson & Johnson, Bayer, and the Asian Development Bank move from CEO-level strategy through top-team transformation projects to executive education for middle managers and digital learning at scale. As Co-Director of IMD’s AI Strategy and Implementation programme, he applies the same sequenced-decision logic to AI adoption – connecting implementation directly to competitive strategy. His research has appeared in Administrative Science Quarterly, Harvard Business Review, Management Science, and MIT Sloan Management Review. He received the EFMD Excellence in Practice Gold Award in 2019 for his collaboration with Siam Commercial Bank on digital transformation, and serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Organization Design. Key speaking topics Platform strategy and competitive advantage Digital transformation decision frameworks AI strategy and enterprise-wide implementation Social platform economics and business value Data analytics and strategic decision-making Digital business model design Organisational digital capability building Ideal for CEOs and senior leadership teams navigating digital transformation at enterprise scale Chief Digital Officers and Chief Strategy Officers assessing platform and AI investment decisions Boards and executive committees evaluating digital readiness and competitive positioning CHROs and Learning & Development leaders designing organisation-wide digital capability programmes Audience outcomes A named, sequenced decision framework for planning and executing digital transformation across the organisation – not a conceptual model but a structured process Practical diagnostic tools (social utility, social solution, and business value tests) for evaluating whether a platform or digital investment is likely to create competitive advantage A clear model for distinguishing digital activity from digital strategy – and for identifying where current transformation efforts are likely to stall Understanding of how AI adoption decisions connect to competitive positioning rather than remaining isolated as technology or operations questions A working vocabulary for the five or six strategic decisions that determine whether transformation programmes deliver at scale

Why organisations work with Monica McCoy She built her practice from inside a Fortune 100 procurement and strategy function, not from advocacy. Her recommendations work because they account for how large companies actually source. Her trademarked Pitch University and Global Supplier Diversity Conference are operating programmes with named corporate partners, including Microsoft, Porsche, and Santander, not concepts. She works upstream of typical DEI conversations, on the pipeline of founders that procurement teams can credibly contract with, which is where most inclusion strategies break down. Her non-profit Pivot Purposefully extends the same discipline to formerly incarcerated women founders, giving her a defensible position on inclusion that goes beyond corporate audiences. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Monica Motivates, LLC (2017 to present); supports 38 Fortune 500 clients on supplier diversity and inclusion delivery Fifteen years at The Coca-Cola Company, most recently Acting Global Director of Strategy and Innovation, McDonald’s Division Creator of Pitch University, the Annual Global Supplier Diversity Conference, and a Microsoft-backed accelerator for commercial real estate founders Founder, Pivot Purposefully, non-profit supporting formerly incarcerated women entrepreneurs Recognitions include American Express Founder of Change (2020), Porsche Driven Women (2021), Iconic Women Creating a Better World for All (Women’s Economic Forum), YWCA Corporate Woman of Achievement (2015) BA Psychology, Emory University; Oxford College Alumni Board Biography Most corporate inclusion programmes fail at the seam between policy and procurement. The policy gets signed. The procurement function keeps sourcing from the same qualified vendor pool. The pipeline of underrepresented founders never reaches contract size. This is the gap Monica McCoy spent fifteen years observing from inside The Coca-Cola Company, and the one her firm now exists to close. Monica Motivates, founded in 2017, works with 38 Fortune 500 clients, including Microsoft, Porsche, and Santander, on the practical mechanics of bringing underrepresented founders into corporate supply chains. The firm’s programmes are operating, not conceptual. Pitch University trains founders for the specific pitch standards large companies use. The Annual Global Supplier Diversity Conference puts buyers and suppliers in the same room at scale. A Microsoft-backed accelerator focuses on commercial real estate, where founder access has historically been narrowest. The corporate credentials sit underneath this work. McCoy was Acting Global Director of Strategy and Innovation for the McDonald’s Division at Coca-Cola, a role that gave her direct exposure to how a Fortune 100 firm sources, qualifies, and contracts at scale. That experience is what makes her programmes legible to procurement leaders, not just to inclusion officers. Her non-profit, Pivot Purposefully, applies the same discipline to a harder constituency, formerly incarcerated women founding businesses. Recognition from the Women’s Economic Forum, American Express, Porsche, and the YWCA tracks the same throughline: inclusion treated as a delivery problem. Key speaking topics Supplier diversity programme design Founder pipeline and access for underrepresented entrepreneurs Inclusion as procurement capability Entrepreneurial pitch and storytelling discipline Corporate strategy and innovation at Fortune 100 scale Personal brand and executive presence for senior women Ideal for CHROs, chief diversity officers, and heads of supplier diversity at large corporates Procurement and category leaders responsible for diverse sourcing targets Founder networks and accelerator audiences focused on underrepresented entrepreneurs Senior women’s leadership programmes inside Fortune 500 organisations Audience outcomes A clearer view of where inclusion policy stalls inside procurement and category management Specific programme structures that have moved underrepresented founders into Fortune 500 supply chains A defensible position on inclusion grounded in operating mechanics, not advocacy framing Practical pitch and access standards founders need to clear to win corporate contracts

