Innovation & Disruption

Why organisations work with Chris Gledhill He has worked both sides of the fintech competitive line: inside Lloyds Banking Group’s disruptive innovation function, then co-founding the UK challenger bank Secco as its CEO. Audiences get an advisor fluent in incumbent constraints and start-up economics. His Secco thesis, that customer data and reputation can function as forms of banked value, pushed the UK challenger debate past interface and pricing into a harder conversation about what banks actually sell. He is a consistent top-tier voice in credible fintech influencer indices, including Onalytica’s Fintech Top 100, where he has ranked as high as third, and the CityAM Fintech Powerlist. He contributed to The FinTech Book (Wiley, edited by Susanne Chishti), the first crowdsourced reference work in the field. His chapter on the future evolution of money beyond cryptocurrency is part of the core literature. Biography highlights Former innovation technologist and lead mobile architect within Lloyds Banking Group’s Digital Innovation and Payments team, part of the bank’s disruptive innovation function Co-founder and former CEO of Secco, a pre-licence UK challenger bank built around customer ownership of money, data and reputation Contributor to The FinTech Book (Wiley), edited by Susanne Chishti of FINTECH Circle Author of “Consumerization: The Enterprise Guide to BYOD” Ranked #3 in Onalytica’s Top 100 Fintech Influencers and a recurring feature in CityAM’s Fintech Powerlist TEDx speaker and long-running commentator on fintech and digital banking Biography Most retail banks are not structured to reinvent themselves. They are built to run their current model efficiently, which is a different problem. The result is a sector that uses the language of transformation while iterating on the same product shelf. Chris Gledhill has argued the opposite case from both sides of the line. Inside Lloyds Banking Group’s Digital Innovation and Payments team, he worked as a lead mobile architect and innovation technologist within what the bank called its disruptive innovation lab. He then co-founded Secco, a pre-licence UK challenger bank, and became its CEO. Secco’s proposition went further than most. Where other UK challengers matched the incumbents on product and improved the interface, Secco proposed that a bank could hold data and reputation alongside money, with the customer owning and controlling both. Gledhill set out the fuller argument in The FinTech Book (Wiley), edited by Susanne Chishti. His chapter asks what money becomes once value itself can be both social and programmable. He is a consistent feature in credible fintech indices, including Onalytica’s Top 100 Fintech Influencers, where he has ranked as high as third, and the CityAM Fintech Powerlist. For boards and strategy teams, that recognition reflects a decade of specific public arguments carried into industry discourse. Key speaking topics Fintech and the future of financial services Digital banking and challenger bank strategy Emerging technology in banking: AI, blockchain, biometrics Digital identity and customer data ownership Innovation inside incumbent financial institutions Open banking and the API economy Ideal for Banking and financial services leadership teams confronting digital-native competitors Heads of digital and innovation inside incumbent financial institutions Fintech and payments industry conferences and strategy offsites Financial services boards setting strategy through a period of technology-led disintermediation Audience outcomes A sharper strategic map of where digital banking is heading and what that means for incumbent business models First-hand perspective on the full-stack challenger bank thesis, including what Secco actually tried to build and why Better questions to take back to boards about customer data ownership and digital identity Informed judgement on which emerging technologies are genuine strategic levers for banks and which are features chasing problems

Why organisations work with Chris Boardman Demonstrable experience building high-performing teams in three distinct environments: elite sport (the British Cycling R&D team known as the «Secret Squirrel Club»), commercial business (Boardman Bikes), and UK national infrastructure (Active Travel England). The pattern transfers. Most speakers only have one of these on the CV. Genuine authority on driving innovation inside institutions that are structurally set up to resist it. His work on the Bee Network in Greater Manchester, alongside Mayor Andy Burnham, is a case study in pushing something new through a political and administrative system built for continuity. Credibility with senior leaders who are tired of generic «marginal gains» content. Boardman was inside the team that produced the phrase and can explain what the method actually looked like on the ground at British Cycling, without the subsequent mythology. A personal story of reinvention that holds a senior room’s attention: carpenter, Olympic champion, product entrepreneur, commissioner of a £2 billion government agency, with the same discipline around preparation running through each phase. Biography highlights Olympic gold medallist, Barcelona 1992 (4km individual pursuit); first British cycling gold in 72 years. World Hour Record holder on two separate occasions; three times wore the yellow jersey at the Tour de France; three-time World Champion. CBE (2022) for services to transport; MBE (1992) for services to cycling. Led the R&D group within British Cycling known as the «Secret Squirrel Club»; co-founded Boardman Bikes with Alan Ingarfield and Sarah Mooney. National Active Travel Commissioner for England and Chair of Sport England, with oversight responsibility for billions of pounds of public investment in active travel and sport. Author of «Triumphs and Turbulence» (Cross Sports Cycling Book of the Year, 2017); BBC and ITV cycling commentator, including London 2012 Olympic coverage. Biography Britain had not won an Olympic cycling gold in seventy-two years. In 1992, at Barcelona, a former carpenter from the Wirral crossed the line first on a Lotus frame. Chris Boardman’s name has been tied to technology-led performance ever since. Two decades later, that fascination with preparation had been institutionalised. As head of research and development at British Cycling, Boardman led the small team that became known inside the sport as the Secret Squirrel Club. Its remit was to find every unglamorous, repeatable improvement a well-prepared squad could stack on top of raw talent. The approach underwrote Team GB’s dominance at Beijing 2008 and London 2012. The phrase «marginal gains» was, in practice, its house style. The same method has since travelled further than most sporting careers ever do. Alongside Mayor Andy Burnham, Boardman designed the Bee Network as Greater Manchester’s first Cycling and Walking Commissioner: an 1,800-mile, £1.5 billion plan to rewire how a city region moves. From 2022 he has led Active Travel England, the national executive agency responsible for the standard of walking and cycling infrastructure across the country. He chairs Sport England in parallel. What makes him useful in a senior boardroom is the translation. Most speakers have built one high-performing team, in one context. Boardman has done it three times: inside an elite sporting federation, inside a consumer bike business he co-founded, and inside a government agency running a £2 billion programme. The common thread is stamina: how you keep a team intact and productive long enough to deliver something the surrounding system quietly prefers not to change. Key speaking topics High-performance team building Innovation culture in complex institutions Change leadership and organisational resistance Marginal gains and operational excellence Leading large-scale public delivery Personal reinvention and career translation Ideal for CEOs and senior leaders responsible for major transformation programmes Public sector, transport, and infrastructure leaders delivering long-duration projects Innovation, strategy, and transformation directors inside risk-averse institutions Audience outcomes A sharper view of what it takes to build a team capable of sustained high performance, drawn from inside British Cycling’s Olympic programme. A working understanding of why innovation usually fails inside institutions, with examples from both elite sport and UK public policy. Specific examples of moving large organisations from strategy to delivery, drawn from the Bee Network and Active Travel England. A direct, practical account of managing one’s own career through repeated reinvention.

