Business Strategy & Growth

Why organisations work with Salvatore Cantale He directs IMD’s Finance for Boards programme, the sitting reference point for non-executive directors who need to challenge financial strategy with authority rather than deference to the CFO. His work sits at the intersection of strategy and finance, so leadership teams leave with a clearer view of which growth bets, acquisitions and restructurings will actually compound value, and which are expensive to justify. He has built a substantive ESG-finance practice covering green bonds, sustainability-linked instruments and climate tech, addressing the question most boards are quietly avoiding: what does sustainability policy do to the numbers. His consulting track record spans global banks (MUFG, UniCredit, ICBC, Development Bank of Japan, APG) and operating businesses (Unilever, Kering, Maersk, Pernod Ricard, Lacoste), which translates into sessions grounded in how the work is done, not how it is theorised. He teaches finance as a language of leadership, not a specialist function, which is what senior executives from non-finance backgrounds usually need and rarely receive. Biography highlights Professor of Finance at IMD Business School, Lausanne Directs IMD’s Finance for Boards, Business Finance and Driving Sustainability from the Boardroom programmes PhD in Finance and MSc in Management, INSEAD; BA in Economics and Finance, University of Catania Former faculty director of the Master’s in Finance at Tulane University’s A.B. Freeman School of Business Recipient of the Global Finance Association Best Paper Award and the Southern Finance Association Outstanding Paper Award Contributor to I by IMD, World Economic Forum Agenda, MIT Sloan Management Review, Financial Times and Wall Street Journal Biography Boards are being asked to sign off on strategies, acquisitions and ESG commitments whose financial consequences are only vaguely understood in the room. Salvatore Cantale’s work is built around the gap that opens when strategic ambition outruns financial literacy at the top of the organisation. As Professor of Finance at IMD, he runs the programmes, Finance for Boards and Business Finance among them, that senior leaders attend when they cannot afford to keep outsourcing that judgment. His intellectual territory is the join between strategy, business models and financial outcomes. The question that animates his teaching is practical: how does a stated strategy actually show up in the P&L, the balance sheet and the cost of capital, and what should a board be able to see that a management deck hides. That framing draws on research in value creation, capital structure and corporate financing choices, work that has been recognised by the Global Finance Association and the Southern Finance Association. A second stream of his work focuses on the relationship between ESG policy and financial performance. Green bonds, sustainability-linked instruments, climate tech investment, investor activism, these are presented to boards as moral or regulatory questions and funded as financial ones. Cantale treats them as both, so executives can defend their choices in either room. His writing on CFO roles, the CEO-CFO-board triumvirate and CSRD compliance sits in I by IMD, the World Economic Forum Agenda, MIT Sloan Management Review and the financial press. The consulting record gives the work texture. Cantale has advised APG, MUFG, UniCredit, ICBC and the Development Bank of Japan on the financial institutions side, and Unilever, Kering, Maersk, Coca-Cola Hellenic, Pernod Ricard and Lacoste on the corporate side. That range is why senior audiences recognise themselves in his examples: the tension between a sustainability roadmap and a quarterly earnings call is not abstract when the person teaching it has sat on both sides of it. Key speaking topics Value creation and capital allocation Finance for boards and non-executive directors The strategic role of the CFO ESG, green finance and sustainability-linked instruments Business models and financial performance Mergers, acquisitions and corporate restructuring Governance and financial regulation Ideal for Boards and non-executive directors sharpening their ability to challenge management on financial strategy CEOs, CFOs and senior executive teams working through capital allocation, M&A or business model change Leadership teams translating ESG and sustainability commitments into credible financial plans Banks, asset managers and financial institutions navigating governance, regulation and investor expectations Audience outcomes A sharper read of how a given strategic choice will land in the financial statements and the cost of capital Clearer language for boardroom debate on value creation, capital structure and investment trade-offs Specific frameworks for assessing ESG and sustainability initiatives on financial as well as non-financial grounds A more confident view of the CFO’s role as strategic partner rather than scorekeeper Practical reference points drawn from named financial and corporate institutions Cantale has advised

Why organisations work with Lior Zoref He gives leaders a tested method for sourcing decisions and ideas from hundreds or thousands of people, drawn from his Bar-Ilan PhD research and his book Mindsharing rather than from anecdote. His TED 2012 talk, the first ever crowdsourced TED talk, is itself a working demonstration of the method, complete with a live audience experiment that hit within three pounds of the right answer. He has run the same playbook inside Microsoft as a VP, which means he can speak to senior teams about adoption, internal politics and the practical limits of crowd input, not just the upside. His current work on collective and artificial intelligence gives executives a usable frame for where human crowd input still beats algorithms, and where the two should be combined. Boards and CEO offices can put him in front of an audience that includes Bill Gates, Al Gore and Jeff Bezos at TED-level events without losing them on technical depth or losing the room on accessibility. Biography highlights PhD in crowdsourcing, Bar-Ilan University; BA and MA in computer science, the Technion. Fourteen years at Microsoft, ending as Vice President of Marketing for Consumer and Online Services. Author of Mindsharing: The Art of Crowdsourcing Everything, listed by Inc. magazine among its top books for entrepreneurs. Delivered the first crowdsourced TED talk at TED 2012 in Long Beach, including a live ox-weighing