Entrepreneurship

Why organisations work with Tony Fernandes The AirAsia acquisition – a loss-making airline bought for one Malaysian ringgit and turned profitable within two years – is not an anecdote; it is a live case study in the structural conditions required to make a low-cost model work, and Fernandes can examine its mechanics from the inside His experience running Capital A across aviation, fintech (BigPay), logistics (Teleport), and digital platforms gives him direct exposure to the question of whether and how a low-cost operating logic translates to adjacent categories; a question most diversifying businesses cannot answer from first-hand evidence He operated through several serious crises – the QZ8501 crash, the COVID-19 near-collapse of the aviation industry, and regulatory probes. He can speak to crisis leadership and institutional transparency from personal rather than theoretical experience His trajectory from accountant to entrepreneur, with career foundations at Virgin and Warner Music, gives him the financial fluency to discuss growth strategy at a structural level, not just as an inspirational narrative Named Forbes Asia Businessman of the Year (2010) and included in the TIME 100 (2015), providing credibility with senior international audiences Biography highlights Co-founder of AirAsia; acquired the airline in 2001 for MYR1 and MYR40 million in debt; turned it profitable within two years CEO of Capital A Berhad, the investment holding company whose portfolio spans aviation, logistics (Teleport), fintech (BigPay), and digital travel platforms Educated at the London School of Economics; Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants; member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales Career foundations at Virgin Communications (financial controller) and Warner Music Group (VP Southeast Asia) Forbes Asia Businessman of the Year (2010); included in TIME magazine’s TIME 100 list (2015) Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), conferred 2011; Commander of the Legion d’Honneur, awarded by the French government Author of Flying High (2017), an account of the AirAsia model and the entrepreneurial decisions behind it Biography Building a low-cost business is a specific discipline, not a general management philosophy. It requires a structural commitment to cost architecture that most organisations talk about but few maintain under the pressure of growth, competition, and investor expectations. The question of how that discipline is designed, defended, and scaled is one of the most practically useful strategic questions a senior leadership team can work through. And Tony Fernandes has lived it across one of the most scrutinised business turnarounds in Asian commercial history. Fernandes acquired AirAsia in December 2001 alongside three co-founders, taking on a government-linked airline carrying MYR40 million in debt. Within two years it was profitable. Within a decade it was Asia’s largest low-cost carrier by passengers carried, operating across multiple regulatory environments with a model that held its structural logic even as the network grew. The mechanics of that – cost discipline, people culture, regulatory negotiation, market sequencing – are what he brings to a conversation. His broader career adds analytical weight. Trained as an accountant at the London School of Economics and ACCA-qualified, he built his early career at Virgin Communications and as VP Southeast Asia at Warner Music before entering aviation. That foundation in financial control, combined with the scale of what he subsequently built, gives him a capacity to speak about growth strategy at the level of structure rather than story. The post-aviation chapter matters too. Capital A’s evolution from an airline group into a holding company spanning fintech, logistics, and digital travel platforms represents a live experiment in whether a low-cost operating logic can be applied beyond the category that originated it. Forbes Asia named him Businessman of the Year in 2010; he appeared on TIME magazine’s TIME 100 list in 2015. The CBE and Commander of the Legion d’Honneur reflect the international reach of what AirAsia built. Key speaking topics Low-cost business model design and defence Business turnaround and commercial restructuring Scaling across regulated, multi-market environments Entrepreneurial decision-making under constraint Crisis leadership and institutional transparency Diversification strategy and platform business models Southeast Asian market growth and aviation industry transformation Ideal for CEOs and boards of growth-stage or expanding businesses wrestling with cost discipline at scale Strategy and transformation leaders in capital-intensive or regulated industries Entrepreneurs and founders preparing for multi-market expansion Senior teams in aviation, logistics, travel, and adjacent industries benchmarking against proven low-cost operators Audience outcomes A structural understanding of what makes a low-cost business model sustainable, not as a cost-cutting exercise but as an operating architecture A clearer framework for thinking about diversification: when the core model’s logic translates to adjacent categories and when it does not Practical reference points from AirAsia’s expansion for organisations navigating multi-market regulatory complexity A more grounded view of crisis leadership: what transparency and accountability look like in practice when institutional reputation is at stake Sharper thinking about the relationship between people culture and commercial performance in high-growth, low-margin environments

Why organisations work with Tom Dixon A working founder and creative director, not a commentator: he runs a brand sold in more than 50 countries and speaks from inside the operating reality of product, manufacturing, and distribution A distinctive view on innovation as material experimentation, formed across four decades from welded scrap-metal pieces in the 1980s to lighting and furniture held in the V&A and MoMA Direct experience of corporate design leadership at Habitat, where he was Head of Design and then Creative Director from 1998 to 2008, alongside running his own studio Public recognition that signals durability rather than novelty: OBE in 2001, CBE in 2025, Designer of the Year at Maison and Objet 2014, London Design Medal 2019 Candour about how the design industry actually works, including the limits of design education, the politics of large retailers, and the economics of running an independent brand at scale Biography highlights Self-taught British designer who began welding furniture from salvaged metal in the mid-1980s after working as a bass guitarist in the band Funkapolitan Head of Design then Creative Director at Habitat, 1998 to 2008 Founder and creative director of Tom Dixon, the brand established in 2002 in Kings Cross, London, with collections distributed across more than 50 countries Appointed OBE in 2001 and CBE in the 2025 New Year Honours list, both for services to British design Designer of the Year at Maison and Objet 2014; recipient of the London Design