Innovation & Disruption

Why organisations work with Sharmadean Reid She has built three businesses from scratch, WAH Nails, Beautystack and The Stack World, and raised venture capital as one of a small number of Black women globally to close a seven-figure seed round. Her work on the gender wealth gap is operational, not rhetorical: The Stack World is a paid community and financial education platform with over 20,000 members, not a campaign or content brand. Penguin Life published her first book, New Methods for Women, in June 2024, giving her a coherent and citable thesis on independence and economic agency that buyers can hand to their teams. She speaks from inside the founder experience that most corporate diversity programmes are trying to influence, with credibility on capital access, community building and brand creation that few other speakers in this category carry. UAL conferred an Honorary Fellowship at Central Saint Martins in 2024, recognising her contribution to creative entrepreneurship and community. Biography highlights Founder, The Stack World, a community and financial education platform with a global membership focused on women’s wealth building. Founder of Beautystack (2017), an image-based booking platform for beauty professionals that raised over £1m in seed funding in 2018. Founder of WAH Nails (2009), the Dalston-born salon that built a global cultural brand and a product line distributed through Boots. MBE for services to the nail and beauty industry, 2015 Queen’s Birthday Honours. Author of New Methods for Women: A Manifesto for Independence, Penguin Life, 2024. Honorary Fellow, University of the Arts London, 2024; graduate of Central Saint Martins, BA Fashion Communication and Promotion. Biography Few women raise seven-figure seed rounds in the UK. Fewer Black women do. Sharmadean Reid did it in 2018 for Beautystack, the image-based booking platform she founded after a decade running WAH Nails, the Dalston salon that turned a youth-culture zine into a cult retail brand and a product line in Boots. That trajectory matters because it gives her something most speakers on women’s leadership do not have: lived experience of the operating constraints, from access to capital to brand building to customer acquisition, that determine whether women actually end up running and owning businesses at scale. Her work is rooted in commercial reality, not advocacy. The Stack World, which she founded in 2021, is the logical next step. It is a paid community and financial education platform with more than 20,000 members, designed to close the gender wealth gap through literacy, networks and collective investment rather than corporate sponsorship. The thesis is published: Penguin Life released her book, New Methods for Women: A Manifesto for Independence, in June 2024. Her credentials sit behind the argument, not in front of it. MBE in 2015 for services to the nail and beauty industry. Honorary Fellowship from University of the Arts London in 2024, conferred at her alma mater Central Saint Martins. For organisations serious about moving gender equity from policy into commercial outcome, she is the rare voice who can speak to founders, executives and policy audiences from the same body of work. Key speaking topics The gender wealth gap and women’s economic empowerment Entrepreneurship, founder journeys and raising venture capital Community as a commercial strategy Building and scaling consumer brands Closing the gender leadership gap Creative entrepreneurship and the creator economy Ideal for CHROs, DEI leads and chief sustainability officers translating gender commitments into measurable outcomes Founders, investors and venture teams focused on backing women-led businesses Marketing, brand and customer leaders building community-led growth models Boards and executive committees setting policy on women’s progression and supplier diversity Audience outcomes A clear-eyed account of what it takes to fund, build and scale a venture-backed business as a woman founder A working definition of the gender wealth gap, and the levers organisations can pull on it Concrete examples of community as a commercial mechanism, not a marketing layer A more honest internal language for discussing gender equity beyond pipeline metrics

Why organisations work with Brian Keating His argument about incentive systems is not borrowed from management theory. He conceived a Nobel-contending experiment, experienced a public retraction, served as a Nobel nominator, and co-founded the Simons Observatory: a $100M project involving 380+ scientists across 40+ institutions. The authority is operational. Losing the Nobel Prize (W.W. Norton, 2018) makes a specific structural case that endorsers including Brian Greene and reviewers in Nature, Science, and Scientific American have engaged with seriously: the systems organisations use to reward individuals actively prevent the inclusive, rigorous, collaborative work that produces real discovery. Into the Impossible (2021) draws from first-person conversations with 11 Nobel laureates to identify the specific mental habits (disciplined curiosity, tolerance for failure, sustained collaboration), that distinguish people who achieve genuine breakthroughs from those who optimise for recognition. He gives boards and senior leaders a precise structural vocabulary for why innovation programmes underperform: not insufficient ambition or budget, but reward architecture that was never designed for collaborative, long-horizon work. As co-director of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for the Human Imagination at UC San Diego, he bridges frontier scientific thinking and the broader question of how organisations cultivate the conditions for original thought. Biography highlights Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics, Center for Astrophysics & Space Sciences, University of California San Diego Principal Investigator and co-founder, Simons Observatory – a four-telescope array in Chile’s Atacama Desert involving 380+ scientists and engineers from 40+ institutions, with approximately $100M in funding raised Inventor of the BICEP (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) telescope; co-leads the POLARBEAR2 and Simons Array experiments Author of Losing the Nobel Prize (W.W. Norton, 2018), reviewed in Nature, Science, and