Growth Strategy

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 Michael Brenner His core argument; that empathy outperforms authority as both a marketing and a leadership lever, is grounded in practitioner experience inside SAP and NewsCred, not academic research; senior leaders engage with it as a claim someone has actually lived, not theorised His book Mean People Suck gives CMOs and CHROs a shared language for the link between culture, employee engagement, and revenue outcomes, making it useful in conversations that usually stay siloed The “Champion Leader” model is a named, transferable alternative to command-and-control management: specific enough to teach, tested across both large enterprises and early-stage startups His content marketing work is anchored in a measurable ROI framework from The Content Formula, translating content investment into financial terms for leaders who need to justify budgets to the CFO, not just the marketing team He has operated on both sides of the client-agency relationship, which means his diagnosis of where organisations waste marketing spend carries a credibility most single-perspective speakers cannot match Biography highlights CEO and Founder of Marketing Insider Group, a content marketing agency serving Fortune 500 brands and B2B technology companies Former VP of Global Content Marketing Strategy at SAP and Head of Strategy at NewsCred Author of three books: Mean People Suck: How Empathy Leads to Bigger Profits and a Better Life (2019), The Content Formula, and Digital Marketing Growth Hacks Named Top CMO Influencer by Forbes and Top Business Speaker by The Huffington Post Contributor to Forbes, The Economist, and The Guardian; contributor at Content Marketing Institute Featured in Entrepreneur Magazine; facilitated content strategy workshops for MarketingProfs Biography Most organisations treat their marketing problem as a content problem. The more accurate diagnosis is a leadership one: companies default to self-promotion when their customers need help, and they build management cultures that reward compliance when growth requires empathy. Michael Brenner spent two decades working from the inside of that tension – as VP of Global Content Marketing Strategy at SAP, as Head of Strategy at NewsCred, and as CMO across a series of high-growth technology startups. His 2019 book Mean People Suck: How Empathy Leads to Bigger Profits and a Better Life argues that low employee engagement and weak marketing performance share a common root: a leadership culture that has traded empathy for authority. The research and case evidence he assembles make it a commercial argument, not a motivational one. As founder and CEO of Marketing Insider Group, Brenner has built content marketing programmes for more than 75 brands. His earlier book, The Content Formula, provides a practical ROI framework that converts content investment into financial language – useful for marketing leaders who need to make the commercial case to a CFO, not just a brand committee. His keynote work is structured around two named concepts: the “Champion Leader,” a model for leaders who close the gap between what organisations ask their teams to do and what actually drives results; and the “Bullseye Organisation,” which frames customer-centricity as a structural discipline rather than a values statement. A contributor to Forbes, The Economist, and The Guardian, and named Top CMO Influencer by Forbes and Top Business Speaker by The Huffington Post, Brenner speaks across the United States and Europe, primarily to senior marketing, commercial, and leadership audiences. Key speaking topics Customer-centric marketing strategy Content marketing ROI and measurement Empathy-led leadership Employee engagement and culture The Champion Leader model Organisational alignment around the customer B2B marketing and demand generation Ideal for CMOs and marketing directors seeking a measurable framework for content marketing investment CHROs and culture leads addressing the connection between employee engagement and commercial performance CEOs and senior leadership teams weighing the limits of authority-based management B2B technology and SaaS organisations building customer-first marketing and go-to-market capabilities Audience outcomes A practitioner-built argument for why empathy is a commercial lever, with specific cases and research rather than aspiration The “Champion Leader” framework as a named, teachable model for shifting from directive to customer-oriented leadership A measurable ROI methodology for content marketing that can be used in internal budget and investment conversations A practical method for identifying where self-promotional bias is costing the business in audience reach and revenue Clearer criteria for distinguishing marketing that serves the customer from marketing that serves the organisation’s ego

James Averdieck’s Background He built the brand with passion and sold it for £32 million. James is compelling and unique as a keynote speaker, as he delivers the message that at the heart of entrepreneurialism lies the idea, the journey, not the exit strategy, and not the final sale price. The entrepreneur, conveys a strong message about the value of loving your business. Speaking from experience, he shares his innovative ideas about entrepreneurship; simplifying business and using creative agility to make your dreams achievable. He shares the ups and downs of running a business with a raw candour, offering a true insight into the rocky road to success. The combination of James’ credibility and transparency, mean important and real lessons can be learned from his keynote speeches. Charismatic, intelligent and thoughtful, James is an ideal speaker for the business circuit. Born in Yorkshire in 1965, James was educated at Uppingham School before studying Economics at Durham University. Following University, James joined the graduate programme at strategy consultants Arthur D. Little, where he learnt about the key drivers to a successful business, this sparked a fire within him to learn more. James spent 9 years in the Food industry working for Safeway and St Ivel and learnt about Sales and Marketing and running businesses. With St Ivel he moved to Belgium and became a convert to Belgian gastronomy and, as he says, ‘went native on the chocolate front’. It was in Brussels that the seed was sown for his UK chocolate venture. James saw the opportunity of marrying high-quality chocolate patisserie with efficient UK supermarket distribution. Spotting a gap in the market, James saw that consumers wanted artisanal products and there was a backlash forming against mass produced big brands. He wanted to deliver high-quality products using the best raw materials. Gü, the brand, is about chocolate extremism – evoking nostalgic memories and magical smells of baking with chocolate. The brand was embraced with love by the supermarkets, launching first in Sainsburys and Waitrose with the others following apace. James has turned his attentions now to a healthier brand, The Coconut Collective, a non-dairy based brand. As a speaker, James’ knowledge combined with natural story-telling makes him an ideal choice for any audience looking to be inspired. James Averdieck is the man who built and sold Gü! A master entrepreneur who realised his dream, harnessed his strengths and pioneered a leading brand, his bumpy journey means he has invaluable lessons to impart.

