Creativity

Why organisations work with Fabian Hemmert He brings a working academic’s depth to a question most strategy teams treat too lightly: what does good human-computer interaction actually look like when AI is in the loop. His “Research Through Design” approach produces tested prototypes, not slideware. The “Data Touch” project, a finger ring that advances presentations by recognising objects, is the kind of artefact that shifts how a leadership team thinks about interface design. He speaks fluently across audiences. A PhD from Berlin University of the Arts, prior commercial work at Nintendo and Marvel, and stage time at SXSW, Lift and the Chaos Communication Congress give him range from board to design floor. He reframes AI as a design problem rather than a deployment problem. For organisations wrestling with adoption, that reframing tends to unlock conversations the technical roadmap cannot. Biography highlights Professor of Interface and User Experience Design, University of Wuppertal, heading the department since 2016. Dr.-Ing. from Berlin University of the Arts, with doctoral research at the Design Research Lab in collaboration with Telekom Innovation Labs. TEDxBerlin speaker; talk “The shape-shifting future of the mobile phone” hosted on TED.com. Conference platforms include SXSW, Lift, Chaos Communication Congress, EuroVision TV Summit, CeBIT, TEDxSalzburg and TEDxInnsbruck. Earlier industry experience at Nintendo of Europe and Marvel Comics during interface design studies. Published academic work on tangible interfaces and design research methodology, including a PhD thesis and book chapter on the Repertory Grid Technique. Biography Most digital products are built for the system, not the human using it. That mismatch is becoming harder to hide as AI moves from the back office into daily work. Fabian Hemmert’s research at the University of Wuppertal is a sustained attempt to close that gap through design rather than user training. He runs the Interface and User Experience Design department at Wuppertal’s industrial design school and earned his Dr.-Ing. at Berlin University of the Arts, working alongside Telekom Innovation Labs. The methodology is “Research Through Design”: build a prototype, put it in front of people, learn what changes. Projects such as “Data Touch”, a finger ring that controls a presentation by recognising the objects in a speaker’s hand, are how the research becomes argument. Earlier in his career he worked for Nintendo of Europe and Marvel Comics, which gives the academic frame a commercial spine. His public platform includes TEDxBerlin, SXSW, Lift, the Chaos Communication Congress, the EuroVision TV Summit and CeBIT. The through-line is consistent across all of them: intuitive technology is a design outcome, not an accident. For senior leaders, the value is a corrective. Strategy decks treat AI and digital tools as capability questions. Hemmert’s work makes the case that adoption, engagement and trust are decided much earlier, at the interface, and that organisations underestimate how much of their digital strategy is being shaped by design defaults they never examined. Key speaking topics Human-computer interaction Designing for AI in everyday use Tangible and embodied interfaces The future of mobile and personal devices Research Through Design methodology Design education and creative capability Play as a method for innovation Ideal for Chief design officers, heads of product and CX leaders rethinking digital interfaces in light of AI. Innovation and R&D teams looking for an academic perspective grounded in built prototypes. Leadership audiences at technology, telecoms, consumer electronics and media organisations. Universities, design schools and conferences focused on the future of human-machine interaction. Audience outcomes A sharper sense of why interface design, not model capability, often decides whether an AI deployment lands. Exposure to working prototypes that reframe assumptions about how digital systems should feel to use. A vocabulary for discussing tangibility, embodiment and intuition as commercial design variables. Confidence to challenge default assumptions about screens, devices and digital workflows in their own organisation.

Why organisations work with David McCandless He built the language of modern editorial data visualisation through Information is Beautiful, the blog and three books that defined the form for a generation of journalists and designers. He co-founded the Information is Beautiful Awards in 2012 with Kantar’s Aziz Cami, the global benchmark prize for data visualisation, giving him a panoramic view of what works across thousands of submissions. His work has been published by The Guardian, Wired, and Die Zeit and exhibited at MoMA, Tate Britain, and the Wellcome Trust gallery, evidence that the craft holds up to both editorial and curatorial scrutiny. His TEDGlobal 2010 talk, “The beauty of data visualization”, remains one of the most-watched introductions to the field and shapes how senior audiences think about visual storytelling. Biography highlights Author of Information is Beautiful (2009), Knowledge is Beautiful (2014), and Beautiful News (2023), published by HarperCollins. Founder of the Information is Beautiful blog and co-founder of the Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards (2012). TEDGlobal 2010 speaker: “The beauty of data visualization”. Information design featured in The Guardian, Wired, and Die Zeit. Work exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Tate Britain, and the Wellcome Trust gallery (London). Began his career as a journalist writing for The Guardian and Wired before building Information is Beautiful into a publishing platform. Biography The hardest problem in modern communication is not gathering data. It is making the data mean something to a reader who has eight seconds and a phone. That is the territory David McCandless has worked for nearly two decades, first as a journalist at The Guardian and Wired, then as the founder of Information is Beautiful. The blog became a publishing programme. Information is Beautiful (2009), Knowledge is Beautiful (2014), and Beautiful News (2023) collect more than 1,500 graphics that take subjects ranging from drug deaths to global wealth and turn them into images a non-specialist can read. The craft sits in the choices: what to compare, what to leave out, what visual metaphor lets a number argue with itself. In 2012 he co-founded what became the Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards with Aziz Cami, then Creative Director at Kantar. Through that platform McCandless has spent more than a decade looking at the best data visualisation work in the world, which gives him an unusually wide reference set when advising teams on what separates a chart that lands from one that does not. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Tate Britain, and the Wellcome Trust gallery, and his TEDGlobal 2010 talk on the beauty of data visualisation introduced the field to a mainstream audience. For organisations sitting on data they cannot translate into action, he offers the rarer skill: editorial judgement on what is worth showing, and how. Key speaking topics Data visualisation Information design Data storytelling Data journalism Visual communication Creativity and pattern recognition Infographics in business communication Ideal for CMOs, brand and marketing leaders rethinking how data shapes customer narratives Communications, internal comms, and corporate affairs leads briefing senior audiences Heads of data, analytics, and insight whose dashboards are not changing decisions Innovation and design leaders building visual literacy across the organisation Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for what makes a data visualisation land with a non-specialist audience Sharper editorial judgement on which numbers in a dataset are worth showing and which are noise Concrete examples from across journalism, design, and the IIB Awards archive of what good looks like A clearer view of how to brief designers, agencies, and internal teams on data-led communication

Why organisations work with Katherine Templar-Lewis She brings the science of uncertainty into the room with an evidence base, not a metaphor. The Uncertainty Experts, the programme she leads as chief scientist, was built with University College London and is one of the few interventions on the topic with published validation. Her material is designed to land on commercial teams, not academic audiences. She has translated the same research into work for Apple, LEGO, Nike, Volvo, Nestle and TikTok. Co-author of The Uncertainty Toolkit with Sam Conniff (Pan Macmillan), giving leaders a named, citable framework rather than a generic talk on resilience. A serious media operator: BBC, Sky News, NBC, CNN, Radio 4 and The Today Show, with coverage in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times and New Scientist. Boards get a communicator who can hold a stage and a camera. Co-founder of Kinda Studios, a neuroscience studio that runs applied research with UCL and Goldsmiths. The work she presents from the stage is the work she is doing with clients during the week. Biography highlights Cognitive scientist; co-founder and director of Kinda Studios, a creative neuroscience studio. Lead scientist and co-creator of The Uncertainty Experts, an interactive documentary developed with University College London and Sam Conniff. Co-author of The Uncertainty Toolkit, published by Pan Macmillan. Co-host and executive producer of Beyond 5 Senses, an Audible Originals neuroscience series. Research collaborations with UCL and Goldsmiths; programme research validated in association with The Royal Society and CIPD. Recurring science contributor on BBC, Sky News, NBC, CNN, Radio 4, The Today Show, The One Show and Start the Week. Speaker and consulting work with Apple, LEGO, Nike, Volvo, Nestle, Netflix and TikTok. Biography Most leadership advice on uncertainty stops at metaphor. Katherine Templar-Lewis works on the underlying mechanism, the cognitive and neurological systems that decide whether a senior team holds its nerve, narrows its focus or freezes. As co-founder of Kinda Studios and lead scientist on The Uncertainty Experts, she has built one of the few evidence-based programmes on the subject, developed with University College London and validated in association with The Royal Society and CIPD. The work has commercial reach because the science is translated, not diluted. The Uncertainty Toolkit, her book with Sam Conniff for Pan Macmillan, sets out the operating moves leaders can make when conditions are unstable: how to read their own physiology, how to choose between options without false confidence, how to keep teams committed when the picture keeps changing. Apple, LEGO, Nike, Volvo, Nestle and TikTok have used the same material inside their own organisations. She is also a confident communicator outside the academic register. As co-host and executive producer of Beyond 5 Senses on Audible, and as a recurring contributor across BBC, Sky News, NBC, CNN and Radio 4, she has spent years turning research into language that an audience can use the next morning. New Scientist has called her approach radically optimistic, which is unusual in a field that tends toward warnings. What she gives an executive audience is a more accurate map of what their own brains are doing during a hard quarter, and a small set of tools that hold up when the data does not. Key speaking topics Decision-making under uncertainty Applied neuroscience for leaders Team performance and connection Cognitive resilience and recovery Neuroaesthetics, creativity and wellbeing Behaviour change and organisational learning Ideal for Executive teams and boards working through prolonged strategic uncertainty CHROs and people leaders rebuilding team resilience after sustained change Innovation, brand and customer experience leaders interested in neuroaesthetics Leadership development programmes for senior cohorts Audience outcomes A working understanding of how the brain handles uncertainty, and what that means for senior decisions Named techniques from The Uncertainty Toolkit that leaders can apply to their own routines Sharper recognition of the team behaviours that signal cognitive overload before performance drops A more confident posture toward ambiguity, grounded in research rather than mindset language

