Innovation & Disruption

Why organisations work with Katherine Melchior Ray She has made the standardise-versus-adapt decision from inside five global brands, so she can tell a leadership team which elements of a brand must stay fixed worldwide and which should flex by market. Her cultural intelligence framework, set out in Brand Global, Adapt Local (Kogan Page, 2025), gives teams a repeatable method for entering new markets instead of one-off market research that ages quickly. She has led marketing in Japan, France, Germany, and the US in three languages, so her read on a market comes from having sold to those consumers herself. She teaches this material to MBAs at UC Berkeley Haas, which means her frameworks are built to be taught and applied by a team, not performed once from a stage. Biography highlights Lecturer in international marketing and leadership at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. Co-author of Brand Global, Adapt Local: How to Build Brand Value Across Cultures (Kogan Page, 2025), endorsed by David Aaker, Greg Hoffman, and Jonah Berger. Former CMO of Shiseido’s luxury portfolio in Tokyo and former CMO of Babbel in Berlin. Senior roles at Nike (GM, US Women’s Footwear), Louis Vuitton (VP Marketing, Japan), Gucci (Executive Director, Japan), and Hyatt (VP, Luxury Brands). Featured on CBS 60 Minutes and CNN, and profiled in The Wall Street Journal. Keynote speaker at Cannes Lions and DMEXCO; fluent in English, French, and Japanese. Biography Louis Vuitton broke sales records in Japan with the Neverfull launch in a market where most Western brands struggle to read the customer. Katherine Melchior Ray ran that marketing. The difference was cultural intelligence: knowing which parts of a global brand to hold firm, and which to adapt for a specific market. That judgement came from an unusually broad operating career. She led Nike’s US women’s footwear business, ran global marketing for Nordstrom’s Façonnable from France, and directed Gucci in Japan before taking on Hyatt’s Park Hyatt and Grand Hyatt luxury brands. She later became CMO of Shiseido’s luxury portfolio in Tokyo, then CMO of Babbel in Berlin, growing both through rapid market change. In Brand Global, Adapt Local, written with Nataly Kelly and published by Kogan Page in 2025, she turned that experience into a method. The book argues that cultural intelligence, the ability to flex across markets, now matters more than ever, because AI scales reach cheaply but cannot read culture. David Aaker, Greg Hoffman, and Jonah Berger endorsed it. She teaches the same material to MBAs at UC Berkeley Haas. Her career spans four countries and three languages, and every framework she offers has already been tested against a real market and a real profit-and-loss statement. Key speaking topics Cultural intelligence as competitive advantage Global brand building across cultures Brand localisation and market entry Marketing leadership in luxury and consumer goods High-performing global teams Culture as a source of innovation Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders scaling a brand into new international markets Global marketing and international expansion teams balancing brand consistency with local relevance Executive teams and boards at consumer-facing businesses in retail, luxury, beauty, hospitality, and tech Leaders of multicultural or multinational teams Audience outcomes A clear test for which brand elements to keep consistent worldwide and which to adapt locally Named examples of how brands such as Apple, Louis Vuitton, and Kit Kat handled the same tension A working definition of cultural intelligence and how it differs from general and emotional intelligence A view on where AI helps global marketing and where human cultural judgement still decides the outcome

Why organisations work with David S. Kidder He hands leadership teams a named, tested method for growth, the GrowthOS, rather than inspiration. Accenture bought the company built around it, and Fortune 500 partners including Nike, P&G, Citi, and GE ran it inside their own businesses. His work targets the specific failure mode of large firms: they grow existing businesses well but rarely turn new opportunities into meaningful revenue. He gives leaders a way to do the second thing without abandoning the first. The methodology is published and taught, not proprietary folklore. New to Big set out the Growth Operating System in full, and the approach has been used as teaching material on enterprise growth and innovation. He works from the operator’s chair, not the lectern. He built Bionic to $30 million in revenue and sold four companies, so his frameworks come with the scar tissue of having run them under real commercial pressure. His current systems, PreMortem and Apogee, extend the same logic into decision discipline: surfacing the two or three assumptions that decide whether a funded initiative actually succeeds, before more capital is committed. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of Bionic, the enterprise-growth firm acquired by Accenture in 2021 and folded into what became Accenture Song Creator of the GrowthOS, deployed with CEOs and leadership teams at Nike, Procter & Gamble, Citi, GE, and more than forty other Fortune 500 organisations Co-author of New to Big (Currency, 2019) with Christina Wallace, endorsed by Clay Christensen, Adam Grant, and Marc Andreessen Creator and co-author of The Intellectual Devotional, a New York Times bestselling series; his books have sold more than one million copies across 18 languages Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year (2008) and recipient of ID Magazine’s International Design Award; graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology Angel investor in more than 150 startups, with early positions including SpaceX and Airbnb Biography Large companies are good at making big businesses bigger. They are far worse at turning a new idea into a business that matters, which is the skill entrepreneurs and venture investors live by. David S. Kidder built his career on closing that gap. At Bionic, the company he co-founded and led as CEO, Kidder created the GrowthOS: a system that borrows the tools and mindsets of venture capital and installs them inside established organisations. He deployed it directly with leadership teams at Nike, Procter & Gamble, Citi, GE, and more than forty other Fortune 500 firms, and bootstrapped the company to $30 million in revenue before Accenture acquired it in 2021 and made the method a core part of Accenture