Innovation & Disruption speakers

Why organisations work with Jon Carmichael He brings a single, verifiable feat that anchors every claim he makes about creative ambition: the 2017 “108” photograph, captured aboard Southwest Airlines flight 1368 after the captain secured FAA approval to perform five 180-degree turns mid-flight. The story has been covered by Good Morning America, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Inc., which gives the keynote external validation few inspirational speakers can match. He has presented at NASA’s Hubble Auditorium and at TEDxManchester, two audiences with low tolerance for thin material, which signals he can hold a room of senior or technical attendees. His “Eclipse Mindset” gives sales conferences, innovation summits, and culture events a non-corporate frame for talking about ambition, alignment, and risk without sounding like internal-comms language. Biography highlights Astrophotographer; sixteen years documenting corporate and political events. Photographed the 2017 total solar eclipse from 39,000 feet aboard Southwest Airlines flight 1368, image titled “108”. Has spoken at NASA’s Hubble Auditorium and at TEDxManchester to an audience of around 2,500. Eclipse work featured by Good Morning America, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Inc., and Weather.com. Visual storytelling engagements with Twitter, Dell and ESPN; collectors of his fine art work include Sir Elton John. Unveiled the “108” image at a Twitter company event at the invitation of Jack Dorsey. Biography In August 2017, a commercial Southwest Airlines flight from Portland to St. Louis made five 180-degree turns at 39,000 feet so a single passenger in seat 1A could photograph a total solar eclipse over the Snake River. That passenger had spent two years mapping flight paths against the moon’s shadow, persuading an airline and a captain to accept the risk, and securing FAA approval the morning of the flight. The resulting image, titled “108”, is the spine of Jon Carmichael’s keynote work. Buyers do not commission him for technical photography. They commission him for what the project demonstrates about how teams attempt things that are not yet possible. The “Eclipse Mindset” he draws from the story is a practical frame, not a metaphor: identify the constraint, recruit unlikely partners, accept that the plan will change in execution, and prepare so that when conditions narrow to a two-minute window, the team can act. His credibility for serious audiences comes from where the work has been received. The image was covered by Good Morning America, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Inc. and Weather.com. He was invited to present at NASA’s Hubble Auditorium, with the talk broadcast to other NASA centres, and at TEDxManchester to roughly 2,500 attendees. Jack Dorsey invited him to unveil the photograph at a Twitter company event. For sales conferences, innovation kick-offs and culture moments where the brief is to lift the room without resorting to standard motivational fare, Carmichael offers a verifiable feat, a named project, and a usable frame, anchored by a story that audiences can recall and repeat months later. Key speaking topics The Eclipse Mindset Creativity and perspective shift Bold execution under constraint Visual storytelling Innovation through ambition Team alignment around a high-stakes vision Ideal for Sales conferences and annual kick-offs seeking a non-corporate opening or closing keynote Innovation, R&D, and product leadership offsites Culture, brand and marketing events CMOs and creative leadership audiences Audience outcomes A specific story they can quote, with named brands and dates, to anchor internal conversations about ambition A practical frame (“Eclipse Mindset”) for identifying which constraints are real and which are inherited Renewed appetite for projects that require unlikely partners and mid-execution adjustment A reminder that bold work is rarely solo: the eclipse image required an airline, a captain, a regulator, and years of preparation

Why organisations work with Thomas Barta He shows organisations where their next growth comes from and, just as importantly, how to get risk-averse teams to actually pursue it. His McKinsey work training over a thousand internal leaders on driving change without formal authority is the engine of his method: growth needs people who can move an organisation they do not control. The behaviours he teaches are drawn from the largest dataset of its kind, more than 68,000 leadership assessments of what separates leaders who shift company performance from those who do not. His McGraw-Hill book with Patrick Barwise of London Business School, The 12 Powers of a Marketing Leader, gives the work a research spine rather than another opinion on growth. As leadership dean of the McKinsey and Marketing Academy CMO Fellowship, he prepares senior leaders for the step up to running a business, which keeps his view of growth leadership current. Biography highlights Former partner, McKinsey & Company; advised more than two dozen Fortune 500 organisations across 14 industries and 45 countries. Co-author with Patrick Barwise of The 12 Powers of a Marketing Leader (McGraw-Hill). CEO, Marketing Leadership Institute; founder of the Marketing Leadership Masterclass. Leadership dean, CMO Fellowship, run by The Marketing Academy with McKinsey. Honorary Fellow of The Marketing Society. Contributor to Forbes, Marketing Week, Nikkei and the Adobe blog; speaker at events for Adobe, Google, IBM, SAP, Oracle, Amazon and the Financial Times. Biography Most large organisations are structured to protect what already works. That is exactly why so many of them miss the next wave: over half the Fortune 500 from the year 2000, Kodak and Nokia among them, no longer exist. Thomas Barta’s work addresses the gap between the people who can see a growth opportunity and the far smaller number who can move an organisation to back it. His method rests on the largest study of its kind. Built on more than 68,000 leadership assessments, conducted with Patrick Barwise of London Business School, it identified the behaviours that separate leaders who shift their company’s trajectory from those who do not. That research became The 12 Powers of a Marketing Leader, published by McGraw-Hill. The behavioural engine came earlier, at McKinsey. As a partner he led growth transformations across 14 industries in 45 countries for more than two dozen Fortune 500 organisations. He was also dean of the firm’s highest-rated internal programme, where he trained over a thousand leaders on one problem: how to drive change when you have responsibility without formal authority. That is the daily reality of anyone trying to start something new inside a large company. He runs the Marketing Leadership Institute, serves as long-standing leadership dean of the McKinsey and Marketing Academy CMO Fellowship, and is an Honorary Fellow of The Marketing Society. An MBA from London Business School sits alongside a Master’s in Organisational Psychology from INSEAD, which is why his keynotes work less as strategy lectures and more as a practical account of how growth actually gets started, championed, and funded inside organisations that would rather play safe. Key speaking topics Finding and acting on new sources of growth Growth leadership and organisational entrepreneurship Driving change without formal authority Why incumbents lose relevance and how to stop it Customer-led growth Marketing leadership and CMO effectiveness Ideal for Executive teams looking for their next source of growth, not just defending the core CEOs and CGOs who want growth owned across the business rather than parked in one function CMOs and senior marketers stepping up to broader commercial and board-level roles Senior leadership offsites and growth or innovation programmes at large organisations Audience outcomes A clear method for spotting growth opportunities their organisation is currently structured to miss. A practical way to get peers and senior leaders to back a growth bet when the lever sits outside your control. The behaviours that research links to leaders who move company performance, not just manage their remit. A read on how to create permission for sensible risk so good ideas stop dying in committee.

