Innovation & Disruption

Why organisations work with Peter Guber He has built and led organizations across film, music, professional sports, and esports. The storytelling framework that runs through his work has been pressure-tested in each, and senior audiences hear it from someone who has actually used it to move boards, talent, partners, and capital. He authored the only mainstream business book on storytelling to hit #1 on the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists simultaneously. Tell to Win and his HBR cover article The Four Truths of the Storyteller give audiences a portable framework they can take into their own communications work, not a collection of war stories. He speaks from current operating experience as Chairman and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment, co-executive chairman of the Golden State Warriors, and owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers. The material reflects problems he still has to solve every week. The same discipline has been honed across more than forty consecutive years of teaching at UCLA Anderson School of Management and the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, recognized in 2017 with the UCLA Medal, the university’s highest honor. Biography highlights Chairman and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment Group; former Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment; former Chairman and CEO of Polygram Entertainment; former President of Columbia Pictures; co-founder of Casablanca Record & Filmworks. Films he produced or executive produced have grossed over $3 billion worldwide and received 50 Academy Award nominations, including five Best Picture nominations and the Best Picture win for Rain Man. Other titles include Batman, The Color Purple, Midnight Express, Flashdance, Gorillas in the Mist, The Witches of Eastwick, and The Kids Are All Right. Co-Executive Chairman and co-owner of the Golden State Warriors (NBA Champions 2015, 2017, 2018); owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers (World Series winners 2020 and 2024); Owner and Executive Chairman of Los Angeles Football Club (MLS); Co-Executive Chairman of aXiomatic Gaming, owner of esports franchise Team Liquid. Author of Tell to Win (Crown Business, 2011), instant #1 New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestseller; named by Fortune one of “5 Business Books You Can Really Use.” Earlier books include Shootout: Surviving Fame and (Mis)Fortune in Hollywood, which became a seven-year AMC television series he hosted. Author of the Harvard Business Review cover article “The Four Truths of the Storyteller” (December 2007). Professor for more than forty years at UCLA Anderson School of Management and UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. UCLA Medal recipient (2017). Appointed to the University of California Board of Regents by Governor Jerry Brown (2017). Biography Sony Pictures Entertainment led the industry in domestic box office market share for four straight years after Peter Guber became Chairman and CEO in 1989. Over the same period, the studio earned 120 Academy Award nominations, the most ever recorded by any company in any four-year stretch. What ran through that work, and through the decades before it at Columbia Pictures, Polygram, and Casablanca Records, was a discipline Guber later codified. He could take a strategic intent and translate it into a story the audience he needed to move had reason to act on. He named it purposeful storytelling. The Harvard Business Review cover article The Four Truths of the Storyteller laid out the four conditions a story has to meet to do real work in a room: true to the teller, the audience, the moment, and the mission. Tell to Win, his expansion of the same thesis, hit number one simultaneously on the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists in 2011. Fortune named it one of “5 Business Books You Can Really Use.” In Guber’s argument, data is the cost of entry; persuasion is the work that closes the deal. Guber still runs Mandalay Entertainment Group, co-owns the three-time NBA champion Golden State Warriors and the World Series-winning Los Angeles Dodgers, and chairs the esports investment vehicle aXiomatic. He has taught the same craft at UCLA Anderson and the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television for more than forty consecutive years, by the Chancellor’s account never missing a year. In 2017, UCLA awarded him the UCLA Medal, its highest honor, the same year Governor Jerry Brown appointed him to the University of California Board of Regents. Key speaking topics Purposeful storytelling in business Leadership communication and persuasion Leading through uncertainty and disruption Innovation and organizational culture High-performance team building across industries Storytelling for marketing and brand strategy Ideal for CEOs and executive leadership teams preparing to communicate strategic change to internal and external audiences. Chief commercial, marketing, and sales leaders rebuilding the persuasion infrastructure of their organizations. Founders and senior operators raising capital, recruiting talent, or pitching boards. Executive education clients, leadership development programs, and partner or customer summits where the centerpiece is communication craft. Audience outcomes A working test for their own communications: whether the story is true to the teller, the audience, the moment, and the mission. A sharper distinction between informing an audience and persuading them, with a clearer view of where most leadership communication breaks down. Specific examples from film, sports, and the boardroom that they can map onto their own decisions and pitches. A method for finding and shaping the right story for a specific audience and a specific moment. Shared vocabulary they can take back to their teams and demand of communications, marketing, and IR functions.

