Business Strategy & Growth speakers

Why organisations work with Pankaj Ghemawat He is the originator of the CAGE Distance Framework, the canonical model for evaluating cultural, administrative, geographic, and economic distance between countries, taught in MBA strategy courses worldwide and used inside boards making market entry decisions. He is principal author of the DHL Global Connectedness Index, the most widely cited empirical measure of cross-border flows of trade, capital, information, and people, which gives leadership teams a defensible reading of the global environment rather than headline narrative. His Law of Semiglobalization gives boards a precise corrective to the assumption that the world is either flat or fracturing, and reframes how to size international ambition against domestic baseline. He holds chairs at IESE Business School and NYU Stern, with 25 years of prior Harvard Business School faculty work, including a McKinsey Award for the best Harvard Business Review article of the year. World 3.0 won the Thinkers50 Book Award for best business book of 2010 to 2011, and The Economist named him among the greatest management thinkers in its 2008 guide. Biography highlights Anselmo Rubiralta Professor of Global Strategy at IESE Business School and Global Professor of Management and Strategy at NYU Stern. Director of the Center for the Globalization of Education and Management at NYU Stern. Principal author of the DHL Global Connectedness Index, introduced in 2011. Author of The Laws of Globalization and Business Applications (Cambridge University Press) and World 3.0 (Harvard Business Review Press), winner of the Thinkers50 Book Award. Recipient of the McKinsey Award for best Harvard Business Review article and the Booz Eminent Scholar Award of the Academy of Management’s International Management Division. Named among the greatest management thinkers in The Economist’s 2008 guide and ranked in the Thinkers50. Biography The hardest strategic question in front of most boards is also the one with the weakest data inside the building: how exposed are we to a world that may be fragmenting, and where should we still be investing across borders. Pankaj Ghemawat has spent his career building the empirical apparatus that answers that question. The CAGE Distance Framework, his contribution to global strategy in the 2000s, gave executives a precise way to measure cultural, administrative, geographic, and economic distance between countries. It is now standard material in MBA strategy courses and inside corporate development teams making market entry calls. World 3.0, published by Harvard Business Review Press, won the Thinkers50 Book Award for best business book of 2010 to 2011. His later work, The Laws of Globalization and Business Applications (Cambridge University Press, 2016), formalises two findings drawn from large datasets: international interactions are smaller than domestic ones, and they are dampened by distance along the CAGE dimensions. Boards that internalise both laws stop oscillating between flat-world enthusiasm and deglobalisation panic, and start sizing international ambition against measured reality. He is principal author of the DHL Global Connectedness Index, introduced in 2011 and now the most widely cited empirical measure of trade, capital, information, and people flows across borders. He holds chairs at IESE Business School and NYU Stern, where he directs the Center for the Globalization of Education and Management. Between 1983 and 2008 he was on the full-time faculty at Harvard Business School, where he was made a full professor in 1991, the youngest in the school’s history. Key speaking topics Globalisation and deglobalisation Cross-border strategy and CAGE distance Market entry and emerging markets Geopolitical risk and corporate exposure Supply chain and global value chain restructuring Global Connectedness Index and trade flows International competitive advantage Ideal for Boards and CEOs reviewing international portfolio exposure, China strategy, or sanctions risk Chief Strategy Officers and corporate development teams evaluating market entry or exit Heads of supply chain and operations restructuring after the end of cheap globalisation Senior leadership teams in multinationals setting the next horizon of cross-border investment Audience outcomes A defensible reading of the actual state of globalisation, drawn from the DHL Global Connectedness Index, not headline narrative. The CAGE Distance Framework as a working tool for evaluating country and market decisions. A clear distinction between semiglobalisation and full integration, and what that implies for strategy. Specific implications for boards on China exposure, regional concentration, and supply chain redesign. A sharper internal vocabulary for separating measurable cross-border risk from political mood.

