Future of Technology speakers

Why organisations work with Inma Martinez She chairs the Multi-Stakeholder Expert Group at the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, the G7/OECD body whose work fed directly into Japan’s Hiroshima Process for AI Safety. That gives her a line of sight into the regulation boards will actually have to live with. She built mobile AI recommendation systems with Cambridge University and Trinity College Dublin teams in the early 2000s, before recommender systems were a category. The technical fluency is real, not borrowed. She moves credibly between Goldman Sachs alumni networks, Nokia-era telecoms, the European Commission, UNESCO, the Spanish AI Council, and Imperial College Business School. Few AI voices are taken seriously in all of those rooms. Two published books, including The Fifth Industrial Revolution, give her a coherent thesis on where digital and space economies converge, rather than a list of trends. Biography highlights Chair, Multi-Stakeholder Expert Group, and Co-Chair, Steering Committee, Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (G7/OECD). Member, AI Council Advisory Board, State Secretariat for AI, Spanish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation. Expert advisor to the European Commission on Big Data and AI since 2001; collaborator with UNIDO, UNESCO, and the European Space Agency. Guest lecturer, Imperial College Business School; Director, Master in Artificial Intelligence, Loyola University, Spain. Author of The Fifth Industrial Revolution (Deusto/Planeta) and The Future of the Automotive Industry. Career across Goldman Sachs, Cable & Wireless, and mobile-internet ventures Escape Velocity and Visual Radio (acquired by Nokia); regularly cited by the Financial Times, The Economist, Bloomberg, Fortune, and Time. Biography The hard problem in AI right now is not the model. It is the distance between what a board has committed to publicly and what the operating business can actually deploy, govern, and defend. Inma Martinez has spent the last decade working that gap from both ends. At the policy end, she chairs the Multi-Stakeholder Expert Group at the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, the G7/OECD body that shapes the rules large enterprises will eventually have to operate inside. The work she led on Responsible AI, AI Innovation, and the Future of Work fed into the Hiroshima Process for AI Safety. She also sits on Spain’s AI Council Advisory Board and has advised the European Commission on Big Data and AI since 2001. At the operating end, her credentials are not theoretical. She built mobile AI recommendation systems with Cambridge University and Trinity College Dublin teams when the category did not yet exist, after a finance career at Goldman Sachs and a global director role at Cable & Wireless. Her mobile-internet ventures Escape Velocity and Visual Radio were acquired by Nokia. She has worked inside the innovation labs of IBM, HP, LG, and Apple. That combined vantage point is what makes her useful to senior leadership: she can speak to a CTO about deployment, to a chief risk officer about governance exposure, and to a CEO about what the next five years of AI regulation will do to capital allocation. Her two books, The Fifth Industrial Revolution and The Future of the Automotive Industry, set out the same thesis in long form. Named outlets including the Financial Times, The Economist, Bloomberg, Fortune, and Time turn to her when an editorial line on AI needs a serious voice. Key speaking topics Applied AI and competitive advantage AI governance, safety, and the G7/OECD policy landscape The future of work in an AI-automated economy Digital transformation for established enterprises and SMEs The Fifth Industrial Revolution and the space economy Connected mobility and the automotive industry’s digital reinvention 5G, edge and cloud computing, and the Internet of Everything Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting AI strategy and AI-governance posture CTOs, CIOs, and chief data officers moving AI from pilot into production Chief risk officers and general counsel scoping AI regulatory exposure Industry forums in financial services, automotive, telecoms, and the space economy Audience outcomes A clear read on where global AI regulation is heading, from someone shaping it A working distinction between AI as marketing narrative and AI as operating capability Specific examples of where applied AI is producing measurable advantage, and where it is failing A defensible position on the workforce implications of AI automation A sharper view of how the digital and space economies will reshape industrial strategy

Why organisations work with Jack Shaw Operator experience across successive AI waves, from expert systems and eCommerce through Knowledge-Based Expert Systems to today’s generative AI. That span of hands-on work is rare, and it is what lets him tell a board which shifts are durable and which are noise. Author of The AI Imperative Series, a planned multi-volume set examining AI transformation industry by industry. The first volume, Manufacturing’s AI Imperative, was published in April 2026; subsequent volumes covering healthcare, finance, distribution, and government are in preparation. Track record advising senior leadership at Mercedes-Benz, Siemens, GE, Caterpillar, Rockwell Automation, Coca-Cola, 3M, IBM, Oracle, and Bosch. The client mix skews industrial and regulated, which is directly relevant when the audience is not a technology company. A working framework that separates tactical AI initiatives, which can pay back inside twelve months, from strategic programmes that reshape the operating model over three to five years. The framework is built for executive teams running both tracks simultaneously without one starving the other. Presents in 26 countries and all 50 U.S. states, with material that adapts to manufacturing, distribution, financial services, and public sector audiences rather than a single vertical. Biography highlights Author of The AI Imperative Series; first volume, Manufacturing’s AI Imperative, published April 2026 Graduate of Yale University; MBA, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University Enterprise AI experience spanning commercial expert systems and machine learning through to today’s generative AI Former Vice President of Commercial Systems, Applied Systems Intelligence; previously led an AI software company in Knowledge-Based Expert Systems Advisor to senior leadership at Mercedes-Benz, Siemens, GE, Caterpillar, Rockwell Automation, Coca-Cola, 3M, IBM, Oracle, and Bosch Keynote presentations in 26 countries and all 50 U.S. states, across manufacturing, distribution, financial services, and public sector audiences Biography Knowledge-Based Expert Systems were running in defence and industrial settings long before ChatGPT gave AI a consumer face. Shaw was writing commercial software in that space in the 2000s as Vice President of Commercial Systems at Applied Systems Intelligence, after leading an AI software company through the previous wave. He has been inside enterprise AI since before most organisations were asking the question, which is why he can tell a board which shifts are durable and which are noise. Drawing on more than four