Future of Work

Why organisations work with Jef Staes He gives leaders a working language for the conflict at the heart of innovation: the Red Monkey model treats the awkward, radical idea as the asset, and the cultural reflex to suppress it as the real problem to solve. His 2D to 3D framework names the specific shift companies are stuck in, from organisations built on standardised competence to ones that run on passion and continuous learning. He has lived both sides of the argument. Two decades inside Siemens and GTE ATEA as software designer, training manager and Corporate Learning Officer, then twenty more building the Red Monkey Company around what he learned was missing. His work is grounded in the academic mainstream of Belgian management education, with visiting lectureships at Vlerick, UAMS and EHSAL, but his delivery is built for general audiences, including four TEDx stages. He addresses culture and innovation as one problem, not two. Most speakers pick a side; Staes argues you cannot fix one without rewiring the other. Biography highlights Author of the Red Monkey trilogy: “I was a sheep”, “My manager is a hero”, and “My organisation is a jungle”. Founder of Red Monkey Company, where he develops the Red Monkey Story and the Engine of Innovation Mindset with client organisations. Former Corporate Learning Officer at Siemens Belgium; earlier career as software designer at GTE ATEA in Belgium and the USA. Visiting lecturer at Vlerick Business School, the University of Antwerp Management School (UAMS), and EHSAL. TEDx speaker on multiple occasions, including TEDxUtrecht with “Behave, brake for red monkeys”. Recurring keynote at OEB Global (Online Educa Berlin), including the Spotlight Stage session “Red Monkey Disruption”. Biography Most organisations are not built to change. They are built to standardise, to repeat, to filter out the awkward. That is the tension Jef Staes has spent four decades inside, first as a software designer at GTE ATEA, then as a training manager and Corporate Learning Officer at Siemens Belgium, and now as the founder of Red Monkey Company. His central argument is that innovation does not fail because organisations lack ideas. It fails because the cultural reflex of any mature company is to reject the radical idea and the person who carries it. The Red Monkey is his name for both. The work, then, is not to generate more ideas, but to redesign the conditions under which a Red Monkey can survive long enough to be tested. Around that core sit two sharper frames. The 2D to 3D shift describes how companies move from running on standardised competence to running on passion-fed expertise. The Power Defect names the structural mismatch between formal authority and actual capability in an information-rich economy. Together they give leaders a vocabulary for problems they usually only feel. Staes writes in metaphor on purpose. The trilogy (“I was a sheep”, “My manager is a hero”, “My organisation is a jungle”) is built for the operator, not the academic, and his TEDx and OEB Global stages reach the same audience. The argument lands because it is unsentimental about how organisations really behave when something new walks in. Key speaking topics Innovation culture and the management of disruptive ideas The 2D to 3D organisational shift The Red Monkey conflict model Learning organisations in the information age Leadership in environments resistant to change Talent, passion and the limits of standardised competence Ideal for Boards and executive teams whose innovation programmes consistently stall after launch CHROs and Chief Learning Officers redesigning learning and talent systems for a knowledge economy Transformation leads and innovation directors trying to protect radical ideas inside conservative cultures Leadership conferences in technology, manufacturing, financial services and the public sector Audience outcomes A working model for why their best ideas keep dying inside their own organisation Language to describe the conflict between standardised competence and passion-driven expertise A clear position on what 3D leadership demands of managers, and where most stop short Recognition of the Power Defect inside their own structure and where it is costing them speed A reframing of resistance to change as an organisational design problem, not a people problem

Why organisations work with Jacob Morgan His “Vulnerable Leader Equation” offers a specific, research-backed counter-argument to the dominant leadership vulnerability narrative – making the case that vulnerability without competence actively undermines trust, not builds it. Boards and CHROs get a framework they can act on, not a platitude. The research underpinning The Future Leader (140 CEO interviews, 14,000-person LinkedIn survey) gives senior audiences data that reflects their own peer group back at them – a rare source of authority in a crowded leadership development market. His founder role at Future of Work Leaders – a by-invitation CHRO community including members from Johnson & Johnson, Dow, and Lego – means his frameworks are stress-tested against the most senior people leaders in the world, not just conference rooms. The Future Leader won the CMI Management Book of the Year 2021, providing external, peer-validated credibility beyond self-reported authority. Organisations navigating the tension between AI adoption and human leadership capability get a framework that treats the two as interdependent – not competing priorities – grounded in his three-environment model of employee experience (culture, technology, physical workspace). Biography highlights Bestselling author of six books published by Wiley and McGraw-Hill, covering collaboration, the future of work, employee experience, leadership, and vulnerability The Future Leader (Wiley, 2020) – winner of the CMI Management Book of the Year 2021 Research base includes 140+ CEO interviews and a LinkedIn-partnered survey of nearly 14,000 employees for The Future Leader; 100+ CEO interviews and a DDI-partnered survey of 14,000 employees for Leading With Vulnerability Founder of Future of Work Leaders, a by-invitation global CHRO community with members from Johnson & Johnson, Dow, Lego, Northrop Grumman, and Neiman Marcus Contributed to and cited in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, NPR, and CNN Host of Great Leadership With Jacob Morgan; featured guest on the Harvard Business School Managing the Future of Work podcast Biography Jacob Morgan has spent more than a decade asking a question most organisations avoid: why do capable leaders so consistently fail to produce the organisations they intend? His answer, built across six books and primary research involving hundreds of CEOs and tens of thousands of employees, is both precise and uncomfortable – the model of leadership most executives were trained in was designed for a world that no longer exists. His most cited framework, the Vulnerable Leader Equation, makes a specific argument: vulnerability in isolation is not a leadership quality, it is a liability. The research underpinning Leading With Vulnerability (Wiley, 2024) – drawn from over 100 CEO interviews and a DDI-partnered survey of 14,000 employees – shows that leaders who combine openness about their gaps with clear, competence-driven responses to those gaps outperform peers on trust, engagement, and team performance. It is a