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

Why organisations work with Paul Polman A ten-year CEO run at Unilever with documented results. Shareholder returns rose 290 percent while the company held the top global sustainability ranking, ended quarterly earnings guidance on day one, and defeated Kraft Heinz’s 143 billion dollar hostile takeover bid in 2017. Ranked first in the world. In 2025 Thinkers50 placed Polman and Andrew Winston first in its biennial list of the most influential management thinkers, the field’s most authoritative ranking. Co-architect of the UN Sustainable Development Goals as one of 27 members of Ban Ki-moon’s High Level Panel. He helped build the framework boards now report against. A direct read on how long-term capital and global institutions weigh sustainability. Polman advises Temasek and the World Trade Organization and sits on the boards of the Rockefeller Foundation and the European Climate Foundation. Net Positive, his book with Andrew Winston, was named a Financial Times Business Book of the Year and won the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award. Biography highlights CEO of Unilever, 2009 to 2019. Succeeded Patrick Cescau and was succeeded by Alan Jope. 27 years at Procter & Gamble, rising to Group President for Europe. Then Chief Financial Officer at Nestlé from 2006 and Head of the Americas from 2008. Member of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s High Level Panel that developed the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. Continues as a UN SDG Advocate. Chair of The Valuable 500 and One Young World, co-chair of the Planetary Guardians, and co-founder and Chair Emeritus of IMAGINE. Board member of the Rockefeller Foundation, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation and the European Climate Foundation, and adviser to the World Trade Organization and Temasek. Former Chair of Oxford Saïd Business School (2019 to 2025) and former Vice-Chair of the UN Global Compact (to June 2024). Co-author of Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take (2021), a Financial Times Business Book of the Year and Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award winner. Ranked first in the 2025 Thinkers50 list with Andrew Winston. Recipient of a UK Knighthood, France’s Légion d’honneur and the UN’s highest environmental honour. Biography Between 2009 and 2019, Unilever delivered a 290 percent shareholder return while holding the top global sustainability ranking and the title of one of the world’s best places to work. The period included the defeat of a $143 billion hostile bid from Kraft Heinz in 2017. The decade is the empirical case sitting underneath everything Paul Polman argues about business today. He wrote the case up with Andrew Winston. Net Positive, published in 2021, argues that companies should improve the wellbeing of everyone they affect, including the planet, and build financial strength in the process. The Financial Times named it a Business Book of the Year, and Thinkers50 gave it the Breakthrough Idea Award the same year. Polman’s operator background predates Unilever. He spent 27 years at Procter & Gamble, rising to Group President for Europe, before joining Nestlé as Chief Financial Officer in 2006. That background matters to the argument. The book comes from someone who ran the P&L while making the sustainability case. Today Polman advises CEOs, boards and investors on long-term value creation and systems change. He co-chairs the Planetary Guardians, chairs The Valuable 500, and sits on the boards of the Rockefeller Foundation and the European Climate Foundation. He advises the World Trade Organization and Temasek. In 2025, Thinkers50 placed him and Andrew Winston first in its biennial ranking of the world’s most influential management thinkers. Key speaking topics Sustainable business and the Net Positive framework Purpose-driven leadership and long-term value creation Sustainability as commercial strategy Climate change and the role of business The UN Sustainable Development Goals Corporate governance and stakeholder capitalism Systems change and industry coalitions Ideal for Boards and executive teams weighing whether to hardwire long-term and sustainability commitments into strategy as a commercial decision, not a reputational one. CEOs and strategy leads under pressure to deliver near-term growth while defending long-term investment and stakeholder trust. CFOs, investors and IR teams making the commercial case for long-term value creation against short-term capital-markets pressure. Governments, multilateral bodies and business coalitions working on public-private collaboration and systems change. Audience outcomes The empirical case, with the Unilever numbers, for why purpose-driven models outperform shareholder-primacy ones over a decade. A sharper line between sustainability as compliance cost and sustainability as commercial strategy, and how boards tell the difference in practice. The Net Positive model: how a company profits by solving the world’s problems instead of creating them, and builds value for shareholders and society while doing it. A working reframe of the UN Sustainable Development Goals as commercial opportunity, grounded in the industry coalitions Polman has helped build. The operator’s view on defending long-term strategy to activist investors, drawn from the defeat of the Kraft Heinz takeover and the decision to end quarterly earnings guidance.