About Dave Trott Dave’s passion for creativity and advertising started in the ’70s when he worked for John Webster at BMP, who has won more advertising awards than anyone else in history. He worked his way to Deputy Creative Director, then left in 1980 to start his own agency, Gold Greenlees Trott. His time at BMP certainly stood him in good stead when Gold Greenlees Trott won Best Agency in the UK by Campaign magazine in their first year, followed four years later by Best Agency in the World by Ad Age magazine, New York. Current/Past Positions and Roles Consultant Joint Founder, Bainsfair Sharkey Trott Joint Founder, WTCS Chairman, The Gate Founder, D&AD Advertising Concepts Workshops Founder, Gold Greenlees Trott Deputy Creative Director, BMP Awards, Accolades, Achievements, Honours D&AD President’s Award for Lifetime Achievement Lifetime Achievement Award from The Creative Circle Lifetime Achievement Award from The Marketing Society Lifetime Achievement Award from The Scottish Advertising Association Speaking Topics Creativity Advertising Lateral Thinking Publications Dave has written six books exploring creativity, communication, and problem-solving: Creative Mischief Predatory Thinking 1+1=3 Creative Blindness The Power of Ignorance Crossover Creativity

Why organisations work with Brent Hoberman He has built and exited two unicorns, lastminute.com and Made.com, and can speak to scaling and to failure with equal credit. Through Founders Factory and firstminute capital, he has first-hand visibility of more than 400 early-stage companies and 12 seed-stage unicorns, giving corporate audiences a live read on where technology is moving. His corporate partner list at Founders Factory, including The Guardian, L’Oreal, easyJet, Aviva and Reckitt Benckiser, means he speaks the language of incumbent strategy as well as founder strategy. As Co-Chair of Enterprise Britain and an adviser to successive UK Prime Ministers, he frames growth inside the real policy and capital conditions leaders operate under. He is candid about what went wrong at Made.com, which gives senior audiences a working case study in IPO timing, governance and post-pandemic demand rather than a highlight reel. Biography highlights Co-founder and former CEO of lastminute.com; sold to Sabre for approximately $1.1bn in 2005. Co-founder of Made.com; founding chairman until shortly before its 2021 IPO. Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Founders Factory, Founders Forum and firstminute capital. Appointed CBE in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to entrepreneurship. Co-Chair of Enterprise Britain; has advised multiple UK Prime Ministers on entrepreneurship policy. Non-executive director roles have included Guardian Media Group, TalkTalk, Shazam, Time Out and The Economist. Biography Lastminute.com went public in March 2000, weeks before the dot-com market broke. The IPO was 43 times oversubscribed and remains one of the fastest company listings in European history. Brent Hoberman was its co-founder and CEO, and he ran the business through the crash and on to a $1.1bn sale to Sabre in 2005. That arc, from frenzy to survival to exit, sits under almost everything he says on stage. Since then he has built three platforms that back other founders. Founders Factory runs corporate-backed accelerators with partners including The Guardian, L’Oreal, easyJet, Aviva, Marks and Spencer and Reckitt Benckiser. firstminute capital is a global seed fund backed by more than 130 unicorn founders. Founders Forum is the community that connects the two. The combined portfolio gives him a working view across several hundred early-stage technology companies at once. He also co-founded Made.com in 2010 and was its founding chairman. He stepped down before the 2021 IPO, having questioned its timing, and the company later entered administration. He uses that outcome directly in corporate sessions on governance, category demand and IPO readiness, which is rare among founders at his level. Outside operating roles, he co-chairs Enterprise Britain with Stephen Fitzpatrick and has advised successive UK Prime Ministers on small business, scale-up and entrepreneurship policy. He was appointed CBE in 2015 for services to entrepreneurship. The policy work matters on the platform because it lets him connect founder behaviour, capital markets and government posture in a way most technology speakers cannot. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and founder psychology Scaling consumer internet and marketplace businesses Venture investing and early-stage capital Corporate innovation and startup partnerships AI and consumer technology trends UK and European tech policy Ideal for Boards and executive committees reviewing innovation strategy Corporate venture and M and A teams working with startups CEO and founder gatherings inside private equity and VC portfolios Senior leadership offsites at consumer, retail, media and financial services firms Audience outcomes A clear read on which early-stage technology categories are attracting serious capital and why A practical view of how corporates get useful work out of startup partnerships, from someone who structures them Frank lessons from a founder who has been through a record-breaking IPO, a billion-dollar exit and a public company collapse A sharper sense of how UK and European policy, capital and talent conditions shape what boards can realistically plan for