direct challenge to the feel-good vulnerability conversation, and it is grounded in data. The Future Leader (Wiley, 2020), winner of the CMI Management Book of the Year 2021, applied the same research discipline to the broader question of what leading through disruption actually requires. Based on interviews with over 140 CEOs at organisations including Unilever, Mastercard, and KPMG – paired with a LinkedIn-partnered survey of nearly 14,000 employees – it identified four specific mindsets and five specific skills that define readiness for leadership in uncertain conditions. Morgan is also the founder of Future of Work Leaders, a by-invitation CHRO community whose members include Johnson & Johnson, Dow, and Lego. His work has been featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review, and MIT Sloan Management Review. He hosts the Great Leadership With Jacob Morgan podcast and has been a featured guest on the Harvard Business School Managing the Future of Work series. Key speaking topics Future-ready leadership Vulnerability and trust in organisations Employee experience strategy Leadership in the age of AI Future of work Organisational culture and performance Executive development and people strategy Ideal for CHROs and CPOs navigating the gap between leadership investment and employee outcomes Senior leadership teams preparing for AI-driven workforce transformation Boards and executive committees reviewing leadership capability and succession HR and people functions building future-ready culture frameworks Audience outcomes A named framework – the Vulnerable Leader Equation – for understanding when and how vulnerability strengthens rather than undermines leadership authority The four mindsets and five skills that Morgan’s CEO research identified as defining future-ready leaders, with practical application at individual and team level A clearer model for diagnosing where employee experience is breaking down across culture, technology, and physical environment Research-grounded perspective on how AI is reshaping the leadership role – and what human capability this places at a premium Practical tools for assessing the gap between how leaders perceive their impact and how their people experience it

Why organisations work with Ian Goldin He predicted in The Butterfly Defect (2014) that a pandemic would be the most likely cause of the next global financial shock, six years before COVID. Boards looking for genuine foresight on systemic risk treat that record as evidence, not branding. He forecasts growth prospects across regions, including the US, Europe, China, and Asia, and across sectors such as manufacturing, banking, and AI. Asset allocators, central banks, and multinational boards use that view to stress-test capital and operating decisions over a five to fifteen year horizon. Few speakers carry both operating and academic authority on globalisation: Vice President of the World Bank, Chief Executive of the Development Bank of Southern Africa, and Founding Director of the Oxford Martin School. His work translates directly into capital and policy decisions on geoeconomics, supply chains, urbanisation, and the impact of AI on jobs and development. These are the live questions on most international boards heading into the late 2020s. He moderates and facilitates as well as keynotes. Clients including J.P. Morgan and pharmaceutical and legal industry events have used him to open and connect multi-day programmes, shape agendas, and chair leadership conversations on top of delivering the headline keynote. Biography highlights Vice President of the World Bank (2003-2006) and Director of Development Policy (2001-2003). Chief Executive of the Development Bank of Southern Africa (1996-2001), advising President Nelson Mandela. Founding Director of the Oxford Martin School (2006-2016), establishing 45 research programmes and over 500 affiliated academics. Professor of Globalisation and Development, University of Oxford, and Professorial Fellow at Balliol College. Author of 25 books including The Butterfly Defect (Princeton, 2014), Age of the City (Bloomsbury, 2023, FT Best Books of 2023), and The Shortest History of Migration (Old Street, 2024). Writer and presenter of three BBC documentary series, including After the Crash and The Pandemic that Changed the World, and the BBC Analysis The Death of Globalisation (2023). Biography In 2014, The Butterfly Defect argued that the next major global financial shock was most likely to come from a pandemic running through the connective tissue of globalisation. Six years later, COVID proved the case. The book, written with Mike Mariathasan and published by Princeton, was Ian Goldin’s clearest statement of a thesis he had been building for two decades: globalisation has produced extraordinary gains and a new class of systemic risk that institutions are not yet built to manage. That argument carries weight because of where it comes from. Goldin was Vice President of the World Bank and, before that, Chief Executive of the Development Bank of Southern Africa, where he advised President Nelson Mandela through the early post-apartheid years. He was Principal Economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and a Programme Director at the OECD in Paris. The institutions sit behind the books. At Oxford, he founded the Oxford Martin School in 2006 and ran it for a decade, building 45 research programmes across more than 100 disciplines. He now leads three Oxford Martin programmes on technological and economic change, the future of work, and the future of development. His books, 25 in total, run from Exceptional People on migration to Age of the City on urban futures, with The Shortest History of Migration arriving in 2024. What boards and governments use him for is harder than topic coverage. It is the ability to connect migration, AI, climate, and supply chain stress into a coherent picture of where capital, talent, and political risk are moving over a five to fifteen year horizon, with the operational scars to know which policy moves actually land. Key speaking topics Economic growth prospects across countries, regions, and sectors Geopolitics, geoeconomics, and the fracturing rules-based order Systemic risk and globalisation AI, jobs, and the future of work The future of cities and urbanisation Long-horizon scenarios and crisis recovery Migration and demographic change Ideal for Boards and executive committees of multinationals navigating geopolitical exposure, supply chain risk, and growth divergence across regions. Government, central bank, and multilateral audiences setting policy on development, AI, and climate. Investor and asset-allocator forums sizing long-horizon risk across regions and sectors. CSOs, heads of strategy, and CFOs responsible for capital decisions under macro and political uncertainty. Audience outcomes A clearer reading of how today’s shocks connect: pandemics, AI, migration, climate, and political fracture as one system. Specific arguments and evidence boards can use when stress-testing strategy against the next decade of global change. A sharper view of how growth prospects diverge across regions and sectors, and what that means for capital allocation, supply chains, and talent strategy. Confidence to challenge assumptions baked into long-range plans, sourced from someone who has run the institutions setting global policy.