Why organisations work with Morten Toft Two decades of repeat innovation facilitation work for Grundfos, Danfoss and other large Danish manufacturers, which is unusual longevity for a process consultant. Author of Innovationsrecepten (The Innovation Recipe), Jyllands-Postens Forlag, a text used as a teaching reference on Danish innovation and entrepreneurship programmes, giving his methodology a documented, teachable form. Operating background as sales and marketing director at Photo Experten across 146 stores, so the co-creation work is grounded in line-management experience, not pure consultancy. Initiator of Danske Hospitalsklovne and the MAD House Denmark Innovation Centre, which gives him a track record of building functioning organisations from a standing start, not only advising existing ones. Sessions are designed for engagement and recall, with humour and physical staging used deliberately to lock in concepts that pure presentation tends to lose. Biography highlights Author of Innovationsrecepten (The Innovation Recipe), Jyllands-Postens Forlag, 2007, with Ole Vestergaard Poulsen, used as a teaching text on Danish innovation and entrepreneurship programmes. Author of To Be Perfectly Honest (Aschehoug, 2001) on authentic leadership, and Changemakers (2020, with Rachel Rouncefield). Co-developer with Rachel Rouncefield (De Montfort University) of the Changemakers youth empowerment programme, building on the Butterfly Project in Peterborough. Long-running innovation facilitator for Grundfos and Danfoss. Initiator of Danske Hospitalsklovne (Danish Hospital Clowns), founded after working with Patch Adams at the Gesundheit Institute in West Virginia. Co-initiator of the MAD House Denmark Innovation Centre in Middelfart. Former sales and marketing director at Photo Experten across 146 Danish stores; earlier consultant at GREY. Biography Innovation in large industrial businesses tends to fail in a specific way. Ideas accumulate in the central team. Adoption stalls at the operating units. The work that reaches customers is a thin version of what was originally proposed. Morten Toft has spent over twenty years working inside that gap, mainly with Danish manufacturing groups including Grundfos and Danfoss, designing co-creation processes that bring stakeholders into the work early enough to own it. His methodology is documented in Innovationsrecepten (The Innovation Recipe), co-authored with Ole Vestergaard Poulsen and published by Politikens Forlag. The book is used as required reading on Danish innovation and entrepreneurship programmes, which gives his approach a teachable structure rather than the personality dependence common to facilitator-consultants. The work draws on a line operating background. Before consultancy, Toft was sales and marketing director at Photo Experten, with responsibility across 146 retail stores in Denmark. That experience, alongside earlier work at GREY, shapes a facilitation style oriented to commercial outcomes and to the practical question of who actually executes the change. He is also the initiator of Danske Hospitalsklovne, founded after a period with Patch Adams at the Gesundheit Institute in West Virginia, and a co-initiator of the MAD House Denmark Innovation Centre. Alongside the innovation work, Toft has written on authentic leadership and personal development, including a forthcoming memoir, Journey Out to Find Home (Danish edition August 2026, English edition planned). He also runs Changemakers, a youth empowerment programme co-developed with Rachel Rouncefield of De Montfort University and grounded in the Butterfly Project in Peterborough, which involved several thousand young people over eight years. The connecting argument across his output is straightforward: organisations get more from their people, and societies more from their young people, when those involved feel they built the answer themselves. Key speaking topics Co-creation and stakeholder-led innovation Innovation process design in industrial organisations Authentic leadership Personal development and purpose at work Building healthy organisational cultures Youth empowerment and the changemaker concept Ideal for Innovation, R&D and product directors in industrial and manufacturing businesses HR and learning leaders running leadership development programmes C-suite and senior teams setting direction for cultural change Founders and entrepreneurial leaders running participation-led organisations Audience outcomes A working model for designing innovation processes that build adoption alongside ideas. Specific tools for involving operating-unit stakeholders before, not after, decisions are made. A clearer view of the link between authentic leadership behaviour and commercial culture. Practical examples drawn from long-running work with Grundfos, Danfoss and Danish retail.

