Corporate Culture

Why organisations work with Alf Rehn His central argument runs against the grain of the innovation industry: that most of what organisations call innovation is performance, not practice – and that rebuilding the real thing requires dismantling the very frameworks many have paid consultants to install. Innovation for the Fatigued (Kogan Page) provides a named, publishable framework – “deep innovation” – that gives leadership teams a vocabulary to diagnose and address innovation theatre without discarding ambition. His current research at SDU’s Center for Organizational Datafication and its Ethics in Society gives him a credible, peer-reviewed lens on how AI and algorithmic systems are reshaping management and innovation decisions – a perspective grounded in data, not trend commentary. Having held chairs at three universities across Finland, Denmark and Sweden, and served on the board of a billion-dollar corporation, he operates across the researcher-practitioner boundary in a way that is rare in the innovation speaking space. His Thinkers50 Guru Radar inclusion (2016) and coverage in the Financial Times, The Sunday Times and Harvard Business Review give buyers a named, verifiable body of external endorsement to anchor the engagement. Biography highlights Professor of Innovation, Design and Management, University of Southern Denmark Head of the Center for Organizational Datafication and its Ethics in Society, SDU – researching AI’s effects on management, innovation and algorithmic ethics Previously held the Chair of Management and Organisation at Åbo Akademi University, Finland; and a professorship in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden Named to Thinkers50 Guru Radar (2016) – listed among “the 30 management thinkers most likely to shape the future of management” Author of Innovation for the Fatigued (Kogan Page) and Dangerous Ideas – the latter translated into eight languages Featured in the Financial Times, The Sunday Times and Harvard Business Review; over 1,000 keynotes delivered across five continents Biography Alf Rehn has spent much of his academic career making the same uncomfortable argument: that organisations are not suffering from a lack of innovation, but from an excess of innovation theatre. His book Innovation for the Fatigued, published by Kogan Page, names this problem directly – and his concept of “deep innovation” offers a framework for distinguishing creative cultures that produce real output from those that have learned to imitate one. That critique has weight because of where it comes from. Rehn holds a chair in Innovation, Design and Management at the University of Southern Denmark, where he also leads the Center for Organizational Datafication and its Ethics in Society – a research unit examining how AI and algorithmic technologies are changing the way executives, engineers and managers make decisions. He has previously held professorships at Åbo Akademi University in Finland and KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, combining research across critical management studies, creativity and organisational theory. His earlier book Dangerous Ideas – translated into eight languages – argues that the ideas organisations most need are precisely the ones they are instinctively disposed to dismiss. Together, the two books form a coherent intellectual position: that genuine innovation requires not better processes but the courage to engage with what is uncomfortable, inconvenient and structurally difficult. Named to the Thinkers50 Guru Radar in 2016 and covered by the Financial Times, The Sunday Times and Harvard Business Review, Rehn engages boards and executive teams on the strategic gap between innovation ambition and innovation reality – and on how emerging technologies, including AI, are creating new versions of the same problem. Key speaking topics Innovation strategy and organisational creativity Innovation fatigue and deep innovation Creative cultures and their destruction Dangerous and unconventional ideas in business AI, datafication and ethics in management Leadership paradox and contradictory demands on leaders Scenario planning and taboo futures Contrarian and critical thinking in strategy Ideal for Chief Innovation Officers and strategy leads seeking to audit and rebuild innovation culture Executive leadership teams who have invested in innovation programmes with limited return Boards and C-suite audiences examining how AI is reshaping organisational decision-making CHROs and transformation leads working on the cultural conditions for sustained creativity Audience outcomes A clearer diagnostic for distinguishing genuine creative capacity from performative innovation activity Practical language and frameworks from Innovation for the Fatigued to challenge and rebuild internal innovation practice A more rigorous approach to unconventional and uncomfortable ideas, informed by the argument of Dangerous Ideas Familiarity with how AI and algorithmic systems are reshaping management decisions, grounded in current academic research A more honest account of what leadership under contradictory demands actually requires – and how to navigate it without resolving it

