Future of Technology speakers

Why organisations work with Nick Bostrom He authored Superintelligence, the text credited with bringing AI existential risk into mainstream policy, technology and boardroom discussion. The vocabulary leaders are now using to debate frontier AI traces back to this work. He led the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford for nineteen years, a research programme whose alumni now staff AI safety teams at the major frontier labs and policy units in Washington, London and Brussels. His simulation argument and work on anthropic reasoning have made him one of the few philosophers whose primary papers are read inside technical AI research, not just adjacent to it. Deep Utopia, his 2024 follow-up, addresses the strategic question most leadership teams have not yet started on: what an organisation is for in a world where AI systems can perform almost any cognitive task better than humans. He treats AI governance as a question about the shape of the future, not a compliance exercise, which is the register most senior leaders need but rarely get from technical or regulatory briefings. Biography highlights Founding Director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford, 2005 to 2024. Founder and Principal Researcher, Macrostrategy Research Initiative. Author of Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, New York Times bestseller, Oxford University Press. Author of Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World, Ideapress, 2024. Twice named on Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers. Recipient of the Eugene R. Gannon Award; ranked on Prospect magazine’s World Thinkers list as the highest-placed analytic philosopher. Biography Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies arrived in 2014 with a thesis few mainstream readers were ready for: that advanced AI systems would, on plausible development paths, present a control problem of civilisational importance. A decade later the book sits on the desks of frontier lab leadership, AI policy officials and the boards of companies whose products now depend on the technology it described. The work came out of the Future of Humanity Institute, which Bostrom founded at Oxford in 2005 and led until its closure in 2024. FHI built the early academic infrastructure for what is now a global field, training researchers who now sit inside OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepMind and the UK AI Safety Institute. His earlier paper on the simulation argument, published in The Philosophical Quarterly in 2003, became one of the few philosophical works to be taken seriously by technical AI researchers and physicists. His 2024 book, Deep Utopia, turns the lens around. The question is no longer whether humanity survives advanced AI, but what people and organisations do in a world where machines can perform almost any cognitive task. For executives whose strategic plans assume scarce human cognitive labour as their basic input, this is the next problem to think about, and very few credible voices have started. Bostrom is now Founder and Principal Researcher of the Macrostrategy Research Initiative, continuing the long-range work on technology, governance and the human future that began at Oxford. Foreign Policy has twice named him among its Top 100 Global Thinkers; Prospect ranked him as the highest-placed analytic philosopher on its World Thinkers list. Key speaking topics Frontier AI and existential risk AI governance and alignment under uncertainty Long-range technology strategy The simulation argument and the limits of knowledge Post-AGI economics and the meaning problem Anthropic reasoning and decision-making under deep uncertainty The future of human enhancement Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting AI strategy and risk posture for the next decade Heads of state, regulators and policy units shaping national AI governance Frontier technology leadership and corporate venture teams Investor and asset-allocator audiences thinking about exposure to AI-driven structural change Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for talking about AI risk, capability and alignment with the same precision used inside frontier labs A clearer view of which AI governance questions are tractable now and which require long-range thinking A grounded sense of how to plan for a post-instrumental economy where human cognitive labour is no longer the scarce input Recognition of how anthropic reasoning and scenario thinking apply to corporate decisions under deep uncertainty Familiarity with the arguments shaping how regulators, AI labs and national security communities are now framing frontier AI

Why organisations work with Nick Brackenbury A working answer to the visibility problem in physical retail. NearSt connects to point-of-sale systems and surfaces live in-store stock inside the platforms where shoppers already search, including Google and Facebook. Operating scale to back the argument. NearSt’s technology integrates with over 130 stock management systems and reaches over 800,000 retail locations globally, with Google as a named platform partner. Investor and partner credibility from inside retail and tech. Backers include Grosvenor Group, YYX Capital, Will Hobhouse of Heal’s and Jack Wills, and senior engineers from DeepMind and Google Research. A concrete view on where the high street competes and where it loses. Useful for retailers, landlords, and brands deciding how much to spend on stores versus marketplaces. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of NearSt, founded 2015, headquartered in London. Named platform partnership with Google connecting in-store inventory into Search and Maps. Total funding of approximately five million pounds across two rounds, led by YYX Capital and joined by Grosvenor Group, True Global, and Moscar Capital. Former Account Director at Ogilvy, working on Jaguar Land Rover, Nestle, and BP’s London 2012 Olympic sponsorship. Speaking platforms include RetailWeek Live, Wired Retail, eCommerce Expo, the British Retail Consortium, and Accenture events. Awards include RetailEXPO Innovation Award 2019, Get in the Ring Western Europe, RetailWeek Startup of the Week, and a London Book Fair Innovation Award. Biography A shopper looking for a specific product in 2026 starts in the same place: a search bar. The shop five minutes away has the item on the shelf. The shopper does not know that, so the order goes to a warehouse. NearSt was built to close that gap, by piping live in-store inventory directly into Google Search, Google Maps, and other consumer platforms. The company was co-founded in 2015 by Nick Brackenbury and Max Kreijn, both former Ogilvy account leads. Brackenbury was one of the agency’s youngest account directors, working across digital programmes for Jaguar Land Rover, Nestle, and BP’s London 2012 Olympic Games sponsorship. NearSt began as a same-hour delivery platform for London high street shops and pivoted into the infrastructure layer beneath the search engines themselves. That pivot is the substance of the speaking material. NearSt’s technology now plugs into more than 130 stock management systems and reaches over 800,000 retail locations globally. Investors include Grosvenor Group, YYX Capital, True Global, and Moscar Capital, alongside angels from Heal’s, Jack Wills, DeepMind, and Google Research. Awards from RetailEXPO, RetailWeek, Get in the Ring, and the London Book Fair sit on top of that operating record. For senior retail and brand audiences, the value is a working commercial argument. Physical stores hold inventory that online retailers cannot match for speed of fulfilment or sustainability of footprint. The constraint has been discoverability, not stock. Brackenbury talks about that constraint from inside the system that is removing it. Key speaking topics The future of high street retail Local commerce and in-store inventory visibility Customer experience in physical retail Retail technology and platform partnerships Entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership Pivoting a business model under pressure Ideal for Retail leadership audiences: CEOs, CMOs, and heads of stores at multi-site retailers and brands. Property and landlord audiences with high street and shopping centre exposure. Marketing and customer experience leaders weighing physical store investment against marketplace spend. Entrepreneurship and scale-up audiences interested in pivoting from B2C to platform infrastructure. Audience outcomes A clearer view of why local stock is the most under-used competitive asset in physical retail. Specific examples of how integrating store inventory with Google and Facebook changes footfall and conversion. A founder’s account of pivoting from a consumer-facing app to an infrastructure business, with the commercial reasoning. A working framework for evaluating retail technology investments against measurable in-store outcomes.

