Digital Transformation speakers

Why organisations work with Randi Zuckerberg She created Facebook Live – a verifiable, specific product decision made inside one of the most consequential platform companies in history – giving her first-hand insight into how media formats shape audience behaviour at scale that no advisory role can replicate. Pick Three (2018) provides a named, counter-intuitive framework with a specific thesis: sustainable performance – individual and organisational – comes from deliberate daily prioritisation across five competing demands, not from attempting balance across all of them simultaneously. Her knowledge of how Facebook made its foundational decisions on elections, political partnerships, and live video predates the broader public and regulatory reckoning with platform power by nearly a decade – and comes from inside the decisions, not from observing them. Her active angel investment portfolio – 53% female founders, 30% diverse founders – means her perspective on digital entrepreneurship and media ventures is commercially current, not retrospective. Multiple Tony Award wins as a Broadway co-producer alongside a technology career demonstrates a consistent and applied understanding of commercial storytelling across very different formats and audience types – directly relevant to organisations trying to build brand authority rather than brand noise. Biography highlights One of the first ten employees at Facebook (2005–2011); Director of Market Development and Spokesperson Creator of Facebook Live, now used by more than two billion people globally Emmy nomination, 2011, for the pioneering integration of television and social media in U.S. midterm election coverage Founder and CEO, Zuckerberg Media (est. 2011); clients include the United Nations, Condé Nast, Clinton Global Initiative, and Cirque du Soleil New York Times bestselling author: Dot Complicated: Untangling Our Wired Lives (HarperCollins, 2013) and Pick Three: You Can Have It All (Just Not Every Day) (2018) Multiple Tony Award-winning Broadway co-producer, including Hadestown (Best Musical, 2019); also Drama Desk Award and Kidscreen Award Host, Randi Zuckerberg Means Business, SiriusXM; board member, Life360 BA in Psychology, Harvard University Biography Facebook Live was built by a team of fewer than ten people making decisions about media format, political partnerships, and audience engagement that nobody had made before. Randi Zuckerberg led that work. The choices her team made – about what live video could do for commercial storytelling, for political communication, for media partnerships – shaped how organisations and audiences interact in real time to this day. After leaving Facebook in 2011, she founded Zuckerberg Media, producing content and advisory work for organisations including the United Nations, Condé Nast, Cirque du Soleil, and the Clinton Global Initiative. The question her firm consistently addresses is strategic rather than technical: how does an organisation translate digital presence into an audience it actually owns, rather than one it rents from a platform? Her 2018 book Pick Three formalised a framework she had developed through practice. The argument is specific and deliberately counter-intuitive: sustainable performance – individual or organisational – does not come from balance across five competing demands (Work, Sleep, Family, Fitness, Friends). It comes from deliberate daily prioritisation of three. That specificity is what makes the framework usable in executive development conversations, rather than aspirational. Her Tony Award wins as Broadway co-producer, her weekly SiriusXM programme, and an angel investment portfolio with a deliberate diversity mandate are not incidental to her commercial thinking. They reflect the same underlying argument – that strategic storytelling, deployed with intent and discipline across different formats, builds audiences that advertising cannot replicate. Key speaking topics Digital media strategy and platform intelligence Entrepreneurship and venture building Commercial storytelling and brand media The creator economy and audience ownership Technology and society: the platform era in retrospect Productivity and prioritisation: the Pick Three framework Women in technology and entrepreneurship Ideal for CMOs, brand directors, and communications executives navigating digital media strategy and audience ownership Entrepreneurial leadership communities, founder networks, and innovation-focused executive programmes Executive teams building media presence as a commercial strategy rather than a communications function CHROs and leadership development leads running programmes on performance, prioritisation, and sustainable leadership Audience outcomes A clearer distinction between digital activity and digital strategy, grounded in how platform companies actually make decisions about media and audience Practical application of the Pick Three framework for daily prioritisation – applicable to individual performance, team leadership, and organisational resource allocation First-hand perspective on how media partnerships, content formats, and platform intelligence were developed inside Facebook during its most formative years A more operationally grounded view of the creator economy: what «owning your audience» actually requires versus what platforms provide Greater confidence in making active, deliberate trade-offs between competing strategic priorities rather than attempting to progress all of them simultaneously

Why organisations work with Ravin Jesuthasan He gives boards and executive teams an actual blueprint for moving from jobs to skills, not a slide about why it matters. The Work Without Jobs framework, developed with John Boudreau, is the reference text on the subject and is taught inside MIT Sloan and Kellogg. His day job is doing this work. As Mercer’s Global Leader of Transformation Services, he advises some of the largest employers in the world on workforce redesign, so the keynote is built on live engagements, not theory. He sits where AI, automation and human capital actually intersect. His four-step framework for applying automation to work, from Reinventing Jobs, has become a standard tool for HR and operations leaders trying to decide what to automate, what to augment, and what to leave alone. He brings institutional authority that buyers can verify. World Economic Forum Steering Committee on Work and Employment, Thinkers50 Radar, FT Book of the Month, fifteen pieces in HBR and MIT Sloan Management Review. His material is built for the CHRO and the CEO in the same room. Many future-of-work speakers pitch to one or the other. He frames the work redesign question as a board-level operating decision, which is how it now needs to be sold internally. Biography highlights Global Leader of Transformation Services at Mercer. Executive Fellow and Adjunct Lecturer of Executive Education, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Author of five books including Work Without Jobs (MIT Press, 2022) and The Skills-Powered Organization (MIT Press, 2024). Wall Street Journal bestseller; Financial Times Book of the Month, October 2024. Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2020; shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Talent Award 2023. World Economic Forum Steering Committee member on Work and Employment. Over 200 published articles, including 15 in Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review; regular Forbes contributor. CFA charterholder and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA). Biography The job, as a unit of organisational architecture, is starting to look obsolete. Roles are static, skills inside them decay in months rather than years, and AI is now capable of doing chunks of work that used to define entire functions. Most large employers know this. Very few know what to replace the jobs-based model with. This is the territory Ravin Jesuthasan has spent two decades mapping. As Global Leader of Transformation Services at Mercer, he advises multinational employers on how to rebuild their workforce architecture around skills and tasks rather than fixed job descriptions. The same body of work runs through Work Without Jobs, written with John Boudreau and published by MIT Press in 2022, and its 2024 follow-up, The Skills-Powered Organization, written with Tanuj Kapilashrami and named Financial Times Book of the Month in October 2024. The institutional credentials match the intellectual claim. He sits on the World Economic Forum’s Steering Committee on Work and Employment, holds an Executive Fellow and Adjunct Lecturer appointment at the Kellogg School of Management, and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2020 before being shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Talent Award in 2023. He has written more than 200 articles, including fifteen pieces for Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review, and contributes regularly to Forbes. For boards now being asked how AI will reshape headcount, productivity and capability, his contribution is not a forecast. It is an operating model: a structured way of deciding what work gets deconstructed, which tasks get automated or augmented, and how the organisation acquires the skills it will actually need next year, not the jobs it posted last year. Key speaking topics The skills-powered organisation Reinventing jobs through automation and AI The future of work and the work operating system Workforce transformation and human capital strategy Human-AI collaboration in the enterprise The future of the Chief People Officer role Sustainable digital transformation Ideal for CHROs and Chief People Officers rebuilding the workforce model around skills and AI. CEOs and boards making capital-level decisions on AI, automation and headcount. Transformation, operations and strategy leaders responsible for redesigning how work gets done. Executive teams preparing for skills-based talent markets and post-jobs operating models. Audience outcomes A working definition of the skills-powered organisation and how it differs from a jobs-based model. A four-step method for deciding what to automate, what to augment, and what to leave to humans. A board-ready argument for treating work design as a strategic operating decision, not an HR programme. Specific case examples from global employers already deconstructing jobs into tasks and skills.

Why organisations work with Riaz Shah He has run reskilling at a scale almost no academic or consultant has matched: more than 400,000 employees and 24 million hours of learning a year inside EY. He built the EY Tech MBA, one of the first corporate degree programmes to put technology fluency at the centre of professional services training, and can speak about what it took to make it work. His authority on the future of work rests on operating responsibility, not research alone. He has been the executive on the hook for the budget, the platform choices and the outcomes. He chairs One Degree Academy, a free school for children in an underserved part of London now ranked among the world’s top ten in the Overcoming Adversity category of the World’s Best School Prizes. His argument that learning design matters at scale is supported by results, not theory. His OBE for Services to Education, awarded by HM King Charles III in 2023, signals that the credibility is recognised beyond the corporate audience. Biography highlights Professor of Practice for Innovation & Leadership, Hult International Business School. 27 years as a partner at EY, including Global Learning Leader, Managing Partner of London Assurance and Chief Operations Officer for EMEIA Markets. Architect of the EY Tech MBA, deployed across a workforce of more than 400,000 professionals. OBE for Services to Education, 2023. Founder and Chair of One Degree Academy, a Top 10 finalist for the World’s Best School Prize in the Overcoming Adversity category. Non-executive director, Genius Group (appointed July 2024). Biography Most large organisations have an AI strategy. Very few have a learning strategy capable of delivering it. That gap, between what a workforce is being asked to do next year and what it knows how to do today, is the specific problem Riaz Shah has spent the last decade inside. At EY, as Global Learning Leader, he carried operating responsibility for how more than 400,000 professionals were equipped for a market reshaped by automation, AI and digital platforms. His team delivered more than 24 million hours of learning a year and built the EY Tech MBA, a full corporate degree programme that put technology fluency at the centre of a professional services career. He had previously been Managing Partner of London Assurance and Chief Operations Officer for EMEIA Markets, so the work was anchored in commercial reality, not in the learning department’s preferences. He now teaches at Hult International Business School as Professor of Practice for Innovation & Leadership, where his sessions with senior executives concentrate on global megatrends, digital disruption and how organisations rebuild capability fast enough to keep up. He also chairs One Degree Academy, a state-funded free school for children aged 4 to 18 in an underserved part of London. The school is a Top 10 finalist in the Overcoming Adversity category of the World’s Best School Prizes, and is the practical expression of his argument that learning design, done seriously, scales. In 2023, King Charles III awarded him the OBE for Services to Education. He sits on the board of Genius Group, a Nasdaq-listed education business, and is a member of YPO. Key speaking topics AI and the future of work Reskilling and workforce transformation at scale Corporate learning as a strategic capability Innovation and growth mindset inside large organisations Generational shifts in the workplace Demographics and changing consumer attitudes Leadership in conditions of digital disruption Ideal for CHROs and Chief Learning Officers commissioning a workforce transformation tied to AI and automation. CEOs and executive committees of large services and knowledge businesses where the talent base is the product. Boards reviewing the capability assumptions inside a digital or AI strategy. Senior leadership conferences where the brief is to make the case for serious, not cosmetic, reskilling. Audience outcomes A sharper view of where the gap between AI ambition and workforce capability is biggest, and which gaps matter most commercially. A clearer picture of what corporate learning has to look like to keep pace with technology, drawn from running it at EY scale. An honest read on what worked and what did not in building the EY Tech MBA, with the operational detail intact. A more confident sense of how to talk to a workforce about AI without losing trust.

