Entrepreneurship

Why organisations work with Muhammad Yunus He has built the model he speaks about. Grameen Bank reached millions of borrowers, 96% of them women, with repayment rates above 95%, and became the template for microfinance in more than a hundred countries. His “social business” concept is operational, not aspirational. Danone, Veolia, BASF, Uniqlo, and others have launched joint social business ventures with the Yunus group under defined commercial terms. The Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games adopted his framework to open procurement to social and solidarity enterprises, with nearly 500 such companies in the supply chain. Milan-Cortina 2026 has signed a follow-on agreement. He sits at the intersection of credibility most speakers cannot reach: Nobel Peace Prize, Presidential Medal of Freedom, Congressional Gold Medal, and recent head of state experience as Chief Adviser of Bangladesh. His “three zeros” agenda, zero poverty, zero unemployment, zero net carbon, gives boards a single frame to connect ESG, inclusion, and youth employment work that usually live in separate decks. Biography highlights Founder of Grameen Bank, awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with the bank. Recipient of the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009) and Congressional Gold Medal (2010). PhD in Economics, Vanderbilt University; former Professor of Economics, Chittagong University. Author of Banker to the Poor, Building Social Business, and A World of Three Zeros. Chairman of the Yunus Centre; partner to Danone, Veolia, BASF, Uniqlo, and others on joint social businesses. Adviser to Paris 2024 on social business and inclusive procurement; agreement signed for Milan-Cortina 2026. Served as Chief Adviser of Bangladesh’s interim government, August 2024 to February 2026. Biography Grameen Bank started lending in a Bangladeshi village in the 1970s, before microcredit had a name. The borrowers were women, the loans were tiny, and the orthodoxy at the time said neither group nor product should work. The bank grew to serve millions of clients with repayment rates above 95%, and the model was copied into more than a hundred countries. The economist who built it, Muhammad Yunus, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with the bank in 2006. The work since has been about converting that proof point into an operating model that companies can actually run. Yunus calls it social business: a non-loss, non-dividend enterprise designed to solve a specific social problem, governed with the same discipline as a commercial business. Danone, Veolia, BASF, and Uniqlo have set up joint ventures with the Yunus Centre on that basis, on nutrition, clean water, and affordable clothing. His books Banker to the Poor, Building Social Business, and A World of Three Zeros are the reference texts. The Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games used the framework to open Games procurement to social and solidarity enterprises. Almost 500 such companies were brought into the supply chain. A follow-on agreement has been signed for the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Games. That is unusual reach for an academic concept. In August 2024, Yunus returned to Dhaka to lead Bangladesh’s interim government as Chief Adviser, following the student-led uprising that ended the Hasina administration. He stepped down in February 2026 after the general election. The detour matters here: he has now run a country as well as built an economic model, and he speaks from both sides of the policy and operating divide. Key speaking topics Social business as an operating model Microfinance and financial inclusion The “three zeros” agenda: poverty, unemployment, net carbon Inclusive procurement and supply chains Women’s economic empowerment Youth employment and entrepreneurship Corporate joint ventures with social outcomes Ideal for Boards and executive committees deciding how to structure ESG, inclusion, and impact work as operating units rather than reporting lines. Heads of strategy, sustainability, and procurement at consumer, industrial, and financial companies running joint ventures or supplier programmes with a social component. Government and multilateral audiences working on financial inclusion, youth employment, and inclusive growth policy. Foundations, family offices, and impact investors choosing between grant-making, ESG investing, and direct social business equity. Audience outcomes A working definition of social business that distinguishes it from CSR, ESG, and traditional philanthropy. Concrete examples of corporate joint ventures structured as social businesses, with the commercial terms made explicit. The Paris 2024 procurement model as a case study in opening a large supply chain to social and solidarity enterprises. A direct view from a Nobel laureate who has also recently led a country on what governments can and cannot do for inclusive growth. A frame, the three zeros, that connects climate, poverty, and unemployment work usually managed as separate programmes.

Why organisations work with Mike Saunders His HumanCentric framework forces transformation teams to test technology decisions against the people who will or will not adopt them, which changes how budgets get allocated. He runs the agency he speaks from. Digitlab has delivered digital work for Vodafone, IBM, Toyota, KPMG and Bidvest, so the room hears practice from a live operator. He brings an emerging-market lens that most digital strategy speakers do not carry, drawn from running an agency in South Africa with delivery into the UK, Europe, US, Australia and Dubai. His Gear Analogy, developed for his TEDx Durban talk, gives leadership teams a working method for picking which ideas deserve real investment and which to drop. He pairs published frameworks with original sector research, including Digitlab’s annual Insight: State of Digital report on where customer behaviour, AI and martech are moving. Biography highlights CEO and Founder of Digitlab, a digital strategy agency with clients spanning South Africa, the UK, Europe, the US, Australia and Dubai. Author of HumanCentric: Technology Fails Unless It Means Something to Someone, which sets out a four-part model (explore, ideate, intersect, create) for human-centred digital transformation. TEDx Durban speaker on Gearing for Greatness: Your Ideas, Your Impact, introducing the Gear Analogy for idea evaluation and execution. Opening chapter author in Doers & Dreamers, a global business compendium also featuring Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss and Brian Chesky. Founder of the Digitlab Academy in partnership with Vega School of Branding, training over 1,000 marketers a year. Awarded Special Honours at the New Generation Awards for contribution to the digital industry; named among “Top Global Digital Marketing Experts & Influencers” (2019). Biography Most digital transformation programmes still get sold to boards as technology projects. The investment lands and the adoption that was supposed to follow does not. The gap is where commercial returns disappear. This is the gap that Saunders has spent more than fifteen years working in. As CEO of