Why organisations work with Nathalie Nahai Her psychological model for how digital persuasion builds or erodes consumer trust is grounded in a decade of published research, not reactions to recent AI headlines, which gives marketing and strategy teams a diagnostic framework rather than a new concern to manage. Business Unusual directly addresses the commercial consequences of values misalignment, applying the frameworks of self-determination theory and eudaimonic consumerism to the question of why consumers switch, stay and trust: with practical implications for brand, marketing and leadership strategy. She co-created TheValuesMap.com with Dr Kiki Leutner of Goldsmiths University, a scientifically grounded instrument that organisations can use to measure and communicate the values they actually hold, converting a strategic abstraction into a usable tool that survives the board conversation. She translates the ethics of AI and persuasive technology into a commercially legible argument that boards can act on, rather than a compliance burden that legal teams manage. Webs of Influence, published by Pearson and translated into seven languages, is used by universities and Fortune 500 companies as a foundational text on digital consumer behaviour, meaning her frameworks are often already the shared language of the audiences she addresses. Biography highlights Author of Webs of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion (Pearson), translated into seven languages and adopted by universities and Fortune 500 companies as a standard text on digital consumer behaviour Author of Business Unusual: Values, Uncertainty and the Psychology of Brand Resilience, with named contributors including Dan Pink, Cindy Gallop and Amy C. Edmondson Co-created TheValuesMap.com (2021) with Dr Kiki Leutner of Goldsmiths University, a scientific values-assessment instrument available to organisations Guest faculty at ELISAVA’s Masters programme in Human Interaction and AI, teaching “Transversal Vision of Artificial Intelligence” Member of the BIMA Human Insights Council, the representative body for digital and tech in the UK Covered in and contributed to the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, Forbes, The Guardian and The Telegraph; hosted the Guardian Changing Media Summit Biography Nathalie Nahai coined the term web psychology in 2011, defining it as the empirical study of how online environments influence human attitudes and behaviours. At the time, most organisations had powerful digital tools and no psychological framework for understanding what those tools were doing to the people using them. Her book Webs of Influence (Pearson), translated into seven languages, built that framework into a practical text adopted by universities and Fortune 500 companies as a standard reference on digital consumer behaviour. Her follow-up, Business Unusual: Values, Uncertainty and the Psychology of Brand Resilience, extended the argument into harder commercial territory – specifically, how organisations sustain consumer trust when digital markets, values and expectations all shift at once. The book drew contributions from Dan Pink, Cindy Gallop and Amy C. Edmondson, and applies self-determination theory and eudaimonic consumerism to the practical question of what makes brands resilient rather than brittle. In 2021 she co-created TheValuesMap.com with Dr Kiki Leutner of Goldsmiths University, a scientifically grounded instrument that organisations can use to measure and communicate their actual values. The ability to deploy psychology as a practical tool – not just a conceptual frame – distinguishes her approach from most advisory work in this space. Her analysis has been covered in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, Forbes, The Guardian and The Telegraph. She has lectured at Cambridge, UCL, Lund and Hult business schools and addressed major platforms including SXSW, the Web Summit and the Guardian Changing Media Summit. She serves as guest faculty at ELISAVA’s Masters programme in Human Interaction and AI and is a member of the BIMA Human Insights Council. Key speaking topics Consumer psychology and digital influence Ethics of AI and persuasive technology Values-led brand resilience Human behaviour and digital trust Eudaimonic consumerism and shifting consumer expectations Web psychology and online decision-making Behavioural science applied to marketing and product design Ideal for CMOs and marketing leadership teams navigating the ethics and commercial implications of AI-driven personalisation Boards and senior leadership teams seeking a psychological framework for brand resilience and consumer trust strategy Digital product and technology teams applying persuasive design with ethical accountability Transformation and strategy leads working to align organisational values with commercial outcomes Audience outcomes A working model for understanding how AI and persuasive technology affect consumer trust and decision-making, grounded in published research rather than trend observation Practical application of self-determination theory and eudaimonic consumerism frameworks to brand, marketing and customer experience strategy A diagnostic approach to identifying where persuasive technology is eroding rather than building customer relationships Clarity on the commercial case for values-led strategy, with evidence from consumer behaviour research A set of questions to carry back into product, marketing and leadership conversations about how technology is actually affecting the people it is designed to serve