Why organisations work with Richard Florida His “three Ts” framework (technology, talent, tolerance) remains the most cited model in talent geography, drawn on by city governments and corporate location strategists worldwide. He named and quantified the creative class, the 40-million-strong workforce whose location and lifestyle decisions now drive regional economic growth. Through the Creative Class Group, he has advised BMW, Audi, Microsoft, Facebook, and Starwood Hotels, alongside city and regional governments worldwide. He co-founded CityLab, now owned by Bloomberg, and contributes regularly to The Atlantic and the Financial Times. His 2017 book The New Urban Crisis examined how the same forces driving creative-economy growth also produce inequality and segregation, giving leaders a more honest account of the trade-offs in talent-led strategies. Biography highlights University Professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and School of Cities, which he helped found Visiting Distinguished Professor at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management Author of The Rise of the Creative Class, winner of the Washington Monthly Political Book Award and a Harvard Business Review Breakthrough Idea of 2004 Co-founder of CityLab, now owned by Bloomberg Ranked #19 on the Thinkers50 list of the world’s most influential management thinkers in 2017 Founder of the Creative Class Group, advising BMW, Audi, Microsoft, Facebook, and Starwood Hotels Biography Talent used to follow jobs. Florida’s research, beginning with his 2002 book The Rise of the Creative Class, demonstrated that the relationship had reversed. The most ambitious workers were now choosing cities first, gravitating to those that combined what he called the three Ts: technology, talent, and tolerance. The Rise of the Creative Class won the Washington Monthly Political Book Award and was named a Harvard Business Review Breakthrough Idea of 2004. The book quantified a workforce of 40 million Americans whose decisions about where to live were beginning to drive regional economies. It became the foundation for how cities and large employers think about competing for human capital. His 2017 book The New Urban Crisis confronted what creative-economy growth had produced. In cities like New York, San Francisco, and London, the same forces driving wealth creation were also increasing inequality, deepening segregation, and hollowing out the middle class. Florida calls this winner-take-all urbanism. The book gave civic and corporate leaders a sharper account of the trade-offs in talent-led growth. Florida is University Professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and School of Cities, which he helped found. He is also Visiting Distinguished Professor at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management and a Distinguished Fellow at NYU’s Schack Institute of Real Estate. Through the Creative Class Group he has advised BMW, Audi, Microsoft, Facebook, and Starwood Hotels on talent and location strategy. Key speaking topics The creative class and the geography of talent Talent attraction and retention in the post-industrial economy Cities as engines of growth and inequality Real estate and corporate location strategy in the creative economy Innovation and the conditions that produce it The future of work in superstar cities Ideal for Chief Human Resources Officers and heads of talent making decisions about where to recruit, locate, and build culture Real estate developers, REITs, and corporate location strategists City leaders, mayors, and economic development agencies competing for investment and talent Boards and CEOs of large employers reassessing geographic footprint after the shift to hybrid work Audience outcomes Florida’s creative class framework, including who it covers and where the category is now concentrated globally Detailed data on which cities and regions are gaining and losing talent right now A diagnosis of why creative-economy growth also generates inequality and segregation, and what cities are doing in response Specific implications for location and recruitment strategy in their own organisation

Why organisations work with Robert Cringely Four decades of first-person reporting on Silicon Valley, from the InfoWorld “Notes from the Field” column (1987 to 1995) through PBSs “Triumph of the Nerds” and “NerdTV” to the long-running I, Cringely site, give him a pattern memory across every major computing wave that few other speakers can match. He runs a public, self-graded annual technology prediction column, which forces a level of accountability about where the industry is heading that most futurists avoid. His book “Accidental Empires” remains a reference text on how the personal computer industry actually got built, used by leaders who want to understand the cultural mechanics of Silicon Valley rather than the press-release version. He has written for The New York Times, Forbes, Newsweek and Worth on technology business, so the framing he brings to a corporate audience is editorial and argument-led, not a vendor pitch. Biography highlights Author of the 1992 best-seller “Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition and Still Can’t Get a Date”. Wrote the “Notes from the Field” column at InfoWorld for eight years, 1987 to 1995. Host and writer behind the PBS documentary series “Triumph of the Nerds” (1996) and “Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet” (1998). Producer and host of “NerdTV” on PBS (2005 to 2006); wrote the “I, Cringely: The Pulpit” column on PBS.org through 2008. Bylines as Cringely have appeared in The New York Times, Forbes, Newsweek and Worth. M.A. in Communication Research from Stanford University; B.A. from the College of Wooster. Biography Silicon Valley keeps selling boards a story that the next wave will look nothing like the last one. The track record says otherwise. The same patterns of overfunding, platform consolidation, and quiet operating change show up in the PC era, the internet era, the cloud era, and now in generative AI. Robert Cringely has been writing those patterns down in real time since 1987. His column “Notes from the Field” ran in InfoWorld through the formative years of the PC industry, and the 1992 book “Accidental Empires” turned that reporting into the canonical account of how Silicon Valley actually behaves under pressure. PBS adapted the book into the three-part series “Triumph of the Nerds” in 1996, followed by “Nerds 2.0.1” on the rise of the internet, and later the “NerdTV” interview series. As Cringely, he has written for The New York Times, Forbes, Newsweek and Worth. What sets the work apart is the prediction discipline. Each January he publishes specific calls on where computing, networks and now AI are heading, and each year he goes back and grades the prior years record in public. Few commentators in the field do