Medal 2019 Work held in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Museum of Modern Art New York, and the Centre Pompidou Author of Dixonary, a 614-page monograph published by Violette Editions in 2013 Biography The S-Chair was made by a designer with no formal training. Tom Dixon taught himself to weld while repairing motorbike frames, and the early pieces that ended up in production at Cappellini in Milan were built from scrap metal in a London workshop. The career that followed is unusual because the self-taught starting point was never quietly dropped; it became the operating thesis of the brand. Between 1998 and 2008, Dixon ran design at Habitat, first as Head of Design and then as Creative Director. He was attempting, inside a large retailer, the same problem most consumer businesses now face: how to keep a coherent design voice while scaling distribution and managing cost. He left in 2008 to put his weight behind Tom Dixon, the brand he had founded in 2002, now a manufacturer and retailer of lighting, furniture, and accessories sold in more than 50 countries. His honours track the long arc rather than a single moment. OBE in 2001, CBE in 2025, Designer of the Year at Maison and Objet in 2014, the London Design Medal in 2019, and permanent collections at the V&A, MoMA New York, and the Centre Pompidou. Dixonary, the 614-page monograph published by Violette Editions in 2013, sets out his working method in his own words: a project, an inspiration image, and a short paragraph on the connection. For a corporate audience the value is specific. Dixon speaks as an operator who has run product, brand, and distribution at scale, who has watched several rounds of industry change from inside a manufacturing business, and who is unusually direct about what works and what does not. He treats design less as a finishing layer than as an argument the company is making, repeated across decades, about why its products exist. Key speaking topics Design as commercial strategy Brand-building from a material idea Innovation through material experimentation The founder-creative director operating model Manufacturing, distribution, and the economics of an independent design brand Lessons from forty years of British design Ideal for CMOs, brand directors, and product leaders considering how design contributes to commercial advantage Founders and CEOs of consumer, lifestyle, and design-led businesses Architecture, interiors, hospitality, and retail audiences working on environments and product Innovation, R&D, and creative leadership audiences interested in long-horizon brand-building Audience outcomes A working definition of design as a strategic asset rather than a styling layer applied late A founder’s account of building and sustaining a brand across four decades of industry change A direct view on how material experimentation translates into commercial product An operator’s perspective on the trade-offs between independent design and scaled retail distribution A more candid sense of how the design and manufacturing industries actually function

Why organisations work with Steve Wozniak He is the only living engineer who designed both the Apple I and Apple II from scratch – making him the sole speaker who can give an unmediated, first-hand account of the technical and creative decisions that launched the personal computer industry, not a retelling of someone else’s story. His account of innovation is engineering-first, not strategy-first: the Apple II preceded the business plan, not the other way round. That distinction gives organisations a direct counterpoint to the assumption that great products are the output of structured innovation programmes. The National Medal of Technology (1985) and the Heinz Award for Technology, The Economy and Employment (2000) – awarded specifically for “single-handedly designing the first personal computer” – are among the most rigorously assessed technology honours in the United States, and are publicly verifiable by any due-diligence process. His three decades of direct involvement in technology education – from adopting a school district to co-founding Woz U in 2017 – extend his argument about curiosity-driven invention into how organisations build and develop technical talent, not just how they manage innovation strategy. His signature format is a moderated conversation, not a fixed keynote: organisations set the agenda, and Wozniak engages directly with the specific challenges the audience brings. The result is different from – and harder to replicate than – a pre-packaged talk. Biography highlights Sole engineer on the Apple I (1976) and Apple II (1977); listed as sole inventor on four Apple patents National Medal of Technology, 1985 – awarded by President Ronald Reagan, jointly with Steve Jobs, for the development and introduction of the personal computer ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award, 1979; Heinz Award for Technology, The Economy and Employment, 2000; National Inventors Hall of Fame inductee, 2000 Computer History Museum Fellow, 1998 Author of iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon (W.W. Norton, 2006) – a New York Times bestselling autobiography BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley; co-founded Woz U in 2017, a postsecondary software engineering and technology training platform Founding sponsor of the Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose and The Tech Interactive, Silicon Valley’s technology museum Biography The Apple II was built by one engineer, on his own time, because the problem interested him. Steve Wozniak had no brief, no product committee, and no market research – just an engineering puzzle he found compelling. That creative condition is what produced the personal computer industry, and it is what Wozniak has spent decades trying to explain and, through his education work, replicate. That engineering-first perspective sets his account apart from those who discuss innovation as a strategic discipline. The Apple II preceded the business, not the other way round. Its colour graphics, integrated keyboard, and floppy disk drive were engineering decisions, not market-research conclusions. The product that launched a global industry was a technical artefact made by a person who loved making things. That distinction matters to any organisation asking why its own innovation efforts consistently underperform. The recognition that followed has been rigorous and specific. Wozniak received the National Medal of Technology in 1985 – jointly with Steve Jobs, for the development and introduction of the personal computer – the highest honour for technological achievement awarded by the United States government. The ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award recognised his contributions in 1979. In 2000, the Heinz Award for Technology, The Economy and Employment cited him explicitly for designing the first personal computer and redirecting his work toward education. He holds four Apple patents and is a Fellow of the Computer History Museum. His commitment to education has been sustained and direct. He