Song. The thinking is set out in New to Big, written with Christina Wallace and endorsed by Clay Christensen, Adam Grant, and Marc Andreessen. Its argument is practical: stop guessing from the inside out, obsess over the customer problems that create real opportunity, run growth as a portfolio, and treat productive failure as information. His earlier books, including the New York Times bestselling Intellectual Devotional series, have sold more than a million copies across 18 languages. Kidder now applies the same discipline to the moment before capital is committed. PreMortem is a decision system that forces teams to name the assumptions underneath their highest-stakes initiatives and test the two or three that decide the outcome. Apogee, rooted in behavioural science, works on how leadership teams commit to each other and hold the line on those commitments. Both come from the same conviction that runs through his four exits: growth is not luck, it is a system you can build and run. Key speaking topics Enterprise growth systems and the GrowthOS New business-model discovery inside established companies Innovation as a repeatable, portfolio-based discipline Commercial decision-making and assumption testing under uncertainty Corporate reinvention and the founder’s mindset at scale Leadership-team performance and accountability Ideal for CEOs, CSOs, and chief growth or innovation officers at large enterprises trying to build new revenue without disrupting the core business Boards and executive teams with a fully funded, high-stakes initiative they cannot confidently say is on course PE and VC portfolio companies under pressure to accelerate new revenue and prove repeatable growth CHROs and people leaders responsible for turning leadership development into visible behaviour change Audience outcomes A shared framework for identifying where genuine new growth lives and a clear first move for pursuing it The specific two or three assumptions that will decide whether a major initiative succeeds, and a plan to test them before more capital goes in A working understanding of how to run innovation as a governed portfolio rather than a series of one-off bets A concrete practice for leadership teams to make visible commitments and hold each other accountable to them Language and mental models that separate a real growth engine from activity that only looks like progress

Why organisations work with Nikolas Badminton He brings a published, named foresight methodology to the room. The Positive Dystopia Canvas, set out in Facing Our Futures, is a structured tool for stress-testing strategy against scenarios leaders would rather not entertain. He has worked the discipline at scale, with leadership teams at NASA, JP Morgan, Disney, Rolls Royce, the United Nations, and the UK Home Office. The methods on stage have been tested in serious rooms first. He bridges AI capability and strategic foresight in a way few speakers can. Most AI speakers stop at adoption. Most foresight speakers treat AI as one signal among many. Badminton treats AI as the variable that breaks existing planning horizons, and shows leaders how to plan accordingly. He served as a key advisor to The Age of A.I. documentary series with Robert Downey Jr., and his work is regularly cited by the BBC, The Atlantic, Forbes, and Fast Company. The audience tends to recognise him before he is introduced. Biography highlights Chief Futurist at Futurist.com, the international strategic foresight consultancy founded by Glen Hiemstra in 1993. Author of Facing Our Futures (Bloomsbury Business, 2023), JP Morgan Private Bank’s Next Gen Pick on its Summer Reading List and a Top-50 Business Book of 2023 by The Next Big Idea Club. Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) and a member of Chatham House. Advisor to The Age of A.I. documentary series with Robert Downey Jr. Research cited by the BBC, VICE, The Atlantic, Fast Company, Business Insider, Forbes, and Sunday Telegraph. Engagements with NASA, the United Nations, Google, Microsoft, JP Morgan, Disney, Rolls Royce, Procter & Gamble, the US Department of State, and the UK Home Office. Biography Most organisations cannot describe the future they are planning toward. They have a five-year strategy and a quarterly forecast, with very little real method in between. This gap is where Nikolas Badminton works. As Chief Futurist at Futurist.com, the strategic foresight consultancy founded by Glen Hiemstra in 1993, he advises executives and government leaders on how to build anticipatory capability into how they plan. His method is set out in Facing Our Futures (Bloomsbury Business, 2023). The book gives executives the Positive Dystopia Canvas, a structured tool for stress-testing strategy against scenarios leaders would rather not entertain. JP Morgan Private Bank named it a Next Gen Pick for its Summer Reading List, and The Next Big Idea Club listed it among the Top-50 Business Books of 2023. The client list reflects the demand for that work. NASA, Disney, JP Morgan, Microsoft, Rolls Royce, the United Nations, the US Department of State, and the UK Home Office have used Badminton’s foresight work to inform planning that runs longer than the political or quarterly cycle. A Fellow of the RSA and a member of Chatham House, he served as a key advisor to The Age of A.I. documentary series with Robert Downey Jr., and his research is cited by the BBC, The Atlantic, Forbes, and Fast Company. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and futures design Artificial intelligence in the enterprise Anticipatory governance and long-range planning Innovation under disruption Energy transition and the future of resources Geopolitical scenarios and technology futures Ideal for CEOs and CSOs building foresight capability inside annual planning cycles. Boards and executive committees stress-testing strategy against long-range scenarios. Innovation, transformation, and R&D leaders responsible for moving beyond pilot stage on AI. Public-sector leaders and policymakers designing decisions with consequences beyond the political cycle. Audience outcomes A working understanding of the Positive Dystopia Canvas and how to apply it to current strategic decisions. Specific signals and scenarios in AI, energy, and geopolitics mapped onto the organisation’s actual planning horizon. The language to make the case for foresight capability inside a strategy function built around quarterly forecasting. Confidence to extend the planning conversation past 18 months without it becoming abstract or speculative.