decades in AI and enterprise technology, Shaw has delivered over 1,000 keynote presentations across 26 countries. As an AI transformation advisor, he works with senior leadership at Mercedes-Benz, Siemens, Bosch, GE, Caterpillar, IBM, Coca-Cola, and Oracle. His focus is where AI changes the economics of the business, not just its tooling. His work turns on a dual-path distinction between Tactical AI and Strategic AI. Tactical AI covers the applications that pay back inside twelve months; Strategic AI is the operating-model change that reshapes competitive position over three to five years. He frames the destination as the Autonomic Enterprise, where routine sensing and response run at machine speed and human judgement is reserved for the decisions that cannot be delegated. That thinking is now published. Manufacturing’s AI Imperative: An Executive Mandate is the first volume in The AI Imperative Series, an industry-by-industry set applying the framework to the AI decisions facing the C-suite, with volumes on distribution, government, healthcare, and finance in preparation. A Yale graduate with a Kellogg MBA, Shaw advises internationally on executive AI strategy, AI governance, and workforce transformation. He speaks directly to what boards are asking now: how to get out of pilot purgatory, how to cut the decision latency that stalls AI programmes, and how the gap between AI leaders and laggards compounds faster than in any previous technology shift. Key speaking topics Tactical AI and Strategic AI: the dual-path framework Enterprise AI from pilot to operating-model change The Autonomic Enterprise and the emerging Autonomic Economy AI governance, risk, and executive accountability Workforce transformation in the age of AI Industry-specific AI strategy for manufacturing, distribution, and regulated sectors Decision latency and compounding advantage in enterprise AI Ideal for Boards and C-suites setting enterprise AI and digital strategy CIOs, CTOs, and CDOs sequencing AI investment across competing priorities: infrastructure, workforce capability, data readiness, and vendor selection Manufacturing, automotive, distribution, and financial services leadership teams Industry associations and regulated-sector conferences asking where the technology actually lands in operations Audience outcomes A clearer read on which AI capabilities matter for their specific industry and time horizon Concrete examples from Fortune 500 deployments rather than generic case studies Vocabulary to challenge vendor pitches and internal proposals with sharper questions A dual-path framework for separating the AI initiatives that pay back inside twelve months from the strategic programmes that reshape the operating model over three to five years, with a method for running both tracks simultaneously without one starving the other

Why organisations work with Jack Stratten Pattern recognition grounded in fieldwork. Insider Trends runs retail safaris in London, New York, Tokyo and Seoul, which means his examples come from stores he has physically been inside, not slide decks recycled from conference circuits. A named RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer in both 2023 and 2024, giving buyers a third-party signal of standing in the retail community. Direct experience advising Nike, LVMH, Ikea, Marks and Spencer, Jaguar Land Rover and Microsoft on retail formats and customer experience, so the frame of reference fits enterprise decision-makers. Works across the full retail stack, from store roles and staff models to omnichannel, supply chain and sustainability, which lets a single session connect teams that usually plan in silos. Format flexibility. Keynote, boardroom session, trend workshop or guided retail safari, all drawn from the same underlying research base. Biography highlights Head of Trends, Insider Trends, a London-based retail futures agency advising C-suite clients globally. Selected for RETHINK Retail’s Top Retail Influencers list in 2023 and 2024. Clients include Nike, Johnson and Johnson, Converse, Ikea, Shell, Marks and Spencer, Jaguar Land Rover, Costa Coffee, Diageo, Microsoft, LVMH, Nespresso, Twilio, The National Trust and Galeries Lafayette. Has run trend seminars for senior business audiences in partnership with the British Library. Media commentator on retail change, including appearances on Channel 4 and BBC Radio 5. Published author on Insider Trends and contributor to industry outlets including Retail Technology Innovation Hub. Biography Physical stores, e-commerce, app, social commerce, marketplace listings, supply chain footprint. For most retailers these are still governed as separate projects with separate owners, even though a single customer now moves across all of them inside one buying decision. That gap between how customers shop and how retailers are organised is the core tension Jack Stratten’s work addresses. As Head of Trends at Insider Trends, a London-based retail futures agency, he sits on top of a continuous research engine that tracks new store formats, brand experiences and commercial models in the cities where retail is evolving fastest. The agency’s client list spans Nike, LVMH, Ikea, Marks and Spencer, Jaguar Land Rover, Microsoft and Galeries Lafayette, and the work typically lands as a keynote, a boardroom session, a workshop, or a guided retail safari through live stores. The value to a leadership team is diagnostic as much as inspirational. Stratten is good at naming which shifts are real signals versus which are noise, which store formats actually drive commercial outcomes, and where omnichannel investment translates into loyalty rather than cost. RETHINK Retail named him one of its Top Retail Influencers in both 2023 and 2024, a practitioner-voted signal that buyers in the sector recognise his read on the category. What separates his sessions from a standard retail trends talk is the grounding. The examples are stores he has walked, brands his team has studied in depth, and commercial decisions he has watched play out, which makes the content usable inside a planning cycle rather than a year-end inspiration slot. Key speaking topics Retail trends and customer behaviour Omnichannel strategy Store of the future and new retail formats Customer experience in consumer brands Retail innovation and business model change Sustainability in retail and supply chain Direct to consumer and brand experience Ideal for Retail and consumer goods executive teams setting store, channel and format strategy. Heads of customer experience, digital and e-commerce aligning on a single commercial plan. Property, leasing and shopping centre leadership rethinking the role of physical space. Senior marketing and brand leaders in consumer categories adjacent to retail. Audience outcomes A clearer view of which retail shifts are material signals and which are surface noise. Concrete examples of store formats, brand experiences and omnichannel models that are working in 2025, with the commercial logic behind them. A shared vocabulary across store, digital, marketing and supply chain teams for the next planning cycle. Specific prompts for where to test, invest or pull back in the next 12 to 24 months. A sharper sense of how consumer brands and retailers are redefining the role of the store.

