Innovation & Disruption

Why organisations work with Silvia Leal She advises the OECD’s Global Forum on Technology on immersive reality, which gives boards direct line of sight to how international policy thinking on emerging tech is being shaped. The IV Premio Nacional de Management 2024 places her among Spain’s most recognised authorities on technology-led management, not on technology in the abstract. She has run innovation and technology programmes at IE Business School and held commercial roles at SAP and Banco Santander, so she speaks to senior teams as someone who has had to operationalise the technology, not only describe it. Her broadcast work on RTVE’s “La Cuarta Revolucion” trained her to make AI, automation and the future of work intelligible to non-specialist audiences, which translates directly into mixed-seniority rooms. She works fluently in Spanish and English, with published books and a regular podcast that give clients a body of public material to brief from. Biography highlights PhD in Sociology; expert member of the OECD Global Forum on Technology. IV Premio Nacional de Management 2024, presented at DLA Piper Spain. Former Director of Innovation and Technology Programs, IE Business School. Prior commercial experience at SAP and in Banco Santander’s technology division. Creator and presenter of “La Cuarta Revolucion” on RTVE La 2, produced with Onza. Author of “Ingenio y pasion” (IE Business Publishing), “Y de repente llego el Metaverso” and “Tendencias: Claves para entender el futuro y construir el presente”. Inspire Award 2021 from the Spanish Artificial Intelligence Association for AI popularisation. Biography Most senior teams now have an AI strategy on paper. Far fewer have a shared language for what the technology can already do well, what it cannot, and which calls have to be made this year. That translation problem sits at the centre of Silvia Leal’s work. She holds a PhD in Sociology and sits on the OECD’s Global Forum on Technology, where she contributes to the working group on immersive reality. Before that she ran the Innovation and Technology Programs at IE Business School, after commercial roles at SAP and in Banco Santander’s technology division. The combination gives her a clear view of both the policy thinking and the operational reality. In Spain her authority is recognised formally. In 2024 she received the IV Premio Nacional de Management at a ceremony hosted by DLA Piper, and in 2021 she was given the Inspire Award by the Spanish Artificial Intelligence Association for her work on AI popularisation. Her public-facing record includes “La Cuarta Revolucion”, the seven-part RTVE series she created and presented on La 2, and the podcast “Tendencias con Silvia Leal”. Her books, including “Ingenio y pasion” in the IE Business Publishing collection and “Y de repente llego el Metaverso”, read as practical management texts rather than tech commentary. For boards and executive teams trying to make AI, the metaverse and digital transformation legible to their own organisation, that practical register is the point. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence in the enterprise Digital transformation and innovation leadership The metaverse and immersive technology Future of work and workforce transformation Emerging technology policy and governance Cybersecurity as a leadership issue Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting AI and digital priorities. Chief Technology, Innovation and Transformation Officers translating strategy into operating decisions. CHROs and HR leaders preparing the workforce for AI-shaped roles. Industry associations and policy-facing events that need a credible bridge between European institutions and operating businesses. Audience outcomes A clearer read on which AI and immersive-tech capabilities are real today and which remain promise. Sharper questions for vendors, partners and internal teams when commissioning AI work. A practical framing of the metaverse and immersive reality as a business question, not a consumer trend. A more honest view of how AI is reshaping roles, skills and recruiting inside their own organisation.