Why organisations work with Nick Clegg He has sat on both sides of the table that defines tech policy: as the head of global affairs at Meta facing regulators, and as a head-of-government negotiator setting policy for a G7 economy. His 2025 book How to Save the Internet lays out a specific argument about how democracies, Silicon Valley and authoritarian states are pulling the internet apart, and what a workable settlement would look like. Boards get the thesis and the evidence behind it. He can map how Brussels, Washington and Beijing actually behave on AI and platform rules from direct experience of all three, not from secondary commentary. His coalition government experience gives him a working language for decision-making when no single party controls the outcome, which is the practical condition most boards now face on tech policy. Biography highlights Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 2010 to 2015, in Britain’s first post-war coalition government. Leader of the Liberal Democrats, 2007 to 2015; Member of Parliament for Sheffield Hallam, 2005 to 2017. President for Global Affairs at Meta Platforms, 2018 to January 2025, leading the company’s policy and regulatory engagement worldwide. Author of How to Save the Internet (Bodley Head/Penguin, 2025), Politics: Between the Extremes (2016), How to Stop Brexit (2017), and The Responsibilities of Democracy (2019, with Sir John Major). Member of the European Parliament for the East Midlands, 1999 to 2004; earlier career at the European Commission. Knighted in 2018; recipient of the Financial Times David Thomas Prize, 1993. Biography The most consequential rules now shaping AI, data and the global internet are being written by a small number of governments that no longer agree with each other. Nick Clegg has worked at the centre of that argument from both sides. As Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2015, he helped run a coalition government through the eurozone crisis. As President of Global Affairs at Meta from 2018 to early 2025, he led the company’s policy engagement with the US, EU, UK, India and beyond. Few people have moved between those two seats. The combination matters because tech policy is no longer a niche regulatory file. It is a board-level question of capital allocation, market access and operational risk. Clegg’s value to a senior audience is that he understands how the political logic of Brussels, the commercial logic of Silicon Valley and the strategic logic of Washington and Beijing actually collide. His 2025 book How to Save the Internet, published by The Bodley Head, sets out the argument in full. He proposes a “digital democracies alliance” to prevent the global internet fragmenting into incompatible national systems, and he is candid about where Big Tech, including his former employer, has misread the public mood. Earlier books, including Politics: Between the Extremes and The Responsibilities of Democracy with Sir John Major, focus on coalition, compromise and democratic resilience under stress. The throughline is governance under conditions where no one is fully in charge. That is the working environment for any senior leader trying to plan around AI rules, content liability, data flows and the geopolitics of semiconductors. Clegg has been in the room when those decisions were taken, on both sides of the regulator and the platform. Key speaking topics AI policy and regulation across the US, EU and UK The geopolitics of the global internet Big Tech, content moderation and platform governance Coalition government and political decision-making under uncertainty Democratic resilience in the age of social media and AI UK and EU relations after Brexit Trust, public discourse and the future of democratic institutions Ideal for Boards and executive teams of companies materially exposed to AI, data, content or platform regulation General Counsel, Chief Policy Officers and Heads of Government Affairs in multinationals CEO and CTO audiences planning AI deployment under divergent regulatory regimes Senior public sector and policy audiences working on tech, digital and AI strategy Audience outcomes A clearer read of where AI and platform regulation is heading in the EU, US and UK over the next planning cycle A working framework for how Silicon Valley, Washington, Brussels and Beijing each think about the internet, and where their positions are converging or diverging An informed view of the argument in How to Save the Internet, including the case for a digital democracies alliance A grounded sense of how senior decisions get made inside coalition governments and inside large global platforms, from someone who has done both

Why organisations work with Nikolas Badminton He brings a published, named foresight methodology to the room. The Positive Dystopia Canvas, set out in Facing Our Futures, is a structured tool for stress-testing strategy against scenarios leaders would rather not entertain. He has worked the discipline at scale, with leadership teams at NASA, JP Morgan, Disney, Rolls Royce, the United Nations, and the UK Home Office. The methods on stage have been tested in serious rooms first. He bridges AI capability and strategic foresight in a way few speakers can. Most AI speakers stop at adoption. Most foresight speakers treat AI as one signal among many. Badminton treats AI as the variable that breaks existing planning horizons, and shows leaders how to plan accordingly. He served as a key advisor to The Age of A.I. documentary series with Robert Downey Jr., and his work is regularly cited by the BBC, The Atlantic, Forbes, and Fast Company. The audience tends to recognise him before he is introduced. Biography highlights Chief Futurist at Futurist.com, the international strategic foresight consultancy founded by Glen Hiemstra in 1993. Author of Facing Our Futures (Bloomsbury Business, 2023), JP Morgan Private Bank’s Next Gen Pick on its Summer Reading List and a Top-50 Business Book of 2023 by The Next Big Idea Club. Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) and a member of Chatham House. Advisor to The Age of A.I. documentary series with Robert Downey Jr. Research cited by the BBC, VICE, The Atlantic, Fast Company, Business Insider, Forbes, and Sunday Telegraph. Engagements with NASA, the United Nations, Google, Microsoft, JP Morgan, Disney, Rolls Royce, Procter & Gamble, the US Department of State, and the UK Home Office. Biography Most organisations cannot describe the future they are planning toward. They have a five-year strategy and a quarterly forecast, with very little real method in between. This gap is where Nikolas Badminton works. As Chief Futurist at Futurist.com, the strategic foresight consultancy founded by Glen Hiemstra in 1993, he advises executives and government leaders on how to build anticipatory capability into how they plan. His method is set out in Facing Our Futures (Bloomsbury Business, 2023). The book gives executives the Positive Dystopia Canvas, a structured tool for stress-testing strategy against scenarios leaders would rather not entertain. JP Morgan Private Bank named it a Next Gen Pick for its Summer Reading List, and The Next Big Idea Club listed it among the Top-50 Business Books of 2023. The client list reflects the demand for that work. NASA, Disney, JP Morgan, Microsoft, Rolls Royce, the United Nations, the US Department of State, and the UK Home Office have used Badminton’s foresight work to inform planning that runs longer than the political or quarterly cycle. A Fellow of the RSA and a member of Chatham House, he served as a key advisor to The Age of A.I. documentary series with Robert Downey Jr., and his research is cited by the BBC, The Atlantic, Forbes, and Fast Company. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and futures design Artificial intelligence in the enterprise Anticipatory governance and long-range planning Innovation under disruption Energy transition and the future of resources Geopolitical scenarios and technology futures Ideal for CEOs and CSOs building foresight capability inside annual planning cycles. Boards and executive committees stress-testing strategy against long-range scenarios. Innovation, transformation, and R&D leaders responsible for moving beyond pilot stage on AI. Public-sector leaders and policymakers designing decisions with consequences beyond the political cycle. Audience outcomes A working understanding of the Positive Dystopia Canvas and how to apply it to current strategic decisions. Specific signals and scenarios in AI, energy, and geopolitics mapped onto the organisation’s actual planning horizon. The language to make the case for foresight capability inside a strategy function built around quarterly forecasting. Confidence to extend the planning conversation past 18 months without it becoming abstract or speculative.

Why organisations work with Nina Schick She published the first book on generative AI in 2020, years before the technology entered the boardroom conversation, which means her current strategic claims sit on a public track record rather than a recent pivot. She is one of very few commercial speakers who has briefed both a sitting US President and a former NATO Secretary General on AI and statecraft, giving senior audiences direct access to the language used at the top of Western policymaking. Her “Industrial Intelligence” thesis reframes AI from a software adoption question into an infrastructure and energy question, which is the conversation CFOs, infrastructure heads, and strategy teams now need but rarely get from a generalist AI speaker. Through Tamang Ventures she holds active advisory roles with frontier firms including Synthesia, valued at $4 billion in its January 2026 Series E led by Google Ventures, alongside Qlik and Truepic, so she speaks from inside the capital and product decisions she describes, not from the outside. Biography highlights Author, Deepfakes: The Coming Infocalypse (Hachette/Twelve, 2020), translated into multiple languages and widely cited as the first book on AI-generated content Briefed US President Joe Biden and advised former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen as Director of Rasmussen Global Worked on Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 presidential campaign and advised on the Democracy Perception Index, the largest annual study on global attitudes toward democracy Founder of Tamang Ventures; advisor to Synthesia (valued at $4B in its January 2026 Series E), founding AI Council member at Qlik, advisor to Truepic Strategic analyst contributor across CNN, Bloomberg, and Sky News during a decade of European political crises including Brexit and the war in Ukraine Half-Nepalese and half-German, with degrees from the University of Cambridge and University College London; now based in the United States after a decade inside UK and EU policy Biography The race to dominate artificial intelligence is no longer a software race. It is a contest over fabs, energy, compute, and the sovereign infrastructure that will determine which states and which companies hold the next decade of pricing power. That argument, which Nina Schick calls Industrial Intelligence, sits at the centre of her current work with governments, defence institutions, and frontier AI companies. She arrived at it earlier than most. Her 2020 book Deepfakes: The Coming Infocalypse, published by Hachette imprint Twelve, was among the first to describe the geopolitical and informational consequences of generative AI, written before ChatGPT existed as a public product. It introduced the concept of the Infocalypse and is cited as foundational reading in national security and policy circles. That early thesis is grounded in a long career inside European policymaking. As Director of Rasmussen Global, she advised Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former NATO Secretary General, on political risk and the technological evolution of warfare. She worked on Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 presidential campaign and advised on the Democracy Perception Index, the largest annual machine-learning study on global attitudes toward democracy. She has briefed US President Joe Biden on AI, technological integrity, and statecraft, and works with the US Army, the United Nations, and Mastercard on AI and sovereignty. For seven years she also served as a strategic analyst contributor across CNN, Bloomberg, and Sky News during the Brexit, Trump, and Ukraine cycles. Through Tamang Ventures, the advisory firm she founded, she now sits inside the companies building the new stack: Synthesia in enterprise AI video, valued at $4 billion in its January 2026 Series E led by Google Ventures, Qlik in data analytics where she is a founding AI Council member, and Truepic in digital provenance. Now based in the United States, she works with the institutions and capital allocators that will shape what the AI infrastructure stack looks like at the end of this decade. The combination of policy access, commercial proximity, and a public