Why organisations work with Peter Diamandis He has built the institutions that defined modern moonshot thinking. XPRIZE, Singularity University and the International Space University are his, not references he cites. Diamandis turned a USD 10 million prize into the catalyst for a private space industry now valued in the hundreds of billions. Boards get a practitioner view of how incentive design unlocks markets. His three New York Times bestsellers with Steven Kotler give executives a shared vocabulary, abundance, exponential, convergence, that travels easily into strategy offsites and board reviews. Through Abundance360 and BOLD Capital Partners he is in continuous contact with the founders building the next wave of AI, longevity and space companies, which keeps the content current rather than retrospective. He frames technology as a commercial and human opportunity, not a threat narrative, which lands with leadership teams that need their organisation to move from caution to considered ambition. Biography highlights Founder and Executive Chairman, XPRIZE Foundation, originator of the Ansari XPRIZE won by SpaceShipOne in 2004. Co-founder and Executive Chairman, Singularity University, with Ray Kurzweil. Co-founder, International Space University, 1987. New York Times bestselling author of Abundance, BOLD and The Future Is Faster Than You Think, with Steven Kotler. Named by Fortune in 2014 as one of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders. Founder or co-founder of more than 25 companies across space, longevity, venture capital and education, including Planetary Resources, Human Longevity Inc, Celularity, Space Adventures and Zero Gravity Corporation. Holds degrees in molecular genetics and aerospace engineering from MIT and an MD from Harvard Medical School. Biography Most boards plan five years ahead while the technologies reshaping their markets are doubling in capability every eighteen months. The result is strategy that ages faster than it ships. This is the territory Peter Diamandis has spent three decades mapping, first as the entrepreneur who built XPRIZE to prove that private teams could reach space, then as the co-founder of Singularity University with Ray Kurzweil to teach leaders how to think about what compounds. The Ansari XPRIZE, announced in 1996 and won in 2004 by SpaceShipOne, was an early demonstration of his core thesis. A well-designed incentive can move a market faster than a government programme. That logic now sits behind the private space industry and a generation of XPRIZE competitions in fields from carbon removal to longevity. Boards meet a practitioner who has used the same mechanism repeatedly at scale, not a commentator describing it. His three bestsellers with Steven Kotler, Abundance, BOLD and The Future Is Faster Than You Think, give leadership teams a working language for AI, robotics, biotech and the convergence between them. Through Abundance360, his community of founders and investors, and BOLD Capital Partners, he keeps a direct line to the companies operationalising these technologies. The keynote draws on what he is funding and seeing now, not on case studies that have already cycled through the business press. His training is unusual for a futurist. Molecular genetics and aerospace engineering at MIT, an MD from Harvard Medical School, and the co-founding of the International Space University while still in medical school. That depth is what allows him to talk credibly to a healthcare board about longevity and to an industrials executive about space, in the same week, without the content collapsing into generality. Key speaking topics Exponential technologies and business strategy Artificial intelligence and convergence with robotics, biotech and energy Innovation, moonshot thinking and incentive prize design Future of work and leadership in accelerating environments Longevity, healthspan and the science of human performance Space, frontier industries and new commercial markets Entrepreneurship and the building of category-defining ventures Ideal for CEO and board audiences setting strategy under exponential technology pressure Innovation, R and D and corporate venture leaders rethinking how bets are made Healthcare, life sciences and longevity leadership teams Founders, scale-up CEOs and investors at private capital and family office gatherings Audience outcomes A working sense of which technologies are converging, on what timeline, and what that means for their industry A vocabulary for moonshot thinking and 10x targets that survives the trip back to the executive team Concrete examples of how incentive design and prize mechanisms have unlocked markets that traditional R and D could not A clearer view of where AI, longevity and space are creating new revenue categories rather than only disrupting existing ones Renewed appetite among senior leaders for ambition that is grounded in what is now technically achievable

Why organisations work with Peter Cochrane A track record of forecasting major technology shifts before they entered mainstream conversation, including the wholesale move to remote working and biometric identification at scale, both documented in books from the early 2000s. Operational depth from running research and development at British Telecom, with a thousand-strong team and budgets up to £1 billion, reporting directly to the main board. Investor and founder credibility that connects foresight to commercial outcomes, including a founding director role at eBookers and a founding investment in Shazam. Active research at the University of Suffolk on AI sentience and cyber attack precursors, giving boards direct access to someone working on these problems rather than commenting on them after the fact. Communication credibility honed in the UK’s first Chair for the Public Understanding of Science and Technology at the University of Bristol, with a record of making complex engineering legible to non-technical executives. Biography highlights Former Chief Technology Officer of British Telecom (1999–2000), reporting to the main board with responsibility for a thousand-strong research team and budgets up to £1 billion. UK’s first Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and Technology, holding the Collier Chair at the University of Bristol from 1999. Currently Visiting Professor at the University of Suffolk, the University of Hertfordshire and the University of Salford, with research focused on AI sentience, cyber attack precursors and truth engine development. Founding director of eBookers, which became the largest eTravel business in Europe within four years, and founding investor in Shazam. Recipient of the OBE for services to international communications (1999), the IEEE Millennium Medal (2000), the Queen’s Award for Innovation and Export (1990), and the City and Guilds Prince Philip Medal. Author of “Uncommon Sense: Out of the Box Thinking for an In the Box World” and “108 Tips for Time Travellers”, and co-editor of “Industry 4.0 and Engineering for a Sustainable Future”. Biography By the early 2000s, predictions of biometric identification at scale and a wholesale move to remote working sounded like science fiction to most boards. Peter Cochrane was already writing about both as engineering inevitabilities, with reasoning grounded in fibre economics and network behaviour. The work is rooted in four decades of operational engineering. A career at British Telecom progressed from linesman to Head of Research and then Chief Technology Officer, with a thousand-strong team studying optical fibre, mobile networks, eCommerce and artificial life. His doctoral research at Essex was pivotal in BT’s decision to go all-digital and all-optical in the 1970s, a call that shaped the company’s competitive position for decades. Outside BT, the work has spanned academia and venture investment. He held the Collier Chair at the University of Bristol as the UK’s first Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and Technology. He co-founded ConceptLabs with members of Apple’s Advanced Technology team, was a founding director of eBookers and the founding investor in Shazam. Recognition includes an OBE for services to international communications, the IEEE Millennium Medal, the City and Guilds Prince Philip Medal, and the Queen’s Award for Innovation and Export. His current work at the University of Suffolk focuses on machine consciousness, cyber attack precursors and the engineering of trust in information systems. Key speaking topics Future of technology and AI Cybersecurity and cyber attack precursors Industry 4.0 and Society 5.0 Sentient systems and machine consciousness The engineering reality of 5G and 6G networks Innovation and the management of rapid change Ideal for Boards and executive committees making capital allocation decisions on AI, cybersecurity and connectivity infrastructure Chief Technology Officers and Chief Information Officers shaping multi-year technology and digital strategy Government departments and policy advisors on technology, communications and national resilience Industry conferences in telecoms, financial services, defence and energy where engineering reality matters to commercial decisions Audience outcomes A direct assessment of which emerging technologies will reshape industry over the next decade and which will not. A method for distinguishing engineering reality from commercial hype when evaluating AI, cybersecurity and infrastructure investment. Specific examples of how previous technology transitions played out, drawn from a CTO seat during the digitisation of telecommunications. An informed view of where current systems are most vulnerable to AI-augmented cyber attack, and what early warning signals look like.