Why organisations work with Andrew and Gaia Grant The co-presenting format is its own offer. The audience hears two voices working a leadership problem in real time, with the academic and the facilitator perspectives playing off each other. The frameworks come out of Gaia Grant’s PhD research in the Discipline of Strategy, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Sydney Business School. The Innovation Climate Leadership Indicator (iCLi) is an academically validated diagnostic, which matters when the work has to defend itself in front of a board or audit committee. They treat the explore-preserve tension as the actual problem. Most innovation speakers present innovation as a simple acceleration story, which leaves leaders without a useful answer for the part of the business that has to stay reliable. The thirty-year working partnership is itself the case study for the leadership content. Andrew and Gaia have built a co-authored body of research while running a global consultancy together, and that lived material reads in the room as something that cannot be performed. Biography highlights Co-authors of The Innovation Race: How to Change a Culture to Change the Game (John Wiley & Sons, 2016) and the international bestseller Who Killed Creativity?…And How Do We Get it Back? (Wiley, 2012) Dr Gaia Grant: PhD researcher and lecturer in the Discipline of Strategy, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Sydney Business School Andrew Grant: founder and director of Tirian International Consultancy and a TEDx speaker, with three decades of executive facilitation across more than thirty countries Developers of the academically validated Innovation Climate Leadership Indicator (iCLi) and the Dynamic Polar Positioning (DPoP) framework, used with executive teams from Fortune 500 firms and government innovation programmes Keynote work at YPO Global Leadership Conference, APEC CEO Summit, the PwC US National Conference, Gartner ITxpo, TEDx and the Salesforce ANZ Roadshow Clients include Google, Nestlé, Boeing, Disney, Salesforce, Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, Citibank, Visa, Goldman Sachs, UBS and the UAE Prime Minister’s Office Biography The hardest part of innovation is not coming up with new ideas. It is running the rest of the business while you do it. That tension is the central argument of two books co-authored by Andrew and Gaia Grant: The Innovation Race and Who Killed Creativity?. It is also the problem most organisations get wrong when they accelerate AI adoption. The research backbone is Dr Gaia Grant’s doctoral work in Strategy, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Sydney Business School. Her PhD examined what lets some organisations innovate sustainably while others stall. Two tools came out of it: the academically validated Innovation Climate Leadership Indicator (iCLi) and Dynamic Polar Positioning (DPoP), both now used by executive teams worldwide. Andrew Grant founded Tirian International Consultancy and is the working other half of the research in the room. Gaia anchors the academic case; Andrew runs the live facilitation, with simulations, audience experiments and the kind of pacing that keeps a three-thousand-person Salesforce roadshow following the argument. The partnership is thirty years old, which is why the co-presented sessions read as a working dialogue, not a stitched-together keynote. The work has been used by Google, Nestlé, Boeing, Salesforce, Four Seasons and the UAE Prime Minister’s Office, often delivered with partner institutions including Duke Corporate Education. What gets repeated is the clearest signal of fit: roadshows that return, leadership programmes that scale, teams running iCLi diagnostics by the next planning cycle. Key speaking topics Innovation leadership and culture The explore-preserve paradox in AI adoption Sustainable innovation in complex organisations Creative intelligence and critical thinking Ambidextrous leadership Innovation diagnostics and culture transformation Ideal for C-suite teams running concurrent AI adoption and core-business protection mandates Heads of innovation, transformation and strategy in large, complex organisations Boards and CEOs designing a programme of cultural change with a long delivery arc Executive education and leadership programmes that need academically defensible content Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the explore-preserve tension that surfaces in every AI and innovation programme An honest read on where the organisation sits on innovation readiness, supported by the Innovation Climate Leadership Indicator (iCLi) A workable distinction between creative thinking and innovation execution, and where each is breaking down inside the audience’s own teams Visibility into which leadership archetypes in the room pull toward exploration and which pull toward preservation Decisions that hold up in a board paper because the framework behind them is academically validated

Why organisations work with Roger Spitz His background gives him unusual commercial authority. Before Techistential and the Disruptive Futures Institute, he led Technology M&A at BNP Paribas globally, where he advised on more than 50 transactions with a combined value over $25 billion. That record matters to boards and institutional investors whose advisers often lack operating experience. His book Disrupt With Impact won the 2024 Chanticleer International Book Awards first place in Business and Enterprise, and the four-volume Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption is used as a practitioner reference on strategic foresight. The AAA Framework (antifragility, anticipation, agility) gives leadership teams a concrete lens to apply to their own operating environment rather than another abstract call to “embrace change”. Techistentialism, the concept he coined, is specifically about human agency and decision-making under AI, which is the question most executive teams are quietly asking themselves about the technology their organisations are deploying. Institutional anchors at the World Economic Forum’s Global Foresight Network, Thinkers360 Top 10 for Management Leadership and the AI Council of the Indian Society for Artificial Intelligence place him inside the forums his audiences either belong to or want to. Biography highlights President of Techistential and Chair of the Disruptive Futures Institute, San Francisco Former Global Head of Technology M&A at BNP Paribas; 50-plus transactions with a combined value exceeding $25 billion Author of Disrupt With Impact and the four-volume Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption 2024 Chanticleer International Book Awards first place in Business and Enterprise Non-Fiction Thinkers360 Top 10 for Management Leadership WEF Global Foresight Network member; AI Council, Indian Society for Artificial Intelligence Biography Traditional strategy runs on prediction. The trouble is that the systems senior leaders now operate in, AI, geopolitics, climate, capital markets, are non-linear in ways prediction cannot catch. Roger Spitz’s work is built around the alternative: a discipline of antifragility, anticipation and agility that allows organisations to benefit from volatility rather than simply endure it. His authority starts in finance. He was Global Head of Technology M&A at BNP Paribas, where he advised on more than 50 transactions with combined value over $25 billion, which is a different foundation to most futurists and is visible in how he handles boards. He now runs Techistential, the climate and foresight strategy advisory he founded, and chairs the Disruptive Futures Institute in San Francisco, where he coined the term “Techistentialism” to describe human agency and decision-making in an AI-mediated world. The body of published work is substantial. Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World won first place in Business and Enterprise Non-Fiction at the 2024 Chanticleer International Book Awards, and the four-volume Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption is used as a practitioner reference on strategic foresight. He sits in the World Economic Forum’s Global Foresight Network, ranks in the Thinkers360 Top 10 for Management Leadership, and serves on the AI Council of the Indian Society for Artificial Intelligence. For CEOs, boards, institutional investors and policy leaders, what Spitz offers is both specific and operational. The AAA Framework gives them a lens. The AI and techistentialism work gives them a language for what autonomous systems are doing to their operating model. And the M&A record gives them a speaker who has been on the other side of the capital-markets conversation they are probably also having. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and the AAA Framework (antifragility, anticipation, agility) AI, techistentialism and human agency in an automated world Non-linear disruption and scenario thinking Geopolitical and technological risk Boardroom strategy under unpredictability Building antifragile organisations Ideal for Boards, CEOs and executive committees revisiting strategic planning assumptions under accelerating disruption Chief strategy officers, chief AI officers and heads of corporate development Institutional investors, asset managers and private equity leadership teams Policy leaders and central banks running foresight and resilience briefs World Economic Forum and high-level industry forums Audience outcomes A clearer view of why linear forecasting is failing and what replaces it in current conditions A working grasp of the AAA Framework and how to apply it to the audience’s own strategy cycle Specific framing for human-AI decision-making drawn from Disrupt With Impact and the techistentialism work Case material from M&A, frontier technology and foresight consulting usable in the audience’s own sector Reference material from the published books that leadership teams can circulate after the session

Why organisations work with Louis De Jaeger He runs a working design practice, Commensalist, that has delivered regenerative projects from food forests and future-proof farms to vineyard hotels and private eco-islands, so the recommendations on stage are tied to built assets, not slideware. He frames regeneration as a financial proposition. Boards leave able to discuss soil, biodiversity and food systems as long-term yield and risk variables, not as CSR. He is one of the few sustainability voices who has also built infrastructure at scale, co-founding the Belgian night-train start-up Moonlight Express that merged into European Sleeper, which gives him direct credibility with leaders who care about how new green businesses actually get financed and operated. He brings a body of evidence from his own work: the FoodForest documentary, the book SOS: Save Our Soils, and over fifty opinion pieces in titles such as De Standaard, De Morgen and Knack. Audiences hear arguments that have already been pressure-tested in print and on screen. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Commensalist, a regenerative landscape architecture practice working on productive landscapes, regenerative farms and hospitality estates worldwide. Co-founder of the Food Forest Institute and of the ByeByeGrass biodiversity campaign in Belgium. Co-founder of Moonlight Express, the Belgian night-train start-up that merged into European Sleeper, now operating sleeper services from Brussels. Director of the award-winning documentary FoodForest (2022) and of the feature documentary Eat More Trees on the role of food forests in climate and food security. Author of SOS: Save Our Soils (2025) and of Design your own food forest, a technical reference on food forest design. Long-running opinion contributor to De Standaard, De Morgen, Knack, Knack Weekend and MO*, with more than fifty published columns since 2018. Biography Most boards now accept that climate, biodiversity and food security are material risks. Far fewer can describe what to actually do about the soil their supply chains depend on. Louis De Jaeger has spent the last decade closing that gap, designing the land and writing the case for it at the same time. He runs Commensalist, a Belgian landscape architecture practice that designs regenerative projects from productive farms and food forests to vineyard hotels and private eco-islands. The work is built, not theoretical. Clients come to him because they need an asset that will still hold value in thirty years under heat, drought and tighter nature regulation. Alongside the practice, he co-founded the Food Forest Institute and the ByeByeGrass campaign in Belgium, and made the documentaries FoodForest and Eat More Trees about the role of food forests in cooling the climate and rebuilding food systems. His 2025 book SOS: Save Our Soils sets out a direct argument that regenerative agriculture is the cheapest, most effective form of climate infrastructure available, and that current food and land policy is mispriced against it. What makes him useful in a leadership room is the second track. With Moonlight Express, the night-train start-up he co-founded that merged into European Sleeper, he has been on the inside of building a green infrastructure business from a deck to operating trains. So when he talks to investors and operators about regeneration as a long-term asset class, the argument carries the weight of someone who has had to finance, license and run one. Key speaking topics Regenerative agriculture and soil health Food forests and productive landscapes Climate, biodiversity and nature-based solutions Sustainable land use and food systems Regeneration as long-term asset strategy Sustainable hospitality and estate design Green infrastructure entrepreneurship Ideal for Boards and investment committees pricing climate, nature and land-use risk into long-term portfolios CSOs, heads of sustainability and ESG leads moving beyond carbon accounting into soil, water and biodiversity Real estate, hospitality and agribusiness operators evaluating regenerative design for their own assets Founders and corporate venture teams backing food, agritech and green infrastructure businesses Audience outcomes A working definition of regeneration that boards can use, distinct from offsetting and from generic ESG language. A clearer view of which sustainability assumptions and assets are likely to age badly over the next decade. Practical reference points from built projects: food forests, regenerative farms, hospitality estates, biodiversity campaigns. A founder’s account of how a green infrastructure business actually gets financed and run, drawn from Moonlight Express and European Sleeper. A sharper internal narrative for connecting climate, food and land strategy to commercial decisions.