Why organisations work with Bjarke Ingels His “hedonistic sustainability” concept – coined in a 2011 TED talk with over two million views – gives leadership teams a credible, named argument against the assumption that environmental ambition and commercial performance are in tension. The Yes Is More manifesto argues against the choice between bold vision and practical delivery; it is taught beyond architecture because the logic is genuinely transferable to any organisation navigating competing strategic demands. BIG’s project portfolio – CopenHill’s waste-to-energy plant with a public ski slope, the BIG U flood-defence park in Manhattan, the Google North Bayshore campus co-designed with Thomas Heatherwick – gives executive audiences proof that resolving sustainability and desirability through design produces outcomes superior to either goal pursued alone. He has spoken at the World Economic Forum, TED, WIRED, and 10 Downing Street, meaning his frameworks have already been stress-tested in front of heads of government, technology leaders, and senior executives. Teaching at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Rice runs alongside leading a 400-person practice with major projects on four continents – his arguments carry the authority of both the seminar room and the construction site. Biography highlights Founder and creative partner of BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), established 2006; offices in New York, London, and Copenhagen; team of 400+ Originator of “hedonistic sustainability,” introduced in a 2011 TED talk now viewed over two million times Author of Yes Is More: An Archicomic on Architectural Evolution (2009) and HOT TO COLD: An Odyssey of Architectural Adaptation Named to TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People (2016); WSJ Innovator of the Year in Architecture; Fast Company 100 Most Creative People in Business Awards include the Golden Lion at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2004), ULI Award for Excellence (2009), Danish Crown Prince’s Culture Prize (2011); Honorary Fellow of the AIA (2020) and RIBA (2015) Featured as opening subject of Netflix’s Abstract: The Art of Design; speaker at TED, the World Economic Forum, WIRED, and 10 Downing Street Has taught at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Rice Universities; honorary professor at the Royal Academy of Arts, School of Architecture, Copenhagen Biography CopenHill is a waste-to-energy plant in Copenhagen that doubles as a public ski slope, climbing wall, and rooftop hiking trail. It is not a compromise between environmental performance and civic amenity. It is Bjarke Ingels’ most cited demonstration of what he calls “hedonistic sustainability” – the argument that reducing environmental impact and improving how people experience their city are the same design challenge. In his 2011 TED talk, now viewed over two million times, Ingels introduced the concept and set out the logic. His manifesto Yes Is More pushed the argument further, proposing “pragmatic utopianism” as a design principle: the deliberate rejection of the choice between visionary ambition and commercial delivery. The book was written for architects. It is now taught in business and strategy contexts because the core argument is transferable. Ingels founded BIG in Copenhagen in 2006, following earlier work at OMA under Rem Koolhaas and the co-founding of PLOT with Julien De Smedt. The firm now operates from New York, London, and Copenhagen with more than 400 staff. Its projects range from the BIG U – Manhattan’s Hurricane Sandy flood-defence infrastructure, redesigned as a continuous public park – to Google’s North Bayshore campus, co-designed with Thomas Heatherwick, where workplace performance and environmental targets were treated as a single design brief. TIME Magazine named him one of the world’s 100 Most Influential People in 2016. He holds the WSJ Innovator of the Year award, Honorary Fellowships from the AIA and RIBA, and has spoken at the World Economic Forum and 10 Downing Street. He has taught at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Rice. Netflix’s Abstract: The Art of Design featured him as its opening subject. His discipline is architecture; his primary value to organisations is a framework for dissolving the trade-off between ambition and pragmatism. Key speaking topics Hedonistic sustainability and design-led climate action Pragmatic utopianism and innovation strategy Urban resilience and large-scale infrastructure design Architecture’s role in organisational and civic identity Creative leadership at scale The built environment and corporate space strategy Design thinking across disciplines Ideal for C-suite and executive leadership teams at real estate, infrastructure, and large-scale development organisations Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG leads seeking to reframe sustainability as a source of commercial advantage rather than compliance cost Corporate boards and transformation leads examining how built