adopted the Los Gatos School District, co-founded Woz U in 2017 to expand access to software engineering training, and has taught computer literacy in classrooms. His autobiography, iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon (W.W. Norton, 2006), was a New York Times bestseller. His BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley was completed years after Apple had already become a global company – a fact that says something about what he values and why. Key speaking topics Engineering-led innovation and market creation The founding of Apple Computer Entrepreneurial thinking inside large organisations The origins of the personal computer industry Robotics, AI, and automation Technology education and technical talent development Creative freedom and engineering culture Ideal for CEOs and board-level audiences examining why large-organisation innovation consistently underperforms relative to investment CTOs, Chief Innovation Officers, and engineering leadership teams seeking a primary-source perspective on invention rather than innovation methodology Corporate innovation programmes and R&D functions looking to ground strategy in engineering-first thinking Technology and digital transformation conferences requiring a speaker whose credibility is structural, not positional Audience outcomes A first-hand account of the technical decisions and working conditions that produced the Apple I and Apple II – the machines that defined personal computing A clearer understanding of why genuine invention tends to emerge from curiosity and freedom rather than process and planning cycles Practical perspective on what organisations can do – and stop doing – to allow engineering talent and technical curiosity to produce commercially significant results Insight into the relationship between education, hands-on technical skill, and the kind of innovation that creates new industries rather than improves existing ones Exposure to a model of entrepreneurship that began with engineering before it had a business – and what that sequence reveals about how lasting technology companies are actually built

Why organisations work with Steve Faktor He works from a proprietary, named methodology, the 4C’s of Innovation™, developed inside Fortune 100 innovation programmes at American Express, Citi and MasterCard, not adapted from case studies of others’ work. His operating record is concrete. As head of the $50M Chairman’s Innovation Fund at American Express, he launched commercial products including Zync, LoyaltyEdge, and the Private Sales joint venture with Vente Privée. His 9 Corporate Personality Types™, the viral Forbes piece picked up by NPR, gives audiences a working tool for diagnosing why innovation initiatives die inside specific corporate cultures. He carries a 750,000-strong LinkedIn following from his status as one of the platform’s original 160 Influencers, alongside figures like Richard Branson. Buyers hiring him get a futurist whose calls are public and dated. The voice in Econovation, sharp and satirical, is the same voice on stage. Senior leaders get an honest read on innovation work without the consultant gloss. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of IdeaFaktory, the innovation incubator behind multiple $100M+ businesses for Fortune 100 brands, built on its proprietary 4C’s of Innovation™ process. Former Vice President of Growth and Innovation and Head of the $50M Chairman’s Innovation Fund at American Express, where he launched Zync, LoyaltyEdge and the Private Sales joint venture with Vente Privée. Former SVP of Innovation and Growth Ventures at Citigroup; senior strategy and innovation executive at MasterCard; former management consultant at Arthur Andersen. Author of Econovation: The Red, White, and Blue Pill for Arousing Innovation (Wiley, 2011). Forbes and Harvard Business Review contributor; one of LinkedIn’s original 160 Influencers, with a 750,000-strong executive following. Host of The Trendaddy show; media credits include The Wall Street Journal, NPR, Bloomberg Radio and MSNBC. Graduate of NYU Stern School of Business. Biography At American Express, the Chairman’s Innovation Fund came with a $50M budget and a brief to launch new businesses inside the company. Steve Faktor ran it. Out of that role came Zync, LoyaltyEdge and a Private Sales joint venture with Vente Privée. The same period produced the methodology he has since codified as the 4C’s of Innovation™: context, creativity, capabilities and culture. That methodology is the operating logic he now applies through IdeaFaktory, the innovation firm he founded after leaving AmEx. IdeaFaktory has helped Fortune 100 clients launch multiple $100M+ businesses by partnering with vetted startups and rebuilding their internal innovation programmes from the culture out. The ‘culture out’ part matters. His viral Forbes piece on the 9 Corporate Personality Types, picked up by NPR, came from watching innovation initiatives die at the hands of identifiable, predictable internal characters. Faktor’s second strand of work is futurist. Econovation (Wiley, 2011) argued that consumerism was ending and producerism was emerging, with economic value shifting to those who make rather than those who consume. As one of LinkedIn’s original 160 Influencers, with a 750,000-strong executive following and Forbes and Harvard Business Review columns, he has built more than a decade of dated, public predictions clients can audit. In a boardroom, both strands earn their seat. Senior teams get a working framework rooted in real product P&Ls, the AmEx ones with his name on them, not someone else’s case studies. They also get a voice that has been right enough, often enough, in public, that buyers can audit the work before they commission it. Key speaking topics Innovation strategy and methodology Corporate-startup partnerships and commercialisation Growth strategy in financial services and consumer goods Futurism and trend forecasting Innovation culture and corporate change Business model innovation Digital commerce, payments and loyalty Ideal for Chief Innovation Officers and Heads of Strategy in Fortune 500 firms whose innovation programmes have plateaued at pilot stage. Growth and commercial leadership teams in financial services, payments and consumer goods evaluating where to commit capital next. Boards and executive committees commissioning a candid, externally validated read on internal innovation capability. Founders and corporate venture teams looking for an operator’s view of how large enterprises actually make buying decisions. Audience outcomes A specific diagnostic for why their innovation programmes are stalling, anchored to the 4C’s of Innovation™. A working vocabulary for the cultural archetypes that block or enable change inside large organisations, drawn from the 9 Corporate Personality Types. A view of which trends in technology, economics and consumer behaviour are most likely to disrupt their P&L over the next five to ten years. A short list of the highest-leverage moves a senior team can make to convert innovation budget into commercial product launches.