Why organisations work with Pedro Moneo Structural early sight of emerging technology. As publisher of MIT Technology Review in Spanish and Portuguese since 2008, he sees breakthrough research before it reaches mainstream corporate strategy. A working model for moving innovation out of pilot. Opinno has executed digital transformation, AI, and innovation programmes for large enterprises across Europe and Latin America since 2008. The work shows what survives contact with the corporate operating model. Engineering rigour applied to commercial decisions. His training as a nuclear engineer at the French Atomic Energy Commission, followed by reactor research at Argonne National Laboratory, gives him a system-design lens on technology adoption. Direct exposure to innovation markets outside the usual US-UK circuit. Opinno operates from offices across Spain, Italy, France, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Argentina, giving him client experience that few speakers can offer. Biography highlights CEO and founder of Opinno, a global innovation consultancy with more than 230 consultants and twelve offices across Europe and Latin America. Publisher of MIT Technology Review in Spanish and Portuguese since 2008; former online publisher of Harvard Business Review in Spanish. Senior Advisor to NASA on cross-industry innovation summits. World Economic Forum Young Global Leader (2016), Eisenhower Innovation Fellow (2014), and Aspen Institute Adler Fellow (2016). Co-founder of the Madrid chapter of the XPrize Foundation. Member of the Board of Advisors at ESCP Business School. Featured as a published case study at IESE Business School. Biography Opinno was founded in Silicon Valley in 2008, the week Lehman Brothers collapsed. Pedro Moneo’s bet was that the crisis would force every large company to reckon with technologies they had been avoiding. He was right. The firm now operates from twelve offices across Europe and Latin America, working in the gap between emerging technology and the corporate operating model. His route to that role is less obvious than the bio of most innovation consultants. He trained as a mechanical engineer at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, then as a nuclear engineer at the French Atomic Energy Commission. He started his career on reactor research at Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago. Strategy consulting at Accenture and a deputy directorship at FEDIT, Spain’s largest private R&D network, followed before he started the company. Two adjacent roles anchor his view of emerging technology. Since 2008 he has been the publisher of MIT Technology Review’s Spanish and Portuguese editions. The role gives him sustained early sight of the research that eventually reaches corporate strategy. Since 2016 he has advised NASA on cross-industry innovation summits. The World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader in 2016, and the Eisenhower Foundation made him an Innovation Fellow in 2014. Inside a corporate boardroom, the question he keeps asking is the one most innovation programmes avoid. What does the operating model need to look like for this technology to generate revenue? The answers come from Opinno’s enterprise work across Spain, Italy, France, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Argentina. Key speaking topics Innovation as a managed corporate discipline Digital transformation in established enterprises Artificial intelligence in the operating model Open innovation and ecosystem design Emerging technology and corporate strategy The Iberian and Latin American innovation landscape Ideal for Boards and CEOs trying to operationalise AI and emerging technology beyond pilot stage Chief Innovation Officers, CTOs, and transformation leads inside large corporates Executive teams in Spanish and Portuguese-speaking markets who need a credible local voice Industry bodies and ecosystem builders shaping national innovation policy Audience outcomes Which emerging technologies are close to commercial maturity, and which are not The specific reasons most corporate innovation programmes fail at the transition from lab to operating model Worked examples from Opinno’s enterprise engagements across Europe and Latin America The texture of corporate innovation in Spanish and Portuguese-speaking markets, where most US and Northern European speakers cannot offer first-hand evidence

Why organisations work with Omar Johnson He has a documented commercial result at the scale most marketers will never reach: Beats by Dre from $20 million to $2 billion, acquired by Apple for $3 billion. He is operating, not reminiscing. As founder of Øpus Intelligence, he is currently applying generative AI to cultural relevance for clients including Nissan, the NBA 2K League, and NFL franchises. He built the campaigns marketing teams still study: the 2012 Beats Olympics athlete play that drove a 600% international sales lift, and the “Straight Outta Somewhere” meme generator that reached over a billion people on a near-zero media budget. He gives senior marketing leaders a working model for cultural relevance as a commercial discipline, with named brand cases from Nike, Apple, Coca-Cola, and Kraft, rather than agency-side theory. Biography highlights Former Chief Marketing Officer, Beats by Dre, and former Vice President of Marketing, Apple. Led Beats from $20 million to over $2 billion in revenue, culminating in the $3 billion acquisition by Apple in 2014. Founder of ØPUS United and founder of Øpus Intelligence, a generative AI platform for cultural relevance, with clients including Nissan, NBA 2K League, Tennessee Titans, and Minnesota Vikings. Author of “Dear White Corporate America,” following a full-page New York Times open letter on racial equity in June 2020. Named “Brand Genius” by Adweek and one of the “Most Innovative CMOs” by Business Insider. Earlier marketing leadership across Nike (including campaigns with LeBron James and Kobe Bryant), Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods, and Campbell Soup. MBA from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. Biography Beats by Dre grew from $20 million to more than $2 billion in revenue in four years and was acquired by Apple for $3 billion in 2014. Omar Johnson was the third employee through the door and the Chief Marketing Officer who built the brand engine that made the trajectory possible. The case studies have lasted longer than the headphones themselves. At the 2012 Olympics, instead of paying for sponsor rights, Beats