Creativity

Why organisations work with Alexandra Shulman She ran British Vogue for a quarter of a century across three recessions and the collapse of the print advertising model, and can speak with evidence about what protects a consumer brand’s authority through structural change. She has first-hand judgement on the fashion and luxury economy that organisations rarely access at this level, including on body image, diversity on the cover, and the commercial consequences of editorial choices. Her work on the Vogue centenary issue with the Duchess of Cambridge, documented by BBC Two, is a case study in how a legacy title uses a single moment to reset its cultural position. As a monthly Business of Fashion columnist and Mail on Sunday writer, she has a continuing, named public record on industry shifts, so audiences get a point of view grounded in current analysis, not reminiscence. Her three books, including the Sunday Times bestseller Clothes and Other Things That Matter, give her a body of published work on women, consumer culture, and the business of appearance that goes beyond the editor role. Biography highlights Editor-in-Chief, British Vogue, 1992 to 2017, the longest-serving editor in the title’s history. Editor of British GQ, 1990 to 1992, before moving to Vogue. CBE (2018) for services to fashion journalism; OBE (2005) for services to the magazine industry. Author of Inside Vogue: A Diary of My 100th Year (2016) and the Sunday Times bestseller Clothes and Other Things That Matter (Cassell, 2020), alongside two novels. Monthly columnist, The Business of Fashion, from 2017; regular columnist, The Mail on Sunday. Subject of the BBC Two documentary Absolutely Fashion: Inside British Vogue (2016). Strategic advisor to the online fashion marketplace Atterley. Biography British Vogue was a profitable but narrow title when Alexandra Shulman took it over in 1992. Over the next 25 years, she grew monthly circulation to around 200,000, ran the magazine through three recessions, and held its cultural authority as the advertising base of print magazines collapsed around it. When she left in 2017, she had edited more issues of British Vogue than anyone in its history. The commercial case for her voice starts there. The work was not only editorial. It was running a consumer brand at the top of a crowded category, deciding every month which photographers, writers, models and stories earned the cover, and taking the commercial consequences. Her 2009 open letter to fashion houses, pushing back on sample-size-only clothes and the implications for body image on the page, is one example of an editorial call with direct business and cultural weight. Since leaving Vogue, she has kept a continuing public record on the industry as a monthly columnist for The Business of Fashion and as a Mail on Sunday writer. Her books include the diary-memoir Inside Vogue: A Diary of My 100th Year, written around the magazine’s centenary, and Clothes and Other Things That Matter, a Sunday Times bestseller that reads the wardrobe as a way into questions about work, ambition, ageing, and the female consumer. She was appointed OBE in 2005 and CBE in 2018. She advises the online fashion marketplace Atterley. The BBC Two documentary Absolutely Fashion: Inside British Vogue filmed her in 2016 assembling the centenary issue with the Duchess of Cambridge on the cover, a piece of work now used as a reference point for how legacy titles use a single edition to reset their place in the culture. Key speaking topics Brand authority in consumer media and luxury Creative leadership and long-tenure editorial judgement The business of fashion and the luxury economy Women, work, and the culture of appearance Body image, diversity, and the responsibility of the page Reinvention after a long institutional career Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders in luxury, beauty, retail, and consumer media Boards and executive teams of cultural or heritage brands working through audience and format change CHROs and leadership development programmes focused on long-tenure creative leadership and succession Conferences on women in business, consumer culture, and the creative industries Audience outcomes A named insider’s read on how fashion and luxury actually make commercial decisions. A working definition of brand authority that holds up across a generational shift in media. A clearer view of the trade-offs between editorial point of view and commercial reach. A usable perspective on long-tenure creative leadership: how to stay current, when to change, when to hold. A frank account of reinvention after a defining role, drawn from her own post-Vogue work.

Why organisations work with Wayne Hemingway Built one of Britain’s best-known fashion labels from a Camden Market stall and sold it to Pentland in 1999, then converted that experience into a 25-year design consultancy advising developers, local authorities, retailers, and cultural institutions. Operates across categories most speakers do not: fashion, mass-market housing, public-realm regeneration, festival creation, and second-hand retail, all anchored in delivered projects rather than commentary. Founded Festival of Thrift and Charity Super.Mkt, turning sustainability and circular consumption into commercially viable consumer experiences rather than awareness campaigns. Brings an unusually direct view on what makes places, products, and brands resonate, formed by working with Wimpey, TfL, Shelter, the National Trust, Girlguiding, the Southbank Centre, and more than forty local authorities. Biography highlights Co-founder of Red or Dead; won British Fashion Council Streetstyle Designer of the Year three consecutive years, 1996 to 1998; brand sold to Pentland Group in 1999. Co-founder of HemingwayDesign, the multi-disciplinary studio behind the 760-home Staiths South Bank development in Gateshead, awarded Housing Design Awards, Best Housing-Led Regeneration Project by Building Magazine, and Building for Life. Co-founder of Festival of Thrift, the UK’s first large-scale festival of sustainable living, launched in 2013 and now a permanent fixture in the North East cultural calendar. Co-founder of Charity Super.Mkt with TRAID’s Maria Chenoweth; pre-loved fashion concept that launched at Brent Cross in January 2023 and has since traded in Westfield, Bond Street, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Oxford, Bluewater, and Bristol. MBE, 2006, for services to the design and fashion industries; Professor of Built Environment at Northumbria University; honorary doctorates from Wolverhampton, Lancaster, and Stafford. Author of “Just Above the Mantelpiece: Mass-Market Masterpieces” (Booth-Clibborn, 2000). Biography Red or Dead started on a Camden Market stall in the early 1980s and ended in 1999 as a Pentland Group acquisition, with three consecutive British Fashion Council Streetstyle Designer of the Year awards along the way. That trajectory, market trader to multi-million-pound exit, is the foundation Wayne Hemingway has been building on for twenty-five years. HemingwayDesign, founded with his wife and business partner Gerardine in 1999, was set up explicitly around affordable and social design. The studio’s signature project, Staiths South Bank in Gateshead, was the practical answer to Hemingway’s “Wimpeyfication and Barrattification” critique of British mass house-building. 