Why organisations work with Susan Cain A single, defensible thesis. Quiet sold over four million copies, spent multiple years on the New York Times bestseller list and translated into 40 languages, which gives a senior audience a shared reference point before she walks on stage. Operational, not theoretical. Through the Quiet Leadership Institute she has delivered corporate programmes at GE, LinkedIn, Procter & Gamble, NASA and the Dutch Air Force, and partnered with Steelcase to redesign office space around introvert-friendly workflows. Reframes inclusion in language that lands with sceptical executives. Personality bias is a talent and productivity argument, not a values argument, which makes the conversation possible in rooms where DEI has become contested. Cultural reach that pulls audiences in. The TED2012 talk has been viewed more than 30 million times and named by Bill Gates as a personal favourite, and Bittersweet was an Oprah’s Book Club pick in 2023. Biography highlights Honours graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School; former Wall Street negotiations attorney Author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, #1 New York Times bestseller, four million copies sold, 40 languages Author of Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole, #1 New York Times bestseller and Oprah’s Book Club selection TED2012 talk “The Power of Introverts” viewed over 30 million times; named by Bill Gates as a favourite TED talk Co-founder of Quiet Revolution and the Quiet Leadership Institute, with corporate programmes at GE, LinkedIn, Procter & Gamble, NASA and the Dutch Air Force Recipient of Harvard Law School’s Celebration Award for thought leadership and the Toastmasters International Golden Gavel Award Biography A third to half of the workforce is introverted, yet most companies are built as though everyone in the room is an extrovert. Hiring rewards the candidate who presents best in an interview. Meetings reward whoever speaks first. Open-plan offices reward visibility over depth of thought. The cumulative cost in lost ideas, attrition and shallow decision-making is significant, and rarely measured. That is the operational problem Quiet named in 2012. The book has sold over four million copies, sat on the New York Times bestseller list for years and been translated into 40 languages, which is why senior leaders tend to arrive at the keynote already inside the argument. The accompanying TED2012 talk has been viewed more than 30 million times and was named by Bill Gates as one of his favourites. The work since then has been practical. Through the Quiet Leadership Institute, founded with former West Point professor Mike Erwin, Cain has run corporate development programmes for organisations including GE, LinkedIn, Procter & Gamble, NASA and the Dutch Air Force. With Steelcase, she co-designed the Quiet Spaces office concept, a direct intervention into the open-plan trend. Her second book, Bittersweet, debuted at #1 on the New York Times nonfiction list and was selected for Oprah’s Book Club in 2023, broadening the conversation into how organisations handle emotion, longing and creativity at work. Her Princeton and Harvard Law training, and her earlier career as a Wall Street negotiator, show up in the way she argues. The case is a talent and productivity case before it is a values case, which is what makes it land in rooms where leaders are tired of the usual inclusion language. Key speaking topics The hidden strengths of introverted leaders Personality bias in hiring, meetings and promotion Workspace and office design for cognitive performance Talent strategy across the introvert and extrovert spectrum Creativity, deep work and the conditions for original thinking Inclusion framed as a productivity argument Emotion, longing and meaning at work (drawing on Bittersweet) Ideal for CHROs, talent leaders and heads of organisational development rethinking how they hire, promote and retain CEOs and senior executives whose workforce skews toward knowledge work, research, engineering or design Heads of workplace strategy and real estate teams designing the next generation of office space Learning and leadership development teams building inclusive leadership curricula that move beyond conventional DEI framing Audience outcomes A concrete vocabulary for the personality bias built into common hiring, meeting and performance practices Specific design choices to test, in meetings, workspaces and team rituals, to surface ideas from quieter staff A reframed argument for inclusion that survives executive scrutiny on commercial grounds A clearer view of where deep work and solitude belong in the operating model of a knowledge organisation

Why organisations work with Sahar Hashemi She has built three commercial ventures from a standing start. Coffee Republic (110 stores, £50 million market cap), Skinny Candy (acquired by Glisten Plc) and Buy Women Built (2,000+ businesses, £2.5 billion combined turnover) give her a working library of how entrepreneurial behaviour actually feels day to day. Her Start Up Forever framework breaks the entrepreneurial mindset down into a small set of repeatable daily behaviours, which is what lets it survive contact with corporate hierarchy. The book was named a Financial Times Business Book of the Month. She translates between two worlds that rarely speak the same language: founders running on instinct and customer obsession, and senior executives running on process and structure. Most speakers can describe one of those worlds; she has lived both. Her credibility on women-led growth is operating credibility, not advocacy. Buy Women Built is a commercial channel built with major retailers, and she co-chaired the UK government’s Scale Up Taskforce on growing SMEs. Biography highlights Co-founder, Coffee Republic; scaled to 110 stores and a £50 million market capitalisation Founder, Skinny Candy (50% acquired by Glisten Plc) and Buy Women Built Author, Anyone Can Do It (Wiley, 2003) and Start Up Forever (Troubador, 2019, Financial Times Business Book of the Month) OBE for services to the UK economy and to charity, 2012 Birthday Honours Co-chair, UK government Scale Up Taskforce; board member, Scale Up Institute Young Global Leader, World Economic Forum Biography Coffee Republic opened on South Molton Street in 1995, the first US-style coffee bar chain in the UK. Within five years it ran 110 stores at a £50 million market capitalisation. Sahar Hashemi co-founded the business with her brother Bobby after leaving a career in law, and the speed of the build became the basis of everything she has worked on since. The question that has occupied her for two decades is why large companies struggle to act on what they already know. Most have the people, the capital and the data to behave entrepreneurially. They rarely behave that way in practice. Her book Start Up Forever, named a Financial Times Business Book of the Month, breaks that gap into a set of daily habits that survive inside