Why organisations work with Navi Radjou He has named and codified two frameworks, Jugaad Innovation and Frugal Innovation, that give leadership teams a shared vocabulary for doing more with less rather than relying on bigger R and D budgets. His client work spans Fortune 500 firms including IBM, Microsoft, Procter and Gamble, GM, SAP, and Ernst and Young, so the case material in his sessions is operational, not academic. The Thinkers50 Innovation Award and three consecutive appearances on the Thinkers50 ranking (2021, 2023, 2025) place him among the small group of innovation thinkers whose work boards take seriously. His 2024 book The Frugal Economy, published by Wiley with Thinkers50, gives senior leaders a current playbook for B2B sharing, distributed manufacturing, and regenerative business models. He brings empirical material from emerging markets that most Western innovation speakers cannot, drawing on field research in India, China, Africa, and Latin America. Biography highlights Former Fellow of Cambridge Judge Business School and former Executive Director of its Centre for India and Global Business. Thinkers50 Innovation Award winner, ranked on the Thinkers50 list in 2021, 2023, and 2025. Co-author of Jugaad Innovation (Jossey-Bass), an international bestseller, and Frugal Innovation: How to Do More With Less (The Economist Books, foreword by Paul Polman). Co-author of From Smart to Wise (Jossey-Bass), a study of wise leadership judgement in technology-driven business environments. Author of The Frugal Economy: A Guide to Building a Better World With Less (Wiley and Thinkers50, 2024). TED Global speaker with over two million views on his talk on frugal innovation. Former Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research; faculty member of the World Economic Forum. Published in Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, and strategy plus business; covered by the Financial Times, The Economist, BBC, NPR, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal. Biography R and D budgets in most large companies have stopped producing the returns they once did. Pilots multiply, capital tightens, and the question on the executive agenda becomes how to generate growth without spending more. This is the territory Navi Radjou has worked in for two decades, first as a Forrester analyst studying global innovation networks, then as Executive Director of the Centre for India and Global Business at Cambridge Judge Business School. His central contribution is a managed practice for innovation under constraint. Jugaad Innovation, co-authored with Jaideep Prabhu and Simone Ahuja, took a Hindi term for resourceful improvisation and turned it into a corporate framework backed by case work from emerging markets. Frugal Innovation, published by The Economist Books with a foreword by Paul Polman, codified the practice for Western firms. The Frugal Economy, his 2024 book with Wiley and Thinkers50, extends the argument into a model for B2B sharing, distributed manufacturing, and regenerative supply chains. The credentials sit underneath the work. Thinkers50 awarded him its Innovation Award in 2013 and has ranked him among the world’s most influential management thinkers in 2021, 2023, and 2025. He has consulted for IBM, Microsoft, Procter and Gamble, GM, SAP, and Ernst and Young, and he serves as a faculty member of the World Economic Forum. His TED Global talk on frugal innovation has been watched more than two million times. What makes the perspective unusual is the empirical base. Most innovation thinkers write from Silicon Valley or business school faculties. Born in Pondicherry, educated at Ecole Centrale Paris and the Yale School of Management, and a French-American dual citizen, Radjou builds his arguments from case material in India, China, Africa, and Latin America, where resource constraint has always been the operating condition, then translates the discipline back into the boardrooms of Fortune 500 firms. Key speaking topics Frugal innovation Jugaad and resource-constrained creativity The frugal economy and regenerative business models Intrapreneurship and corporate growth Innovation strategy in emerging markets Wise leadership in the AI era B2B sharing and distributed manufacturing Ideal for Boards and executive teams reviewing innovation portfolios under capital constraint Chief Strategy Officers and Chief Innovation Officers planning growth without expanding R and D spend Sustainability leads and CEOs translating ESG commitments into operating substance Leadership development programmes for senior executives in multinational organisations Audience outcomes A working definition of frugal innovation that distinguishes it from cost-cutting and connects it to growth Case-based examples from Fortune 500 and emerging-market firms that show the discipline in operation A vocabulary for Jugaad and intrapreneurship that senior teams can carry into their own innovation reviews A view of the frugal economy as a commercial opportunity, with named mechanisms (B2B sharing, distributed manufacturing, regenerative principles) A more rigorous standard for what counts as innovation when resources are scarce