Digitlab, the South African agency he founded, he has run digital programmes for Vodafone, IBM, Toyota, KPMG and Bidvest. He argues that technology fails unless it means something to someone, and that digital is a people conversation that happens to run on technology. His book HumanCentric: Technology Fails Unless It Means Something to Someone sets out the four-part model he uses with clients: explore, ideate, intersect, create. Each phase forces a transformation team to test technology decisions against the human stakeholders who will or will not adopt them. It functions as a working framework, and it shows up in his keynote work as practical structure for leadership audiences. His TEDx Durban talk Gearing for Greatness introduced the Gear Analogy, a tool for evaluating which ideas to back and which to drop. He contributed the opening chapter of Doers & Dreamers, the global business book that also features Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss and Brian Chesky. Each year, Digitlab publishes its Insight: State of Digital report mapping where customer behaviour, AI, search and martech are actually moving. Key speaking topics Human-centred digital transformation Customer experience and digital strategy AI and data-driven marketing Marketing technology and innovation Digital consumer behaviour The Fourth Industrial Revolution in business Ideal for CMOs and digital marketing leaders running transformation or martech programmes CEOs and CDOs are accountable for digital strategy and adoption outcomes Boards and executive teams setting commercial AI and data direction Marketing, sales and IT leadership teams are trying to align around shared revenue outcomes Audience outcomes A working framework for testing digital decisions against the real people who will or will not adopt them A method for separating ideas worth backing from ideas worth abandoning, drawn from the Gear Analogy Specific signals on what is shifting in customer behaviour, AI, search and martech, drawn from Digitlab’s annual State of Digital research A view of how marketing, sales and IT teams should align around a single revenue model

Why organisations work with Mike Harris He has done the actual job, twice. First Direct (1989) and Egg (1998) were both built from scratch into category-defining UK consumer brands while sitting inside or alongside incumbent institutions, Midland Bank and Prudential. That kind of new-business creation inside a large organisation is rare among innovation speakers. He took Egg from concept to a £1bn flotation in under two years. When he talks about pace of execution, it is from a CEO who delivered it under public-market scrutiny. As Chairman of Group Innovation at RBS (2005-2009), he has worked both sides of the innovation problem: building the new business, and governing the innovation portfolio at scale inside a major bank. His operating framework comes directly from First Direct: customer-led, and built around how distinct segments actually want to be served. It is set out in Find Your Lightbulb (Wiley, 2008) and applied through the IconicShift programme across companies in FinTech, pharmaceuticals and consumer health. As co-founder of Monument Partners and a non-executive chairman at FinTech ventures including Monolith, he is still active at the investor and founder edge of financial services. The material is current. Biography highlights Founding CEO of First Direct (1989), the world’s first major 24/7 telephone bank, launched as a subsidiary of Midland Bank Founding CEO of Egg (1998); floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2000 at a £1.3bn valuation Chief Executive of Mercury Communications (1991-1995), the first major competitor to BT in UK telecoms Chairman of Group Innovation at Royal Bank of Scotland, 2005 to 2009 Co-founder and Chairman of Garlik, sold to Experian in 2011; Tim Berners-Lee on its advisory board Author of Find Your Lightbulb (Wiley/Capstone, 2008); winner of the BT Flagship Award for Innovation, 2008 Co-founder of Monument Partners (2012), a FinTech-focused advisory firm; regular speaker at the MIT Sloan School mid-career MBA programme between 1996 and 2008 Biography First Direct launched in 1989 as a 24/7 telephone bank, owned by Midland but kept far enough away from it to behave differently. The result was a brand that has spent decades at or near the top of UK customer service rankings across every industry. The CEO who built it was Mike Harris. He left Midland to run Mercury Communications, the first major competitor to BT in UK telecoms, where turnover grew from £1bn to £1.6bn during his tenure. In 1995 he founded Prudential Banking, which became Egg in 1998. Egg floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2000 at a £1.3bn valuation, less than two years from launch. After leaving Egg, he turned to innovation governance. As Chairman of Group Innovation at Royal Bank of Scotland from 2005 to 2009, he built a group-wide innovation programme inside an institution then under acute strategic pressure. His book Find Your Lightbulb (Wiley, 2008) set out the operating principles. The IconicShift mentoring programme has since applied them across companies in FinTech, pharmaceuticals, food, fashion, law and consumer health. Most innovation speakers have either built a new business or governed innovation portfolios. Harris has done both, and continues to do both. He is co-founder of FinTech advisory firm Monument Partners, and a non-executive chairman at FinTech ventures including Monolith. Key speaking topics Innovation strategy and execution Customer-led growth Building new businesses inside large organisations Brand and proposition design FinTech and financial services innovation Entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership Digital identity and consumer trust Ideal for CEOs and group strategy leads in financial services and telecoms wrestling with category disruption Chief Innovation Officers and heads of new ventures who need to sponsor breakthrough propositions inside legacy structures Boards and ExCos of established consumer-facing organisations under pressure to reinvent the customer relationship FinTech founders and corporate venture investors looking for current operating perspective Audience outcomes A clearer view of why most innovation programmes produce activity instead of new customers, and what to do about it Operating principles for taking a new proposition from concept to revenue at speed, drawn from First Direct, Egg and Garlik A diagnostic for whether the current organisation can house the new business it is trying to build, and what to change if it cannot How chairmen and CEOs can use innovation governance to back the right bets without smothering them