Scientific American, and endorsed by theoretical physicist Brian Greene Author of Into the Impossible (2021) and Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner (2025), drawing on first-person interviews with Nobel laureates across physics, economics, and beyond U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers; Fellow of the American Physical Society; Buchalter Cosmology Prize; 2022 Legend of Flight, International Air & Space Hall of Fame Host of the Into the Impossible podcast – long-form conversations with Nobel laureates, scientists, and technologists – with more than 200,000 subscribers Biography Organisations that fund innovation but reward speed tend to get neither. The dynamic is structural, not cultural: when recognition flows to individuals who move fast and announce loudly, the slow, rigorous, collaborative work that genuine breakthroughs require becomes a career liability. Brian Keating has spent more than two decades inside that tension. Not observing it from the outside, but navigating it at the frontier of experimental cosmology. Keating is the Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of California San Diego and Principal Investigator of the Simons Observatory, a four-telescope array in Chile’s Atacama Desert that he co-founded in 2016. The project grew to involve more than 380 scientists and engineers from over 40 institutions, with Keating raising approximately $100 million in funding from the Simons Foundation. Keating teaches undergraduate quantum mechanics at UC San Diego in the same weeks he records long-form conversations with Nobel laureates on the Into the Impossible podcast. Guests have included Roger Penrose, Frank Wilczek, Sara Seager, and Andrei Linde. Active experimental research alongside sustained engagement with the field’s most consequential thinkers is the working basis from which he addresses two questions senior audiences are now asking him directly: what AI does to the scientific method, and what is happening to the research university as a credentialing and funding institution. Managing that collaboration across disciplines, institutions, competitive pressures, and high-stakes scientific uncertainty is the practical foundation on which his speeches rest. That argument appears explicitly in Losing the Nobel Prize (W.W. Norton, 2018). Keating, who conceived the original BICEP telescope and was closely involved in the BICEP2 collaboration whose findings made global headlines before being retracted, uses the experience to make a case that extends well beyond physics: the Nobel Prize, as structured, rewards individual speed and competition while punishing the inclusive, methodical, collaborative work that real discoveries require. Reviewed in Nature, Science, and Scientific American, and endorsed by physicist Brian Greene, the book gives senior audiences a precise structural vocabulary for a problem most organisations recognise but struggle to name. The follow-up volumes, Into the Impossible (2021) and Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner (2025), draw on first-person interviews with Nobel laureates across physics and economics to identify the working habits that distinguish genuine breakthrough thinkers from those who optimise for recognition. Keating is also co-director of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for the Human Imagination at UC San Diego, a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and a 2022 Legend of Flight inductee at the International Air & Space Hall of Fame. His podcast, also titled Into the Impossible, has reached more than 200,000 subscribers and has hosted over 11 Nobel Prize winners. Key speaking topics Incentive systems, innovation culture, and the structural conditions for breakthrough Large-scale scientific collaboration and high-stakes research leadership AI and the future of scientific discovery, peer review, and the research workflow The structural future of higher education and the research university Cosmology, the cosmic microwave background, and the science of the early universe The culture of ambition and discovery in high-performance environments Failure, resilience, and the creative habits of exceptional thinkers The future of curiosity-driven research in an era of AI and data Ideal for Chief Innovation Officers, R&D leaders, and boards wrestling with why innovation programmes underdeliver Senior executive teams in science- and technology-intensive industries (pharma, aerospace, deep tech, energy) where collaboration at scale is a strategic challenge University presidents, provosts, and trustee boards addressing the AI-driven restructuring of higher education and the legitimacy questions facing research institutions Foundations, philanthropic funders of science, and policy bodies designing the next generation of research grants, prizes, and incentive structures Audience outcomes A clear structural diagnosis of why incentive systems that reward individual speed and visibility tend to suppress the collaborative, rigorous work that genuine breakthroughs require Practical examples – drawn from one of the most ambitious scientific projects of the past decade – of how large, distributed collaborations can be designed and sustained under uncertainty A set of mental habits and working practices, sourced from conversations with Nobel laureates, that distinguish breakthrough thinkers from those who optimise for recognition A more precise vocabulary for discussing innovation culture with boards and leadership teams – one grounded in evidence, not aspiration Perspective on how organisational ambition can be redirected from visible short-term wins toward the patient, inclusive work that produces durable results