Why organisations work with Chris Barton He built a product under conditions that proved his point: no smartphones, no app stores, no viable algorithm, and a consensus view from MIT and Stanford that the problem was unsolvable. Shazam survived six years of near-bankruptcy before the App Store arrived. That timeline is the argument, not a metaphor for it. His two named frameworks – «Start from Zero» and «Creative Persistence» – give innovation leads something to work with after the event: a method for stripping assumptions back to first principles, and a model for distinguishing productive persistence from sunk-cost thinking. His role building Android’s carrier distribution infrastructure at Google, and leading mobile carrier partnerships at Dropbox, means his perspective on how transformative products actually reach scale is drawn from the operational history of three category-defining companies. He holds 12 patents across Shazam, Google, and Dropbox – including one employed in the Google Search algorithm – and testified as a key DOJ witness in the Google antitrust trial on the mobile default deals he personally negotiated. That depth of institutional involvement in the mobile computing era is not a speaker credential; it is a primary source. Guard Inc., his current startup applying AI to drowning detection in swimming pools, is a live demonstration that his frameworks are not retrospective lessons from one successful exit – he is still using them on a problem that experts regard as unsolved. Biography highlights Co-founder and first CEO of Shazam; the company was acquired by Apple in 2018 for a reported $400 million and has been downloaded more than 2 billion times First business development employee at Google focused on mobile partnerships; led the carrier agreements with Verizon and AT&T that established Android’s distribution infrastructure One of the first 100 employees at Dropbox, heading mobile carrier partnerships Holds 12 patents across Shazam, Google, and Dropbox, including one employed in the Google Search algorithm BA Economics and MBA, UC Berkeley; Master in Finance, University of Cambridge; early career at L.E.K. Consulting Key witness for the U.S. Department of Justice in the United States v. Google LLC antitrust trial (2023), testifying on mobile search default agreements he personally negotiated Founder and CEO of Guard Inc., an AI startup building drowning detection technology for swimming pools Biography Most organisations treat innovation as a culture question. Chris Barton treats it as a methods problem. As co-founder and first CEO of Shazam – the music recognition app Apple acquired in 2018 for a reported $400 million – he built a category that did not exist, under conditions that should have made it impossible. When Barton conceived the idea in 1999, there were no smartphones, no app stores, and no algorithm capable of identifying music from ambient audio. Professors at MIT and Stanford told him the pattern recognition problem could not be solved. Shazam launched commercially in 2002 and survived six years of near-bankruptcy before the App Store created its distribution opportunity. It reached 300 million monthly active users before Apple acquired it. The timeline matters: this is not a story about a fast breakthrough. It is a story about sustained method under prolonged failure. His track record inside the companies that built mobile computing adds a different layer of authority. At Google he was the first business development employee focused on mobile, leading the carrier agreements with Verizon and AT&T that established Android’s distribution infrastructure. At Dropbox he was one of the first 100 employees, heading mobile carrier partnerships. He holds 12 patents across all three companies, including one used in the Google Search algorithm, and in 2023 testified as a key DOJ witness in the United States v. Google LLC antitrust trial – speaking to the mobile default deals he personally negotiated. His frameworks – «Start from Zero» and «Creative Persistence» – extract a repeatable method from that experience: how to strip assumptions back to first principles, and how to sustain focus on core insight when resistance is at its strongest. He applies both now as founder and CEO of Guard Inc., an AI startup building drowning detection technology for swimming pools – a problem, again, that multiple experts have called unsolvable. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and startup creation Innovation under expert and institutional resistance Consumer AI and the origins of mobile technology Friction elimination and product simplicity Creative Persistence as an organisational method Technology and business model disruption Assumption-stripping and first-principles thinking Ideal for Senior leadership and innovation teams at large organisations launching new products or business units against internal or expert resistance Chief Digital Officers, CTOs, and heads of innovation building internal capability for breakthrough thinking Entrepreneurial organisations and scale-up leadership navigating prolonged uncertainty Conference audiences of founders, technology executives, and business leaders in high-disruption sectors Audience outcomes A working understanding of the «Start from Zero» and «Creative Persistence» frameworks, and how to apply them when pursuing ideas facing expert or institutional opposition A concrete model for distinguishing productive persistence from sunk-cost thinking – drawn from six years of near-bankruptcy at Shazam before the product reached scale Specific techniques for identifying and eliminating friction – the unnecessary effort that prevents otherwise viable ideas from reaching users A revised understanding of how transformative consumer products (Shazam, Android, Dropbox) were built from first principles, not from incremental improvement Greater organisational confidence in pursuing ideas that current consensus dismisses

Why organisations work with Charlie Luxton He runs a working practice, Charlie Luxton Design, whose built work includes the Hook Norton Community Land Trust Passivhaus scheme, so his sustainability argument is grounded in projects he has actually delivered, not a consultancy deck. Two decades of mainstream broadcasting on More4, Channel 5, and BBC platforms have trained him to explain embodied carbon, retrofit, and energy performance to non-specialist audiences without losing technical substance. He speaks credibly across the full stack of a property or ESG conversation: design, materials, regulation, occupant behaviour, and cost, which is unusual for a single speaker. He is a comfortable host and awards presenter as well as a keynote voice, so clients running built-environment or sustainability conferences can use him in more than one role across an event. His perspective is practitioner-first: what works on a real site in the UK climate, at a realistic budget, with real trades and supply chains, which senior buyers in property, construction, and corporate real estate recognise as scarce. Biography highlights Director of Charlie Luxton Design, an Oxfordshire