Why organisations work with Aaron Frank As one of only two lead facilitators of Singularity University’s flagship five-day Executive Program, he translates emerging technology trajectories into specific decisions a senior team can make this quarter, not abstract futures. He has taught the same material to the United States Marine Corps, the Central Bank of Denmark, Ernst & Young, FC Barcelona, GE, and The Economist Group, which means his frame is tested across regulators, militaries, sports bodies, and Fortune 500 operators. He guest lectures inside Oxford’s Saïd Business School Digital Transformation course, evidence that his content survives peer scrutiny in a serious executive-education environment. He writes a steady stream of analysis for Singularity Hub, Wired, Forbes, Vice, and VentureBeat, and authored Singularity’s 2026 executive briefing on Physical AI, so audiences get a speaker whose arguments are already pressure-tested in print. His current research focus is the convergence of generative AI, spatial computing, 3D simulation, and physical AI, a frame that gives him a concrete read on where the next wave of enterprise infrastructure is heading. Biography highlights Principal Faculty, Singularity University, and one of only two lead facilitators of its flagship five-day Executive Program. MBA, University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, where he also guest lectures on the Digital Transformation course. Bylines in Vice, Wired, Forbes, VentureBeat, and Singularity Hub. Author of A Business Leader’s Introduction to Physical AI (Singularity, 2026). Has spoken to or advised the United States Marine Corps, the CIA, the Department of Defense, the Central Bank of Denmark, Ernst & Young, GE, The Economist Group, Coca-Cola, Under Armour, FC Barcelona, the NBA, Sony, and Honeywell. Board member, Saint Francis Living Room, a community kitchen in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. Biography Generative AI is now familiar territory for most senior leaders. What comes after is the harder question: which emerging shifts genuinely reshape an industry, and where capital should actually move. That interpretive read is what Aaron Frank does for a living. He is one of only two lead facilitators of Singularity University’s flagship Executive Program. The five-day intensive puts him in a room with around a hundred senior leaders, working through emerging technology trajectories as a structured curriculum. Few speakers test their arguments against a senior audience that often. His range covers rapid technological change, spatial computing and 3D simulation, digital twins as enterprise infrastructure, and the move toward physical AI. He has taught that material to the United States Marine Corps, the Central Bank of Denmark, Ernst & Young, FC Barcelona, and GE. His bylines appear in Wired, Forbes, Vice, VentureBeat, and Singularity Hub. Outside Singularity, he holds an MBA from Oxford’s Saïd Business School and guest lectures on its Digital Transformation course. He also sits on the board of Saint Francis Living Room, a community kitchen in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. His current research focus is the rise of physical AI, set out for Singularity in a 2026 executive briefing on the convergence of robotics, simulation, and spatial intelligence. Key speaking topics Exponential technology trajectories and leadership decisions Innovation strategy under technology acceleration Spatial computing, 3D simulation, and digital twins Physical AI and robotics Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting AI and emerging technology investment direction CTO, CIO and head of digital transformation audiences Industrial, manufacturing, defence and supply chain leadership planning around physical AI and digital twins Strategy and innovation leads in financial services, sport, media and government Audience outcomes A clearer read on which emerging technology shifts actually reshape their industry, and which are noise. A working vocabulary for generative AI, spatial computing, digital twins, and physical AI that a senior team can use in the same conversation. Specific examples of how regulators, militaries, sports bodies, and Fortune 500 operators are deploying these technologies today. A view on the next two to five years of enterprise AI infrastructure beyond the chatbot, drawn from operating deployments.

