Innovation & Disruption speakers

Why organisations work with Dr Helena Boschi She brings neuroscience into the room with the credibility of someone who has sat on the executive side of HR. Senior roles at Shire Pharmaceuticals and Serono SA mean she speaks to leadership problems from inside, not from a lab. Her book Why We Do What We Do (Wiley, 2020) gives leadership teams a shared vocabulary for why people behave as they do under pressure, which lasts beyond the event. She works at the intersection of chronic stress and cognitive performance, an area most leadership speakers skim and few treat as a board-level risk. She is a member of the British Psychological Society and has built Chequered Leopard Ltd since 2004 specifically to translate peer-reviewed research into operational practice, not keynote theatre. She is unusually sharp on the behavioural cost of hybrid working: trust erosion, risk attitudes, attention, empathy. Useful for any leadership team still making assumptions about what remote does to a workforce. Biography highlights Founder of Chequered Leopard Ltd (since 2004), a consultancy applying neuroscience to leadership, change and workplace behaviour. Author of Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Our Brain to Get the Best Out of Ourselves and Others (Wiley, 2020). Former Vice President of Talent Management at Shire Pharmaceuticals. Former Corporate Director and Head of Global Organisation Development at Serono SA (now part of Merck KGaA). Member of the British Psychological Society. Research interests include the impact of chronic, work-induced stress on cognitive ability in the workplace. Biography Most change programmes fail on the same fault line. Leaders model behaviour as a matter of willingness, when the brain is actually running on threat detection, bias and habit. Helena Boschi has built a twenty-year practice around closing that gap, translating applied neuroscience into the decisions senior teams actually have to make. Her consultancy, Chequered Leopard Ltd, was founded in 2004 after senior corporate roles inside Shire Pharmaceuticals, where she was Vice President of Talent Management, and Serono SA, where she led global organisation development. That sequence matters. She is not a researcher who later discovered business. She ran the people function at scale in listed multinationals and turned to neuroscience because the tools available to her were not explaining what she was seeing. Her book Why We Do What We Do, published by Wiley in 2020, sets out how the brain communicates, remembers, attends, leads and decides, and what organisations can do to stop working against it. The work that sits beneath it, including her interest in chronic work-induced stress and cognitive function, informs keynotes on change, cognitive bias, psychological safety, hybrid working and innovation. She is a member of the British Psychological Society. The argument she leaves in the room is specific. Most of what organisations call a culture problem is a biology problem being asked to behave. Once leaders see that, the interventions change. Key speaking topics Applied neuroscience at work The neuroscience of change Cognitive bias and decision-making Psychological safety and fear at work Trust, risk and hybrid working The neuroscience of innovation Chronic stress and cognitive performance Neuroplasticity and cognitive agility in an AI-driven world Ideal for CEOs, executive teams and boards working through sustained change or transformation programmes. CHROs, CPOs and senior HR, talent and organisation development leaders. Leadership development and learning teams designing programmes for senior cohorts. Cross-cultural and international leadership groups operating in hybrid conditions. Audience outcomes A clearer picture of why people resist, withdraw or underperform during change, grounded in how the brain responds to uncertainty. Named cognitive biases leaders can spot in their own decisions and in the decisions their teams make for them. A practical read on what hybrid working is doing to trust, empathy and risk appetite inside their organisation. Specific behavioural levers for psychological safety, rather than slogans. Language and evidence leaders can take back into their own teams without needing to cite academic research.

Why organisations work with Henrik von Scheel He is one of the named architects of Industry 4.0 as it was formalised in Germany’s high-tech strategy, so his frame of reference is the policy and standards layer most strategists only read about. His advisory seat on the EU AI Act and on the EU Climate Change Board (Green Deal, FIT for 55, CBAM) lets him brief boards on regulation that is still being written, not regulation that has already shipped. He sits inside the Institute of Strategic Intelligence, whose trend material feeds the World Economic Forum, so the inputs he uses with clients are the same inputs shaping global agenda papers. His 2024 Wiley handbook “Strategy in the Age of Disruption” gives clients a documented method for sequencing disruption response rather than a slide deck of trends. Co-authorship of 153 business, architecture and IT standards, including the SAP implementation method and the NATO Architecture Framework C3 Taxonomy meta-model, means he moves from boardroom narrative to operational specification inside the same engagement. Biography highlights Originated the term “Fourth Industrial Revolution” in 2011 as a member of the Advisory Group to the German Federal Ministry of Education & Research, with Prof August Wilhelm Scheer and Prof Henning Kagermann. Co-author of Germany’s Digital Agenda (2009 to 2010), later adopted as the European Commission’s Europe Digital Agenda 2020. Managing Director of the Institute of Strategic Intelligence and Professor of Economics and Strategy Management. Author of “Strategy in the Age of Disruption: A Handbook to Anticipate Change and Make Smart Decisions” (Wiley, 2024). Advisory Council Member on the EU Artificial Intelligence Act and on the EU Climate Change Board (Green Deal, FIT for 55, CBAM Scope 1 to 3); co-author of 153 business, architecture and IT standards, including the SAP implementation method and the NATO Architecture Framework C3 Taxonomy meta-model. Recipient of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Award (2019), the prize popularly described as the Nobel of knowledge sharing; named a leading authority on strategy by the Financial Times and a most influential futurist of the century by CNBC. Biography The phrase “Industry 4.0” was first written into a German federal policy paper in 2011, and the working group behind it had three names on it. One of them was Henrik von Scheel, then advising the Federal Ministry of Education & Research alongside August Wilhelm Scheer and Henning Kagermann. Two years later the concept was published as Germany’s high-tech strategy and became the dominant frame for industrial digitalisation across most advanced economies. That origin story matters because most strategists discuss digital transformation from outside the room. Von Scheel works from inside it. He co-authored