Why organisations work with Alex Goryachev He ran the function he now talks about. Cisco’s global innovation strategy, AI programme launch and innovation centres on five continents were built under his direction. He gives boards and executive teams a working playbook for moving AI past the pilot stage, drawn from Fearless Innovation and codified into the global ISO Standards on Innovation he helped shape. He addresses workforce resistance to AI directly, naming the cultural and behavioural blockers that stall enterprise AI programmes, rather than focusing only on the technology layer. He bridges enterprise practice and the next generation of leaders through his Executive-in-Residence role at Tulane’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, which keeps his frameworks tested against current operating reality. Biography highlights Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Fearless Innovation (Wiley, 2020). Former Managing Director and Global Head of Innovation Strategy, Cisco. Established Cisco’s Global Innovation Centers across five continents and led the launch of its AI innovation programme. Executive-in-Residence, Tulane University Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Contributor to global ISO Standards on Innovation. Frequent contributor to Forbes, Fast Company, Entrepreneur and CEOWORLD; LinkedIn Top AI Voice. Earlier leadership roles at IBM, Dell and Pfizer. Biography Most enterprise AI programmes do not fail at the model. They fail at the handover, at the moment a promising pilot has to become a working capability inside a large operating company. That is the territory Goryachev spent two decades in. As Managing Director and Global Head of Innovation Strategy at Cisco, he established the company’s Global Innovation Centers across five continents and led the launch of its AI innovation programme. Earlier leadership work at IBM, Dell and Pfizer gave him an unusually broad view of how innovation actually moves through large, regulated organisations. That operating experience became the basis of Fearless Innovation (Wiley, 2020), a Wall Street Journal bestseller that lays out a practical discipline for converting innovation rhetoric into measurable results. The book sits alongside his contribution to the global ISO Standards on Innovation, where he helped codify the principles for how organisations build innovation capability at scale. He continues that work today as an Executive-in-Residence at Tulane University’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and as a regular contributor to Forbes, Fast Company, Entrepreneur and CEOWORLD on the question that now dominates board agendas: how to move from AI as a slide-deck strategy to AI as an operating advantage. Key speaking topics Enterprise AI strategy and operational deployment Innovation as a managed discipline AI literacy and workforce readiness Digital transformation in large enterprises Leadership in an AI-first operating model Culture change and innovation behaviour Ideal for Boards and CEOs setting an AI agenda beyond proof-of-concept Chief Innovation, Strategy and Transformation Officers responsible for translating AI ambition into operating results CHROs and learning leaders rebuilding workforce capability for an AI-first business Executive teams in Fortune 500s, scale-ups and government bodies stalled at the pilot stage of AI Audience outcomes A clear view of the difference between AI experimentation and AI as an operating capability, with named markers of each. Specific patterns from inside Cisco’s innovation programme that audiences can map onto their own organisations. A direct read on where workforce resistance to AI typically appears, and what leaders can do about it. A working sense of what Fearless Innovation prescribes as the discipline behind sustained innovation results.