Why organisations work with Pedro Duque Two flown space missions, STS-95 aboard Space Shuttle Discovery and the Cervantes mission to the International Space Station, give him first-hand experience of mission-critical decision-making in high-risk multinational technical environments. Three years running Spain’s national innovation system as Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities. He saw what happens when research and innovation policy meet the real economy, and where the translation breaks down. Chair of Hispasat, one of three European operators inside SpaceRISE, the consortium awarded the IRIS² concession. He is inside the construction of European technological sovereignty, not commenting on it from the outside. He has approached the same questions about technology, risk, and capability from three operationally distinct positions: as an astronaut at ESA, as a CEO at Deimos Imaging, and as a minister in the Spanish government. Biography highlights ESA astronaut who flew STS-95 aboard NASA’s Space Shuttle Discovery in 1998 and the 10-day Cervantes mission to the International Space Station aboard Soyuz TMA in 2003. Spain’s Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities from 2018 to 2021, and Minister of Science and Innovation from 2020 to 2021. Member of Spain’s Congress of Deputies for Alicante, 2019 to 2020. Chair of Hispasat since December 2023; the company is one of three European satellite operators in the SpaceRISE consortium awarded the EU’s IRIS² satellite constellation contract. Former Managing Director and Executive President of Deimos Imaging during the launch of Deimos-1, Spain’s first Earth observation satellite. Member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Engineering; recipient of Russia’s Order of Friendship, Spain’s Grand Cross of Aeronautical Merit, and the Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation. Biography On 29 October 1998, Spain watched its first astronaut launch from Cape Canaveral aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery. Pedro Duque has stayed close to space ever since, but rarely from orbit. After a second flight in 2003, this time on a Soyuz to the International Space Station for the Cervantes mission, Duque moved between roles that few people combine. He led Deimos Imaging during the launch of Deimos-1, Spain’s first Earth observation satellite. He returned to ESA to head its Flight Operations Office, which oversees European activities on the ISS from the Columbus Control Centre near Munich. In 2018, Pedro Sánchez named him Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities. He held the post through 2021, including a period as Minister of Science and Innovation, and represented Spain on the European Space Agency’s Ministerial Council. During his tenure he committed an additional €701 million to Spain’s ESA contribution between 2020 and 2026. Since December 2023 he has chaired Hispasat. The company is now one of three European satellite operators inside SpaceRISE, the consortium awarded the IRIS² concession in late 2024. IRIS² is the EU’s third flagship space programme, a 290-satellite constellation built for European sovereignty in secure connectivity. Few speakers can describe what that means from the inside. Key speaking topics Space technology and the modern economy Satellite infrastructure and European sovereignty Innovation policy and national competitiveness International cooperation in complex technical programmes Decision-making in high-risk operational environments Earth observation and applied satellite data The space industry and geopolitical risk Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting strategy under technological and geopolitical uncertainty Government, policy, and public sector leadership forums on innovation, science and industrial strategy Aerospace, defence, telecommunications, and infrastructure leadership Corporate audiences shaping long-horizon technology and capability decisions Audience outcomes A reframing of satellite and space infrastructure as a strategic layer of the modern economy A view from inside the IRIS² consortium of what European secure connectivity actually requires How mission-critical decisions get made when failure is unacceptable and teams cross nationalities A grounded read on where national innovation policy translates into commercial outcomes and where it stalls

Why organisations work with Marina Díaz Ibarra She has run a regional consumer technology business at scale, leading Mercado Libre’s Argentina, Chile and Peru operation as General Manager, so her view of digital growth is built from operating P&L, not consultancy. She built and exited a digital transformation company, Wolox, which Accenture acquired in 2021, giving her a working view of how incumbents actually buy and absorb innovation. She sits on the boards of Nasdaq-listed AgileThought, Rotoplas, Gentera and IFC (World Bank) portfolio companies, so she can speak to how boards across Latin America are framing AI, fintech and risk decisions. Her advisory work with Bitso, the largest crypto exchange in Latin America, and Jumex gives her live exposure to fintech, blockchain and consumer brand strategy in volatile markets. She wrote “Un mundo sin jefes” (Conecta, 2021), a candid book on executive life and self-leadership, which makes her credible on the human side of transformation as well as the technology side. Biography highlights General Manager for Argentina, Chile and Peru at Mercado Libre, 2015 to 2017. Managing Director of Wolox, the digital product and transformation firm acquired by Accenture in 2021. Earlier global roles at Nike (Emerging Markets Apparel), Under Armour (Global Senior Product Manager), Unilever (Dove, Latin America) and Puratos. Board director of Rotoplas, Gentera (Banco Compartamos), AgileThought (Nasdaq) and IFC (World Bank) portfolio companies. Advisor to Bitso and Jumex. MBA