Why organisations work with Henry Timms He has operated at the top of two of the most scrutinised cultural institutions in the United States, Lincoln Center and 92nd Street Y, and can speak to legacy transformation from inside the seat, not from a consulting deck. “New Power,” co-written with Jeremy Heimans, was a Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year finalist and is now one of the standard references for leaders thinking about participatory influence. Buyers get the author, not a secondary interpreter. He built GivingTuesday from a single idea at 92Y into a movement operating in 100 countries that has generated over $13 billion in giving. That is hard evidence of how the framework works in practice. As CEO of Brunswick Group, he now advises global boards and CEOs on exactly the reputational and influence problems the framework was built to address, which keeps the material current rather than retrospective. Biography highlights Chief Executive Officer, Brunswick Group (2024 to present) President and CEO, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (2019 to 2024); oversaw the $550 million renovation of David Geffen Hall Co-founder of GivingTuesday (2012), active in 100 countries Co-author, “New Power” (2018, Doubleday), Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year shortlist Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to the arts and to philanthropy (2022) Hauser Leader, Harvard Kennedy School; Senior Fellow, Stanford University and the United Nations Foundation; member, Council on Foreign Relations Biography Most legacy institutions are not structured for participation. They are structured for authority that flows one way, from the board and the executive outward, and that structure is now breaking in public. The problem Henry Timms works on is what leaders do about it. Timms and Jeremy Heimans gave the shift a name in their 2018 book “New Power,” shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year. Old power, in their argument, is held like a currency: hoarded, closed, pushed down. New power operates like a current: open, participatory, shaped by the many. The point is not that one replaces the other. It is that serious leaders now have to run both systems at once. He has done this in practice. At 92nd Street Y he co-founded GivingTuesday in 2012, a movement that now operates in 100 countries and has generated over $13 billion for charitable causes. At Lincoln Center, where he was President and CEO from 2019 to 2024, he oversaw the $550 million renovation of David Geffen Hall and repositioned one of America’s most visible cultural institutions for a more participatory era. As CEO of Brunswick Group, he now advises global boards and CEOs on reputation, influence and institutional trust, with affiliations at Harvard Kennedy School, Stanford, Oxford and the Council on Foreign Relations. He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2022 for services to the arts and to philanthropy. Key speaking topics New power and the shift in how influence operates Leading legacy institutions through transformation Building and scaling participatory movements Reputation and trust in a networked era AI and the future of institutional authority Philanthropy, purpose and stakeholder engagement Ideal for CEOs and boards of legacy institutions facing relevance or trust challenges Chief communications, marketing and brand officers rethinking stakeholder influence Foundation and nonprofit leadership teams designing participatory programmes Senior leadership offsites on culture, reputation and institutional change Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for distinguishing old power and new power inside their own organisation Named examples of how global institutions have built participatory strategies without surrendering discipline A clearer read on where their organisation’s authority is eroding and where it can be rebuilt Practical reference points from GivingTuesday, Lincoln Center and Brunswick client work

Why organisations work with Geoff Colvin Four decades of reporting inside Fortune on how the best-run companies actually change, not a consultant’s framework imported from outside the room. The thesis behind Talent Is Overrated, a WSJ, BusinessWeek and New York Times bestseller, gives leadership teams a concrete answer to a question most duck: how do you actually build world-class performers instead of hoping you hire them. Humans Are Underrated reframes the AI conversation for executives. The argument is that empathy, group problem-solving and storytelling become the commercial differentiator, and it lands with boards that are tired of abstract automation talks. A career’s worth of on-stage interviews with Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen and Henry Paulson at the Fortune Global Forum translates directly into panel moderation and onstage CEO interviews that audiences remember. Read in dozens of languages and heard daily on CBS Radio, he arrives with an unusual combination of reach and specificity that senior audiences trust on first encounter. Biography highlights Senior Editor-at-Large at Fortune, where he has written the Value Driven column and covered leadership, economics and competition for four decades. Author of Talent Is Overrated, Humans Are Underrated, The Upside of the Downturn, and co-author of Angel Customers and Demon Customers. The Upside of the Downturn named Best Management Book of the Year by Strategy+Business. Former co-anchor of Wall Street Week with Fortune on PBS. Daily business commentator on the CBS Radio Network, with more than 10,000 broadcasts. Lead moderator at the Fortune Global Forum, with onstage interviews of CEOs, heads of state and central bankers including Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan and Janet Yellen. Biography Most organisations say they want world-class performance, and most fund it with selection rather than development. Talent Is Overrated took that contradiction apart. Drawing on research into elite performers across sport, music, chess and business, Colvin argued that what separates the best is deliberate practice, the willingness to work at the edge of capability, under feedback, for years. The book became a Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek and New York Times bestseller, and gave boards and chief people officers a language for building executive capability rather than buying it. Humans Are Underrated extended the argument into the automation decade. As machines absorbed more analytical and predictable work, Colvin’s case was that the commercial premium would shift to empathy, group problem-solving and persuasion, the deep human skills most leadership pipelines still treat as soft. Both books have shaped how serious HR and strategy functions think about what to develop in senior leaders. The credibility behind that writing is institutional. Colvin has spent his career at Fortune, currently as Senior Editor-at-Large, writing the Value Driven column and covering the forces reshaping competition. He co-anchored Wall Street Week with Fortune on PBS, and has broadcast daily for CBS Radio with well over 10,000 segments on air. The Upside of the Downturn, his book on operating through recession, was named Best Management Book of the Year by Strategy+Business. On stage, the work shows up differently. As lead moderator of the Fortune Global Forum he has conducted onstage interviews with Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Herb Kelleher, Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan, Janet Yellen and Henry Paulson, among many others. That experience is what corporate clients hire when they need a keynote that sets the terms of a CEO summit, or a moderator who can hold a room of chief executives to the substance. Key speaking topics Leadership in continuous disruption Executive performance and deliberate practice The human skills economy in an age of AI Business model reinvention Global economic outlook and competitive strategy Panel moderation and CEO onstage interviews Future of work and talent development Ideal for CEO, CHRO and chief learning officer audiences rethinking how senior leadership capability is built rather than bought. Boards and executive committees grappling with where automation leaves human advantage in their business model. Fortune-style CEO summits, leadership conferences and global forums that need a moderator with genuine authority across economics, technology and governance. Audience outcomes A defensible answer to how their organisation develops world-class performers, not just identifies them. A sharper read on which parts of the business automation makes cheaper, and which parts become more valuable as a result. Language for talking to boards and investors about human capability as a commercial asset, not an HR line item. Perspective from inside four decades of Fortune reporting on which leadership responses to disruption have actually worked.