Why organisations work with Jacques Attali He built one of the institutions that defined the post-Cold War economic settlement. As founding president of the EBRD, he carries direct experience of structuring capital flows into a continent in political transition, the kind of frame few living economists can offer. A decade as special adviser to President Mitterrand and Sherpa for two G7 summits gives him an inside view of how heads of state actually make decisions under pressure, useful to any board navigating government exposure. His futures work, particularly A Brief History of the Future, sets out a coherent scenario framework (hyperempire, hyperconflict, hyperdemocracy) that boards can use as a long-range planning lens rather than as a single forecast. He has chaired two French government commissions on growth, one for Sarkozy and a positive economy report for Hollande, with proposals that fed directly into national reform agendas. The work is operational, not theoretical. Founder of Action Against Hunger, the EUREKA technology programme and Positive Planet. He has built and run institutions, not only written about them. Biography highlights Founding President, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 1991 to 1993. Special adviser to President Francois Mitterrand, 1981 to 1991; G7 Sherpa for the Paris (1982) and Arche de la Defense (1989) summits. Chair, Commission for the Liberation of French Growth (Sarkozy, 2007 to 2008); author of the Positive Economy report (Hollande, 2013). Author of more than 80 books, including Noise: The Political Economy of Music, A Brief History of the Future and Verbatim, in 22 languages. Founder of Action Against Hunger (1979), the EUREKA European technology programme (1984) and Positive Planet (1998). Named one of Foreign Policy magazine’s Top 100 Global Thinkers (2009); graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique, Sciences Po, the Ecole des Mines and ENA; doctorate in economics. Biography The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development opened its doors in London in April 1991 with a mandate no institution had attempted before: channel Western capital into countries leaving state socialism without recreating the conditions that had broken them. Jacques Attali designed it and ran it for its first two years. The institution is still operating, with more than seventy countries of operations and shareholders today, which is the most useful evidence of the architecture he chose. Before the EBRD, ten years inside the Elysee under Francois Mitterrand. Attali was special adviser to the president from 1981 to 1991, sat in the cabinet meetings and the bilateral meetings with foreign heads of state, and served as France’s Sherpa at the G7 summits in Paris in 1982 and at the Arche de la Defense in 1989. The work he has done since, two growth commissions for two French presidents and consulting with governments and large companies through Attali & Associates, is built on that operating exposure to how state and economy actually intersect. The intellectual output runs alongside. Eighty-plus books, translated into twenty-two languages, with Noise: The Political Economy of Music (1977) and A Brief History of the Future (2006) the most widely cited. The futures work matters commercially because it gives boards a framework. The hyperempire, hyperconflict and hyperdemocracy scenarios in A Brief History of the Future are now nearly twenty years old, which is the right test of long-range writing. The frame still holds against the geopolitics of the present decade. He has also built things outside government. Action Against Hunger (1979), still one of the major humanitarian organisations operating in famine zones. The EUREKA technology programme (1984), the European R&D collaboration that, among other outputs, produced the standards work behind the MP3 format. Positive Planet (1998), the microfinance non-profit now active across more than 80 countries. Foreign Policy magazine named him among its Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2009. Key speaking topics Geopolitical risk and the next world order The future of Europe and European competitiveness Long-range scenarios and strategic foresight Global economic transformation The future of finance and microfinance Positive economy and intergenerational responsibility Globalisation and its commercial consequences Ideal for Boards and executive committees of multinationals with material exposure to European and emerging-market policy shifts Chief strategy officers and corporate development teams working on long-range scenario planning Bank and asset management leadership groups exposed to sovereign and geopolitical risk Government and intergovernmental audiences working on growth, innovation and reform agendas Audience outcomes A longer historical frame for the current geopolitical realignment, anchored in firsthand experience of the post-1989 settlement. A working scenario lens, hyperempire, hyperconflict and hyperdemocracy, that senior teams can apply to their own strategy review. A sharper read on Europe’s commercial position relative to the US and China, from someone who has helped design European institutions. A serious account of how heads of state actually reach decisions, useful for executives operating across government interfaces.