experiment that became one of the conference’s most-discussed moments. Keynote client list includes SAP, KPMG, Jaguar, Kodak, Nike, LinkedIn, Element Fleet Management and the Consumer Technology Association. Coverage and citation in Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, NPR, The New Yorker, Inc. and the BBC. Biography The first crowdsourced TED talk was delivered in 2012 by a former Microsoft marketing VP who walked on stage at Long Beach with a live ox. Five hundred audience members guessed its weight. The crowd’s average came within three pounds. The point of the demonstration was simple. Groups, properly used, are often more accurate than the smartest individual in the room. The speaker behind it, Lior Zoref, has spent the years since turning that idea into a working method for organisations. His PhD in crowdsourcing at Bar-Ilan University, combined with fourteen years inside Microsoft, gives him a rare double position. He can argue the academic case for crowd wisdom and explain what it actually takes to run it inside a large company with established hierarchies and politics. Mindsharing, his book on the topic, was named by Inc. magazine among its best books for entrepreneurs and has been translated into multiple languages. It treats social and internal networks as a decision-making asset that most leaders still underuse, with examples drawn from how he crowdsourced his own TED talk and his book. His current keynote work focuses on the line between collective human intelligence and artificial intelligence. The argument he brings to senior audiences is not that AI replaces the crowd, or that the crowd outperforms AI, but that organisations that learn to combine the two will out-decide and out-innovate those that pick a side. Key speaking topics Crowd wisdom and collective intelligence Innovation and idea generation at scale Decision-making in complex environments Collective intelligence and artificial intelligence Leadership in the era of networked organisations Crowdsourcing for product, marketing and strategy Ideal for CEOs and executive teams looking to widen the input set on major strategic decisions Innovation, R and D and product leaders running idea-generation programmes CMOs and customer experience leaders using community and customer crowds as a strategic asset Leadership offsites and TED-style flagship events that need a high-credibility, demonstration-led keynote Audience outcomes A working understanding of when crowd input beats expert input, and when it does not Concrete techniques for running crowdsourced decisions inside an organisation, with named examples A clearer view of how to combine human collective intelligence with AI tools rather than treating them as substitutes A memorable, demonstration-led case for changing how senior teams generate options before they choose

Why organisations work with Dr Darren Coleman He treats brand as an investment asset with measurable commercial return, giving CMOs and CFOs a shared language for defending budget when growth tightens. His Brand Experience Blueprint maps the path from strategy to frontline delivery, closing the gap between what marketing promises and what operations execute. Twenty-five years of B2B and services brand work across Europe, the Middle East, South East Asia and Japan, with named delivery for Johnson & Johnson, Singapore Airlines, Goldman Sachs, FUJIFILM, Nikon and Maybank. A doctoral grounding in B2B services brand performance, peer-reviewed publication in Industrial Marketing Management and the European Journal of Marketing, and a Kogan Page book in three languages. Visiting lecturer at the University of Warwick, with a teaching practice that keeps the frameworks tested against current MBA cohorts and corporate clients in parallel. Biography highlights Founder and Managing Consultant, Wavelength Marketing. Author, Building Brand Experiences: A Practical Guide to Retaining Brand Relevance (Kogan Page); translated into Korean, Turkish and Mandarin. PhD in B2B services brand performance; MA in marketing. Visiting Lecturer in Corporate Brand Management, University of Warwick. Peer-reviewed publication in Industrial Marketing Management and European Journal of Marketing. Keynote speaker at Electronic World Marketing Summit (Kotler Impact), Brand Week Istanbul, B2B Marketing Ignite and Fifteen Seconds Graz. Biography Service brands sell something customers cannot pick up, weigh or return. What they buy is an experience, and the gap between what marketing promises and what operations actually delivers is where loyalty, pricing power and referral are won or lost. Closing that gap is the work Dr Darren Coleman has spent twenty-five years on. His Brand Experience Blueprint is built around three operating layers: the environment shaping customer perception, the strategic essentials that anchor the brand, and the enablers that translate strategy into frontline delivery. Clients including Johnson & Johnson, Singapore Airlines, Goldman Sachs, FUJIFILM, Nikon, Maybank and Orange have used it to rebuild positioning, justify brand investment to finance, and make service consistent across markets. The intellectual foundation is academic. Coleman holds a PhD in B2B services brand performance, has published in Industrial Marketing Management and the European Journal of Marketing, and teaches Corporate Brand Management at the University of Warwick. The applied output is Building Brand Experiences, published by Kogan Page and now in Korean, Turkish and Mandarin editions, used by marketing teams and MBA programmes as a working operating manual rather than a theory text. What CMOs and CEOs take from him is a way to argue for brand investment in commercial terms. He reframes brand from a cost centre defended on faith into a measurable asset that protects margin when competitors discount and acquisition costs rise. Key speaking topics Brand experience strategy and execution Brand-driven growth for service organisations B2B services branding Brand as a commercial investment asset Customer experience and brand relevance Employer brand and internal alignment Sustainable brand differentiation Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and marketing leadership teams in B2B and service businesses C-suites in financial services, professional services, technology and healthcare evaluating brand investment Customer experience and operations leaders responsible for closing the strategy-to-delivery gap Executive education and senior leadership programmes covering brand, growth and customer strategy Audience outcomes A commercial argument for brand investment that holds up in a finance conversation A working model for translating brand strategy into operational customer experience Diagnostic clarity on where the brand promise and the customer reality currently diverge Practical reference points from Johnson & Johnson, Singapore Airlines, Goldman Sachs and other named service brands