thesis published five years before the market caught up is what makes her useful in a boardroom. Key speaking topics Industrial Intelligence and the AI infrastructure stack Generative AI and corporate strategy AI, semiconductors, and the US-China technology competition AI and energy demand Deepfakes, synthetic media, and information integrity AI in defence, NATO, and statecraft Sovereign AI and the future of national power Ideal for Boards, CEOs, and strategy heads recalibrating long-range AI investment around infrastructure rather than tooling CIOs, CTOs, and chief data officers needing a geopolitical lens on supply, partnerships, and dependency risk Defence, security, and public sector audiences working on AI policy, sovereignty, and statecraft Investor and capital allocator audiences pricing AI exposure across compute, energy, and software layers Audience outcomes A clear thesis about why AI is an infrastructure and energy contest, not only a software adoption question A working frame for assessing corporate exposure to compute, semiconductor, and energy supply constraints Specific examples of how policy, defence, and frontier AI companies are already operating inside the Industrial Intelligence framework Sharper questions to take into the next strategy review on AI, sovereignty, and dependency risk A grounded view of where deepfakes and synthetic media now sit in the corporate and political risk picture

Why organisations work with Nora AlMatrooshi She graduated from NASA’s 2021 astronaut candidate programme alongside ten American candidates chosen from more than 12,000 applicants, as the only non-NASA astronaut in her class and the first Arab woman in the programme’s history. That credential is not replicable. Her career connects two sectors that rarely share a vantage point: hydrocarbon infrastructure (projects for ADNOC and Saudi Aramco) and advanced space operations. Audiences in GCC energy, government, and technology sectors get a perspective that spans the full range of UAE industrial ambition. The UAE Astronaut Programme went from concept to operational in under a decade. AlMatrooshi went through the entire process, from open national selection through two years at Johnson Space Center, and can describe what selection rigour and institutional commitment actually produced. Selected from 4,305 applicants through a multi-phase evaluation built to international standards, she speaks from direct experience of what elite technical preparation demands of individuals and the organisations that develop them. Biography highlights First Arab woman to complete NASA’s astronaut candidate programme; graduated March 2024 at Johnson Space Center Selected from 4,305 applicants, UAE Astronaut Programme second batch (2021) Mechanical engineering graduate, UAE University; member, American Society of Mechanical Engineers Former piping engineer, National Petroleum Construction Company – projects for ADNOC and Saudi Aramco; later Technical Specialist at ADNOC First place in the UAE, 2011 International Mathematical Olympiad Gulf Business 100 Most Powerful Arabs, 2022, 2024, and 2025; Arabian Business 100 Most Inspiring Leaders 2024 (ranked sixth) Biography The UAE had no domestic astronauts in 2009. Ten years later, Hazzaa AlMansoori spent eight days aboard the International Space Station. In 2024, Nora AlMatrooshi became the first Arab woman to complete NASA’s full astronaut candidate programme, graduating alongside ten candidates selected from more than 12,000 American applicants. AlMatrooshi was chosen from 4,305 applicants in 2021. Over two years at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, her training spanned ISS operations, spacewalk preparation at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, robotics, T-38 jet proficiency, and Russian language. Survival training at Fort Novosel, Alabama was also required. In March 2024, she received her astronaut pin and qualified for future space mission assignments. Before the astronaut programme, she worked as a piping engineer at the National Petroleum Construction Company on projects for ADNOC and Saudi Aramco, and later as a Technical Specialist at ADNOC. She served as Vice President of NPCC’s Youth Council for three consecutive terms. Her academic record includes placing first in the UAE in the 2011 International Mathematical Olympiad. Gulf Business has included her in its 100 Most Powerful Arabs in 2022, 2024, and 2025. Arabian Business ranked her sixth in its 100 Most Inspiring Leaders in 2024. Her stated ambition is to land on the Moon aboard an Emirati spacecraft. Key speaking topics Human spaceflight preparation and operations National space programmes and strategic capability-building Engineering excellence in high-stakes environments STEM talent development and technical career pathways International collaboration in advanced science and technology Selection and readiness in elite technical environments Ideal for STEM, engineering, and advanced technology conferences Government and public sector leadership events focused on national innovation programmes Energy sector organisations, particularly those with ADNOC and Saudi Aramco connections or GCC operating context Youth, education, and talent development forums where firsthand accounts of competitive entry carry weight Audience outcomes A specific account of what elite technical selection actually looks like, from open national application to NASA programme graduation Understanding of how the UAE built operational space capability from scratch in under a decade Insight into the standards, preparation, and team discipline required in environments where errors are not recoverable A reference point for what STEM pipeline development produces at its most rigorous Perspective on the relationship between national ambition, institutional investment, and individual readiness