architectural practice focused on energy-efficient residential work. BA in Architecture, Oxford Brookes University; MA, Royal College of Art, London. Lead presenter on More4’s Building the Dream and Homes by the Sea, and presenter on Channel 5’s Build a New Life in the Country. Architect for the Hook Norton Community Land Trust, a twelve-home Passivhaus-standard community-led housing scheme. Co-author with Sally Bevan of Restored to Glory (BBC Books, 2005), the book accompanying the BBC restoration series. Has delivered talks through professional bodies including RIBA Gloucestershire on embodied carbon in buildings. Biography The built environment is responsible for a significant share of global carbon emissions, and the gap between pledges and delivered projects is where most organisations are now stuck. Architects who actually build at that intersection, and who can describe the work in plain language, are rare. That is the space Charlie Luxton occupies. He runs Charlie Luxton Design from North Oxfordshire, a practice dedicated to energy-efficient homes that use local materials and respond to local climate. The studio’s work includes the Hook Norton Community Land Trust scheme, twelve Passivhaus-standard homes developed with a community-led trust in the village where the practice is based. It is a concrete example of the low-energy, community-scale housing model the sustainability conversation often describes in the abstract. Alongside the practice, he has spent more than twenty years on UK television, presenting Building the Dream and Homes by the Sea for More4 and Build a New Life in the Country for Channel 5, with earlier credits including BBC Three’s Dreamspaces. That broadcasting background is why organisations book him: he can take a technical topic like embodied carbon or retrofit and hold a general audience without simplifying the substance. He trained at Oxford Brookes and the Royal College of Art and co-authored Restored to Glory with Sally Bevan for BBC Books. For corporate audiences this produces something specific. Real-estate, construction, and ESG conversations often split between policy speakers who have not built anything and technical specialists who cannot hold a room. Luxton bridges the two, which is useful when a leadership team has committed to a sustainability target and now has to make decisions about what they actually build or lease. Key speaking topics Sustainable architecture and low-carbon buildings Embodied carbon and the built environment Retrofit, energy performance, and the existing UK housing stock Passivhaus and community-led housing Design, materials, and local climate The future of construction Property, homes, and how people live Ideal for Property, construction, and real-estate leadership audiences setting net-zero and retrofit strategy ESG, sustainability, and corporate real-estate teams inside large corporates Housing associations, local authorities, and community trusts working on low-carbon housing delivery Built-environment conferences and awards requiring a credible host with technical authority Audience outcomes A clear read on where embodied and operational carbon actually sit in a building project, and which decisions move the number. A practical sense of what Passivhaus, retrofit, and low-energy design look like once built, drawn from delivered UK projects. Confidence to interrogate sustainability claims made by designers, developers, and suppliers in their own supply chain. A more realistic view of cost, trade-offs, and timescales in low-carbon building, as opposed to the brochure version.

Why organisations work with Carl Frey The 2013 paper Frey co-authored with Michael Osborne – estimating 47% of US jobs at risk from automation – is one of the most cited works in social science of the past two decades, with its methodology adopted by Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, the World Bank, and the Bank of England. No comparable speaker in this space brings this level of intellectual provenance to the conversation. His concept of the “technology trap” gives boards a precisely named mechanism for diagnosing their own institutional response to AI: the pattern by which efforts to resist short-term disruption deny organisations the long-term gains that technology makes possible. How Progress Ends (Princeton, 2025) addresses the question now at the top of most board agendas – why do some organisations and nations sustain the capacity to benefit from new technology while others stagnate – and gives senior leaders a durable, historically grounded answer rather than a forecast. His analysis is built on 1,000 years of economic history, not current trend extrapolation. That means the framework he offers survives the next wave of AI announcements rather than becoming obsolete with each new model release. Advisory roles with the G20, OECD, European Commission, and OECD Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence mean he brings regulatory and policy intelligence that most academic speakers lack – organisations understand not just the technology but the governance environment forming around it. Biography highlights Dieter Schwarz Associate Professor of AI & Work, Oxford Internet Institute; Fellow of Mansfield College; Director, Future of Work Programme, Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford Co-author of “The Future of Employment” (2013, with Michael Osborne) – one of the most cited social science papers of the past two decades; 20,000+ citations on Google Scholar; methodology adopted by Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, the World Bank, and the Bank of England Author of The Technology Trap (Princeton University Press, 2019) – Financial Times Best Books of the Year; winner of the Richard A. Lester Prize for Outstanding Book in Industrial Relations and Labour Economics (Princeton University) Author of How Progress Ends (Princeton University Press, 2025) – shortlisted for the FT/Schroders Business Book of the Year Award; finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize Advisor to the G20, OECD, European Commission, and United Nations; former member of the OECD Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence and the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the New Economic Agenda Ranked in the top 0.5% of economists worldwide by IDEAS/RePEC; contributor to the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Scientific American, and The Economist (By Invitation) Biography The paper that put 47% of US jobs at risk of automation – co-authored at Oxford by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne in 2013 – reshaped the global policy debate and became one of the most cited works in social science that decade. Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors used its methodology. So did the World Bank and the Bank of England. The Economist later described Frey as an “accidental doom-monger”: his own reading of the evidence was considerably more nuanced than the headlines. That nuance became the subject of his first book. The Technology Trap (Princeton, 2019) – Financial Times Best Book of the Year and winner of Princeton’s Richard A. Lester Prize – argued that the real risk of automation is not that work disappears, but that organisations and governments mismanage the transition. Drawing on the Industrial Revolution and the Computer Revolution, Frey named the failure mode precisely: resistance to short-term disruption, he showed, tends to deny access to the long-term gains. His 2025 book How Progress Ends – shortlisted for the FT/Schroders Business Book of the Year Award – extends the framework to the question now central to board strategy: why do some organisations and nations sustain the capacity to benefit from new technology while others stagnate? Frey’s answer, built from 1,000 years of economic history spanning Song China to the present, identifies the balance between decentralised innovation and the institutional capacity to scale as the deciding factor. As Dieter Schwarz Associate Professor of AI & Work at Oxford’s Internet Institute and Director of the Future of Work Programme at the Oxford Martin School, Frey advises the G20, OECD, European Commission, and United Nations. His analysis appears in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, and Scientific American. IDEAS/RePEC ranks him in the top 0.5% of economists worldwide. Key speaking topics Automation, AI, and labour market transformation The technology trap: historical lessons for the age of AI Why progress stalls – and what organisations and nations can do about it Workforce strategy in an era of technological disruption AI, inequality, and the distribution of economic gains Industrial policy and the geopolitics of technological leadership The economics of innovation: decentralisation, scaling, and competitive advantage Ideal for Boards and C-suite leadership teams navigating AI investment decisions and long-term workforce strategy CHROs and transformation leads developing evidence-based frameworks for workforce planning under conditions of technological disruption Policy and public affairs functions in sectors facing direct automation exposure – financial services, professional services, manufacturing Strategy and scenario planning teams in organisations with significant AI or digital transformation programmes Audience outcomes A historically grounded framework for distinguishing automation that displaces workers from technology that expands what workers can do – and why the difference matters for investment decisions A working understanding of the “technology trap” mechanism: how to identify institutional resistance before it becomes strategically costly Concrete criteria for evaluating workforce and AI investment decisions against historical patterns of disruption, transition, and recovery Insight into the macro-economic and geopolitical conditions shaping AI adoption – including what the US-China competition for technological leadership means for business strategy Sharper language and stronger evidence for board-level conversations about AI, workforce, and long-term competitive positioning

Why organisations work with Bruce Dickinson The “customers into fans” argument is drawn from 40 years of evidence. Iron Maiden has sold over 90 million albums across four decades without a conventional radio or streaming strategy. Dickinson frames this as the product of an operating philosophy – not a marketing achievement – giving commercial leaders a different lens on audience loyalty that few speakers can offer with this level of firsthand verification. His aviation credentials are professional-grade, not supplementary. Dickinson holds an Airline Transport Pilot’s Licence and flew commercial Boeing 757s for Astraeus Airlines. He then founded, lost money on, restructured, and turned around a real aviation MRO business to profitability. His commentary on risk as a managed discipline – rather than a constraint to minimise – comes from the cockpit and the boardroom, not a consulting brief. His memoir is a documented argument, not a celebrity anecdote. What Does This Button Do?, published by HarperCollins and No.1 on the Sunday Times Bestseller list, is a first-person account of running two demanding professional careers simultaneously. It gives audiences and event organisers a readable reference point for the claims he makes on stage. He has lived a business turnaround, not studied one. Caerdav went from pre-tax losses of over £2 million to generating £400,000 net monthly profit after a restructure Dickinson led personally. This gives him direct credibility in conversations about founding companies, operational failure, and the discipline required to reverse course. His Honorary Group Captaincy of 601 Squadron RAF, his ranking as no.7 in Britain at fencing, and his eight-year BBC Radio 6 Music presenting career are all independently verifiable. They give the polymath narrative an evidential foundation that separates him from lifestyle speakers using the same positioning without the credentials to support it. Biography highlights Lead vocalist of Iron Maiden since 1981; the band has sold over 90 million albums and performed more than 2,000 shows worldwide Airline Transport Pilot’s Licence holder; former Boeing 757 captain for Astraeus Airlines; personally piloted Iron Maiden’s Boeing 747-400 Ed Force One on multiple world tours Founder and Chairman of Caerdav (formerly Cardiff Aviation Ltd., founded 2012), a certified aircraft maintenance, repair, overhaul and pilot training company at St Athan, South Wales, operating with EASA, FAA and UK CAA approvals Author of What Does This Button Do? (HarperCollins, 2017) – No.1 Sunday Times Bestselling Autobiography and New York Times Bestseller Honorary Group Captain, 601 (County of London) Squadron, Royal Air Force – appointed January 2020 Ranked no.7 in Great Britain at fencing (foil); named a living polymath by Intelligent Life magazine (2009) BBC Radio 6 Music presenter, 2002–2010 Biography Building a global fanbase and selling over 90 million records across four decades – without conventional radio airplay – looks like a creative achievement. Bruce Dickinson frames it differently: as the outcome of an operating philosophy applied consistently, in which giving an audience something they cannot get elsewhere becomes a structural principle rather than a marketing ambition. Dickinson is Iron Maiden’s lead vocalist, a role he has held since 1981. He is also a qualified commercial airline captain holding an Airline Transport Pilot’s Licence, who flew Boeing 757s for Astraeus Airlines and piloted the band’s Boeing 747-400, Ed Force One, on multiple world tours. When Astraeus collapsed in 2011, he founded Cardiff Aviation – later restructured as Caerdav – a certified aircraft maintenance, repair, overhaul and pilot training company operating from a former RAF base in South Wales. Holding EASA, FAA and UK CAA approvals, the company now generates £400,000 net monthly profit after a turnaround Dickinson led personally following years of losses. His memoir, What Does This Button Do?, published by HarperCollins in 2017, reached No.1 on the Sunday Times Bestseller list and became a New York Times bestseller. It is