760 homes were built with Wimpey on a Homezone model that re-thought streets, parking, and play, and the scheme won Housing Design Awards, Building Magazine’s Best Housing-Led Regeneration Project, and Building for Life. The same instinct, identify a category that has stopped trying and rebuild it with design at the centre, runs through everything that followed. Festival of Thrift, co-founded in 2013, made sustainability a free family weekend rather than a guilt trip. Charity Super.Mkt, launched at Brent Cross in January 2023 with TRAID’s Maria Chenoweth, turned charity-shop fashion into a destination format and reported £3 million in pre-loved sales inside two years. The wider HemingwayDesign client list runs from Transport for London and the National Portrait Gallery to more than forty local authorities working on town-centre and coastal regeneration. For organisations the value is specific: a designer-entrepreneur with the credentials of a fashion founder and the track record of a public-realm developer, who can talk credibly to boards about brand, to operators about retail, and to leadership teams about why design-led businesses outlast design-decorated ones. He is an MBE, a Professor of Built Environment at Northumbria, and an author, but the argument is the work itself. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and design-led business building Brand and creative direction Sustainability and the circular economy Place-making, regeneration, and the future of the high street Affordable housing and mass-market design Retail futures and pre-loved consumer behaviour Festivals, culture, and community-led commercial models Ideal for Founders, CEOs, and creative directors of consumer brands. Property developers, housebuilders, and local authority leadership teams responsible for placemaking and regeneration. Retail and hospitality leaders rebuilding propositions for second-hand, sustainable, and experience-led formats. Cultural organisations, charities, and festival operators looking to commercialise purpose without losing it. Audience outcomes A working view of how Red or Dead and HemingwayDesign turned design instinct into commercial categories that lasted. A clearer sense of where sustainability becomes a viable consumer business rather than a marketing position. Specific lessons from Staiths South Bank, Festival of Thrift, and Charity Super.Mkt on building new categories from a standing start. Direct, plainly spoken provocations on brand, place, and the social value of design that audiences leave talking about.

Why organisations work with Tyler Brule He has built, sold, and continued to build international media brands across more than two decades, with Wallpaper* sold to Time Inc and Monocle scaled into print, radio, retail and bureaux across multiple cities. His agency Winkreative has shaped the visual and editorial identity of Swiss International Air Lines, Prada, American Express, BlackBerry, Bally and others, giving him a practitioner’s view on brand systems rather than a commentator’s. He offers a direct point of view on why print, physical retail, and curated journalism continue to command paying customers when the industry consensus says they should not. His Monocle platform reports from cities around the world on business, design, urbanism and soft power, giving senior audiences a global perspective grounded in on-the-ground reporting, not desk research. Biography highlights Founder of Wallpaper* (1996), sold to Time Inc in 1997. Founder of Winkreative (1998), a branding agency with clients including Swiss International Air Lines, Prada, American Express, Bally, Lexus, BlackBerry and Sky News. Founder, chairman and editor-in-chief of Monocle, launched in February 2007. Launched Konfekt in 2020, a Zurich-based quarterly aimed at female readers in English and German. Long-running “Fast Lane” columnist at the Financial Times Weekend. Recipient of the British Society of Magazine Editors’ Lifetime Achievement Award. Biography In 1996, a Canadian journalist recovering from a sniper injury sustained while reporting in Afghanistan took a small business loan and launched a style and design magazine. Wallpaper* became one of the defining publishing launches of the 1990s and was sold to Time Inc within a year. Most editors do this once. Brule did it twice. The second time, in 2007, the conditions were worse. Print was contracting and digital advertising was eating the industry. Monocle launched into that market as a global affairs, design and business title with high cover prices, physical retail shops, and bureaux in cities including Zurich, Tokyo and Hong Kong. It is now a media brand spanning print, Monocle 24 radio, online, retail, and Konfekt, a Zurich-based women’s title launched in 2020 for English and German-speaking markets. Alongside the publishing work, Winkreative has shaped the brand and editorial identity of Swiss International Air Lines after the collapse of Swissair, and worked with Prada, American Express, Bally, Lexus, BlackBerry, and others. That practitioner experience sits behind his commentary: he has actually built the kind of brand systems most speakers describe from the outside. For senior buyers, his value is a specific, contrarian point of view on where attention, loyalty, and paying audiences actually live, supported by a Monocle reporting platform that covers cities, soft power and consumer culture from bureaux on three continents. The British Society of Magazine Editors’ Lifetime Achievement Award sits in that context: recognition of a body of work in an industry that has consolidated around platforms he refused to use. Key speaking topics Brand building in saturated categories The future of media and paid content Design as commercial infrastructure Cities, soft power and the urban consumer Entrepreneurship in declining industries Editorial and customer experience Global trends and consumer culture Ideal for Boards and executive teams in consumer, luxury, media, hospitality, travel and retail Chief marketing, brand and customer officers reviewing brand identity and customer experience Founders and investors building category-defining consumer brands After-dinner and moderation work for senior international audiences Audience outcomes A practitioner’s view on what makes a brand worth paying for, drawn from Wallpaper*, Monocle and Winkreative A clearer sense of where attention and loyalty are actually building in consumer markets, not where the industry says they are A global, city-by-city read on design, retail and consumer behaviour, sourced from Monocle’s reporting bureaux A founder’s account of building media and brand businesses that run against the direction of their industry