from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Economics degree from Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. Master’s in Project Valuation from ITBA. Author of “Un mundo sin jefes” (Conecta, Penguin Random House, 2021). Biography Mercado Libre is the company that beat Amazon in Latin America. Marina Díaz Ibarra was the General Manager who ran its Argentina, Chile and Peru business between 2015 and 2017, at the point where mobile commerce, payments and logistics were converging into a single operating problem. That seat shapes how she thinks about digital growth: as a question of unit economics, talent and execution, not as a slide on disruption. After Mercado Libre, she moved to the other side of the table. As Managing Director of Wolox, she built a digital product company that helped incumbents in financial services, retail and consumer goods translate ambition into working software. Accenture acquired the business in 2021. The experience left her with a precise view of where corporate transformation programmes break down, and what makes the small number that work different. Her earlier career was inside the brand machinery of Unilever, Nike, Under Armour and Puratos, with regional and global roles spanning Latin America and the United States. That background, combined with an MBA from Wharton and an economics training from Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, gives her an unusual range: she can read a brand P&L, a venture cap table and a board pack with equal fluency. She now sits on the boards of Rotoplas, Gentera, Nasdaq-listed AgileThought and several IFC (World Bank) portfolio companies, and advises Bitso, the largest crypto exchange in Latin America. Her book “Un mundo sin jefes” (Conecta, 2021) put on record the human cost of running at executive speed and the discipline required to keep going. It is the part of the story that boards rarely talk about and that her audiences consistently respond to. Key speaking topics Digital transformation in incumbent businesses Exponential technologies and operating advantage E-commerce, omnichannel and mobile in emerging markets Fintech, blockchain and crypto in Latin America Board-level technology and innovation governance Customer experience and brand in a digital economy Self-leadership and executive resilience Ideal for Boards and executive committees framing AI, fintech and digital transformation decisions CEOs and CDOs of incumbents who have stalled between pilot and scaled deployment CMOs and customer experience leaders rebuilding around digital and mobile commerce Senior leadership audiences in Latin America, the United States and EMEA looking for an operator view from the region Audience outcomes A clear-eyed account of what separates digital transformation programmes that scale from those that stall A working view of how Latin American operators have built consumer technology businesses against larger global incumbents Specific cases from Mercado Libre, Wolox and live board work in fintech, water, microfinance and technology services A frank perspective on the human and leadership cost of running at the pace transformation now demands

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

Why organisations work with Fernando Trias de Bes He is the only Spanish author to have co-written books with Philip Kotler, and the frameworks in Lateral Marketing and Winning at Innovation give leadership teams a shared vocabulary for where their ideas actually come from. Winning at Innovation, with its A-to-F Model, won the CMI Innovation and Entrepreneurship category at the 2013 Management Book of the Year Awards, a credential that speaks directly to boards asking how innovation should be structured inside the firm. He runs Salvetti and Llombart, a Barcelona-based consumer research and innovation consultancy whose client list has included PepsiCo, Sony, Hewlett-Packard, Nestle and McKinsey, which means the classroom work is tested against paying clients. He bridges two registers most economists do not reach, serious academic marketing theory and popular business writing, and audiences that have read La buena suerte or El libro negro del emprendedor often arrive already familiar with his thinking. He presents in English and Spanish and has been delivering executive-level keynotes since 2003, with hundreds of international engagements behind him. Biography highlights Associate Professor of Marketing Management at ESADE Business School since 1994. Co-author with Philip Kotler of Lateral Marketing (Wiley, 2003) and Winning at Innovation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). CMI Management Book of the Year 2013, Innovation and Entrepreneurship category, for Winning at Innovation. Founder and President of Salvetti and Llombart, a consumer insight and innovation consultancy working with PepsiCo, Sony, HP, Nestle and McKinsey. Regular columnist for La Vanguardia, ARA and El Pais Semanal; author of more than twenty books of essay and fiction translated into more than thirty languages. Winner of the Premio Espasa de Ensayo (2015), Premio De Hoy de Ensayo (2009) and Shinpukai Prize (Japan, 2005). Biography Most innovation in large companies is lateral in name only. Teams segment further, tweak an existing product, and call it new. Fernando Trias de Bes spent two decades arguing, in books co-written with Philip Kotler, that this is the core reason corporate pipelines stall, and building methods that address it directly. Lateral Marketing, published by Wiley in 2003, set out a structured way to generate product concepts that do not come from narrower segmentation but from a different logical operation on the category itself. Winning at Innovation, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2011, took the argument further with the A-to-F Model, a step-by-step description of the roles and stages an organisation needs to convert ideas