Her «neurosignature diversity» framework, developed in The Brain-Friendly Workplace, gives leadership teams a precise, science-based explanation for why talent attrition persists after conventional DEI investment – and a specific mechanism to address it. She names the «neurogap» – the structural drift toward dopamine- and testosterone-dominant personality profiles at the top of organisations – and provides a testable diagnostic for closing it, rather than a general aspiration toward inclusion. Her background spans neuroscience research at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research and management consulting at McKinsey and Company – a combination that gives her credibility in two domains that most neuroleadership speakers claim from only one. Audiences leave with four mapped neurosignatures linked to specific workplace behaviours, stress responses, and collaboration styles – a concrete tool, not a mindset shift. Her frameworks are published and peer-accessible: a Harvard Business Review article and a Wall Street Journal bestselling book reduce the internal scepticism that evidence-oriented leadership teams typically bring to behavioural science. Biography highlights Neuroscientist trained at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research; alumna of McKinsey and Company Lead author of The Leading Brain: Neuroscience Hacks to Work Smarter, Better, Happier (Random House) – named a Best Management Book by strategy+business Author of The Brain-Friendly Workplace: Why Talented People Quit and How to Get Them to Stay – Wall Street Journal bestseller Harvard Business Review contributor; work featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Newsweek, and CNBC Member of the socio-political council of acatech, The German Academy for Technology, advising the German government on technology, digitalisation, and AI Advisory board member, NeuroColor; LinkedIn Top Voice Biography At the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Friederike Fabritius studied what actually happens inside the brain under pressure. At McKinsey and Company, she saw what organisations actually do – and how rarely those two things match. The gap between them is the problem her work is built to close. Her central argument, developed across two books and field-tested with organisations including EY, BCG, and Google, is specific: most leadership teams over-represent dopamine- and testosterone-dominant personality types, selecting for stress tolerance in ways that systematically exclude other cognitive profiles. She calls this the neurogap. It explains why talented people leave not because of poor managers but because of poorly calibrated environments – and why retention problems persist despite sustained DEI investment. In The Brain-Friendly Workplace – a Wall Street Journal bestseller – Fabritius maps four neurosignatures tied to distinct workplace behaviours, stress responses, and communication preferences. The framework gives HR and leadership teams a diagnostic built on brain chemistry rather than demographic proxies. Her Harvard Business Review article on neurosignature diversity brought the argument to a practitioner audience; her earlier book, The Leading Brain (named a Best Management Book by strategy+business), established the scientific credibility underpinning it. She serves on the socio-political council of acatech, The German Academy for Technology, which advises the German government on digitalisation and AI – a role that reflects the applied, policy-facing dimension of her science. For boards and senior teams wrestling with sustained performance, retention, and culture, she offers something distinctive: a testable causal model, not a call for behavioural change without a structural explanation. Key speaking topics Neurosignature diversity and talent retention Brain-based leadership and decision-making Peak performance and the neuroscience of flow Cognitive diversity and inclusion Neuroscience of change, uncertainty, and resilience Trust, collaboration, and the social brain Learning, neuroplasticity, and habit formation at work Ideal for CHROs and people leaders responsible for talent strategy and retention outcomes Senior leadership and executive teams seeking evidence-based frameworks for culture design Learning and development leaders building performance or cognitive diversity programmes Boards and transformation leads navigating hybrid work, workforce change, and sustained engagement Audience outcomes A named framework – neurosignature diversity – for diagnosing why current culture drives attrition, with specific, actionable steps to address the neurogap Practical understanding of how brain chemistry shapes performance, stress tolerance, collaboration style, and communication preference across a team Clearer grasp of how to design environments that support cognitive diversity beyond demographic targets Concrete approaches to managing hybrid and distributed teams in line with how different brain types actually work best under pressure Evidence-based perspective on why DEI initiatives stall at the neurological layer – and how to move past aspiration to structural change

Why organisations work with Farid Tabarki A coherent thesis on how power, work, and value are moving away from the middle, set out in his book The End of the Middle and extended in his 2025 co-authored book The Acceleration Effect, on how organisations should navigate when change itself is speeding up. The vocabulary of radical transparency, radical decentralisation, and the liquid society, which gives leadership teams a shared frame for shifts they already feel but cannot yet name. Studio Zeitgeist’s Transformation Playground whitepaper, with seven organising principles that move the conversation from trend description to operating choice. Direct comparative observation from 195 countries, which gives him a working library of how different political, economic and cultural systems respond to the same structural pressures and feeds the comparisons that land with board audiences. A weekly column in Het Financieele Dagblad and standing on De Volkskrant‘s top 200 most influential people, which signals he is read by the same Dutch business audience clients are trying to reach. Biography highlights Founding director of Studio Zeitgeist, an Amsterdam-based research and strategy practice. Author of The End of the Middle: What a Society of Extremes Means for People, Politics and Business (English edition, 2017) and co-author with Joey Hullegie of Het versnellingseffect (The Acceleration Effect, Atlas Contact, 2025), a Dutch business bestseller on the Managementboek Top 100. Trendwatcher of the Year, Netherlands, 2012-2013. Long-running columnist at Het Financieele Dagblad and listed in De Volkskrant‘s top 200 most influential people in the Netherlands since 2013. Author of the Studio Zeitgeist whitepaper The Transformation Playground, Reinventing Business Principles. Has travelled to 195 countries as part of an ongoing project to visit every country in the world, drawing on the comparative material for his work on institutions and structural change. Supervisory and advisory roles across culture, housing, health and education, including Stadgenoot, the Prince Bernhard Culture Fund, International Theatre Amsterdam, and Platform Onderwijs 2032 for the Dutch government. Named as “Minister of AI” in a hypothetical cabinet by Dutch current affairs programme WNL op Zondag. Biography The middle layer of modern economies is thinning out. Travel agents, retail bankers, mid-tier publishers, and many salaried roles in between have lost the ground they were built on. Power, value, and attention are moving to the edges, towards platforms, networks, and individuals. That is the argument at the heart of The End of the Middle, Farid Tabarki’s book on what a society of extremes means for people, politics, and business. He sets out three structural shifts: the rise of online platforms that absorb intermediary work, technology that hollows out educated jobs, and the decline of the nation state as the central seat of power. The book reads as a working manual for leaders who can feel these shifts in their own businesses but lack the language to act on them. His 2025 book Het versnellingseffect, co-authored