Why organisations work with Mick Ebeling “Commit, then figure it out” is an operating method with shipped output behind it. The EyeWriter, Project Daniel, Bento, and Music: Not Impossible all began as problems that engineers and clinicians had filed under impossible. Three TIME Best Inventions across thirteen years: the EyeWriter (2010), Bento (2021), Music: Not Impossible (2023). No other individual has matched that benchmark. He frames innovation around what his team calls “absurdities”, unmet needs attached to named individuals. That vocabulary travels into executive conversations where abstract innovation language usually fails. A career as a film producer shapes how he tells the case studies. Audiences see the working details of each project, including how it got built and where the friction lived. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Not Impossible, the studio that grew out of Not Impossible Labs and now spans the lab, the Not Impossible Institute, and the Not Impossible Foundation. Spin-out companies include Bento and Music: Not Impossible. Only individual to have three inventions named to TIME Magazine’s Best Inventions list: the EyeWriter (2010), Bento (2021), and Music: Not Impossible (2023). The EyeWriter is part of the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Named to Fortune’s Top 50 World’s Greatest Leaders. Recipient of the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian of the Year Award. Two-time SXSW Innovation of the Year winner; Cannes Lions Titanium Lion winner for Project Daniel; nominated for Design of the Year by London’s Design Museum; WIRED Agent of Change. Author of “Not Impossible: The Art and Joy of Doing What Couldn’t Be Done”, Simon & Schuster, 2015. Founder of The Ebeling Group (2001), a commercial film and animation production company whose credits include Stranger Than Fiction, The Kite Runner, and Quantum of Solace. Biography In April 2009, a graffiti artist named Tony “Tempt” Quan drew his first new piece of art in seven years, using only the movement of his eyes. He had been silenced by ALS since 2003. The technology that made it possible, the EyeWriter, was assembled in a Los Angeles living room. Mick Ebeling had flown in five programmers and hackers from Graffiti Research Lab, Free Art and Technology Lab, and openFrameworks to attempt it. The device is now part of the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. That episode established the working method behind everything Ebeling has built since. Not Impossible Labs identifies what the team calls “absurdities”: specific human problems that today’s technology should be able to solve and has not. The model is to commit to one named individual, build a working solution, then scale it. The team calls this “Help One. Help Many.” The portfolio that followed kept the same shape. Project Daniel produced 3D-printed prosthetic arms for a teenage boy in South Sudan after a bombing severed his hands. The project was nominated for Design of the Year by London’s Design Museum and won the Cannes Lions Titanium Lion. Bento, a text-based system that connects food-insecure Americans with prepaid meals from local restaurants and grocery stores, started life as Hunger: Not Impossible. It has since spun off into its own company and been named a Fast Company World Changing Ideas honoree. Music: Not Impossible built haptic vests that let deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences feel live music as patterns of vibration. Three of these inventions sit on TIME Magazine’s Best Inventions list, a record no other individual holds. For organisations, the value lies less in the projects themselves than in what they prove. The word impossible is almost always doing more work than it deserves inside a company. Ebeling’s method, “commit, then figure it out”, comes from his earlier career as a film producer at The Ebeling Group, where impossible delivery dates were structural to the business. Audiences leave with a test for the word “impossible” they can run on their own organisation. They also leave with named cases they can cite the next time a hard idea gets that label. Key speaking topics Innovation methodology and the psychology of “impossible” Purpose-driven culture and organisational mission Radical collaboration across disciplines Technology applied to human problems The “Help One. Help Many.” model Storytelling as an innovation discipline Ideal for Innovation and R&D leaders stuck on problems they have classified as too hard to solve CEOs and executive teams trying to translate purpose statements into operating culture Innovation and transformation conferences seeking a credentialed keynote with a named methodology Cross-functional teams being asked to deliver outcomes their existing playbook does not cover Audiences in healthcare, pharma, technology, finance, and professional services, where ambitious problems are routinely filed as too hard to solve Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for separating ideas that are genuinely infeasible from ideas that are simply unattempted A set of named case studies they can cite when defending innovation budgets and ambition inside their organisation A different criterion for committing resources to a hard problem, modelled on a method that has shipped working technology repeatedly A more honest read on the gap between an organisation’s stated purpose and how that purpose shows up in daily decisions

Why organisations work with Michael Johnson He has a defensible body of work on what it actually takes to perform on the single day that matters, drawn from a career where seven undefeated years in the 400m were earned through training design, not talent alone. He is the only male sprinter to hold the 200m and 400m world records simultaneously and the only man to defend an Olympic 400m title, which gives him standing in any room where the topic is sustained excellence rather than a single peak moment. Through Michael Johnson Performance, he has spent more than two decades translating elite training methodology into corporate and athletic settings, so the content is structured rather than anecdotal. As founder and Commissioner of Grand Slam Track, he is currently operating inside the commercial reality of building a new institution under public scrutiny, which gives him relevant material on launch decisions, capital, and pressure that is fresher than most retired-athlete keynotes. He has a long broadcast track record with the BBC, which means he is comfortable with live audiences, panel formats, and sharper interview-style sessions, not only set-piece keynotes. Biography highlights Four Olympic gold medals: 200m and 400m at Atlanta 1996, 400m at Sydney 2000, 4x400m relay at Barcelona 1992 and Atlanta 1996. Eight individual World Championship gold medals and a 400m world record (43.18s, Seville 1999) that stood for 17 years. Author of “Slaying the Dragon” (HarperCollins, 1996), co-written with Jess Walter. Founder of Michael Johnson Performance, a human performance and athlete development business. Founder and Commissioner of Grand Slam Track, the professional sprint league launched in April 2025. Member of the Laureus World Sports Academy and longtime BBC Sport athletics analyst. Biography The 400m at the 1999 World Championships in Seville was won by 43.18 seconds, a world record that stood for 17 years. The runner had been undefeated at the distance for seven years by that point. That kind of sustained dominance is not produced by talent. It is produced by a system: training design, race modelling, recovery discipline, and an unusually clear view of what to do in the final 50 metres when the body is asking permission to slow down. That