Germany’s Digital Agenda with Scheer in 2009 to 2010, which the European Commission adopted as the Europe Digital Agenda 2020. He sits on the advisory council for the EU Artificial Intelligence Act and on the EU Climate Change Board, where he is contributing to the Green Deal, FIT for 55 and CBAM. He is briefing boards on rules he is helping draft. The operational layer is just as concrete. Through the Institute of Strategic Intelligence, where he is Managing Director, he supplies trend research used by the World Economic Forum. He has co-authored 153 business, architecture and IT standards, including the SAP implementation method and the NATO Architecture Framework C3 Taxonomy meta-model. This is what lets him move a conversation from megatrend to operational specification without losing the room. His 2024 Wiley handbook “Strategy in the Age of Disruption”, co-written with Ciprian Popa and Joshua von Scheel, sets out a method for anticipating change and sequencing decisions rather than reacting to disruption after the fact. Current demand reflects that range: law firms working through the future of legal practice, defence, banking, automotive and manufacturing leaders working through the move from automation to intelligence. Key speaking topics Industry 4.0 and industrial digitalisation Artificial intelligence strategy and the EU AI Act From automation to intelligence in industrial operations Strategic foresight and megatrend analysis Future of legal practice in the age of AI Digital transformation execution Supply chain and operations reinvention Sustainability, ESG and energy transition Ideal for Boards and CEOs in manufacturing, automotive, defence and banking setting AI, digital and Industry 4.0 strategy at group level Managing Partners and innovation leads in law firms working through how AI restructures legal practice and client work Chief Strategy Officers and transformation leads sequencing capital and operating bets under disruption COOs and operations leaders reinventing factories, supply chains and service operations Government and policy audiences shaping national digital, AI or industrial agendas Audience outcomes A clear read on which megatrends are commercially actionable in the next planning cycle and which are still ten years out A defensible logic for sequencing AI, automation and digital investments against P&L impact An insider view of where EU AI and climate regulation is going before it lands A working method, drawn from his Wiley handbook, for making strategic decisions when the operating environment keeps shifting Confidence that the digital and Industry 4.0 narrative inside the organisation matches what is happening at policy and standards level

Why organisations work with Henry Chesbrough He is the named author of the framework that most corporate innovation functions claim to use. When a board wants the original argument rather than a consultant’s summary, they bring him in. Two decades of field research inside Procter & Gamble, Intel, IBM, GE, Bayer, and Huawei give him specific evidence on where open innovation pays off and where it quietly fails. His work extends beyond R&D into business models and services, which is where most open innovation programmes stall once the easy wins run out. He sits at the centre of the academic and practitioner networks that define the field, including the Garwood Center at Berkeley Haas and the Open Innovation Community he founded. Recognition from Thinkers50 (ranked four times), the Industrial Research Institute’s Medal of Achievement, and the Academy of Management’s Distinguished Scholar-Practitioner Award establishes standing with both academic and corporate audiences. Biography highlights Faculty Director of the Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. Maire Tecnimont Professor of Open Innovation at Luiss University, Rome. Author of “Open Innovation” (HBS Press, 2003), “Open Business Models” (2006), “Open Services Innovation” (2011), and “Open Innovation Results” (Oxford University Press, 2020). Named to the Thinkers50 ranking four times and shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Innovation Award in 2011. Recipient of the Industrial Research Institute’s Medal of Achievement (2017), the Herbert Simon Award (2020), and the Academy of Management Distinguished Scholar-Practitioner Award (2022). Honorary doctorates from Hasselt University, the University of Vic, and Eindhoven University of Technology. Biography “Open innovation” is the most widely adopted idea in corporate R&D of the last twenty years, and Henry Chesbrough is the person who named it. His 2003 book set out a simple claim that changed how firms think about invention: no organisation, however well resourced, can rely only on its own labs. The better question is how to combine internal and external ideas, and how to build a business model that captures value from both. That argument has held up through two decades of field research. Chesbrough’s work inside Procter & Gamble, Intel, IBM, GE, Bayer, and Huawei is the evidence base behind “Open Innovation Results” (Oxford University Press, 2020), which examines why many open innovation programmes stall and what separates the firms that generate measurable returns from the ones that merely adopt the vocabulary. His institutional base is the Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, where he is Faculty Director. He is also Maire Tecnimont Professor of Open Innovation at Luiss University in Rome, and previously held a chair at ESADE in Barcelona. Before academia he spent over a decade in Silicon Valley’s disk drive industry, finishing as Vice President of Marketing at Quantum’s Plus Development subsidiary. Recognition has followed the field’s maturity. Thinkers50 has named him to its ranking four times, the Industrial Research Institute awarded him its Medal of Achievement in 2017, and the Academy of Management gave him its Distinguished Scholar-Practitioner Award in 2022. For senior leaders rebuilding an innovation function, Chesbrough brings both the original thesis and the accumulated evidence of what happens when it meets a real P&L. Key speaking topics Open innovation Business model innovation Corporate R&D strategy Ecosystems and external partnerships for innovation Services innovation Technology commercialisation Intellectual property strategy Ideal for CEOs and CTOs responsible for corporate R&D and innovation portfolios Chief Strategy Officers rebuilding the firm’s approach to external partnerships and ecosystems Heads of corporate venturing, open innovation, and new business building Boards and executive teams reviewing the economics of internal versus external innovation sourcing Audience outcomes A clear grasp of what open innovation actually requires beyond the label, from the person who defined it. Named examples of where the model has produced measurable results and where large firms have wasted effort. A sharper view of how business models, not just technology pipelines, determine returns on innovation spend. Language and frameworks that help executive teams align on what “open” means for their specific sector.