Why organisations work with Neil Martin He built the probabilistic strategy modelling systems now used by more than half the current Formula One grid – not a commentator on F1 decision-making, but the person who changed how the sport models decisions under uncertainty. Two specific, named race outcomes are directly attributed to his calls: Red Bull Racing’s first Formula One win at the 2009 Chinese Grand Prix, and Räikkönen’s win at the 2005 Monaco Grand Prix – both the product of real-time probabilistic reasoning under extreme competitive pressure. He translates a specific, working methodology – Monte Carlo simulation and game theory applied to real-time competitive decisions – into frameworks organisations can use when multiple futures must be weighed against each other with no time to wait for certainty. His experience spans the full decision chain: building the analytical models, leading the strategy team live in the race, and managing the operational culture of teams working against non-negotiable deadlines with global coordination demands. As Co-Founder of PACETEQ GmbH, he continues to build and deploy competitive analytics tools across motorsport, which means his perspective is operational and current rather than retrospective. Biography highlights BSc in Mathematics with Computer Science and MSc in Operational Research, University of Southampton; MSc project on optimal pit-stop and refuelling strategies secured a full-time role at McLaren Racing Pioneered the application of Game Theory and Monte Carlo simulation to F1 race strategy at McLaren from 1998, replacing deterministic planning with stochastic models that could account for uncertain events in real time Team Leader of Operational Research at McLaren Racing; Chief Strategist at Red Bull Racing; Head of Operations Research and Strategy at Scuderia Ferrari (2011-2015) Strategic calls directly credited with Red Bull Racing’s first-ever Formula One win at the 2009 Chinese Grand Prix and Räikkönen’s victory at the 2005 Monaco Grand Prix Co-Founder of PACETEQ GmbH, an AI-powered motorsport analytics business; software originating from his work in active use across more than half the Formula One grid Covered in the Financial Times; featured speaker at the Gartner Data and Analytics Summit Biography Neil Martin joined McLaren Racing in 1996 to solve a specific problem: race strategy was being built on deterministic models that assumed a single most-likely future. He replaced those models with stochastic ones, applying Game Theory and Monte Carlo simulation to uncertain events. Traffic patterns, overtake probabilities, safety car timing – these could now be modelled, and strategy built around a range of probable outcomes rather than one. That shift produced verifiable results at the highest level. At the 2005 Monaco Grand Prix, Martin sent an email from McLaren’s Woking base instructing Räikkönen to stay out under a safety car; the call won the race. At the 2009 Chinese Grand Prix, as Red Bull Racing’s Chief Strategist, he kept both cars out in wet conditions when almost every competitor pitted. It was the team’s first-ever Formula One win – a 1-2 finish built on asymmetric risk reasoning under pressure. Martin joined Scuderia Ferrari in 2011 as Head of the newly created Operations Research department, brought in alongside Pat Fry to rebuild the team’s race operations. He left in 2015. Since then, he has founded Random Logic and co-founded PACETEQ GmbH, an AI-powered analytics business whose tools now run on more than half the current Formula One grid. For senior leaders, the argument is direct. Performance under pressure is not determined by the quantity of data available. It is determined by the quality of the frameworks used to act on it. Martin’s career is a proof of concept for what that discipline looks like when competitive stakes are at their highest. Key speaking topics Decision-making under uncertainty Probabilistic risk modelling Data-driven competitive strategy High-performance operations Risk management in live environments Marginal gains and continuous improvement Analytics-led performance optimisation Ideal for C-suite and senior strategy leaders making high-stakes decisions with incomplete data and competitive time pressure Risk, analytics, and data science functions seeking to operationalise probabilistic thinking across the organisation Boards and executive teams benchmarking their decision culture against elite performance environments Corporate conferences in financial services, technology, and professional services where data-driven decision-making is a strategic priority Audience outcomes A named conceptual shift: from deterministic “most likely scenario” planning to probabilistic mapping of multiple futures and their associated likelihoods Clarity on the conditions under which data produces better decisions, and the organisational habits that close the gap between having information and acting on it with confidence Specific, race-derived examples of asymmetric risk reasoning applicable to resource allocation, market entry, and competitive response decisions Practical understanding of how high-performance teams coordinate under non-negotiable deadlines without sacrificing analytical discipline A benchmark for what genuinely data-driven operational culture looks like when competitive stakes leave no margin for deterministic thinking