Why organisations work with Adam Braun He is a working CEO, not a retired one. Clarasight’s carbon planning software is in active commercial deployment with clients representing over $1 trillion in market capitalisation, so his content reflects current operating reality. He has built three organisations across three categories: a nonprofit started with $25 that grew to hundreds of schools globally, a venture-backed education startup acquired by WeWork, and a B2B sustainability platform. The pattern recognition across founder modes is rare. His “Build For Where The World Is Headed” framework gives leaders a teachable structure for anticipating change and committing capital before consensus forms, rather than another model for reacting after the fact. His Pencils of Promise origin story translates cleanly into a corporate room. Audiences leave with a specific argument about how individual conviction scales into institutional outcomes, evidenced by a real organisation, not an analogy. He pairs commercial credibility with a published, bestselling book on purpose-driven leadership, which means leadership development and culture briefs can be served by the same speaker without a register switch. Biography highlights CEO and Co-Founder of Clarasight, carbon planning and intelligence software, formerly Climate Club Founder and Chairman of Pencils of Promise, a nonprofit started with $25 that has built schools across Ghana, Guatemala, Laos and Nicaragua Co-Founder and CEO of MissionU, acquired by WeWork in 2018; subsequently served as a senior executive in the WeGrow business New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Promise of a Pencil, Simon & Schuster Selected by the World Economic Forum as one of the original ten Global Shapers; named to Business Insider 40 Under 40 and Wired’s “50 People Who Are Changing the World” Brown University graduate; began his career at Bain & Company Biography The hard part of strategy is not seeing change. It is committing capital and people before the change is obvious to competitors. Most operating cultures are built to do the opposite. Adam Braun has spent his career sitting in that gap as a founder. Pencils of Promise began with $25 and grew into a nonprofit operating schools across Ghana, Guatemala, Laos and Nicaragua. MissionU, the income-share-agreement college alternative he co-founded, was acquired by WeWork in 2018, where he then served as a senior executive in the WeGrow business. Clarasight, his current company, sells carbon planning software into enterprise clients representing more than $1 trillion in market value. That arc gives him an unusual operating vocabulary. He has launched a category from zero capital, raised venture funding and exited through acquisition, and is now running a B2B SaaS business in a buyer-relevant category. The framework he teaches, “Build For Where The World Is Headed,” is the synthesis of those three founder modes into a structure leaders can use to evaluate where to deploy effort before the market rewards it. His book The Promise of a Pencil, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller published by Simon & Schuster, gives the same argument a leadership-development register. He was an original World Economic Forum Global Shaper, has been named to Business Insider 40 Under 40 and Wired’s “50 People Who Are Changing the World,” and built his early career at Bain & Company after graduating from Brown. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and founder leadership Building organisations for future operating conditions Innovation under uncertainty Corporate sustainability as commercial advantage Purpose-driven business strategy Social entrepreneurship and scaled impact Ideal for Founders, CEOs and executive committees setting growth or transformation agendas Heads of strategy, innovation and sustainability shaping medium-term capital decisions Leadership development programmes for high-potential operators and emerging executives Conferences focused on entrepreneurship, scale-up leadership, or corporate climate strategy Audience outcomes A working framework for committing to direction before market consensus forms A founder’s view of how scaled impact actually compounds, drawn from three different ventures A practical read on where corporate sustainability becomes commercial advantage rather than reporting overhead A renewed argument for individual agency inside large organisations, evidenced rather than asserted

Why organisations work with Adam Cheyer He built the original Siri – not from a single insight but through more than a decade of AI research at SRI International – and then rebuilt the paradigm at Samsung and Airbnb. That depth of iteration, across platforms and at scale, is not replicated elsewhere on the speaking circuit. Four of his five ventures were acquired specifically for their AI technology, by Apple, Samsung, Airbnb, and Cognizant. The acquisitions validate not just the product but the engineering and commercial judgements behind it. After each acquisition, he stayed and led AI integration inside the acquiring organisation. Most founders don’t stay for that part – which is where AI strategies most commonly fail. He was ranked #2 on Voicebot.ai‘s Top Visionaries in Voice 2019 – behind Jeff Bezos and ahead of Sundar Pichai – while actively deploying conversational AI inside Samsung’s global platform. His foundation at SRI International as Chief Architect of CALO/PAL – the US government’s largest AI project, funded by DARPA – means his commercial instincts are grounded in the actual science of how intelligent systems work. Biography highlights Co-founder of Siri, Inc.; Director of Engineering, iPhone/iOS group, Apple – led AI and server-side development for Siri across more than 500 million devices Co-founder and VP R&D, Viv Labs, acquired by Samsung in 2016; Viv became the technical foundation for Samsung’s Bixby Chief Architect, CALO/PAL project, SRI International – the US government’s largest-funded AI research programme, funded by DARPA Co-founder and CEO, GamePlanner.AI, acquired by Airbnb (late 2023, est. ~$200M); VP AI Experience, Airbnb Founding member, Change.org; co-founder, Sentient Technologies (acquired by Cognizant) 60+ peer-reviewed publications; 50+ patents across AI, machine learning, distributed computing, and conversational systems Ranked #2, Voicebot.ai Top Visionaries in Voice 2019; 2024 Brandeis Alumni Achievement Award; TechCrunch Crunchies Award for Best Technology Achievement Scientific Advisory Board member, Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2) Biography Building an AI product that works in a controlled environment and scaling it to hundreds of millions of users are different engineering problems. Most organisations now committing to AI strategies have very few people in the room who have done the second – and fewer still who have done it multiple times, across different platforms, inside multiple large organisations. Adam Cheyer spent more than a decade at SRI International as Chief Architect of CALO/PAL – the US government’s largest AI research programme, funded by DARPA – before co-founding Siri, Inc. in 2007 with Dag Kittlaus and Tom Gruber. When Apple acquired the company in 2010, he stayed as Director of Engineering in the iPhone/iOS group, leading