into launches. The Chartered Management Institute named it Innovation and Entrepreneurship Book of the Year at its 2013 awards. Trias de Bes has taught marketing and innovation at ESADE Business School since 1994 and runs Salvetti and Llombart, the Barcelona consumer research and innovation consultancy he co-founded in 1996. Clients have included PepsiCo, Sony, Hewlett-Packard, McKinsey and Nestle, which gives the academic frameworks a field of consumer goods and services to answer to. Beyond the business books he writes columns for La Vanguardia, ARA and El Pais Semanal, and has published essays and novels translated into more than thirty languages, including La buena suerte, co-written with Alex Rovira, and El libro negro del emprendedor. The Premio Espasa de Ensayo in 2015 sits alongside earlier recognition in Japan and Spain. That range, economist, consultant, columnist, novelist, is the unusual shape of the author, and it is what audiences tend to remember from the keynote. Key speaking topics Business model innovation Lateral marketing and creativity in commercial strategy The A-to-F Model for organising innovation Entrepreneurship and the economics of new ventures Economic trends and consumer behaviour Corporate reinvention and disruptive thinking Ideal for CMOs, CSOs and heads of innovation confronting commoditised categories and stalled pipelines. Executive committees running corporate strategy offsites on growth and reinvention. Business schools and management development programmes covering innovation, marketing and entrepreneurship. Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for lateral versus vertical innovation that a leadership team can use the next day. The A-to-F structure for assigning innovation roles and stages inside an organisation. Concrete examples, drawn from consumer goods and services, of where breakthrough ideas actually come from. A sharper read on why most corporate innovation produces line extensions rather than category moves.

Why organisations work with Bernardo Hernandez Operator credibility on both sides of the Atlantic: a senior Google product role through the Zagat acquisition, then running Flickr at Yahoo, then founding and selling Verse to Block. Few European speakers have lived that arc. Investor pattern recognition across a portfolio that includes Wallapop, Glovo, Fever, Paack, Citibox and Stripe. He talks about scaling consumer tech from inside the cap table, not from the outside. A working view of what AI is doing to product organisations through Pensero AI, his current company, which applies AI to engineering performance and management. Direct experience of the moves that matter to corporates: M&A integration at Google, platform repositioning at Yahoo and fintech exit to a US strategic acquirer. Biography highlights Co-founder of Idealista, Spain’s leading real estate platform. Director of Product Management at Google, 2005 to 2013; led the Zagat acquisition and team. Head of Flickr and Senior Vice President of Product at Yahoo, 2013 to 2015. Founder and CEO of Verse, the European payments app acquired by Block (Square) in 2020. Co-founder and Co-CEO of Pensero AI in New York. Board of Directors, Mapfre USA; trustee, Fundacion Princesa de Girona; jury member, Princess of Asturias Awards for Science and Technology. Recipient of Spain’s National Innovation and Design Award (2023, Ministry of Science). Biography Idealista was a small Madrid property site when Bernardo Hernandez co-founded it in 2000. Today it is the dominant real estate platform in southern Europe. That first venture set the template for a career spent building consumer internet businesses, then teaching incumbents how to think about the same problem. After five years as a portfolio manager at Fidelity, BBVA and Putnam, he joined Google in 2005 as Director of Product Management. He spent eight years inside the company, including leading the Zagat acquisition and integration. He then ran Flickr at Yahoo as Senior Vice President of Product before founding Verse, the European payments app that Block acquired in 2020. The operator track is matched by an investor track. He has backed Wallapop, Glovo, Fever, Paack, Citibox and Stripe, among others, and was an early investor in Tuenti before its sale to Telefonica. He sits on the board of Mapfre USA and is a trustee of the Fundacion Princesa de Girona under the Spanish Royal House. In 2023 he received Spain’s National Innovation and Design Award from the Ministry of Science. His current company, Pensero AI, applies AI to engineering management, giving him a live operating view of what generative AI is doing to product organisations rather than a theorist’s view. For corporate audiences this matters: he is currently building inside the technology shift he is invited to speak about. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and the scale-up playbook Digital business models and platform economics Consumer fintech and mobile payments AI in product and engineering organisations Corporate venturing, M&A and integration Innovation portfolios and angel investing Building between Europe and the United States Ideal for CEOs and board directors weighing build, buy or back decisions on new digital businesses. Chief Strategy, Chief Innovation and Corporate Development leaders running venture and M&A activity. Banks, insurers and retailers facing fintech and platform challengers. Leadership groups at European corporates with US ambitions, or US groups expanding into Europe. Audience outcomes A clearer sense of how founders make speed and capital decisions that corporate processes typically slow down. A working framework for evaluating new business models against existing P&L economics. Concrete reference points from Idealista, Google, Flickr, Verse and the current Pensero AI build. A sharper read on where AI is creating leverage inside product and engineering teams right now.