environment decisions affect organisational culture, talent, and long-term asset value Civic leaders and urban planners making large-scale public investment decisions Audience outcomes A named, transferable framework – “hedonistic sustainability” – for challenging the trade-off assumption in ESG, design, and innovation strategy conversations Concrete examples, drawn from BIG’s global project portfolio, of how resolving competing constraints through design produces outcomes that neither goal alone would generate A reframe of what “innovation” means in large-scale, long-horizon project environments where short-term pragmatism typically wins Greater confidence in presenting design ambition as a strategic argument rather than an aesthetic or cost preference Practical insight into building and leading a high-velocity creative organisation across multiple geographies and project scales

Why organisations work with Avinash Kaushik He built the intellectual vocabulary a generation of marketers now uses, including the See-Think-Do-Care framework that maps content, media and measurement to real customer intent. Sixteen years as Google’s Digital Marketing Evangelist gave him a view of marketing performance across most of the world’s largest advertisers, not a single case study. He bridges analytics and brand in a room that usually forces leaders to pick one, advising both a measurement firm (Human Made Machine) and a global fashion group (Tapestry). His books sit on the desks of working practitioners in ten-plus languages; the argument has survived translation, platform change and the rise of generative AI. He is unusually direct about what does not work in marketing measurement, which is why senior buyers use him to sharpen internal debates rather than flatter them. Biography highlights Former Senior Director of Global Analytics and Digital Marketing Evangelist at Google, a sixteen-year tenure. Global Chief Strategy Officer at Human Made Machine; Brand Strategy and Marketing Transformation Consultant at Tapestry. Author of “Web Analytics: An Hour a Day” and “Web Analytics 2.0” (Wiley), translated into more than ten languages. Originator of the See-Think-Do-Care framework for intent-based marketing strategy. Recipient of the American Statistical Association’s Statistical Advocate of the Year and the Web Analytics Association’s Most Influential Industry Contributor award. Writes “The Marketing Analytics Intersect” newsletter, read by approximately 55,000 marketing and analytics leaders. Biography Marketing leaders rarely struggle for data. They struggle to decide what any of it means for growth next quarter. That is the problem Avinash Kaushik has spent two decades making tractable, first inside Google as its Senior Director of Global Analytics and Digital Marketing Evangelist, and now as global Chief Strategy Officer at Human Made Machine and brand strategy consultant to Tapestry. His See-Think-Do-Care framework reframed digital marketing around customer intent rather than channel or demographic, and it is now embedded in the working language of marketing teams from consumer goods to financial services. It is a simple idea with a disciplined consequence: measurement and content have to follow the audience’s state of mind, not the agency’s media plan. Two books, “Web Analytics: An Hour a Day” and “Web Analytics 2.0”, carried that argument into practice and have been translated into more than ten languages. The American Statistical Association named him Statistical Advocate of the Year; the Web Analytics Association recognised him as its Most Influential Industry Contributor. He has taught and advised at Stanford, USC Annenberg and the Rotman school at Toronto. What sets his current work apart is the refusal to treat AI as a separate topic. In rooms with CMOs and CFOs, he draws the line from intent-based customer understanding to incrementality-based measurement to where generative AI actually earns its keep. The recommendation is usually sharper and the vendor pitch usually weaker by the time he is done. Key speaking topics Intent-centric marketing strategy Incrementality-based marketing measurement AI and generative AI in marketing Digital analytics and data-driven decision making Customer-centric growth and retention Marketing transformation for senior leaders The See-Think-Do-Care framework in practice Ideal for CMOs and marketing leadership teams rebuilding measurement for an AI-first environment. Boards and executive teams stress-testing the commercial return from digital and marketing investment. Heads of analytics, data and performance marketing aligning with brand and commercial functions. CEO and CFO audiences who want a serious outside view on marketing’s contribution to growth. Audience outcomes A clearer line between customer intent, marketing activity and commercial outcome. A sharper test for whether a measurement approach is actually incremental or just reported. A working critique of how generative AI is being sold into marketing and where it earns real return. A shared vocabulary, grounded in See-Think-Do-Care, that senior teams can use to align content, media and measurement. A more confident internal argument about where to stop investing, not only where to invest more.