Why organisations work with James Hardy He has run growth on both sides of the platform divide, leading EMEA for Alibaba and now global retail at Flutterwave, so he can argue marketplace strategy from inside the operating model, not from a consultancy slide. He co-founded Avenue51, the platform that won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in 2020 and The Guardian Start Up of the Year in 2016, which gives him founder credibility on selling Western brands into China. He frames e-commerce as ecosystem competition, not site optimisation, which reframes how boards think about platform dependency, payments infrastructure and customer data. He is one of the very few speakers who can speak with operator authority on Africa as a commercial market, via Flutterwave’s role as the continent’s largest fintech. Biography highlights Head of Global Retail & Market Development at Flutterwave, Africa’s largest fintech. Former Head of Europe, Middle East and Africa at Alibaba.com. Co-founder of Avenue51, the UK platform that helped Western brands enter China. Avenue51 won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise, International Trade, in 2020 and The Guardian Small Business Showcase Start Up of the Year in 2016. Named in the Financial Times Leap 100. MBA, Melbourne Business School; earlier career as a solicitor at Mishcon de Reya and Travers Smith, then General Counsel at Next 15, Bite Communications and Text 100. Biography Alibaba and Amazon are not the same business and never have been. One is a vertical operator that buys, stocks and ships. The other is a payments-and-data ecosystem that lets merchants sell. Hardy ran EMEA for Alibaba, and the distinction shapes how he advises Western brands on international growth. Before Alibaba, he co-founded Avenue51, the UK platform that helped European brands build market share in China through Tmall and the Alibaba marketplaces. Avenue51 won The Guardian Small Business Showcase Start Up of the Year in 2016, and the Queen’s Award for Enterprise, International Trade, in 2020. His Financial Times Leap 100 listing came out of that period. He now runs global retail and market development at Flutterwave, Africa’s largest fintech, which gives him a live operator’s view of where commerce, payments and platform competition are heading next. That perspective is rare on the speaker circuit. Most e-commerce speakers come from one platform, one geography, or one consultancy lens. Hardy has been an operator inside Alibaba, a founder selling Western brands into China, and is now building consumer and SME revenue across Africa. His earlier career was legal, with stints as a solicitor at Mishcon de Reya and Travers Smith and General Counsel roles at Next 15, Bite Communications and Text 100. That background shows up in how he handles questions on platform terms, data sovereignty and the contractual asymmetry between brands and marketplaces. Key speaking topics International e-commerce and retail globalisation Alibaba and Amazon: comparative platform strategy Marketplace and ecosystem business models China market entry for Western brands African commerce and fintech infrastructure Data-driven decision-making in commercial strategy Corporate innovation and startup operating models Ideal for CCOs, CMOs and heads of ecommerce planning for international or marketplace expansion Boards weighing platform dependency, marketplace risk and channel strategy Brand and retail leadership teams entering China, the Gulf or Africa Corporate innovation leads to working on ecosystem and platform plays Audience outcomes A clearer view of where Alibaba and Amazon are genuinely different, and what that means for marketplace strategy A working model for assessing platform dependency as a board-level risk Operator-level perspective on entering China and African markets without ceding the customer relationship Sharper questions for the leadership team on payments, data and ecosystem economics

Why organisations work with James Lyne He runs the world’s most respected cybersecurity training and research institution, so the material he brings into a boardroom reflects what SANS instructors and researchers are seeing in live incidents, not a curated deck of last year’s case studies. Twenty years of frontline work across red teaming, malware reverse engineering, incident response and intelligence support. He speaks to boards, regulators and technical teams in the same briefing and holds credibility with all three. Live demonstration is his signature. He hacks IoT devices, runs social engineering against willing volunteers and walks audiences through real ransomware. Leaders leave with a felt sense of the risk, not a slide on it. Founder of CyberStart, which put 400,000-plus students through hands-on cyber challenges before closing after nine years. That gives him a specific, tested view on the talent gap most organisations are trying to solve. TED main-stage, NBC Nightly News, BBC, CNN, Bill Maher, John Oliver. The booking converts into a communications asset as well as a keynote. Biography highlights Chief Executive Officer, SANS Institute, appointed from the Office of the CEO after years of strategic and operational leadership inside the organisation. Certified SANS Instructor specialising in offensive operations, with more than two decades in cybersecurity across offensive, defensive and forensic work. Former Global Head of Security Research at Sophos, where he led public threat research and commentary via the Naked Security platform. Founder of CyberStart, a gamified cyber skills programme that ran nine years and engaged over 400,000 students in more than 200 hands-on challenges. TED main-stage speaker on everyday cybercrime, plus TEDx talks including Hacking With Words and Smiles. Recipient of the SANS Difference Makers Award for contribution to the UK cybersecurity community. Media regular across NBC Nightly News, CNN, BBC News, Real Time with Bill Maher and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Biography Most cybersecurity briefings for senior audiences fail in the same way. They are either too abstract to act on, or too technical to follow. Lyne built his career working the gap between those two failure modes, first as Global Head of Security Research at Sophos, then as a long-standing Certified Instructor at SANS Institute, and now as its Chief Executive Officer. Twenty years on the frontline shapes the material. He has reverse engineered malware, red teamed high-security organisations, supported intelligence efforts against adversaries and sat inside the response to major breaches. That work is the reason his keynotes do not rely on slides. He demonstrates. Hacking an IoT device on stage, walking a room through a live phishing capture, pulling apart a ransomware sample in real time. The threat stops being theoretical. Lyne’s argument as CEO of SANS is that human expertise, curious and mission-driven, is the decisive advantage in cybersecurity, including against AI-enabled attackers. That belief sits behind CyberStart, the gamified cyber skills programme he founded, which ran for nine years and pulled over 400,000 students through hands-on challenges in cryptography, forensics and ethical hacking. It is also why leadership teams book him when they want their people to leave a session with a sharper instinct, not a longer reading list. The media footprint reinforces rather than replaces the substance. TED main-stage on everyday cybercrime, appearances on NBC Nightly News, CNN, BBC, Bill Maher and John Oliver, and a SANS Difference Makers Award for his contribution to the UK cyber community. Boards get a speaker who can hold a technical room and translate for a non-technical one in the same afternoon. Key speaking topics Cybersecurity as a board-level risk AI-enabled threats and the future of cyber defence Ransomware economics and incident response Social engineering and the human attack surface Internet of Things and connected device risk The cyber skills gap and building security talent Threat intelligence and the live threat landscape Ideal for Boards, CEOs and audit committees setting cyber risk appetite and oversight CISOs, CIOs and CTOs briefing executive teams on threat and resilience posture Financial services, critical infrastructure and regulated industries with concentrated cyber exposure Leadership summits, customer events and partner conferences where a live demonstration reframes the conversation Audience outcomes A concrete, demonstrated view of how modern attackers actually operate, from ransomware crews to social engineers A clearer sense of where AI is shifting the economics of both attack and defence Named examples of IoT, identity and supply chain vulnerabilities that map onto the audience’s own environment A shared language for boards and technical teams to talk about cyber risk without talking past each other A sharper read on where cyber talent and training investment actually move the needle