Why organisations work with Rich Mulholland He runs a working AI agency, Too Many Robots, alongside a presentation business, so the advice on staying relevant in an AI-saturated market comes from someone deploying the tools, not commenting on them. Legacide gives him a precise argument that flips the standard innovation conversation: the constraint is not new ideas, it is the old behaviour that keeps surviving every restructure. Here Be Dragons codifies “storyselling” as a discipline for commercial teams, useful for sales leaders trying to move buyers without resorting to feature lists or discounting. Missing Link has shaped the presentation craft of corporate leaders across South Africa and beyond for over two decades, which means he speaks to senior executives about communication as someone who has trained the room rather than just spoken in it. Biography highlights Founder of Missing Link, described by multiple sources as South Africa’s largest presentation and communication training firm. Founder of Too Many Robots, an AI agency advising clients on practical AI deployment. Co-founder of 21Tanks, a problem-identification consultancy positioned as South Africa’s first perspective lab. Author of four books: Legacide, Boredom Slayer, Here Be Dragons, and Relentless Relevance. Guest lecturer at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business and the Gordon Institute of Business Science. TEDx speaker at TEDxJohannesburg and TEDxCapeTown; has delivered keynotes in 50 countries across six continents. Biography Innovation programmes rarely fail at the idea stage. They fail at the legacy stage, where the existing way of doing things absorbs the new initiative and digests it back into business as usual. This is the territory Rich Mulholland has spent two decades working in, first through Missing Link, the South African presentation and communication firm he founded, and then through the writing that made Legacide a reference point for executives trying to understand why their change programmes keep stalling. His thesis is direct. Innovation does not happen when an organisation starts doing something new. It happens when it stops doing something old. That distinction reframes the senior team’s job from generating ideas to clearing space, and it is the spine that connects his work across innovation, sales, and communication. In Here Be Dragons he applies the same logic to commercial teams, treating storytelling not as a soft skill but as the operating discipline that decides whether a deal moves. The AI dimension is the more recent layer. Through Too Many Robots, the agency he founded to help clients deploy AI tactically rather than rhetorically, Mulholland has been working inside the question that most boards are still asking from the outside: what remains a human advantage when expectation, attention, and execution can all be automated. His answer, set out in the Humanity’s Unfair Advantage keynote, is that relevance is the perpetual play, not a position you achieve once. He is a guest lecturer at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business and at GIBS, has spoken in 50 countries across six continents, and has appeared on TEDx stages including TEDxJohannesburg and TEDxCapeTown. Before any of this he was a touring roadie running lights for Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, and Bon Jovi, which is where the obsession with what makes a room respond actually started. Key speaking topics Relentless relevance and the discipline of staying useful to customers Legacy thinking as the silent constraint on innovation Storyselling and persuasion for commercial teams Humanity’s unfair advantage in an AI-driven market Leadership communication and executive presence Strategy for autonomous and purpose-driven organisations Ideal for Chief commercial officers, chief revenue officers, and sales leadership audiences working on storytelling and buyer persuasion Innovation leads, transformation heads, and strategy teams trying to dismantle legacy behaviour rather than add new initiatives Executive communicators and senior leaders preparing for high-stakes platforms, investor days, and town halls Boards and leadership teams scoping where AI substitutes human work and where human relevance still holds Audience outcomes A working definition of what legacy thinking looks like inside their own organisation, and where it is absorbing innovation effort A sharper framing for sales and commercial narratives that moves beyond feature lists into customer-centred story A clearer view of which parts of their work AI will eat and which parts depend on human relevance A practical standard for what a senior executive presentation should do, drawn from someone who has trained presenters for two decades

Why organisations work with Chris Heemskerk Operator credibility from inside Google, where he led Scaled Acquisitions for North America and advised the Sales Acceleration and Innovation Labs documented in the Harvard Business School case study by Linda Hill and Emily Tedards. A defined framework set, including The Innovation Scorecard and The Innovation Engine, that gives boards a way to assess innovation capability across culture, organisation, external posture and effectiveness, rather than relying on anecdote. Practical authority on AI deployment: he speaks as a practitioner who has built scaled sales and product operations, not as an external commentator on the technology. Faculty standing at the European Institute of Innovation for Sustainability, with formal innovation leadership credentials from Harvard Business School and design thinking certification from Stanford, supporting executive-level training and masterclass briefs. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, The Innovation Alliance Former Head of Scaled Acquisitions, Google North America Strategic advisor named in the Harvard Business School case “Innovation at Google Ads: The Sales Acceleration and Innovation Labs (SAIL) (A)” (Case 423-076) Faculty, European Institute of Innovation for Sustainability Author of The Innovation Scorecard and The Innovation Engine frameworks Executive Certification in Innovation Leadership, Harvard Business School; Design Thinking, Stanford University; MSc Marketing, London School of Business and Finance Biography Most large organisations now run innovation teams and AI working groups. Far fewer can name what those teams have shipped, retired, or scaled in the last year. The gap between activity and operating advantage is where senior leaders get exposed, and it is the gap Chris Heemskerk works in. His credibility on that question is operator credibility. As Head of Scaled Acquisitions for Google North America, he ran a large commercial operation inside one of the most studied innovation environments in business. He then helped initiate the partnership between Google Ads and Harvard Business School that produced the case “Innovation at Google Ads: The Sales Acceleration and Innovation Labs (SAIL) (A),” authored by Linda Hill and Emily Tedards, in which he is named as a strategic advisor on the bet-sourcing framework that vetted and accelerated new pipeline opportunities. That experience now sits behind two frameworks he uses with executive teams: The Innovation