Why organisations work with Ayesha Khanna Her named “pilot purgatory” diagnostic (the finding that over 88% of AI pilots never scale) gives leadership teams a precise frame for why their programmes stall, and a structured path to production. This is a field-tested argument with a clear strategic implication. She brings board-level fiduciary exposure most AI advisors do not hold: Johnson Controls (smart buildings), NEOM Tonomus (national smart city infrastructure in Saudi Arabia), Mercy Healthcare (US), and L’Oréal’s Scientific Advisory Board. She has governed AI strategy, not only advised on it. Her advisory work spans both national AI strategy: she helped shape Singapore’s SkillsFuture programme and served on the IMDA board. Organisations get a strategist who has worked both sides. Her previous board position on AVEVA and her current role at Johnson Controls give her direct insight into how AI and digital transformation are reshaping critical infrastructure, highly relevant to sectors where technology adoption has long tail consequences. As the author of the forthcoming Gamechanger, a practical business strategy guide to generative AI, she is building the intellectual framework for the current adoption challenge while it is happening, not retrospectively. Biography highlights Co-Founder and CEO, Addo AI; a global AI solutions firm whose clients have included Singtel, SMRT, Pfizer, Sompo Holdings, Habib Bank, and Smart Dubai Board director: Johnson Controls (NYSE: JCI); NEOM Tonomus, Saudi Arabia; previously AVEVA (FTSE100, prior to Schneider Electric acquisition) Scientific Advisory Board, L’Oréal; Consumer Committee, Mercy Healthcare; Singapore HTX (homeland security technology) Member, World Economic Forum Global Future Councils; formerly on Singapore IMDA board and Ministry of Education SkillsFuture steering committee Named one of Southeast Asia’s groundbreaking female entrepreneurs by Forbes; Edelman Top 50 AI Creators (2025); Salesforce 16 AI Influencers to Know (2024) Author of Straight Through Processing (2008) and co-author of Hybrid Reality (TED Books, 2012); forthcoming Gamechanger on generative AI business strategy Published and quoted in The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, TIME, Foreign Policy, and Strategy+Business PhD, Information Systems (digital innovation in smart cities), London School of Economics; MS, Columbia University; BA (Honours), Harvard University Biography Ayesha Khanna has spent two decades at the point where AI strategy meets the decisions boards have to make. Her argument is specific: most organisations do not fail at AI because they lack ambition or budget. They fail because they build pilots without the business-outcome architecture to scale them, what she calls “pilot purgatory,” a state that traps over 88% of enterprise AI programmes. Ayesha works with large corporations and governments on the full adoption journey, from strategy through deployment, with clients that have included Singtel, SMRT, Pfizer, Sompo Holdings, Habib Bank, and Smart Dubai. Khanna has spent more than a decade on Wall Street developing large-scale trading, risk management, and data analytics systems. Her PhD from the London School of Economics focused on digital innovation in smart cities, grounding her practical work in a rigorous analytical framework. What sets Khanna apart from most AI strategists is the nature of her board exposure. She currently holds directorships at Johnson Controls (smart building technology, NYSE: JCI), NEOM Tonomus (the technology infrastructure body for Saudi Arabia’s $500 billion NEOM smart city project), and Mercy Healthcare, and sits on L’Oréal’s Scientific Advisory Board. She previously sat on the board of AVEVA when it was an FTSE100 company. These are not advisory relationships, they are governance roles in which she has been responsible for technology strategy at fiduciary level, across healthcare, infrastructure, and consumer science simultaneously. Her forthcoming book, Gamechanger, extends this practitioner perspective into a structured business playbook for generative AI. Her two earlier books, Straight Through Processing (2008) and the TED book Hybrid Reality (2012), co-authored with Parag Khanna, established her early argument that the human-technology relationship was shifting from coexistence to co-evolution. That argument has aged well. Khanna has been recognised by Forbes as one of Southeast Asia’s groundbreaking female entrepreneurs, named to Edelman’s Top 50 AI Creators in 2025, and quoted across The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and Foreign Policy. Key speaking topics Generative AI strategy and enterprise adoption AI governance and risk frameworks Smart cities and urban technology infrastructure AI in financial services and healthcare Future of work in an AI-driven economy National AI strategy and public-private collaboration The Hybrid Age: human-technology co-evolution Ideal for CEOs and C-suite leadership teams building or scaling enterprise AI programmes Board directors and non-executive directors responsible for technology governance and digital risk oversight Government and public sector leaders developing national AI strategies or smart city initiatives Financial services, healthcare, and infrastructure sector organisations at advanced stages of AI deployment Audience outcomes A named diagnostic for why AI pilots stall before scaling, and a framework for building the business-outcome architecture needed to move from experimentation to production Practical understanding of what AI governance looks like at board level: what boards need to own, what they need to delegate, and what risks require a formal framework Sector-specific examples of organisations generating measurable revenue and operational impact through AI, drawn from a client base across telecoms, finance, healthcare, and infrastructure A structured perspective on the “Hybrid Age” – the shift in how humans and AI systems operate together – and what it means for workforce strategy and organisational design Criteria for prioritising AI investment by business outcome rather than technology capability, applicable across industries at different stages of digital maturity