corporate structure rather than dying in workshop rooms. The work has weight because it is grounded in three operating businesses she actually built, not consulting case studies. Skinny Candy, the sugar-free confectionery brand, was acquired by Glisten Plc. Buy Women Built, launched in 2020, now represents more than 2,000 women-built businesses with combined turnover above £2.5 billion and has become a working channel inside major UK retailers. She co-chaired the UK government’s Scale Up Taskforce and sits on the board of the Scale Up Institute. Senior teams at Microsoft, L’Oreal, LinkedIn, Procter & Gamble and Sky have brought her in for the same reason: she gives a leadership group a usable answer to the question of what entrepreneurial behaviour looks like on a Tuesday afternoon at a 50,000-person company. She was awarded an OBE in 2012 for services to the UK economy and to charity, and named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurial mindset inside large organisations Innovation and creativity as everyday discipline Building start-up culture in established businesses Intrapreneurship and behaviour change at scale Women-led entrepreneurship and scale-up growth Customer obsession as a leadership behaviour Courage, action and the founder’s bias to start Ideal for Executive teams running innovation, transformation or culture-change programmes CHROs and learning leaders who want behaviour change, not awareness Strategy and growth leaders trying to build new businesses inside an existing one Sales, marketing and customer teams rebuilding around customer obsession Audience outcomes A practical model of entrepreneurial behaviour that translates into Monday-morning habits Specific examples of how founder instincts (customer obsession, bias to act, comfort with ambiguity) operate inside corporate structure A clearer view of why innovation programmes stall, and what to remove rather than add Renewed confidence in personal agency: what an individual contributor or senior leader can change without permission Frameworks from Start Up Forever that teams can apply to their own products, customers and decisions

Why organisations work with Rachael Robertson She gives leadership teams a working vocabulary, «No Triangles», «Bacon Wars», «Respect Trumps Harmony», that clients adopt as internal shorthand long after the keynote ends. She has run a workforce in conditions where avoidance was not an option: 18 people, one year, no exit, at Davis Station. The lessons are tested, not theoretical. Her two Wiley-published books, Leading on the Edge and Respect Trumps Harmony, give buyers a defensible, peer-reviewable body of work to point at internally. She speaks specifically to the leadership cost of false harmony: how senior teams that prize getting on quietly underperform teams that prize respect and direct disagreement. She reads as Australian-direct rather than American-motivational, which makes her credible with engineering, mining, finance and government audiences who are allergic to inspirational framing. Biography highlights Led the 58th ANARE expedition to Davis Station, Antarctica, including the year-long winter with a team of 18. Victoria’s youngest ever Chief Ranger, appointed at 32, with responsibility for the state’s South West Region. MBA, Melbourne Business School; BA in Public Relations, Deakin University. Author of Leading on the Edge (Wiley, 2013) and Respect Trumps Harmony (Wiley). Has delivered keynotes across mining, healthcare, finance, construction, retail and government, including ANZ, BHP-Billiton, Chevron, Australia Post and CPA Australia. Biography A workforce of 18 people, locked into Davis Station for the Antarctic winter, cannot be managed with charisma or compromise. Everyone is interdependent, no one can leave, and the dynamics that big organisations spend years tolerating become operational risks within weeks. That is the problem Rachael Robertson was handed in 2005 as the leader of the 58th ANARE expedition. She had arrived there through Victoria’s parks service, where she became the youngest Chief Ranger in the state’s history at 32. After Antarctica she completed an MBA at Melbourne Business School and turned the experience into a deliberate body of leadership work, not a memoir. The frameworks she has built, «No Triangles», «Respect Trumps Harmony», «Bacon Wars», «Lead Without a Title», are codified in her two Wiley books and used by client organisations as internal vocabulary. They focus on a specific failure pattern: senior teams that mistake politeness for cohesion and pay for it later in slow decisions, hidden grievances, and softening accountability. She has spoken to leadership audiences across mining, finance, healthcare, construction and government, including ANZ, BHP-Billiton, Chevron, Australia Post and CPA Australia. The reason she keeps being booked into those rooms is straightforward: she gives senior leaders a small set of behaviours they can name, defend, and install with their own teams the following Monday. Key speaking topics Leadership under sustained pressure Constructive conflict and team accountability Resilience in isolated and high-stakes workplaces Safety leadership and remote operations Building team culture in interdependent environments Women in senior leadership Change-ready organisational cultures Ideal for CEOs, COOs and executive teams running geographically dispersed or high-risk operations Mining, energy, construction, transport and emergency services leadership HR and people directors rebuilding accountability after restructure or hybrid drift Conferences for senior women in operational and technical industries Audience outcomes A named vocabulary for the silent dysfunctions, gossip chains, parked grievances, false harmony, that erode senior team performance. Specific behavioural rules a leader can install the next week, including the No Triangles practice for direct communication. A clearer view of when team harmony becomes a leadership liability rather than an asset. Tested examples of how decisions, conflict and morale hold up when a team cannot escape itself.