put national-flag headphones on athletes through a private lounge, lifting international sales by 600%. In 2015, the “Straight Outta Somewhere” meme generator reached over a billion people on a near-zero media budget. Both built category leadership through cultural participation, not paid reach. After Apple, Johnson founded ØPUS United, a brand management firm, and then Øpus Intelligence, a generative AI platform that productises cultural relevance for marketers. Live clients include Nissan, the NBA 2K League, and NFL franchises, with a 2025 partnership with Sundial Media (parent of ESSENCE, Refinery29, AFROPUNK) extending the model further into culture media. His earlier career across Nike, Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods, and Campbell Soup gave him the inside view of large brand systems; his post-Apple work gives him the operator’s view of what is breaking in them now. Adweek named him a Brand Genius. Business Insider named him one of the Most Innovative CMOs. His 2020 New York Times open letter, “My Open Letter to White Corporate America,” became the book “Dear White Corporate America.” Key speaking topics Brand building and category leadership Marketing strategy and growth Cultural relevance as a commercial discipline Generative AI in marketing and brand management Customer experience and brand authenticity Storytelling and creative campaign design Ideal for CMOs, brand directors, and senior marketing leadership teams CEO and executive committee offsites where growth depends on brand strength Consumer, retail, sports, media, and entertainment audiences Innovation, creative, and customer experience functions exploring AI in marketing Audience outcomes A working definition of cultural relevance that can be applied to a brand plan, not a slogan Named campaign cases (Beats Olympics, Straight Outta Somewhere, Nike commercials with LeBron James and Kobe Bryant) used to illustrate how cultural participation beats paid reach A current view from inside a generative AI marketing platform on what the technology actually changes for brand teams A direct provocation to senior leaders on authenticity, representation, and the commercial cost of getting either wrong

Why organisations work with Ola Ahlvarsson He has built, scaled, and exited businesses across two decades of European internet history, from Boxman in the late 1990s through Star Stable Entertainment and Epicenter, so his counsel on scale-up decisions is operating advice rather than commentary. He runs SIME, the Stockholm summit that has gathered C-level executives, founders, and investors annually since 1996, which gives boards a direct line into where Nordic and global tech is moving next. He co-founded Epicenter, a Nordic innovation hub now spanning Stockholm, Oslo, and Helsinki, with industry clusters in AI, longevity, food systems, and real estate, providing a current view of how corporates are partnering with startups. His advisory client list includes Google, Microsoft, Samsung, IBM, Ericsson, Telenor, and Schibsted, which signals comfort sitting with senior teams in regulated, large-cap environments. He works equally well as a keynote and as a moderator, which is rare; for boards designing high-stakes innovation summits, that dual capability is genuinely useful. Biography highlights Co-founder and former CEO of Result, the Stockholm-based business builder behind Spray, Spraydate, Sellbranch, and Keynote Media Group. Co-founder of Star Stable Entertainment, the Stockholm-based MMO studio behind one of Europe’s most successful children’s online games. Co-founder of Epicenter, the Nordic innovation hub operating across Stockholm, Oslo, and Helsinki. Curator and host of SIME, running since 1996 in Stockholm. Named «Top Ten Leading European Internet Entrepreneurs» by The Wall Street Journal in 1999 and a World Economic Forum Global Leader for Tomorrow. Author of Mission Possible (Midas, 2005), Silicon Valhalla (2016), Happy Business (Aniara), and Mindchange (Fritanke, 2024). Biography European internet history runs through a small group of operators who built it from the inside. Ola Ahlvarsson is one of them. From Boxman in the late 1990s to Star Stable Entertainment in 2010, he has co-founded more than twenty companies and watched several through to acquisition, including Spray to Snowfall and Spraydate to Match.com. Result, the Stockholm builder he co-founded in 1999 and led as CEO until 2008, was the engine behind much of that portfolio. Through it, and later through Keynote Media Group, he assembled a working knowledge of what scale, exit timing, and corporate partnership actually require. The Wall Street Journal named him among Europe’s top ten internet entrepreneurs the year Result launched. In 2014 he co-founded Epicenter, now a Nordic innovation hub with sites in Stockholm, Oslo, and Helsinki and clusters in AI, longevity, sustainable food systems, and real estate. He also curates and hosts SIME, the digital business summit he has run in Stockholm since 1996, which gives him a continuous view of how the industry’s centre of gravity moves. His written work brings a softer edge to the operator profile. Mindchange (2024) draws on his career and his parallel life as a karate and kickboxing competitor to argue that emotional control is a strategic asset for senior leaders. He has presented at the World Economic Forum, DLD Munich, World Knowledge Forum in Seoul, and Le Web in Paris, and advised Google, Microsoft, Samsung, IBM, Ericsson, Telenor, and Schibsted. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership Digital transformation Innovation and corporate venturing Future of technology Business model innovation Self-leadership and performance under pressure Nordic and European tech ecosystems Ideal for Boards and CEOs designing innovation strategy or new venture units Chief Innovation, Chief Strategy, and Chief Digital Officers leading scale-up partnerships with startups Executive teams running annual summits or leadership offsites that need a substantive moderator as well as a keynote Audience outcomes A working understanding of how serial founders judge timing, capital, and exit, drawn from twenty-plus years of operating decisions. A current read on the Nordic and European tech landscape, including how innovation hubs and corporates are partnering today. Practical handles for installing founder-style decision-making inside a corporate operating model. A perspective on emotional control and self-leadership that connects athletic discipline to executive performance.