Why organisations work with Howard Yu The Future Readiness Indicator – a quantitative, publicly available benchmark developed by Yu’s Center at IMD – gives boards an industry-specific measure of strategic preparedness, replacing intuition with verifiable data and enabling direct comparison with the leading companies in their sector. His LEAP thesis makes a specific and testable claim: competitive longevity depends not on refining the current knowledge base but on deliberately crossing into adjacent disciplines before copycats commoditise what already exists. This is a named argument with an empirical track record, not a generic innovation position. His case material spans century-old incumbents (P&G, Novartis) and recent disruptors (BYD, WeChat) across industries – giving leadership teams cross-sector evidence for what strategic transformation actually looks like, rather than analogies drawn from a single sector. His doctoral research at Harvard Business School was supervised by Clayton Christensen and Joseph Bower – grounding his frameworks in a rigorous empirical tradition and a direct intellectual lineage from the two most cited strategy thinkers of their generation. He co-directs IMD’s Future-Ready Enterprise programme, run jointly with MIT, and has designed and delivered strategic transformation work for organisations including ABB, Novo Nordisk, Heineken, Bosch, and Maersk – his content is tested in demanding executive contexts, not developed for stage consumption alone. Biography highlights LEGO Professor of Management and Innovation, IMD Business School, Switzerland Director, IMD Center for Future Readiness – established with funding from the LEGO Brand Group Creator of the Future Readiness Indicator, a publicly available composite index benchmarking seven industries on long-term strategic preparedness Author of LEAP: How to Thrive in a World Where Everything Can Be Copied (2018) – Axiom Business Book Award winner; named to Inc.’s Best Strategy Books of 2018 Thinkers50 Strategy Award, 2023; included in the Thinkers50 global management thinkers ranking DBA, Harvard Business School, supervised by Clayton Christensen and Joseph Bower Regular contributor to Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, and Forbes; frequent commentator on Bloomberg, BBC, and CNBC Named among the world’s top 40 business professors under 40 by Poets&Quants Biography Yu holds the LEGO Chair in Management and Innovation at IMD Business School and directs the Center for Future Readiness. His research addresses a recurring failure that most strategy teams prefer not to name: the slow commoditisation of the capabilities that once guaranteed advantage, and the organisational inertia that makes it so hard to act before the damage is visible. His book LEAP, winner of the Axiom Business Book Award and named by Inc. as one of the best strategy books of 2018, argues that competitive longevity requires deliberate moves across knowledge disciplines. Companies must leap from the domain that built today’s advantage to the one that will define tomorrow’s, before competitors close the gap. The case material runs from P&G’s sequential moves through manufacturing, consumer psychology, and biotechnology to pharmaceutical firms navigating organic chemistry, microbiology, and genomics over more than a century. That historical argument has a quantitative counterpart. The Future Readiness Indicator, developed by Yu’s Center, is a composite index benchmarking seven industries using publicly available data on R&D investment, revenue generation, and innovation behaviour. At IMD, he co-directs the Future-Ready Enterprise programme, run jointly with MIT, working directly with leadership teams from ABB, Novo Nordisk, Heineken, Bosch, and Maersk. His doctoral work at Harvard Business School was supervised by Clayton Christensen and Joseph Bower. In 2023, he received the Thinkers50 Strategy Award. He writes regularly for Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, and Forbes, and appears frequently on Bloomberg, the BBC, and CNBC. Key speaking topics Competitive advantage in commoditising markets Strategic leaps and knowledge discipline transitions Future readiness measurement and benchmarking Business model resilience and transformation Innovation strategy in incumbent organisations Long-term value creation under disruption Ideal for Board and C-suite teams confronting decisions about strategic transformation or competitive commoditisation Chief Strategy Officers and heads of corporate development Senior leadership teams at large incumbents in sectors facing digital or technological disruption Executive education cohorts focused on long-term strategy and innovation capability Audience outcomes A specific vocabulary for diagnosing where competitive advantage is in the process of commoditisation, before the position has fully eroded Practical application of the LEAP framework to identify which knowledge discipline transitions are most relevant to their industry and timeline Understanding of how the Future Readiness Indicator works and what the leading companies in their sector are doing differently on the dimensions it measures A shift from generic innovation language to a structured argument about which strategic bets are worth making and when Clarity on the distinction between strategic planning and forward-looking capability-building – and the leadership behaviours that drive the difference

Why organisations work with Hunter Tura His “22nd Century Brand” framework, developed publicly through DesignSingapore Council, gives leadership teams a precise vocabulary for what brand investment is actually supposed to deliver, reframing brand from a static identity asset to a dynamic participation platform that drives commercial affiliation. He has built and run design businesses at CEO level, which means his counsel on brand strategy is not advisory abstraction. Rather, it is the same kind of operational decision-making he is asking leadership teams to make. His client portfolio spans luxury (Prada, Chanel, Tiffany), cultural institutions (Victoria & Albert Museum, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts), aviation (Changi Airport), and technology (Netflix, GE, Samsung) providing a level of cross-sector pattern recognition that a single-sector brand consultant cannot offer. His formation in architecture under Rem Koolhaas at Harvard GSD gives him a systems-thinking approach to brand that most strategists, who are trained in marketing or communications, lack. It shows in how he diagnoses problems others misread. His work at Entro on experiential branding and the built environment addresses a dimension of brand strategy – how physical spaces communicate and shape participation – that is almost entirely absent from the mainstream brand conversation, but increasingly urgent for property, hospitality, aviation, and cultural sectors. Biography highlights Chief Creative Officer, Entro Communications (appointed November 2025); previously President & CEO, Bruce Mau Design (2010–2019) and CEO, The Creative Organization Client work spanning Netflix, Samsung, GE, Unilever, Audi, Lululemon, Changi Airport Group, Lucid Motors, and the Victoria & Albert Museum Curator, Canada Pavilion, 2018 London Design Biennale; juror, Presidential Design Awards Singapore (2017) and Florence Design Biennale (2019) Commentator, “Design Canada” (2017 documentary) Creator of “The 22nd Century Brand” – a conceptual series produced with DesignSingapore Council and the National Design Centre, reframing brand evolution as a strategic