Why organisations work with James Woudhuysen He treats forecasting as a discipline, not a performance. His work is built on decades of market intelligence at Philips and Seymour Powell, which gives his calls on technology and consumer behaviour a base of operating evidence rather than commentary. He argues against received wisdom on energy, climate and innovation in print, repeatedly. For boards reviewing capital allocation in those areas, that contrarian record is the value, not a stylistic feature. He covers innovation across energy, IT, construction, transport and the office in a single frame. That breadth lets him explain why an emerging technology will or will not change a sector, drawing on adjacent precedents most specialists miss. He writes and lectures with named sources and statistics, not slogans. The work is closer to a serious editorial brief than to a futures keynote, and it stands up to scrutiny in a room of operators. Biography highlights Visiting Professor of Forecasting and Innovation, London South Bank University Co-author, Energise! A Future for Energy Innovation (Beautiful Books, 2009) with Joe Kaplinsky Co-author, Why is Construction so Backward? (Wiley-Academy, 2004) with Ian Abley Co-author, Big Potatoes: The London Manifesto for Innovation (Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press, 2012) Former Chief of Worldwide Market Intelligence, Philips Consumer Electronics; former Director, Seymour Powell Editor of Design magazine (1979 to 1982); co-founder of Blueprint; contributor to The Economist, The Times, The Independent, The Guardian and spiked Biography Most forecasts about technology repeat the dominant narrative back to the buyer. The harder, more useful question is which parts of the consensus are wrong, and where the capital and political assumptions behind it are about to break. That has been the working question across four decades of Woudhuysen’s career, from physics at Sussex to running worldwide market intelligence at Philips Consumer Electronics in the Netherlands. His chair at London South Bank University is in Forecasting and Innovation, and the topics he writes on cover energy systems, construction, IT, infrastructure and consumer technology in a single frame. Energise! A Future for Energy Innovation, co-authored with Joe Kaplinsky in 2009, argued that the response to climate change should be heavy investment in supply-side energy technology, not moralising about consumption. The argument set the template for his later commentary in spiked, The Economist and The Times. The corporate record matters because it grounds the work. Three years as Chief of Worldwide Market Intelligence at Philips, four years as a director at Seymour Powell, decades of consulting reports for clients including Amadeus, Brother UK and UK Trade and Investment. He edited Design magazine in the early 1980s and co-founded Blueprint. That combination of operating intelligence and sustained published commentary is what makes the forecasting calls credible. His co-authored manifesto Big Potatoes: The London Manifesto for Innovation was published in 2010 and republished by Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press in 2012, and his earlier book Why is Construction so Backward? remains a reference point in the industry’s productivity debate. The through-line across the work is a defence of ambitious innovation against what he sees as the cultural reasons organisations and governments hesitate to pursue it. Key speaking topics The future of energy and the limits of net zero policy Forecasting technology and consumer behaviour Innovation in construction, infrastructure and transport The economics and politics of climate policy The future of work and the office Globalisation, China and the geography of R&D Market intelligence and competitive foresight Ideal for Boards and executive committees reviewing long-range capital allocation in energy, infrastructure or industrial technology Chief Strategy Officers and innovation leads briefing on technology cycles and emerging markets Senior teams in construction, manufacturing and consumer technology rethinking their productivity assumptions Investor and analyst forums looking for a contrarian read on energy transition and innovation policy Audience outcomes A clearer sense of which technology and energy forecasts the audience should trust and which it should challenge A working framework for telling structural change from cyclical noise across sectors A concrete account of why innovation slows in mature sectors and what unblocks it Named arguments and data the audience can take into their own strategy and capital decisions

Why organisations work with Jamie Bartlett He has spent more than a decade inside the parts of the internet that boards now worry about: dark net markets, crypto fraud, online radicalisation, generative AI manipulation. The reporting is first-hand, not desk-based. He built and ran the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos, giving him a rare combination of investigative journalism and large-scale data work on online behaviour. The People Vs Tech won the 2019 Transmission Prize and set out a specific argument about how digital systems destabilise democratic institutions, an argument that now reads as a forecast of the AI-and-elections debate. The Missing Cryptoqueen is one of the most successful financial-crime podcasts ever made; he can talk about crypto fraud and influence operations from inside the case file, not from a slide deck. He is comfortable in front of regulators, insurers and corporate boards, having spoken at the ABI Annual Conference and worked with governments on online harms and disinformation policy. Biography highlights Founder and former Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at the think tank Demos. Author of The Dark Net, Radicals Chasing Utopia, The People Vs Tech and The Missing Cryptoqueen, published by Penguin Random House and Hachette. Winner of the 2019 Transmission Prize and longlisted for the 2019 Orwell Prize for Political Writing for The People Vs Tech. Presenter of the BBC Two documentary The Secrets of Silicon Valley and the BBC podcast series The Missing Cryptoqueen and Believe in Magic. TED speaker; “How the mysterious dark net is going mainstream” has been viewed several million times. Technology contributor to The Telegraph, The Spectator, the New York Times, The Times, the Guardian, Foreign Policy and Prospect; writes the Substack newsletter How to Survive the Internet. Biography The OneCoin fraud took roughly four billion dollars from ordinary investors before its founder, Ruja Ignatova, vanished. Jamie Bartlett spent two