Why organisations work with Darren Hardy He has run the operating seat, not just studied it. He led SUCCESS magazine as publisher and founding editor for eight years and built businesses before that, so the material lands with founders and CEOs rather than feeling like borrowed theory. The Compound Effect gives audiences a single, durable mental model for how small daily choices become outsized business outcomes. It survives long after the keynote ends, which is what organisations actually pay for. His 2016 Master of Influence award from the National Speakers Association places him in a lineage of fewer than a dozen people, alongside Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar and Brian Tracy. Few current keynote speakers carry that specific credential. He has spent two decades interviewing the operators behind large companies, including Richard Branson, Howard Schultz and Jack Welch, and brings those case studies into rooms without name-dropping for its own sake. DarrenDaily gives him a live, ongoing feedback loop with hundreds of thousands of high-performers, so the content is stress-tested against what is actually working in the field rather than recycled from a book written years ago. Biography highlights New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Compound Effect, The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster and Living Your Best Year Ever. Publisher and Founding Editor of SUCCESS magazine, 2007 to 2015. National Speakers Association Master of Influence Award, 2016. Former executive producer of The People’s Network and chairman of The Success Training Network. Founder of DarrenDaily, a daily mentoring platform for entrepreneurs and executives. Has interviewed leaders including Richard Branson, Howard Schultz, Jack Welch and Steve Wynn. Biography Most performance problems in founder-led businesses are not strategy problems. They are execution problems dressed up as strategy problems, and they compound quietly until a growth plan stalls. Darren Hardy has spent twenty-five years working on the side of that equation that boards rarely discuss directly: the daily habits, operating rhythms and personal disciplines that separate the operators who build something lasting from the ones who do not. His argument is built from two sources. The first is his own operating career. He started his first business at eighteen and ran a company generating material annual revenue before he was thirty, before spending eight years as Publisher and Founding Editor of SUCCESS magazine, relaunching the title and running it as a business. The second is editorial. Through SUCCESS and the networks he ran before it, he interviewed a long line of senior operators, including Richard Branson, Howard Schultz, Jack Welch and Steve Wynn, and distilled what he learned into The Compound Effect, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller still in active circulation more than a decade after publication. The 2016 Master of Influence Award from the National Speakers Association is the credential that most senior buyers notice. It has gone to roughly a dozen people in the history of the profession, including Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar and Brian Tracy, and it is not given for platform skill alone. It signals durability of ideas, something Hardy has since extended through DarrenDaily, a daily mentoring programme followed by hundreds of thousands of founders, sales leaders and executives. What a room gets from him is not motivation in the old sense. It is a specific mental model for how decisions compound, delivered by someone who has run the P&L, built the audience, and stress-tested the ideas against a live community of operators every working day. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurial performance and founder psychology Habit compounding and long-term execution discipline Leadership in fast-changing, multi-generational workplaces Productivity systems of high-performing operators Sales team performance and commercial discipline Personal leadership and daily operating rhythm Ideal for Founder-led and founder-stage businesses facing the transition from hustle to operating discipline CEOs, COOs and sales leaders running performance-driven commercial organisations Annual kick-offs, leadership offsites and sales conferences where the brief is execution, not strategy Audience outcomes A clear, durable model for how small daily choices compound into commercial outcomes A sharper view of the specific habits and rhythms that separate top operators from competent ones Case material drawn from real interviews with leaders such as Branson, Schultz and Welch, applied to the audience’s own context A concrete shift in how leaders structure their own days, weeks and quarters on returning to the business

Why organisations work with T. Harv Eker His core material is built from his own operating experience, including a retail fitness chain scaled to ten locations, a subsequent financial collapse, and a methodical rebuild; this is not theory cribbed from other authors. Secrets of the Millionaire Mind put his argument into mainstream circulation, a New York Times bestseller and number one on the Wall Street Journal business-book list, which gives audiences a common reference point before the session starts. His Money Blueprint framework translates abstract wealth mindset material into a concrete diagnostic that individuals can apply to their own decisions and habits. Peak Potentials Training, the company he founded, has run entrepreneurial and wealth-mindset programmes at scale for more than two decades, so the material has been refined in front of large, mixed audiences rather than a single executive room. He speaks directly to founders, owner-operators and ambitious individuals, which is a different audience to the corporate keynote circuit and a better fit for entrepreneurial and franchise events. Biography highlights Canadian-American entrepreneur, businessman and motivational speaker Author of the New York Times bestseller Secrets of the Millionaire Mind (HarperCollins, 2005), number one on the Wall Street Journal business-book list Founder of Peak Potentials Training, acquired by Success Resources in 2011 Developer of the Money Blueprint framework for understanding individual wealth behaviour Creator of