the AI and server-side development that put Siri on more than 500 million devices. He has repeated this cycle three more times. Viv Labs, which he co-founded and led as VP R&D, was acquired by Samsung in 2016 and became the technical foundation for Bixby. Sentient Technologies – an early large-scale distributed machine learning platform – was acquired by Cognizant. GamePlanner.AI was acquired by Airbnb in late 2023, where Cheyer served as VP AI Experience, applying generative AI to transform how users engage with the platform. He holds more than 50 patents and has authored more than 60 peer-reviewed publications in AI, machine learning, and conversational systems. He serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and received the 2024 Brandeis Alumni Achievement Award for contributions to technology entrepreneurship. Key speaking topics Conversational AI and intelligent personal assistants Generative AI and enterprise application AI product development and commercial scaling Technology entrepreneurship and venture building Human-computer interaction and intelligent interfaces Large-scale and distributed machine learning AI integration in consumer and enterprise platforms Ideal for Chief Technology Officers and product leadership teams navigating AI product strategy Innovation and R&D functions evaluating AI investment decisions Executive and board audiences assessing AI-enabled product development or acquisition C-suite leaders who need a practitioner’s account of where AI integration succeeds and where it fails Audience outcomes A practitioner’s account of how conversational and generative AI systems are designed, built, and scaled – distinct from analyst or vendor perspectives Understanding of the architectural and organisational decisions that determine whether AI products deliver at scale Direct insight into how Apple, Samsung, and Airbnb have each integrated acquired AI technology into their core platforms Lessons from founding, scaling, and exiting AI ventures across four separate acquisition cycles A grounded, evidence-based framework for assessing which AI capabilities are commercially transformational and which remain overstated

Why organisations work with Adam Morgan Morgan coined the challenger brand concept in a named, commercially researched framework – the eight challenger credos in Eating the Big Fish – giving organisations a specific strategic vocabulary that has been in active use across global marketing for over two decades. His most recent research project, The Extraordinary Cost of Dull, quantifies in IPA-backed data what strategic sameness actually costs a business: dull communications require up to 2.6× the media spend of interesting ones to generate the same commercial result – a figure that reframes brand strategy as a finance conversation. Where most brand strategists stop at positioning, Morgan extends the argument to internal culture: The Pirate Inside addresses the behavioural and organisational conditions needed to sustain a challenger strategy over time. A Beautiful Constraint gives leadership teams a practical method for treating budgetary and structural limitations as strategic inputs rather than blockers – directly applicable to any growth brief operating under resource pressure. His work sits at the junction of brand strategy, marketing effectiveness, and organisational behaviour – a combination that is unusually rare in a single practitioner. Biography highlights Founder and Chair of eatbigfish, the international challenger brand consultancy Author of Eating the Big Fish (Wiley, 1999; 2nd ed. 2009) – international bestseller, translated into eight languages; coined the term “challenger brand” Author of The Pirate Inside (Wiley, 2004) and co-author of A Beautiful Constraint (2015, with Mark Barden) Former Joint European Planning Director, TBWA\Chiat\Day; TBWA clients included Apple, Absolut, and Sony PlayStation Co-creator of The Extraordinary Cost of Dull – multi-partner research with Peter Field, System1, the IPA, and Dr Karen Nelson-Field Speaker at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2023 and 2024 Host of the Let’s Make This More Interesting podcast (eatbigfish) Consultancy clients have included IKEA, Unilever, Lexus, and PepsiCo Biography Adam Morgan spent the formative years of his career at TBWA\Chiat\Day, the agency behind Apple’s relaunch, Absolut, and Sony PlayStation. When he left to found eatbigfish in 1997, his question was specific: how do brands with fewer resources than the market leader compete – and win? Eating the Big Fish, published in 1999, answered that question with a named framework: eight challenger credos drawn from research into forty brands that had grown rapidly against dominant incumbents. The book introduced the term “challenger brand” to a global marketing audience, became an international bestseller in eight languages, and established a body of research – The Challenger Project – that has continued to evolve through four further books and three decades of consultancy work. The most recent extension of that work is The Extraordinary Cost of Dull, a research collaboration with Peter Field, System1, the IPA, and Dr Karen Nelson-Field. Analysing IPA Effectiveness Databank data, the project quantifies what strategic sameness costs organisations at the P&L level: brands running dull communications need up to 2.6 times the media investment of those running interesting ones to achieve equivalent commercial returns. The finding moves brand strategy from a marketing conversation into a boardroom one. What makes Morgan’s perspective directly useful to senior leaders is the consistency of the underlying argument across all three registers – strategy (Eating the Big Fish), culture (The Pirate Inside), and resource constraint (A Beautiful Constraint). The thesis is the same in each case: ambition and specificity of point of view are not optional extras for challengers. They are the mechanism. Key speaking topics Challenger brand strategy Differentiation and market positioning Growth under resource constraint The commercial cost of strategic sameness Brand culture and internal challenger behaviour Marketing effectiveness and creative impact Constraint as competitive advantage Ideal for CMOs and marketing leadership teams responsible for brand growth and differentiation CEOs and strategy directors in organisations competing against dominant category incumbents CFOs and senior leadership teams seeking to connect brand investment to commercial return Brand and innovation teams operating under budget or resource pressure Audience outcomes A working definition of challenger strategy – and a clear way to assess whether it applies to their organisation’s current position Familiarity with the eight challenger credos as a practical diagnostic and planning tool A data-backed understanding of what strategic sameness costs in media spend terms, and how to use that argument internally A framework for identifying where organisational constraints can be reframed as strategic advantages rather than blockers Specific behavioural markers of a challenger culture – and how to diagnose whether their organisation has them