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 Dan Waldschmidt He has run the turnaround himself. As CRO then CEO of Panzura, he led 150% year-on-year customer base growth and 288% three-year revenue expansion, which gives the speaking material a current operator’s authority. The Edgy Conversations thesis is research-based, drawing on 1,000 case studies of outlier performers across business, science, and sport, and gives audiences a defensible argument for unconventional commercial choices. He speaks credibly to enterprise technology buyers. The Panzura mandate sits in hybrid cloud storage and ransomware resilience, which makes him useful for boards balancing growth ambition with infrastructure risk. His work travels well from sales kickoffs to executive offsites because the same framework is applied to revenue, talent, and brand positioning. The voice is direct and confrontational by design. Senior teams that are tired of motivational keynotes tend to respond to a speaker willing to name what is not working in the room. Biography highlights Chief Executive Officer of Panzura, appointed January 2024, having joined as reFounder and Chief Revenue Officer in 2020. Author of Edgy Conversations: How Ordinary People Can Achieve Outrageous Success, published 2014. Founder of Waldschmidt Partners International, a strategy consultancy active 2010 to 2018. Wall Street Journal listed his Edgy Conversations blog among the top sales blogs online. Contributor at Entrepreneur.com; featured in Forbes, CNBC, and Business Insider. Ultra-endurance athlete with multiple 100-mile race finishes, including the Everest Marathon course. Biography The hardest part of a turnaround is not the diagnosis. It is doing the work while the business is still running. Revenue targets do not pause for restructuring, customers do not wait for a refreshed value proposition, and the sales team needs a story to tell on Monday morning. Most strategy advice does not survive contact with that pressure. Dan Waldschmidt’s career has been built inside that pressure. At Panzura, the hybrid cloud storage company, he joined in 2020 as reFounder and Chief Revenue Officer, rebuilt the commercial engine, and was appointed CEO in January 2024. The published numbers, 150% year-on-year customer base growth, 288% three-year revenue expansion, 125% net retention, and Inc. 5000 recognition, came from a deliberate repositioning into the enterprise market and a tightening of the sales motion around ransomware resilience and data security. The intellectual backbone is Edgy Conversations, his book based on the stories of 1,000 outlier performers across business, science, mathematics, and sport. The argument is that breakthrough commercial outcomes come from a small number of unfashionable behaviours: deliberate focus, willingness to refuse the conventional path, and a narrow definition of what counts as success. Before Panzura, he ran Waldschmidt Partners International, advising leadership teams on revenue strategy, and his columns and blog have been cited by the Wall Street Journal and Entrepreneur.com. For senior buyers, the practical relevance is the combination of operator and author. The frameworks are not abstract. They are the same frameworks he is currently applying to a public-stage enterprise technology business with real customers and real quarterly numbers. Key speaking topics Revenue turnaround and commercial repositioning Sales transformation in enterprise technology High-performance behaviour in commercial teams Brand and category differentiation under pressure AI and data security as growth narratives Leadership of restructured commercial functions Ideal for Chief Revenue Officers and sales leadership teams resetting commercial strategy CEOs and boards navigating a turnaround or strategic repositioning Founders and scale-up leadership teams in enterprise technology Sales kickoffs, partner summits, and executive offsites where the audience is operators rather than observers Audience outcomes A direct read on which commercial behaviours predict outlier results and which do not A framework for tightening sales motion and customer focus during a strategy reset Specific operating examples from a current enterprise technology turnaround Language for repositioning a business in a contested category A challenge to the default assumption that incremental change will deliver step-change growth