system is the substance of Michael Johnson’s work outside the track. Across Olympic Games in Barcelona, Atlanta and Sydney, he won four gold medals, including a 200m and 400m double in Atlanta that no other male sprinter has matched. He held world records at both distances at the same time. He wrote about the underlying method in “Slaying the Dragon” with Jess Walter in 1996, and built it into a working business through Michael Johnson Performance, which has trained Olympic and professional athletes for more than two decades. His current platform is Grand Slam Track, the professional sprint league he founded and runs as Commissioner. The league launched in April 2025 with backing from Winners Alliance and a roster of contracted athletes competing across four annual meets. It has since had to restructure under Chapter 11 protection. The point for a corporate audience is not the outcome, which is unfinished. It is that he is currently operating as a founder under public, financial and regulatory pressure, which sharpens the material he brings into the room on decisions, capital, and execution. He sits on the Laureus World Sports Academy and has worked as a BBC athletics analyst across multiple Olympic cycles, which means audiences get a speaker who is comfortable being interviewed and pushed, not only one delivering a prepared keynote. Key speaking topics Performance under pressure Preparation, training design and execution Sustained excellence and competitive longevity Leadership of self and team in high-stakes moments The Olympic mindset Founding and running a new sports league Ideal for Senior leadership offsites focused on execution and composure Sales kickoffs and high-performance team events Board and CEO dinners where authority and presence matter as much as content Sport, media and commercial audiences interested in the business of athletics Audience outcomes A clear account of what elite preparation looks like when the day cannot be repeated A specific framework for composure when the stakes are visible and external A grounded view of what sustained excellence costs, beyond the highlight reel A current operator’s perspective on building a new institution under financial pressure

Why organisations work with Michael Cusumano He wrote the book leaders cite when they argue about platform strategy. The Business of Platforms, with Gawer and Yoffie, is the reference text for how Apple, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft built their positions, and where new entrants can still find leverage. He has spent three decades studying how software companies actually make money, from Microsoft Secrets through The Business of Software to current work on generative AI as the next platform layer. He bridges Western and Japanese industry. Two Fulbright Fellowships, ten years working in Japan, and a former dean role at Tokyo University of Science give him a working view of competitive dynamics across both markets. He is operator-adjacent. Roughly 100 consulting engagements with organisations including NASA, the World Bank, and the Bank of England, plus a dozen public-company board seats, mean the framework is pressure-tested against real strategic decisions. Biography highlights SMR Distinguished Professor of Management at MIT Sloan; Faculty Director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship; Co-Director of the MIT System Design and Management Program. Author or co-author of 14 books, including The Business of Platforms (2019), Strategy Rules (2015), Staying Power (2010), Platform Leadership (2002), and Microsoft Secrets (1995). Strategy Rules has been translated into 18 languages; Microsoft Secrets into 14. Writes the Technology Strategy and Management column for Communications of the ACM; former editor-in-chief and chairman of MIT Sloan Management Review. Recipient of the 2019 Abbie Griffin High Impact Award from the Journal of Product Innovation Management; IEEE Software 25th-Anniversary Top Pick. Princeton (BA), Harvard (PhD); two Fulbright Fellowships; former Special Vice President and Dean of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Tokyo University of Science. Biography Platform businesses follow a different physics from product businesses. The companies sitting at the top of every market-cap league table, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta, did not get there by selling better products. They built two-sided markets, opened controlled access to complementors, and used network effects to compound advantage. Cusumano’s work, with Annabelle Gawer and David Yoffie, is the reference scholarship on why this works and when it does not. His position at MIT Sloan reflects three decades of close study of the software industry. Microsoft Secrets, written with Richard Selby in 1995, was the first inside account of how a software company actually shipped product at scale. Platform Leadership followed in 2002, naming the pattern Intel, Microsoft, and Cisco had used to organise entire industries around themselves. The Business of Platforms, in 2019, extended the argument into the era of Amazon, Google, and Apple, separating what worked from what failed. He is also one of the few strategy scholars who can credibly write about Silicon Valley and Tokyo in the same paragraph. Two Fulbrights, ten years working in Japan, a former dean role at Tokyo University of Science, and fluent Japanese have produced a comparative view of how Western and Asian firms approach scale, software, and ecosystem competition. The 2019 Abbie Griffin High Impact Award and an IEEE Software 25th-Anniversary Top Pick recognise the influence of that work inside the academic and engineering communities. The current focus is generative AI as a new platform for applications development, which he argues will redraw competitive lines in software again, this time around model providers, infrastructure layers, and application developers. For boards trying to read where value will sit in the next stack, that is the live question, and the framework he has spent thirty years sharpening is the one being applied to it. Key speaking topics Platform strategy and ecosystem competition The economics of software businesses Generative AI as a platform layer Digital strategy in winner-take-most markets Innovation and entrepreneurship inside large firms Competing across US and Japanese technology markets Lessons from Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs Ideal for Boards and executive committees stress-testing platform or ecosystem strategy CSOs and corporate development leaders evaluating how generative AI reshapes competitive position Technology and product leadership at firms moving from product to platform models CEO summits and senior leadership programmes covering digital strategy and software economics Audience outcomes A working framework for deciding when to compete as a product and when to open a platform. A clear read on why some platforms compound and others collapse, with the named cases that prove the pattern. Sharper questions to bring to AI strategy debates, focused on where value accrues across the stack. A comparative view of how leading US and Japanese firms have built and defended platform positions.