Why organisations work with Navi Radjou He has named and codified two frameworks, Jugaad Innovation and Frugal Innovation, that give leadership teams a shared vocabulary for doing more with less rather than relying on bigger R and D budgets. His client work spans Fortune 500 firms including IBM, Microsoft, Procter and Gamble, GM, SAP, and Ernst and Young, so the case material in his sessions is operational, not academic. The Thinkers50 Innovation Award and three consecutive appearances on the Thinkers50 ranking (2021, 2023, 2025) place him among the small group of innovation thinkers whose work boards take seriously. His 2024 book The Frugal Economy, published by Wiley with Thinkers50, gives senior leaders a current playbook for B2B sharing, distributed manufacturing, and regenerative business models. He brings empirical material from emerging markets that most Western innovation speakers cannot, drawing on field research in India, China, Africa, and Latin America. Biography highlights Former Fellow of Cambridge Judge Business School and former Executive Director of its Centre for India and Global Business. Thinkers50 Innovation Award winner, ranked on the Thinkers50 list in 2021, 2023, and 2025. Co-author of Jugaad Innovation (Jossey-Bass), an international bestseller, and Frugal Innovation: How to Do More With Less (The Economist Books, foreword by Paul Polman). Co-author of From Smart to Wise (Jossey-Bass), a study of wise leadership judgement in technology-driven business environments. Author of The Frugal Economy: A Guide to Building a Better World With Less (Wiley and Thinkers50, 2024). TED Global speaker with over two million views on his talk on frugal innovation. Former Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research; faculty member of the World Economic Forum. Published in Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, and strategy plus business; covered by the Financial Times, The Economist, BBC, NPR, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal. Biography R and D budgets in most large companies have stopped producing the returns they once did. Pilots multiply, capital tightens, and the question on the executive agenda becomes how to generate growth without spending more. This is the territory Navi Radjou has worked in for two decades, first as a Forrester analyst studying global innovation networks, then as Executive Director of the Centre for India and Global Business at Cambridge Judge Business School. His central contribution is a managed practice for innovation under constraint. Jugaad Innovation, co-authored with Jaideep Prabhu and Simone Ahuja, took a Hindi term for resourceful improvisation and turned it into a corporate framework backed by case work from emerging markets. Frugal Innovation, published by The Economist Books with a foreword by Paul Polman, codified the practice for Western firms. The Frugal Economy, his 2024 book with Wiley and Thinkers50, extends the argument into a model for B2B sharing, distributed manufacturing, and regenerative supply chains. The credentials sit underneath the work. Thinkers50 awarded him its Innovation Award in 2013 and has ranked him among the world’s most influential management thinkers in 2021, 2023, and 2025. He has consulted for IBM, Microsoft, Procter and Gamble, GM, SAP, and Ernst and Young, and he serves as a faculty member of the World Economic Forum. His TED Global talk on frugal innovation has been watched more than two million times. What makes the perspective unusual is the empirical base. Most innovation thinkers write from Silicon Valley or business school faculties. Born in Pondicherry, educated at Ecole Centrale Paris and the Yale School of Management, and a French-American dual citizen, Radjou builds his arguments from case material in India, China, Africa, and Latin America, where resource constraint has always been the operating condition, then translates the discipline back into the boardrooms of Fortune 500 firms. Key speaking topics Frugal innovation Jugaad and resource-constrained creativity The frugal economy and regenerative business models Intrapreneurship and corporate growth Innovation strategy in emerging markets Wise leadership in the AI era B2B sharing and distributed manufacturing Ideal for Boards and executive teams reviewing innovation portfolios under capital constraint Chief Strategy Officers and Chief Innovation Officers planning growth without expanding R and D spend Sustainability leads and CEOs translating ESG commitments into operating substance Leadership development programmes for senior executives in multinational organisations Audience outcomes A working definition of frugal innovation that distinguishes it from cost-cutting and connects it to growth Case-based examples from Fortune 500 and emerging-market firms that show the discipline in operation A vocabulary for Jugaad and intrapreneurship that senior teams can carry into their own innovation reviews A view of the frugal economy as a commercial opportunity, with named mechanisms (B2B sharing, distributed manufacturing, regenerative principles) A more rigorous standard for what counts as innovation when resources are scarce

Why organisations work with Mustafa Suleyman Few people in AI both ship the product and frame the public debate. As CEO of Microsoft AI he runs Copilot, Bing and Edge for hundreds of millions of users, while The Coming Wave was shortlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year and called Bill Gates’s favourite book on AI. His “containment problem” framework gives boards a working language for asking governance questions about AI without lapsing into either hype or fatalism. He has been inside the founding team of three of the most consequential AI organisations of the past fifteen years: DeepMind in 2010, Inflection AI in 2022 and Microsoft AI in 2024. That operating vantage point on how AI strategy actually gets built is uncommon in the speaker market. A Senior Fellowship at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School and a board seat at The Economist Group give him sustained credibility on policy and governance, not only on product. Biography highlights CEO of Microsoft AI since March 2024, with responsibility for Copilot, Bing, Edge, MSN and GroupMe. Co-founder of DeepMind (2010), former head of Applied AI; the company was acquired by Google in 2014 in its largest European deal at the time. Co-founder and former CEO of Inflection AI, where he built the Pi assistant with Reid Hoffman and Karen Simonyan. Author of The Coming Wave (Crown, 2023) with Michael Bhaskar: New York Times bestseller; shortlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year; book of the year at the Financial Times, the Economist, Bloomberg and the Guardian. Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School; board member of The Economist Group. CBE in the 2019 New Year Honours; named to TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in AI in 2023 and 2024; TED main-stage speaker, “What is an AI anyway?” (April 2024). Biography DeepMind, Inflection AI and Microsoft AI are three of the most consequential AI organisations of the past fifteen years. Mustafa Suleyman co-founded two and now runs the third. He co-founded DeepMind in 2010, where he led the applied AI work and the DeepMind Ethics and Society research unit. He went on to co-found Inflection AI in 2022 with Reid Hoffman and Karen Simonyan, building Pi, an assistant designed for emotionally responsive conversation. In March 2024 Microsoft brought him in as CEO of Microsoft AI, with responsibility for Copilot, Bing, Edge and the company’s MAI frontier model team. His public argument turns on the containment problem. It is the task of keeping powerful technologies inside the control of the institutions meant to govern them, even as those technologies become cheaper and more accessible. He developed that argument in The Coming Wave, the book he wrote with Michael Bhaskar. It became a New York Times bestseller and was named a book of the year by the Economist, the Financial Times, Bloomberg and the Guardian. Outside Microsoft, he sits on the board of The Economist and is a Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School. Key speaking topics The future of artificial intelligence AI governance and the containment problem Frontier AI development and consumer deployment AI strategy for boards and senior leaders Technology, power and the nation-state The next wave of general-purpose technologies AI safety and alignment Ideal for CEOs and boards setting AI strategy and capital allocation Chief technology officers and chief product officers responsible for AI deployment Government leaders, regulators and policy advisors working on AI rules Senior leaders in financial services, healthcare, media and consumer technology Audience outcomes A working language for talking about AI risk and AI opportunity in the same conversation, anchored in the containment problem A clearer view of what frontier AI labs are actually building, from someone who runs one A sense of where consumer AI is heading over the next two to three years, beyond the current news cycle An honest read on which AI claims are worth taking seriously and which to discount

Why organisations work with Mike Saunders His HumanCentric framework forces transformation teams to test technology decisions against the people who will or will not adopt them, which changes how budgets get allocated. He runs the agency he speaks from. Digitlab has delivered digital work for Vodafone, IBM, Toyota, KPMG and Bidvest, so the room hears practice from a live operator. He brings an emerging-market lens that most digital strategy speakers do not carry, drawn from running an agency in South Africa with delivery into the UK, Europe, US, Australia and Dubai. His Gear Analogy, developed for his TEDx Durban talk, gives leadership teams a working method for picking which ideas deserve real investment and which to drop. He pairs published frameworks with original sector research, including Digitlab’s annual Insight: State of Digital report on where customer behaviour, AI and martech are moving. Biography highlights CEO and Founder of Digitlab, a digital strategy agency with clients spanning South Africa, the UK, Europe, the US, Australia and Dubai. Author of HumanCentric: Technology Fails Unless It Means Something to Someone, which sets out a four-part model (explore, ideate, intersect, create) for human-centred digital transformation. TEDx Durban speaker on Gearing for Greatness: Your Ideas, Your Impact, introducing the Gear Analogy for idea evaluation and execution. Opening chapter author in Doers & Dreamers, a global business compendium also featuring Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss and Brian Chesky. Founder of the Digitlab Academy in partnership with Vega School of Branding, training over 1,000 marketers a year. Awarded Special Honours at the New Generation Awards for contribution to the digital industry; named among “Top Global Digital Marketing Experts & Influencers” (2019). Biography Most digital transformation programmes still get sold to boards as technology projects. The investment lands and the adoption that was supposed to follow does not. The gap is where commercial returns disappear. This is the gap that Saunders has spent more than fifteen years working in. As CEO of Digitlab, the South African agency he founded, he has run digital programmes for Vodafone, IBM, Toyota, KPMG and Bidvest. He argues that technology fails unless it means something to someone, and that digital is a people conversation that happens to run on technology. His book HumanCentric: Technology Fails Unless It Means Something to Someone sets out the four-part model he uses with clients: explore, ideate, intersect, create. Each phase forces a transformation team to test technology decisions against the human stakeholders who will or will not adopt them. It functions as a working framework, and it shows up in his keynote work as practical structure for leadership audiences. His TEDx Durban talk Gearing for Greatness introduced the Gear Analogy, a tool for evaluating which ideas to back and which to drop. He contributed the opening chapter of Doers & Dreamers, the global business book that also features Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss and Brian Chesky. Each year, Digitlab publishes its Insight: State of Digital report mapping where customer behaviour, AI, search and martech are actually moving. Key speaking topics Human-centred digital transformation Customer experience and digital strategy AI and data-driven marketing Marketing technology and innovation Digital consumer behaviour The Fourth Industrial Revolution in business Ideal for CMOs and digital marketing leaders running transformation or martech programmes CEOs and CDOs are accountable for digital strategy and adoption outcomes Boards and executive teams setting commercial AI and data direction Marketing, sales and IT leadership teams are trying to align around shared revenue outcomes Audience outcomes A working framework for testing digital decisions against the real people who will or will not adopt them A method for separating ideas worth backing from ideas worth abandoning, drawn from the Gear Analogy Specific signals on what is shifting in customer behaviour, AI, search and martech, drawn from Digitlab’s annual State of Digital research A view of how marketing, sales and IT teams should align around a single revenue model