years inside that story for the BBC, and the podcast he co-wrote and presented, The Missing Cryptoqueen, became one of the most-downloaded financial-crime investigations the BBC has ever produced. It is the clearest example of his method: long, embedded reporting inside the parts of the digital economy that institutions struggle to see clearly. That method runs through four books. The Dark Net mapped the subcultures, markets and ideologies operating below the public internet. Radicals Chasing Utopia tracked fringe political movements that have since shaped mainstream politics. The People Vs Tech, which won the 2019 Transmission Prize, argued that digital platforms were quietly hollowing out the conditions democracy needs to function. Boards reading it in 2018 found it provocative. Boards reading it now read it as a forecast. The analytical foundation came earlier, at Demos. Bartlett founded and led the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media for around a decade, combining investigative reporting with large-scale data work on online extremism, political movements and information operations. That work fed into BBC Two’s The Secrets of Silicon Valley and into regular contributions to the New York Times, The Times, the Guardian, Foreign Policy and Prospect. His current focus is the generative AI cycle and what it does to fraud, trust and democratic infrastructure. He writes the Substack How to Survive the Internet, speaks to insurers, regulators and corporates on digital risk, and has appeared at venues including the Association of British Insurers Annual Conference. The brief he answers most cleanly: help senior leaders see what is actually happening online, not what their dashboards say is happening. Key speaking topics Generative AI, democracy and corporate trust Online fraud, crypto scams and financial crime Disinformation, influence operations and information integrity Dark net markets and digital underworld economies Technology, regulation and the future of online harms Political radicalisation and digital subcultures Ideal for Boards, audit committees and risk committees grappling with AI, fraud and digital trust as governance issues Insurers, banks and financial services firms exposed to crypto fraud, identity risk and information operations CISOs, Chief Risk Officers and Heads of Compliance briefing executive teams on the changing online threat landscape Government, regulatory and policy audiences shaping rules on AI, online harms and platform accountability Audience outcomes A clearer picture of how generative AI is changing fraud, influence and information integrity in practice, beyond the headline narrative. Specific case material on OneCoin, dark net markets and online radicalisation that leaders can use to brief their own teams. A sharper sense of where digital risk now sits inside corporate governance, not only inside IT. Confidence in talking about technology, democracy and trust without leaning on consultancy abstractions. A reading of where the next two years of regulatory and reputational pressure on technology are likely to land.

Why organisations work with Jamie Siminoff He has the full founder arc on the record: invented a product category in a garage, pitched it on national television and walked out without a deal, rebuilt from near-bankruptcy, and sold to Amazon for about 1 billion dollars. He has run the acquired business inside Big Tech, giving buyers a rare view of what integration, reporting lines, and product autonomy look like after a landmark exit. He has repeated the cycle: founded Honest Day’s Work, sold it to Latch Inc., took the CEO seat at the acquirer, then returned to Amazon as a VP running Ring and adjacent smart home units. Most speakers have one exit story; he has a sequence. The Shark Tank rejection is specific and documented, which makes the resilience material credible rather than motivational. It is cited by the Sharks themselves as one of the biggest misses in the show’s history. He co-authored “Ding Dong: How Ring Went From Shark Tank Reject to Everyone’s Front Door” with Andrew Postman, published in November 2025, which gives buyers a named, durable reference point for the material. Biography highlights Founder and original CEO of Ring, acquired by Amazon in 2018 for approximately 1 billion dollars. Pitched DoorBot on ABC’s Shark Tank in 2013 and left without a deal; returned to the show as a guest Shark in 2018. Earlier founder of PhoneTag, the first voicemail to text service, and Unsubscribe.com, both acquired. Founder of Honest Day’s Work, acquired by Latch Inc. in 2023; subsequently appointed CEO of Latch. Rejoined Amazon in 2025 as Vice President running Ring and related smart home businesses, leading a pivot to AI. Babson College, Class of 1999, and Honorary Doctor of Laws from Babson in 2021, where he delivered the undergraduate commencement address. Co-author with Andrew Postman of “Ding Dong: How Ring Went From Shark Tank Reject to Everyone’s Front Door,” published November 2025. Biography Ring began as DoorBot, a Wi-Fi video doorbell built in a garage in 2011. By 2013 it was on Shark Tank, where every investor passed. The company was close to running out of money. Seven years later, Amazon bought it for roughly 1 billion dollars. That arc is the material Siminoff brings to the stage, and he brings it with the receipts. The more useful part of the story for serious operators is what happened between the rejection and the exit. Siminoff rebuilt the product and the brand, raised from Kleiner Perkins, Qualcomm Ventures, Goldman Sachs, DFJ Growth and Sir Richard Branson, and built Ring into a category defining consumer technology business. After the Amazon acquisition he stayed inside the company for five years, running Ring alongside Blink, Amazon Key and adjacent smart home lines. Most founder talks stop at the exit. His continues through integration. He has since extended the pattern. He founded Honest Day’s Work, sold it to Latch Inc. in 2023, stepped in as Latch’s CEO, and in 2025 rejoined Amazon as a Vice President running Ring and nearby smart home units, now pivoting the category toward AI. In November 2025 he published “Ding Dong” with Andrew Postman, the first full account of how Ring actually got built. A Babson graduate and Honorary Doctor of Laws from the same institution, he is one of a small group of founders who can speak to rejection, category creation, acquisition, and re-entry as connected stages of one working life. Key speaking topics Consumer technology product invention and category creation Scaling from prototype to acquisition Founder resilience through investor rejection Operating an acquired business inside Big Tech Smart home, connected devices, and AI in consumer hardware Brand building in hardware startups Hiring and team building in early stage companies Ideal for Founders, CEOs and product leaders in consumer technology and connected hardware Corporate innovation, strategy and M and A teams working on acquisition integration Investor audiences and startup ecosystems running portfolio or founder programmes Entrepreneurship centres and executive education audiences in business schools Audience outcomes A concrete, non-generic view of what it takes to get a hardware startup from prototype to billion-dollar exit. A working model for how to treat a high-profile rejection as distribution rather than a verdict. Specific insight into how an acquired category runs inside a company like Amazon, and what that means for teams going through similar integrations. A clear read on where consumer smart home and home security technology are heading as AI becomes the core layer of the product. Hiring and early team construction principles drawn from building Ring from a Craigslist hire list to a company sold for 1 billion dollars.