Why organisations work with Neil West First-hand operator perspective from inside Apple Music, the App Store, Apple TV+ and iTunes during the period the company shifted a billion-dollar services business across Europe. A specific thesis on simplicity as competitive advantage, set out in It Just Works (Macmillan Business, 2026) and structured as nine rules leaders can apply to their own products and teams. Useful for the meeting after the strategy offsite: he speaks to the practical work of cutting features, killing projects, and protecting customer experience from internal politics. Co-founded the iTunes Festival and curated Apple’s relationship with artists from Beyonce to Bono, which gives the talks the texture of a content business, not a generic technology keynote. Translates Steve Jobs era principles into language that lands with commercial and product leaders who have to ship, not theorise. Biography highlights Head of Services, Apple Southern Europe, with responsibility for App Store, Apple Music, Apple TV+, iCloud, Books, Podcasts, Arcade and Fitness+ across the region. Head of Music, Apple UK and Europe, for ten years, including the period iTunes became the world’s largest music retailer. Co-founder and curator of the iTunes Festival. Author of It Just Works: The Nine Simple Rules of Apple’s Success, Macmillan Business, September 2026. TEDx speaker on The Beatles, Steve Jobs, and Team Management. Earlier career: European Editor-in-Chief at Rhapsody, the first music streaming subscription service, Creative Director at Garageband.com (founded with Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads and Sir George Martin), and Editor-in-Chief of NEXT Generation magazine. Biography iTunes was a record store before it was a streaming service, and the App Store was a developer experiment before it was a platform. The hard part of running those businesses across Europe was not adding features. It was deciding what not to build, what to pull, and which artist or partner relationship was worth defending against internal pressure to standardise. West did that work for sixteen years. As Head of Music for Apple in the UK and Europe, he led the team through the period iTunes became the world’s biggest music retailer, and co-founded the iTunes Festival as a way of binding the catalogue to a live cultural moment. He then ran Services for Apple Southern Europe, a billion-dollar portfolio covering App Store, Apple Music, TV+, iCloud, Books, Podcasts, Arcade and Fitness+, through the shift from downloads to subscription. His argument now, set out in It Just Works (Macmillan Business, 2026), is that Apple’s edge has always been a discipline for removing complexity rather than a talent for adding features. The book offers nine rules drawn from inside the business, on simplifying products, reducing friction in customer journeys, and protecting focus when an organisation grows. His TEDx talk on The Beatles and Steve Jobs makes the team-design version of the same case. For audiences in product, marketing, services and digital businesses, the value is the operator detail. He talks about specific decisions, named launches, and the politics of holding a line on customer experience when commercial pressure points the other way. Key speaking topics Simplicity as commercial operating discipline Customer experience in subscription and platform businesses The shift from downloads to streaming and what it taught the wider content economy Product and service launches at scale Building and managing creative teams Lessons from inside Apple’s services business Ideal for Product, services and platform leaders running multi-product portfolios CMOs and customer experience leaders in subscription, media and consumer businesses Innovation and transformation directors looking for an operator voice rather than a consultant frame Leadership teams resetting after a period of feature accumulation or proposition drift Audience outcomes A working definition of simplicity that can be applied to a roadmap, not just a brand line. Specific tests for deciding what to cut from a product, service or process. A view of Apple’s services business from inside the European operation, including how artist and partner relationships were handled. Language for protecting customer experience against internal pressure to add complexity. A team-design lens drawn from how Apple, and before it The Beatles, structured small creative groups for output.