Why organisations work with Julie Gautier A first-hand discipline of working under physiological pressure that few keynote speakers can credibly claim. Two French records in constant weight freediving, minus 68 metres on a single breath, are evidence of a practice, not an anecdote. A creative body of work that translates the discipline into something an audience can feel. Ama, shot in a single breath in the world’s deepest pool, has reached a wide international audience and has become a reference point for how breath, focus and stillness are cultivated. Direct relevance to leadership audiences asking how to stay composed under public scrutiny, scrutiny markets, board pressure or crisis. The mechanism she describes is concrete: how the breath is trained, how attention is held, how panic is metabolised before it becomes decision. A second register of value for organisations working on creativity, environmental purpose, or the relationship between people and the natural world. Her films sit inside that conversation rather than next to it. Biography highlights Two French records in constant weight freediving, minus 65 metres (2006) and minus 68 metres (2007). Co-founder of Les Films Engloutis, the production label behind her underwater work. Writer and director of Ama, performed in a single breath in the Y-40 deep pool, Italy. Co-director and writer of the underwater music video for Beyoncé and Naughty Boy’s “Runnin’ (Lose It All)” (2015). Director of One Breath Around the World, featured in National Geographic’s Short Film Showcase. TEDxLausanneWomen speaker, December 2019, “Inspiration in the Absence of Breath”. Biography Holding the breath is a trained skill, not a held-back reflex. Gautier worked on it for nine years as a competitive freediver, including two French national records in constant weight, before stepping out of the sport in 2009. The discipline she learned, working with the breath rather than against it, is the substance she now brings to leadership audiences. Her second career has been as a director and performer in underwater cinema. With Guillaume Néry, she co-founded Les Films Engloutis, the label behind films including Narcose, Ocean Gravity and One Breath Around the World, the last of which was carried by National Geographic’s Short Film Showcase. She also co-directed and wrote the underwater music video for Beyoncé and Naughty Boy’s “Runnin’ (Lose It All)”. Ama, released on International Women’s Day in 2018, is the work that brought the practice into the cultural conversation. It is a single-breath performance in the Y-40 deep pool in Italy, choreographed and performed by Gautier herself. It has been read as a piece on grief, on women’s resilience, on the management of pressure, on the value of stillness. It is not a metaphor for any of those things. It is the discipline made visible. For a corporate audience, the relevance is direct. Senior leaders are working in conditions where composure has become a performance variable. Gautier’s contribution is not motivational language. It is a description of how a person who has practised breath and attention under real physiological constraint actually does it, and what transfers when the audience walks out of the room. Key speaking topics Breath, focus and composure under pressure Self-leadership and emotional regulation Creativity drawn from natural environments Personal discipline and long-form practice Ocean storytelling and environmental purpose Ideal for Senior leadership offsites where composure under public pressure is a stated theme Cultural and inspirational segments of conferences for boards, executive committees and partner audiences Wellbeing, performance and people-function summits looking for substantive content on breath and attention Brand, creative and sustainability events where ocean storytelling has natural anchor Audience outcomes A concrete account of how breath is trained as a tool for focus, not as a wellness motif A vocabulary for talking about composure as a learned practice rather than a personal trait Visual material, drawn from her films, that audiences continue to discuss after the session A working frame for how stillness, patience and humility translate into professional performance

Why organisations work with Jeffrey Schnapp He has done the rare thing of building both a respected academic institution (metaLAB at Harvard, Stanford Humanities Lab) and a venture-backed hardware business (Piaggio Fast Forward, makers of the gita robot). Most innovation speakers have done one or the other. The gita robot, which he co-conceived, won the 2020 Red Dot Award Best of the Best. He can speak to product design as a senior operator, not as a commentator on other people’s products. His framework treats culture, narrative, and material design as part of the same engineering problem. For consumer brands, mobility companies, and cultural institutions, that is the integration most teams never manage internally. He sits at the centre of the most serious institutional conversations on the future of libraries, museums, archives, and AI-augmented knowledge work, with Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center, the Triennale di Milano, and the Canadian Centre for Architecture among his collaborators. Biography highlights Carl A. Pescosolido Chair in Romance Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature, Harvard University; Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature. Founder and faculty director of metaLAB (at) Harvard; faculty co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Co-founder and Chief Visionary Officer of Piaggio Fast Forward; former CEO 2015 to 2018. Founding director of the Stanford Humanities Lab, 1999 to 2009. Co-author of Digital_Humanities (MIT Press, 2012); author of FuturPiaggio (2017) and Storia rapida della velocita (2025), winner of the 2025 Premio di saggistica “Citta delle rose.” Speaker at TED, the United Nations, and the Royal Academy of Sweden; gita robot recipient of the 2020 Red Dot Award Best of the Best. Biography The gita robot, a two-wheeled cargo follower built by Piaggio Fast Forward in Boston, won the 2020 Red Dot Award Best of the Best. Its co-founder is a Harvard professor of comparative literature. That sentence is the simplest way to describe what Jeffrey Schnapp does: he runs serious cultural scholarship and serious product engineering as a single practice, and ships from both ends. At Harvard he holds the Carl A. Pescosolido Chair, chairs the Department of Comparative Literature, and founded