this; almost none have done it for as long. For a corporate audience, the value is editorial judgement on a noisy market. Cringely will tell a leadership team which AI claims are doing real operating work, which look like the dot-com years repeating, and where the durable economics of compute, data and platforms actually sit. Key speaking topics Generative AI and the next phase of enterprise computing The economics and geopolitics of cloud and compute Silicon Valley business models and platform consolidation Annual technology predictions and the discipline of forecasting The history of the PC, internet and cloud as a guide to the AI cycle Cybersecurity and infrastructure risk in a connected economy Ideal for Boards and executive committees forming a view on AI investment and platform exposure Strategy, technology and innovation leaders responsible for the corporate AI agenda Industry conferences and offsites in technology, financial services, telecoms and media Investor and analyst audiences seeking an editorial read on Silicon Valley signals Audience outcomes A clearer read on which AI and platform claims are durable and which are cycle-driven Pattern recognition across the PC, internet, cloud and AI waves applied to the audience’s own bets Sharper questions for vendors, partners and internal technology teams A practical framework for tracking and grading technology predictions over time

Why organisations work with Robert Tercek He has run the digital businesses he now advises on. President of Digital Media at OWN, first SVP of Digital Media at Sony Pictures, Creative Director at MTV. That operating record gives his framing weight that pure analysts cannot match. Vaporized won the 2016 International Book of the Year at the Frankfurt Book Fair from a field of 10,000 titles. The thesis, that whole categories of physical product and intermediary dissolve into software, has held up across a decade of platform and AI shifts. He works in long horizons. General Creativity, his advisory firm, is built around scenario work and ten-year strategic planning, not next-quarter trend commentary, which suits boards making capital-allocation decisions on AI, metaverse and infrastructure. He treats emerging technology as a governance problem, not a hype cycle. His current speaking on the industrial metaverse, digital twins and platform power foregrounds the questions executives and policymakers actually have to answer. Biography highlights Author of Vaporized: Solid Strategies for Success in a Dematerialized World, named 2016 International Book of the Year by getAbstract at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Former President of Digital Media, OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network. Sony Pictures Entertainment’s first Senior Vice President of Digital Media. Creative Director at MTV, where he helped launch the network across more than 20 international markets. Founder and CEO of General Creativity, advising Fortune 500 clients including AT&T, IBM, Microsoft, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and NBC Universal. Strategic Advisor to the Johnny Carson Foundation and the Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; taught the first interactive media course at USC School of Cinematic Arts. Biography Whole categories of business have already been replaced by software, and most boards still treat that as a channel question. Retail shelves, classroom hours, hotel desks, broadcast schedules, payment rails: each one has been thinned out or absorbed into a platform layer. The pattern Tercek named “dematerialisation” in 2015 is the same pattern now driving the AI and platform conversation in 2026. That naming is documented. Vaporized: Solid Strategies for Success in a Dematerialized World won the 2016 International Book of the Year at the Frankfurt Book Fair, selected by getAbstract editors from a field of 10,000 business titles. A decade on, the book reads less like prediction and more like a manual that incumbents wish they had taken seriously when it landed. The credibility comes from operating, not commentary. Tercek was Creative Director at MTV when the network launched into more than 20 international markets, Sony Pictures Entertainment’s first SVP of Digital Media when multiplayer games first ran in a browser, and President of Digital Media at OWN when Oprah Winfrey’s 2009 webcasts pulled the largest live online education audience on record. He now runs General Creativity, advising Fortune 500 clients on digital transformation and long-horizon strategy. His current work focuses on the industrial metaverse, digital twins and the governance questions sitting underneath platform power: who owns the rules, who carries the risk, and what serious organisations should be building rather than buying. He is also a Strategic Advisor to the Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and holds, with collaborators, 12 US patents covering decentralised entertainment and cryptocurrency systems. Key speaking topics Dematerialisation and the virtual economy Industrial metaverse and digital twins Digital transformation strategy Platform power and technology governance AI, automation and the future of work Long-range scenario planning under exponential change Decentralised systems and Web3 Ideal for Boards and CEOs setting ten-year capital allocation against AI, platform and infrastructure shifts Chief Strategy Officers, Chief Digital Officers and transformation leads in incumbent industries facing software-driven disruption Industrial, energy and infrastructure leaders evaluating digital twin and industrial metaverse investments Policy, regulatory and public-sector audiences working on platform governance and technology risk Audience outcomes A working model for spotting which parts of a business are most exposed to dematerialisation, and on what time horizon A clear read on where the industrial metaverse and digital twins create real operating advantage, and where they do not A sharper framework for ten-year scenario planning that survives short-term hype cycles Specific reference points from MTV, Sony, OWN and current Fortune 500 advisory work, not generic futurist commentary