Why organisations work with Christian Havrehed He has operated inside the Sino-Western seam at every level: management consulting at L.E.K., MD roles in Hong Kong and Shanghai with KPMG, Allianz and VIKING, and a two-person expedition partnership that lasted 70 days at sea. Mandarin fluency lets him work directly with Chinese stakeholders in the room, not through a translator, which materially changes the quality of preparation and post-meeting reading. The Atlantic row with Sun Haibin is a documented case study in trust-building under pressure, published in three languages and over 20,000 copies, that he uses to make cross-cultural failure modes concrete. He is qualified to challenge the comforting Western assumption that cultural difference can be managed with a framework imported from headquarters. For boards weighing China exposure, he brings a credible inside-and-outside view that few Western speakers can match without a state affiliation that constrains them. Biography highlights 20 years working in China, including managing director roles with KPMG, Allianz, and VIKING Life-Saving Equipment in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Former consultant at L.E.K. Consulting, London. BA Joint Hons. in Chinese Language and Western Management Studies, Durham University, with study at Renmin University, Beijing. Author of “Beijing to Barbados in a Rowboat”, published in English, Chinese, and Danish; over 20,000 copies sold. First Dane to row an ocean: 3,000-mile Atlantic crossing in 2001 with Chinese ex-soldier Sun Haibin. Founder of the Yantu Project; Adventure Ambassador for Engage with China and Eyesea; member of The Explorers Club. Biography China is no longer a question of market entry. It is a question of whether senior teams can lead partnerships, joint ventures, and supply relationships where the other side does not share their assumptions about risk, hierarchy, or time. That is the ground Christian Havrehed has worked for two decades. After reading Chinese at Durham University and studying at Renmin University in Beijing, he moved into management consulting at L.E.K. in London, then ran businesses inside China and Hong Kong as managing director with KPMG, Allianz, and VIKING Life-Saving Equipment. He speaks Mandarin in commercial settings, which changes the texture of every conversation he is part of. In 2001 he rowed 3,000 miles across the Atlantic with Sun Haibin, a former Chinese PLA soldier and Communist Party member, becoming the first Dane and the first Chinese citizen respectively to row an ocean. The story, told in “Beijing to Barbados in a Rowboat”, is published in three languages and used by Havrehed as a working case study in what trust actually requires when the contract runs out and the weather turns. For senior leaders, the value is practical. He challenges the soft-skills framing of cross-cultural work and treats it as a leadership problem with real commercial consequences: deal terms misread, partners disengaged, talent lost. His Yantu Project, founded in 2000, has been the spine of this work since long before China became a board-level agenda item in the West. Key speaking topics Sino-Western leadership and partnership Cross-cultural collaboration in joint ventures Trust-building under operational pressure China market strategy and stakeholder engagement Risk-taking and decision-making in unfamiliar conditions Sustainability and citizen science through expedition Ideal for Boards and executive committees with material China exposure Country leaders, regional MDs, and joint-venture sponsors operating in or with Greater China Heads of strategy, M&A, and partnerships evaluating Asia-Pacific deals Senior teams running multinational cross-border programmes where cultural fluency is operationally load-bearing Audience outcomes A clearer view of where Sino-Western partnerships actually fail, drawn from inside both sides of the seam. Specific, named examples of trust-building behaviours that hold up when conditions deteriorate. A direct challenge to standard cultural-intelligence frameworks imported from Western HQ. Practical reframing of risk-taking as an organisational capability, not a personality trait. A more grounded basis for boardroom conversations about China exposure, partnership terms, and joint-venture governance.

Roy Hodgson’s background Having been a youth player at Crystal Palace, Roy spent the rest of his playing days in non-league football before beginning his managerial career in 1976. Throughout his career, Roy managed 16 different teams in eight countries, beginning in Sweden with Halmstads BK in the 1976 season. He later guided the Switzerland national team to the last 16 of the 1994 World Cup and qualification for Euro 1996; Switzerland had not qualified for a major tournament since the 1960s. From 2006 to 2007, he managed the Finland national team, guiding them to their highest-ever FIFA ranking of 33rd place and coming close to qualifying for a major tournament for the first time in their history. He managed the England national team from 2012 to 2016, taking the England job shortly before Euro 2012. ‘Roy’s England’ won all 10 matches in qualifying for Euro 2016, but he stepped down after a 2-1 last-16 defeat by Iceland left him with a record of three victories from 11 games in major tournaments. Other clubs that Roy has managed include Inter Milan, Malmö FF, Grasshoppers, FC Copenhagen, and Udinese. He has also been in charge of Blackburn Rovers, Liverpool, West Bromwich Albion, Fulham and, most recently, Crystal Palace, in the Premier League; guiding the Cottagers to the Europa League final in 2010. As of the end of the 2021 football season, Roy will step down from managing Crystal Palace, to retire from football. Roy served several times as a member of UEFA’s technical study group at the European Championships and was also a member of the FIFA technical study group at the 2006 World Cup. Roy speaks five languages and has worked as a television pundit in several of the countries in which he has coached. Hodgson was made a Knight, First Class, of the Order of the Lion of Finland in September 2012. He received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of York on 22 January 2016 and is an alumnus of the University of Greenwich, having graduated from Avery Hill College in 1972 with a Cert ED. In 2018 Hodgson was made a Freeman of the Borough of Croydon.