metaLAB, an experimental research unit at the intersection of design, technology and the humanities. He is also a faculty co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Before Harvard he founded and ran the Stanford Humanities Lab, one of the earliest serious experiments in digital humanities infrastructure. In parallel, he co-founded Piaggio Fast Forward, the robotics arm of the Italian mobility group behind Vespa, and served as its CEO from 2015 to 2018 before moving into the Chief Visionary Officer role. PFF has shipped the gita and gita mini personal cargo robots and, in 2025, the kilo utility robot. His authored work, including FuturPiaggio and the prize-winning Storia rapida della velocita, treats mobility, speed and material culture as questions a serious product company needs to answer. The pattern across his career is a refusal to separate cultural intuition from operational delivery. He has curated exhibitions at the Triennale di Milano and the Canadian Centre for Architecture, redesigned tunnels in Trento into a working history museum, and helped define what the next generation of libraries, archives and AI-augmented knowledge tools will look like. For corporate audiences working on brand, customer experience, mobility, or innovation portfolios, that integrated view is the asset. Key speaking topics Innovation at the intersection of design, culture and technology Mobility and the future of urban life Robotics and human-centred product design The future of libraries, archives and museums AI and the future of knowledge work Cultural history as a strategic asset for brands Design-led entrepreneurship Ideal for Boards and executive teams in mobility, consumer products, and design-led brands Innovation, R&D, and design leaders integrating cultural insight into product development Cultural institutions, libraries, and museum leadership rethinking their operating model Universities and think tanks commissioning on the future of knowledge work and the humanities Audience outcomes A working model for treating cultural history and product design as one discipline rather than two budgets Concrete reference cases from Piaggio Fast Forward, metaLAB, and large-scale curatorial projects A clearer view of how AI is reshaping libraries, archives and knowledge institutions, from someone building inside both the academy and a venture A vocabulary for senior teams who want innovation programmes that produce shipped objects, not slide decks

Why organisations work with DJ Target He was inside grime before it was a marketing category. As a founding member of Roll Deep with Wiley, Dizzee Rascal, Skepta and Flowdan, his account of how the genre formed is first-hand, not retrofitted. His book Grime Kids became the definitive insider history of the scene and the source text for a BBC Three drama adaptation written by Theresa Ikoko. Few cultural movements are documented this directly by a participant. The Rap Game UK, which he co-hosts with Krept and Konan, earned a BAFTA nomination for Entertainment Programme, giving him broadcast craft alongside scene credibility. Eden’s Bloom, the freeze-dried baby food brand he co-founded with his wife Eva, gives him a working perspective on building a consumer brand from scratch outside the music industry. He brings the hosting craft of a daily 1Xtra slot to corporate panels, awards and culture-led conversations, where the bar is keeping a senior audience interested without scripting every line. Biography highlights Founding member of Roll Deep alongside Wiley, Dizzee Rascal, Skepta and Flowdan; co-producer of the UK Top 20 single “Champagne Dance”. BBC Radio 1Xtra presenter since 2007, former co-music lead of the station. Co-host of BBC Three’s BAFTA-nominated The Rap Game UK with Krept and Konan. Author of Grime Kids: The Inside Story of the Global Grime Takeover (Trapeze, 2018). Executive producer on the BBC Three drama adaptation of Grime Kids, written by Theresa Ikoko and produced by Mammoth Screen. Co-founder of Eden’s Bloom, a freeze-dried baby food brand built with his wife Eva Joseph. Biography Grime did not arrive fully formed. It was built on pirate radio in East London by teenagers who had no expectation that anyone outside their estates would listen. Roll Deep was one of the collectives at the centre of that, and DJ Target was one of its founding members alongside Wiley, Dizzee Rascal, Skepta and Flowdan. Their 2002 single “Champagne Dance” reached number 13 on the UK Singles Chart and signalled that the scene could cross over without losing what made it. That experience gave him the source material for Grime Kids: The Inside Story of the Global Grime Takeover, published by Trapeze in 2018. The book became the canonical insider account of the genre, later adapted into a BBC Three drama series written by Theresa Ikoko and produced by Mammoth Screen, with DJ Target as executive producer. He is one of the few participants in a cultural movement who has gone on to write its history and shape its dramatisation. His broadcasting career sits alongside this. He has presented on BBC Radio 1Xtra since 2007, served as the station’s co-music lead, and co-hosts BBC Three’s The Rap Game UK with Krept and Konan, a series that earned a BAFTA nomination for Entertainment Programme. The hosting craft is the part senior audiences feel directly: keeping a room engaged, threading a conversation, working without a script. Outside music he co-founded Eden’s Bloom with his wife Eva Joseph, a freeze-dried baby food brand named after their daughter. The venture gives him a working view of consumer brand-building from product to shelf, and a second story to draw on when the brief is entrepreneurship rather than culture. Key speaking topics UK grime, garage and the rise of British Black music Cultural authenticity in brand and youth marketing Building a creative scene from the ground up Broadcasting and panel hosting Founder experience in consumer goods Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders working on youth, music or culture-led campaigns Internal culture and DEI programmes that want substance rather than slogans Awards hosting, panel moderation and after-dinner sets where craft and cultural authority both matter Founder communities and accelerator audiences interested in consumer brand-building Audience outcomes A first-hand account of how grime moved from pirate radio to global recognition, told by someone who was there A clearer read on what makes brand engagement with youth culture credible and what makes it fall flat A working founder’s view of building a consumer product brand alongside a creative career A hosted conversation that lands with audiences who can spot a scripted moderator from the back of the room