Why organisations work with Robin Speculand Direct, exclusive access to the inside story of DBS Bank’s transformation from “best bank in Singapore” to repeated “World’s Best Bank” winner, captured through C-suite interviews and translated into a method other organisations can apply. Proprietary implementation assessments and tools, including the Implementation Compass and the Ticking Clock model, that give leadership teams a structured way to diagnose where their strategy is breaking down. Co-author with Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez of the Strategy Implementation Playbook, the most current step-by-step reference work in a field most consultancies still treat as adjacent to strategy. Two and a half decades specialising solely in the implementation problem at Bridges Business Consultancy, with foundational client engagements at Singapore Airlines and a global luxury group, and current work extending the same discipline into AI and digital transformation. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Bridges Business Consultancy Int; co-founder, Strategy Implementation Institute; co-founder, Digital Leadership Specialists. Author of nine books, including World’s Best Bank (Amazon #1 bestseller, over 100,000 copies sold, translated into seven languages) and Excellence in Execution. Co-nominated for the Thinkers50 Ideas into Practice Award (2021) with DBS CEO Piyush Gupta. Educator for Duke CE and IMD; adjunct faculty at Singapore Management University and the National University of Singapore. Speaker at the Global Peter Drucker Forum (2023); featured on BBC, CNBC, Channel News Asia, and Forbes. Author of three Harvard-listed case studies on DBS Bank’s digital transformation. Biography DBS Bank was, for years, an unremarkable regional player. A decade later, it had been named World’s Best Bank by Euromoney, Global Finance, and The Banker in successive years, and Harvard had filed it among the most significant digital transformations of the era. Robin Speculand had direct access to the C-suite throughout. World’s Best Bank: A Strategic Guide to Digital Transformation is the published account of how the change was actually executed, not a retrospective tribute. That access matters because most strategy literature stops at the decision. Speculand founded Bridges Business Consultancy in 2000 specifically because he saw executives talking about strategy with almost no operating language for implementation. Twenty-five years later, the field he helped name has its own institute, of which he is co-founder, and a body of work that includes nine books, six Harvard-listed case studies, and the Strategy Implementation Playbook co-authored with Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez. His 2024 book Implement: Doing it Right in a Digital World extends the same discipline into AI-era transformation. His proprietary tools, the Implementation Compass and the Ticking Clock model, give boards a way to locate where execution is breaking down: governance, pace, capability, behaviour, or measurement. Singapore Airlines was an early client. A global luxury group used the work to anchor its first digital programme. The teaching footprint, Duke CE, IMD, Singapore Management University, NUS, reflects how seriously serious institutions now take implementation as a discrete competence. He was co-nominated with then-DBS CEO Piyush Gupta for the Thinkers50 Ideas into Practice Award in 2021, the practitioner counterpart to the main Thinkers50 ranking. The point is not the recognition. It is what the nomination signals: that the lessons of one of the decade’s most-studied transformations have been codified in a form other organisations can use. Key speaking topics Transformation in an AI-driven world Strategy implementation Digital transformation Execution and operating discipline Lessons from the DBS Bank transformation Leadership in change programmes Organizational Agility Ideal for CEOs, COOs, and chief strategy officers leading enterprise-wide transformation Boards governing multi-year digital or operating-model change Banking and financial services leadership teams benchmarking against DBS Senior teams preparing strategy off-sites where implementation, not formulation, is the constraint Audience outcomes A clear language for diagnosing where their own strategy is breaking down in implementation The DBS playbook is a comparable, not a case study, with the levers their own organisation can pull A structured view of transformation as governance and capability work, not a technology purchase Specific instruments (Implementation Compass, Ticking Clock), leaders can take back into their next strategy review

Why organisations work with Rohit Talwar His “Very Human Future” argument that the central strategic task is keeping human outcomes at the centre of AI and technology adoption, not merely managing adoption itself gives leadership teams a framing that is both commercially grounded and defensible at board level. He edits and contributes to multi-author research books that aggregate the work of 60+ futurists and practitioners across a single question; this publishing model means his content draws on current collective intelligence rather than a single perspective frozen at a point in time. As Co-Chair of the UK Node of The Millennium Project, he sits inside a global futures research network. His material reflects active scenario-building methodology, not retrospective trend commentary. He builds entire talks around sector-specific strategic implications: financial services, aviation, local economies, rather than delivering a generic future-of-technology keynote with surface-level industry references. Ranked among the Global Gurus Top 30 Futurist Professionals for 2025, he is a verifiably credentialled figure in an industry where credibility is difficult to assess. Biography highlights CEO and founder of Fast Future, a foresight research, publishing, and advisory firm Editor or lead contributor to more than eight books including A Very Human Future, Beyond Genuine Stupidity: Ensuring AI Serves Humanity, and The Future of Business Co-Chair of the UK Node of The Millennium Project, a global futures research organisation Ranked in the Global Gurus Top 30 Futurist Professionals for 2025; previously profiled by The Independent as a top 10 global futurist MBA from London Business School; BA in Electronics and Computer Science from the University of Keele; early career at British Telecom on AI research and at Andersen Consulting Delivered more than 1,500 keynotes and workshops across 70+ countries on six continents; regular contributor to international news networks on technology and innovation Biography Fast Future is not a typical consultancy. Rohit Talwar built it as a research and publishing operation, an ongoing mechanism for aggregating the work of futurists, practitioners, and emerging thinkers into books and advisory frameworks. That structural choice shapes the quality of what he brings to a leadership conversation. His central argument, developed across titles including A Very Human Future and Beyond Genuine Stupidity: Ensuring AI Serves Humanity, is specific: the question organisations are not asking clearly enough is not whether to adopt AI, but what kind of organisation they want to be when the adoption is complete. Strategy that treats AI as a technical problem consistently misses the governance, cultural, and human-capital decisions that determine whether the investment pays off. Talwar holds an MBA from London Business School and began his career in AI research at British Telecom before moving into management consulting. His foresight work is grounded in structured methodology: he serves as Co-Chair of the UK Node of The Millennium Project, a global futures research body, and brings scenario-building rigour to topics that, in other hands, often remain speculative. The Global Gurus research organisation ranked him among the Top 30 Futurist Professionals for 2025. The effect on senior audiences evidenced consistently across client feedback is a specific one: not inspiration, but productive disruption of existing strategic assumptions. His talks are built to destabilise complacent planning rather than to validate it. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and exponential technologies Strategic foresight and scenario planning Human-centred responses to digital transformation Business model innovation in the face of disruption Global megatrends and drivers of change The future of financial services and fintech Long-range futures and organisational resilience Ideal for Executive leadership teams and boards stress-testing long-range strategy Chief Strategy Officers and Chief Innovation Officers building foresight capability Financial services leadership navigating AI and platform disruption Conference and association audiences in technology, aviation, professional services, and public sector Audience outcomes A structured vocabulary for discussing AI strategy that goes beyond adoption and automation Practical scenario-thinking tools that can be applied directly in strategy workshops Clearer understanding of which emerging technologies require immediate strategic response versus longer-horizon monitoring A sharper framing of the organisational and human-capital implications of accelerating technological change Reduced gap between awareness of disruption and the leadership confidence to act on it

Why organisations work with Rory Cellan-Jones He has reported on every significant technology cycle from the dot.com bust to generative AI, which gives senior teams a working baseline for how this wave will and will not behave. His book Always On argues that the smartphone is the Model T Ford of the 21st century and traces the loss of public trust from the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony to Cambridge Analytica. That argument frames a board conversation on AI legitimacy in language buyers can use. He brings the institutional memory of the BBC technology desk into the room, including direct interviews with the founders and chief executives now setting the AI agenda. His OBE for services to journalism, honorary fellowship at the National Museum of Computing, and current advisory roles at FTI Consulting and Brands2Life signal a credibility that survives the move from press gallery to boardroom. He hosts and moderates with the discipline of a live broadcaster, which makes him a strong choice when the brief is a serious panel rather than a single keynote. Biography highlights BBC Technology Correspondent, 2007 to 2021, with prior roles on The Money Programme, Newsnight, and the Today Programme. Appointed OBE in the 2024 Birthday Honours for services to journalism. Author of Always On: Hope and Fear in the Social Smartphone Era (Bloomsbury), Dot.Bomb, the memoir Ruskin Park, and Sophie From Romania. Co-host of the Movers and Shakers podcast on Parkinson’s disease, launched 2023. Senior Advisor, FTI Consulting; Senior Media and Strategy Consultant, Brands2Life. Honorary Fellow, National Museum of Computing; honorary degree, University of York. Biography The dot.com bust ran straight through Cellan-Jones’s first stint as a technology reporter. He had just been appointed BBC Internet Correspondent when the bubble broke, and the book he wrote about it, Dot.Bomb, set the pattern for a career spent reporting on technology as something that has to survive contact with markets, regulators and the public. That long memory is what senior teams now use him for. Across fourteen years as BBC Technology Correspondent, from January 2007, he covered the rise of the iPhone, the social media platforms, the cryptocurrency cycles, and the early arguments about AI safety. His book Always On reads that period as a single arc, with the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony as the high water mark of techno-optimism and the Cambridge Analytica revelations as the moment public trust broke. He left the BBC in 2021 and has since taken senior advisory roles at FTI Consulting and Brands2Life, which keep him close to the corporate side of the same questions he reported on as a journalist. He was appointed OBE in the 2024 Birthday Honours. The current AI debate is where the back catalogue earns its keep. Boards are being asked to make commitments at a pace that exceeds the evidence, and the reflex to copy whichever competitor moves first is exactly the pattern he watched go wrong in 2000, again in 2008, and again in 2017. Few speakers can frame that lesson with the same authority. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and the public trust problem The smartphone era and the social contract of technology Disruptive innovation and the corporate response Technology regulation and the limits of self-governance Cybersecurity in consumer and corporate life Long-run lessons from forty years of technology cycles Health, technology and the patient experience Ideal for Boards setting AI adoption policy and accountability CIO, CTO and CDO leadership offsites looking for an outsider perspective on the current cycle Communications, public affairs and policy teams managing technology reputation risk Conferences requiring a moderator or host with deep subject knowledge Audience outcomes A clearer read on which parts of the current AI narrative match historical patterns and which are genuinely new A working framework for thinking about public trust as a corporate input, not an externality A sense of the regulatory direction in the UK, EU and US and what that implies for product and policy decisions Questions a board should be asking its own technology and risk leadership in the next twelve months