Why organisations work with Frits van Paasschen Two Fortune 500 CEO seats, Coors Brewing and Starwood Hotels and Resorts, give him a perspective most disruption speakers do not have: he has actually run the kind of company being disrupted, with shareholders, a board, and a quarter to report. Author of The Disruptors’ Feast, a book built from travel to more than 100 countries and interviews with operators rather than academics, which gives board conversations a concrete evidence base rather than a theoretical one. Still sits inside the rooms he advises. Current directorships at Amadeus, Williams-Sonoma, dsm-firmenich, and Sonder mean his view of governance under disruption is current, not retrospective. Credible on the international dimension in a way US-centric speakers are not. Dutch-American, ran Nike’s EMEA business out of the Netherlands, speaks five languages, led Starwood during its China expansion. A Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute fellowship and a Harvard MBA Teaching Fellowship in Economics signal the same thing his book does: he treats the CEO job as an intellectual problem, not a performance. Biography highlights President and CEO, Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, 2007 to 2015 President and CEO, Coors Brewing Company, 2005 to 2007 Corporate Vice President and General Manager, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Nike Author, The Disruptors’ Feast: How to Avoid Being Devoured in Today’s Rapidly Changing Global Economy Current directorships at Amadeus IT Group, Williams-Sonoma (Chair, Audit and Finance Committee), dsm-firmenich, and Sonder Holdings Fellow, Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute; MBA, Harvard Business School; BA Economics and Biology, Amherst College Biography Starwood Hotels and Resorts was acquired by Marriott in 2016. In the years immediately before that, the company was navigating Airbnb, the rise of China as its fastest-growing market, a mobile-first guest, and an activist investor. Frits van Paasschen ran it through most of that period, from 2007 to 2015, having arrived from the CEO seat at Coors Brewing and, before that, Nike’s EMEA business. Three different consumer industries, three different disruption stories, one operator. That operating lineage is what makes his view on disruption unusual. The Disruptors’ Feast, his 2017 book, is not a consultant’s map of “the future of” anything. It is reporting, drawn from more than 100 countries he has worked in or travelled to, on how the combination of connectivity, demographic shift, and capital flows actually lands inside companies. The argument is that most incumbents do not lose to a single disruptor; they lose to the compounding of several forces they treated as separate problems. He remains inside the governance conversation rather than outside commentating on it. He chairs the Audit and Finance Committee at Williams-Sonoma, sits on the boards of Amadeus, dsm-firmenich, and Sonder, and recently completed a two-year fellowship at the Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute. That combination matters for a speaking audience of directors and C-suite leaders: when he talks about how a board should read a strategic threat or a management succession under pressure, he is describing the seat he is currently in. The value for a serious leadership audience is not the disruption taxonomy. It is watching a former public-company CEO think out loud about the decisions he got right, the ones he did not, and what a director should actually be asking when the operating model starts to strain. Key speaking topics Leadership under disruption Global strategy and international expansion Board governance in volatile markets Consumer and hospitality business transformation CEO decision-making and accountability Cross-cultural leadership of global organisations Ideal for Boards and non-executive directors working through strategic threats to the core business CEO and C-suite offsites where the agenda is how to lead an incumbent through sustained disruption Global consumer, retail, hospitality, and travel-industry leadership audiences Senior strategy, transformation, and corporate development teams inside multinationals Audience outcomes A sharper read on which disruptive forces compound inside an incumbent and which are noise A working vocabulary for how boards and CEOs should talk about risk, governance, and pace of change together rather than separately Specific, named examples from Starwood, Coors, Nike, and the companies he now sits on the boards of, rather than generic case studies A more honest framework for what a global leadership role actually requires, from someone who has run one on three continents

Why organisations work with Duncan Wardle His Theory of Creativity™ is a named, commercially tested framework – not a philosophy but a practical toolkit developed and stress-tested across Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and Disney Parks before being applied with post-Disney clients including Apple, the NBA, Coca-Cola, and NBCUniversal. He treats creativity as a repeatable operational habit rather than a talent or a culture programme – giving leadership teams a concrete, tool-based answer to the question of how to make innovation everyone’s job, not a department’s. Specific tools within the framework – the “What If” method and the “Rivers of Thinking” model – address the cognitive and structural barriers that prevent established organisations from generating genuinely new ideas. These are actionable instruments audiences can use immediately, not post-event reading lists. He is one of the few speakers in this space who built an innovation function from the inside of a major global brand, rather than studying one from outside – a distinction that matters to senior audiences who have heard the Disney case study told at second hand. Author of The Imagination Emporium: Creative Recipes for Innovation (2024), a practitioner resource designed to be used independently by organisations after an engagement, extending the shelf life of the session beyond the room. Biography highlights VP of Innovation and Creativity at The Walt Disney Company; previous VP roles include VP Global Public Relations and VP International Marketing and Sales, with postings across London, Paris, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Mumbai, and Shanghai Founded Disney’s Creative Catalyst Team, responsible for embedding innovation across Imagineering, Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and Disney Parks Founder and CEO of iD8 & innov8, a design thinking consultancy; clients include Apple, Coca-Cola, NBA, PepsiCo, IBM, NBCUniversal, and Spotify Author of The Imagination Emporium: Creative Recipes for Innovation (Benbella Books, 2024) Contributor to Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and Fast Company; member of the Fast Company Executive Board Multiple TEDx speaker, including “The Theory of Creativity” (TEDxAUK) and “Creating Relationship Magic” (TEDxBocaRaton) Honorary Doctorate in Business Administration, Edinburgh Napier University (2014); White House American Citizen Award (2008); Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award; 2022 Nordic Business Forum Speaker Contest Winner Teaches Innovation Masterclasses at Yale and Harvard Biography Duncan Wardle joined The Walt Disney Company as an intern in the London office in 1987. Over the following 30 years he progressed through VP roles in global public relations, international marketing and sales, and ultimately VP of Innovation and Creativity – the function he built from scratch, founding Disney’s Creative Catalyst Team and deploying it across Imagineering, Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and Disney Parks. His central argument is that creativity is not a talent distributed unevenly across the workforce. It is a capability that corporate structures systematically suppress – and one that can be restored with the right tools. The framework he developed inside Disney, the Theory of Creativity™, includes specific instruments: the “What If” method, used by Walt Disney himself to pivot the company from an animation studio to an entertainment and theme park pioneer, and the “Rivers of Thinking” model, which identifies the expertise-driven habits that stop large organisations from generating genuinely new ideas. Since founding iD8 & innov8, Wardle has applied these methods with clients including Apple, Coca-Cola, the NBA, PepsiCo, and NBCUniversal – demonstrating that a toolkit built for an entertainment brand translates across sectors where creative problem-solving is structurally harder. His 2024 book, The Imagination Emporium: Creative Recipes for Innovation, packages the methodology as a practical resource organisations can use independently. He also contributes to Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and Fast Company, and teaches Innovation Masterclasses at Yale and Harvard. His formal recognition includes a White House American Citizen Award (2008), an Honorary Doctorate in Business Administration from Edinburgh Napier University (2014), a Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award, and the 2022 Nordic Business Forum Speaker Contest. He is a multiple TEDx speaker, with talks including “The Theory of Creativity” and “Creating Relationship Magic.” Key speaking topics Innovation strategy and the Theory of Creativity™ Design thinking and creative problem-solving Organisational barriers to creative thinking Customer experience innovation Human creativity and competitive advantage in the age of AI Building innovation culture at scale Creative leadership and entrepreneurial thinking Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership teams responsible for growth and competitive strategy Chief Innovation Officers, Chief Strategy Officers, and transformation leads Large organisations seeking to embed innovation beyond a dedicated function Conference audiences in technology, consumer, media, and professional services sectors Audience outcomes A named set of practical innovation tools – including the “What If” method and the “Rivers of Thinking” model – that teams can apply immediately A framework for identifying and removing the cognitive and structural barriers that block creative thinking in established organisations Clarity on how to separate the creative process from the operational process, and why the two must be managed differently An understanding of why human creativity is not threatened by AI – and how to build it as a source of commercial competitive advantage Concrete methods for making innovation a daily habit rather than a quarterly initiative

Why organisations work with Stéphane J.G. Girod Co-author of Resetting Management (Kogan Page, 2021), shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2022 in Change & Sustainability, with diagnostic tools tested against the agility journeys of LEGO, General Electric, LVMH and ING. Co-edited the Summer 2023 California Management Review special issue on business agility with Julian Birkinshaw of London Business School and Christiane Prange, placing him at the academic centre of how agility is studied and taught. Directs IMD’s Luxury 2050 initiative and the Reinventing Luxury Lab, with named C-suite client work at Richemont, La Prairie, Cartier, PUIG, Mazda and Telenor. His Harvard Business Review article “Restructure or Reconfigure?” (with Samina Karim of Northeastern) gives executives the working distinction that one in three reorganisations get wrong: when to change the underlying structure and when only to recombine units within it. Biography highlights Professor of Strategy and Organizational Innovation at IMD Business School, Lausanne. Co-author, Resetting Management: Thrive with Agility in the Age of Uncertainty (Kogan Page, 2021); shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2022 in Change & Sustainability. Co-editor of the Summer 2023 California Management Review special issue on business agility, with Julian Birkinshaw and Christiane Prange. Forbes columnist on innovation and transformation in luxury industries. Research published in Harvard Business Review, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal and Long Range Planning. DPhil in Strategic Management, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford; MBA, Aalto University; speaks seven languages. Forthcoming with Wiley: Purposeful Luxury, on positive-impact sustainability strategies in luxury industries. Member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Entertainment and Lifestyle Economy, 2025 to 2026. Biography Most large organisations are not built for the speed at which their markets now change. Strategy cycles run on multi-year horizons. Org charts assume stable competitive advantage. Both premises are under sustained strain in consumer goods, banking, retail and luxury. Stéphane Girod has spent his academic career on the diagnostic question this raises: when planning fails, what replaces it? His book Resetting Management, co-authored with Martin Králik and shortlisted for the 2022 Business Book Awards in Change & Sustainability, sets out a framework for business agility tested against case studies of LEGO, General Electric, LVMH and ING. Agility, in his account, lives at three distinct levels: strategic, organisational, and leadership. Most companies confuse one for another. His base is IMD, where he is Professor of Strategy and Organizational Innovation, leads the Luxury 2050 initiative, and directs the Reinventing Luxury Lab. He works directly with executive teams at Richemont, La Prairie, Cartier, PUIG, Mazda and Telenor on strategy and transformation. His sectoral focus on luxury, retail and consumer goods places him close to the industries where the agility question has become most urgent, where consumer behaviour, digital channels and sustainability pressure are now moving faster than strategic planning can absorb. His research has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal and Long Range Planning. With Samina Karim of Northeastern University, his 2017 HBR article “Restructure or Reconfigure?” gave executives a working distinction between two organisational change