Why organisations work with Steve Blank Co-creator of the Lean Startup methodology, the operating logic most corporate innovation programmes are now built on, taught by the person who designed it. His Lean LaunchPad curriculum became the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps, now the standard for commercialising research at the NSF, NIH and U.S. Department of Energy. Co-founder of Stanford’s Hacking for Defense programme and the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation, with direct experience deploying innovation methodology inside the U.S. defence and intelligence community. Twenty-one years inside eight Silicon Valley startups, with four IPOs including E.piphany. He built what he teaches before he taught it. Named one of 12 Masters of Innovation by Harvard Business Review and listed on the Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers. Biography highlights Adjunct Professor at Stanford University and Senior Fellow for Entrepreneurship at Columbia University. Author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany, The Startup Owner’s Manual, and Hacking for Defense: Innovation Doctrine. May 2013 Harvard Business Review cover story, “Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything,” defined the field. Co-founder of Stanford’s Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation; served on the Defense Business Board and the U.S. Navy’s Science and Technology Advisory Board. Lean LaunchPad class taught at 75+ universities globally; Hacking for Defense at 70+, with more than 70 dual-use startups and over $350 million in follow-on funding. Eight Silicon Valley startups across 21 years, four IPOs, including E.piphany, Zilog, MIPS and SuperMac. Biography Startups search for a business model. Large companies execute one. Conflating the two is what makes most corporate innovation programmes underperform: they apply planning, forecasting and accountability tools designed for known businesses to activities that are inherently exploratory. Steve Blank’s argument, developed across two foundational books and a 2013 Harvard Business Review cover story, is that innovation has to be run as a managed discipline with its own operating logic. The Lean Startup methodology he co-created treats new ventures as a search process, where customer development, hypothesis testing and minimum viable products replace the business plan as the primary instrument of decision-making. His credibility on this is built from doing the work, not just teaching it. He spent 21 years inside eight Silicon Valley startups, four of which went public, including E.piphany. He then took the same methodology into the U.S. federal system: his Lean LaunchPad curriculum was adopted by the National Science Foundation as I-Corps, now the standard for commercialising research at the NSF, NIH and Department of Energy. His Hacking for Defense programme, co-founded at Stanford with Joe Felter and Peter Newell, has produced more than 70 dual-use startups and over $350 million in funding. He teaches at Stanford, Columbia and Berkeley, advises the Department of Defense, and co-founded Stanford’s Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation. Harvard Business Review has named him one of 12 Masters of Innovation; Thinkers50 ranked him among the global top 50. The reason corporate audiences book him is straightforward: he is one of very few people who has built innovation processes that work inside the most rigid bureaucracies in existence, and he can show a senior team how to do the same. Key speaking topics Lean Startup methodology Corporate innovation at scale Customer development and business model search Entrepreneurship Disruption and incumbent response Innovation inside government and defence Ideal for Chief Innovation Officers and corporate venture leaders Boards and executive teams designing or resetting innovation programmes Government and defence leaders responsible for technology adoption and commercialisation Founders, scale-up CEOs and corporate accelerator leadership Audience outcomes A working distinction between executing a known business model and searching for a new one, with the implications for how each should be resourced, measured and led. The operating logic behind customer development, hypothesis testing and minimum viable products as decision-making instruments inside large organisations. Examples from the Lean LaunchPad, NSF I-Corps and Hacking for Defense programmes showing how the methodology has been deployed at federal scale. A diagnostic for why most corporate innovation programmes produce pilots and proofs-of-concept without commercial outcomes.