Scorecard, which assesses innovation capability across culture, organisation, external posture and effectiveness, and The Innovation Engine, which sets out the operating system for sustained innovation output. As Founder and CEO of The Innovation Alliance, and as faculty at the European Institute of Innovation for Sustainability, he works with senior teams on the same question he faced as an operator: how to turn ambition into a managed capability. For boards looking at their AI agenda, the value is specific. Heemskerk speaks as someone who has built scaled commercial operations and has the structured material to translate AI ambition into how a function actually runs, what it measures, and what it discards. Key speaking topics Innovation strategy Innovation culture AI deployment in large organisations Operating models for scaled innovation Digital transformation Executive masterclasses on innovation leadership Ideal for CEOs and C-suite leaders setting AI and innovation strategy Chief Innovation Officers and heads of strategy operationalising new capability Boards reviewing innovation governance and AI exposure Senior commercial and digital transformation leaders moving beyond pilots Audience outcomes A defined view of where the organisation sits on the four pillars of innovation capability Practical reference points from inside Google for how scaled operations adopt new technology A sharper distinction between innovation theatre and innovation that produces operating output Frameworks executives can return to after the keynote, including the Innovation Scorecard and Innovation Engine

Why organisations work with Claudia Bechstein A working chair for high-stakes technology and AI conversations, with the subject fluency to interrogate engineers, regulators and CEOs in the same panel without losing the room. Around 150 live appearances per year across IAA Mobility, GreenTech Festival, Bitkom AI & Data Summit and the German Federal Government Digital Summit, which means she walks into a tech main stage already knowing the room and the operators in it. Bilingual delivery in German and English at the level required for a Bundesregierung digital summit and an English-language CEO panel on the same brief, with no drop in confidence between the two. Co-creator of the KI Palooza Festival, the Stuttgart AI platform for mid-market companies, which gives her a working view of where AI is actually being deployed below the FAANG and DAX 40 level. A trained business psychologist, so the moderation is built around how people answer under pressure, not around a presenter script. Biography highlights MSc in Business Psychology, FOM University of Applied Sciences Berlin and University of San Diego (2020). Co-creator of KI Palooza, a Stuttgart AI festival for mid-market companies. Moderates approximately 150 live events per year, in German and English, across congresses, fireside chats, press conferences and hybrid formats. Recurring chair for IAA Mobility, GreenTech Festival Berlin, Bitkom AI & Data Summit, the German Federal Government Digital Summit, ABB Robotics and the Lobster Data Hero Summit. Worked with Bosch, Salesforce, Porsche, BMW, Dell Technologies, Vodafone, Telekom, Volkswagen, Samsung, Hyundai, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, UBS, Julius Bär, Handelsblatt and ZDF. Investor in HealthTech and shareholder in a media production company. Biography The chair of a serious technology conference is doing real work. They are deciding which question gets asked, which answer gets pushed back on, and which CEO is allowed to retreat into talking points. Claudia Bechstein has built a fifteen-year career around that specific craft, in German and English, at the level of IAA Mobility, the GreenTech Festival, the Bitkom AI & Data Summit and the German Federal Government Digital Summit. Her route into the role is unusual. She trained as a business psychologist, completing an MSc at FOM Berlin and the University of San Diego in 2020, and the discipline shows in how she runs a panel. She is interested in how people answer under pressure, where they get vague, and where the room stops believing them. That is a different toolkit from broadcast presenting, and it is the reason she is booked repeatedly for technical panels where executives have rehearsed answers and operators have unrehearsed ones. The subject base is technology, AI, mobility and the energy transition. She is co-creator of KI Palooza, a Stuttgart festival built around how mid-market German companies actually deploy AI, and an active investor in HealthTech. The work for Bosch, Salesforce, Porsche, BMW, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, Dell, Vodafone, Telekom, ABB Robotics, Volvo and Hyundai is in the same territory: industrial, automotive, data, transformation. For organisations running an AI conference, a transformation summit or a board-level mobility conversation, the practical question is whether the chair can hold the room. Bechstein’s commercial proposition is that she has done so, in two languages, at roughly 150 events a year, for the German industrial economy and a growing list of international clients. Key speaking topics Conference and panel moderation for technology and AI events Artificial intelligence and digital transformation Future of mobility and the automotive industry Sustainability, climate and the energy transition Industry 4.0 and industrial transformation Innovation in mid-market and DAX companies Data and digitalisation HealthTech and FinTech Ideal for Conference organisers running technology, AI, mobility or sustainability summits who need a working chair, not a presenter DAX and mid-market communications and event leads commissioning bilingual (German and English) main-stage hosting Industry associations and federal bodies running policy-and-industry events where the chair has to credibly interrogate ministers and CEOs Boards and executive teams running internal AI, transformation or leadership conferences that include external operators and regulators Audience outcomes A conference programme that runs to time and reads as a strategic conversation, not a series of vendor pitches Panels where the senior speakers are pushed past their prepared answers without the room losing them Bilingual coverage of the same brief, in German and English, without a drop in pace or precision A working AI, mobility or sustainability discussion that the in-house team can use as source material after the event