Why organisations work with Adam Smith The Real Junk Food Project is not a case study from a consultancy report. Smith built it from a single Leeds cafe in 2013 to a network of 120+ projects across seven countries, which makes his argument about the scalability of surplus redistribution operationally evidenced, not theoretical. The Pay As You Feel model challenges the assumption that pricing must track cost-price. For organisations navigating social value procurement, circular economy strategy, or food retail margins, that challenge is commercially relevant. Smith has given parliamentary evidence to an All-Party Parliamentary Group on food waste, which means his framing has direct policy credibility – useful for organisations managing regulatory and reputational exposure on ESG commitments. His current work at Surplus to Purpose, which diverted 506 tonnes of food in 2023, keeps his insight current. He is not drawing on a legacy project. The Telegraph named him one of the 50 most influential people in UK Food & Drink (Food & Drink Power List, 2017). His argument has been stress-tested in public, not just on stage. Biography highlights Founded The Real Junk Food Project in Leeds in December 2013; the network grew to 120+ projects across seven countries within four years TEDx speaker at TEDxWarwick (2015): “Let’s REALLY Feed the World” Named one of 50 most influential people in UK Food & Drink, The Telegraph Food & Drink Power List (2017) FRSA (Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts) Gave parliamentary evidence to an All-Party Parliamentary Group on food waste Yorkshire Awards 2025 Community Hero Award; Canal & River Trust Unsung Hero of Leeds (2022) CEO of Surplus to Purpose since 2022; appeared on Channel 4’s Inside the Superbrands Observer Food Monthly Awards runner-up across TRJFP projects in Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds (2017, 2018) Biography The UK food industry wastes an estimated 9.5 million tonnes of food annually. Most of it is edible. In December 2013, Adam Smith opened a single cafe in Armley, Leeds, that served meals made entirely from intercepted surplus. He called the pricing model Pay As You Feel. Within four years, that cafe had become a network of 120+ projects operating across seven countries. The model did not succeed because it was charitable. It succeeded because it demonstrated a functional alternative to the assumption that surplus has no commercial value – and that communities, schools, and organisations could participate in redistribution at scale without requiring philanthropy as a precondition. Smith stepped back from The Real Junk Food Project in 2019 and, in 2022, took on the leadership of Surplus to Purpose – a social enterprise built on the same structural argument but with a more explicit focus on the environmental costs of food waste in the supply chain. Surplus to Purpose diverted 506 tonnes of food in 2023. He has given parliamentary evidence to an All-Party Parliamentary Group on food waste, and The Telegraph placed him on its Food & Drink Power List in 2017 as one of the 50 most influential people in the sector. The TEDxWarwick talk from 2015 covers the core argument clearly. Food waste is a corporate supply chain decision, not a consumer behaviour problem. The organisations with the most leverage to change it are the ones that benefit most from not changing it. Key speaking topics Surplus food redistribution and supply chain waste Pay As You Feel and alternative pricing models Purpose-led business model design Social enterprise at scale ESG and food system accountability Corporate responsibility in the food supply chain Ideal for Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG leads in food retail, hospitality, and manufacturing Procurement and supply chain leadership in organisations with food or FMCG exposure Strategy and transformation teams working on circular economy frameworks Social value and impact leads in public sector and corporate foundations Audience outcomes A working model for how surplus redistribution operates at scale – not a concept, but a documented case with known failure points and operational evidence A concrete example of how pricing can be decoupled from cost-price to deliver both social value and commercial viability Clarity on where corporate supply chains generate waste and why existing incentive structures keep that waste in place A framework for distinguishing between ESG commitments that reduce reputational risk and changes that alter the underlying supply chain economics

Why organisations work with Adjiedj Bakas His analytical framework tracks six categories of structural change simultaneously – economic, technological, demographic, environmental, spiritual and security – giving leadership teams a coherent map rather than a trend list. No single category is read in isolation; the interactions between them are where the real strategic insight lives. His “#Forwardism” thesis reframes megatrend analysis as a source of opportunity rather than a catalogue of threat. This is a deliberate intellectual stance, not a motivational gloss – it changes how an organisation positions itself in response to disruption. His biography is genuinely differentiating in a field dominated by Western vantage points. Of Indian descent, raised in Suriname and based in the Netherlands for three decades, Bakas brings a Global South perspective to questions about the shifting balance of economic and cultural power that most European or American futurists cannot replicate. His material has been tested against the most demanding institutional audiences on the circuit: the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, the parliaments of Hungary, Shell’s major futures conferences, and central banking and financial institutions across Africa and Asia. A Shell audience of senior executives elected him one of the top two speakers from a field of fifty. His books – including World Megatrends and Beyond the Crisis – have been used as course material at CEIBS in Shanghai, and the intellectual rigour of his framework has earned consistent media recognition from CNN, the BBC, The Guardian and China Daily. Biography highlights Founder of Trend Office Bakas, Amsterdam – a trendwatching practice serving multinationals, financial institutions and governments internationally Author of more than ten books on global megatrends, distributed across 40+ countries; titles include World Megatrends, Beyond the Crisis, Megatrends Europe and #Forwardism Elected Trendwatcher of the Year 2009 and Immigrant Entrepreneur of the Year 2008 in the Netherlands Covered as a leading voice on global futures by CNN, BBC, The Guardian, Times of India and China Daily Keynote engagements include Shell, Deloitte, Google, Microsoft, ABN AMRO, KPMG, Rabobank, Credit Suisse and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly Course material at CEIBS (China Europe International Business School, Shanghai) and Emory University, Atlanta Biography Most organisations run their long-term strategy on a three-to-five year horizon. The megatrends that actually reshape industries – demographic reordering, geopolitical power shifts, energy transitions, technological discontinuities – operate on timescales of twenty years or more. Adjiedj Bakas, founder of Trend Office Bakas in Amsterdam, has spent his career helping senior leaders read those slower, more consequential signals before they arrive