a first-person account of running two demanding professional careers simultaneously – not a retrospective on fame, but a practical argument for how creative ambition and operational discipline coexist. The specific commercial lesson he draws from that experience – turning customers into fans, not merely buyers – is developed through Iron Maiden’s documented business model and translates directly to organisations trying to build durable audience commitment in any sector. Appointed Honorary Group Captain of 601 (County of London) Squadron RAF in 2020, ranked no.7 in Britain at fencing, and named a living polymath by Intelligent Life magazine in 2009, Dickinson brings to speaking engagements a range of firsthand disciplines that give his arguments about performance, precision and resilience direct evidential weight. Key speaking topics Turning customers into fans Entrepreneurship and business building Risk management and business turnaround Creative discipline in commercial performance Team cohesion under sustained pressure Corporate culture and long-duration performance Aviation and the travel industry Ideal for CEOs, commercial directors, and senior leadership teams working on customer loyalty and brand differentiation Entrepreneur and business founder audiences seeking firsthand perspective on building and restructuring real companies under pressure Marketing and brand strategy events where the relationship between internal culture and customer commitment is the central theme Aviation, travel, and logistics sector conferences Audience outcomes A reframed understanding of customer loyalty as an operating and cultural outcome rather than a marketing result Practical principles from commercial aviation and four decades of global touring enterprise applied directly to business discipline and team performance A firsthand account of business failure, restructuring, and turnaround drawn from Caerdav’s trajectory – directly applicable to leaders navigating operational difficulty Specific language and argument for what it means to build an audience that is genuinely committed rather than merely transactional A concrete case study in how creative ambition and operational rigour function as complementary rather than competing forces in high-performance organisations

Why organisations work with Brian Solis Operator and analyst in one seat. He runs ServiceNow’s global Innovation and Executive Briefing Centers while writing and researching, so the frameworks he presents are stress-tested on live enterprise engagements. Twenty-plus year track record naming shifts early. His “digital Darwinism” argument, developed across The End of Business as Usual, WTF and X, forecast customer-behaviour-led disruption before most boards were discussing it. Anthropological lens on AI and technology. He frames innovation around how customers and employees are actually behaving, not around the technology stack, which gives CX, marketing and transformation leaders usable material rather than vendor abstractions. Published thesis on the current executive question. Mindshift (Wiley, 2024) sets out how leaders move from reactive management to visionary direction in an AI-first operating environment, making him directly relevant to transformation and CEO agendas right now. Credible with both technology and customer experience audiences. His work is regularly cited across ServiceNow, Salesforce alumni networks, and customer-experience publications, which lets a single booking land with CIO, CMO and CXO communities. Biography highlights Head of Global Innovation, ServiceNow, overseeing Innovation and Executive Briefing Centers in Silicon Valley, New York, London, Paris, Sydney and Singapore. Former Global Innovation Evangelist, Salesforce. Former Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group, covering digital transformation, customer experience and disruption. Author of eight business books including Mindshift (Wiley, 2024), Lifescale (Wiley, 2019), X: The Experience When Business Meets Design, What’s the Future of Business and The End of Business as Usual. Ranked in Thinkers360 Top 50 Metaverse Thought Leaders, 2023. Hosts the (r)evolution video series and the WTF podcast, with a combined following of more than 700,000 across social platforms. Biography Digital transformation has been oversold and under-delivered inside most large enterprises. Programmes launch, dashboards light up, and the underlying operating model stays the same. Brian Solis has been writing about this gap for two decades and now sits inside it, as Head of Global Innovation at ServiceNow, running Innovation and Executive Briefing Centers across Silicon Valley, New York, London, Paris, Sydney and Singapore. His argument across eight books is consistent. Customer and employee behaviour shifts first, technology amplifies the shift, and organisations that treat innovation as a theatre of announcements get outrun by the ones that rewire how decisions are made. He captured this as “digital Darwinism” in The End of Business as Usual and sharpened it in X: The Experience When Business Meets Design and What’s the Future of Business. Mindshift, published by Wiley in October 2024, reframes the same question for an AI-first environment. It is aimed at executives who need to move their teams from reactive management to a visionary posture, spot trends early and convert them into prioritised innovation bets. Before ServiceNow, Solis was Global Innovation Evangelist at Salesforce and, before that, Principal Analyst at Altimeter Group, where he built much of the public research base he still draws on. He is one of the few voices in this space who operates at the intersection a senior buyer actually cares about: the analyst who names the shift, the author who frames it for a boardroom, and the operator responsible for making it real inside a global enterprise. Key speaking topics Digital transformation and digital Darwinism AI-era leadership and the mindshift from reactive to visionary Innovation strategy and the future of the enterprise Customer experience and behavioural change Disruption and emerging technology trends The future of work and employee experience Ideal for CEO, CIO, CDO and transformation leads responsible for enterprise-wide digital and AI strategy. CMO, Chief Customer Officer and CX leads rebuilding the customer model around new behaviour. Innovation, R&D and strategy leaders moving from proof-of-concept to operating-model change. Board and executive offsites framing the next three to five year technology and experience agenda. Audience outcomes A sharper read on which behavioural and technology shifts are material for their sector right now. A working definition of the difference between innovation theatre and innovation that changes the operating model. Language to argue internally for a move from reactive programmes to a visionary, trend-led agenda. A framework from Mindshift for spotting, prioritising and acting on emerging opportunities in an AI-first environment. Specific cues for aligning customer experience, employee experience and technology investment around the same thesis.