Why organisations work with Monty Criswell Five number-one country singles across three decades, including “I Saw God Today” for George Strait, “Five More Minutes” for Scotty McCreery and “Hell of a View” for Eric Church, give him a body of work most after-dinner speakers cannot match. His material is built around real songs played live, not slides. The performance element makes the resilience message land with senior audiences in a way a conventional keynote cannot. A stage 3 colon cancer recovery, tied to active support of Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, gives the health and recovery thread substance rather than sentiment. Thirty years in a commercial creative industry, with named hits for George Strait, Eric Church, Trace Adkins, Scotty McCreery and Parker McCollum, makes him credible on the realities of sustained creative output under commercial pressure. Biography highlights Co-writer, “I Saw God Today” (George Strait, 2008), CMA Single of the Year; Grammy and Dove nominations. Number-one country singles include “Just Fishin'” (Trace Adkins), “Five More Minutes” (Scotty McCreery, triple platinum), “Hell of a View” (Eric Church, double platinum) and “Handle on You” (Parker McCollum). Two Grammy nominations for Country Song of the Year; multiple BMI and NSAI songwriting awards. Songwriter Session presenter at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Nashville. Publishing history with Hamstein Music Group, Sony/ATV/Tree and currently Spirit Music Group. B.A. American Studies, cum laude, University of Alabama. Biography Country music is one of the few commercial creative industries where the same writer can sustain hits across thirty years. It is also one of the most unforgiving. Hit songs decide careers, and most writers never get one. Monty Criswell has written or co-written five number-one country singles in four different decades, including “I Saw God Today” for George Strait, which won CMA Single of the Year in 2008 and was nominated for a Grammy. The catalogue runs from Trace Adkins to Eric Church to Parker McCollum. “Five More Minutes” for Scotty McCreery went triple platinum. “Hell of a View” for Eric Church went double platinum. The longevity matters more than any single credit. It is what gives him a working theory of how a person keeps producing under commercial pressure when the room around them changes. Halfway through that run he was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer. He recovered, returned to writing, and continued to land number ones. He now supports Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center and sits with his wife on Vanderbilt’s Canby Robinson Society. The cancer story is not a frame for the talk; it is the second source of evidence behind it. “An Evening with Monty Criswell” is a live performance, not a conference session. He plays the songs, tells the stories behind them, and draws lessons on persistence, craft and recovery from a working life that produced both. For organisations looking for an inspirational close to a conference, an awards dinner or a leadership offsite, the offering is unusual: a credible commercial creative who can hold a room with songs the audience already knows. Key speaking topics Resilience and recovery after serious illness Sustaining creative output over a long career Storytelling as a leadership tool Persistence in commercially unforgiving industries Country music songwriting craft Faith and personal values in working life Ideal for Conference closing keynotes and gala dinners where an inspirational live performance is required Sales kick-offs and leadership offsites in need of a resilience and persistence anchor Cancer charities, healthcare audiences and corporate wellness events Audiences in the United States with country music affinity, including Nashville-based events Audience outcomes A live experience of how a hit country song is built, told by its writer A first-hand account of stage 3 cancer recovery and the return to high-output work Stories drawn from a thirty-year Nashville career, with named artists and named songs A close that lands emotionally without leaning on a slide deck

Why organisations work with Taryn Southern She produced the first solo-artist pop album composed with AI in 2018, when most organisations were still asking whether generative tools could ship anything usable. The lessons on creative workflow integration are now several years ahead of most enterprise practice. She runs storytelling and external communications at Blackrock Neurotech, an implantable BCI company, which gives her a working view of the next technology layer beyond generative AI. Her documentary work, including «I AM HUMAN» at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, gives her a rare ability to translate frontier neurotechnology into language a non-technical board can use. She has keynoted SXSW, Web Summit, the World AI Summit, and NY Times Future of Work, and has been booked by Google, Salesforce, Deloitte, and Gartner. Senior tech audiences treat her as a peer, not a populariser. Biography highlights Chief Storytelling Officer at Blackrock Neurotech since 2021, leading story strategy for funding rounds totalling over $230M led by Thiel Capital, Apeiron, and Tether Released «I AM AI» in 2018, the first solo-artist pop album composed and produced with AI tools including Amper, IBM Watson Beat, Google Magenta, and AIVA Directed and produced «I AM HUMAN,» premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival; subsequent awards include Best Director at Oslo Film Fest Three-time Streamy Awards nominee; 2018 Geena Davis Award recipient for innovative female filmmaking Keynote speaker at SXSW, Web Summit, World AI Summit, Google’s AI Summit, VidCon, The Next Web, NY Times Future of Work Featured in Vanity Fair, Billboard, Fast Company, Wired, Forbes, Psychology Today, and Harvard Business Review Biography The first