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 Seth Godin The permission marketing framework, first articulated in 1999, anticipated the mechanics now encoded in GDPR, email consent law, and the inbound marketing movement. Organisations working with Godin are drawing on the original source, not a derivative Purple Cow provides a genuinely testable argument: remarkability must be designed into the product or service from the outset, not applied as a marketing layer afterwards: a direct challenge to most organisations’ R&D and go-to-market sequencing His body of work spans 21 bestsellers over three decades with a consistent intellectual thread; buyers are not engaging with a single-thesis speaker, but with someone whose thinking has proved durable across multiple market cycles Inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame (2018), the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame (2013), and the Guerrilla Marketing Hall of Fame – the only person known to hold all three – giving him third-party validation across the full spectrum of marketing practice His daily blog, running for over 25 years without interruption, is itself a proof point for the compounding value of consistent, permission-based communication: a lived demonstration of the principle he teaches Biography highlights Author of 21 international bestsellers translated into 38+ languages, including Permission Marketing, Purple Cow, Tribes, Linchpin, This Is Marketing, and This Is Strategy (2024 National Bestseller) Originator of the «permission marketing» and «interruption marketing» frameworks (1999), now foundational to digital marketing, CRM practice, and consent regulation worldwide Founder of Yoyodyne, a pioneering permission-marketing company sold to Yahoo! in 1998; served as Yahoo!’s VP of Direct Marketing post-acquisition Inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame (AMA New York, 2018), the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame (2013), and the Guerrilla Marketing Hall of Fame MBA, Stanford Graduate School of Business; BA in computer science and philosophy, Tufts University Founder of the altMBA, an intensive online leadership and decision-making workshop Five TED Talks; author of one of the most-read daily business blogs in the world Biography Seth Godin sold his first company, Yoyodyne, to Yahoo! in 1998 for $29.6 million. It was a permission marketing business: built around the then-contrarian argument that reaching people who had consented to hear from you was worth more than reaching vastly more people who had not. That argument is now the structural basis of email marketing, CRM, and data consent regulation across most markets. His 1999 book Permission Marketing named the framework and introduced its counterpart: interruption marketing, the logic of buying attention from people who did not want to give it. The book’s central claim – that anticipated, personal, relevant communication outperforms volume-based reach at every commercial stage – has proved more durable than most marketing theory of its era. HubSpot built a software category around a version of it. GDPR made it legally mandatory. The same structural argument runs through his subsequent work. Purple Cow made the case that a product worth noticing is the precondition for marketing worth running. Tribes reframed leadership as community-building rather than hierarchy. This Is Strategy, published in 2024 and a US National Bestseller, gives organisations a practical framework for distinguishing between long-term systems thinking and reactive planning. Each book refines the same underlying question: what does it actually take to earn the attention and trust of people who have a choice? He holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a degree in computer science and philosophy from Tufts University. Inducted into three marketing halls of fame and the author of 21 international bestsellers, Godin writes a daily blog that has run without interruption for over 25 years; a compounding body of public intellectual work that few business writers at any level have matched. Key speaking topics Permission-based marketing and opt-in engagement Market differentiation and the logic of remarkability Strategy, systems thinking, and long-term planning Tribe leadership and community-driven growth Creative practice and the discipline of shipping work The economics of attention in overcrowded markets Climate communication and collaborative action Ideal for CMOs and brand leadership teams rethinking acquisition and retention strategy CEOs and senior strategy leads pressure-testing their differentiation logic Founders and growth-stage leaders building category identity Boards and executive teams resetting planning frameworks in volatile conditions Audience outcomes A working understanding of the permission marketing framework and how it applies to current customer acquisition and retention strategy A testable argument for why remarkability must precede marketing investment, not follow it Practical framing for the difference between short-term attention tactics and long-term trust-building Exposure to the systems-thinking approach in This Is Strategy, useful for teams that confuse tactics with strategy A challenge to default assumptions about reach, volume, and interruption as commercial levers

Why organisations work with Sebastian Thrun He has shipped autonomous AI at production scale. The Stanford team he led won the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005, and the Google self-driving project he co-founded became Waymo. He built the playbook that boards now ask about. Google X, founded under his leadership, codified moonshot methodology for capital-intensive technology bets. He has direct experience reskilling enterprise workforces in AI, data and cloud through Udacity, including programmes for IBM, Mercedes-Benz and Google before the 2024 acquisition by Accenture. He explains AI without dumbing it down. Senior audiences leave with a working sense of what current systems can and cannot do, and where the real operational risk sits. Biography highlights Co-founder of Google X and the Google self-driving car project that became Waymo Led the Stanford Racing Team whose vehicle Stanley won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge; Stanley now sits in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History Co-founder and