Why organisations work with Harvey Goldsmith He has produced two of the largest broadcast events in history, Live Aid in 1985 and Live 8 in 2005, and can speak first-hand to how they were assembled, funded and delivered. He built the UK’s leading concert promotion business from a student club in Brighton to a company working with most of the major global artists of the past five decades. He continues to start and chair new ventures, including the British Music Experience museum, the OnBlackheath Festival and Hans Zimmer’s first live concert tour, so the material is current rather than retrospective. His CBE, Music Industry Trust Award and Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres are recognition from named bodies that he treats live performance as a serious commercial and cultural discipline. Biography highlights CBE for services to the entertainment industry, 1996 Queen’s Birthday Honours List. Co-organiser of Live Aid (1985) with Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, raising approximately £140 million. Worldwide producer of Live 8 (2005), with 225 artists across multiple international locations. Producer of the Led Zeppelin reunion at the O2 Arena (2007) in tribute to Ahmet Ertegun. Chairman of the British Music Experience, the UK’s museum of popular music. Music Industry Trust Award (2006); Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (2006); Freedom of the City of London (2011). Biography Live Aid was assembled in roughly ten weeks. Two stadiums, a global satellite broadcast and an artist roster that had never been gathered before, with no precedent for the funding model, the rights model or the production model. The producer who solved those problems alongside Bob Geldof was Harvey Goldsmith. That work is the most visible expression of a longer story. Goldsmith began promoting concerts as a pharmacy student in Brighton in the 1960s, founded Artiste Management Productions in 1973 and Harvey Goldsmith Entertainments in 1976, and built the leading UK concert promotion business of the era. Across that period he worked with the artists who defined modern live music, including Bruce Springsteen, Queen, The Who, Paul McCartney and Luciano Pavarotti. The pattern of the work is entrepreneurial rather than custodial. Live 8 in 2005 used the Live Aid model and rebuilt it for a different media environment. The Led Zeppelin reunion at the O2 in 2007 was a single-night production at the scale of a tour. He produced Hans Zimmer’s first live concerts in 2014 and turned them into a European touring property, and he founded the OnBlackheath Festival the same year. He continues to chair the British Music Experience and to invest in and advise newer ventures across experiential marketing and immersive entertainment. The CBE, the Music Industry Trust Award and the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres are the formal markers. The substantive credential is a sixty-year track record of starting things, financing them, and getting them on stage on the date promised. Key speaking topics Live event production at global scale Entrepreneurship across long careers Building creative businesses The economics of live music and broadcast Leadership under hard deadlines Charitable and philanthropic event delivery Ideal for CEOs and founders responsible for ventures with fixed launch dates Marketing and brand leaders building experiential platforms Boards and investors evaluating creative and entertainment businesses Audiences in the events, media, music and live entertainment industries Audience outcomes A first-hand account of how Live Aid and Live 8 were actually built, financed and delivered. A working view of how an entrepreneur sustains a creative business across five decades and multiple media cycles. Specific lessons in negotiating with talent, broadcasters and sponsors when the date will not move. A grounded perspective on what philanthropy looks like when it has to clear its costs and reach an audience.

Why organisations work with Angelica Cheung She built Vogue China from zero to the definitive voice in Chinese luxury over 16 years as founding editor-in-chief, which gives her a deeper read on how Chinese taste actually moves than almost any operating executive a board could hire. She now sits on both sides of the table, as Venture Partner at HongShan (formerly Sequoia Capital China) and as strategic adviser to Gildo Zegna for Asia, so her view is priced against real capital and real operating decisions. She holds board seats at Zegna Group, AMI Paris, We11Done and Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, a rare spread across European luxury, emerging Asian design and global hospitality that lets her compare what is working across categories. She is Asia Ambassador for the British Fashion Council and a recurring judge on the LVMH Prize, ANDAM, Woolmark and British Fashion Awards, which means she is reading the next generation of brands before they land. She was inducted into the BoF 500 Hall of Fame in 2019, an editorial recognition by Business of Fashion of long-run influence on the global industry, not a one-year listing. Biography highlights Founding editor-in-chief of Vogue China, 2005 to 2020, launching the title and leading it for 16 years. Venture Partner at HongShan (formerly Sequoia Capital China), covering consumer and lifestyle investments. Strategic Adviser to the CEO of the Ermenegildo Zegna Group for Asia. Board Director at Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, appointed January 2026, representing Cascade Investment. Board positions at Zegna Group (NYSE), AMI Paris and We11Done. Asia Ambassador of the British Fashion Council; BoF 500 Hall of Fame inductee, 2019. International Advisory Board, Durham University Business School. Biography China’s luxury market is one of the most studied and least understood commercial environments in the world. Angelica Cheung has spent more than two decades inside it, first as the editor who defined how Chinese readers saw global fashion, then as an investor and board director shaping how global brands enter the market. She launched Vogue China in September 2005 for Conde Nast and ran the title for 16 years until stepping down in December 2020. The first issue sold out its 300,000 print run and was reprinted twice, and she went on to become the editorial interlocutor most global houses relied on when they had to read Chinese taste, generational shifts and cultural nuance. In 2021 she joined HongShan, formerly Sequoia Capital China, as Venture Partner covering consumer and lifestyle, and was appointed Strategic Adviser for Asia to Gildo Zegna, CEO of the Ermenegildo Zegna Group. She now holds board seats at Zegna Group, AMI Paris, We11Done and Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, the Four Seasons appointment announced in January 2026. Her credentials in the wider industry match the operating work. She is Asia Ambassador of the British Fashion Council, a judge on the LVMH