solo-artist pop album composed with AI was released in September 2018, before most enterprises had finished their first ChatGPT briefing note. «I AM AI» used Amper, IBM Watson Beat, Google Magenta, and AIVA, with the lead single «Break Free» reaching the Top 100 radio charts. The interest, for a serious audience, is not the novelty. It is what the project showed about how a working creative integrates these tools into a production workflow that ships. That production credibility is the spine of the work Taryn Southern now does with senior teams. She has produced more than 1,500 videos across more than a decade of digital media, advised early product teams at YouTube, Google VR, and Snapchat, and directed an award-winning Google VR series. The vantage point is unusual: she has built original commercial product with generative tools at every stage of their maturity. Since 2021 she has been Chief Storytelling Officer at Blackrock Neurotech, the implantable brain-computer interface company. She launched what the company describes as the world’s first BCI museum, oversaw a corporate rebrand and the formation of a BCI Ethics Advisory board, and led communications strategy for funding rounds totalling over $230M, with investors including Thiel Capital, Apeiron, and Tether. The role gives her a working view of the technology layer that arrives after generative AI, and the regulatory and ethical questions a board will be asked to take a position on within the next decade. Her directorial debut, «I AM HUMAN,» premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival and followed three of the first patients to receive implantable brain-computer interfaces. The film is the practical bridge in her work with corporate audiences: it shows what the next frontier of human-machine technology looks like in a hospital, in a home, and in the conversations a serious organisation will need to have about it well before the technology becomes commonplace. Key speaking topics Generative AI in creative production AI-augmented workflows and creative practice Brain-computer interfaces and human-machine integration Frontier neurotechnology and ethics Storytelling for emerging technology companies The future of human and artificial intelligence Ideal for Boards and leadership teams setting AI strategy beyond initial pilots Chief Marketing Officers, Chief Communications Officers, and creative leadership integrating generative tools into production Innovation, R&D, and strategy leaders tracking neurotech and the post-AI technology stack Senior leadership conferences in technology, media, healthcare, and life sciences Audience outcomes A working understanding of how generative AI tools function inside a real production workflow, drawn from a practitioner who has shipped commercial product A grounded view of brain-computer interface technology, what it currently does, where it is going, and the questions boards will face A sharper sense of which categories of creative and knowledge work are most exposed to generative AI, and which remain durably human An informed perspective on the ethical and governance terrain emerging at the intersection of AI and neurotechnology

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

Why organisations work with Stephen Shapiro He treats innovation as a portfolio of small, structured bets rather than a culture programme, which is why his work lands with CFOs and operating leaders, not just innovation teams. His 25 Lenses framework, set out in Invisible Solutions, gives leadership teams a working tool for reframing the questions behind a stalled initiative, rather than another model to admire and shelve. He built and ran Accenture’s 20,000-person process and innovation practice, so the advice is grounded in operating a function at scale, not in observing one. Senior corporate audiences trust him with active programmes: 3M, P&G, Nike, Marriott, NASA, Microsoft, Capital One, and Johnson and Johnson are among the organisations that have brought him in to work on real innovation problems. The 2015 Speaker Hall of Fame induction and Senior Fellow appointment at The Conference Board signal that the speaking craft and the underlying research both meet a serious institutional bar. Biography highlights Senior Fellow, The Conference Board. 15-year career at Accenture, where he built the firm’s 20,000-person process and innovation practice. Inducted into the Speaker Hall of Fame (CPAE) by the National Speakers Association in 2015. Author of seven books, including Best Practices Are Stupid, named 800-CEO-READ’s best innovation and creativity book of the year, and Invisible Solutions, an INDIE Award winner. Industrial Engineering, Cornell University; Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation; six-year term on the NSA Board of Directors. Has worked with leadership teams in over 50 countries, including 3M, P&G, Marriott, Nike, NASA, Microsoft, Capital One, Honda, and Johnson and Johnson. Biography Most corporate innovation programmes fail in the same place. They generate ideas faster than the operating model can absorb them, and the executive committee eventually quietens down because the cost is visible and the return is not. The problem is rarely a shortage of creativity. It is a missing discipline for choosing which questions to spend money on. That is the problem Stephen Shapiro has spent twenty-five years working on. At Accenture he co-led the business process reengineering practice, then built the firm’s 20,000-person process and innovation practice. The shift from efficiency work to growth work shaped the argument that runs through his books: innovation is an operating capability, not a culture, and it can be managed with the same rigour as any other portfolio. His seven books trace that argument. Best Practices Are Stupid, named 800-CEO-READ’s best innovation and creativity book of the year, makes the case for small structured bets over large transformational programmes. Invisible Solutions sets out 25 Lenses for reframing the questions behind a stalled initiative. Pivotal, published in 2024, takes the same discipline into how organisations create stability while continuing to change. The recurring thesis is that better questions are cheaper and more useful than more answers. The institutional credentials reinforce the work. He is a Senior