with Joey Hullegie and published by Atlas Contact, extends the thinking. The argument is that change is no longer punctuated by single technologies but by the rate of change itself, and that authority, place, value, and the human scale are all coming under pressure as a result. It is written as a navigation guide for organisations that can no longer assume a new equilibrium will arrive. Tabarki has been researching the European zeitgeist since 2000 through Studio Zeitgeist, the Amsterdam practice he founded. The studio’s Transformation Playground whitepaper lays out seven organising principles for companies operating in a more decentralised, more transparent, more liquid environment. He has also spent two decades travelling to 195 countries as part of a project to visit every country in the world. That comparative material, covering how different systems handle urbanisation, technology, governance, and economic pressure, sits behind the case studies he uses with boards. He is read weekly in Het Financieele Dagblad, sits on De Volkskrant‘s top 200 most influential people in the Netherlands, and was named Dutch Trendwatcher of the Year for 2012-2013. The work that earns him a board hearing is the same work that earns him those columns: a willingness to push past the trend label and ask what the shift actually changes for the next strategic decision. Key speaking topics The end of the middle and the liquid society The acceleration effect and strategic navigation Radical transparency in organisations Radical decentralisation of power and work Strategic foresight and structural shifts Liquid leadership Reinventing business principles for a post-middle economy Platforms, networks, and the redistribution of value Ideal for Boards and executive committees confronting structural change in their sector Strategy and transformation leads setting medium-term direction under uncertainty Senior leadership conferences where the brief calls for both a sharp keynote and a credible moderator Audience outcomes A clearer reading of which parts of their business sit on the disappearing middle A working vocabulary for shifts in transparency, decentralisation, and liquidity that staff already sense Specific organising principles to test against their current structure and strategy A sharper view of where customer and employee power is moving next

Why organisations work with Emmanuel Gobillot His «Disciplined Collaboration» framework reframes organisational silos as a structural problem rather than a cultural failing, naming four specific fears that prevent collective work and providing a tested four-step method for removing them – replacing the generic language of culture programmes with operational tools senior teams can actually deploy. Alive Inside (Routledge, 2026) provides a named seven-principle model for the human leadership qualities – compassion, courage, intuition, presence, storytelling – that AI cannot replicate, giving executive teams a practical basis for deciding where to invest human leadership effort in an AI-enabled organisation. Follow the Leader identifies eight specific elements of charisma that followers respond to, starting from what followers need rather than what leaders should do – a structural inversion that produces more usable diagnostics than prescriptive leadership frameworks. His consulting record at Hay Group, leading both the Consumer Sector practice and the Leadership Services function, and subsequent client work with Google, Vodafone, AstraZeneca, Carlsberg, and the United Nations, gives his frameworks a testing ground that spans sectors, governance structures, and organisational scale. Ten books published with Kogan Page, Routledge, and De Gruyter over twenty years track how leadership must adapt through successive phases of technological change – mass collaboration, networked organisations, and now AI – giving organisations a framework that is cumulative rather than reactive to the latest disruption. Biography highlights Former Director at Hay Group, leading both the Consumer Sector Consulting practice and the Leadership Services function, advising Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 organisations Named corporate clients include Google, Vodafone, Carlsberg, Hilton, AstraZeneca, Zurich Financial Services, and the United Nations Author of ten published books, including Alive Inside (Routledge, 2026), an updated edition of The Connected Leader (De Gruyter, 2024), and earlier titles Leadershift, Disciplined Collaboration, and Follow the Leader (Kogan Page) Contributor to Chief Executive (chiefexecutive.net) on leadership and AI Educated at UWC Atlantic and the University of St Andrews; also holds a Diploma in Management Science from Nottingham Trent University Founder of Emmanuel Gobillot Limited; co-founder of Collaboration Partners consultancy Biography The gap between collaboration as a stated priority and collaboration as an operating reality is one of the most consistent problems in organisations. Most attempts to close it add process or culture without addressing the structural conditions that prevent people from working collectively in the first place. Emmanuel Gobillot has spent twenty years diagnosing that gap – and building the frameworks to close it. At Hay Group, he led the Consumer Sector Consulting practice and then the Leadership Services function, working directly with Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 organisations. Named clients – Google, Vodafone, Carlsberg, AstraZeneca, Zurich Financial Services, the United Nations – span sectors and governance structures. That breadth is the evidence base on which his frameworks are built. The best-known outputs of that work are The Connected Leader (updated edition, De Gruyter, 2024) and Disciplined Collaboration (Kogan Page). Both are built around a consistent argument: that leadership and collective performance require structural architecture, not cultural exhortation. Follow the Leader sharpens this through a specific focus on followership, identifying eight elements of charisma that followers respond to and asking what followers need rather than what leaders should do. Disciplined Collaboration names the four fears that make most collaboration programmes ineffective and provides a tested four-step method for removing them. His most recent book, Alive Inside (Routledge, 2026), extends this thinking into the AI era. Where most leadership responses to AI focus on skills and adaptation, Gobillot asks a more fundamental question: which human leadership qualities cannot be replicated by an algorithm, and how do leaders build authority around them? The answer – a seven-principle framework built on compassion, courage, intuition, presence, and storytelling – gives executive teams a practical model for investing human effort where it is most durable. Key speaking topics Disciplined collaboration and the architecture of collective performance Human leadership advantage in AI-enabled organisations Leadership and followership dynamics Connected leadership and trust-based influence Organisational culture and collective performance Leading through successive phases of technological disruption Ideal for Senior executive and C-suite teams addressing collaboration breakdown across divisions or functions CHROs and people leaders building leadership development programmes that account for AI-driven change Boards and transformation leads evaluating leadership models in AI-enabled environments Organisations where silos, cross-functional friction, or low collective performance are named strategic problems Audience outcomes A structural framework for diagnosing why collaboration initiatives fail and what architecture is missing A named set of human leadership qualities that AI cannot replicate, with a practical model for building authority around them Clarity on the distinction between the performance of teamwork and the structural conditions that produce genuine collective effort Tools drawn from the Disciplined Collaboration and Alive Inside frameworks that apply directly to existing leadership and culture programmes A reframe of the leader-follower relationship that shifts the design question from «what should leaders do?» to «what do followers actually need?»