Why organisations work with Tim Harford Translates economic and statistical research into commercial decisions, drawing on a Financial Times column that has run for nearly two decades and a body of ten published books. Brings credibility on numbers that very few speakers can match: Honorary Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and OBE for services to economic understanding. Reframes innovation as an evidence-based discipline grounded in adaptation and failure, the central thesis of “Adapt” and “Messy”, rather than the usual creativity rhetoric. Equips senior audiences to interrogate their own data culture using the rules from “How To Make The World Add Up”, a practical antidote to misleading statistics inside organisations. Trusted as a host, moderator and after-dinner speaker by serious audiences because his radio craft on “More or Less” and “Cautionary Tales” carries directly into the room. Biography highlights Senior columnist, Financial Times, writing “The Undercover Economist”. Presenter, BBC Radio 4’s “More or Less”, the long-running statistics-in-the-news programme. Host of “Cautionary Tales”, a Pushkin Industries podcast, and creator of “Fifty Things That Made The Modern Economy”. Author of ten books, including “The Undercover Economist”, “Adapt”, “Messy”, “How To Make The World Add Up” and “The Truth Detective”. Honorary Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and of Brasenose College, Oxford; Associate Member of Nuffield College, Oxford. OBE for services to Improving Economic Understanding; winner of the Bastiat Prize (twice), the Wincott Journalist of the Year award, and the Royal Statistical Society award for journalistic excellence. Biography Most organisations claim to be evidence-led. Few are. Decisions are framed in numbers but driven by narrative, and innovation programmes routinely refuse to learn from the failures that contain the most useful information. Harford’s work, across the Financial Times column, ten books and two long-running BBC and Pushkin productions, has been built around exactly that gap. His books map the intellectual territory leaders care about. “The Undercover Economist” reframed everyday markets through the lens of price, scarcity and incentive, and has sold more than 1.5 million copies in thirty languages. “Adapt” and “Messy” argue that progress depends on disciplined trial, error and tolerance for disorder, a more honest account of innovation than most corporate playbooks allow. “How To Make The World Add Up” gives senior audiences a practical method for testing the numbers they are asked to act on. The credentials behind that work are unusual. Honorary Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, Associate Member of Nuffield College Oxford, an OBE for services to economic understanding, and a body of awards from the Bastiat Prize to the Wincott. As presenter of BBC Radio 4’s “More or Less”, Harford has spent years publicly stress-testing the statistics that shape policy and business commentary, which makes him one of the few speakers who can hold a senior room on data culture without resorting to platitudes. For boards and leadership teams, the value is concrete. Sharper questions about innovation portfolios, a working method for separating signal from noise, and a more honest model of how organisations actually learn. The recent “Cautionary Tales” series, which dissects high-profile organisational failures, has become a reference point for leaders thinking seriously about how decisions go wrong. Key speaking topics Behavioural economics in commercial decision-making Innovation, adaptation and learning from failure Statistical literacy and data culture in organisations Economic forces shaping business and policy Creativity, disorder and team productivity Cognitive bias and judgement under uncertainty Ideal for Boards and executive committees confronting decisions where the numbers are contested Strategy, innovation and R&D leaders building portfolios under uncertainty CFOs and finance functions reviewing how evidence is presented and challenged internally Senior leadership offsites where the brief calls for serious intellectual content with broad relevance Audience outcomes A working method for interrogating statistics and management dashboards before acting on them A clearer model of innovation as managed trial and error, with practical implications for portfolio choice Sharper recognition of the cognitive errors that recur in senior decision-making Concrete references from “Cautionary Tales” and “More or Less” that audiences can use to reframe their own debates

Why organisations work with Simon Woodroffe He has founded and sold two category-defining hospitality brands, YO! Sushi, sold to Zensho Holdings for £494 million in 2023, and YOTEL, the compact airport hotel now operating internationally. The founder story is specific and verifiable: Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 1999, OBE in 2006, and a business built initially on extended supplier payment terms rather than venture capital. His appearance on the first series of Dragons’ Den gives him a recognisable profile with UK and Commonwealth audiences who grew up with the format. His career before entrepreneurship, stage design for major rock artists, extreme-sports TV production, gives his session a different register from the MBA-style founder speaker, more creative and more usable by brand and product audiences. His philanthropic work on prison rehabilitation with Make Justice Work adds a credible social-purpose thread for organisations running CSR or purpose-led events. Biography highlights Founder of YO! Sushi (1997), sold to Zensho Holdings for £494 million in 2023 Founder of YOTEL (2007); over 1,000 rooms across three countries by 2016 Appeared as an investor on the first series of BBC’s Dragons’ Den Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year (1999); OBE (2006) for services to the hospitality industry Earlier career as theatre stagehand and stage designer for Rod Stewart, Jethro Tull and others Author of The Book of Yo! Biography YO! Sushi was the first conveyor-belt sushi brand in the UK, and for most of a generation it was the restaurant that taught British diners what the category was. Simon Woodroffe founded it in 1997 with extended supplier payment terms rather than investor capital, and spent the following decade turning it into a national brand before selling the controlling stake in 2003. In 2023 the business was sold to Zensho Holdings for £494 