Why organisations work with Ola Ahlvarsson He has built, scaled, and exited businesses across two decades of European internet history, from Boxman in the late 1990s through Star Stable Entertainment and Epicenter, so his counsel on scale-up decisions is operating advice rather than commentary. He runs SIME, the Stockholm summit that has gathered C-level executives, founders, and investors annually since 1996, which gives boards a direct line into where Nordic and global tech is moving next. He co-founded Epicenter, a Nordic innovation hub now spanning Stockholm, Oslo, and Helsinki, with industry clusters in AI, longevity, food systems, and real estate, providing a current view of how corporates are partnering with startups. His advisory client list includes Google, Microsoft, Samsung, IBM, Ericsson, Telenor, and Schibsted, which signals comfort sitting with senior teams in regulated, large-cap environments. He works equally well as a keynote and as a moderator, which is rare; for boards designing high-stakes innovation summits, that dual capability is genuinely useful. Biography highlights Co-founder and former CEO of Result, the Stockholm-based business builder behind Spray, Spraydate, Sellbranch, and Keynote Media Group. Co-founder of Star Stable Entertainment, the Stockholm-based MMO studio behind one of Europe’s most successful children’s online games. Co-founder of Epicenter, the Nordic innovation hub operating across Stockholm, Oslo, and Helsinki. Curator and host of SIME, running since 1996 in Stockholm. Named «Top Ten Leading European Internet Entrepreneurs» by The Wall Street Journal in 1999 and a World Economic Forum Global Leader for Tomorrow. Author of Mission Possible (Midas, 2005), Silicon Valhalla (2016), Happy Business (Aniara), and Mindchange (Fritanke, 2024). Biography European internet history runs through a small group of operators who built it from the inside. Ola Ahlvarsson is one of them. From Boxman in the late 1990s to Star Stable Entertainment in 2010, he has co-founded more than twenty companies and watched several through to acquisition, including Spray to Snowfall and Spraydate to Match.com. Result, the Stockholm builder he co-founded in 1999 and led as CEO until 2008, was the engine behind much of that portfolio. Through it, and later through Keynote Media Group, he assembled a working knowledge of what scale, exit timing, and corporate partnership actually require. The Wall Street Journal named him among Europe’s top ten internet entrepreneurs the year Result launched. In 2014 he co-founded Epicenter, now a Nordic innovation hub with sites in Stockholm, Oslo, and Helsinki and clusters in AI, longevity, sustainable food systems, and real estate. He also curates and hosts SIME, the digital business summit he has run in Stockholm since 1996, which gives him a continuous view of how the industry’s centre of gravity moves. His written work brings a softer edge to the operator profile. Mindchange (2024) draws on his career and his parallel life as a karate and kickboxing competitor to argue that emotional control is a strategic asset for senior leaders. He has presented at the World Economic Forum, DLD Munich, World Knowledge Forum in Seoul, and Le Web in Paris, and advised Google, Microsoft, Samsung, IBM, Ericsson, Telenor, and Schibsted. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership Digital transformation Innovation and corporate venturing Future of technology Business model innovation Self-leadership and performance under pressure Nordic and European tech ecosystems Ideal for Boards and CEOs designing innovation strategy or new venture units Chief Innovation, Chief Strategy, and Chief Digital Officers leading scale-up partnerships with startups Executive teams running annual summits or leadership offsites that need a substantive moderator as well as a keynote Audience outcomes A working understanding of how serial founders judge timing, capital, and exit, drawn from twenty-plus years of operating decisions. A current read on the Nordic and European tech landscape, including how innovation hubs and corporates are partnering today. Practical handles for installing founder-style decision-making inside a corporate operating model. A perspective on emotional control and self-leadership that connects athletic discipline to executive performance.

Why organisations work with Oliver Leisse A live trend-research operation behind every keynote. SEE MORE runs ethnographic fieldwork across more than 50 global cities, so the material is observed evidence, not desk-research speculation. A specific point of view on the AI agent shift. His 2024 book “The Age of Agents” with Tim Cortinovis sets out what changes when software stops waiting for prompts and starts acting on goals. A named framework leadership teams can use after the room empties. The Four Metatrends (Commitment, Convenience, Creativity, Connection) and the Consumer Trend Circle give clients a reusable structure for trend triage. Two decades of strategy work for brands including Deutsche Bank, TUI, Henkel, Microsoft, Google, REWE and Deutsche Post. The frame of reference is commercial planning, not academic forecasting. Bilingual delivery in English and German for European audiences who want substance in either language. Biography highlights Founder of SEE MORE, Future Research and Development, Hamburg (2008). Founder of EARSandEYES GmbH (1997), an early online market and trend research institute. Former strategy consultant at DDB, TBWA, BBDO and Springer & Jacoby. Author of “Be prepared” (Haufe Verlag, 2012; 2nd ed. 2014), “So geht Zukunft” (Edel, 2020), “The Age of Agents” (2024), and “Die Zukunft der Gastro” (Deutscher Fachverlag, 2024). Named clients include Deutsche Bank, TUI, Henkel, Microsoft, Google, Deutsche Post, REWE, Burda and AON. SEE MORE conducts qualitative ethnographic research across more than 50 global metropolitan markets. Biography Most futurist content arrives at boards as desk research dressed up in graphics. The signal-to-noise ratio is poor, and the planning horizon is rarely operational. SEE MORE was built to produce something different: ethnographic field observation across more than 50 global cities, fed back into commercial strategy work for organisations that need a defensible view of the next three to five years. The institute’s founder spent the first part of his career as a strategy consultant inside DDB, TBWA, BBDO and Springer & Jacoby. In 1997 he set up EARSandEYES, one of the early online market and trend research firms. SEE MORE followed in 2008. Clients have included Deutsche Bank, TUI, Henkel, Microsoft, Google, Deutsche Post, REWE and Burda. The current centre of gravity is AI agents and what they mean for operating models. The 2024 book “The Age of Agents”, co-written with Tim Cortinovis, argues that the shift from prompted assistants to goal-directed agents changes how work is structured, not just how it is automated. That argument runs through his current keynote material on automation, customer evolution and the future of work. What separates this work from the broader futurist field is the discipline of the underlying method. The Four Metatrends framework (Commitment, Convenience, Creativity, Connection) and the Consumer Trend Circle give leadership teams a reusable structure for triaging weak signals. Both are anchored to observed behaviour in named markets, which is what makes them usable in a planning conversation. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and AI agents Future of work and leadership Customer evolution and consumer behaviour Automation and the operating model Trend research and strategic foresight Generation Z and changing workforce expectations Retail and customer experience disruption Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting three-to-five year strategy under AI and automation pressure CMOs and customer experience leads tracking consumer behaviour shifts across European and global markets HR and transformation leads redesigning work around AI-agent capability Innovation and strategy teams looking for a structured trend-triage method Audience outcomes A clearer read on which AI and consumer-behaviour signals matter for the next planning cycle, and which can be deprioritised. A working understanding of the Four Metatrends framework and how to apply it to a specific business unit. A specific point of view on AI agents as an operating model question, not a tooling question. Named examples from observed consumer behaviour in global metropolitan markets, drawn from SEE MORE field research.

Why organisations work with Omar Christidis He has spent a decade mapping the MENA digital economy at a depth no global consultancy replicates: 30+ Arabnet conferences, 15+ original research reports and direct visibility into more than 650 regional startups. He sits inside the deal flow as Partner and Board Member at Flat6Labs Beirut, so his read on what is actually getting funded in the region is operational, not commentary. His advisory work with the Middle East Institute’s Strategic Foresights Program and the Aspen Institute UK gives him a policy-grade frame on technology that translates well to boards weighing geopolitical exposure alongside digital strategy. He is one of the few speakers who can hold a serious technology conversation in both English and Arabic for a regional C-suite audience, with the Yale and Booz analytical pedigree to back it up. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Arabnet, the MENA-focused digital events, media and research company, founded in Beirut in 2009. Partner and Board Member, Flat6Labs Beirut, a $20m accelerator with 33 investments in Lebanese startups. Advisory Board Member, Strategic Foresights Program, Middle East Institute, Washington DC. Faculty Member and Moderator, Aspen Institute UK. BA and MBA, Yale University; former consultant at Booz & Co. MENA. Named Global Finance Magazine Top Innovator for the Middle East (2018); featured in Forbes, CNN, CNBC Arabia and Sky News Arabia. Biography The MENA digital economy is no longer an emerging-market footnote. Over the past decade it has produced unicorns, regulatory frameworks for fintech and e-commerce, and a regional venture industry that now writes cheques large enough to keep founders at home. Few people have shaped that shift more practically than the founder of Arabnet. Arabnet was launched in Beirut in 2009, after Omar Christidis left a role in private wealth management in New York during the financial crisis and a stint at Booz & Co. in the MENA. The company has since organised more than thirty regional tech conferences, published over fifteen original research reports on the Arab digital ecosystem, and supported 650+ startups, becoming the standing forum where founders, corporates and investors meet. His credibility is built on access, not opinion. As Partner and Board Member at Flat6Labs Beirut, a $20m accelerator with 33 Lebanese investments, he sees what is being funded. As an Advisory Board Member of the Middle East Institute’s Strategic Foresights Program in Washington and a Faculty Member at Aspen Institute UK, he sees how regional technology decisions are being read in policy circles. The result is a speaker who can tell a Gulf board what the next wave of digital challengers actually looks like, where capital is moving, and which corporate innovation playbooks travel and which do not. Global Finance Magazine named him Top Innovator for the Middle East in 2018; the World Economic Forum named Arabnet a Top 100 Arab World Startup the year before. Key speaking topics MENA digital economy and startup ecosystem Corporate innovation strategy Digital disruption and emerging business models Tech investment and venture capital in the Arab world Future of media and advertising Fourth industrial revolution Banking and fintech in the Middle East Ideal for Boards and C-suites of regional incumbents in banking, telco, media and retail facing digital challengers Global corporates entering or scaling in MENA who need a regional read on customer behaviour and competitive risk Investors, family offices and sovereign funds allocating to MENA technology and venture Government and policy audiences shaping digital, fintech and innovation regulation in the region Audience outcomes A current, named view of where MENA digital capital is flowing and which sub-sectors are concentrating A working frame for distinguishing genuine regional disruptors from imported business models that will not survive local conditions Specific examples of how incumbents in banking, retail and media have responded to digital challengers in MENA, and what worked A sharper read on how Gulf and Levant regulators are shaping the operating environment for technology businesses