Why organisations work with Martin McCourt He has run the playbook most boards are still arguing about: taking a single-product, single-market business into more than 60 international markets while protecting the founder’s creative engine. He grew Dyson profits past £300m and crossed £1bn in revenue in 2011, with 80% of the business coming from outside the UK by the time he left. He is one of very few British CEOs who has personally established subsidiaries in the US, Japan, Switzerland, Austria and Germany, and won market leadership in most of them, including the US. He chairs Joseph Joseph and COMPO and sits on the board of Weber, which keeps him close to live boardroom decisions in the design-led consumer and homewares businesses he spent his career scaling. Named UK Business Leader of the Year at the 2010 National Business Awards, recognised for running a company described as the standout performer of the recession. Biography highlights CEO of Dyson for 15 years, leading the move from a single-product UK operation into more than 60 international markets. Took Dyson revenue past £1bn in 2011, with profits above £300m and 80% of revenue from outside the UK. Established Dyson subsidiaries in the US, Japan, Switzerland, Austria and Germany, winning market leadership in most including the US. Earlier senior commercial roles at Mars, Duracell, Toshiba and Pelikan across more than 40 years in manufacturing, design, sales and marketing. UK Business Leader of the Year, 2010 National Business Awards. Currently Chairman of Joseph Joseph and COMPO, a non-executive director of Weber, and a Visiting Professor at Aston Business School. Earlier chair and board roles include Glen Dimplex, the world’s largest electrical heating manufacturer, alongside Tharsus, Lightfoot, Pure Electric, FreeFlow Technologies and Learning Curve Group, several taken through to successful exit. Biography Dyson was a British engineering business with one famous product and one home market when Martin McCourt joined as CEO. Fifteen years later, 80% of the revenue was coming from outside the UK, profits had passed £300m, and the company had crossed £1bn in sales for the first time in 2011. That outcome did not happen by accident. McCourt designed and ran the international strategy that took Dyson into more than 60 markets, building subsidiaries from scratch in the US, Japan, Switzerland, Austria and Germany and winning market leadership in most of them. He moved manufacturing to Asia while increasing skilled UK jobs, and he kept the commercial machine running so that James Dyson could stay focused on inventing. The career underneath that work matters. Before Dyson, McCourt spent more than two decades in senior commercial roles at Mars, Duracell, Toshiba and Pelikan, learning how branded consumer businesses scale and where they break. That history is why he can speak to the practical mechanics of growth, not just the headline outcome. In 2010 he was named UK Business Leader of the Year at the National Business Awards, recognised for running what was described as the standout business of the recession. That work continues at board level. In September 2025 he became Chairman of Joseph Joseph, the British design-led homewares brand, having advised co-founder Richard Joseph in the company’s early years. He also chairs COMPO, the European organic gardening business, sits on the board of Weber in Chicago, and holds a Visiting Professorship at Aston Business School. Key speaking topics International scaling of product-led businesses Building consumer brands across multiple markets The CEO and founder relationship British manufacturing and global competitiveness Innovation-driven growth Leadership through rapid expansion Clean-technology and industrial investment Ideal for CEOs and boards of founder-led or product-led businesses planning international growth Chief Commercial Officers and international MDs scaling consumer brands Industrial and manufacturing leadership teams considering global market entry Leadership programmes for senior operators in product, design and engineering-led companies Audience outcomes A clear-eyed view of what it actually takes to move a single-market business into 60-plus markets A working model for the CEO and founder partnership in inventor-led companies Specific lessons on entering and winning major international markets, drawn from the US, Japan and Europe A sharper sense of where British manufacturing competes and where it does not Boardroom-grade thinking on innovation, capital allocation and long-horizon growth

Why organisations work with Mark Beaumont He has cycled and recovered from multi-month performance projects with measurable outcomes, but what made them possible was the planning and the team behind the rider. The 18,000 miles in 78 days and 14 hours was a logistics and physiology problem before it was a sporting one. His work as an Operating Partner at Envoy Group, and as an executive chair, gives him a working command of capital allocation and operational discipline that most adventure speakers cannot offer. He has filmed documentaries for fifteen years across the BBC, Amazon Prime and GCN, so he can speak credibly to leaders about performing under public scrutiny and telling a story that lands. He frames endurance as a planning problem: nutrition, sleep, route, contingency, support team. That structure transfers cleanly to a senior team running a long transformation. The British Empire Medal and his Guinness World Records titles are credentials a buyer can put on a board agenda without needing to explain them. Biography highlights World record holder, fastest cycle around the world: 18,000 miles, 78 days, 14 hours (2017). World record holder, fastest solo ride length of Africa: Cairo to Cape Town in 42 days, 8 hours (2015). Author of six books, including The Man Who Cycled the World, Africa Solo, and Around the World in 80 Days. Partner at Eos Advisory, an early-stage innovation fund backing science, engineering and technology companies. BBC documentary subject and contributor for over 15 years, including Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games global coverage. British Empire Medal, 2018 New Year Honours, for services to sport, broadcasting and charity. Biography The 80-day cycle around the world looks like a sporting record. It is closer to a 24-hour-a-day operational project with one performer, a small support crew, a fixed deadline, and no option to renegotiate the route. Holding sixteen hours of cycling a day for eleven weeks, on four hours of broken sleep, is a planning and recovery discipline first. These projects run across two decades and many expeditions: an 18,000-mile circumnavigation in 2008, the length of Africa in 2015, and a faster circumnavigation in 78 days and 14 hours in 2017. The earlier rides were filmed for the BBC, the later ones for GCN and Amazon. All were audited by Guinness World Records and run with a support team handling logistics, nutrition and recovery. What he sells a business audience is the working method behind them. The investor side of the work matters here. Beaumont spent six years as a partner and investor at Eos Advisory, an early-stage fund backing Scottish science and technology businesses, before joining Envoy Group as an Operating Partner. His working week goes on capital allocation, founder assessment and scale-up risk. That gives him a commercial register most adventure speakers do not have when they walk into a leadership offsite. What a senior team gets from him is a structured account of how to plan for the long middle of a hard project: where decisions break down, what data to track, when to slow the team to protect the team. The British Empire Medal in 2018, awarded for services to sport, broadcasting and charity, sits alongside six published books and a documentary record stretching back fifteen years. Key speaking topics Sustained performance under prolonged pressure Planning and execution of multi-month projects Recovery and decision-making after setback Risk management in high-consequence environments Early-stage investment and scale-up discipline Endurance physiology applied to business performance Ideal for Executive teams running multi-year transformation or restructuring programmes Sales and operations leadership conferences focused on sustained performance Founder and scale-up audiences working with early-stage investors Senior offsites where resilience is the substantive agenda, not the entertainment Audience outcomes A working method for pacing senior teams through long, demanding projects Specific lessons from three audited world-record expeditions on planning, support and recovery A clearer view of where decision-making degrades under fatigue and how to design around it An investor-side perspective on what separates ambition from operational discipline