million. His second brand, YOTEL, launched in 2007, took the compact airline cabin as the template for airport hotel rooms at Gatwick and Heathrow and has since scaled internationally. The route into hospitality was unusual. Woodroffe left Marlborough College at sixteen with two O-levels and worked as a theatre stagehand before moving into stage design for rock artists, including Rod Stewart and Jethro Tull, and later into television work selling concert rights and producing extreme-sports programming. The creative and production experience shows up in how his hospitality brands are designed: the tableside call buttons and self-heating plates at YO! Sushi, the airline-cabin compression at YOTEL. Public recognition followed the commercial record. He was named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 1999, appointed OBE in 2006 for services to the hospitality industry, and appeared as one of the original investors on the first series of Dragons’ Den. His book The Book of Yo! codified his operating philosophy for entrepreneurs. For founder, hospitality, retail and brand audiences, Woodroffe brings a relatively rare combination: two category-defining consumer brands, a creative-industries background that informs the product design, and a direct, unguarded speaking style shaped by years in front of audiences on and off camera. His continuing work on prison rehabilitation rounds out the profile for CSR-oriented events. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and building consumer brands from nothing Creativity and business-model innovation in hospitality Financing growth with limited capital Customer experience and brand design Reinvention across creative and commercial industries Purpose, rehabilitation and business as a force for good Ideal for Entrepreneur and founder-focused events, particularly in hospitality, retail and consumer brands Corporate innovation, marketing and customer-experience conferences Leadership and all-hands events needing a main-stage creative-business voice Awards dinners and after-dinner engagements looking for a recognisable UK entrepreneur with a Dragons’ Den profile Audience outcomes A founder’s operating account of how YO! Sushi and YOTEL were actually built and financed Reference points from two category-defining hospitality brands applicable to the audience’s own brand or innovation agenda A creative-industries view of customer experience and design that is different from a standard consulting frame Direct material for founder and leadership cohorts on risk, reinvention and brand longevity

Why organisations work with Rory Sutherland His Alchemy argument, that businesses leave their most valuable opportunities untapped by optimising for logic rather than psychology, is built on 30 years of commercial practice at Ogilvy, not academic research. He founded and runs a dedicated behavioural science practice inside one of the world’s largest advertising agencies, where small contextual changes have produced large, documented commercial results, including tripling a call centre’s conversion rate through script changes alone. His concept of “psycho-logic” gives commercial teams a named, usable framework for the decisions that resist rational modelling: pricing, positioning, and customer experience chief among them. His two TED talks have passed seven million combined views, meaning his arguments are already part of the strategic vocabulary of many senior audiences, any conversation with him starts further ahead. He founded Nudgestock, the annual festival of behavioural sciences – making him an institutional builder in the field, not simply a commentator on it. Biography highlights Vice Chairman of Ogilvy UK; co-founder and leader of Ogilvy’s Behavioural Science Practice, established 2012 Author of Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense (Penguin, 2019); co-author of Transport for Humans: Are We Nearly There Yet? (2021) Two TED Talks – “Life Lessons from an Ad Man” and “Sweat the Small Stuff” – with over 7 million combined views Former President of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising; former Chair of Judges, Direct Jury, Cannes Lions Fortnightly “The Wiki Man” columnist, The Spectator; founder of Nudgestock, the annual behavioural sciences festival Studied Classics at Christ’s College, Cambridge; joined Ogilvy as a graduate trainee in 1988 Biography In 2012, Rory Sutherland did something unusual for an advertising agency: he built a team of psychology graduates inside Ogilvy and pointed them at commercial problems. The premise was direct. Most organisations optimise for the logical version of what customers want, not the psychological reality of how they decide. Three decades of commercial practice have made that premise difficult to argue with. His 2019 book Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense sets out the argument in full. Human decision-making, Sutherland contends, follows a “psycho-logic”, a coherent but non-rational set of rules governing what people buy, how much they’ll pay, and how satisfied they feel. Richard Thaler and Robert Cialdini both appear in its pages; Nassim Nicholas Taleb described it as “a breakthrough book.” The Behavioural Science Practice he founded at Ogilvy tests these ideas commercially. Small contextual adjustments – changes to a call centre script, a reframing of a product’s positioning, a tweak to the sequence of a customer journey – have produced measurable results. It is the kind of evidence that makes his argument practical rather than purely theoretical. He served as President of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising and as Chair of the Judges for Cannes Lions’ Direct Jury. His two TED talks have passed seven million combined views. He writes a fortnightly column in The Spectator and founded Nudgestock, the annual festival of behavioural sciences. Key speaking topics Behavioural economics and commercial strategy Consumer psychology and decision-making Perception, value, and pricing psychology The limits of data-driven marketing Creativity and non-rational problem-solving Behavioural design and customer experience Nudge theory in organisational contexts Ideal for Chief Marketing Officers and marketing leadership teams rethinking growth strategy Commercial strategy and innovation leaders exploring alternatives to pure data-led optimisation Senior executives and boards examining how psychological insight can improve pricing, product design, and customer experience Conference audiences in financial services, retail, consumer goods, and technology where customer behaviour directly drives commercial performance Audience outcomes A named framework, “psycho-logic”, for identifying where logical optimisation is producing diminishing returns in marketing and commercial strategy Specific, documented examples of small behavioural interventions that produced large commercial results A clearer understanding of why the most effective growth moves often look counterintuitive, and how to make the internal case for them Practical grounding in behavioural economics principles applicable to pricing, customer experience, and product design A more honest audit of where data-driven approaches reach their limits and what to reach for instead