and societal imperative March, Harvard University Graduate School of Design (thesis directed by Rem Koolhaas); Supermentor, Harvard Business School Field X/Y programme; Alumni Council, Harvard GSD Biography The organisations that use brand to create durable competitive advantage treat it as a design discipline, not a marketing function. Hunter Tura has spent 25 years at that boundary, running Bruce Mau Design as President & CEO for nine years, founding SYNDICATE X and The Creative Organization, and now serving as Chief Creative Officer at Entro Communications, where he leads creative strategy across experiential branding, wayfinding, and built-environment design at an international scale. His client work crosses sectors that rarely share a diagnostic framework: luxury goods (Prada, Chanel, Tiffany), cultural institutions (the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts), aviation and hospitality (Changi Airport, Marina Bay Sands), and technology (Netflix, GE, Samsung). The common strategic problem is consistent: how does an organisation make its brand do genuine commercial work rather than simply look credible? That question has a specific intellectual architecture in Tura’s hands. His “22nd Century Brand” framework traces how brand has evolved from static trademark to dynamic participation platform. The organisations ahead of their competitors have designed brand as a system. The ones falling behind have commissioned a refresh. Tura holds an MArch from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where his thesis was supervised by Rem Koolhaas, and a BA from Haverford College in the Growth and Structure of Cities. He has served on the Harvard GSD Alumni Council, is a Supermentor at Harvard Business School, and was curator of the Canada Pavilion at the 2018 London Design Biennale. He also appeared as a commentator in the 2017 documentary Design Canada. Key speaking topics Brand strategy as a driver of competitive growth Design-led business transformation Experiential branding and the built environment The evolution of brand from identity to participation platform Building and leading creative organisations at scale Cross-sector brand innovation The commercial case for design thinking Ideal for CMOs and senior marketing leadership managing significant brand investment with unclear ROI CEOs and boards navigating brand repositioning, post-merger integration, or market repositioning Senior leaders in property, hospitality, aviation, and cultural sectors where physical environment is central to brand experience Executive education cohorts in innovation, design strategy, or competitive differentiation Audience outcomes A diagnostic framework for identifying why brand investment is not producing competitive returns – with named examples from luxury, tech, and cultural sectors A clear distinction between communications-led and design-led brand strategy, and what each produces Practical language for commissioning, evaluating, and challenging brand strategy work at leadership level An understanding of how experiential and environmental design is reshaping brand expectations across sectors Exposure to cross-sector patterns from a practitioner who has made CEO-level brand decisions across more than twenty years and four distinct industry categories

Why organisations work with Ian Khan He arrives with the audience already measured. The Future Readiness Score, built from research across more than 750 organisations, scores a business on seven pillars: engagement, learning, collaboration, people, culture, innovation, and execution. Undisrupted (Wiley, 2025) was shortlisted for the inaugural Thinkers50 Future Readiness Award, on a list of eight that included Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, Rita McGrath of Columbia Business School, Amy Webb of NYU Stern, and Howard Yu of IMD. His sessions can end with a decision on paper. Leaders complete the assessment beforehand, watch the collective result build on screen during the session, and each leave with a personalised ninety-day plan. The leadership team receives the aggregate report. He collects his own primary material. Interviews with senior leaders, filmed through the year, are produced as The Futurist on Amazon Prime Video and published as annual State of Industry reports. Biography highlights Author of Undisrupted (Wiley, 2025), a USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestseller, which sets out the Future Readiness Score and the seven pillars of future readiness. Shortlisted for the inaugural Thinkers50 Future Readiness Award, presented with the Royal Academy of Management at the 2025 Awards Gala in London. Future Readiness Score built from research across more than 750 organisations. Executive producer and host of The Futurist, a documentary series on Amazon Prime Video across more than 45 regions. Author of Metaverse For Dummies (Wiley) and director of the documentary Blockchain City. Bronze Medal, Business Leadership and Management, 2025 North American Book Awards; on-record technology commentator for CNN and Forbes. Biography Most AI strategy sessions end with agreement that the technology matters and no agreement on what to do next. The Future Readiness Score was built for that gap. It scores an organisation on seven pillars, engagement, learning, collaboration, people, culture, innovation, and execution, and returns a ranked view of where readiness is thin. The Score comes out of research across more than 750 organisations and is set out in Undisrupted, published by Wiley in February 2025. Thinkers50 shortlisted the book for the inaugural Future Readiness Award, presented with the Royal Academy of Management. The list of eight also carried Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, Rita McGrath, Amy Webb, and Howard Yu. Sessions can be built on the client’s own data. The audience completes a readiness assessment ahead of the event. The collective result appears on screen during the session, benchmarked against organisations already measured, and the room ranks its own priorities. Attendees leave with a personalised ninety-day plan and the leadership team receives the aggregate report. The material behind the content is first-hand. Interviews with scientists, operators, founders, regulators, and investors are filmed through the year and produced as The Futurist on Amazon Prime Video. The same research is published as annual State of Industry reports. Khan also wrote Metaverse For Dummies for Wiley, directed Blockchain City, and comments on technology for CNN and Forbes. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and generative AI strategy Future readiness and organisational diagnostics Digital transformation and enterprise technology adoption Emerging technology and disruption AI governance and responsible deployment Leadership in an AI-driven operating environment Ideal for CEOs, CIOs, and CTOs sponsoring AI strategy across business units Boards and executive committees setting technology investment priorities Transformation and digital leaders responsible for moving pilots into production Government and public-sector leaders assessing AI readiness and governance Audience outcomes A scored readiness position for their own team, from the assessment completed before the session. A personalised ninety-day plan with named owners and dates. A ranked list of which AI initiatives to fund and which to close. A benchmark against the organisations already measured on the same seven pillars. Criteria for AI governance decisions, from data quality through to adoption.