Why organisations work with Marc Randolph He did not study the Netflix founding from the outside – he ran it. The decisions, the wrong turns, and the business model that eventually disrupted an entire industry are first-hand material, not case-study reconstruction. His central argument challenges a reflex most leadership teams share: that the quality of an idea determines whether it deserves to be pursued. His counter – that testing discipline matters more than idea quality – is specific, actionable, and uncomfortable in the right way. The Netflix founding includes the Blockbuster meeting, where Netflix was offered for $50 million and turned down. That episode alone reframes how organisations should think about incumbent advantage, competitive threat, and the cost of certainty. “That Will Never Work” is not a memoir dressed as business advice. It is a structured argument about how good companies are actually built – through iteration, testing, and the willingness to be wrong in public, not in a boardroom. He runs an active mentorship programme with working founders, which means his frameworks are tested against current entrepreneurial reality – not fixed in the past. Biography highlights Co-founder and first CEO of Netflix, which he helped build from a dismissed DVD-by-mail startup into the foundation of the platform that redefined global entertainment Author of “That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea” (Little, Brown and Company, 2019) Serial entrepreneur with multiple companies founded across direct marketing, software, and technology Former senior marketing executive at Borland International and Macromedia Guest on NPR’s “How I Built This” and other leading entrepreneurship platforms Active mentor to early-stage founders through a structured programme he runs directly Biography Netflix was not an overnight success. In its early years it was dismissed by almost everyone – including, famously, the executives at Blockbuster, who were offered the company for $50 million and said no. Marc Randolph was in that room. He co-founded Netflix in 1997 and served as its first CEO, navigating the business from an idea most people thought would never work to the foundation of what became one of the most disruptive companies in modern business history. His book, “That Will Never Work,” published by Little, Brown in 2019, does not simply recount that journey. It makes a specific argument: that entrepreneurial success has less to do with the quality of an idea than with the discipline of testing it. Most organisations spend considerable energy debating whether an idea is good enough to act on. Randolph’s contention is that the debate itself is the problem – that deciding in advance kills more valuable ideas than the market ever would. That argument is not abstract. It comes from years of direct experience – not only co-founding Netflix, but building and failing at other companies before it, and mentoring hundreds of founders since. Randolph runs an active programme for early-stage entrepreneurs, which means his frameworks are under continuous pressure from people trying to apply them in real conditions today. For organisations wrestling with innovation culture, the fear of failure, or the gap between strategy and action, Randolph offers something most speakers in this space cannot: a first-hand account of what it actually took, and a framework built from that experience rather than written about it. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and the discipline of idea-testing Business model innovation and iteration Innovation culture in established organisations Risk, failure, and commercial decision-making Leadership in early-stage and high-growth companies The Netflix founding – strategy, competition, and disruption Mentorship and building founder capability Ideal for CEOs and senior leadership teams building or renewing innovation culture Chief Strategy Officers and heads of new ventures or corporate innovation labs Entrepreneurship conferences and startup ecosystem events Leadership development programmes focused on commercial risk-taking and decision-making under uncertainty Audience outcomes A reframe of how ideas should be evaluated – replacing debate with testable hypotheses Practical language for separating idea quality from execution discipline A clearer understanding of what distinguishes organisations that build new things from those that discuss them Direct exposure to the decision-making logic behind one of the most studied company-founding stories in modern business A more honest framework for thinking about failure as evidence rather than verdict

Why organisations work with Marc Koska He built the commercial case for a life-saving innovation from first principles; price parity, existing tooling, no retraining required, so that institutional resistance had no rational hiding place. Few innovators have that level of strategic discipline documented at scale. His 2008 India campaign reached 508 million people and triggered a government mandate within months. That is a documented playbook for moving from public awareness to policy change at national scale, directly applicable to any organisation trying to shift entrenched behaviour. He holds The Economist Innovation Award for Social and Economic Innovation, a Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur of the Year designation, and an OBE; the kind of external validation that makes a business case credible in front of conservative institutional and government audiences. His ApiJect work, backed by US Department of Defense and HHS funding for pandemic response infrastructure, demonstrates how the same innovation principles apply to supply chain resilience and emergency preparedness. Unlike most entrepreneurship narratives, his story has a documented endpoint: a 2015 WHO global policy mandate requiring auto-disable syringes across the therapeutic sector, 30 years after the K1 was first conceived. Biography highlights Inventor of the K1 auto-disable syringe: locks after a single use, licensed to 14 global manufacturers, credited with saving over 10 million lives OBE awarded 2006 for contribution to global healthcare The Economist Innovation Award for Social and Economic Innovation; Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2015, World Economic Forum network Ashoka Fellow 2017; honorary doctorates from the University of Sussex and Brighton University Founder of Star Syringe (1996) and The SafePoint Trust, the UK registered charity whose advocacy helped drive the 2015 WHO global injection safety mandate Speaker at TED, Google Zeitgeist, Intelligence Squared, and the World Economic Forum Biography The K1 syringe was engineered to be as cheap as the one it replaced, to run on the same factory tooling, and to lock after a single use. Marc Koska designed it that way deliberately, because he understood that a safer product priced as a premium would never reach the patients who needed it most. Koska founded Star Syringe in 1996 to license the technology, and The SafePoint Trust as a registered UK charity to run