Why organisations work with Dominik Boesl Operating credibility from two of the most consequential robotics manufacturers in Europe: KUKA, where he co-managed the market launch of the LBR iiwa, the first industrially certified collaborative robot, and Festo, where he ran a robotics division spanning five international R&D centres. A governance perspective rooted in formal institutional work, not commentary: VP roles in the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, Global Chair of the IEEE TechEthics Initiative, and founder of the Robotics & AI Governance Foundation. A named intellectual contribution. The “4 Robotic Revolutions” model, co-developed with Bernd Liepert and presented at IEEE IROS, gives audiences a working frame for where robotics sits today and what comes next. Policy-level reach into the UN system through the UN DESA expert group on AI and robotics for the Sustainable Development Goals, useful for boards weighing the regulatory direction of travel. Research that informs strategy rather than describing it: he leads the Robotics 2050+ Global Delphi Study, a long-range scenario programme supported by IEEE. Biography highlights Professor of Digital Sciences, Automation & Leadership, HDBW Munich; Adjunct Professor, TUM Institute for LifeLong Learning Founder, Robotics & AI Governance Foundation; founder and CEO, Innomancer Thinktank Former VP and Head of Robotics, Festo AG; former Principal Corporate Innovation Manager and VP Consumer Driven Robotics, KUKA AG Past VP for Industrial Activities, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society; past Global Chair, IEEE TechEthics Initiative Member of the UN DESA expert group on AI and robotics for the Sustainable Development Goals Co-author of the “4 Robotic Revolutions” framework (IEEE IROS 2016) and lead of the Robotics 2050+ Delphi Study Biography The collaborative robotics market did not exist as a commercial category until a small group of teams, including the one Boesl worked in at KUKA, navigated the LBR iiwa through the safety standards that made human-machine co-working legally and operationally viable. That kind of work, sitting at the join between engineering, regulation, and commercial deployment, is what informs the way he now advises boards. After KUKA he ran the robotics division at Festo, overseeing five international R&D centres and the development of the Festo BionicCobot, the first pneumatic collaborative robot. The combination of two senior operating roles at two of the most credible robotics businesses in Europe is unusual on its own. It becomes more so when paired with chair-level institutional work: VP for Industrial Activities at the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, and Global Chair of the IEEE TechEthics Initiative for five years. His academic and policy work extends the same agenda. As Professor of Digital Sciences at HDBW Munich and an adjunct at the TUM Institute for LifeLong Learning, he leads the Robotics 2050+ Global Delphi Study, a long-range scenario programme on the future of robotics and AI. Through the Robotics & AI Governance Foundation and a seat on the UN DESA expert group, he contributes to how governments and standards bodies think about autonomous systems and the Sustainable Development Goals. What this means for buyers is straightforward. When a board asks where the line should sit between human and machine decision-making, or how to make AI deployment defensible to a regulator, Boesl is one of the few voices in Europe who can answer from the engineering side, the standards side, and the policy side at once. Key speaking topics Robotics and human-machine collaboration AI governance and technology ethics Industry 4.0 and operational deployment of automation Strategic foresight and long-range scenario planning Responsible innovation in regulated industries The future of work in robotic and AI-enabled organisations Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting AI and automation strategy in industrial, manufacturing, and engineering-led organisations Chief technology, chief digital, and chief AI officers responsible for moving from pilots to deployment Heads of innovation, R&D leadership, and corporate strategy teams in industrial groups and Mittelstand manufacturers Policy, public affairs, and ESG leaders tracking the regulatory direction of AI and robotics Audience outcomes A clearer map of where robotics and AI sit today against the “4 Robotic Revolutions” frame, and what the next phase actually demands of an operating business A working vocabulary for AI governance that a board can use with regulators, auditors, and internal risk functions Specific reference points from KUKA and Festo on what it takes to deploy collaborative robotics inside an industrial operation A perspective on long-range scenarios drawn from the Robotics 2050+ Delphi research, rather than commentary A sharper sense of where the human-machine boundary should sit for the organisation’s own workforce design

Why organisations work with David Rowan He runs the climate-tech and health-tech investment funds at Voyagers and has personally backed more than 180 early-stage tech companies. The view he brings to a board is from active deal flow, not from a research summary. Nine years editing WIRED UK gave him direct working relationships with the founders of WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Google, Spotify, Didi, Xiaomi and Nest while those companies were still being built. He reports on the frontier from inside the rooms where it is designed. His Penguin bestseller Non-Bullshit Innovation came out of a 20-country investigation into what real corporate innovation looks like once the theatre of accelerators and chief disruptive growth officers is stripped away. Boards get a tested set of strategies, not a list of trends. Every talk is researched and built around the sector in the room. Recent briefs include aviation (SITA), insurance, automotive after-market, real estate, luxury fashion and television. He converts frontier technology into the decisions a CEO has to take this quarter. Repeat clients include Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Google, Sky, Salesforce and Warner Bros. Biography highlights Founding Editor-in-Chief of WIRED UK, 2008-17 Author of Non-Bullshit Innovation (Penguin); Amazon #1 business bestseller; Financial Times Business Books of the Month; translated into Japanese, Korean, Russian and Ukrainian 900+ keynotes globally; event moderator for the World Economic Forum, the UK and French governments, the G8 Innovation Conference, the Royal Academy of Engineering and GITEX Dubai Technology columnist for The Times, GQ, Condé Nast Traveller and The Sunday Times Investor in 180+ early-stage tech companies; named unicorns include Grammarly, Improbable, Maven Clinic, Cerebral, Commure, Rebellion Defense, Kitopi and Onfido Founder of Voyagers; manager of its climate-tech and health-tech investment funds; adviser to Lakestar Biography The length of task an AI agent can autonomously complete is doubling every seven months. Autonomous robots are already running factory shifts. Most boards are setting strategy from briefings that pre-date both. David Rowan’s working life sits inside the gap between those two realities. As founding Editor-in-Chief of WIRED UK, he built working relationships with the founders of WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Google, Spotify, Didi, Xiaomi and Nest while those companies were still scaling. He has since backed more than 180 early-stage tech companies, eight of which have reached unicorn valuations: Grammarly, Improbable, Maven Clinic, Cerebral, Commure, Rebellion