Why organisations work with Philippe Starck He has redefined entire categories through design, not decorated them. The Delano in Miami did not improve hotels, it created the boutique-hotel format that Ian Schrager built a global business on. The Louis Ghost chair sold over a million units by reimagining what mass-produced furniture could look like. His “democratic design” doctrine reframes design as a commercial and ethical question rather than an aesthetic one. The argument that quality belongs at the lowest possible price, not the highest, is directly useful to organisations rethinking product strategy and customer access. He works at every scale a business cares about. Hospitality interiors for Royalton, Mondrian, Sanderson, Le Meurice. Industrial products for Alessi, Kartell, Microsoft, Vitra. Bathroom systems for Hansgrohe AXOR since 1994. Few speakers have applied a single design philosophy across that many sectors and lived to argue for it. He brings a working creator’s view of innovation, including recent collaborations on AI-designed furniture with Kartell and Autodesk, and architectural work on the Axiom space station. He speaks about where design is heading from inside the work, not from outside it. Biography highlights Designed the private apartments of President François Mitterrand at the Élysée Palace and the Café Costes in Paris, the two commissions that established his international reputation. Created the boutique-hotel category with the Delano Miami in collaboration with Ian Schrager, followed by Royalton, Paramount, Mondrian, Hudson, Sanderson, St Martin’s Lane, and Le Meurice. Iconic industrial designs include the Juicy Salif citrus reamer for Alessi, the Louis Ghost chair for Kartell (over one million units sold), the Costes chair, the Microsoft Optical Mouse, and the AXOR bathroom collections for Hansgrohe. First French speaker invited to a TED conference; his 2007 talk “Design and destiny” remains one of the platform’s most viewed design lectures. Knight of the Legion of Honour, Officer of Arts and Letters, recipient of the D&AD President’s Award, the Harvard Excellence in Design Award, and the Grand Prix National de la Création Industrielle, among more than 100 international awards. Appointed artistic director for the French presidency of the European Union in 2008, and Ambassador of Creativity and Innovation in 2009. Biography The Delano in Miami opened in 1995 and changed the economics of hospitality. Before it, hotels competed on stars, location, and service. After it, hotels competed on atmosphere and identity. The boutique-hotel category, now a global multi-billion-dollar segment, was built on a single project that Philippe Starck designed for Ian Schrager. The lesson, for any business that thinks design is a finishing layer, is that one designed space can create a market. That pattern, design that creates rather than decorates, runs through fifty years of work. The Café Costes in 1984 reinvented the Parisian café and produced a chair that sold 400,000 units. The Louis Ghost chair for Kartell sold over a million. Hospitality interiors for the Mondrian, Royalton, Sanderson, and Le Meurice. Bathroom systems with Hansgrohe AXOR since 1994. Industrial products for Alessi, Vitra, Microsoft, Emeco, and Duravit. The discipline behind these is what Starck calls democratic design: the argument that quality belongs at the lowest possible price the market can support, not the highest, and that a designer’s obligation is to make good things widely available rather than rare things expensive. This is a usable doctrine for executives, not just designers. It treats design as a commercial decision about category position, brand identity, product economics, and customer access. It rejects the binary of luxury versus mass-market and asks instead what quality at scale should look like. It is also a working philosophy, currently being applied to AI-collaborative furniture with Kartell and Autodesk, to hospitality projects from Paris to Zurich to the French Riviera, and to the Axiom commercial space station. Starck is a Knight of the Legion of Honour, an Officer of Arts and Letters, and the recipient of the Harvard Excellence in Design Award, the D&AD President’s Award, and more than 100 international honours. He was the first Frenchman invited to a TED conference and served as artistic director for the French presidency of the European Union. For organisations rethinking how they show up to customers, he offers something rarer than a topic. He offers a method that has built categories. Key speaking topics Democratic design and the economics of quality at scale Design as a driver of brand identity and category creation Hospitality and experience-led environments Product innovation and industrial design Sustainability, dematerialisation, and the future of materials Creativity, AI, and the changing role of the designer The philosophy of useful objects Ideal for Hospitality and consumer brand leadership teams reconsidering how environments and products carry brand identity CMOs, chief brand officers, and customer experience executives who need to argue for design as a commercial lever Product, R&D, and innovation leaders facing decisions about quality, materials, and category position Founders and senior leaders building businesses where design choices and brand identity are inseparable Audience outcomes A working definition of democratic design and how it applies to product strategy, brand position, and pricing decisions A clearer view of when design creates a category versus when it decorates one, with named examples from hospitality and consumer goods Direct exposure to a creator’s view of where design is heading, including AI collaboration, dematerialisation, and the post-plastic era Permission to treat design as a board-level question rather than a downstream finishing exercise