chairman of Udacity, acquired by Accenture in 2024 to power the LearnVantage reskilling platform Co-founder and former CEO of Kitty Hawk, the eVTOL “flying car” company backed by Larry Page Member of the National Academy of Engineering and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina; Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award (Education, 2012) Co-author of Probabilistic Robotics (MIT Press), the standard graduate text on the mathematics behind autonomous systems Biography Stanley crossed the finish line of the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge after 132 miles of desert, the first autonomous vehicle to do so. The Stanford Racing Team that built it was led by Sebastian Thrun, then director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Stanley now sits in the Smithsonian. The technology grew into Waymo and the modern autonomous vehicle industry. That arc, from research lab to production AI, is what makes his perspective valuable to senior teams. He gave up tenure at Stanford to become a Google Fellow, co-founded Google X, and built the moonshot model that boards now reference when they talk about long-horizon technology bets. Probabilistic Robotics, the textbook he co-authored with Wolfram Burgard and Dieter Fox, remains the standard graduate reference in the field. The second half of his career addresses the constraint that most boards now feel acutely. Talent. Udacity, which he co-founded in 2012, built the Nanodegree model with employers including IBM, Mercedes-Benz and Google, then sold to Accenture in 2024 to anchor the LearnVantage reskilling platform. He also co-founded Kitty Hawk with Larry Page to commercialise eVTOL aircraft. Audiences get something specific from him. A clear read on what current AI systems do well, where they fail, what production deployment actually requires, and how to build a workforce that can operate the technology rather than admire it. Key speaking topics Production AI and autonomous systems Moonshot methodology and long-horizon technology bets AI workforce reskilling and the talent constraint The future of mobility and self-driving vehicles AI for the board and the executive committee Online learning and the economics of education Ideal for Boards and executive committees moving from AI strategy to operating deployment CHROs and CLOs commissioning enterprise reskilling at scale Automotive, mobility and industrial leadership teams facing autonomy CTOs and chief AI officers benchmarking moonshot and R&D portfolios Audience outcomes A working mental model of where current AI systems succeed and where they fail in production A concrete view of the workforce capability required to run AI inside a large organisation A read on how moonshot bets are structured, governed and shut down inside a serious technology company A clearer sense of where autonomy is heading in mobility, logistics and adjacent sectors

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 Robert Herjavec Two major business exits anchor the credibility. BRAK Systems sold to AT&T Canada for $30.2 million in 2000, and Herjavec Group’s majority stake sold to Apax Partners in 2021. Senior teams hear from an operator who has built and exited at scale. Seventeen years as an original Shark on ABC’s Shark Tank, evaluating thousands of founder pitches in real time. Audiences get a working investor’s read on what closes a deal and what kills one. A sales-first view of business growth. You Don’t Have to Be a Shark, his Wall Street Journal bestseller, frames sales as the universal skill of business and gives non-sales people a usable discipline. Operator-level cybersecurity context from founding and running Herjavec Group, once one of Canada’s largest information security firms, before its 2022 merger into Cyderes. Useful when boards want the threat landscape explained without a vendor agenda. An immigrant-founder narrative with verifiable outcomes. Arrived in Halifax at age eight from communist Yugoslavia, then built and exited multiple technology businesses while helping launch one of the most successful business reality formats on network television. Biography highlights Founder of Herjavec Group (2003); served as CEO until stepping down in September 2024 following the company’s 2022 merger with Fishtech Group and rebrand to Cyderes Sold BRAK Systems to AT&T Canada for $30.2 million in 2000 Original cast member on ABC’s Shark Tank since the show’s 2009 debut; also a panelist on Canada’s Dragons’ Den and Shark Tank Australia Author of three business books: Driven (2010), The Will to Win (2013), and You Don’t Have to Be a Shark (St. Martin’s Press, 2016), a Wall Street Journal bestseller Recipient of the 2012 Ernst & Young Ontario Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Technology and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal BA in English literature and political science, University of Toronto Biography Most leaders manage businesses someone else built. Robert Herjavec has founded and exited three. BRAK Systems, the cybersecurity firm he started in his basement, was sold to AT&T Canada for $30.2 million in 2000. Ramp Network, which he ran as VP of Sales, was acquired by Nokia for $225 million. In 2003 he founded Herjavec Group, which grew into one of Canada’s largest information security businesses. Apax Partners bought a majority stake in 2021. After a 2022 merger with Fishtech Group it became Cyderes, where Herjavec served as CEO until September 2024 and remains an investor and board member. He has been an original Shark on ABC’s Shark Tank since the show’s 2009 debut. Across seventeen seasons he has heard thousands of founder pitches and decided in real time which to back and which to walk away from. The result is an unusual stockpile of pattern recognition on what closes a deal and what kills one from the investor’s side of the table. His three books work the same vein. Driven (2010) and The Will to Win (2013) were simultaneous Globe and Mail bestsellers about how persistence and self-discipline build careers. You Don’t Have to Be a Shark (St. Martin’s Press, 2016) reached the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, arguing that sales is a teachable craft any senior leader can use. He won the 2012 Ernst & Young Ontario Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Technology and was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal by the Governor-General of Canada for outstanding service. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and the founder mindset Sales as a business discipline Building and scaling technology companies Resilience and persistence in business The cybersecurity threat landscape for enterprise leaders Growth strategy and going from zero to scale Pitch evaluation and the investor’s perspective Ideal for Sales kickoffs and revenue leadership offsites where credibility on selling as a teachable discipline is the priority Annual conferences and flagship events where a marquee, household-name keynote needs to anchor the agenda on entrepreneurship and growth Founder-led businesses and high-growth firms whose audiences want an operator with multiple verified exits behind him Cybersecurity, fintech, and enterprise technology audiences, where his industry pedigree adds weight to the broader entrepreneurship and growth conversation Audience outcomes A sharper read on what actually closes a sales conversation and what kills one before it starts The discipline of starting from zero, told by someone who arrived in Halifax with one suitcase and built three businesses worth nine-figure exits An investor’s lens on how to evaluate ideas and the founders behind them, built from seventeen years inside the Shark Tank panel A working argument that persistence and discipline outperform inherited advantage, with a verifiable career arc behind it: BRAK to AT&T, Ramp to Nokia, Herjavec Group to Apax A board-level perspective on cybersecurity risk informed by two decades inside one of Canada’s largest enterprise security operators

Why organisations work with Richard Reed He built Innocent from a £500 stall at a London music festival to Europe’s number one smoothie brand and a Coca-Cola exit valued at over half a billion dollars. He ran every stage of that growth as co-CEO of the brand side of the business. JamJar Investments has backed Deliveroo, Tony’s Chocolonely, Babylon Health and Tails.com. The portfolio gives him a live investor view of what is working in consumer brands today, beyond any retrospective Innocent story. He pioneered “wackaging”, the on-pack conversational copy that built Innocent’s brand voice. Other UK consumer brands copied the device for more than a decade, which is unusually long-lived evidence of a marketing mechanic that travels. Innocent committed 10% of profits to charity through the Innocent Foundation from day one, and Reed kept that operating model intact through every funding round and the Coca-Cola sale itself. Purpose at scale is something he has actually operated, not theorised. His book “If I Could Tell You Just One Thing” (Canongate, 2016) collected single pieces of advice from Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, the Dalai Lama and Sir David Attenborough among others. He brings that breadth of access into the room with senior audiences. Biography highlights Co-founder of Innocent Drinks (1998); grown from £500 of fruit at a London music festival to Europe’s number one smoothie brand Sold Innocent to The Coca-Cola Company in 2013, in a transaction valued at over half a billion dollars Co-founder of JamJar Investments, the consumer-focused early-stage venture firm whose portfolio includes Deliveroo, Tony’s Chocolonely, Babylon Health and Tails.com Author of “If I Could Tell You Just One Thing…” (Canongate Books, 2016), with interviews including Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, the Dalai Lama and Sir David Attenborough Appointed CBE in the 2016 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to the food industry and to charity Founder of Art Everywhere; co-founder of the Innocent Foundation; presenter of BBC Three’s “Be Your Own Boss” Biography Innocent Drinks started with £500 of fruit at a London music festival in 1998, and a sign asking passers-by whether the founders should give up their day jobs. Fifteen years later, Coca-Cola paid over half a billion dollars for the company. Richard Reed was one of three Cambridge graduates who took it that distance, running the brand side of the business as co-CEO from market stall to category leader. What set Innocent apart at scale was discipline about what to keep. The brand voice, the on-pack “wackaging” copy that competitors imitated for over a decade, and the 10% of profits committed to charity through the Innocent Foundation all stayed intact. They survived every funding round and the eventual Coca-Cola sale. By 2010, Innocent held roughly three-quarters of the UK smoothie market. Since 2013, Reed has invested in the next wave of consumer founders through JamJar Investments. The portfolio reads as a working hypothesis about where consumer brand power is going: Deliveroo, Tony’s Chocolonely, Babylon Health, Tails.com. He carries the operator’s view of what scales and what does not into every deal. Beyond the day job, he authored “If I Could Tell You Just One Thing” for Canongate Books in 2016. The book drew single pieces of advice from Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, the Dalai Lama, Sir David Attenborough and forty-odd others, with author’s profits donated to mentoring and social inclusion charities. He was appointed CBE in the 2016 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to the food industry and to charity. Key speaking topics Building consumer brands from start-up to category leader Brand voice, marketing innovation and the wackaging mechanic Social purpose as operating model, not communications layer Scaling under competitive pressure and corporate ownership Early-stage investing in consumer businesses Founder mindset and entrepreneurial discipline at scale Customer conviction and brand love in commodity categories Ideal for Founders and founder-CEOs scaling a consumer-facing business through the awkward middle stages Marketing, brand and customer-experience leaders working on customer conviction inside large organisations Boards and corporate development teams making capital decisions on consumer brands or considering an acquisition of one ESG, sustainability and purpose leads moving social commitments out of communications and into the operating model Audience outcomes A first-hand account of what scaling a consumer brand demands at each stage, from market stall to category leader to corporate exit Specific examples of how Innocent built brand voice, wackaging and category share, and what survived corporate ownership versus what did not A live investor-side read on which consumer-brand bets are paying off, drawn from JamJar’s positions in Deliveroo, Tony’s Chocolonely, Babylon Health and Tails.com A grounded argument for why social purpose works commercially when it is built into the operating model, with the Innocent Foundation as the worked example