the Millionaire Mind Intensive and related programmes delivered internationally Biography The practical question behind most wealth advice is why the same information produces very different outcomes for very different people. T. Harv Eker’s working answer is the Money Blueprint: a set of internalised beliefs, set early, that governs how someone earns, saves, invests and loses money. His career has been an extended test of that argument, first on himself and then in front of large rooms of entrepreneurs. He is Canadian-American, born in Toronto in 1954, and started working at thirteen. After more than a dozen unsuccessful businesses, he opened one of North America’s early retail fitness stores and scaled it to ten locations, selling part of the company to a Fortune 500 buyer. He then lost most of the proceeds within two years. The rebuild is the source of the framework: a deliberate study of the psychological patterns that separate people who make money from people who keep it. That work became Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, a New York Times bestseller and number one on the Wall Street Journal business-book list, and Peak Potentials Training, the seminar company he founded and later sold to Success Resources in 2011. The Millionaire Mind Intensive remains the flagship programme. Eker’s natural audience is entrepreneurs, business owners and individuals building financial independence, rather than corporate boards. For growth conferences, founder communities, franchise events and wealth-focused audiences, his draw is the combination of a directly applicable framework, a mainstream bestseller and an operator’s willingness to talk about the failures as well as the results. Key speaking topics Wealth psychology and the Money Blueprint Entrepreneurial mindset and personal finance Building and rebuilding businesses Habits of high-earning individuals Motivation, action and execution Ideal for Entrepreneurs, founders and owner-operators scaling or restarting a business Franchise networks, sales organisations and business-opportunity communities Growth-focused conferences and private wealth events After-dinner and headline slots where a direct, plain-spoken commercial voice is required Audience outcomes A working diagnostic of the beliefs driving their current earning and spending behaviour A concrete view of the habits shared by high-earning entrepreneurs, drawn from Eker’s own research and teaching Specific prompts for changing patterns that have previously capped income or business growth A direct, action-oriented call to implement, consistent with his operating style

Why organisations work with Erika Lucas Her accelerator, run in partnership with the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder, has supported more than 220 women and minority-owned startups since 2017. She draws on live operating experience, finding and scaling founders that most capital systems miss. Her venture fund, VEST Her Ventures, invests in women-led companies in the care economy and the future of work. She brings a current portfolio view of where workforce shifts and regulatory pressure are opening commercial opportunities, and the market is under-pricing. She speaks the language of the full capital stack. As a former private equity Partner and as Director of Trade and Foreign Direct Investment at the Oklahoma Department of Commerce, she is fluent in public incentives, PE, VC, and bank credit, which matters for boards making complex allocation decisions. Her TED talk, “America’s Trillion Dollar Blindspot,” makes a market-sizing case for capital flowing to overlooked founders. That is the register that senior leaders and investment committees respond to. She operates from Oklahoma City, away from the coastal hubs from which most speakers on this topic come. For companies building workforce, consumer, or policy strategies outside a handful of metros, her ground-level view is difficult to source elsewhere. Biography highlights Co-founder of StitchCrew, its accelerator with the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder, has supported more than 220 women and minority-owned startups since 2017 Founder and General Partner of VEST Her Ventures, an early-stage venture fund investing in women-led companies in the care economy and future of work TED speaker: “America’s Trillion Dollar Blindspot” (TEDxOU) Host of the VEST Her Podcast, examining the structural barriers to women’s economic advancement Board of Directors at Arvest Bank; Fellow at the Just Economy Institute; Member of the Latino Corporate Directors Association Former Partner at a US and European private equity firm; former Director of Trade and Foreign Direct Investment at the Oklahoma Department of Commerce, where 38 international companies located or expanded during her tenure Biography Only a sliver of venture capital reaches women and founders of colour. The commercial cost of that pattern is usually understated. Whole categories of customers, markets, and operators are being systematically under-priced by capital that is trained to look in the same handful of places. StitchCrew was built on that reading of the market. Co-founded with her husband Chris in 2016, it runs an accelerator in partnership with the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder and has supported more than 220 women and minority-owned founders. The positioning matters. It sits in the middle of the country, not on a coastal hub, and the deal flow reflects markets that most East Coast or Bay Area funds never see. The logic extended into investment. VEST Her Ventures, founded in 2022, backs early-stage women-led companies in the care economy and future of work, two sectors where demand is visibly running ahead of available capital. The fund came together in weeks. Two million dollars was raised in two months, entirely from women limited partners based in the middle of the country. The throughline runs back through her earlier career. She was a Partner at a private equity firm with investments in the United States and Europe, and Director of Trade and Foreign Direct Investment at the Oklahoma Department of Commerce, where 38 international companies located or expanded during her tenure. She sits on the board of Arvest Bank, is a Fellow at the Just Economy Institute, and hosts the VEST Her Podcast, where