as operational emergencies. His body of work – more than ten books published across 40 countries, including World Megatrends, Beyond the Crisis and Megatrends Europe – develops a consistent analytical lens across six categories of structural change: economic, technological, demographic, environmental, spiritual and security. His most recent work, #Forwardism, introduces the concept of “Happynomy” – the argument that the most powerful megatrends are better interpreted as sources of strategic opportunity than as threats to be mitigated. The perspective he brings is shaped by biography as much as by research. Of Indian descent, raised in Suriname and based in the Netherlands for three decades, Bakas has a genuinely non-Western vantage point on shifts in global economic and cultural power that most European futurists cannot replicate. His engagements span Shell, Deloitte, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, the parliaments of Hungary, and financial institutions across Africa, Asia and Europe – audiences for whom a view of the future that goes beyond the Western horizon is not optional. Elected Trendwatcher of the Year in the Netherlands in 2009, his work has been covered by CNN, the BBC, The Guardian and China Daily. His books have been used as course material at CEIBS in Shanghai and Emory University in Atlanta. Key speaking topics Global megatrends and structural futures Geopolitical power shifts and the rise of the Global South Demographic change and its economic consequences Long-cycle economic forecasting and scenario planning Energy and environmental transitions Technology and innovation futures Opportunity-centred strategic foresight (#Forwardism / Happynomy) Ideal for C-suite and board leaders developing long-range organisational strategy Strategy and foresight teams in multinationals requiring a structured macro-trend framework Financial institutions and investment firms assessing long-term geopolitical and economic risk Government and public-sector organisations navigating demographic and geopolitical change Audience outcomes A structured, six-category framework for mapping structural megatrends across economic, technological, demographic, environmental and geopolitical dimensions Greater confidence in distinguishing long-cycle structural shifts from short-term cyclical noise Exposure to the Global South’s increasing influence on economic and cultural direction – a perspective absent from most standard futures briefings A reframed strategic posture: tools for reading disruption as a source of opportunity rather than purely a risk management challenge A renewed and evidence-based basis for organisational optimism in conditions of uncertainty

Why organisations work with Aidan McCullen A working library of change thinking. The Innovation Show has put him in long-form conversation with hundreds of named authors and practitioners on transformation, which feeds directly into the frameworks he brings into a room. A book with institutional weight. Undisruptable is a Wiley title with a foreword by Visa founder Dee Hock, and sits on a defined three-part argument about reinvention rather than a generic change pitch. Credentialled by Thinkers50. The 2025 Innovation Award places him among a small group of named voices that the management research community treats as serious on this topic. A practitioner seat at Trinity. He built and teaches the Emerging Technology Trends module at Trinity Business School, which forces his material to hold up under repeated MBA-level scrutiny. Reinvention as lived experience. A decade as an Ireland international rugby player, then digital lead at Bauer Media, then Head of Innovation at RTE, then author and board director, gives him standing to talk about personal reinvention without it sounding theoretical. Biography highlights Author of Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention for Individuals, Organisations and Life, Wiley, with a foreword by Dee Hock, founder of Visa. Recipient of the Thinkers50 Innovation Award in 2025. Host and creator of The Innovation Show, broadcast on RTE Ireland and Finland’s Business FM. Adjunct Professor at Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin, where he developed the Emerging Technology Trends module. Non-Executive Director at National Broadband Ireland. Former Ireland rugby international with more than 100 senior appearances for Leinster, Toulouse and London Irish. Biography Reinvention is the part of change leadership that organisations consistently underprice. Strategy decks are easy. Sustaining the personal and cultural shift after the deck is signed off is where most transformation programmes quietly break, which is the territory Aidan McCullen has spent the last decade mapping. His book Undisruptable, published by Wiley with a foreword by Visa founder Dee Hock, sets out a three-part argument: change as opportunity, the cognitive biases that block it, and the language leaders need to carry an organisation through it. The book sits alongside The Innovation Show, his interview platform, where he has worked through the material in long-form conversation with several hundred named authors, founders and academics on change and innovation. That output earned him the Thinkers50 Innovation Award in 2025 and an adjunct seat at Trinity Business School, where he built the Emerging Technology Trends module. He also serves as a Non-Executive Director at National Broadband Ireland, which keeps the work close to live infrastructure decisions rather than pure commentary. His own track record is the unusual part of the case. A decade as an Ireland rugby international with Leinster, Toulouse and London Irish, followed by digital ecosystem work at Bauer Media, the Head of Innovation role at RTE, and now author, broadcaster and board director, gives him direct experience of the cost of reinvention, which is what senior audiences tend to want to interrogate when the topic is on the agenda. Key speaking topics Permanent reinvention as a leadership discipline Change management and transformation programmes Cognitive bias and decision-making under change Emerging technology trends for senior leaders Innovation culture and operating models Personal reinvention and career transitions Communicating change inside large organisations Ideal for CEOs, COOs and transformation leads running multi-year change programmes CHROs and senior HR leaders responsible for leadership development and culture Boards and executive committees stress-testing the organisation’s capacity to keep changing Innovation, strategy and digital leaders who own the operating-model side of reinvention Audience outcomes A working model for treating reinvention as a continuous capability, not a one-off programme Specific named cases (including Fujifilm) of organisations that survived structural disruption, and what they did differently A clearer view of the cognitive biases that stall senior teams during change Language and analogies leaders can use to carry their own organisations through reinvention A short reading list of the most useful change thinkers, drawn from his interview catalogue