Why organisations work with Brian McBride He has actually done the job a board is usually asking about: scaled Amazon UK as CEO, then chaired ASOS and Trainline through listed-company growth. His view on digital disruption is operator-grade, not commentator-grade, grounded in P&L decisions inside a pure-play digital business. He has governed at national scale as President of the CBI and as Lead Non-Executive on the UK Ministry of Defence Board, which gives him a rare read on the business-state interface. He speaks the language of chairs, non-executives, and regulators fluently, because those are the roles he still holds. He is credible with both traditional boards and digital-native leadership teams, and comfortable translating between them. Biography highlights CEO of Amazon.co.uk, 2006-2011 Chairman of ASOS plc, 2012-2018 Current Chair of Trainline plc President of the Confederation of British Industry, 2022-2024 Lead Non-Executive Director, UK Ministry of Defence Board, 2020-2025 Independent non-Executive, KPMG UK Public Interest Committee Honorary Doctorate, University of Glasgow; Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Biography Amazon UK was still a challenger in the British market when Brian McBride took over as CEO in 2006. By the time he left in 2011, it had become the default reference point for what digital retail looked like in the UK, and the benchmark every high-street incumbent was measured against. That experience sits underneath almost everything he has done since. After Amazon he moved into chairing listed digital businesses. He chaired ASOS plc from 2012 to 2018 through its expansion as a global online fashion retailer, and he currently chairs Trainline plc, the UK-listed online rail and coach platform. Chairing digital-first companies at public-market scale is a narrow skill, and his track record in it is unusually deep. His governance reach runs well beyond any single company. He served as President of the CBI from 2022 to 2024, a period that included the most serious institutional crisis in the organisation’s recent history, and as Lead Non-Executive Director on the UK Ministry of Defence Board from 2020 to 2025. He is now an Independent non-Executive on KPMG UK’s Public Interest Committee and a senior adviser at Scottish Equity Partners. Earlier in his career he ran Dell’s UK and Northern Europe business and was Managing Director of T-Mobile UK, where he led the UK launch of 3G. Glasgow University awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2024 for services to business and philanthropy, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh elected him a Fellow in 2025. Key speaking topics Digital business leadership at scale E-commerce strategy and platform competition Board governance in listed digital companies Transformation inside traditional businesses Public and private sector leadership The UK business and policy environment Ideal for Chairs, CEOs and board directors of listed companies facing digital-era competition Executive teams inside traditional businesses running a transformation programme Senior leaders in public sector and government-adjacent institutions working with private sector partners CBI-level industry bodies, banks, professional services firms and large retailers Audience outcomes A working view of how a pure-play digital business actually makes decisions, from someone who ran one A sharper sense of what effective board governance looks like when the business model is still changing A clearer read on where leadership styles break down in the shift from traditional to digital-native operating models A grounded perspective on the UK business environment from a former CBI President Practical reference points from Amazon, ASOS and Trainline rather than abstract case studies

Why organisations work with Brian Cox His work on the ATLAS experiment at CERN places him inside the research that underlies quantum computing, particle detection, and the most advanced engineering challenges of our time – not adjacent to it. The Quantum Universe, Why Does E=mc2?, and Universal have collectively sold over a million copies: evidence that he can make abstract, rigorous science genuinely comprehensible to non-specialist audiences at scale. His Horizons tour set two Guinness World Records for science communication, reaching over 400,000 people across three continents – a proof of audience engagement no management consultant or futurist can match. As UN Champion for Space (appointed October 2025), he connects scientific frontier thinking directly to global governance, sustainability, and long-term civilisational risk – giving boards a frame that goes well beyond conventional technology briefings. He has presented at the World Economic Forum in Davos and in China, and headlined Infosecurity Europe 2025, demonstrating that his material holds up to scrutiny from the most demanding professional audiences. Biography highlights Professor of Particle Physics, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester; Royal Society Professor for Public Engagement in Science Member, ATLAS collaboration, CERN Large Hadron Collider; formerly co-spokesperson, FP420 R&D project at CERN (2004–2009) Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS); CBE for services to the promotion of science Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize (2012); Institute of Physics Kelvin Medal and Prize (2010); Royal Television Society Best Presenter (2011) Author of six popular science books with collective sales exceeding one million copies, including The Quantum Universe and Why Does E=mc2? Guinness World Records holder for live science touring; Horizons: A 21st Century Space Odyssey reached over 400,000 people across three continents Appointed UN Champion for Space by UNOOSA, October 2025 Presenter of multiple Peabody and BAFTA-recognised BBC series including Wonders of the Solar System, Wonders of the Universe, and The Planets Biography Brian Cox holds a chair in particle physics at the University of Manchester and works on the ATLAS experiment at CERN – the collaboration responsible for some of the most significant experimental results in the history of physics. That grounding in active research is what separates him from science communicators who translate the work of others. He is doing the work himself. His books – Why Does E=mc2?, The Quantum Universe, Universal: A Guide to the Cosmos – have collectively sold over a million copies. Each one takes a genuine problem in physics, works through it without condescension, and arrives at implications that reward careful attention. The Royal Society awarded him the Michael Faraday Prize for exactly this quality: rigorous science made genuinely accessible. Live, Cox operates at a scale no other scientist in the world matches. His Horizons tour set two Guinness World Records, reaching over 400,000 people across the UK, North America, Australia, and Europe. These are not public lectures; they are full arena productions using state-of-the-art visual technology, exploring quantum theory, black holes, the origin of life, and the nature of time. In October 2025, the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs designated him UN Champion for Space – recognising his ability to connect frontier physics to the practical challenges of global governance and sustainability. For boards and senior leadership teams, Cox offers something specific: a working physicist’s account of where the science actually is, what it makes possible, and what it rules out. At the World Economic Forum, at Infosecurity Europe, at TED – the audiences are demanding, and the material holds. The value is not inspiration in the abstract; it is the kind of rigorous, first-principles framing that improves the quality of strategic decisions. Key speaking topics Particle physics and the Large Hadron Collider Quantum mechanics and its practical implications Space technology and global infrastructure The origin and structure of the universe Scientific reasoning and evidence-based decision-making The future of space exploration and governance Science communication and public understanding of technology Ideal for Boards and C-suite teams seeking first-principles scientific context for technology strategy CTOs, CIOs, and transformation leads navigating quantum computing and advanced physics-derived technologies Global leadership summits and flagship corporate conferences requiring authoritative, high-profile keynote presence Organisations in aerospace, defence, energy, financial services, or cybersecurity where physical science is directly relevant to competitive strategy Audience outcomes A clearer mental model of what quantum mechanics, particle physics, and space science actually mean for the technologies being built now Confidence in reasoning about scientific uncertainty and frontier research – rather than deferring entirely to technical specialists A broader frame for long-term strategic thinking, grounded in the timescales and constraints of physical reality rather than market cycles Greater appreciation of evidence-based reasoning as a decision-making discipline, not just a scientific one Understanding of how space-based infrastructure and emerging physics-derived technologies intersect with sustainability, governance, and geopolitical risk