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

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

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

Why organisations work with Peter Fisk He brings a structured framework for business reinvention. Business Recoded sets out seven mindset shifts and 49 codes drawn from deep work with senior leaders at companies including Microsoft, Adidas and Patagonia. Senior teams leave with a shared model to argue from. He sits in the rare overlap between marketer and strategist. As former CEO of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and now Professor of Strategy and Innovation at IE Business School in Madrid, he treats marketing, customer thinking and innovation as parts of one growth discipline. Most organisations still split them across separate functions and budgets. He has worked with senior leaders across more than 300 companies in over 55 countries, with particular depth in Asian innovation and emerging-market growth. The case material is current and varied, not the same handful of examples a leadership team has already seen. As former Thinkers50 Global Director and founder of the annual European Business Forum, he has unusual curatorial access to the leading management thinkers in the world. Sessions draw on what is actually moving across the field. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of GeniusWorks, a London-based strategy and innovation consultancy Professor of Leadership, Strategy and Innovation at IE Business School, Madrid; academic director of the Global Advanced Management Program Former Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Marketing Former Thinkers50 Global Director; founder of the annual Thinkers50 European Business Forum Author of nine business books, including Business Recoded, Gamechangers, and the Genius series, translated into 35 languages; Business Recoded shortlisted for the CMI Management Book of the Year Earlier commercial career at British Airways, including responsibility for the Concorde brand Biography The Chartered Institute of Marketing is the world’s largest professional marketing organisation. Peter Fisk ran it before founding GeniusWorks. He used the role to argue that marketing, customer and innovation belong inside growth strategy, where most organisations still treat them as separate functions. That argument has shaped his work since. His career started in physics, in a superconductivity lab. He moved into commercial roles at British Airways, including managing the Concorde brand, before consulting work at PA Consulting Group and Brand Finance. After CIM he founded GeniusWorks, a London consultancy, and joined IE Business School in Madrid as Professor of Strategy and Innovation. His 2020 book Business Recoded sets out seven mindset shifts and 49 codes for reinventing how a business creates value. It is built on deep interviews with leaders at companies including Microsoft, Adidas, Patagonia and Spotify. The Financial Times reviewed it as “the book you have to read now”. It was shortlisted for the CMI Management Book of the Year. Through the Thinkers50 European Business Forum, which he founded in 2017 as Thinkers50 Global Director, he convenes the world’s leading management thinkers each year. Recent stages have brought together Michael Porter, Rita McGrath, Erin Meyer and Alex Osterwalder. That curatorial position is unusual for a working consultant. The frameworks in his sessions are continually refreshed by direct contact with the academics and practitioners writing the next generation of management ideas. Key speaking topics Growth strategy in fast-changing markets Business model reinvention Innovation strategy and execution Customer strategy and brand growth The Business Recoded framework: seven shifts for reinventing the business Asian innovation and emerging-market growth Sustainable growth and purposeful business Ideal for CEOs and boards facing slowing growth in mature markets Strategy and innovation leaders responsible for new business models or category growth CMOs and customer experience leaders rethinking how marketing connects to commercial strategy Executive leadership teams running annual strategy or transformation offsites Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for the seven shifts that separate business reinvention from incremental change Case material from Asian innovators and global category leaders that most leadership teams will not have seen A connected view of innovation, customer and marketing strategy as one growth discipline Specific direction on where to stop investing, alongside where to grow

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

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

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

Why organisations work with Peter Vogel He holds the Debiopharm Chair for Family Philanthropy at IMD, one of the only dedicated academic chairs in Europe focused on how wealthy families turn giving into strategy rather than reputation management. His two reference books, Family Philanthropy Navigator and Family Office Navigator, function as operating manuals for principals and advisors, and the philanthropy title won the Axiom Business Book Awards silver medal. He directs the IMD Global Family Business Center, which gives him a live view across hundreds of enterprising families and their governance, succession, and investment decisions. He is also an operator: founder and non-executive Chairman of Delta Venture Partners, which means founder and family-office audiences hear practitioner judgement, not only academic frameworks. Family Capital ranked him among the Top 100 Family Influencers globally, and Poets&Quants named him to its Best 40 Under 40 business school professors list. Biography highlights Professor of Family Business and Entrepreneurship, IMD Business School, Lausanne. Debiopharm Chair for Family Philanthropy and Director, IMD Global Family Business Center. Co-author of Family Philanthropy Navigator (Axiom Business Book Awards Silver Medal) and Family Office Navigator. Author of Generation Jobless? (Palgrave Macmillan) on the youth employment crisis. Founder and non-executive Chairman, Delta Venture Partners AG; Associate Partner, Cambridge Family Enterprise Group. Inducted into the Family Business Hall of Fame (2024); Poets&Quants Best 40 Under 40 business school professors (2022). Biography Most family businesses do not survive the second generation, and most family offices are built reactively, after a liquidity event, with little design behind them. The work that decides whether enterprising families compound capital or destroy it happens in governance, succession, and philanthropy, areas treated as private until they go wrong in public. Peter Vogel’s research and teaching at IMD sit precisely there. At IMD Business School in Lausanne, he holds the Debiopharm Chair for Family Philanthropy and directs the Global Family Business Center, which works with principals, next-generation owners, and their advisors across continents. The chair, funded by the Debiopharm Group, is one of very few dedicated academic posts in Europe focused on how families convert wealth into strategic giving rather than reputational signalling. His two reference books, Family Philanthropy Navigator and Family Office Navigator, are used by family principals and their advisors as practical operating guides. The philanthropy title won the Axiom Business Book Awards silver medal. Before the family-enterprise work, he wrote Generation Jobless? (Palgrave Macmillan), a global analysis of youth unemployment built on interviews with policymakers, employers, and young entrepreneurs. He is also a practitioner. He founded and chairs Delta Venture Partners, an early-stage investment firm, and is an Associate Partner of the Cambridge Family Enterprise Group. Family Capital has named him to its Top 100 Family Influencers list; Poets&Quants placed him among its Best 40 Under 40 business school professors; and in 2024 he was inducted into the Family Business Hall of Fame. Key speaking topics Family business governance and succession Family office design and operating models Strategic philanthropy for enterprising families Next-generation ownership and leadership Entrepreneurship inside family enterprises Multi-generational wealth and capital allocation Ideal for Principals and next-generation members of family-owned businesses and family offices Advisors to enterprising families: private banks, wealth managers, multi-family offices, legal and tax counsel Boards of family-controlled companies considering succession, governance reform, or philanthropic strategy Foundation trustees and philanthropy leaders inside enterprising families Audience outcomes A clearer view of what separates family enterprises that survive transitions from those that fragment A vocabulary for the three connected systems in an enterprising family: the operating business, the family office, and the philanthropy Practical reference points for governance design, ownership succession, and next-generation engagement A sharper sense of where philanthropy belongs in family strategy and where it does not