Why organisations work with Tanya Menon A research voice on inclusion that starts with network structure, hiring data, and decision bias rather than identity language, useful for leadership teams that need substance under a contested topic. Tenured academic credibility: Stanford PhD, Fisher College professorship, Associate Editor at Management Science, a decade teaching Power and Influence at Chicago Booth. Co-author of Stop Spending, Start Managing (Harvard Business Review Press), which names five specific organisational traps including expertise lock-in and conflict avoidance, applied directly to senior team behaviour. A TED Talk with 1.8 million-plus views that translates weak-tie network research into a behaviour senior leaders and their teams can immediately recognise in themselves. Equally fluent on team performance, persuasion, and hiring, which makes her a credible single speaker across an HR or culture programme rather than one topic in a series. Biography highlights Professor of Management and Human Resources, Fisher College of Business, Ohio State University. PhD, Stanford Graduate School of Business; BA, Harvard University. Associate Editor, Management Science. Co-author, Stop Spending, Start Managing: Strategies to Transform Wasteful Habits, Harvard Business Review Press. TED Talk listed among TED.com’s most popular of 2018, with over 1.8 million views. Faculty for over a decade at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, teaching Power and Influence. Research cited in The Wall Street Journal, NPR, The Guardian, The Times of London, Chicago Tribune, and Boston Globe. Biography Most senior teams know who they talk to every day. Far fewer can name who they have stopped talking to, and what that has cost the organisation. Tanya Menon’s research starts in that gap. Her work at Ohio State’s Fisher College of Business, supported by a Stanford PhD and a decade teaching at Chicago Booth, focuses on how relationships at work shape decisions, hiring, and innovation. Her TED Talk, “The secret to great opportunities? The person you haven’t met yet,” reframes networking as a structural problem rather than a personal one. Drawing on Mark Granovetter’s classic work on weak ties, she shows why the routines that feel efficient inside an organisation quietly narrow the people, ideas, and candidates a leader ever encounters. Over 1.8 million people have watched it. With Leigh Thompson of Kellogg, she wrote Stop Spending, Start Managing for Harvard Business Review Press. The book identifies five concrete traps, including the Expertise Trap, the Winner’s Trap, and the Agreement Trap, that explain why competent teams burn time and money on the wrong problems. It is built for leaders who run real teams, not for a general management audience. She has been an Associate Editor at Management Science, and her research has been cited by The Wall Street Journal, NPR, The Guardian, The Times of London, the Chicago Tribune, and the Boston Globe. The through-line is a usable diagnostic vocabulary for the parts of organisational life that look like soft skills until they start producing hard losses. Key speaking topics Networks and weak ties at work Inclusion through hiring and network design Team decision-making and productive conflict Power, persuasion, and influence Innovation and pattern-breaking Wasteful organisational habits and managerial traps AI and human decision-making in hiring Ideal for CHROs and Heads of Talent rethinking hiring pipelines and selection bias. Heads of DEI and culture leaders looking for a research-led, non-ideological frame for inclusion. Senior leadership teams under pressure to improve cross-functional collaboration. Learning and development leads designing executive programmes on influence, networks, and team performance. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the network and hiring habits that quietly limit inclusion and innovation. Five named organisational traps senior teams can test their own behaviour against. A research-grounded view of weak ties as a hiring, learning, and idea-generation lever. Specific tactics for breaking routine social patterns inside large organisations. A more defensible inclusion narrative grounded in network structure and decision data.