Why organisations work with Miha Pogacnik His Macro Violin concept is cited by C. Otto Scharmer in Theory U and across MIT Sloan’s leadership writing. Senior teams engage with an arts-based framework that already has standing in serious management thought. He has worked inside the leadership floors of IBM, Microsoft, Bosch, Nike, Shell, Novartis and Porsche. The frame of reference is decades of access to people running companies that compete on judgment. His Resonance Platform method, taught at IEDC-Bled and in client sessions, moves a leadership group from positional debate into composed creative dialogue around the actual decision on the table. He has taught at Harvard, INSEAD, IMD, IESE Barcelona, CEIBS Shanghai and THNK Amsterdam, alongside his appointment at IEDC-Bled. The work is taken seriously inside management academia and in client rooms. Biography highlights Adjunct Professor of Arts and Leadership at IEDC-Bled School of Management; has taught at Harvard, INSEAD, IMD, IESE Barcelona, CEIBS Shanghai and THNK Amsterdam Macro Violin concept attributed to him is cited by C. Otto Scharmer in Theory U and across the MIT Sloan body of work on systemic leadership Founder of IDRIART (Institute for Development of Intercultural Relations through the Arts); originated the Chartres Festival d’Eté in 1981 Ambassador of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia Has worked with leadership teams at IBM, Microsoft, Nike, Shell, Novartis, Bosch, Coca-Cola and Porsche Speaker at the World Economic Forum (Davos and China), European Forum Alpbach and UN agencies; TEDx talk “A Creative Detour to Unleash Human Potential” Biography Most senior teams have absorbed every available framework for leadership. None of those frameworks change how they listen, or how they bring a room of expert voices into a coherent decision. The capacity that matters at the top is closer to conducting an orchestra than to running an analysis. That is the territory Miha Pogacnik has worked in for four decades. As Adjunct Professor of Arts and Leadership at IEDC-Bled School of Management, he uses musical performance to develop the listening and composed judgment that leadership at the top requires. His Resonance Platform method, taught in sessions with leadership teams at IBM, Microsoft, Bosch, Nike, Shell and Porsche, walks executives through the structural intelligence of a Bach fugue or a Brahms violin concerto and back to the decision on their desk. His distinctive intellectual contribution is the Macro Violin: the principle that a leader, like a violinist inside Chartres Cathedral, cannot perform on instrument alone but has to play the whole space. C. Otto Scharmer cites the concept in Theory U and across the MIT Sloan body of work on systemic leadership. That principle now sits at the centre of how arts-based leadership is taught at IEDC-Bled. The work has roots in something larger than corporate audiences. Pogacnik founded IDRIART in the early 1980s and went on to direct more than 200 intercultural festivals in crisis regions, including the Adriatic during the breakup of Yugoslavia and Central Europe in the years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. He serves as Ambassador of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia. The first IDRIART festival ran at Chartres Cathedral in 1981, the same setting in which Pogacnik first identified the Macro Violin principle, and where the entire body of work begins. Key speaking topics Arts-based leadership development Listening as a leadership discipline Creativity and innovation through musical structure Cultural intelligence in international business Organisational learning through artistic practice The Resonance Platform method for senior teams The Macro Violin and ensemble leadership Ideal for CHROs and Chief Learning Officers designing executive development programmes CEOs and Chief Strategy Officers convening senior teams for board offsites or strategic dialogue Business school deans and EMBA directors integrating arts and humanities into leadership education Conference programmers leading flagship events on creativity and leadership Audience outcomes A demonstration of how musical structure reveals complex team dynamics, with a Bach fugue or Brahms violin concerto used as the diagnostic Live application of the Resonance Platform method to the strategic question the leadership team brings into the room A working vocabulary for leadership drawn from musical performance: composition, ensemble, listening from the periphery, and the macro violin The shift from treating the conductor as a metaphor to treating conducting as a working model of leadership

Key speaking topics Brand leadership and marketing strategy Creative leadership Innovation and creativity in business Global advertising and communications High-performance culture Leadership in complex markets Ideal for CEOs and senior leadership teams Marketing and brand executives Advertising and communications professionals Organisations seeking high-performance culture insights Audience outcomes Clear perspectives on building brands beyond functional differentiation Practical insights into creative leadership at scale Lessons from global advertising and communications leadership Frameworks linking brand strength to business performance Why organisations work with Kevin Roberts Direct experience leading a global advertising network. Proven track record in brand strategy and creative leadership. Published author on brand building and leadership. Experience spanning business, academia, and sports governance. Biography Kevin Roberts is a former CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi who led one of the world’s most recognised global advertising networks and helped shape brand strategy at scale. His leadership experience spans international markets, global clients, and complex commercial environments, making him a sought-after voice on brand building, creativity, and business performance. During his tenure at Saatchi & Saatchi, and through subsequent chair roles within the organisation and its parent group, he operated at the centre of global communications strategy. His perspective combines board-level decision-making with hands-on experience in driving brand relevance and competitive positioning across industries. Roberts is the author of Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands and 64 Shots: Leadership in a Crazy World, and co-author of Peak Performance: Business Lessons from the World’s Top Sporting Organizations. His published work explores the connection between emotional engagement, leadership, and sustained business success. His contribution to business and the wider community was recognised with appointment as a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. He has also held honorary professorships in creative leadership, innovation, and leadership at leading universities in the UK and New Zealand, reflecting the practical and academic relevance of his work. Alongside his corporate career, Roberts has held governance roles in international rugby, including board-level and chair positions, further strengthening his insight into high-performance cultures and leadership under pressure. For organisations seeking clarity on brand differentiation, creative leadership, and the commercial impact of marketing at global scale, Kevin Roberts brings senior executive experience, published thought leadership, and cross-sector governance expertise.