Why organisations work with Ida Kymmer Brings a working knowledge of how the same technologies are deployed in commercial, defence, and peacebuilding contexts, so leaders see the full surface area of a decision rather than one face of it. Founder of House of PeaceTech, the ecosystem platform connecting investors, startups, governments, and NGOs working on conflict prevention and recovery technology, which gives clients access to a network most strategy advisors cannot reach. Has shaped immersive technology programmes for BMW, H&M, Clinique, and Shiseido during her tenure at Journee, so the perspective is built on real brand deployment, not theory. Active across MENA, Korea, and the Nordics through Infinite Reality, Hub71, and Vinnova, giving organisations a read on emerging technology adoption beyond the usual US and Western European frame. Publishes Tech for War and Peace weekly, so the analysis a client receives is built from continuous primary research, not refreshed every booking cycle. Biography highlights Director of Business, MENA at Infinite Reality Founder of House of PeaceTech, the ecosystem platform for technology in conflict prevention and recovery Former Director of Global Affairs at Journee, working with BMW, H&M, Clinique, and Shiseido Author of Tech for War and Peace, a weekly newsletter on defence, conflict, and peacebuilding technology Master of Arts in Peace and Conflict Studies Startup judge for Vinnova (Sweden) and Hub71 (Abu Dhabi); speaking record at World Economic Forum, SXSW, Gitex, TechBBQ, and Deloitte Innovation Day Biography Emerging technology rarely arrives with a clean use case. The same systems that power immersive retail can be repurposed for surveillance, defence, or disinformation. Most advisors look at one face of that surface. Few look at all of them. Ida Kymmer’s work sits across the commercial, defence, and peacebuilding applications of the same technologies. She holds a Master of Arts in Peace and Conflict Studies and founded House of PeaceTech, an ecosystem platform connecting investors, startups, governments, and NGOs working on conflict prevention and recovery. Her weekly newsletter, Tech for War and Peace, tracks how defence-adjacent technologies move between sectors. Her commercial credibility is built on deployment, not theory. As Director of Global Affairs at Journee from 2021 to 2023, she shaped immersive technology programmes for BMW, H&M, Clinique, and Shiseido. She now serves as Director of Business, MENA at Infinite Reality, and judges startups for Sweden’s Vinnova and Abu Dhabi’s Hub71. The geographic and linguistic range matters here. She has lived in nine countries, speaks five languages, and reads emerging technology adoption from Seoul, the Gulf, and the Nordics as fluently as from Silicon Valley. Boards in any of those markets get a perspective that the usual American or Western European advisory pool does not provide. Key speaking topics Emerging technology and innovation strategy Defence and peace technology Immersive technology and commerce Disinformation and information integrity Sustainability and the green transition Korean innovation systems and soft power MENA technology ecosystems Ideal for Boards and executive teams making frontier technology investment or deployment decisions Chief innovation, strategy, and digital officers in consumer brands, automotive, and luxury Government, defence, and policy audiences engaging with dual-use technology Sustainability and ESG leads scrutinising green-transition supply chains Audience outcomes A clearer map of how a single technology operates across commercial, defence, and humanitarian use cases Specific examples of immersive technology deployment from named global brands A working view of innovation ecosystems in Korea, MENA, and the Nordics Sharper questions to put to internal teams on dual-use exposure, supply chain ethics, and emerging technology partnerships

Why organisations work with Inma Martinez She chairs the Multi-Stakeholder Expert Group at the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, the G7/OECD body whose work fed directly into Japan’s Hiroshima Process for AI Safety. That gives her a line of sight into the regulation boards will actually have to live with. She built mobile AI recommendation systems with Cambridge University and Trinity College Dublin teams in the early 2000s, before recommender systems were a category. The technical fluency is real, not borrowed. She moves credibly between Goldman Sachs alumni networks, Nokia-era telecoms, the European Commission, UNESCO, the Spanish AI Council, and Imperial College Business School. Few AI voices are taken seriously in all of those rooms. Two published books, including The Fifth Industrial Revolution, give her a coherent thesis on where digital and space economies converge, rather than a list of trends. Biography highlights Chair, Multi-Stakeholder Expert Group, and Co-Chair, Steering Committee, Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (G7/OECD). Member, AI Council Advisory Board, State Secretariat for AI, Spanish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation. Expert advisor to the European Commission on Big Data and AI since 2001; collaborator with UNIDO, UNESCO, and the European Space Agency. Guest lecturer, Imperial College Business School; Director, Master in Artificial Intelligence, Loyola University, Spain. Author of The Fifth Industrial Revolution (Deusto/Planeta) and The Future of the Automotive Industry. Career across Goldman Sachs, Cable & Wireless, and mobile-internet ventures Escape Velocity and Visual Radio (acquired by Nokia); regularly cited by the Financial Times, The Economist, Bloomberg, Fortune, and Time. Biography The hard problem in AI right now is not the model. It is the distance between what a board has committed to publicly and what the operating business can actually deploy, govern, and defend. Inma Martinez has spent the last decade working that gap from both ends. At the policy end, she chairs the Multi-Stakeholder Expert Group at the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, the G7/OECD body that shapes the rules large enterprises will eventually have to operate inside. The work she led on Responsible AI, AI Innovation, and the Future of Work fed into the Hiroshima Process for AI Safety. She also sits on Spain’s AI Council Advisory Board and has advised the European Commission on Big Data and AI since 2001. At the operating end, her credentials are not theoretical. She built mobile AI recommendation systems with Cambridge University and Trinity College Dublin teams when the category did not yet exist, after a finance career at Goldman Sachs and a global director role at Cable & Wireless. Her