Why organisations work with Dave Noll He brings a working television creator’s instinct for what survives a pitch room, drawn from selling 60-plus series and more than 3,500 episodes to global networks. The Chopped origin story is a usable case study in persistence. The format was rejected by Food Network before becoming one of the longest-running cooking competitions on US television and earning a James Beard Award. His credentials sit outside the usual corporate speaker pool, which makes the message about creative risk land differently with sales and innovation audiences who have heard the standard versions. He frames innovation as a commercial discipline rather than an ideation exercise, focused on what gets bought, what gets renewed, and what scales internationally. Biography highlights Co-creator of Chopped (Food Network, 2009 to present); franchise inducted into the Culinary Hall of Fame. Two-time Emmy Award winner and two-time Gracie Award winner. Chopped won the James Beard Award for Best Television Series in 2012. Co-founder of Keller Noll, a New York-based format development company with international productions across Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, South Africa, Turkey and the United States. Creator of America Says (Game Show Network), No Kitchen Required (BBC America), Rocco’s Dinner Party (Bravo), Beat the House (HGTV), Face The Truth (CBS) and Punchline (FOX). Signed a first-look deal with Boat Rocker in 2021, reported in Deadline. Biography Chopped was rejected by Food Network the first time it was pitched in 2007. The same concept, brought back months later, became one of the longest-running cooking competition formats on US television, has aired since 2009, was inducted into the Culinary Hall of Fame and won the 2012 James Beard Award for Best Television Series. The producer behind it is Dave Noll, co-founder of Keller Noll, a New York-based format development company he runs with Cleve Keller. Together, they have created and sold more than 60 television series and produced over 3,500 episodes, with productions filmed across eight countries and a 2021 first-look deal with Boat Rocker. His value to a commercial audience is the working knowledge of what it takes to get an idea past the people who say no for a living. That includes America Says on Game Show Network, No Kitchen Required on BBC America, Rocco’s Dinner Party on Bravo, Face The Truth on CBS, and the wider game-show and competition portfolio that the partnership has built since 2007. For sales, marketing and innovation teams, his contribution is closer to a master class in commercial creativity than a leadership talk. He works in an industry where every pitch is graded on what audiences will actually choose to watch, and brings that discipline into rooms where corporate innovation often loses contact with the customer. Key speaking topics Innovation as a commercial discipline Creative persistence and pitch resilience Turning rejected ideas into market-ready products Storytelling and format thinking for brand teams Sales performance and customer-centred creativity Team-level creative culture in deadline-driven environments Ideal for Sales and revenue leadership audiences working on creative differentiation Marketing, brand and innovation teams inside consumer-facing organisations Corporate offsites and annual kick-offs that want a non-corporate voice on creativity and commercial risk Higher education and association audiences focused on entrepreneurship and media Audience outcomes A concrete example of how a category-defining product survives repeated rejection before reaching the market A working producer’s perspective on what makes a creative idea commercially durable Practical reference points from inside one of television’s most successful format development partnerships Renewed conviction in pushing creative work through internal gatekeepers without diluting it

Why organisations work with Scott Dikkers A published method for generating creative output at volume, codified in the “How to Write Funny” series and tested over three decades of running The Onion newsroom. The founder’s view of how a $16,000 college newspaper became a national satirical brand worth multiples of that, with a defined argument about mission, culture and creative discipline drawn from “Outrageous Marketing” and “The Onion Story.” Built and runs the “Writing with The Onion” programme at The Second City in Chicago, training comedy writers who have gone on to Emmy-winning television rooms, so the keynote sits on top of a working teaching practice. A practitioner’s perspective on creativity in the age of generative AI, framed around how human writers and editors keep brand voice intact when first drafts are cheap and originality is not. Biography highlights Founder of The Onion and TheOnion.com, the world’s first humour website. Longest-serving editor-in-chief of The Onion across two tenures (1988-1999 and 2005-2008) and former General Manager and VP of Creative Development. Number one New York Times bestselling author of “Our Dumb Century,” winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor. Author of more than 30 books, including the “How to Write Funny” series, “Outrageous Marketing” and “The Onion Story.” Creator of the “Writing with The Onion” programme at The Second City training centre in Chicago. Syndicated cartoonist of “Jim’s Journal,” distributed to college newspapers across the United States from 1987 to 1997. Biography A satirical college newspaper bought for $16,000 in 1989 became one of the most recognisable brands in American media. The route from there to a national audience, a Peabody-winning news network and a publishing list that has sold millions of copies was not luck. It was a writers’ room run with unusual discipline, and Scott Dikkers ran it for most of its formative years. As editor-in-chief of The Onion across two tenures, and later as General Manager and VP of Creative Development, Dikkers built the editorial process that produced the headlines most readers can still quote. He launched TheOnion.com in 1996, the first humour