strategies that produce very different financial results. He co-edited the Summer 2023 California Management Review special issue on business agility with Julian Birkinshaw of London Business School and Christiane Prange. Girod holds a DPhil from Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, and speaks seven languages. He writes a Forbes column on innovation and transformation in luxury industries. His forthcoming book with Wiley, Purposeful Luxury, addresses how luxury houses move sustainability from brand narrative into operating substance. Key speaking topics Business agility in established organisations Strategy under uncertainty Organisational design and reconfiguration Digital execution in large companies Innovation and disruption in the luxury sector Sustainability strategy in luxury and consumer goods Leading large-scale transformation Ideal for Executive teams in luxury, consumer goods, retail and banking facing structural disruption Chief strategy officers and transformation leads designing the next planning cycle Boards of luxury and premium brands navigating polarisation, sustainability pressure and shifts in the Chinese market C-suites running a major reorganisation who need to choose between restructuring and reconfiguring Audience outcomes A working distinction between strategic, organisational and leadership agility, with a diagnostic for which one their company needs first A test for whether the next reorganisation should be a restructure or a reconfiguration, and what each implies financially Specific examples of how LEGO, ING, LVMH and General Electric have succeeded and failed at agility, with the lessons that travel across sectors A sector-specific read on how luxury and consumer-goods incumbents are responding to digital channels, sustainability pressure and shifts in the Chinese market

Why organisations work with Maher Mezher He holds a patent on the Innovators Process, a four-phase method filed across multiple jurisdictions, and uses it as the operating system inside the workshops he runs. His credibility is built on shipped products, not models on paper. The Fertility Loan he created in retail banking is a teaching case in Philip Kotler’s Principles of Marketing. He works in the languages and industries where innovation is hardest to land: regulated banking, telecom and pharma across the Middle East and Europe. He brings a tool stack, not just a talk. The Innovators Tool app, Innovators Habits and Become an INNOVATOR methodology give teams something to use the day after the keynote. He sits inside the regional innovation infrastructure, including Georgetown University in Qatar’s executive education and Qatar Foundation’s Stars of Science programme. Biography highlights Founder of Innovators League, a consulting and training firm focused on installing innovation capability inside large organisations. Inventor of the Innovators Process, a four-phase innovation method protected by patent filings. Creator of the Innovators Tool, an app for guiding teams from idea to commercial concept. Faculty for Leading Change through Innovation at Georgetown University in Qatar Executive Education. Mentor at Stars of Science, the Qatar Foundation pan-Arab innovation programme. Originator of the Fertility Loan, a retail banking product cited as a case study in Philip Kotler’s Principles of Marketing. Biography Most innovation programmes fail at the same point. Ideas are generated, pilots are funded, and then the work stalls between the lab and the line. Maher Mezher built his career on closing that gap, first as a banker shipping products, then as the operator of a method designed to make innovation behave like a managed process. His starting move was the Fertility Loan, a retail banking product he created that ran into a real customer need rather than a marketing brief. It later appeared as a case in Philip Kotler’s Principles of Marketing, which is the kind of citation that signals practitioner credibility rather than academic positioning. From that base he built Innovators League, the consulting firm through which he now works with banks, telcos, pharma companies and government bodies. The intellectual core is the Innovators Process, a patented four-phase method, supported by the Innovators Tool app and the Become an INNOVATOR methodology used inside client workshops. He sits inside the region’s innovation infrastructure as much as he speaks at it: faculty for Georgetown University in Qatar’s executive education on leading change through innovation, and a mentor on Stars of Science, the Qatar Foundation programme that backs Arab inventors. That mix of patent holder, product builder and teacher is what large organisations book him for. Key speaking topics Structured innovation process Innovation capability inside regulated industries Digital leadership and AI for non-technical leaders Creative leadership under uncertainty Innovator habits and behaviour change Product and business model innovation Innovation in financial services Ideal for CEOs and innovation leads in banks, telcos and pharma planning a multi-year innovation programme Heads of product and transformation responsible for moving concepts to launch Executive education and leadership academies in the Middle East and Europe Government and sovereign innovation bodies building national capability Audience outcomes A working understanding of the four phases of the Innovators Process and where their organisation breaks them A vocabulary for separating ideas, concepts and innovations, so teams stop conflating activity with progress Concrete examples of innovations that shipped in regulated industries, with the trade-offs named A method and tool set leaders can put into rotation the week after the session A sharper read on which innovation behaviours to hire for and which to coach

Why organisations work with Dominic McVey He has operated, not observed: acquired and restructured Hela Clothing in Sri Lanka in 2013 and grew its workforce to over 17,000 across Sri Lanka, Kenya and Ethiopia, supplying M&S, Tesco, John Lewis and Asda. He converts a teenage-millionaire origin story into serious boardroom utility: the founder instinct for spotting asymmetric opportunity, applied to corporate growth, M&A, and emerging market entry. He brings a government-grade network on Africa: MBE for services to private sector development in Africa, Namibian Honorary Consul to Wales, Coalition for Global Prosperity advisory council, Co-Chair of Global Academy Africa. He speaks credibly on ethical supply chains from the operator seat, as founder of the Fair Fashion Pact and Chairman of Computer Aid International. Biography highlights Professor of Practice, University of Wales Trinity Saint David (appointed June 2022). MBE, 2022 Platinum Jubilee Honours, for services to private sector development in Africa. Chairman and trustee of Computer Aid International, which has reached over 14.5 million people with technology access since 1997. Founder, Fair Fashion Pact; former owner and chairman of Hela Clothing, Sri Lanka. Namibian Honorary Consul to Wales; Co-Chair, Global Academy