Why organisations work with Hunter Tura His “22nd Century Brand” framework, developed publicly through DesignSingapore Council, gives leadership teams a precise vocabulary for what brand investment is actually supposed to deliver, reframing brand from a static identity asset to a dynamic participation platform that drives commercial affiliation. He has built and run design businesses at CEO level, which means his counsel on brand strategy is not advisory abstraction. Rather, it is the same kind of operational decision-making he is asking leadership teams to make. His client portfolio spans luxury (Prada, Chanel, Tiffany), cultural institutions (Victoria & Albert Museum, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts), aviation (Changi Airport), and technology (Netflix, GE, Samsung) providing a level of cross-sector pattern recognition that a single-sector brand consultant cannot offer. His formation in architecture under Rem Koolhaas at Harvard GSD gives him a systems-thinking approach to brand that most strategists, who are trained in marketing or communications, lack. It shows in how he diagnoses problems others misread. His work at Entro on experiential branding and the built environment addresses a dimension of brand strategy – how physical spaces communicate and shape participation – that is almost entirely absent from the mainstream brand conversation, but increasingly urgent for property, hospitality, aviation, and cultural sectors. Biography highlights Chief Creative Officer, Entro Communications (appointed November 2025); previously President & CEO, Bruce Mau Design (2010–2019) and CEO, The Creative Organization Client work spanning Netflix, Samsung, GE, Unilever, Audi, Lululemon, Changi Airport Group, Lucid Motors, and the Victoria & Albert Museum Curator, Canada Pavilion, 2018 London Design Biennale; juror, Presidential Design Awards Singapore (2017) and Florence Design Biennale (2019) Commentator, “Design Canada” (2017 documentary) Creator of “The 22nd Century Brand” – a conceptual series produced with DesignSingapore Council and the National Design Centre, reframing brand evolution as a strategic and societal imperative March, Harvard University Graduate School of Design (thesis directed by Rem Koolhaas); Supermentor, Harvard Business School Field X/Y programme; Alumni Council, Harvard GSD Biography The organisations that use brand to create durable competitive advantage treat it as a design discipline, not a marketing function. Hunter Tura has spent 25 years at that boundary, running Bruce Mau Design as President & CEO for nine years, founding SYNDICATE X and The Creative Organization, and now serving as Chief Creative Officer at Entro Communications, where he leads creative strategy across experiential branding, wayfinding, and built-environment design at an international scale. His client work crosses sectors that rarely share a diagnostic framework: luxury goods (Prada, Chanel, Tiffany), cultural institutions (the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts), aviation and hospitality (Changi Airport, Marina Bay Sands), and technology (Netflix, GE, Samsung). The common strategic problem is consistent: how does an organisation make its brand do genuine commercial work rather than simply look credible? That question has a specific intellectual architecture in Tura’s hands. His “22nd Century Brand” framework traces how brand has evolved from static trademark to dynamic participation platform. The organisations ahead of their competitors have designed brand as a system. The ones falling behind have commissioned a refresh. Tura holds an MArch from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where his thesis was supervised by Rem Koolhaas, and a BA from Haverford College in the Growth and Structure of Cities. He has served on the Harvard GSD Alumni Council, is a Supermentor at Harvard Business School, and was curator of the Canada Pavilion at the 2018 London Design Biennale. He also appeared as a commentator in the 2017 documentary Design Canada. Key speaking topics Brand strategy as a driver of competitive growth Design-led business transformation Experiential branding and the built environment The evolution of brand from identity to participation platform Building and leading creative organisations at scale Cross-sector brand innovation The commercial case for design thinking Ideal for CMOs and senior marketing leadership managing significant brand investment with unclear ROI CEOs and boards navigating brand repositioning, post-merger integration, or market repositioning Senior leaders in property, hospitality, aviation, and cultural sectors where physical environment is central to brand experience Executive education cohorts in innovation, design strategy, or competitive differentiation Audience outcomes A diagnostic framework for identifying why brand investment is not producing competitive returns – with named examples from luxury, tech, and cultural sectors A clear distinction between communications-led and design-led brand strategy, and what each produces Practical language for commissioning, evaluating, and challenging brand strategy work at leadership level An understanding of how experiential and environmental design is reshaping brand expectations across sectors Exposure to cross-sector patterns from a practitioner who has made CEO-level brand decisions across more than twenty years and four distinct industry categories

Why organisations work with Hal Gregersen A specific, teachable method for recasting strategic problems: the four-minute “Question Burst,” published in Harvard Business Review and used inside organisations from Disney/Pixar to Patagonia. Co-author of “The Innovator’s DNA” with Clayton Christensen and Jeff Dyer, the foundational research identifying the five behaviours, including questioning, that separate disruptive innovators from ordinary executives. A perspective shaped by 200-plus structured interviews with catalytic questioners, including founders and CEOs, plus a behavioural database of more than 25,000 leaders. MIT Sloan and former MIT Leadership Center director credentials that give his frameworks weight in C-suite and board settings, not just innovation labs. Ranked on the Thinkers50 list across five cycles, peaking at #16, and winner of the 2017 Distinguished Achievement Award for Leadership. Biography highlights Senior Lecturer in Work and Organization Studies, MIT Sloan School of Management. Former Executive Director, MIT Leadership Center. Co-author of “The Innovator’s DNA” (Harvard Business Review Press) and author of “Questions Are the Answer” (Harper Business, 2018). 