Defense, Kitopi and Onfido. He now runs the Voyagers climate-tech and health-tech investment funds. His Penguin bestseller Non-Bullshit Innovation came out of a 20-country investigation into how incumbent businesses actually generate new value, once the theatre of accelerators and chief disruptive growth officers is set aside. The book was named a Financial Times Business Book of the Month and translated into Japanese, Korean, Russian and Ukrainian. Its argument is that genuine innovation is a discipline with specific, testable strategies. His next book is on culture as the differentiating asset for organisations in an era when AI risks commodifying everything else. Repeat clients include Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Google, Sky, Salesforce and Warner Bros. He moderates for the World Economic Forum, the UK and French governments, the G8 Innovation Conference and the Royal Academy of Engineering. His stated KPI for a keynote: leave the audience 91% excited about the future, and 9% afraid. Key speaking topics AI strategy for established businesses Exponential technology and industry disruption Innovation as a managed discipline inside incumbent organisations The future of work in the age of AI agents Culture and talent strategy under AI commodification Sector-specific technology foresight Ideal for CEOs and boards setting AI strategy for established businesses CHROs and Chief People Officers reshaping talent strategy as AI changes the shape of work Chief Innovation, Digital and Strategy leaders translating frontier technology into operating decisions Senior leadership teams in sectors facing acute technology disruption: finance, real estate, aviation, media, healthcare, insurance, automotive Audience outcomes A clearer separation of what is genuinely real at the AI frontier from what remains hype A practical triage of technology decisions: what to fund this quarter, what to pilot, what to ignore The 17 strategies from Non-Bullshit Innovation, applied to the audience’s own sector A sector-specific reading of what AI agents are likely to do to operating models and headcount over the next 24 months

Why organisations work with David Goodhart His Anywheres-Somewheres framework – originated in The Road to Somewhere and now widely cited in policy and board-level discourse – gives leadership teams a precise vocabulary for the value divide driving political volatility, workforce disengagement, and brand risk, and a basis for strategic response that goes beyond reactive communication. His Head, Hand, Heart typology reframes the talent and automation debate: it argues that cognitive work has been systematically over-valued at the expense of manual and care-based vocations, giving organisations a rigorous basis for rethinking workforce design, skills investment, and the distribution of dignity and status at work. His trilogy – The Road to Somewhere, Head, Hand, Heart, and The Care Dilemma – maps three decades of social disruption as a connected analytical story, giving boards a through-line from the Brexit-era value fracture to current debates on care, fertility, and workforce sustainability. He draws on live research at Policy Exchange’s Demography, Immigration and Integration Unit rather than a fixed single-book thesis – his analysis tracks current demographic, policy, and political data and adjusts accordingly. His range is structurally unusual: 12 years as a Financial Times correspondent, founder and editor of Prospect magazine, Director of Demos, and current Commissioner on the Equality and Human Rights Commission – he holds the argument across journalism, think tank research, and regulatory governance in a combination that very few analysts in this space can match. Biography highlights Head of Policy Exchange’s Demography, Immigration and Integration Unit and Director of the Integration Hub Commissioner on the Equality and Human Rights Commission Founder and former editor of Prospect magazine (established 1995); Financial Times correspondent for 12 years, including a posting in Germany during reunification Former Director of the think tank Demos Author of The Road to Somewhere (Sunday Times bestseller; longlisted for the Orwell Prize 2018), Head, Hand, Heart (Financial Times and Telegraph Book of the Year 2020), The Care Dilemma (Financial Times and Spectator Book of the Year 2024), and The British Dream (shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2014) Contributor to the Guardian, the Times, the Independent, and the Financial Times; presenter of BBC Radio 4 Analysis programmes Biography David Goodhart founded Prospect magazine in 1995 and spent 12 years as a Financial Times correspondent – including a posting in Germany during reunification. The Road to Somewhere (2017) named the divide between mobile Anywheres and rooted Somewheres: a framework now standard in policy and board-level analysis of political risk. That book launched a trilogy. Head, Hand, Heart (2020) extended the argument to work and status, making the case that cognitive elites had systematically captured the labour market at the expense of manual and care-based vocations. A Financial Times and Telegraph Book of the Year, it identified the dignity deficit that now drives workforce disengagement and vocational underinvestment. The Care Dilemma (2024), also a Financial Times Book of the Year, completed the arc – examining how rapid social change has produced structural deficits in care, family stability, and demographic renewal. His institutional base spans journalism, policy, and governance. He served as Director of Demos before heading Policy Exchange’s Demography, Immigration and Integration Unit. He sits as a Commissioner on the Equality and Human Rights Commission – a combination that allows him to hold the argument across research, regulatory practice, and public media with unusual coherence. The frameworks Goodhart has built are reference points for boards and leadership teams trying to understand why workforces, consumer bases, and political environments are pulling in different directions. His contribution is analytical rigour applied to the forces most organisations feel but struggle to name. Key speaking topics The Anywheres-Somewheres divide and political risk Immigration, integration, and social cohesion Populism, value-based political fractures, and elite distrust Status, dignity, and the cognitive-skills divide in modern economies Demography, fertility, and the care deficit The future of vocational work and skills systems National identity and the politics of belonging Ideal for C-suite and board audiences mapping the political and social risks shaping the operating environment Government, public sector, and policy leadership teams working on immigration, integration, demographic change, or social cohesion HR, talent, and workforce strategy leaders reassessing skills frameworks, vocational pathways, and workforce dignity in the context of automation Public affairs, corporate affairs, and ESG functions managing social licence, institutional trust, and stakeholder relations Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the Anywheres-Somewheres divide and its concrete implications for workforce, consumer, and political behaviour A structural account of why political volatility is a durable feature of the operating environment, not a temporary disruption A framework for auditing how organisations distribute status, dignity, and investment across cognitive, manual, and care-based roles – and the strategic consequences of imbalance Clearer analytical thinking about demographic change – falling birthrates, ageing populations, and the emerging care deficit – as strategic planning factors rather than background noise A more grounded, evidence-based framing of immigration and integration as policy and social licence issues, accessible across the political spectrum