Why organisations work with Albert Read He ran Conde Nast Britain through the most disruptive decade in publishing, taking titles such as Vogue, GQ and Wired through a shift from print to multi-platform commerce. The lessons translate directly for any business whose product was built for an earlier distribution model. His book The Imagination Muscle (Hachette, 2023) makes a specific argument: imagination is a faculty that can be trained, measured against output, and embedded in how teams work. It gives a leadership audience something more useful than a creativity pep talk. He built and launched Conde Nast operations in China, India and the UAE, which gives him concrete experience of exporting a creative business into new commercial and regulatory environments. As a Senior Advisor to the Milken Institute and External Advisor to Bain and Company, he is engaged by serious institutions for strategic counsel, not as a celebrity author. He is the rare speaker on creativity who has actually carried operating P and L responsibility for creative businesses at scale, which makes the argument credible in a CEO or board setting. Biography highlights Managing Director, Conde Nast Britain, 2017 to 2024. Oversaw British Vogue, GQ, Wired UK, Vanity Fair, Tatler, Conde Nast Traveller, Glamour, House and Garden and World of Interiors. Executive Chairman, The Evening Standard, from September 2024. Author, The Imagination Muscle: Where Good Ideas Come From (Hachette, 2023). Senior Advisor, Milken Institute. External Advisor, Bain and Company. Launched Wired UK in 2009 and led Conde Nast market launches in China, India and the UAE. Classics, New College, Oxford. MBA, INSEAD. Contributor to The Spectator, The Telegraph and The Times of London. Biography For most of the past two decades, the question facing legacy media businesses has been the same one now reaching every other industry. The product was designed for one distribution model, the audience moved to another, and the response cannot be a slower version of what already exists. Albert Read spent twenty-five years at Conde Nast inside that question, and as Managing Director of Conde Nast Britain from 2017 to 2024 he was the executive accountable for the answer across British Vogue, GQ, Wired, Vanity Fair, Tatler, Conde Nast Traveller and the rest of the UK portfolio. His operating record covers the parts of reinvention that are easy to claim and hard to do. He launched Wired in the UK, took Conde Nast into new digital products, conferences, awards and education, and led the company’s market launches in China, India and the UAE. In September 2024 he was appointed Executive Chairman of The Evening Standard, taking on the title’s shift from daily to weekly. His book, The Imagination Muscle: Where Good Ideas Come From, published by Hachette in 2023, argues that imagination is not a temperament but a faculty that can be trained, exercised and built into how an organisation works. Spanning examples from cave painting to Steve Jobs, it gives senior leaders something more practical than the usual creativity literature: a way of thinking about creative output as a discipline that responds to environment, observation and routine. Read is a Senior Advisor to the Milken Institute and an External Advisor to Bain and Company. He read Classics at New College, Oxford, holds an MBA from INSEAD, and has written for The Spectator, The Telegraph and The Times of London. He is the son of the novelist Piers Paul Read and grandson of the art critic Sir Herbert Read, founder of the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Key speaking topics Creativity and imagination as commercial discipline Leadership through digital disruption in legacy businesses Brand reinvention at scale Human creativity in the age of artificial intelligence Entrepreneurial culture inside large organisations The new responsibilities of the modern leader Ideal for CEOs and executive teams in legacy businesses facing structural reinvention CMOs, brand and content leaders responsible for creative output at scale Innovation, R and D and strategy leaders building creative capability inside large organisations Boards and leadership offsites looking at the human counterweight to AI investment Audience outcomes A working definition of imagination as an organisational capability that can be developed, not a personality trait you either have or do not. Concrete examples from Conde Nast and beyond of how creative businesses survived and grew through digital disruption. A sharper view of where AI extends human creative capacity and where it crowds it out. Specific habits, environments and decisions that make teams more inventive without losing operational discipline.

Why organisations work with Alberto Levy Operator credibility on emerging tech: he is the co-founder and CEO of Poly Crypto Rewards and innovation advisor to the Royal Commission for AlUla, so the perspective comes from current decisions, not commentary. Teaches innovation and entrepreneurship inside the IE University International MBA, which gives executives the frameworks his book Start Here codifies for first-time founders and intrapreneurs. Track record across roughly 1,500 projects with 300+ clients in more than 15 countries, including Fortune 500 work spanning automotive, FMCG, media and technology. Recognised on the platforms senior buyers track: World Economic Forum, Harvard Business Review Summit, MIT EmTech, Singularity University, TEDx. A distinctive human-centred voice in a category dominated by hype: his keynotes connect AI, Web3 and design to leadership behaviour and culture, not just technology roadmaps. Biography highlights Adjunct Professor on the International MBA at IE University, Madrid, since 2018, and faculty member on innovation, design thinking and digital leadership programmes at Porto Business School, EGADE / Tec de Monterrey, IPADE, and Financial Times Headspring. Co-founder and CEO of Poly Crypto Rewards, a crypto rewards platform. Innovation and Technology Advisor to the Royal Commission for AlUla, Saudi Arabia, and board advisor at the Founder Institute. Author of Start Here: A Practical Guide to Entrepreneurship for First-Time Founders. Featured speaker at the World Economic Forum, MIT EmTech, Harvard Business Review Summit, TEDx, Singularity University, and Oracle Leaders Circle. Master’s in Interactive Telecommunications, New York University; Bachelor’s in Computer Engineering, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro; Aspen Institute alumnus and Forbes Business Council member. Biography The technology cycle has compressed. AI, Web3 and design tools that organisations were piloting two years ago are now embedded in their products, their go-to-market, and the daily work of their teams. Most leadership teams are still trying to convert that into durable operating advantage rather than another wave of pilots. Alberto Levy works in that gap. He has spent more than two decades inside roughly 1,500 projects across 15+ countries, advising Fortune 500 organisations in automotive, media, FMCG and technology, and has carried that experience into the classroom as an Adjunct Professor on the IE University International MBA, where he teaches innovation, design thinking and digital leadership. His operating profile gives the work weight. He is co-founder and CEO of Poly Crypto Rewards, an Innovation and Technology Advisor to the Royal Commission for AlUla in Saudi Arabia, and a board advisor at the