commercial and advocacy strategies in parallel. His 2008 India campaign, press conferences in 14 cities, television, radio, and cinema, reached 508 million people and led the Indian Health Ministry to mandate auto-disable syringes across government hospitals. The WHO followed with a global injection safety mandate in 2015. The Economist recognised his work with its Innovation Award for Social and Economic Innovation. The Schwab Foundation named him Social Entrepreneur of the Year in 2015, integrating him into the World Economic Forum network. An OBE for services to global healthcare, an Ashoka Fellowship, and honorary doctorates from the University of Sussex and Brighton University reflect the breadth of institutions that have validated his contribution. His TED talks and appearances at Google Zeitgeist have brought the commercial logic of his approach to audiences well beyond the health sector. His more recent work through ApiJect, a blow-fill-seal prefilled injector developed with US Department of Defense and HHS backing for pandemic response, applies the same principle to national supply chain resilience: remove the systemic barriers that allow an inferior standard to persist. For leadership teams thinking about scaling innovation through complex regulatory environments, his three-decade arc from design brief to global standard is among the most instructive available. Key speaking topics Scaling innovation from invention to global adoption Navigating policy, procurement, and regulatory barriers Social entrepreneurship and mission-driven commercial design Stakeholder mobilisation and behaviour change at scale Public health risk and injection safety Pandemic preparedness and supply chain resilience Ideal for Senior leadership teams and boards navigating innovation adoption in regulated or institutionally resistant industries CEOs and commercial directors seeking a case study in displacing entrenched incumbents with a commercially competitive alternative Public health, pharmaceutical, and medical device executives responsible for global supply chain and safety standards Conference audiences focused on social entrepreneurship, purpose-driven business, and systemic change Audience outcomes A framework for identifying where institutional inertia – rather than product quality – is blocking innovation adoption Practical understanding of how to design innovations for price parity and manufacturing compatibility from the outset Insight into how multi-stakeholder campaigns can translate public awareness into government policy change A case study in running commercial and advocacy strategies in parallel without mission drift A concrete example of what it takes to move a proven innovation from proof of concept to a WHO-mandated global standard

Why organisations work with Luke Johnson He has built, bought and sold more well-known British consumer brands than almost any other operator of his generation, including PizzaExpress, Strada, The Ivy, Giraffe, Patisserie Valerie and Gail’s, which gives any commercial audience an unusually direct reference point. He runs his own private equity firm, Risk Capital Partners, and continues to chair operating businesses, so the perspective is current investor and chairman, not retired founder. He has written a weekly national-press column on entrepreneurship for more than twenty years across the Financial Times, The Sunday Times and the Sunday Telegraph, which means audiences get arguments that have been tested in print, not improvised on stage. He is willing to talk publicly about the collapse of Patisserie Valerie, the fraud that triggered it, and what a chairman missed, which is rare candour from a figure still active in private equity. His chairmanship of Channel 4, the Royal Society of Arts and the Institute of Cancer Research gives him a board-level vocabulary that translates well for non-executives, charity trustees and public sector audiences. Biography highlights Chairman of PizzaExpress from 1993 to 1999, growing the chain from 12 to over 150 restaurants and the share price from 40p to over 900p. Founder and chairman of Risk Capital Partners, a London private equity firm operating since 2001. Chairman of Channel 4 Television Corporation, 2004 to 2010. Founder of Signature Restaurants (The Ivy, Le Caprice, J. Sheekey, Belgo) and the Strada chain; investor in Giraffe, Gail’s, Brighton Pier Group and Patisserie Holdings. Author of “Start It Up: Why Running Your Own Business Is Easier Than You Think” (Penguin, 2011) and weekly columnist for the Financial Times (2007 to 2015) and The Sunday Times (2015 to 2021). Co-founder and chairman of the Centre for Entrepreneurs; former chairman of the Royal Society of Arts, StartUp Britain and the Institute of Cancer Research; honorary degrees from Heriot-Watt, Bath, UWE and the University of West London. Biography PizzaExpress had twelve restaurants and a 40p share price when Luke Johnson and Hugh Osmond took control in 1993. By the time Johnson left as chairman in 1999, the chain had passed 150 sites and the share price had cleared 900p. That single deal still anchors his commercial reputation, but it sits inside a longer pattern. He founded Signature Restaurants, which owned The Ivy, J. Sheekey, Le Caprice and Belgo. He built Strada from scratch to thirty sites. Risk Capital Partners, the private equity firm he has run since 2001, has backed Giraffe, Gail’s, Brighton Pier Group, Patisserie Holdings and a long list of mid-market operators. The picture is not uniformly positive, and that is part of why senior audiences listen. Patisserie Holdings, where he was chairman and largest shareholder, collapsed in October 2018 after the discovery of significant accounting fraud. He has written and spoken about the experience in detail, including what a non-executive chair can and cannot see from the board. Alongside the deals, Johnson has built an unusually durable second career as a writer. He wrote weekly for the Sunday Telegraph from 1998, for the Financial Times from 2007, and for The Sunday Times until 2021. The work covers founders, capital, markets, management and failure, and it is consistently specific. His 2011 book “Start It Up”, published by Penguin, sets out the operator’s view of starting and running a small business without the usual founder mythology. Public roles round out the picture. He chaired Channel 4 Television for six years, the Royal Society of Arts for three, the Institute of Cancer Research for eight, and co-founded the Centre for Entrepreneurs to make the case for British founders in public policy. Four British universities, Heriot-Watt, Bath, the University of the West of England and the University of West London, have awarded him honorary degrees on the strength of that combined record. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and the realities of starting a business Private equity and growth-stage investment Consumer, hospitality and retail strategy Scale-up leadership and board governance Lessons from corporate failure and fraud The economics of small and medium-sized business Chairmanship of listed and charitable organisations Ideal for Founders, CEOs and senior teams in consumer, hospitality, retail and service businesses Private equity, venture and growth-stage investor audiences Boards and non-executive directors of listed and private companies Industry conferences and member organisations focused on entrepreneurship and SME growth Audience outcomes A franker view of why scale-ups stall than most growth literature offers, drawn from named deals on both sides of the outcome. A working understanding of how private equity actually evaluates and backs consumer businesses, from a practitioner who still writes the cheques. A clearer sense of what a board chair owes a company under stress, informed by the Patisserie Valerie collapse and other live cases. Concrete prompts for founders on capital, hiring, controls and exit, anchored in three decades of operator experience.