Why organisations work with Mike Kaplin Built sustainability under genuine resource constraints. The Center for Creative Ecology at Kibbutz Lotan has spent nearly three decades producing food, energy, and shelter from waste streams and brackish water in the Arava desert. Pioneering work on natural building in Israel led to the legalisation of natural building regulations there, a rare case of grassroots ecological practice changing the regulatory environment. A working demonstration site to point to: around 700 Israeli and international participants have come through the Green Apprenticeship programme since 2000, and the regenerative system can be examined in operation rather than only on paper. Integrated regenerative practice runs as one connected operation, where organic agriculture, alternative energy, natural construction, and waste management feed into each other. Biography highlights Co-founder and Director of the Center for Creative Ecology (CfCE) at Kibbutz Lotan, established in 1997. One of Israel’s first permaculturists; pioneered the country’s first recycling area. Led the natural building work that contributed to the legalisation of natural building regulations in Israel. Initiator and coordinator of the Green Apprenticeship work/study programme. Around 700 Israeli and international participants have completed it since 2000. The Center for Creative Ecology received the Israel Ministry of the Environment’s Shield award in 2000 for environmental education. Kibbutz Lotan received the Global Ecovillage Network’s Ecovillage Excellence prize in 2006. Biography Kibbutz Lotan sits in the southern Arava desert, where the founding settlers had little more than sand and brackish water to work with. The Center for Creative Ecology grew out of that constraint. Established in 1997, the CfCE has become a working centre for training, research, and demonstration in sustainability under arid conditions. Mike Kaplin co-founded it and now directs it. The work spans organic food production from composted municipal and agricultural waste, energy-efficient construction using straw bale and natural materials, water systems built around brackish irrigation, and community waste management. Every part has been built, run, refined, and documented on site. Some of the work has reshaped what Israel allows. Mike’s pioneering of natural building methods contributed to the legalisation of natural building regulations in Israel, and the recycling area he developed at Lotan was the country’s first. The CfCE received the Israel Ministry of the Environment’s Shield award in 2000 for environmental education; Kibbutz Lotan received the Global Ecovillage Network’s Ecovillage Excellence prize in 2006. Around 700 participants from Israel and overseas have come through the Green Apprenticeship programme since 2000, learning permaculture design, natural building, and community-scale sustainability on the kibbutz itself. For organisations rethinking their use of resources, Lotan offers something unusual: a board can examine operations that have run for decades, in conditions harsher than any corporate setting, and ask what transfers. Key speaking topics Permaculture design Sustainable agriculture in arid environments Natural and ecological building Community-scale waste management Organic food production from composted waste Renewable energy in desert conditions Regenerative community design Ideal for Sustainability and ESG leaders are looking for working examples of regenerative practice rather than aspirational frameworks. Boards examining what climate transition demands are at the operational level, including under genuine resource constraints. Real estate, construction, and built-environment teams interested in natural building methods and the regulatory work that legalised them in Israel. Education and learning leaders responsible for designing experiential sustainability programmes. Audience outcomes Direct examples of regenerative practice from a desert site that has run since 1997. The story behind one of Israel’s clearest cases of grassroots practice changing national regulation, via natural building. A working reference point for integrated sustainability across food, water, energy, and waste, designed as a single system. What serious sustainability looks like when supply chains and conventional inputs cannot be assumed, drawn directly from the operations Lotan has run for decades.

Why organisations work with Mike Harris He has done the actual job, twice. First Direct (1989) and Egg (1998) were both built from scratch into category-defining UK consumer brands while sitting inside or alongside incumbent institutions, Midland Bank and Prudential. That kind of new-business creation inside a large organisation is rare among innovation speakers. He took Egg from concept to a £1bn flotation in under two years. When he talks about pace of execution, it is from a CEO who delivered it under public-market scrutiny. As Chairman of Group Innovation at RBS (2005-2009), he has worked both sides of the innovation problem: building the new business, and governing the innovation portfolio at scale inside a major bank. His operating framework comes directly from First Direct: customer-led, and built around how distinct segments actually want to be served. It is set out in Find Your Lightbulb (Wiley, 2008) and applied through the IconicShift programme across companies in FinTech, pharmaceuticals and consumer health. As co-founder of Monument Partners and a non-executive chairman at FinTech ventures including Monolith, he is still active at the investor and founder edge of financial services. The material is current. Biography highlights Founding CEO of First Direct (1989), the world’s first major 24/7 telephone bank, launched as a subsidiary of Midland Bank Founding CEO of Egg (1998); floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2000 at a £1.3bn valuation Chief Executive of Mercury Communications (1991-1995), the first major competitor to BT in UK telecoms Chairman of Group Innovation at Royal Bank of Scotland, 2005 to 2009 Co-founder and Chairman of Garlik, sold to Experian in 2011; Tim Berners-Lee on its advisory board Author of Find Your Lightbulb (Wiley/Capstone, 2008); winner of the BT Flagship Award for Innovation, 2008 Co-founder of Monument Partners (2012), a FinTech-focused advisory firm; regular speaker at the MIT Sloan School mid-career MBA programme between 1996 and 2008 Biography First Direct launched in 1989 as a 24/7 telephone bank, owned by Midland but kept far enough away from it to behave differently. The result was a brand that has spent decades at or near the top of UK customer service rankings across every industry. The CEO who built it was Mike Harris. He left Midland to run Mercury Communications, the first major competitor to BT in UK telecoms, where turnover grew from £1bn to £1.6bn during his tenure. In 1995 he founded Prudential Banking, which became Egg in 1998. Egg floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2000 at a £1.3bn valuation, less than two years from launch. After leaving Egg, he turned to innovation governance. As Chairman of Group Innovation at Royal Bank of Scotland from 2005 to 2009, he built a group-wide innovation programme inside an institution then under acute strategic pressure. His book Find Your Lightbulb (Wiley, 2008) set out the operating principles. The IconicShift mentoring programme has since applied them across companies in