2017 Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Award for Leadership; ranked Thinkers50 #16 in 2019. Senior Fellow at Innosight; co-founder of the Innovator’s DNA consulting group. Previous faculty roles at INSEAD, London Business School, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, and Aalto University. Biography The most consequential strategic mistakes rarely come from missing data. They come from accepting a flawed framing of the problem. The leaders who break that pattern share a behavioural habit, asking catalytic questions, that can be researched, isolated, and taught. That argument runs through twenty years of work at MIT Sloan, where Hal Gregersen serves as Senior Lecturer in Work and Organization Studies and previously led the MIT Leadership Center. With Clayton Christensen and Jeff Dyer, he co-authored “The Innovator’s DNA,” the research project that identified the five discovery skills, including questioning, observing, and experimenting, that separate disruptive innovators from competent operators. His subsequent book, “Questions Are the Answer,” drew on more than 200 interviews to formalise the practice. Out of that work came the “Question Burst,” a four-minute structured method published in Harvard Business Review’s “Better Brainstorming” and now used inside organisations from Disney/Pixar to Patagonia to reframe stuck problems before solutions are debated. The Thinkers50 ranking, peaking at #16 globally in 2019, and the 2017 Distinguished Achievement Award for Leadership reflect what senior teams actually take from his sessions: a transferable discipline for changing the questions in the room before changing the strategy. Key speaking topics Inquiry-driven leadership The Innovator’s DNA and the five discovery skills The Question Burst methodology Building cultures of constructive questioning Disruptive innovation as a leadership behaviour AI and the future of catalytic inquiry Leading through transitions Ideal for CEOs and senior executive teams setting strategy under deep uncertainty. Chief Innovation Officers, Chief Strategy Officers, and transformation leads building innovation capability beyond pilot programmes. Boards and leadership development programmes seeking a research-grounded behavioural framework rather than a values statement. Audience outcomes A working command of the Question Burst method, applied live to a real organisational problem. The five Innovator’s DNA behaviours mapped onto the audience’s own roles, with a clear view of where they default to answering rather than questioning. A diagnostic for spotting the questions a leadership team is currently avoiding, and the strategic cost of that avoidance. Concrete language for embedding catalytic questioning into operating rhythms, board reviews, and innovation portfolios.

Why organisations work with Fredrik Haren His formula IDEA = P(K+I) – a person combining existing knowledge with new information – converts creativity from an abstract value into a model that managers can act on; this is the foundation of how he runs workshops, not just a rhetorical device The Idea Book has been deployed as an internal training tool by HP, Ericsson, Volvo, China Mobile, and GE – demonstrating that his framework translates from conference platform to in-organisation application His research base is genuinely cross-cultural: 25 years of field interviews across 75 countries, including fieldwork in North Korea and Mongolia, gives him material that no Western-campus-based creativity theorist can replicate He holds the Global Speaking Federation’s International Ambassador Award – given to fewer than 15 speakers globally since 2001 and, at the time of his award, never previously to a non-native English speaker based in Asia – a peer-verified credential, not a self-declared one His most recent book, The World of Creativity (Capstone/Wiley), entered for The Business Book Awards 2026, signals that his thinking continues to develop rather than recycle the same material Biography highlights Author of 10 books including The Idea Book, listed among the 100 Best Business Books of All Time Recipient of the International Ambassador Award from the Global Speakers Federation – awarded to fewer than 15 speakers globally since 2001 One of approximately 30 Global Speaking Fellows (CSPGlobal) worldwide Speaker of the Year, Sweden (2007); founder of interesting.org 2,000+ speeches delivered across 75 countries and 6 continents over a 25-year career Clients include KPMG, Grant Thornton International, HP, IKEA, BMW, Ericsson, GE, Volvo, and American Express Biography Fredrik Haren’s starting point is a question most organisations avoid asking directly: if you need a new idea tomorrow, where does it come from? His formula – IDEA = P(K+I), meaning a person combining existing knowledge with new information – strips creativity of its mystique and reframes it as something organisations can design for. The Idea Book, first published in 2004, applied that thinking in a concrete format: 150 pages of frameworks combined with 150 blank pages for working. It became an internal training tool at HP, Ericsson, Volvo, China Mobile, and GE, and was listed among the 100 Best Business Books of All Time. His most recent book, The World of Creativity (Capstone/Wiley), draws on 25 years of field research – interviews with thousands of people across 75 countries including North Korea – to map how creativity is both universal and shaped by culture. That fieldwork is the differentiator. Where most speakers on innovation draw from research or theory, Haren’s material comes from direct observation across markets and contexts that Western organisations rarely access. It gives global conference audiences – whose reference points span multiple continents – a framework that holds across cultures rather than one that travels badly. His credentials within the professional speaking community are a useful proxy for depth: Certified Speaking Professional, one of approximately 30 Global Speaking Fellows worldwide, and recipient of the Global Speakers Federation’s International Ambassador Award – given to fewer than 15 speakers since 2001 and, at the time of his award, the first to a non-native English speaker based in Asia. Key speaking topics Business creativity and idea generation Innovation as a repeatable organisational process Cross-cultural creativity and global mindset Creativity in the age of AI Building creative capability in organisations Future skills and the innovation-ready workforce Ideal for Global conference audiences spanning multiple nationalities where a single Western-centric perspective will not land CHROs and Learning & Development leads seeking to build creative capability beyond individual talent acquisition Senior leadership teams of multinationals where innovation is a stated priority but no reliable process exists to support it Innovation and transformation executives accountable for sustaining competitive differentiation Audience outcomes A working model – IDEA = P(K+I) – for understanding how ideas are generated and how to apply it in their own context Practical techniques for stimulating idea generation individually and with teams, applicable on return to the office A cross-cultural perspective on how creative practice differs across markets – relevant for any organisation operating across geographies A reframe of creativity from personal talent to organisational skill, with direct implications for how teams are developed A clearer read on how AI changes – and does not change – the fundamentals of human creativity