Prize, ANDAM, International Woolmark and British Fashion Awards panels, a member of Durham University Business School’s International Advisory Board, and a BoF 500 Hall of Fame inductee since 2019. Key speaking topics China’s luxury and premium consumer Brand building in the Chinese market Generational shifts among Chinese consumers Culture-led strategy for global consumer brands Consumer and lifestyle investment in Asia Global luxury growth strategy Fashion industry leadership Ideal for CEOs and CMOs of global luxury, premium fashion and beauty groups Consumer brand boards considering entry, expansion or repositioning in China Hospitality and lifestyle leadership teams managing Chinese outbound and domestic demand Investors and corporate development teams allocating to Asian consumer Audience outcomes A clearer read on where Chinese luxury and premium demand is actually moving, from the people and platforms driving it A working view of how global brands are winning or losing with Chinese consumers right now, grounded in named brands and specific moves A sharper question set for their own China strategy, from positioning through to channel and talent A sense of what investors and boards are pricing into Asian consumer bets, told from someone doing both

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

Why organisations work with Dan Sobovitz Five years inside the cabinet of a European Commission Vice-President, writing speeches and running digital for the institution that regulates much of Europe’s technology agenda. That is a view of how policy communication actually works that external consultants rarely have. Runs spreadable.io, the agency behind interactive programmes for the European Commission, European Parliament, UNESCO, Michelin, Groupe RATP, and Viva Tech. Clients hire him when a standard panel format will not hold the room. Chief communications role at the European Startup Prize for Mobility, Europe’s largest acceleration programme for clean mobility startups, gives him a working feed of what is actually happening in European mobility and climate tech rather than a reading of it. Hosts and moderates in English and French across tech, mobility, and sustainability events including Viva Tech, ChangeNow, and Michelin’s Movin’On Challenge, with a hosting style built around live audience interaction rather than scripted Q and A. Civil society work through DemoCrisis and Fondation Ceci n’est pas une crise gives him a serious, non-promotional voice on how digital platforms are changing democratic participation. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, spreadable.io, Brussels Chief Communications Officer, European Startup Prize for Mobility Senior Adviser, Digital Communications, BCW Former speechwriter and digital communications strategist, cabinet of European Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic TEDx speaker, “Can technology make democracy great again?” (TEDxAUEB) MA, Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs; MPP, Hertie School of Governance Biography Inside the European Commission, the problem was not a shortage of policy. It was that the policy was not reaching anyone outside Brussels. Dan Sobovitz spent five years in the cabinet of Vice-President Maros Sefcovic working on exactly that, writing speeches and running digital channels that tried to turn technical EU work into something recognisable to citizens, journalists, and founders. The methods were unusual for an institution. Live interactive interviews from a self-driving car. VR footage of EU satellites going into orbit. Crowdsourcing policy input from youth and climate activists through digital platforms. Live audience voting at EU startup pitches. Most of it came out of a single idea: the Commission had interesting things to say and was burying them under procedural language. He now runs spreadable.io, the interactive-events agency he founded after leaving the Commission, with clients including the European Parliament, UNESCO, Michelin, Groupe RATP, and Viva Tech. Alongside this he is Chief Communications Officer at the European Startup Prize for Mobility, the EU’s largest acceleration programme for clean mobility startups, and a Senior Adviser on Digital Communications at BCW. His civic work through DemoCrisis and Fondation Ceci n’est pas une crise addresses a narrower question that runs under everything else he does: what happens to democratic participation when the public conversation moves onto platforms none of the participants control. He writes and speaks on that question in English and French, and has given a TEDx talk, “Can technology make democracy great again?” Key speaking topics Digital communications and institutional storytelling Technology, democracy, and civic participation Sustainable mobility and clean transport innovation European startup ecosystems and innovation policy Interactive conference formats and audience engagement Public policy communication in the age of platforms Ideal for Corporate and institutional communications leaders rethinking how they talk about technology and regulation Innovation, mobility, and sustainability programmes looking for a bilingual host who can run a serious technical room Public affairs and policy teams operating at the EU level CEO and C-suite audiences planning flagship innovation or transformation events Audience outcomes A sharper read on how European institutions and corporates are actually communicating technology and policy, and where that is breaking down Concrete examples of formats that move an audience out of passive listening, drawn from live EU and corporate programmes A working understanding of how the European clean mobility and startup landscape fits together across Commission, Parliament, and industry A more honest view of what digital platforms are doing to public debate and what institutions can do about it