Why organisations work with Rowan Gibson He is the author of a named ideation methodology, the 4 Lenses of Innovation, that gives an entire organisation a common language for spotting breakthrough opportunities rather than relying on isolated creative teams. His book Innovation to the Core, published by Harvard Business School Press with Peter Skarzynski, is one of the few practitioner texts focused specifically on building enterprise-wide innovation systems, not on innovation as a mindset. He has worked directly with senior teams at Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Bayer, Mars, Philips, P&G, Dell and Haier, giving him a working comparison set across most major industries. He was shortlisted for the 2015 Thinkers50 Innovation Award, alongside Vijay Govindarajan and Scott Anthony, marking peer recognition from the field’s primary ranking body. His current keynote work integrates AI tools directly into the innovation method, so audiences leave with a view of generative AI as a creative engine inside a structured process, not as a separate technology agenda. Biography highlights Author of Rethinking The Future (1996), Innovation to the Core (Harvard Business School Press, 2008) and The Four Lenses of Innovation (Wiley, 2015), translated into 25 languages. Originator of the 4 Lenses of Innovation methodology, taught and applied inside Fortune 500 innovation programmes. Cofounder of InnovationExcellence.com, a long-running practitioner portal in the innovation field. Shortlisted for the 2015 Thinkers50 Innovation Award. Founder and President of Imagination Bridge, a strategy innovation and digital transformation consultancy. Has advised and lectured at Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Bayer, Coca-Cola, Mars, Philips, P&G, Dell, Haier, Heineken, Siemens and Toyota, among others. Biography Most companies do not have an innovation problem. They have an innovation system problem. Ideas surface and stall, breakthrough projects depend on a particular leader, and the next pipeline always starts from scratch. Rowan Gibson built his career around fixing exactly that gap. Rethinking The Future, his 1996 anthology with contributions from Charles Handy, Michael Porter, C.K. Prahalad, Stephen Covey and Peter Senge, set the early frame. Innovation to the Core, written with Peter Skarzynski for Harvard Business School Press in 2008, took the next step and laid out how an enterprise builds a sustained innovation capability rather than running isolated programmes. The Four Lenses of Innovation, published by Wiley in 2015, distilled the underlying ideation method into something a working team can actually use: four perspectives, Challenging Orthodoxies, Harnessing Trends, Leveraging Resources and Understanding Needs, that produce new strategic options on demand. That method is now the spine of his keynote and consulting work as President of Imagination Bridge. He has run innovation engagements for Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Bayer, Mars, P&G, Coca-Cola, Philips, Dell and Haier, which is a working comparison set across consumer goods, technology, pharma and industrials. The 2015 Thinkers50 Innovation Award shortlist placed him alongside Vijay Govindarajan and Scott Anthony, the field’s most cited contributors. His current work folds generative AI into the same method, which is the most useful version of the AI-and-innovation conversation a senior team can have. The question is not whether AI changes innovation. It is whether the organisation has a disciplined process strong enough for AI to accelerate, instead of one that AI only makes faster at producing the wrong ideas. Key speaking topics Enterprise innovation capability The 4 Lenses of Innovation methodology AI in the innovation process Business model innovation Strategy under disruption Creative thinking for senior teams Digital transformation Ideal for Chief Strategy Officers, Chief Innovation Officers and CTOs running enterprise innovation programmes Executive committees are redesigning the innovation operating model around AI tools Heads of R&D, product and growth in consumer, industrial and technology businesses Boards are weighing how to make innovation a measurable capability rather than a sponsored activity Audience outcomes A working version of the 4 Lenses of Innovation method that teams can apply to a current strategic question A clearer view of where AI fits inside an innovation process, and where it does not Specific examples of how named global companies have built innovation capability at scale A vocabulary for distinguishing one-off creative wins from a repeatable enterprise capability Concrete prompts for the orthodoxies, trends, resources and unmet needs in the audience’s own market

Why organisations work with Salim Ismail He authored the reference text on exponential organisational design. Exponential Organizations and its 2023 sequel are the most widely cited corporate playbooks for moving from linear operating models to ones built on AI, data, and external leverage. The ExO Sprint, codified in Exponential Transformation, gives boards a 10-week structured method for testing exponential business models inside an existing P&L. It is a managed process, not a keynote concept. He brings the founding-era credibility of Singularity University, where he built the curriculum and faculty alongside Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil, then carried that thesis into operating practice through ExO Works and OpenExO. He sits on the XPRIZE Foundation board, giving him direct line of sight on which technology categories are about to compress in cost and capability, and what that means for incumbents in adjacent industries. He speaks to boards and CEOs in the language of organisational structure, not innovation theatre. The takeaway is a diagnostic on where the company will be outpaced and what to redesign first. Biography highlights Lead author, Exponential Organizations (Diversion Books, 2014); Frost & Sullivan Growth, Innovation, and Leadership Book of the Year. Lead author, Exponential Organizations 2.0 (2023), with Peter Diamandis, Michael Malone, and a foreword by Ray Kurzweil. Co-author, Exponential Transformation (Wiley, 2018), the ExO Sprint implementation handbook. Founding Executive Director of Singularity University, with Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil. Founder of ExO Works (2016) and Co-founder and Chairman of OpenExO. Board member, XPRIZE Foundation (since March 2017); previously Vice President and Head of Brickhouse, Yahoo’s internal incubator. Biography Most large companies are not slow because their leaders are slow. They are slow because their structure was designed for a linear world, where capability, headcount, and asset base scaled in step with revenue. The book that named this problem and offered an alternative model is Exponential Organizations, published in 2014 and updated in 2023. Its lead author is Salim Ismail. The framework came out of the founding years of Singularity University, where Ismail served as Executive Director alongside Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil. The question on the table was practical: if computing, sensing, biotech, and energy are all on cost curves that drop by orders of magnitude per decade, what does an organisation built to ride those curves actually look like. The answer became the 10 ExO attributes, including a Massive Transformative Purpose, staff on demand, community and crowd, algorithms, and leveraged assets. It is the reason the book has been picked up as a corporate operating reference rather than a futurist commentary. Through ExO Works and OpenExO, Ismail turned the framework into a transformation