mobile-internet ventures Escape Velocity and Visual Radio were acquired by Nokia. She has worked inside the innovation labs of IBM, HP, LG, and Apple. That combined vantage point is what makes her useful to senior leadership: she can speak to a CTO about deployment, to a chief risk officer about governance exposure, and to a CEO about what the next five years of AI regulation will do to capital allocation. Her two books, The Fifth Industrial Revolution and The Future of the Automotive Industry, set out the same thesis in long form. Named outlets including the Financial Times, The Economist, Bloomberg, Fortune, and Time turn to her when an editorial line on AI needs a serious voice. Key speaking topics Applied AI and competitive advantage AI governance, safety, and the G7/OECD policy landscape The future of work in an AI-automated economy Digital transformation for established enterprises and SMEs The Fifth Industrial Revolution and the space economy Connected mobility and the automotive industry’s digital reinvention 5G, edge and cloud computing, and the Internet of Everything Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting AI strategy and AI-governance posture CTOs, CIOs, and chief data officers moving AI from pilot into production Chief risk officers and general counsel scoping AI regulatory exposure Industry forums in financial services, automotive, telecoms, and the space economy Audience outcomes A clear read on where global AI regulation is heading, from someone shaping it A working distinction between AI as marketing narrative and AI as operating capability Specific examples of where applied AI is producing measurable advantage, and where it is failing A defensible position on the workforce implications of AI automation A sharper view of how the digital and space economies will reshape industrial strategy

Why organisations work with Isabel Aguilera Navarro She has run the Iberian or Southern European business of three of the most scrutinised multinationals in the world (Dell, Google, GE) and can speak from the CEO chair, not the consultant’s deck. She sits on the boards of five listed and regulated companies spanning cement, real estate, biotech, digital advertising and water, giving her a cross-sector read on how governance and transformation actually play out at board level. She chairs the Audit and Control Committee of Lar Espana, a role that forces her to translate strategic ambition into numbers, risk and control, which is exactly the language CFOs and chairs want to hear from a speaker. She has held an Executive in Residence position at Esade Business School in Strategy and General Management for over two decades, so the frameworks she uses are taught as well as lived. She wrote a full book on intelligent digital transformation, Lo que estaba por llegar ya esta aqui, giving audiences a defined thesis rather than a collection of anecdotes. Biography highlights President, General Electric Spain and Portugal (2008 to 2009). General Manager, Google Spain and Portugal (2006 to 2008), leading the set-up of Google Iberia. CEO, Dell Computer for Spain, Italy and Portugal (1997 to 2002). Operations Director, NH Hotel Group (2002 to 2005). Independent director of Cemex, Lar Espana, Oryzon Genomics, Canal de Isabel II and Making Science; chair of the Audit and Control Committee at Lar Espana. Executive in Residence, Department of Strategy and General Management, Esade Business School; former President of the Social Council of the University of Seville. Author of Lo que estaba por llegar ya esta aqui: Secretos de la transformacion digital inteligente (LID Editorial, 2016). Biography Most transformation programmes fail in the gap between the boardroom and the country P&L. Isabel Aguilera Navarro has spent her career working in that gap. She stood up Google’s operation in Spain and Portugal, then moved across to run General Electric in the same region, having earlier led Dell’s Iberian and Italian business through the years in which Dell took the top of the PC market in Europe. That sequence, Dell then NH Hoteles then Google then GE, is unusual. It put her inside a Silicon Valley growth company, a Spanish hospitality group, a consumer technology brand at its commercial peak and an American industrial conglomerate, each at the moment the business model was being rewritten. The operating lessons translate directly into how she now advises boards. Today she sits as an independent director of Cemex, Lar Espana, Oryzon Genomics, Canal de Isabel II and Making Science, chairing the Audit and Control Committee at Lar Espana. The mix is deliberate: heavy industry, commercial real estate, biotech, a regulated water utility and a digital advertising firm. Few speakers can move between those governance contexts with credibility, and fewer still have done so while also holding an Executive in Residence role at Esade Business School. Her book Lo que estaba por llegar ya esta aqui argues that the digital transformation leaders were preparing for has already arrived, and the remaining work is organisational rather than technological. Financial Times and Fortune have both included her in their European and global rankings of senior women in business, and the Wall Street Journal named her among the 30 Most Influential Business Women in Europe in 2001 for her work at Dell. Key speaking topics Corporate governance and board strategy Digital transformation in established businesses Leadership across industries and operating models Strategy and competitive positioning Innovation inside large organisations Technology company operating culture Ideal for Boards and nominating committees preparing for a strategy refresh or a digital transformation programme. CEOs and executive committees of large, multi-country businesses navigating technology and operating-model change. Audit and risk committees looking to translate strategic ambition into governance, numbers and control. Leadership programmes for senior women in business and cross-sector executive development audiences. Audience outcomes A board-level view of where digital transformation programmes tend to break inside real P&Ls, drawn from three country-CEO seats. A clearer sense of how governance structures can either accelerate or stall strategic change, from someone who chairs an audit and control committee. Specific contrasts between how Silicon Valley, American industrials and European operators approach the same strategic problem. Frameworks from Esade’s Strategy and General Management faculty, tested against sitting boards in cement, real estate, biotech and water. Reference points from her book on intelligent digital transformation that audiences can take back into their own planning cycles.