Why organisations work with Dave Ulrich The four-domain architecture of human capability, talent, leadership, organisation, and the HR function, is Ulrich’s own framework. It gives business and HR leaders a single integrated taxonomy for what is otherwise a sprawl of disconnected people and organisation initiatives, and a structured way to decide which investments will actually move stakeholder outcomes. The Human Resource Competency Study, now in its eighth round across 35 years, has cumulatively drawn on more than 100,000 respondents. Round 7 produced the headline finding that organisational capability has four times the business impact of individual talent. Round 8 sharpens the picture: HR department capability and the organisational capabilities HR helps build have six to eight times the business impact of individual HR competencies. Ulrich brings these findings into the room directly, not via a citation. Ulrich is the originator of the HR Business Partner model that most large organisations still operate today. Engaging him is not external validation of the existing model. It is access to the next-generation architecture, including the Organization Guidance System diagnostic that has now been run inside more than 500 organisations. The Leadership Capital Index reframes leadership quality as a measurable asset that investors and boards can rate the way Moody’s rates credit. For boards under increasing pressure to disclose human capital substance, not narrative, this is one of the few frameworks built explicitly for that conversation. Induction into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame, alongside HR Magazine’s «father of modern HR» designation and recognition as the most influential HR thinker of the decade, places him among the small group of figures who have demonstrably shaped a field rather than contributed to one. Biography highlights Rensis Likert Professor Emeritus, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan Co-founder and partner, The RBL Group Author of more than 30 books including Human Resource Champions (Harvard Business School Press, 1997), The Leadership Capital Index (Berrett-Koehler, 2015), Victory Through Organization (McGraw-Hill, 2017), and Reinventing the Organization (Harvard Business Review Press, 2019) Editor, Human Resource Management journal, 1990 to 1999; Distinguished Fellow, National Academy of Human Resources Inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame, 2017; HR Magazine Lifetime Achievement Award, 2012, source of the «father of modern HR» designation; named most influential HR thinker of the decade by HR Magazine Lead architect of the Human Resource Competency Study (eight rounds, 35-plus years, more than 100,000 cumulative respondents) and the Organization Guidance System diagnostic (more than 500 organisations) Active global platform: more than 400,000 LinkedIn followers and a weekly newsletter with more than 230,000 subscribers, with weekly posts routinely reaching 50,000 to 70,000 views Biography HR is not about HR. The phrase is Ulrich’s own. It captures the through-line of three decades of work: that the HR function exists to deliver value to every stakeholder the organisation touches, not to perfect its own processes. Employees and executives inside. Customers, investors, and communities outside. The discipline he calls human capability is the architecture that connects them. That architecture has four domains, each backed by its own research base. Talent covers how organisations acquire, develop, and retain full contributors, now framed by Ulrich as Talent Advantage = AI × HI, artificial intelligence multiplied by human ingenuity. Organisation treats the company as a set of capabilities: agility, culture, innovation, strategic clarity, collaboration, and customer connection. These can be prioritised through the Organization Guidance System, now deployed in more than 500 companies. Leadership draws on the Leadership Code research with more than 30,000 respondents, and on the Leadership Capital Index, which gives boards and investors a measurable framework for leadership quality. The HR function rests on the 35-year Human Resource Competency Study, with more than 100,000 cumulative respondents, and shapes the operating models, practices, and competencies HR uses today. The practical consequences of this work have shaped how HR is organised. Human Resource Champions (1997) introduced the four-role model, strategic partner, change agent, administrative expert, and employee champion, that became the template for HR business partnering inside Fortune 500 organisations. The Leadership Capital Index (2015) made the case that leadership quality can be rated the way credit is rated. Victory Through Organization (2017) was the empirical headline: organisational capability has roughly four times the business impact of individual talent. Round 8 of the HRCS sharpens that further: the HR department and the organisational capabilities it helps build have six to eight times the business impact of individual HR competencies. Ulrich is the Rensis Likert Professor Emeritus at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, and a partner at The RBL Group. He has worked with more than half of the Fortune 200 across more than 80 countries. He was inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 2017, and was named «father of modern HR» by HR Magazine in its 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award. His weekly LinkedIn posts reach more than 400,000 followers and 230,000 newsletter subscribers. That audience is how much of the global HR and business community engages with his current work in real time. Key speaking topics Stakeholder value through human capability The four domains of HR: talent, leadership, organisation, and the HR function HR transformation and the next-generation HR Business Partner model Organisational capability as competitive advantage Leadership Capital Index and leadership as a board-level asset The HR inflection point: AI, analytics, and the future of the HR function Culture transformation and organisational design Ideal for CEOs and executive teams looking for a single integrated language across talent, leadership, organisational capability, and the HR function CHROs and senior HR teams whose remit now spans stakeholder outcomes across employees, customers, investors, and communities Boards and investors who need a measurable framework for the human capability behind market value Transformation leads redesigning the HR operating model and the cross-functional accountabilities that sit alongside it across business leaders, HR, and employees Audience outcomes The four-domain human capability framework as a single integrated language for talent, leadership, organisation, and HR investment, replacing the disconnected list of HR programmes most teams are working from The empirical case for why organisational and capability investments outperform individual talent investments, drawn directly from HRCS and OGS findings A diagnostic logic for deciding which human capability investments will move customer share, investor confidence, and community standing, not just employee engagement scores A practical model for measuring leadership quality that can be defended in an investor or board conversation A clear position from which CHROs and CEOs can present HR as a leading indicator of business performance rather than a lagging cost