FinTech, pharmaceuticals, food, fashion, law and consumer health. Most innovation speakers have either built a new business or governed innovation portfolios. Harris has done both, and continues to do both. He is co-founder of FinTech advisory firm Monument Partners, and a non-executive chairman at FinTech ventures including Monolith. Key speaking topics Innovation strategy and execution Customer-led growth Building new businesses inside large organisations Brand and proposition design FinTech and financial services innovation Entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership Digital identity and consumer trust Ideal for CEOs and group strategy leads in financial services and telecoms wrestling with category disruption Chief Innovation Officers and heads of new ventures who need to sponsor breakthrough propositions inside legacy structures Boards and ExCos of established consumer-facing organisations under pressure to reinvent the customer relationship FinTech founders and corporate venture investors looking for current operating perspective Audience outcomes A clearer view of why most innovation programmes produce activity instead of new customers, and what to do about it Operating principles for taking a new proposition from concept to revenue at speed, drawn from First Direct, Egg and Garlik A diagnostic for whether the current organisation can house the new business it is trying to build, and what to change if it cannot How chairmen and CEOs can use innovation governance to back the right bets without smothering them

Why organisations work with Mick Ebeling “Commit, then figure it out” is an operating method with shipped output behind it. The EyeWriter, Project Daniel, Bento, and Music: Not Impossible all began as problems that engineers and clinicians had filed under impossible. Three TIME Best Inventions across thirteen years: the EyeWriter (2010), Bento (2021), Music: Not Impossible (2023). No other individual has matched that benchmark. He frames innovation around what his team calls “absurdities”, unmet needs attached to named individuals. That vocabulary travels into executive conversations where abstract innovation language usually fails. A career as a film producer shapes how he tells the case studies. Audiences see the working details of each project, including how it got built and where the friction lived. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Not Impossible, the studio that grew out of Not Impossible Labs and now spans the lab, the Not Impossible Institute, and the Not Impossible Foundation. Spin-out companies include Bento and Music: Not Impossible. Only individual to have three inventions named to TIME Magazine’s Best Inventions list: the EyeWriter (2010), Bento (2021), and Music: Not Impossible (2023). The EyeWriter is part of the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Named to Fortune’s Top 50 World’s Greatest Leaders. Recipient of the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian of the Year Award. Two-time SXSW Innovation of the Year winner; Cannes Lions Titanium Lion winner for Project Daniel; nominated for Design of the Year by London’s Design Museum; WIRED Agent of Change. Author of “Not Impossible: The Art and Joy of Doing What Couldn’t Be Done”, Simon & Schuster, 2015. Founder of The Ebeling Group (2001), a commercial film and animation production company whose credits include Stranger Than Fiction, The Kite Runner, and Quantum of Solace. Biography In April 2009, a graffiti artist named Tony “Tempt” Quan drew his first new piece of art in seven years, using only the movement of his eyes. He had been silenced by ALS since 2003. The technology that made it possible, the EyeWriter, was assembled in a Los Angeles living room. Mick Ebeling had flown in five programmers and hackers from Graffiti Research Lab, Free Art and Technology Lab, and openFrameworks to attempt it. The device is now part of the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. That episode established the working method behind everything Ebeling has built since. Not Impossible Labs identifies what the team calls “absurdities”: specific human problems that today’s technology should be able to solve and has not. The model is to commit to one named individual, build a working solution, then scale it. The team calls this “Help One. Help Many.” The portfolio that followed kept the same shape. Project Daniel produced 3D-printed prosthetic arms for a teenage boy in South Sudan after a bombing severed his hands. The project was nominated for Design of the Year by London’s Design Museum and won the Cannes Lions Titanium Lion. Bento, a text-based system that connects food-insecure Americans with prepaid meals from local restaurants and grocery stores, started life as Hunger: Not Impossible. It has since spun off into its own company and been named a Fast Company World Changing Ideas honoree. Music: Not Impossible built haptic vests that let deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences feel live music as patterns of vibration. Three of these inventions sit on TIME Magazine’s Best Inventions list, a record no other individual holds. For organisations, the value lies less in the projects themselves than in what they prove. The word impossible is almost always doing more work than it deserves inside a company. Ebeling’s method, “commit, then figure it out”, comes from his earlier career as a film producer at The Ebeling Group, where impossible delivery dates were structural to the business. Audiences leave with a test for the word “impossible” they can run on their own organisation. They also leave with named cases they can cite the next time a hard idea gets that label. Key speaking topics Innovation methodology and the psychology of “impossible” Purpose-driven culture and organisational mission Radical collaboration across disciplines Technology applied to human problems The “Help One. Help Many.” model Storytelling as an innovation discipline Ideal for Innovation and R&D leaders stuck on problems they have classified as too hard to solve CEOs and executive teams trying to translate purpose statements into operating culture Innovation and transformation conferences seeking a credentialed keynote with a named methodology Cross-functional teams being asked to deliver outcomes their existing playbook does not cover Audiences in healthcare, pharma, technology, finance, and professional services, where ambitious problems are routinely filed as too hard to solve Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for separating ideas that are genuinely infeasible from ideas that are simply unattempted A set of named case studies they can cite when defending innovation budgets and ambition inside their organisation A different criterion for committing resources to a hard problem, modelled on a method that has shipped working technology repeatedly A more honest read on the gap between an organisation’s stated purpose and how that purpose shows up in daily decisions