Why organisations work with Brad Templeton He has sat inside the Google self-driving car program as a strategy and technology consultant since 2010, giving him a read on the robotaxi industry that armchair analysts cannot match. He holds 21 patents across self-driving cars and telephony, so claims about what is technically possible come from someone who has actually built in the space. As founder of ClariNet in 1989, the first company built to do commercial business on the internet, he has a forty-year pattern of calling commercial shifts before the market sees them. Twenty years on the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, including a decade as Chairman, means he speaks credibly on the privacy, surveillance and civil-liberties consequences of AI and autonomy. He is a founding faculty member and Chair for Computing and Networks at Singularity University, where the brief is to frame exponential technology change for senior decision-makers. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of ClariNet Communications (1989), the first company established to conduct commercial activity over the internet. Chairman Emeritus of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Chairman from 2000 to 2010, board member since 1997. Founding faculty and Chair for Computing and Networks at Singularity University since 2009. Strategy and technology consultant on the Google self-driving car project, now Waymo, since 2010. Inventor on 21 patents in autonomous vehicles and telephony. Forbes contributor on robocars; publisher of Robocars.com and the long-running Brad Ideas blog. Board member of the Foresight Institute; plaintiff in Reno v. ACLU. Biography ClariNet went live in June 1989 and sold the first commercial subscription on the internet to Stanford University. The founder was Brad Templeton. That single contract is the practical birth of the dot-com economy, and it sets the pattern for the rest of his career: spotting the commercial shape of a technology before the market has language for it. Two decades later the same instinct took him into Google’s self-driving car program. Since 2010 he has consulted on strategy and technology for what is now Waymo, while also writing a reference column on the industry for Forbes and at Robocars.com. His 21 patents in autonomous vehicles and telephony make the commentary load-bearing; he is not narrating the robotaxi race from the outside. Alongside the commercial work, Templeton spent twenty years on the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a decade of that as Chairman, and was a named plaintiff in Reno v. ACLU, the Supreme Court case that struck down the Communications Decency Act. That record is why boards bring him in when the question shifts from “does the AI work” to “what fights over privacy, surveillance and liability will shape who gets to deploy it.” At Singularity University, where he has been Chair for Computing and Networks since the founding faculty, the job is translating exponential technology curves for executives who need to plan against them. Few speakers combine an operator record in autonomous vehicles, a founder’s claim on the commercial internet, and two decades of civil-liberties advocacy in the same briefing. Key speaking topics Autonomous vehicles and the robotaxi industry Exponential technology and Moore’s Law thinking Artificial intelligence deployment and strategy Privacy, surveillance and civil liberties in a connected economy Internet history and the pattern of commercial technology shifts Future of mobility and urban transportation Cybersecurity and technology policy Ideal for Boards and executive teams sizing investment or partnership decisions in autonomous vehicles, mobility or AI. CTOs and chief innovation officers testing internal assumptions about exponential technology timelines. General counsel, chief privacy officers and policy leads working through AI and surveillance exposure. Automotive, insurance, logistics and urban-planning leadership teams preparing for autonomous deployment. Audience outcomes A sharper read on which autonomous-vehicle timelines are grounded and which are vendor marketing. A working mental model for exponential technology curves and what they mean for planning horizons. Specific case material from inside the Google and Waymo programs that is hard to source elsewhere. A clearer view of the privacy, liability and civil-liberties questions that will shape AI and autonomy regulation. Named examples drawn from forty years of commercial internet history, used to pressure-test current assumptions.

Why organisations work with Bjarke Ingels His “hedonistic sustainability” concept – coined in a 2011 TED talk with over two million views – gives leadership teams a credible, named argument against the assumption that environmental ambition and commercial performance are in tension. The Yes Is More manifesto argues against the choice between bold vision and practical delivery; it is taught beyond architecture because the logic is genuinely transferable to any organisation navigating competing strategic demands. BIG’s project portfolio – CopenHill’s waste-to-energy plant with a public ski slope, the BIG U flood-defence park in Manhattan, the Google North Bayshore campus co-designed with Thomas Heatherwick – gives executive audiences proof that resolving sustainability and desirability through design produces outcomes superior to either goal pursued alone. He has spoken at the World Economic Forum, TED, WIRED, and 10 Downing Street, meaning his frameworks have already been stress-tested in front of heads of government, technology leaders, and senior executives. Teaching at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Rice runs alongside leading a 400-person practice with major projects on four continents – his arguments carry the authority of both the seminar room and the construction site. Biography highlights Founder and creative partner of BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), established 2006; offices in New York, London, and Copenhagen; team of 400+ Originator of “hedonistic sustainability,” introduced in a 2011 TED talk now viewed over two million times Author of Yes Is More: An Archicomic on Architectural Evolution (2009) and HOT TO COLD: An Odyssey of Architectural Adaptation Named to TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People (2016); WSJ Innovator of the Year in Architecture; Fast Company 100 Most Creative People in Business Awards include the Golden Lion at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2004), ULI Award for Excellence (2009), Danish Crown Prince’s Culture Prize (2011); Honorary Fellow of the AIA (2020) and RIBA (2015) Featured as opening subject of Netflix’s Abstract: The Art of Design; speaker at TED, the World Economic Forum, WIRED, and 10 Downing Street Has taught at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Rice Universities; honorary professor at the Royal Academy of Arts, School of Architecture, Copenhagen Biography CopenHill is a waste-to-energy plant in Copenhagen that doubles as a public ski slope, climbing wall, and rooftop hiking trail. It is not a compromise between environmental performance and civic amenity. It is Bjarke Ingels’ most cited demonstration of what he calls “hedonistic sustainability” – the argument that reducing environmental impact