Founder Institute. His book, Start Here: A Practical Guide to Entrepreneurship for First-Time Founders, distils the same playbook he uses with executive teams: spotting real problems, building businesses around them, and stress-testing them against modern tools, AI and digital business models included. Levy is described as an Innovation Evangelist by the Harvard Business Review Summit and the World Economic Forum, and has spoken at MIT EmTech, TEDx, Singularity University and Oracle Leaders Circle. The thread through all of it is a refusal to treat technology as the answer on its own. His argument to senior leaders is that AI, Web3 and design only become advantage when matched to a clear human problem the organisation has decided to solve. Key speaking topics Innovation as an operating discipline AI and human intelligence in the enterprise Web3, blockchain and the future of digital business Digital transformation with a human-centred lens Entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship at scale Creative leadership and culture Customer experience and experiential storytelling Ideal for Board and executive teams setting an AI, Web3 or digital strategy that has to outlast the current technology cycle Chief Innovation Officers, CTOs and transformation leads moving from pilots to operating model Corporate venture, intrapreneurship and founder-track programmes inside large organisations CMOs and customer experience leaders rebuilding around emerging technology Audience outcomes A clearer view of where AI and Web3 produce real operating advantage and where they do not A working model for translating innovation strategy into product, team and culture decisions Practical entrepreneurship tools drawn from Start Here, applicable to both founders and intrapreneurs A sharper sense of how to keep customers and employees at the centre of a technology agenda Confidence to make decisions on emerging technology without waiting for the next hype cycle

Why organisations work with Alec Ross He has advised both a US Secretary of State and a global venture capital firm on the same question: where power is moving as technology, capital and national interest collide. Boards get a single read across all three. The Industries of the Future sold into 24 languages and remains a reference text for executive teams framing long-range technology strategy. That gives him a shared vocabulary with global leadership audiences before he opens his mouth. The Raging 2020s offers a specific thesis, not a survey: the social contract between government, business and citizens is broken, and companies that misread the rebalancing will lose licence to operate. Leaders leave with a framework for where regulatory and political risk is actually heading. He built and sat inside the first serious technology policy function at the State Department, then moved to the investor side at Amplo. He speaks to both the regulator’s logic and the cap table’s logic, which most commentators cannot. Named to Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers and awarded the State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award. Credentials buyers can cite when justifying the booking internally. Biography highlights Senior Advisor for Innovation to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, 2009 to 2013, in a role created specifically to modernise the practice of diplomacy. Author of two New York Times bestsellers: The Industries of the Future (Simon and Schuster, 2016) and The Raging 2020s (Henry Holt, 2021). Distinguished Professor at the Business School of the University of Bologna; previously Distinguished Senior Fellow at Johns Hopkins University and Senior Fellow at Columbia SIPA. Board Partner at Amplo, a global venture capital firm, with director roles across technology, finance, manufacturing, human capital and cybersecurity companies. Co-founder of One Economy, a nonprofit that expanded broadband access for low-income households before broadband policy was a political issue. Named to Foreign Policy magazine’s Top 100 Global Thinkers and holder of the US Department of State Distinguished Honor Award. Biography The Senior Advisor for Innovation job at the State Department did not exist before 2009. It was built for Alec Ross, who spent four years travelling to forty-one countries turning emerging technology into an instrument of US foreign policy under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. That mandate, sitting at the join between diplomacy, national security and the technology industry, is the lens he has brought to every role since. The Industries of the Future, published in 2016, mapped the sectors he believed would reorganise the global economy over the following decade: robotics, genomics, the commercialisation of data, the weaponisation of code. It sold into 24 languages and became a fixture on executive reading lists. The Raging 2020s, published in 2021, moved the argument on. The question is no longer which technologies win. The question is whether the contract between governments, companies and citizens holds, and what companies do when it does not. Ross now teaches at the University of Bologna Business School and sits as a Board Partner at the venture capital firm Amplo, with director seats across technology, finance, manufacturing and cybersecurity. He reads a regulatory brief the way a former diplomat does and a growth plan the way an investor does, and has held both jobs in earnest. What that produces for a leadership audience is judgement on questions that sit above the CTO and below the board: where the geopolitical weather is turning, which regulatory frames are about to land, which technology bets will still make sense when the politics catches up. Foreign Policy named him to its Top 100 Global Thinkers for a reason specific to this moment. Very few commentators have worked the diplomatic side, the commercial side and the academic side of the same argument. Key speaking topics Geopolitics of technology and the US to China contest The social contract between governments, companies and citizens Artificial intelligence, data and national competitiveness Cybersecurity as a board-level risk Regulation, antitrust and the future licence to operate Long-range industry disruption and capital allocation Innovation policy and the future of work Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting multi-year technology and geopolitical strategy CEOs, CSOs and heads of government affairs briefing for regulatory inflection points Financial services, technology and industrial leadership teams exposed to US, EU and China policy divergence Conferences convening CEOs, policymakers and investors on the intersection of technology and state power Audience outcomes A sharper read on where regulation, capital and public sentiment are pushing the next decade of technology strategy. A working framework for pricing political and geopolitical risk inside commercial decisions. Named examples of how governments, companies and citizens are renegotiating the social contract, and the implications for licence to operate. A clearer view of which technology sectors are concentrating power, and where corporate strategy has to adjust. An investor and policymaker’s dual perspective on the same question, translated for operators.