Why organisations work with Jason Bradbury Twelve years presenting The Gadget Show on Channel 5 trained him to make emerging technology legible to a general audience without diluting the substance. Boards get the same treatment. His 2026 keynote The AI Advantage introduces a “6 Degrees of AI” framework that maps AI impact across sectors, giving audiences a structured way to read their own industry rather than a generic overview. He completed MIT’s Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Business Strategy programme, anchoring the keynote content in a formal commercial-AI curriculum rather than vendor marketing. He combines keynote and host roles in the same booking. For technology summits and innovation days that need a credible anchor across the whole programme, this removes a casting decision. Biography highlights Presented Channel 5’s The Gadget Show from launch in 2004 to 2016, twelve years of prime-time technology broadcasting. Multiple Guinness World Records set on the programme, including fastest jet-powered street luge at 186.41 km/h. Author of the Dot Robot techno-thriller series for Penguin Random House: Dot Robot, Atomic Swarm, Cyber Gold. Completed MIT Sloan’s Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Business Strategy programme. Has sat on judging panels for the BAFTA Video Games Awards and the Media Guardian Innovation Awards. Keynote and hosting work with Vodafone, Samsung, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, Sony, Audi, BMW, BP, Disney, Porsche, Salesforce, Royal Caribbean and BT. Biography Twelve years on Channel 5’s The Gadget Show is, among other things, twelve years of explaining emerging technology to an audience that did not study engineering. Jason Bradbury presented the programme from its 2004 launch through 2016, by which point he had also set multiple Guinness World Records on air, the most cited being a jet-powered street luge clocked at 186.41 km/h on the show’s 200th episode. The broadcasting work sits alongside a second strand of authorship. The Dot Robot series for Penguin Random House (Dot Robot, Atomic Swarm, Cyber Gold) is technology fiction for younger readers, and the same instinct runs through his keynote work: take a complicated technical subject, find the human stakes, hold attention. The keynote material has tightened as AI has moved up the boardroom agenda. Bradbury completed MIT Sloan’s Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Business Strategy course, and his 2026 talk The AI Advantage introduces a “6 Degrees of AI” framework intended to give business audiences a structured way to read AI impact in their own sector rather than a generic horizon scan. He is most commonly booked by organisations that want a single credible figure to anchor a technology day, keynote on AI in the morning, host panels in the afternoon, hold the room. Clients across that work include Vodafone, Samsung, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, BMW, BP, Porsche, Disney and Salesforce. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence for business audiences Sector impact of generative AI Future of work and automation Emerging consumer technology Robotics and autonomous systems Innovation and product disruption Technology event hosting and moderation Ideal for Technology summits and innovation days that need a single anchor across keynote and host roles Sales kick-offs and customer conferences using AI as the headline theme Boards and executive offsites looking for an accessible read on AI sector impact Awards ceremonies and brand events with a technology adjacency Audience outcomes A working mental model of where AI is heading across the next decade, mapped to the audience’s own sector Sharper questions to ask vendors, internal teams and consultants about AI claims A concrete sense of which AI use cases are credible now versus speculative Reduced sense that AI is a single undifferentiated wave, replaced with a structured view of where it lands

Why organisations work with Javier Verdura He has shipped category-defining hardware, not slide decks. The Supercharger form, the Powerwall housing and the Solar Roof tile are his team’s work, manufactured globally. He is named inventor on more than 130 patents across surgical equipment, consumer products, packaging and energy hardware. The range is the point: the discipline travels across sectors. He operates inside one of the most demanding product environments in the world, reporting into a company that asks its teams to “fail fast” and still hit volume. Leaders hear how that actually runs day to day. He can speak to the handoff between design, engineering and manufacturing, which is where most product organisations lose time and money. His philosophy is explicit: if you can’t manufacture what you create, it is not worth designing. He brings a credible Latin American voice into rooms that rarely hear one at this level of product leadership, which matters for organisations building global teams. Biography highlights Global Director of Product Design at Tesla since 2012. Product design lead on the Tesla Supercharger network, Powerwall home battery and Solar Roof. Named inventor on more than 130 patents. Graduate of ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena (BS Product Design, 1991). Former VP of Industrial Design and Development at Product Ventures (Connecticut), where he spent roughly 15 years before Tesla. Has taught industrial design at Georgia Tech School of Design and Architecture and at Universidad de Monterrey (UDEM). Biography The Supercharger stall, the Powerwall on the garage wall, the Solar Roof tile that reads as a roof before it reads as a panel. All three had to look inevitable and be manufacturable at volume. Javier Verdura leads the team inside Tesla that does that work, and has since 2012. His route in was unusual. Tesla’s chief designer, Franz von Holzhausen, an ArtCenter classmate, called in 2012 and asked him to run product design. By then, Verdura had already spent a full career in industrial design consultancy: senior designer at Group 4 Design in Connecticut, design manager at Inno Design in Atlanta, then fifteen years as VP of design and development at Product Ventures, shipping surgical instruments, consumer goods and packaging