Why organisations work with Richard Noble He is one of the very small number of speakers who has actually held a world record under personal physical risk and built the team, the car and the funding model that made it possible. The Thrust2 record stood for fourteen years. His work on ThrustSSC produced the first and only land vehicle to break the sound barrier, and the lessons he draws are about how a small underfunded team executed something the established motor industry had judged impossible. He is the rare speaker whose case studies are his own. The Bloodhound education programme, the ARV Super2 light aircraft, Farnborough Aircraft and JCB Dieselmax are all ventures he founded or led, and the failures are discussed as openly as the records. He pioneered distributed sponsorship in Britain, with the ThrustSSC supporters club running what his team describes as the country’s first end-to-end electronic trading site. Boards considering crowdfunding, community equity or non-traditional capital get a working precedent. His message is uncomfortable on purpose. He argues that the British funding establishment systematically rejects ambitious engineering, and he uses his own story to challenge audiences who claim to back innovation without backing risk. Biography highlights Drove Thrust2 to 633.468 mph at Black Rock Desert, Nevada, on 4 October 1983, returning the World Land Speed Record to Britain after thirteen years in American hands. Project director of ThrustSSC, which on 15 October 1997 became the first land vehicle to officially break the sound barrier, at 763.035 mph, with RAF pilot Andy Green at the wheel. Founded the Bloodhound SSC project in 2008 and built its associated education programme, which has reached approximately 4,600 UK schools and over two million schoolchildren worldwide. Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE); winner of the 1983 Segrave Trophy; honorary Doctor of Technology from the University of the West of England (2010); honorary degree from the University of Bradford (2018). Author of “Thrust: The Remarkable Story of One Man’s Quest for Speed” (Partridge Press, 1998) and “Take Risk!” (Evro Publishing, 2020), which together document eleven of his record-breaking and aviation projects. Founder of ARV Aircraft (the Super2 light aircraft) and Farnborough Aircraft, and a contributor to the JCB Dieselmax diesel record car that exceeded 350 mph at Bonneville in 2006. Biography Most organisations talk about risk. Very few are built to back the kind of venture where failure is the likely outcome, the budget is gone in three months, and the project has to be rebuilt from a scrapyard sale of the previous prototype. Richard Noble has spent his working life inside that gap. His Thrust2 programme began in the mid-1970s with £175 raised from selling the wreckage of his crashed Thrust1 car for scrap. Eight years later, on 4 October 1983, Thrust2 averaged 633.468 mph at Black Rock Desert and returned the World Land Speed Record to Britain. He was awarded the OBE and the Segrave Trophy that year. The record stood for fourteen years. The follow-on project, ThrustSSC, started with a £40,000 sponsorship from Castrol and a two-year computational research programme led by aerodynamicist Ron Ayers. Noble gave up the driving seat to concentrate on funding. On 15 October 1997, with RAF Tornado pilot Andy Green at the controls, ThrustSSC ran at 763 mph and became the first land vehicle to officially break the sound barrier. The financing model behind it, including a supporters’ club website his team has described as Britain’s first end-to-end electronic trading site, prefigured a generation of distributed online fundraising. The Bloodhound SSC project, founded in 2008, aimed at 1,000 mph and built one of the largest STEM education programmes in the UK, working with around 4,600 schools. It went into administration in 2018, was sold to Ian Warhurst, and Noble has written about that ending as candidly as he has written about the records. His 2020 book “Take Risk!” tells the same story from the angle that matters most to a corporate audience: the eleven projects, the people and companies who backed him, and the British institutional culture that he argues consistently fails to back ambitious engineering. Key speaking topics High-risk venture leadership Resilience under repeated failure Team formation under extreme pressure Risk-taking and risk culture in business Entrepreneurship and unconventional capital formation British engineering ambition and innovation Leading without institutional backing Ideal for Boards and senior leadership teams setting risk appetite, particularly those wrestling with the gap between stated ambition and actual investment behaviour. Innovation, R&D and engineering leaders responsible for high-uncertainty programmes where conventional ROI cases do not apply. Sales conferences and incentive events where the audience needs a credible, lived account of resilience and persistence rather than a generic motivational story. After-dinner audiences at industry conferences who want a senior speaker with genuine record-breaking authority and a sharp argument about institutional risk aversion. Audience outcomes A concrete sense of how a small underfunded team can deliver something an established industry has judged impossible, drawn from Thrust2 and ThrustSSC rather than abstract case studies. A sharper view of where their own organisation talks about risk-taking but funds and governs as if it does not. Practical reference points for raising capital outside conventional institutional channels, including distributed sponsorship and supporter-funded models. An honest account of failure as part of the same career as the records, including Bloodhound’s collapse, that gives senior teams permission to talk about their own setbacks more openly. A persistent argument they will keep returning to: that ambition without willingness to absorb sustained personal and financial risk produces neither records nor breakthrough commercial outcomes.