website on the internet, and went on to edit “Our Dumb Century,” a number one New York Times bestseller that won the Thurber Prize for American Humor and has sold more than half a million copies. The argument behind his commercial work is set out in “How to Write Funny,” “Outrageous Marketing” and “The Onion Story.” Comedy is not magic. It is a method, and brand voice is the operational output of that method. Dikkers codified the process at The Onion, then transferred it into the “Writing with The Onion” programme he created at The Second City training centre in Chicago, where his students have been hired into Emmy-winning television rooms. For corporate audiences, the relevance is direct. Generative AI has made first drafts trivial and originality scarce. Dikkers’ keynote takes the writers’ room discipline that built The Onion and applies it to creative output, brand voice and the question every marketing and product team is now asking: how do you keep what makes your work yours when the cost of imitation has collapsed. Key speaking topics Creativity as an operating discipline Brand voice and editorial culture Humour and storytelling in business communication Building a media brand from a standing start Creative leadership in the age of generative AI Media literacy and the reading of satire Mission-led culture in creative organisations Ideal for CMOs, brand and content leaders managing creative output at scale Innovation, R&D and product leadership teams working alongside generative AI tools Communications, internal comms and L&D leaders rebuilding storytelling capability Entrepreneurship programmes and founder audiences at universities and conferences Audience outcomes A working method for generating original creative material, drawn from the writers’ room that built The Onion A clearer language for what brand voice is and how it survives contact with AI-generated content A founder’s view of how a small editorial team scaled into a national media business without losing its identity A sharper test for distinguishing satire and credible information in a feed-driven media environment A reference set of named examples from three decades of Onion headlines that a team can take back into its own creative reviews

Why organisations work with Phil Hansen A creativity argument grounded in a documented personal case. The shift from precision pointillism to working with tremor became the basis for a body of work, not a recovery story bolted onto a talk. A live participatory format. Audiences co-create a physical artwork during the session and keep it, which gives the message a durable internal artefact most keynotes cannot leave behind. A TED2013 main-stage talk that has sustained a public audience for more than a decade, used in classrooms and corporate learning programmes alongside the keynote. A track record across creative and commercial platforms including Adobe MAX, the Grammy Awards, Disney, the Rockefeller Foundation and the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates. A Guinness World Record portrait built from 52,901 individual dots, which functions as a tangible proof point for the discipline of working within self-imposed constraint. Biography highlights TED2013 speaker, “Embrace the Shake.” Author of “Tattoo a Banana” (Perigee/Penguin Random House, 2012) and “Phil Hansen: In Process” (2015). Guinness World Record holder for the largest connect-the-dots image (52,901 dots, 2017). Keynote and live-art appearances for Adobe MAX, the Grammy Awards, Disney, Skype, Mazda, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Million Dollar Round Table and the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates. Featured by Discovery Channel, Good Morning America, BBC and PBS. Biography A neurologist’s instruction to “embrace the shake” became the starting point for an entire body of work. The pointillism Hansen had trained on was no longer physically available to him. What replaced it was a practice built around unusual materials, unusual surfaces and the deliberate use of constraint as the brief itself, captured in the time-lapse videos that have become his signature output. The TED2013 talk made that case to a general audience. The keynote translates it for organisations: when teams treat constraint as the problem, they spend their energy on the constraint. When they treat it as the brief, they spend it on the work. The argument is simple, the proof is the practice it produced. The corporate engagements followed the talk: Adobe MAX, the Grammy Awards, Disney, Skype, Mazda, the Rockefeller Foundation. The format is unusual for a business audience because the audience makes something. A collaborative artwork is produced live in the room and stays with the client, which gives the session a physical residue most keynotes do not. The Guinness record for a connect-the-dots image of 52,901 points sits alongside the books, “Tattoo a Banana” and “In Process,” as evidence that the method is not a story about overcoming an obstacle. It is a working discipline that has produced output for two decades. Key speaking topics Creativity under constraint Innovation culture in resource-limited environments Reframing limitation as creative brief Collaborative creative practice Resilience and creative reinvention Experiential keynote and live-art performance Ideal for Innovation, R&D and product leaders building team creative practice under tighter budgets CHROs and culture leads running offsites, leadership conferences and post-restructure team events Marketing, design and brand teams looking for an experiential session rather than a lecture format Conference programmers seeking a high-energy participatory keynote to anchor a programme Audience outcomes A working definition of constraint as a creative input, with a specific example produced live in the room A physical collaborative artwork created during the session that the organisation keeps Language to use internally when teams default to treating constraint as the problem A reference case (the shake, the materials, the record) that travels easily inside the organisation after the event