Why organisations work with Ashwin Gulati A founder’s-eye view drawn from 100+ ventures in four countries, not a single startup story extrapolated into a thesis Hands-on experience as interim executive and Entrepreneur-in-Residence inside companies in crisis, not commentary from the sidelines Author of Soul Venture, a 16-year project that documents the human and psychological mechanics of startup failure that most business books edit out Comfortable in the room with boards, family offices and first-time founders, and switches register accordingly Bilingual operator across US and European venture cultures, useful when expansion crosses regulatory and capital-market boundaries Biography highlights 30+ years guiding founders, CEOs and boards across 100+ ventures in the US, UK, Spain and France Founder of Match Point Ventures, working with boards, family offices and executive teams as strategic advisor, interim executive and Entrepreneur-in-Residence Author of Soul Venture: A True Life and Death Journey Into the Startup Culture (Match Point Press) Featured at Claremont McKenna College’s Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum on the unspoken truths of entrepreneurship Quoted and published in Chief Executive, Authority Magazine, Grit Daily, StartupNation, CEO World and LeadershipNow BA in Economics and Mathematics from Claremont McKenna College, with study at King’s College London and the London School of Economics Biography Ninety-seven of every hundred startups fail. The interesting question is not why most fail, but what the survivors paid to get through, and why so little of that cost is ever named in public. Ashwin Gulati has spent three decades inside that question, working alongside founders, CEOs and boards through launches, pivots, expansions and exits in the US, UK, Spain and France. His work spans more than 100 ventures, from early-stage technology companies to family-office-backed operating businesses. Through Match Point Ventures he steps in as strategic advisor, interim executive or Entrepreneur-in-Residence, running diagnostic assessments on capital structure, business model, leadership alignment and market position. The role is not theoretical. It usually begins when something is breaking. Soul Venture, his debut book, took 16 years to write because it does what most entrepreneurship literature avoids. It traces the psychological and human costs that sit alongside the spreadsheet view of company building. The book is part memoir, part field guide, drawn from his own ventures and from the founders he has worked beside. It has been featured by Chief Executive, Grit Daily and Authority Magazine, and anchors his speaking on what he calls the X-factors that separate real builders from the rest. He addresses three moments in venture life with equal seriousness. The take-off, where most founders mistake hustle for traction. The flight, where scaling exposes who can actually lead. And the landing, where exits, succession and legacy decide what the work was for. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and the founder journey Scale-up leadership across stages Venture launch and operational sustainability Exit, succession and founder legacy Self-leadership and founder resilience Cross-border venture building Ideal for Founder communities, incubators and accelerators briefing first-time and serial entrepreneurs Boards, family offices and investor networks evaluating venture portfolios Executive teams inside scale-ups confronting transition or crisis Business schools and entrepreneurship programmes building founder development tracks Audience outcomes A clearer map of the launch, scale and exit decisions that decide a venture’s outcome Specific failure mechanics drawn from 100+ companies, not founder mythology Language for the human cost of building, useful in boardrooms that usually avoid it A working frame for legacy and succession that goes beyond the financial exit

Why organisations work with Lauren LoGrasso She brings the operating logic of a working podcast producer to the question of creative leadership, having executive produced two of the highest-charting podcasts of the past five years, Unlocking Us with Brené Brown and We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle. She speaks to creativity as engagement infrastructure, not as inspiration, drawing on a body of work that has won the Webby, Signal, W3, Hermes Creative, People’s Choice, and Communicator awards through her own show. She gives event audiences a recognisable name from the podcast economy, paired with a keynote performer’s stagecraft as a SAG-AFTRA actor and working musician. Her perspective on self-expression at work is grounded in production craft: what gets people to show up with their fullest contribution, and what systematically silences them. Biography highlights Creator and host of Unleash Your Inner Creative, winner of the Webby, Signal, People’s Choice, W3, Hermes Creative, and Communicator awards. Vice President of Programming and Development at Audacy Podcasts. Executive producer credits on We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle and Unlocking Us with Brené Brown during her tenure at Cadence13. Named one of Podcast Magazine‘s 22 Unsung Heroes of Podcasting. Featured in People Magazine, Yahoo, and Business Insider; named by CEO Weekly as a top inspiring woman to follow. Singer-songwriter who has collaborated with Grammy-winning producer Jeff Bova, with songs placed in award-winning films. Biography Unlocking Us with Brené Brown launched at number one and was named Apple’s top new podcast of 2020. We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle did the same a year later. Lauren LoGrasso was an executive producer on both, working at Cadence13 to shape the editorial sensibility that made those shows resonate. The thread running through that work is now the thread running through her keynotes. Unleash Your Inner Creative, the podcast she creates and hosts, has won the Webby, Signal, W3, Hermes Creative, People’s Choice, and Communicator awards. The subject is creativity, but the working question is organisational: why people stop offering their best ideas, and what conditions bring those ideas back into the room. LoGrasso speaks to corporate audiences and university programmes on creative leadership and workplace engagement, with signature talks including “The Key to Creative Leadership” and “The Power of Unleashing Creativity in Your Workplace.” She currently serves as VP of Programming and Development at Audacy Podcasts and continues to perform as a singer-songwriter, with collaborations including Grammy-winning producer Jeff Bova. The substance of her contribution is the connection between self-expression and contribution at work, named by Podcast Magazine as one of 22 Unsung Heroes of Podcasting and consistently profiled by major outlets for the operating model behind her shows. Key speaking topics Creative leadership in the workplace Employee engagement and morale Self-expression and authentic voice at work Podcasting and audio storytelling for brands and leaders Mental health and creative wellbeing Innovation through creative practice Event hosting, moderation, and interview craft Ideal for Heads of People, Culture, and Employee Engagement designing programmes that move beyond wellness benefits. Innovation, marketing, and brand leaders looking to bring creative practice into commercial work. Internal conferences, leadership offsites, and women’s leadership programmes seeking a keynote with stagecraft. Universities and graduate business programmes hosting events on creative careers and purpose-led work. Audience outcomes A working definition of creativity as an organisational condition, not a personality trait. Specific practices for managers who want their teams to surface ideas earlier and more often. A clearer reading of why engagement scores stall in technically high-performing teams. An honest framing of the link between self-expression, mental health, and sustained contribution at work.