Why organisations work with Parm Sandhu A first-hand command perspective on incidents the public watched unfold, including the Lee Rigby murder in Greenwich and senior organising responsibility during the London 2012 Olympics. A serving leader’s account of how institutional culture excludes capable people, evidenced by her settled discrimination case against the Metropolitan Police and her memoir Black and Blue. Operational fluency in counter-terrorism, public order, anti-corruption and crisis response, drawn from 30 years across the Met rather than from secondary research. A current education brief as Managing Director of the London Policing College and Associate Lecturer at the University of West London, which keeps her thinking close to how leadership and ethics are actually taught to the next generation. Comfort in front of cameras and senior audiences, built from regular analysis on BBC News, Sky News, ITV News, Channel 4, Channel 5, LBC, Times Radio and Good Morning Britain. Biography highlights Former Chief Superintendent, Metropolitan Police Service; first and only Asian female officer promoted through the ranks to that grade. Borough Commander for Richmond and senior officer with operational responsibilities during the London 2012 Olympics and on duty during the Lee Rigby murder in Greenwich. Author of Black and Blue: One Woman’s Story of Policing and Prejudice, Atlantic Books, co-written with Stuart Prebble. Managing Director, London Policing College; Associate Lecturer, University of West London. Honorary Doctorate of Letters, University of West London, for contribution to public service and police education. Public Sector Award, Asian Women of Achievement Awards. Regular on-air contributor for BBC News, Sky News, ITV News, Channel 4, Channel 5, LBC, Times Radio and Good Morning Britain. Biography The Lee Rigby murder happened on a residential street in Greenwich in 2013. Parm Sandhu was the superintendent on duty. That kind of moment, where command judgement is made quickly and reviewed slowly, sits at the centre of how she thinks about leadership. Thirty years inside the Metropolitan Police gave her the operational range to back it up: counter-terrorism, anti-corruption, public order, and a senior organising role during the London 2012 Olympics. She finished as a Chief Superintendent and Borough Commander for Richmond, the first and only Asian woman in the force’s history to be promoted through the ranks to that grade. She also wrote about what it cost. Black and Blue, published by Atlantic Books with journalist Stuart Prebble, is a serving officer’s account of how institutional culture decides who gets believed and who gets through. Her later discrimination case against the Met, settled confidentially, made the same argument in a different register. Audiences hear both sides of the same career, the command decisions and the cultural ones. Today she runs the London Policing College and lectures at the University of West London, where she holds an honorary Doctorate of Letters for her contribution to public service. The combination of senior operational command, public commentary on BBC News, Sky News, ITV News and LBC, and a settled record on discrimination is rare. It is also why she lands with leadership audiences who are tired of being told that culture and performance are separate problems. Key speaking topics Crisis command and decision-making under public scrutiny Counter-terrorism and major incident leadership Institutional culture and organisational integrity Inclusive leadership in hierarchical institutions Women’s safety and violence against women and girls Resilience and personal recovery from adversity Ethics, accountability and public trust Ideal for Boards and executive committees of institutions where culture, scrutiny and public trust are commercial risks, including financial services, healthcare and regulated public bodies. Senior leadership programmes for police, military, civil service and other hierarchical organisations. CHRO and Chief People Officer audiences working on inclusion outcomes rather than inclusion communications. Conferences on women in leadership and on safeguarding, where a commander-rank perspective is genuinely uncommon. Audience outcomes A clearer sense of what command judgement actually looks like when an incident is live and the public is watching. A practical view of how culture quietly suppresses talent, and what senior leaders can do about it before it reaches a tribunal. A frame for thinking about resilience that is grounded in 30 years of operational policing rather than in self-help language. A direct, named account of how institutional discrimination operates in practice, with implications for any organisation under similar scrutiny.