Fellow at The Conference Board, was inducted into the Speaker Hall of Fame (CPAE) in 2015, and holds the Certified Speaking Professional designation. Clients including 3M, P&G, Nike, Marriott, NASA, and Microsoft have brought him in for active innovation programmes rather than thought-leadership set pieces, which is the more useful test of where his work actually lands. Key speaking topics Innovation as a managed corporate discipline Question reframing and problem definition Portfolio approaches to innovation investment Culture and team composition for innovation Stability and adaptability in uncertain markets Growth strategy beyond best-practice benchmarking Ideal for CINOs, heads of innovation, and R&D leaders running enterprise programmes CEOs and strategy leaders trying to convert innovation activity into commercial results Transformation sponsors and operating committees rebuilding the innovation function after a stalled programme Large industrials, financial services, consumer goods, and healthcare organisations with complex internal innovation portfolios Audience outcomes A working method for reframing the strategic question behind a stalled initiative, drawn from the 25 Lenses framework A clear case for replacing large transformational bets with structured small ones, and the financial logic to defend it internally A diagnostic for which innovation activities are producing learning and which are producing motion Specific examples of how named Fortune 500 clients have restructured innovation portfolios, with the trade-offs made visible Language a senior leader can use the next morning to challenge their own innovation roadmap

Why organisations work with Daisy Buchanan A working novelist and journalist who teaches creative practice as a wellbeing discipline, not a soft skill. Her DK title Read Yourself Happy makes the case that reading is anxiety management with evidence, not a metaphor. Founder of the Creative Confidence Clinic and a tutor for Arvon, the UK creative writing charity. Her sessions on imposter syndrome and creative risk are built on a teaching practice, not a single keynote. Host of the literature podcast You’re Booked, with hundreds of long-form author interviews. She brings a tested craft of asking good questions, which transfers directly into panel hosting, internal town halls and leadership Q and A formats. Catalogue of four Sphere novels and three non-fiction books across DK, Headline and Hachette. The credibility is in the working output, not the speaker reel. Broadcast fluency across Woman’s Hour, the Today programme, This Morning and Good Morning Britain. Audiences get a speaker who can hold a room, an interviewee and a live moment with the same control. Biography highlights Author of four novels published by Sphere (Little, Brown): Insatiable, Careering, Limelight and Pity Party. Insatiable was longlisted for the CWIP prize. Author of three non-fiction books: How To Be A Grown Up, The Sisterhood, and Read Yourself Happy (DK, 2025), on reading as a tool for anxiety. Host of the You’re Booked podcast, interviewing authors on their reading lives. Founder of the Creative Confidence Clinic, a writing community on Substack, and creator of the Write Like A Reader course. Tutor for the Arvon Foundation. Journalism in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times, Grazia (former “Dear Daisy” agony aunt), Marie Claire and The Pool. Broadcast credits include Woman’s Hour, Today, A Good Read, This Morning and Good Morning Britain. Guest-presented Booker Prize coverage for BBC News. Biography Wellbeing programmes have multiplied inside organisations over the past decade, and so has the language of psychological safety. Yet many leaders still find their teams cautious, distracted and reluctant to bring a half-formed idea into the room. The missing piece is often the daily practice of imagination, attention and honest conversation, which used to happen on the page and in long forms of reading. Buchanan’s books take this on directly. Read Yourself Happy, published by DK in 2025, argues that the right book habit is a clinically meaningful intervention in anxiety. Her novels with Sphere, including Insatiable, Careering (adapted by BBC Radio 4) and Limelight, examine ambition, money and self-worth in working women’s lives. Her non-fiction includes The Sisterhood and How To Be A Grown Up, both written for readers navigating early career and adult identity. The teaching grew out of the writing. She founded the Creative Confidence Clinic on Substack, tutors for the Arvon Foundation and hosts You’re Booked, a long-running literature podcast in which she conducts the kind of careful, generous author interview that is now uncommon in mainstream culture. The discipline of asking good questions and listening to the answer sits underneath her workplace sessions on imposter syndrome, creative risk and reading for wellbeing. For organisations, the value is in the combination of a working journalist’s discipline, a novelist’s specificity about emotional life, and a broadcaster’s room presence. Audiences leave able to name what they were anxious about, with a small number of usable habits for attention and creative risk. Her broadcast work, from the Today programme to guest-presenting Booker Prize coverage for BBC News, also makes her a credible host for internal events where the speaker needs to land a difficult conversation, not deliver a slide deck. Key speaking topics Reading and book habits as a tool for anxiety and mental health Creative confidence and imposter syndrome at work Asking better questions in leadership and team conversations Storytelling and narrative craft for business communication Women, ambition and the working life Event hosting, panel moderation and author-in-conversation formats Ideal for People, culture and wellbeing leaders looking for a wellbeing voice that is literary and specific rather than clinical or generic Internal communications and L&D teams running sessions on creative confidence, imposter syndrome or storytelling Conference organisers needing a credible host or moderator for an author-in-conversation or fireside format Women’s networks, ERGs and book clubs inside organisations Audience outcomes A working definition of creative confidence that they can practise without leaving their job A small set of reading and attention habits with a defensible link to anxiety reduction Sharper questions to take into one-to-ones, town halls and difficult team conversations Permission to take creative risk in writing, presenting and contributing in meetings A more honest sense of the gap between performed confidence and the real thing