for clients including Ingersoll-Rand, Kodak and Panasonic. The through-line is manufacturability. Verdura states his philosophy plainly: if you can’t make what you design, it isn’t worth designing. That discipline is what Tesla bought when it hired him, and it is the lens he brings to audiences wrestling with why their own product pipelines stall between concept and line. He holds more than 130 patents, a BS in Product Design from ArtCenter (1991), and teaching posts at Georgia Tech and Universidad de Monterrey. He is one of the most senior Mexican-born product leaders in the global technology sector, a fact that gives his accounts of working inside Tesla an additional resonance for organisations thinking about where their next generation of design and engineering talent comes from. Key speaking topics Product design leadership at scale Design-to-manufacture discipline Innovation inside Tesla: Supercharger, Powerwall, Solar Roof Electric vehicles and the energy transition Patent-driven product development Building global design and engineering teams Latin American talent in global technology Ideal for CEOs, CPOs and heads of R&D running product organisations where design, engineering and manufacturing have to meet on the same timeline. Boards and leadership teams in automotive, energy, consumer hardware and industrials benchmarking their innovation pipeline against Tesla’s. Design and engineering leadership summits that want an operator, not a theorist. Corporate events building Latino and Hispanic executive networks at a senior technical level. Audience outcomes A clear, first-hand account of how Tesla turns a pencil sketch into manufactured hardware at a global scale. The operating logic behind “fail fast” when the failures cost real capital, not slideware. A practical view of where most product organisations break between design, engineering and manufacturing, and where Tesla’s handoff is structured differently. Specific examples from the Supercharger, Powerwall and Solar Roof programmes, not generic innovation theory. A sharper sense of what a modern product leadership function has to look like to ship category-defining hardware.

Why organisations work with Jay Tuck He has reported on AI from inside the places it matters most: Ukrainian battlefields, US carrier decks, intelligence agencies, and the trading floors AI has effectively emptied. The talk lands as field reporting, not theory. His book Evolution ohne uns sold widely enough in Germany that the Bundeswehr bought 10,000 copies to put in front of its officers. The German defence establishment treats his framing as a serious internal reference, not bureau copy. He carries 35 years of ARD investigative reporting and a TEDxHamburgSalon talk past five million views. Audiences arrive already knowing the argument, which raises the floor on the room. He is fluent on AI risk in language that translates: what a generative model actually decides, where the human is no longer in the loop, and what a bank or hospital board can still control. Biography highlights 35 years at ARD German Television, including Executive Producer of the flagship nightly news programme ARD-Tagesthemen. Author of High-Tech Espionage (St. Martin’s Press), published in 14 countries. Author of Evolution ohne uns (Plassen Verlag), a German technology bestseller; the German Ministry of Defence acquired 10,000 copies for its armed forces. Author of KI und der moderne Krieg (Econ Verlag) on battlefield AI in the Ukraine war. War correspondent in Kuwait, Iraq, and Ukraine; embedded aboard USS Truman. TEDxHamburgSalon talk “Artificial Intelligence: It Will Kill Us” with more than five million views. Founder and CEO of Airtime Dubai Ltd, producing the technology magazine Understanding Tomorrow for Al-Jazeera Arabic. Biography The systems now embedded in military, financial, and clinical decisions are no longer fully legible to the people who own the risk. Code writes its own next version. Targets are nominated by software. Trades clear without a human in the chair. The question for any serious board is whether the governance model around these systems still matches what they actually do. Tuck reports on this gap from the inside. His investigative book High-Tech Espionage was published in fourteen countries by St. Martin’s Press. Evolution ohne uns became a sustained bestseller in Germany on Plassen Verlag, with the Federal Ministry of Defence acquiring ten thousand copies for distribution within the Bundeswehr. KI und der moderne Krieg documents how AI is being used and contested on the battlefield in Ukraine. The reporting sits on a long career in serious news. He spent 35 years inside ARD German Television, ending as Executive Producer of the flagship nightly programme ARD-Tagesthemen, with combat assignments across both Gulf Wars, Ukraine, and the carrier USS Truman. Bylines in Stern, Der Spiegel, Die Welt, Time, and Le Point. His TEDxHamburgSalon talk on AI risk has passed five million views. What he offers a room is the journalist’s job done well: specific cases, named systems, and a clear account of where human authority over machine decisions has already been ceded. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and national security AI in modern warfare Autonomous weapons and the human-in-the-loop question AI in financial markets and algorithmic trading AI in law enforcement and biometric forensics Cybersecurity and high-tech espionage AI in healthcare and clinical decision-making Ideal for Boards and audit committees stress-testing AI risk and oversight Defence, intelligence, and law enforcement leadership audiences CROs, CISOs, and heads of compliance in regulated industries Senior leadership offsites in financial services and healthcare are reckoning with model risk Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for how contemporary AI systems actually make decisions, and where human review has quietly dropped out. Named case studies from defence, finance, and law enforcement where the technology has already moved past existing governance. A sharper read on which AI risks belong on a board agenda and which sit lower in the organisation. A grounded view of the strategic stakes for Western institutions as adversary states deploy AI in conflict and intelligence.