Why organisations work with Isabel Behncke Her evidence base is unusually direct. More than 3,000 kilometres tracking wild bonobos in Congo gave her the first comprehensive field study of adult play in our closest living relatives, which anchors every claim she makes about creativity and social bonding in observed behaviour rather than metaphor. She translates evolutionary biology into practical arguments about culture. Her framing of play as a core adult competence, not a perk, gives leaders a defensible language for investing in creativity, psychological safety and informal connection inside performance-driven cultures. She moves between serious scientific and serious commercial settings. TED main stage twice, WIRED, Google Zeitgeist, SXSW, the House of Lords, the United Nations General Assembly and the G20, which means she is used to calibrating the same argument for scientists, policymakers and executives. She holds institutional credibility across three continents. Oxford DPhil, Gruter Institute fellowship, PERC board seat and a research post at Universidad del Desarrollo’s Social Complexity Research Center, plus advisory work on Chile’s long-term science and innovation strategy. She sits outside the behavioural economics cohort. Her discipline is field ethology, which gives her arguments about trust, risk and collaboration a biological depth that lands differently with leaders who have already heard the standard behavioural science keynote. Biography highlights DPhil in Evolutionary Anthropology from the University of Oxford, with the first comprehensive scientific study of adult play behaviour in wild bonobos at the Wamba research site in Congo. MPhil in Human Evolution from the University of Cambridge; BSc in Zoology and MSc in Wildlife Conservation from University College London. TED Fellow and TED Resident; two main-stage TED talks including «Evolution’s gift of play, from bonobo apes to humans» and «Does nature have a sense of humor?». Researcher at the Social Complexity Research Center (CICS), Universidad del Desarrollo, Santiago; Fellow of the Gruter Institute for research on human behavior and institutions; board member at PERC. Advisory roles in Chile’s long-term strategy for science, technology, innovation and knowledge, with affiliations including the Centro de Estudios Publicos. Platform work includes WIRED, Google Zeitgeist, SXSW, the United Nations General Assembly, the House of Lords and the G20, alongside features in BBC and National Geographic documentaries and The Tim Ferriss Show. Biography Most organisations talk about creativity and collaboration as if they were cultural aspirations. Field ethology treats them as biological functions. Isabel Behncke built her career studying how social mammals, and specifically wild bonobos in the Congo, generate trust, creativity and resilience through play, risk-taking and informal bonding. Her DPhil at Oxford produced the first comprehensive scientific study of adult play behaviour in wild bonobos, based on more than 3,000 kilometres of field observation at the Wamba research site. That field base shapes how she works with organisations. Her argument is that adult play is not a soft concept but an adaptive mechanism that underpins learning, social bonding and innovation in every species that depends on flexible behaviour, humans included. Leaders hear a case for culture that is rooted in evolutionary evidence rather than slogans, delivered by someone who has watched these behaviours in the wild. Her institutional footprint runs across science, policy and public platforms. She is a researcher at the Social Complexity Research Center at Universidad del Desarrollo in Santiago, a Fellow of the Gruter Institute, a board member at PERC and an adviser on Chile’s long-term science and innovation strategy. She is a TED Fellow and TED Resident, has spoken twice from the main TED stage, and has appeared at WIRED, Google Zeitgeist, SXSW, the House of Lords, the United Nations General Assembly and the G20. For senior leaders grappling with how to build adaptive, creative teams under pressure, she offers a rare combination: the rigour of a field scientist, the clarity of a seasoned public communicator, and a set of questions most boards have never asked about why their best work tends to happen in their least controlled rooms. Key speaking topics Play as a driver of adult creativity and adaptation Trust, risk-taking and social bonding inside teams Evolutionary perspectives on organisational culture Human behaviour, complexity and change Creativity and the science of collaboration Rituals and informal structure in working life Ideal for CEOs, Chief People Officers and culture leads rethinking collaboration, creativity or psychological safety Leadership and talent development programmes that want a serious scientific frame rather than another behavioural economics keynote Innovation, R&D and design leaders examining how team environments shape creative output Organisations rebuilding rituals and informal structure after hybrid and remote disruption Audience outcomes A clear evolutionary case for why adult play, humour and informal bonding shape performance, not just morale Language for talking about trust, risk and creativity that rests on observed behaviour in social mammals A sharper read on which cultural habits accelerate adaptation and which quietly suppress it Fresh questions to ask about how teams learn, collaborate and recover under sustained pressure

Why organisations work with Itai Green He runs the operator’s playbook for open innovation, built on programmes delivered for named multinationals including Toyota, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Maccabi Healthcare, and Electra. He owns the access point to two of Israel’s largest vertical startup communities, ITTS (around 350 traveltech founders) and IITS for insurtech, which gives corporate audiences a direct route into live deal flow. His book with Business Expert Press, Innovation or Elimination: Winning in a World of Constant Change. An Executive Playbook (2026), codifies a two-decade framework for collaboration between corporates and startups, so the keynote carries a published thesis rather than a deck. He has briefed senior commercial audiences at repeat Economist summits, UNWTO, and Amcham Brazil’s CEO Forum, which means he calibrates to board-level decision makers, not technology enthusiasts. He was inside corporate innovation at Amadeus IT Group before building the consultancy, so he speaks to the internal politics of innovation programmes from the same side of the table as the buyer. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Innovate Israel (2017 to present). Former Head of Business Development and Innovation, Amadeus IT Group Israel. Former CEO, Maxtech Technologies; former VP Business Development, Techtium; prior roles at Elbit. Co-founder, JerusalemOnline. Author, Innovation or Elimination: Winning in a World of Constant Change. An Executive Playbook (Business Expert Press, 2026). Founder of the ITTS and IITS startup communities covering traveltech and insurtech in Israel. Keynote speaker at Economist summits (2018 to 2022), UNWTO Tourism Startup Competition, and Amcham Brazil CEO Forum. Biography Most corporate innovation programmes fail quietly. They produce pilots, demo days, and scouting reports, but very little that reaches a P&L. The gap is not talent or budget; it is the wiring between the corporate and the outside ecosystem it claims to work with. Itai Green has spent two decades inside that wiring. As Head of Business Development and Innovation at Amadeus IT Group in Israel, and before that as a CEO and operator across Maxtech, Techtium, and Elbit, he built the internal muscle that most large organisations are still trying to grow. In 2017 he founded Innovate Israel to run that playbook for global corporates, connecting them to Israeli startups across IT, pharma, finance, travel, retail, banking, insurance, energy, and construction tech. Client work has included Toyota, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Maccabi Healthcare, and Electra. Alongside the consulting practice, he built two of the largest sector communities in Israel’s ecosystem. ITTS (Israel Travel Tech Startups) now covers around 350 founders. IITS does the same job for insurance technology. For a corporate buyer, those communities are the live deal flow behind the keynote. His book Innovation or Elimination: Winning in a World of Constant Change. An Executive Playbook (Business Expert Press, 2026) sets out the framework he has been using with clients: how leadership teams structure open innovation, how they absorb external technology without breaking their core business, and how they stop confusing pilots with outcomes. Key speaking topics Open innovation and corporate-startup collaboration Generative AI in corporate strategy Israeli innovation ecosystem and ecosystem engagement Traveltech and insurtech Corporate venturing and scouting models Innovation leadership and organisational readiness Business model innovation under geopolitical and tariff pressure Ideal for Chief Innovation Officers, Heads of Corporate Venturing, and Chief Strategy Officers building or resetting an open innovation function. Executive committees in travel, insurance, pharma, retail, energy, and banking evaluating engagement with Israel’s startup ecosystem. Business development and R&D leaders who have active scouting but no reliable path from pilot to deployment. Boards and CEO forums looking for an operator’s view on turning innovation spend into commercial growth. Audience outcomes A working definition of what separates a functioning open innovation programme from a scouting theatre. A clear map of how to engage with Israel’s startup ecosystem without burning internal credibility on dead-end pilots. A perspective on where generative AI shifts the corporate-startup dynamic, grounded in live client work rather than forecasts. Specific internal structures and incentives that leaders can use to move a pilot from proof of concept to a line of business. A candid read on where open innovation tends to fail inside large corporates, from someone who has sat on both sides.