Why organisations work with Philip Sheppard He has actually built and runs an AI creative business. LifeScore, the generative music platform he co-founded with Siri creator Tom Gruber, has raised £11m and ships to Warner Music Group and Octopus Ventures-backed commercial partners. The argument is grounded in a working company, not a slide on disruption. He brings a working composer’s view of human-AI collaboration. Most AI commentary is by analysts. His comes from sitting at the boundary where a human writes the musical raw materials and the machine selects, layers and mixes them in real time, which is the same architectural question now facing design, copy, video and brand teams. The credentials carry weight in a creative-leadership audience. A Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Music, an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Music Branch membership, and conducting all 205 national anthems for the London 2012 Olympics with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at Abbey Road are not transferable credentials. He has a track record of speaking to technology buyers, not music audiences. Keynotes for Ernst & Young, Deloitte, Google, Facebook, YouTube and Kyu Collective, and on stages including C2MTL, TTI Vanguard and Business Innovation Factory. He turns an abstract debate into a live demonstration. He performs and composes on stage using a six-string electric cello, which makes the argument about generative systems and human craft visible rather than theoretical. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of LifeScore, an AI adaptive music platform co-founded with Tom Gruber, co-creator of Siri at Apple; backed by Warner Music Group and Octopus Ventures. Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, awarded as a lifetime recognition of services to music and education. Composer of more than 65 scores for film, television, gaming and theatre, including Detroit: Become Human (Sony), the Star Wars: The Force Awakens Comic Con trailer, Mercury 13 (Netflix), In the Shadow of the Moon and Meru. Conducted and arranged all 205 national anthems for the London 2012 Olympic winners’ ceremonies, recorded with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios. Music director for the London handover at the 2008 Beijing Olympics closing ceremony; music producer for the Tour de France, Rugby World Cup and the COP21 Paris climate summit. Member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Music Branch (2017) and the Television Academy; author of Music Makes Your Child Smarter (Schirmer Trade Books). Biography LifeScore was incubated inside Abbey Road Studios for a reason. The company was set up to answer a question that now matters far beyond music. If a machine can generate plausible creative output on demand, what exactly is the human still meant to do? Philip Sheppard, a composer and Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, co-founded the platform with Tom Gruber, co-creator of Siri at Apple, and now runs it as CEO. Warner Music Group and Octopus Ventures have backed it through an £11m funding round. The architecture of LifeScore is, in effect, the architecture of any serious human-AI creative system. Composers and musicians build the raw musical materials. The machine selects, layers, sequences and mixes them in real time around the listener’s environment. The output is generated, but the judgement, taste and craft that make it sound human are not. That is the model Sheppard now describes to technology and creative leaders trying to industrialise generative AI without losing what made their work recognisable in the first place. The credentials behind the argument are concrete. Sheppard has composed more than 65 scores for film, television and gaming, including Detroit: Become Human, the Mercury 13 documentary for Netflix and In the Shadow of the Moon. He conducted and arranged all 205 national anthems for the London 2012 Olympics with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at Abbey Road, and was music director for the London handover at the Beijing 2008 closing ceremony. He sits as a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Television Academy, and wrote Music Makes Your Child Smarter for Schirmer Trade Books. His keynote audiences are mostly outside the music industry. Ernst & Young, Deloitte, Google, Facebook, YouTube and Kyu Collective have all booked him, alongside stages such as C2MTL, TTI Vanguard and Business Innovation Factory. The reason is the same in each case. He is one of the few people who can speak about generative AI and creative work from the position of having shipped a company that does it, and a body of work that depends on it being done well. Key speaking topics Human-AI collaboration in creative work Generative AI and the future of creative industries Building an AI venture from inside a creative practice Music, data and adaptive systems Innovation and creativity as a managed discipline The role of craft in machine-augmented teams Ideal for Chief technology, AI and digital officers shaping how generative AI is deployed across creative, brand and design functions Chief marketing, brand and customer-experience leaders whose teams now produce content with generative tools Innovation, R&D and product leadership at media, entertainment, consumer and platform businesses Leadership offsites at technology, consulting and professional services firms looking for a credible voice on creativity and AI Audience outcomes A clearer account of what generative AI changes about creative production, and what it does not A working mental model for dividing labour between human judgement and machine generation in creative workflows Named examples of how an AI creative venture is actually built, funded and run, drawn from LifeScore’s own history A sharper sense of where craft and taste still differentiate a brand or product in a generative environment A live demonstration of human-machine creative collaboration through performance, not slides