the repeated question is what it would take for American capital to stop leaving its most profitable markets untouched. Key speaking topics Access to capital and overlooked markets Entrepreneurship and the new majority economy The care economy and future of work Women in leadership and ownership Venture capital and economic inclusion Economic mobility and public-private strategy Ideal for Corporate boards and Chief Investment Officers are looking for the next source of portfolio growth Private equity and venture investment committees assessing deal flow and diversification CHROs and heads of talent building workforce and care infrastructure strategies Economic development agencies, chambers of commerce, and regional leadership forums are working on commercial inclusion Audience outcomes A sharper commercial argument for investing in overlooked founders and markets, drawn from a live accelerator and an active venture portfolio A clearer map of where venture and growth capital actually lands in the United States, and which geographies and founder profiles it consistently misses Named sectors where consumer and workforce change is already running ahead of investment capital, including the care economy and the infrastructure of work A vocabulary for discussing inclusion in commercial terms, usable with boards, investment committees, and senior executives who are sceptical of fairness-led framing

Why organisations work with Jacco van der Kooij He built the operating language that serious SaaS revenue teams already use. Bowtie, SPICED and Revenue Architecture are not proprietary curiosities; they are the common vocabulary at companies like DocuSign, Uber Eats, Adobe and MURAL. His work treats go-to-market as a designed system, not a set of sales tactics. Leadership teams leave with a structural view of acquisition, retention and expansion as one connected revenue engine. He has operating credibility from inside enterprise technology. Senior roles at Kontiki, Qumu and Technicolor sit underneath the frameworks, so the advice is grounded in execution, not theory. He is published where serious readers look. Harvard Business Review (with Frank V. Cespedes of Harvard Business School) and a shelf of best-selling books including Revenue Architecture and Blueprints for a SaaS Sales Organization. He advises the capital side, not just the operating side. Growth advisory to Notion Capital, Reach Capital, Astella and Storm Ventures gives him a cross-portfolio view of what compounds and what breaks. Biography highlights Founder of Winning by Design, a go-to-market consulting and training firm working with hundreds of recurring-revenue companies worldwide. Creator of the Bowtie customer-journey model, the SPICED qualification framework and the Revenue Architecture operating model. Author of Revenue Architecture (2023) and co-author of Blueprints for a SaaS Sales Organization and The SaaS Sales Method series. Co-author with Frank V. Cespedes of the Harvard Business Review article “Hiring Star Salespeople Isn’t the Best Way to Grow” (February 2016). Clients and training partners include Uber Eats, DocuSign, Adobe, MURAL, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and OwnBackup. Growth advisor to Notion Capital, Reach Capital, Astella and Storm Ventures. Keynote speaker at Dreamforce, SaaStock Dublin, SaaS Growth London, MarketingProfs and RD Summit Brazil. Biography Recurring revenue rewrote the economics of B2B software, but most companies still run sales, customer success and marketing as separate departments with separate targets. Winning by Design, the firm Jacco van der Kooij founded in 2012, exists to correct that. The core of his work is a set of frameworks that have become standard vocabulary inside serious SaaS revenue teams. The Bowtie extends the funnel into onboarding, adoption and expansion, so leadership can see acquisition and retention as one connected system. SPICED gives every customer-facing function a shared qualification model. Revenue Architecture, the 2023 textbook of over 250 diagrams and blueprints, ties the two into an operating design for recurring-revenue growth. His authority is grounded in operating history before it is grounded in publishing. Senior sales and strategy roles at Kontiki, Qumu and Technicolor sit underneath the frameworks. Harvard Business Review published his co-authored work with Frank V. Cespedes of Harvard Business School on why hiring star salespeople is a weaker growth lever than organisational design, a piece that now reads as the seed of the larger thesis. Today his focus is how compounding growth systems behave under AI. He advises executive teams and venture capital firms, including Notion Capital, Reach Capital, Astella and Storm Ventures, on redesigning go-to-market operating models where probabilistic modelling and AI-enabled workflows replace linear funnel thinking. The training side of the business has equipped revenue teams at Uber Eats, DocuSign, Adobe, MURAL and Hewlett Packard Enterprise with the same operating language. Key speaking topics Revenue Architecture for recurring-revenue businesses The Bowtie customer-journey model SPICED qualification and customer conversations Go-to-market operating design for B2B SaaS AI-enabled go-to-market and probabilistic growth modelling Sales organisation design and scaling Executive growth governance Ideal for CROs, CCOs, VPs of Sales and VPs of Customer Success rebuilding the revenue engine around recurring revenue B2B SaaS founders and executive teams moving from founder-led selling into scaled, systematised go-to-market Venture capital firms and boards overseeing growth-stage portfolio companies Corporate transformation leaders inside enterprise technology businesses shifting to subscription or consumption models Audience outcomes A shared operating language across sales, marketing and customer success that replaces siloed vocabulary. A structural view of the full customer journey through the Bowtie, from acquisition into retention and expansion. A working grasp of SPICED as a qualification and conversation model any customer-facing team can deploy. A clearer read on where AI meaningfully changes go-to-market design and where it is overclaimed. Specific diagnostic questions leadership teams can use to locate the actual bottleneck in their growth system.