Why organisations work with Jack Shaw Operator experience across successive AI waves, from expert systems and eCommerce through Knowledge-Based Expert Systems to today’s generative AI. That span of hands-on work is rare, and it is what lets him tell a board which shifts are durable and which are noise. Author of The AI Imperative Series, a planned multi-volume set examining AI transformation industry by industry. The first volume, Manufacturing’s AI Imperative, was published in April 2026; subsequent volumes covering healthcare, finance, distribution, and government are in preparation. Track record advising senior leadership at Mercedes-Benz, Siemens, GE, Caterpillar, Rockwell Automation, Coca-Cola, 3M, IBM, Oracle, and Bosch. The client mix skews industrial and regulated, which is directly relevant when the audience is not a technology company. A working framework that separates tactical AI initiatives, which can pay back inside twelve months, from strategic programmes that reshape the operating model over three to five years. The framework is built for executive teams running both tracks simultaneously without one starving the other. Presents in 26 countries and all 50 U.S. states, with material that adapts to manufacturing, distribution, financial services, and public sector audiences rather than a single vertical. Biography highlights Author of The AI Imperative Series; first volume, Manufacturing’s AI Imperative, published April 2026 Graduate of Yale University; MBA, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University Enterprise AI experience spanning commercial expert systems and machine learning through to today’s generative AI Former Vice President of Commercial Systems, Applied Systems Intelligence; previously led an AI software company in Knowledge-Based Expert Systems Advisor to senior leadership at Mercedes-Benz, Siemens, GE, Caterpillar, Rockwell Automation, Coca-Cola, 3M, IBM, Oracle, and Bosch Keynote presentations in 26 countries and all 50 U.S. states, across manufacturing, distribution, financial services, and public sector audiences Biography Knowledge-Based Expert Systems were running in defence and industrial settings long before ChatGPT gave AI a consumer face. Shaw was writing commercial software in that space in the 2000s as Vice President of Commercial Systems at Applied Systems Intelligence, after leading an AI software company through the previous wave. He has been inside enterprise AI since before most organisations were asking the question, which is why he can tell a board which shifts are durable and which are noise. Drawing on more than four decades in AI and enterprise technology, Shaw has delivered over 1,000 keynote presentations across 26 countries. As an AI transformation advisor, he works with senior leadership at Mercedes-Benz, Siemens, Bosch, GE, Caterpillar, IBM, Coca-Cola, and Oracle. His focus is where AI changes the economics of the business, not just its tooling. His work turns on a dual-path distinction between Tactical AI and Strategic AI. Tactical AI covers the applications that pay back inside twelve months; Strategic AI is the operating-model change that reshapes competitive position over three to five years. He frames the destination as the Autonomic Enterprise, where routine sensing and response run at machine speed and human judgement is reserved for the decisions that cannot be delegated. That thinking is now published. Manufacturing’s AI Imperative: An Executive Mandate is the first volume in The AI Imperative Series, an industry-by-industry set applying the framework to the AI decisions facing the C-suite, with volumes on distribution, government, healthcare, and finance in preparation. A Yale graduate with a Kellogg MBA, Shaw advises internationally on executive AI strategy, AI governance, and workforce transformation. He speaks directly to what boards are asking now: how to get out of pilot purgatory, how to cut the decision latency that stalls AI programmes, and how the gap between AI leaders and laggards compounds faster than in any previous technology shift. Key speaking topics Tactical AI and Strategic AI: the dual-path framework Enterprise AI from pilot to operating-model change The Autonomic Enterprise and the emerging Autonomic Economy AI governance, risk, and executive accountability Workforce transformation in the age of AI Industry-specific AI strategy for manufacturing, distribution, and regulated sectors Decision latency and compounding advantage in enterprise AI Ideal for Boards and C-suites setting enterprise AI and digital strategy CIOs, CTOs, and CDOs sequencing AI investment across competing priorities: infrastructure, workforce capability, data readiness, and vendor selection Manufacturing, automotive, distribution, and financial services leadership teams Industry associations and regulated-sector conferences asking where the technology actually lands in operations Audience outcomes A clearer read on which AI capabilities matter for their specific industry and time horizon Concrete examples from Fortune 500 deployments rather than generic case studies Vocabulary to challenge vendor pitches and internal proposals with sharper questions A dual-path framework for separating the AI initiatives that pay back inside twelve months from the strategic programmes that reshape the operating model over three to five years, with a method for running both tracks simultaneously without one starving the other