Why organisations work with Shivvy Jervis A forecaster who has worked through Microsoft, the United Nations, Salesforce, Lenovo and the UK Government’s digital division, briefing each on where digital, AI and neuroscience advances are heading next. A second specialism in applied neuroscience, covering drive, stress and persuasion, which gives her sessions a behavioural dimension most technology speakers cannot offer. A broadcaster’s craft built across CNN, Reuters and a Discovery Channel documentary, so she can hold a leadership audience for a keynote and run the full event around it. Recognition from Forbes (Trailblazer), Management Today (Champion of Change) and Britain’s Women of the Year, anchoring her credibility outside the speaker circuit. Sustained focus on human-centred technology rather than tool demos, which lands with audiences asking how to deploy AI without losing the workforce in the process. Biography highlights Founder of FutureScape 248, a social innovation and forecasting consultancy launched in 2017. Former CNN broadcast journalist; presenter of a two-part Discovery Channel documentary on the future of cities. Forecasting work conducted for Microsoft, the United Nations, Salesforce, Lenovo and the UK Government’s digital division. Named a Trailblazer by Forbes, one of Britain’s Women of the Year, and a Champion of Change by Management Today. Two long-running streaming video series on technology and innovation with a reported audience of 14 million. Recognised by the World Economic Forum and cited by CNN as one of the most trusted voices on technology. Biography Most boards now sit between two pressures on technology. There is a brief to “do something with AI” arriving from above, and a workforce asking what any of it means for their job. The reading they need is editorial, not vendor-led. That is the gap Shivvy Jervis works in. As founder of FutureScape 248, the forecasting consultancy she launched in 2017, she has briefed Microsoft, the United Nations, Salesforce, Lenovo and the UK Government’s digital division on what is plausible, what is hype, and what is close enough to commit capital to. The frame is consistently human-centred: not what the technology does, but what it changes about how people work, decide and buy. A second strand of her practice draws on applied neuroscience, covering drive, stress and persuasion at work. That gives her keynote a behavioural dimension that most technology speakers cannot match, and it lands with audiences who are wary of pure futurism. The output is editorial in tone, built from years as a broadcast journalist with CNN, Reuters and Discovery Channel. Her recognitions sit outside the bureau circuit, including Forbes Trailblazer, Britain’s Women of the Year, and Champion of Change from Management Today. The reason senior buyers commission her is more specific than awards. She translates the noise around AI and emerging tech into the small number of shifts a leadership team needs to act on. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and human-centred deployment Forecasting and emerging technology Digital transformation and the future of work Applied neuroscience for performance and decision-making Cybersecurity, privacy and data ethics Innovation strategy in regulated industries Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting AI and digital strategy CHROs and transformation leads handling workforce response to AI Innovation, digital and customer experience leadership Industry conferences seeking a forecaster who can also host Audience outcomes A clear read on which AI and emerging-tech shifts will affect the audience’s industry on a near-term horizon. A behavioural lens on adoption, covering how people respond to AI in their work and what that means for change plans. Specific examples from her work with Microsoft, the UN, Salesforce, Lenovo and UK Government, used as reference points rather than case studies. A vocabulary leaders can use internally to separate hype from substance in vendor and pilot decisions.

Why organisations work with Marc Mekki He has built the kind of products he teaches about. Botsmith, his innovation lab, ships experimental tools using AI, AR/VR and cloud, so the method comes from practice, not theory. He teaches design thinking to consulting and corporate audiences at PwC Academy, McKinsey, Center for Creative Leadership and LEORON, where the bar for substance is set by professional services standards. He works fluently across China, Europe and the Middle East after twenty years of operating in those markets, which is rare for an innovation speaker. His MIT Sloan certified design thinking grounding gives senior teams confidence that the frameworks have an institutional pedigree, not a TED-talk one. He frames AI as a human-centred product problem rather than a model selection problem, which is the conversation most boards now need. Biography highlights Co-founder of Botsmith, an innovation lab building experimental software using AI, AR/VR and cloud. MIT Sloan Certified Design Thinking practitioner. Associate Faculty in Innovation, Design Thinking and Leadership Thinking at LEORON Institute. Speaker and trainer for PwC, McKinsey, Center for Creative Leadership, Adobe, Bombardier, Amadeus, NEOM, Procter & Gamble and Dubai Association Conference. Contributor to Boardroom Magazine, Arabian Business and Association Meetings International. Twenty years of entrepreneurial work across China, Europe and the Middle East, currently based in the UAE. Biography Most enterprises have stopped debating whether AI matters. The harder question is whether their organisation can actually turn it into a product, a service or a customer experience that works. That is the territory Marc Mekki has been operating in for two decades, first as an entrepreneur in Southern China, then as the co-founder of Botsmith, an innovation lab building experimental tools using AI, AR/VR and cloud. Botsmith is the practitioner half of his work. The teaching half runs through PwC Academy, McKinsey, Center for Creative Leadership and LEORON Institute, where he holds an Associate Faculty role in Innovation, Design Thinking and Leadership Thinking. He is MIT Sloan certified in design thinking, and he uses the same methods he ships products with when he runs sessions for senior teams. The reason this matters to a buyer is straightforward. Innovation speakers tend to come from one of two places: consultancy decks or academic research. Marc comes from a builder’s seat. He has shipped, failed, iterated and shipped again, and he has done it across China, Europe and the GCC, where he is now based. The work he writes about in Boardroom Magazine, Arabian Business and Association Meetings International is the work he does week to week. His keynotes, including The Art of a Thousand Mistakes and Something