Why organisations work with Omer Wilson He has run the brand function inside three of the most consequential data centre platforms of the last decade, including Digital Realty in EMEA and APAC, giving him a working model of how technical infrastructure businesses actually win category leadership. He has been voted Datacloud Marketer of the Year on two separate continents, in Monaco in 2015 and Singapore in 2018, which is a rare double inside the industry’s only credible peer-voted award. He builds brand strategy that translates between cultures, with operational experience in the UK, Singapore and now Portugal, and a Turkish-British background that informs his work on Asia and emerging-market positioning. He is currently leading marketing for a 1.2 GW, EUR 8.5 billion AI-era data campus in Sines, which means his commentary on the next decade of digital infrastructure marketing is grounded in a live programme, not retrospective analysis. Biography highlights Chief Marketing Officer, Start Campus, leading brand and go-to-market for the SINES DC campus in Portugal. Former Chief Marketing Officer at Qarbon Technologies and Pure Data Centres Group. Senior marketing leadership at Digital Realty across EMEA and APAC, joining the company in 2011 in London. Datacloud Data Centre Marketer of the Year 2015, Monaco. Datacloud Asia Marketer of the Year 2018, Singapore. Founder and Chief Strategist, Anatolia.Asia Consulting Group; trained on the IBM Global Graduate Scheme; former Head of Corporate Solutions Marketing for Jones Lang LaSalle EMEA. Biography The data centre industry built its commercial story on power, cooling and square metres. As AI workloads have changed what hyperscale customers actually need, the buying conversation has shifted to sustainability, sovereignty and brand trust. The companies winning that conversation are doing marketing work most of the sector still treats as overhead. Wilson has been one of the operators inside that shift. At Digital Realty he ran marketing across EMEA and later APAC after joining the firm in London in 2011, then took the CMO seat at Pure Data Centres Group and Qarbon Technologies. He is now Chief Marketing Officer at Start Campus, the operator behind the 1.2 GW SINES campus in Portugal, an EUR 8.5 billion programme positioned as one of Europe’s most sustainable AI data centres. His professional voice was shaped early by the IBM Global Graduate Scheme and then by running corporate solutions marketing at Jones Lang LaSalle across EMEA. That mix matters, because he treats brand as a commercial system: pricing, sales enablement and customer narrative working as one engine. He has been voted Datacloud Marketer of the Year twice, in Monaco in 2015 and Singapore in 2018, the industry’s clearest peer signal that the work travels. He also founded Anatolia.Asia Consulting Group, advising technology and infrastructure clients on positioning across Europe and Asia, and is a regular keynote speaker at Cloud Expo Asia, Data Centre World and DCD events. The through-line in his work is category creation: helping technical businesses build brand authority before commodity pressure forces a price conversation. Key speaking topics Brand strategy in technology and digital infrastructure Marketing leadership in data centres and hyperscale Category creation in B2B technology Cross-cultural positioning between Europe and Asia Sustainability and AI as commercial narratives Go-to-market for capital-intensive technology businesses Ideal for CMOs and senior marketing leaders inside technology, infrastructure and capital-intensive B2B businesses CEOs and founders of scale-up technology companies preparing a category narrative Sales and commercial leadership teams in data centres, cloud, energy and adjacent infrastructure sectors Industry conferences in digital infrastructure, AI, cloud and sustainability Audience outcomes A clearer model for how brand work compounds commercial value inside technical categories. Examples from inside the data centre industry of how marketing has shifted from spec-led to narrative-led selling. Practical perspectives on positioning sustainability and AI claims so they hold up with sophisticated buyers. A sharper view of how Asia, Europe and emerging markets behave differently as B2B technology audiences.

Why organisations work with Paco Underhill He invented the methodology behind modern in-store consumer research. Envirosell’s video-tracking and observational fieldwork, built up over four decades, is the empirical foundation that most behavioural retail consulting now borrows from. His client base is the proof point. Envirosell has worked with more than a third of the Fortune 100 across 50-plus countries, on stores, banks, restaurants, malls, and digital interfaces. Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping is taught in MBA and design programmes globally and has been published in 27 languages, giving him a shared vocabulary with the buyers in the room. Malcolm Gladwell’s 1996 New Yorker profile “The Science of Shopping” turned Underhill’s work into one of the most reprinted pieces the magazine has ever run, anchoring his standing as the named figure in the field. He works in concrete categories, food and beverage, beauty, telecoms, fashion, supermarkets, malls, financial branches, not abstract retail strategy, which is what category leaders actually need. Biography highlights Founder and former CEO of Envirosell Inc., the behavioural research and consultancy firm he established in 1986 Author of four Simon & Schuster titles: Why We Buy, Call of the Mall, What Women Want, and How We Eat Why We Buy published in 27 languages and used in MBA and design school curricula worldwide Subject of Malcolm Gladwell’s 1996 New Yorker profile “The Science of Shopping” Vassar College graduate; also studied at Columbia University and Ewha University, Seoul; former adjunct instructor in the doctoral programme in Environmental Psychology at City University of New York Owner of Peckshee LLC; columnist for Design: Retail and The Robin Report Biography In 1986, almost no one was studying what customers actually did inside a store. Marketers had surveys, retailers had sales data, and architects had floor plans, but no one had a continuous record of human behaviour at the shelf. Envirosell, founded in New York that year, was built to fix that. Paco Underhill borrowed the basic premise of environmental psychology, that surroundings shape behaviour, and turned it into a fieldwork practice using video cameras, trained observers, and large-sample tracking inside live commercial space. The output, after four decades, is a body of work that consumer brands and retailers across more than 50 countries have used to redesign stores, formats, packaging, and service flow. Envirosell’s client list spans more than a third of the Fortune 100. The categories range from grocery and food service to beauty, fashion, financial branches, telecoms, and malls. Underhill’s books, published by Simon & Schuster, took that work into the public domain. Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping has appeared in 27 languages and is taught in MBA and design schools globally. Call of the Mall, What Women Want, and 2022’s How We Eat extended the method into specific commercial terrains. The work earned wider recognition through Malcolm Gladwell’s 1996 New Yorker profile, “The Science of Shopping,” one of the most reprinted articles in the magazine’s history. It introduced ideas that have since become standard vocabulary in retail design: the decompression zone at a store entrance, the butt-brush effect, the way physical adjacency shapes purchase decisions. Underhill’s role in this is specific. He is the figure most consistently named when the field is described. He stepped back as CEO of Envirosell in 2020 and now advises through Peckshee LLC. The intellectual position has not changed. Stores, malls, food retail, and the consumer-facing parts of banking and telecoms remain the terrain, and direct observation of behaviour remains the method. Key speaking topics The science of shopping and retail psychology Consumer behaviour in physical and digital commercial environments Food, beverage, and grocery retail transformation Female-friendly markets and the rise of women as commercial decision-makers The future of malls, high streets, and retail real estate Brand experience at the point of purchase Cross-market retail trends from 50-plus countries Ideal for Chief marketing officers, chief customer officers, and brand leaders inside consumer-facing businesses Retail and merchandising leadership inside grocery, food service, beauty, fashion, and electronics Real estate, mall, and property executives planning the next generation of commercial space Boards and leadership teams of consumer banks, telecoms, and service businesses with branch or storefront networks Audience outcomes A clearer read on how customers actually behave inside their own stores, sites, and branches Specific levers, layout, adjacency, signage, dwell time, that move conversion and basket size A grounded view of how food, beauty, fashion, and grocery retail are shifting across markets A practical sense of where female consumers are reshaping product, format, and service design An external reference point for internal debates on store closures, format changes, and digital integration

Why organisations work with Paddy Lowe He has industrialised winning at three Formula 1 constructors and can show, from inside the engineering room, how a championship operation actually allocates capital, talent and risk. He runs Zero Petroleum, the company behind the Guinness-verified first flight on 100 percent synthetic fuel, which gives him a working answer to the question of how aviation and motorsport decarbonise without waiting for batteries. His authority on energy transition is operational, not advocacy: a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering speaking from a fuel plant, not a policy podium. He bridges the two conversations that boards now run in parallel, hard-edged engineering performance under pressure and the capital reality of net zero, which most speakers handle separately. Biography highlights 32 years in Formula 1 across Williams, McLaren and Mercedes; technical leadership behind cars that won 12 World Championships and 158 Grands Prix. Technical Director at McLaren, then Executive Director (Technical) at Mercedes during the team’s 2014 to 2016 dominance with Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg. Co-founder and CEO of Zero Petroleum, a UK synthetic fuel company producing fossil-free drop-in fuels from atmospheric CO2 and renewable hydrogen. Holder of the Guinness World Record with the Royal Air Force for the first aircraft flight powered entirely by synthetic fuel, achieved at Cotswold Airport in November 2021. Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, elected 2015. Engineering graduate of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and Honorary Fellow of the College. Biography Mercedes won 51 of 59 Grands Prix between 2014 and 2016. Paddy Lowe was the Executive Director responsible for the technical organisation that made that possible, after a decade as Technical Director at McLaren and an earlier career at Williams developing the active suspension that delivered the 1992 titles. Three constructors, twelve World Championships, one common pattern: an engineering culture built to convert money and time into measurable performance under public scrutiny. That track record is the credential. The substantive work he now talks to boards about is different. In 2020 he co-founded Zero Petroleum, a synthetic fuel company that combines atmospheric carbon dioxide with renewable hydrogen to produce fossil-free, drop-in liquid fuels. The point is not laboratory novelty. The point is that aviation, motorsport, shipping and the global classic vehicle base will run on hydrocarbons for decades, and decarbonising them needs molecules, not only electrons. The proof exists. In November 2021, Zero Petroleum and the Royal Air Force flew an aircraft on 100 percent synthetic fuel and were awarded a Guinness World Record for the first such flight. Formula 1 has since committed to fully sustainable fuels, and Lowe has been a public technical voice in the policy conversation around how that transition is engineered and financed. For a senior buyer, the value is operational specificity. He explains how engineering organisations win against deadlines, how data and simulation reshape decision-making at the top of an organisation, and what it actually takes, in capital, regulation and supply, to move a heavy industry off fossil fuel. Key speaking topics Synthetic fuels and the energy transition in aviation, motorsport and heavy transport Net zero strategy beyond electrification Engineering performance under competitive pressure Data-led decision making in high-stakes operations Innovation and R&D leadership in regulated industries Lessons from Formula 1 championship organisations Ideal for Boards and executive teams in aviation, automotive, energy and industrial groups facing a credible decarbonisation deadline CTOs, Chief Sustainability Officers and Heads of R&D scoping practical low-carbon liquid fuel pathways Strategy and transformation leads benchmarking high-performance engineering cultures Investor days, supplier summits and policy forums where the audience needs a working voice on the energy transition Audience outcomes A clearer view of how aviation, motorsport and other liquid-fuel sectors can decarbonise without waiting for full electrification A working sense of how a Formula 1 technical organisation converts data, simulation and capital into repeatable performance A sharper read on which net zero claims are engineered and financed, and which are still rhetorical Specific examples of what it takes, in regulation, supply chain and certification, to move a synthetic fuel from prototype to commercial flight