Africa; advisory council, Coalition for Global Prosperity; ambassador, HALO Trust. Keynote speaker at Davos (2020, 2024), Bloomberg’s Modern Affluence Summit (2019) and the Conservative Party Conference main stage (2018). Biography Most expansion plans into frontier markets get built around cost arbitrage and break on everything else. The operators who actually scale in Sri Lanka, Kenya, Ethiopia or Mexico spend less time on the landed-cost model and more on recruitment, training, community standing, political relationships and supplier reliability. McVey has done the second version of that work. He bought Hela Clothing in Sri Lanka in 2013, when the business had around 3,000 staff supplying UK high street retailers. Under his ownership the group expanded into Kenya and Ethiopia, grew to more than 17,000 employees, and supplied Levi’s, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, M&S, John Lewis and Tesco. That track record is the spine of his credibility when he speaks to boards about emerging market growth. The earlier chapter gives him the founder register. At 13 he began importing US-made micro-scooters into the UK. By 15 he was Britain’s youngest self-made millionaire. At 18 the Queen named him a “Pioneer for Britain in Entrepreneurism”. That arc is not a keynote hook; it is why buyers trust him to talk about spotting mispriced opportunity. The third layer is policy and philanthropy. He was awarded an MBE in the 2022 Platinum Jubilee Honours for services to private sector development in Africa, sits on the Coalition for Global Prosperity advisory council, serves as Namibian Honorary Consul to Wales, and chairs Computer Aid International. He founded the Fair Fashion Pact to raise standards in African apparel supply chains. The University of Wales Trinity Saint David appointed him Professor of Practice in 2022. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and founder thinking Emerging market growth and private sector development in Africa Ethical supply chains and responsible sourcing Scaling manufacturing across multiple geographies Business model innovation and portfolio diversification Philanthropy, trade and sustainable foreign direct investment Ideal for Boards and executive teams planning expansion into African, South Asian or Latin American markets. CEOs and commercial leaders wrestling with supply chain ethics, ESG credibility and supplier consolidation. Founder-led businesses and family offices looking for a peer voice on portfolio strategy and emerging opportunity. Conferences on trade, development finance, manufacturing and the UK-Africa commercial relationship. Audience outcomes A clearer read on what actually determines whether emerging market operations scale, beyond the cost model. A framework for evaluating supply chain partners that treats labour standards as commercial leverage, not compliance overhead. A sharper view of Africa as an investment destination from someone with working diplomatic and trade relationships there. A founder’s perspective on how to spot and act on asymmetric opportunity inside a corporate setting.

Why organisations work with Thomas Barta He turned the largest dataset on marketing leadership effectiveness, more than 67,000 360-degree assessments, into a specific set of behaviours that separate high-impact CMOs from the rest. His McGraw-Hill book with Patrick Barwise of London Business School, The 12 Powers of a Marketing Leader, gives senior marketers a research-grounded playbook rather than another opinion piece on the role. As leadership dean of the CMO Fellowship run by McKinsey and The Marketing Academy, he works each year with a small cohort of CMOs being prepared for CEO roles, which gives him a current view of where the function is going. His McKinsey work training over a thousand internal leaders on driving change without authority translates directly to the central problem CMOs face: delivering growth across functions they do not control. Biography highlights Former partner, McKinsey & Company; advised more than two dozen Fortune 500 organisations across 14 industries and 45 countries. Co-author with Patrick Barwise of The 12 Powers of a Marketing Leader (McGraw-Hill). CEO, Marketing Leadership Institute; founder of the Marketing Leadership Masterclass. Leadership dean, CMO Fellowship, run by The Marketing Academy with McKinsey. Honorary Fellow of The Marketing Society. Contributor to Forbes, Marketing Week, Nikkei and the Adobe blog; speaker at events for Adobe, Google, IBM, SAP, Oracle, Amazon and the Financial Times. Biography Marketing officers carry the customer agenda but rarely own the levers that drive growth. Thomas Barta’s research, built on more than 67,000 360-degree assessments of marketing and non-marketing leaders, set out to identify what actually separates the CMOs who shift their company’s trajectory from those who do not. The work, conducted with Patrick Barwise of London Business School, became The 12 Powers of a Marketing Leader, published by McGraw-Hill. His authority on the subject is grounded in two decades of advisory work. As a partner at McKinsey, Barta led growth transformations across 14 industries in 45 countries, working with more than two dozen Fortune 500 organisations. He was also dean of the firm’s highest-rated internal programme, where he trained over a thousand McKinsey leaders on a single problem: how to drive change in organisations where you have responsibility without formal authority. That problem is the same one most CMOs face every quarter. He runs the Marketing Leadership Institute and, with The Marketing Academy and McKinsey, serves as long-standing leadership dean of the CMO Fellowship, an annual cohort of marketers being prepared for CEO roles. He is an Honorary Fellow of The Marketing Society and writes for Forbes, Marketing Week and Nikkei. Barta’s training is unusual for the field. An MBA in marketing from London Business School sits alongside a Master’s in Organisational Psychology from INSEAD, which is why his keynotes read less as marketing seminars and more as work on senior influence, board credibility and the behavioural mechanics of leading commercial change. Key speaking topics Marketing leadership and CMO effectiveness Driving change without formal authority Customer-led growth The behavioural shift from marketer to marketing leader Influence at the executive table Building commercial credibility for the marketing function Ideal for CMOs, CGOs and senior marketing leaders preparing for board-level roles CEOs who want the marketing function to set, not chase, the growth agenda Marketing leadership programmes and CMO development cohorts Customer, brand and growth leadership offsites at large organisations Audience outcomes A clear picture of the twelve behaviours research links to high-impact marketing leadership. A practical model for influencing peers and superiors when the lever you need sits outside your function. A sharper read on how senior marketers earn commercial credibility with CFOs and CEOs. A framework for translating customer insight into decisions the rest of the C-suite will fund.