Why organisations work with Peter York He named and codified a market segment that became a global reference point. Co-authoring The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook gave brands a working language for tribal segmentation that is still in use forty years later. He has run the brand-rehabilitation playbook on the actual problem, not the conference version of it. SRU clients have included Dunhill, Coutts & Co, Tiffany, Mont Blanc, Liberty, Jaeger, The Economist and The Financial Times. He moves between editorial authority and consulting authority in a way few speakers can. Harpers & Queen, Management Today and GQ on one side; ICI, Unilever, Marks & Spencer, BAT and WH Smith on the other. He carries a long memory of how consumer culture actually shifts. Two BBC2 series on style and the 1980s, Peter York’s Hipster Handbook, and Dictators’ Homes are the visible output of a thirty-year archive of trend reading. Biography highlights Co-author, The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook (with Ann Barr); author of Style Wars, Peter York’s Eighties, and Dictators’ Homes. Co-founder, SRU Ltd, and architect of the SRU Group of nine specialist consultancies; clients have included ICI, Unilever, Marks & Spencer, BAT, Clarks, Allied Dunbar, Thorn EMI, WH Smith and Ladbroke. Style Editor at Harpers & Queen for ten years; columnist at The Independent on Sunday, GQ and Management Today. Brand and positioning advisor to Dunhill, Coutts & Co, Tiffany, Mont Blanc, Liberty, Jaeger, The Economist, The Financial Times, Channel 4, the BBC and UK Government clients. Visiting Professor, University of the Arts London; President of The Media Society. Broadcaster: two BBC2 series on style and the 1980s; Peter York’s Hipster Handbook (BBC4, 2016); The Rise and Fall of the Adman; regular contributor to BBC Newsnight. Biography Most marketing teams describe their customers in language that was already a decade old when they wrote the deck. The Sloane Ranger arrived in Harpers & Queen in 1975 and in The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook in 1982 because Peter York and Ann Barr were watching the same people the rest of the industry was missing. The book sold in millions and became a working reference for any brand trying to talk to a tribe rather than a demographic. That instinct hardened into a consulting practice. With Lord Stevenson, York co-founded SRU Ltd and built it into a group of nine specialist agencies through the 1980s, working on brand positioning, repositioning and what York calls brand rehabilitation for ICI, Unilever, Marks & Spencer, BAT, Thorn EMI, WH Smith and Ladbroke. The luxury and editorial side of the practice ran in parallel: Dunhill, Coutts & Co, Tiffany, Mont Blanc, Liberty, Jaeger, The Economist and The Financial Times. The writing kept pace with the consulting. Style Wars, Peter York’s Eighties, Dictators’ Homes and roughly eleven books in total, alongside columns at The Independent on Sunday, GQ and Management Today, and a long second life on screen with two BBC2 series on style and the 1980s, Peter York’s Hipster Handbook on BBC4, and the documentary The Rise and Fall of the Adman. He is a Visiting Professor at the University of the Arts London and President of The Media Society. For a senior brand or marketing team, the value is specific. York can sit across pricing, positioning and reputation work and tell a board what their customers are about to want, in language that does not sound like a trend report. He has been doing it on the same client list, in print and on screen, for forty years. Key speaking topics Brand strategy and brand rehabilitation Luxury markets and high-end consumer behaviour Consumer tribes, segmentation and cultural identity Marketing communications and positioning Cultural change and creative industries Reputation and corporate communications Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and marketing leadership teams running repositioning or rehabilitation work Boards of luxury, premium and heritage brands managing relevance under generational change Senior teams in retail, financial services and media translating cultural shifts into commercial decisions Communications and reputation leads working on category narrative Audience outcomes A sharper read on the cultural drivers behind shifts the data is only beginning to show A working language for tribes and segments that goes beyond demographic categories Specific examples of brand rehabilitation drawn from named luxury and heritage clients A frame for separating real positioning problems from surface communications problems