Out of Nothing, sit on the same operating thesis: iterative product practice, lean experimentation and design discipline are how organisations move emerging technology from pilot to production. Clients booking him include Adobe, Bombardier, Amadeus, NEOM, Procter & Gamble and Dubai Association Conference. Key speaking topics Applied artificial intelligence in the enterprise Design thinking and human-centred product practice Lean innovation and experimentation Digital transformation Emerging technology, including AR/VR and cloud Agile leadership Future of technology Ideal for CIOs, CTOs and Chief Digital Officers moving AI from pilot to operating use Heads of Innovation, transformation leads and product directors building portfolio discipline Customer experience and design leaders embedding human-centred methods at scale Senior teams in financial services, hospitality, energy and consulting operating in EMEA and the GCC Audience outcomes A working definition of what design thinking actually requires inside an enterprise A clearer view of why AI pilots stall and what an operating-model fix looks like Concrete patterns from Botsmith and other build environments for moving from concept to shipped product A sharper sense of how to evaluate emerging technology bets without falling for hype Practical lean experimentation language usable by non-technical executives

Why organisations work with Anand Tamboli His Apress book Build Your Own IoT Platform is a widely used technical manual for developers building IoT platforms, which anchors him outside the bureau-speaker register and inside the engineering community. His second book Keeping Your AI Under Control applies the same discipline to AI governance, giving senior audiences a specific frame on the control layer that most AI keynotes skip. Chartered Engineer status plus MBA in International Business gives him the combination buyers want: deep technical credibility with business-side vocabulary. He mentors innovators through Venture Cafe Sydney, CSIRO and UNSW, so the current reading on emerging technology is current and specific to what is actually being built, not abstract. Twenty-plus years of Fortune 500 speaking and consulting plus awards from Consensus Group Australia («Best Author of the Year») and IoT Hub Australia («IoT Pioneer» nomination) give the credibility an external anchor. Biography highlights Founder, Knewron Technologies; Chartered Engineer; MBA in International Business Author of Build Your Own IoT Platform (Apress) and Keeping Your AI Under Control Innovation mentor for Venture Cafe Sydney, CSIRO and UNSW Honorary Treasurer, Computer Society of India; member, Australian Computer Society «Best Author of the Year», Consensus Group Australia; «IoT Pioneer» nomination, IoT Hub Australia 21-plus years speaking and consulting with Fortune 500 clients Biography Most AI and IoT keynotes operate at the level of strategy slides. Anand Tamboli’s work starts at the implementation layer. His Apress title Build Your Own IoT Platform is used by engineering teams to stand up working platforms inside a small number of business days. His second book Keeping Your AI Under Control does the same job for AI governance: it translates the control question into decisions that a senior operator can make, not an ethics committee. The academic base is Chartered Engineer status and an MBA in International Business, with earlier training in electrical, electronics and power-systems engineering. The commercial base is over two decades of Fortune 500 speaking and consulting through Knewron Technologies. The community base is mentoring through Venture Cafe Sydney, CSIRO and UNSW. Those three combined are unusual in the technology-futurist speaker market. The recognition sits with the substance. He has been named «Best Author of the Year» by Consensus Group Australia and nominated as an IoT Pioneer by IoT Hub Australia. He serves as Honorary Treasurer of the Computer Society of India and is an active member of the Australian Computer Society. The institutional footprint is inside engineering communities, not inside bureau marketing. For boards, CIOs, CTOs, innovation leaders and transformation functions at Fortune 500 enterprises, Tamboli offers a register that sits between engineering implementation and executive governance. He works in English across keynote, masterclass, panel and consulting formats. Key speaking topics AI governance and keeping AI deployments under control IoT platform strategy and implementation Transformative innovation and future-ready organisations Technology ethics and responsible technology Learning to unlearn and leading through disruption Distributed leadership and the future of work Ideal for Boards, CIOs and CTOs making AI and IoT deployment decisions Innovation, R&D and transformation functions at Fortune 500 enterprises Engineering leadership communities requiring a technical, not commentator-level, speaker Asia-Pacific and Australasian corporate and public-sector audiences Audience outcomes A working framework for AI governance drawn from Keeping Your AI Under Control An engineering-level view of IoT platform strategy from an Apress-published author Specific examples drawn from 21-plus years of Fortune 500 technology consulting A view of where the emerging-technology agenda sits for boards over the next cycle

Why organisations work with Ting Li A sitting professor at a top European business school whose work appears in Management Science, MIS Quarterly, and Information Systems Research, which means the frameworks she brings to a leadership room have already been tested against the strongest academic standards. Director of Digital Business Practice at the Erasmus Centre for Data Analytics, where research is run alongside large corporates and the Dutch government, so the recommendations are grounded in operating reality rather than slideware. One of the few academic voices working across digital pricing, online advertising, social and mobile analytics, and immersive technology, which lets her connect AI investment decisions to concrete commercial levers. Named to the Poets and Quants Top 40 Under 40 ranking of business school professors, an external signal that the teaching translates for senior executive audiences, not only doctoral students. Bilingual in English and Mandarin, with research and teaching