method. The ExO Sprint, documented in Exponential Transformation with Francisco Palao and Michelle Lapierre, is a 10-week board-level process for stress-testing existing business models against exponential disruption and building parallel ventures inside the company. He sits on the XPRIZE Foundation board, which keeps the diagnostic anchored to where technology cost curves are actually moving. His operating credentials sit underneath the writing. He led Brickhouse, Yahoo’s internal incubator, evaluating thousands of disruptive ideas and shipping four products. He co-founded PubSub Concepts and Angstro, the latter acquired by Google in 2010. He holds an honours degree in theoretical physics and computing from the University of Waterloo. The biography matters because the framework is not abstract; it is the synthesis of someone who built inside large companies, founded outside of them, and then taught both groups how to think about the next decade. Key speaking topics Exponential organisational design Disruptive convergence of AI, biotech, and energy Business model innovation under exponential cost curves Corporate venturing and the ExO Sprint Future of entrepreneurship and scale-up leverage Strategic foresight for boards Technology-driven workforce redesign Ideal for Boards and CEOs are evaluating whether the current operating model can survive the next decade of technology compression Chief strategy officers and corporate development leads are designing exponential ventures alongside the core business Innovation and digital transformation leaders are moving past pilots into operating-model change Industry forums in financial services, energy, life sciences, and industrials, where incumbents face exponential challengers Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the 10 ExO attributes and a way to score the audience’s own organisation against them A clearer view of which technology cost curves are about to bend in their industry and on what timeline Specific examples of incumbents that have applied the ExO Sprint and what changed in the P&L A diagnostic on where structural drag, not technology, is the actual constraint on exponential growth A point of view on what to centralise, what to distribute, and what to externalise as AI capability deepens

Why organisations work with Scott Galloway A working framework for how platform economics, network effects, and data accumulation concentrate value, drawn from a tenured marketing academic who has also built and sold technology companies inside the same system he analyses. Annual, falsifiable predictions on consumer, technology, and business trends that boards can stress-test against their own capital allocation, rather than abstract futurism. Direct reads on the AI cycle, including where investment is overpriced relative to operating value and where it is not, from a faculty member teaching brand and digital strategy at MBA level. A founder track record across nine companies, including the sale of L2 to Gartner, that grounds the strategic argument in commercial reality rather than commentary. Reach across The Prof G Pod, Pivot with Kara Swisher, and the No Mercy / No Malice newsletter that signals a leader who already shapes how senior audiences think about Big Tech. Biography highlights Professor of Marketing, NYU Stern School of Business; teaches Brand Strategy and Digital Marketing to second-year MBAs. Founder of nine companies including Prophet, RedEnvelope, L2 (sold to Gartner), and Section. New York Times bestselling author of The Four, The Algebra of Happiness, Post Corona, Adrift, and The Algebra of Wealth; books translated into 28 languages. Host of The Prof G Pod and co-host of Pivot with Kara Swisher; publisher of the No Mercy / No Malice newsletter. Board service: The New York Times Company, Urban Outfitters, Panera Bread, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Ledger. Named one of the world’s best business school professors by Poets & Quants; multiple Webby Award winner. Biography A small number of companies now capture a disproportionate share of consumer attention, transaction data, and equity value. The Four set out the mechanics of how Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Google did it, and the argument has only sharpened as AI consolidates around the same incumbents. Galloway treats this as a question of structural economics, not corporate behaviour, and that is the lens he brings to a boardroom. At NYU Stern, he holds a chair in marketing and teaches Brand Strategy and Digital Marketing to second-year MBAs. Poets & Quants has ranked him among the world’s best business professors. The academic position matters because it disciplines the work, but the operating experience is what makes the analysis useful to executives: nine companies founded, including Prophet, RedEnvelope, and L2, the digital intelligence firm acquired by Gartner in 2017. The published record runs from platform economics in The Four to capital and career frameworks in The Algebra of Wealth, with Post Corona and Adrift sitting between as reads on the post-2020 economy and the structural condition of the United States. Across The Prof G Pod, Pivot with Kara Swisher, and No Mercy / No Malice, he makes annual, data-led predictions on consumer, tech, and macro trends that leadership teams can test against their own planning. What distinguishes him in a room of senior buyers is the combination of categories he occupies at once: faculty member, founder, board director at The New York Times Company and Panera, and a public commentator with reach. That stack means the argument is not theoretical, not detached from operating reality, and not delivered with the hedging that usually accompanies academic input. Key speaking topics Big Tech and platform economics Artificial intelligence and the next concentration of value Brand strategy in a digital, winner-take-most economy Consumer and technology trend forecasting Entrepreneurship and company building Higher education and the future of work Capital, careers, and personal financial strategy Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting strategy in sectors exposed to platform incumbents CMOs, CSOs, and digital leaders rebuilding commercial models for a data-concentrated market Investor and capital allocation audiences seeking a structural read on tech and AI cycles Annual leadership offsites looking for a falsifiable trend forecast rather than generic futurism Audience outcomes A clearer view of where platform economics concentrate value and where they do not, applied to the audience’s own sector. Specific reads on the AI cycle, including which categories are overpriced and which are operationally credible. A set of annual predictions that can be stress-tested against the organisation’s planning assumptions. A sharper sense of what brand and customer strategy now have to do to remain defensible.