Why organisations work with Jaideep Prabhu He wrote the books that put frugal innovation on the boardroom agenda. “Jugaad Innovation” and “Frugal Innovation” are the reference texts, and the latter won the Chartered Management Institute’s Management Book of the Year in 2016. He connects innovation theory to what is actually happening in India, China, Brazil and Africa, not as case studies but as strategic signal for Western firms facing the same constraints a decade later. His work travels into public policy. “How Should a Government Be?” takes the same logic on digital, lean operations and citizen value, and applies it to how state power is now exercised. He holds two chairs at Cambridge Judge Business School and is a Fellow of the British Academy, which means the frameworks have been pressure-tested by academic peers, not only by consultants. Biography highlights Professor of Marketing and Jawaharlal Nehru Professor of Indian Business and Enterprise, Cambridge Judge Business School Director of the Centre for India and Global Business at Cambridge Judge Business School Fellow of the British Academy; Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge Co-author of “Jugaad Innovation” (Jossey-Bass, 2012) and “Frugal Innovation” (Economist Books / Profile Books, 2015), winner of the CMI Management Book of the Year 2016 Author of “How Should a Government Be? The New Levers of State Power” (Profile Books, 2021) Commentary and profiles in The Economist, Financial Times, The New York Times, The Times, Le Monde, BBC News, BBC Radio 4 and Bloomberg BusinessWeek Biography “Jugaad” is the Hindi word for an ingenious, improvised fix. In 2012, Jaideep Prabhu and his co-authors turned it into a serious argument about how Western firms should learn to innovate when money, time and certainty are all in shorter supply. That book, and its successor “Frugal Innovation”, reframed a generation of conversations about growth under constraint. Prabhu holds two chairs at Cambridge Judge Business School: Professor of Marketing and the Jawaharlal Nehru Professor of Indian Business and Enterprise. He directs the Centre for India and Global Business, and sits as a Fellow of the British Academy and of Clare College, Cambridge. The research sits where marketing, innovation, strategy and international business meet, with a steady focus on what firms in emerging economies are teaching firms everywhere else. “Frugal Innovation”, co-written with Navi Radjou and published with The Economist, won the Chartered Management Institute’s Management Book of the Year in 2016. His 2021 book “How Should a Government Be? The New Levers of State Power” extended the same question beyond companies, arguing that digital infrastructure, lean operations and new organisational forms are reshaping what governments can credibly deliver. The through-line is practical. Leaders who work with him come away with a clearer view of how to compete on creativity and economics at the same time, and a sharper sense of which constraints to design around and which to design with. Key speaking topics Frugal and jugaad innovation Business model innovation in emerging markets Growth strategy under constraint India and the global innovation economy Digital transformation in the public sector The future of government and state capacity Global marketing and competitive advantage Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting innovation and growth strategy for cost-sensitive or emerging markets CSOs, CMOs and heads of innovation looking to pressure-test portfolios against leaner competitors Public sector leaders, policy teams and ministers redesigning delivery around digital and citizen value Corporate India programmes, global leadership forums and any organisation with a serious India or emerging markets thesis Audience outcomes A working definition of frugal innovation that distinguishes it from cost-cutting and makes it usable at board level Named examples from India, China, Brazil and Africa of firms that built scale under constraint, and what they reveal about Western incumbents A framework for spotting which parts of the business model are most exposed to leaner competition and which offer the fastest route to reinvention For public sector audiences, a clearer view of the levers that modern states are using to deliver more with less Specific, citable references from the three books that senior teams can build internal conversations around