ties across Europe, North America, and China, useful for boards working through digital strategy with operations on both sides of the rules-based order. Biography highlights Professor of Digital Business and head of the Information Systems group at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. Founding member and Academic Director of Digital Business Practice at the Erasmus Centre for Data Analytics, and head of the Immersive Tech and AI Lab. Visiting Professor positions at Wharton, MIT, Tsinghua, Temple, Arizona State, and City University of Hong Kong. Published in Management Science, MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Nature Communications, Production and Operations Management, and Harvard Business Review. Named by Poets and Quants as one of the Top 40 Best Business School Professors Under 40 Worldwide. Research funded by the Dutch National Science Foundation and by industry partners including VIVAT, AllSafe, and the Dutch Police. Biography Most digital strategy advice on AI and platforms is opinion dressed as evidence. Ting Li works the other way around. Her research at Rotterdam School of Management uses econometrics, field experiments, and machine learning to test what digital technologies actually do to consumer behaviour, pricing, and competitive position, then translates the result for the people making the investment call. At RSM she holds the chair in Digital Business and runs the Information Systems group. She is also Academic Director of Digital Business Practice at the Erasmus Centre for Data Analytics, where she works with corporates and Dutch public bodies on live problems in digital advertising, platform design, and AI deployment. The Immersive Tech and AI Lab she leads gives her a working view of where AR, VR, and generative tools are starting to change customer experience rather than only marketing decks. Her academic record sits at the top of the field. Papers in Management Science, MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, and Nature Communications, alongside articles in Harvard Business Review, mean a board hearing her on digital pricing or online advertising is hearing the underlying evidence, not a secondhand reading of it. Visiting positions at Wharton, MIT, and Tsinghua give her a working network across the leading research centres on the digital economy. The Poets and Quants Top 40 Under 40 ranking captured what executive education clients already report: she is a researcher who can hold a senior room. That is what makes her useful when the question on the table is whether a specific AI or platform bet will move the business. Key speaking topics Digital strategy and the digital economy AI and decision-making in the enterprise Digital platforms and online advertising Pricing and revenue management Social and mobile analytics Digital privacy and algorithmic accountability Generative AI, AR, VR, and immersive technology Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting digital and AI investment priorities. Chief Digital, Data, and AI Officers moving from pilots to operating deployment. Chief Marketing Officers and revenue leaders working on pricing, platform, and advertising decisions. Strategy and innovation leads in retail, financial services, and consumer-facing platforms. Audience outcomes A clearer read on which AI and digital investments have evidence behind them and which do not. A sharper view of how digital pricing, advertising, and platform mechanics affect customer behaviour at scale. Practical reference points for governing AI use in commercial decisions. A working sense of how immersive and generative technologies are starting to reshape customer experience.

Why organisations work with James Taylor A named, published model. The Eight Ps of SuperCreativity (Purpose, Personality, Practice, People, Process, Place, Product, Persuasion) gives leadership teams a common language for a problem most companies still discuss in abstractions. Field-tested with the buyers he is pitching to. Apple, Cisco, Deloitte, EY, Visa, IBM, McDonald’s, Sony and Johnson and Johnson have used his work with their teams, so the credibility problem is solved before the conversation starts. Primary research, not curation. Through the SuperCreativity Podcast he has interviewed hundreds of founders, researchers and creative directors, which gives his keynotes specific stories that bureau-written talks on AI cannot match. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts with a TED talk on augmenting human creativity, which signals institutional seriousness for boards that want more than a futurist pitch. Works in partnership as The Ethical Futurists with Alison Burns when briefs require joint treatment of AI, sustainability and ethical business practice. Biography highlights Author, SuperCreativity: Accelerating Innovation in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (Sirmione Publishing, 2026). Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA); MBA. TED speaker: SuperCreativity, Augmenting Human Creativity in the Age of AI. Host, SuperCreativity Podcast, featuring interviews with creative leaders, founders and AI researchers. Advisory and keynote client roster includes Apple, Cisco, Deloitte, EY, Visa, IBM, McDonald’s, Sony, Mercedes-Benz and Johnson and Johnson. Co-founder of The Ethical Futurists with Alison Burns, focused on sustainability, ethics and future of work. Biography The conversation in most boardrooms has moved on from whether to adopt AI to whether AI is producing anything genuinely new. Productivity gains are easier to claim than originality, and executives now want to understand what separates teams that use AI to compress existing work from teams that use it to generate ideas their competitors have not yet considered. That is the question Taylor has built his practice around. His book SuperCreativity, published by Sirmione Publishing in 2026, argues that the age of the lone genius is over and that creative advantage now belongs to leaders who can orchestrate collaboration between humans and machines. The Eight Ps framework at the centre of the book (Purpose, Personality, Practice, People, Process, Place, Product, Persuasion) is how he translates the argument into something a leadership team can act on. The evidence base is unusually direct. Through the SuperCreativity Podcast he has run long-form interviews with founders, researchers, and creative directors across Silicon Valley and beyond, building a library of primary material on how creative work is actually being done under AI conditions. That research feeds keynotes for Apple, Cisco, Deloitte, EY, Visa, IBM, McDonald’s, Sony, Mercedes-Benz and Johnson and Johnson. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, holds an MBA, and has delivered a TED talk on augmenting human creativity in the age of AI. With Alison Burns he also runs The Ethical Futurists, a dedicated partnership for briefs that sit at the intersection of AI, sustainability and corporate ethics. Key speaking topics Human-AI creative collaboration Innovation capability and the Eight Ps of SuperCreativity Creative leadership in AI-enabled organisations Applied artificial intelligence for business teams Ethics and responsibility in AI adoption Future of work and creative skills Ideal for C-suite and board sessions weighing the strategic return on AI investment beyond productivity Chief Innovation Officers, CTOs and transformation leads responsible for integrating AI into existing teams Leadership offsites for creative, marketing, product and R and D functions Industry conferences on AI, innovation and the future of work Audience outcomes A shared framework, the Eight Ps of SuperCreativity, that leadership teams can carry back into their own planning A clearer view of where AI augments human judgement and where it dilutes it Specific examples of how large organisations are using AI to raise creative output, not just operational speed A starting position on the ethical questions that follow any serious AI rollout Prompts for how to redesign roles, teams and workflows around human-AI collaboration

Why organisations work with Lisa Bodell She attacks the root cause most innovation programmes ignore. Her thesis is that complexity, not a lack of ideas, is what stops large companies from changing. She brings a tested operational toolkit, including the “Kill a Stupid Rule” exercise and the Why Simple Wins toolkit, that teams can run inside the business the week after the keynote. Her client list runs through hard-to-move organisations such as Pfizer, Lockheed Martin, Bloomberg, Google, SAP and Citigroup, where the simplification argument has to survive contact with regulated, matrixed environments. Her two Routledge books, Kill the Company (Axiom Best Business Book Award, 2014) and Why Simple Wins, give leadership teams a shared language and a structured method that outlasts the session. She is a working operator, not only a writer. She has run FutureThink for more than two decades and writes monthly for Forbes, so the material is being pressure-tested in the field continuously. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of FutureThink, an innovation and simplification training firm working with global enterprise clients since 2003. Author of Why Simple Wins (Routledge) and Kill the Company (Routledge / Bibliomotion), the latter an Axiom Best Business Book Award winner. Monthly contributor to Forbes; quoted or published in Fast Company, WIRED, The New York Times, Inc., Bloomberg Businessweek, Harvard Business Review, FOX News and CNN. TEDxNormal speaker, “How Simplification is the Key to Change”. Named to the Forbes “50 Leading Female Futurists” list in 2020. Has taught innovation at American University and Fordham University, and worked with clients including Pfizer, Lockheed Martin, Bloomberg, Google, SAP and Citigroup. Biography Most innovation problems inside large companies are not idea problems. The pipeline is full. The strategy decks exist. What is missing is room to act on any of it, because calendars, approval chains and legacy rules have absorbed the working week. This is the territory Lisa Bodell has built a career on. She is the founder and CEO of FutureThink, which she launched in 2003 to do something narrower and more useful than most innovation consulting. Rather than add another framework, FutureThink helps leadership teams remove. Remove low-value meetings, remove obsolete rules, remove the tasks that consume capacity without producing decisions. The argument is that simplification is the precondition for innovation, not a side benefit. That argument runs through her two books with Routledge, Kill the Company and Why Simple Wins. Kill the Company, which won the 2014 Axiom Best Business Book Award, is built around a simple inversion: instead of asking how to grow, ask how a competitor would put you out of business, and act on the answer. Why Simple Wins extends the method into a practical toolkit for stripping out the work that does not matter, with exercises like “Kill a Stupid Rule” that have been used inside companies including Pfizer, Lockheed Martin, Bloomberg and Google. Bodell writes monthly for Forbes and has been featured in Fast Company, WIRED, The New York Times, Harvard Business Review and Bloomberg Businessweek. Forbes named her to its 2020 list of 50 Leading Female Futurists. The reason senior teams keep booking her is narrower than that profile suggests. She gives leaders a defensible reason, and a method, for taking things off the plate. Key speaking topics Organisational simplification Innovation and disruption Killing complexity in large organisations Future of work and ways of working Change and culture transformation Provocative questioning as a leadership tool Creating capacity for higher-value work Ideal for CEOs and executive teams trying to free up capacity inside complex, matrixed organisations. Chief Strategy, Transformation and Innovation Officers running enterprise-wide change programmes. Operations and HR leaders auditing meetings, rules and processes that no longer earn their place. Leadership offsites and innovation summits where the brief is to provoke, not to inform. Audience outcomes A direct case for treating complexity, not idea generation, as the binding constraint on innovation. A set of named exercises, including “Kill a Stupid Rule” and the Why Simple Wins toolkit, that teams can run on Monday morning. A sharper question set for leadership meetings, modelled on the Kill the Company method. A shared language for distinguishing low-value busywork from work that produces decisions and outcomes. Permission, from a credible outside voice, to remove rather than add.