and improving how people experience their city are the same design challenge. In his 2011 TED talk, now viewed over two million times, Ingels introduced the concept and set out the logic. His manifesto Yes Is More pushed the argument further, proposing “pragmatic utopianism” as a design principle: the deliberate rejection of the choice between visionary ambition and commercial delivery. The book was written for architects. It is now taught in business and strategy contexts because the core argument is transferable. Ingels founded BIG in Copenhagen in 2006, following earlier work at OMA under Rem Koolhaas and the co-founding of PLOT with Julien De Smedt. The firm now operates from New York, London, and Copenhagen with more than 400 staff. Its projects range from the BIG U – Manhattan’s Hurricane Sandy flood-defence infrastructure, redesigned as a continuous public park – to Google’s North Bayshore campus, co-designed with Thomas Heatherwick, where workplace performance and environmental targets were treated as a single design brief. TIME Magazine named him one of the world’s 100 Most Influential People in 2016. He holds the WSJ Innovator of the Year award, Honorary Fellowships from the AIA and RIBA, and has spoken at the World Economic Forum and 10 Downing Street. He has taught at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Rice. Netflix’s Abstract: The Art of Design featured him as its opening subject. His discipline is architecture; his primary value to organisations is a framework for dissolving the trade-off between ambition and pragmatism. Key speaking topics Hedonistic sustainability and design-led climate action Pragmatic utopianism and innovation strategy Urban resilience and large-scale infrastructure design Architecture’s role in organisational and civic identity Creative leadership at scale The built environment and corporate space strategy Design thinking across disciplines Ideal for C-suite and executive leadership teams at real estate, infrastructure, and large-scale development organisations Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG leads seeking to reframe sustainability as a source of commercial advantage rather than compliance cost Corporate boards and transformation leads examining how built environment decisions affect organisational culture, talent, and long-term asset value Civic leaders and urban planners making large-scale public investment decisions Audience outcomes A named, transferable framework – “hedonistic sustainability” – for challenging the trade-off assumption in ESG, design, and innovation strategy conversations Concrete examples, drawn from BIG’s global project portfolio, of how resolving competing constraints through design produces outcomes that neither goal alone would generate A reframe of what “innovation” means in large-scale, long-horizon project environments where short-term pragmatism typically wins Greater confidence in presenting design ambition as a strategic argument rather than an aesthetic or cost preference Practical insight into building and leading a high-velocity creative organisation across multiple geographies and project scales

Why organisations work with Bill Taylor His central argument – that the most dangerous thing in a successful organisation is its own track record – gives leadership teams a precise, uncomfortable diagnosis, not a generic call to “innovate more.” Simply Brilliant provides a detailed, case-study-backed framework for achieving breakthrough performance in traditional and unglamorous fields, making it directly applicable to organisations outside tech and consumer markets. His research spans companies most strategy consultants never study – regional banks, industrial manufacturers, office cleaning businesses – which means his examples land with audiences tired of hearing about Apple and Amazon. His Mavericks at Work thesis – that the most successful competitors don’t try to out-execute rivals but redefine the terms of competition altogether – gives strategy teams a concrete alternative to benchmarking their way to mediocrity. As a former HBR editor and founding editor of a magazine that sold for $340 million, he brings practitioner credibility to arguments about how organisations actually change, not just how they should. Biography highlights Co-founder and founding editor, Fast Company, with Alan Webber; magazine sold for $340 million within six years of founding Former editor, Harvard Business Review Author of three books published by Portfolio/Penguin: Simply Brilliant (2016), Practically Radical, and Mavericks at Work Mavericks at Work: New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek bestseller; named “Business Book of the Year” by both The Economist and the Financial Times Simply Brilliant named “Best Strategy and Leadership Book of 2016” by 800CEORead Regular contributor to Harvard Business Review; former “Under New Management” columnist, New York Times Sunday Business; former columnist, The Guardian Graduate of Princeton University (BA) and MIT Sloan School of Management (MBA) Named “Champion of Workplace Learning and Performance” by the American Society for Training and Development, alongside past recipients Jack Welch and Fred Smith Biography Fast Company was built on a single provocation: that the rules of business competition were being rewritten, and most organisations were too comfortable to notice. Bill Taylor co-founded the magazine from borrowed office space in Harvard Square, and within six years it had sold for $340 million – at the time, the second-highest price ever paid for a single magazine in the United States. The argument that drove it has shaped his work ever since. Taylor’s three books – Mavericks at Work, Practically Radical, and Simply Brilliant – are each structured around the same core tension: why do organisations with genuine competitive advantages so often fail to sustain them? His answer, developed most fully in Simply Brilliant, is that expertise becomes a trap. The knowledge that produced past performance quietly closes off the thinking that would produce future performance. It is not disruption from outside that limits most organisations – it is the weight of their own accumulated success. What makes this argument useful in practice is where Taylor looks for evidence. His case studies are not drawn from Silicon Valley or the usual gallery of tech unicorns. They come from regional banks, industrial suppliers, auto dealerships, and office cleaning companies – settings where leaders have no option to blame their industry for mediocrity. Simply Brilliant was named the best strategy and leadership book of 2016 by 800CEORead. Mavericks at Work was named “Business Book of the Year” by both The Economist and the Financial Times. Taylor writes regularly for Harvard Business Review and held an editorial role there before Fast Company. His work is consistently focused on a single, testable question: what does it actually take for leaders to let go of what made them successful, and build something better? Key speaking topics Organisational innovation beyond technology Breaking the experience trap in established industries Competitive strategy and differentiation Culture as competitive advantage Leadership imagination and renewal Change management in traditional organisations Talent, engagement, and high-performance culture Ideal for CEOs and senior leadership teams in established, non-tech industries facing competitive reinvention Strategy and transformation leads planning large-scale organisational change programmes Executive conferences where the audience has heard the Silicon Valley playbook and needs a different frame CHROs and culture leads connecting people strategy to competitive performance Audience outcomes A named framework for diagnosing why expertise becomes an obstacle to growth – and what to do about it Case studies from non-tech, traditional industries that reframe what competitive reinvention looks like in their own sector Practical questions for testing whether their organisation’s current strategy is genuinely distinctive or competitively invisible A clearer sense of where leadership imagination, rather than market conditions, is the binding constraint on performance Language for talking to boards and leadership teams about transformation that doesn’t rely on disruption clichés