Why organisations work with Kevin Kelly His Xceptional Execution methodology is not motivational scaffolding – it is a documented framework built from original case study research with high-growth entrepreneurs across the globe, making the argument that execution, not vision, is the real driver of commercial success. Do! The Pursuit of Xceptional Execution was endorsed by Tom Peters, co-author of In Search of Excellence, as the book Peters himself had always wanted to write – a specific, named validation from one of the most cited figures in management literature. The Triple A (Attention, Awareness, Authentic Action) and Storytelling frameworks give teams named, repeatable tools for immediately improving how they earn attention, structure conversations, and close in markets where buyers are already sceptical before a call begins. His cross-industry track record is verifiable: rated the highest-performing speaker at Microsoft’s World Partner Conference (92.5% satisfaction score, ahead of five other speakers on the programme) and a repeat keynote speaker at the Million Dollar Round Table – two of the most commercially exacting professional audiences in technology and financial services. His starting point is always the specific failure mode that sales leaders recognise – the knowing-doing gap – rather than generic motivation; audiences leave with a named diagnosis and specific tools, not energy that fades by the following Monday. Biography highlights Founder of Advanced Marketing, established in Ireland in 1990 following a career breaking sales records across construction and manufacturing sectors in Ireland and internationally Author of five business books, including Do! The Pursuit of Xceptional Execution, endorsed by Tom Peters, co-author of In Search of Excellence How? When You Don’t Know How sold 15,000 copies in Ireland – a bestseller for an independent Irish author on a first title Developed the Xceptional Execution Video Series for Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Community; rated top speaker at the 2015 Microsoft World Partner Conference with a 92.5% audience satisfaction score Repeat keynote speaker at the Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT), one of the most selective annual platforms for financial services professionals globally Has addressed audiences across more than 35 countries, with named corporate clients including GE Healthcare, KPMG, Hologic, Hang Seng Bank, Lane Crawford, and ICON Clinical Research Biography The central problem in most commercial teams is not a shortage of knowledge. It is a shortage of consistent execution. Kevin Kelly, founder of Advanced Marketing, has built a 30-year methodology on that distinction: the argument that competitive advantage in sales and leadership is won not by the team with the most insight, but by the team that acts on ordinary ideas with extraordinary discipline. His framework, Xceptional Execution, emerged from structured research with entrepreneurs and executives across the globe: people who achieved outsized commercial results not through original thinking, but through repeatable, disciplined action. Do! The Pursuit of Xceptional Execution captured this research and was endorsed by Tom Peters, co-author of In Search of Excellence, as the book Peters himself had always wanted to write. The frameworks Kelly uses in his sessions: Triple A (Attention, Awareness, Authentic Action) and Storytelling, are designed to be immediately applicable by sales and leadership teams returning to their desks the next morning. At Microsoft’s World Partner Conference he was rated the highest-performing speaker on a six-speaker programme, with a 92.5% audience satisfaction score. He has since delivered keynotes for the Million Dollar Round Table and for commercial audiences across more than 35 countries spanning financial services, healthcare, technology, and professional services. Based in the west of Ireland, Kelly holds a marketing degree and began his career breaking sales records in construction and manufacturing before founding Advanced Marketing in 1990. His first book, How? When You Don’t Know How, sold 15,000 copies in Ireland. His subsequent body of work (five books in total) returns repeatedly to the same conviction: that performance, at the individual and organisational level, is almost always a question of execution rather than ambition. Key speaking topics Sales performance and commercial execution Attention and persuasion in distracted markets Xceptional Execution methodology and frameworks Storytelling and business communication Leadership, engagement, and team performance Entrepreneurship and growth through disciplined action Communication and influence in multicultural environments Ideal for Sales directors and commercial leaders seeking to close the gap between sales training and sustained field performance CEOs and senior executives accountable for execution culture across distributed or international teams Partner and channel organisations – particularly in technology and financial services – where performance depends on enabling third-party sales behaviours Associations and conference organisers serving entrepreneurial, financial services, or sales professional audiences (including MDRT-type communities) Audience outcomes A named framework (Triple A and Storytelling) for structuring sales conversations and earning attention from overloaded, sceptical buyers A shift in perspective from sales as persuasion to sales as disciplined execution – with specific practices that distinguish knowing from consistently doing Practical storytelling tools for making commercial messages stick in distracted, multicultural, and low-trust environments Clarity on the specific behaviours and mindsets that separate average teams from those that execute consistently under pressure Approaches to converting disengaged employees and resistant prospects into active advocates – grounded in the Xceptionalists research from Do!