Innovation & Disruption

Why organisations work with Adam Cheyer He built the original Siri – not from a single insight but through more than a decade of AI research at SRI International – and then rebuilt the paradigm at Samsung and Airbnb. That depth of iteration, across platforms and at scale, is not replicated elsewhere on the speaking circuit. Four of his five ventures were acquired specifically for their AI technology, by Apple, Samsung, Airbnb, and Cognizant. The acquisitions validate not just the product but the engineering and commercial judgements behind it. After each acquisition, he stayed and led AI integration inside the acquiring organisation. Most founders don’t stay for that part – which is where AI strategies most commonly fail. He was ranked #2 on Voicebot.ai‘s Top Visionaries in Voice 2019 – behind Jeff Bezos and ahead of Sundar Pichai – while actively deploying conversational AI inside Samsung’s global platform. His foundation at SRI International as Chief Architect of CALO/PAL – the US government’s largest AI project, funded by DARPA – means his commercial instincts are grounded in the actual science of how intelligent systems work. Biography highlights Co-founder of Siri, Inc.; Director of Engineering, iPhone/iOS group, Apple – led AI and server-side development for Siri across more than 500 million devices Co-founder and VP R&D, Viv Labs, acquired by Samsung in 2016; Viv became the technical foundation for Samsung’s Bixby Chief Architect, CALO/PAL project, SRI International – the US government’s largest-funded AI research programme, funded by DARPA Co-founder and CEO, GamePlanner.AI, acquired by Airbnb (late 2023, est. ~$200M); VP AI Experience, Airbnb Founding member, Change.org; co-founder, Sentient Technologies (acquired by Cognizant) 60+ peer-reviewed publications; 50+ patents across AI, machine learning, distributed computing, and conversational systems Ranked #2, Voicebot.ai Top Visionaries in Voice 2019; 2024 Brandeis Alumni Achievement Award; TechCrunch Crunchies Award for Best Technology Achievement Scientific Advisory Board member, Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2) Biography Building an AI product that works in a controlled environment and scaling it to hundreds of millions of users are different engineering problems. Most organisations now committing to AI strategies have very few people in the room who have done the second – and fewer still who have done it multiple times, across different platforms, inside multiple large organisations. Adam Cheyer spent more than a decade at SRI International as Chief Architect of CALO/PAL – the US government’s largest AI research programme, funded by DARPA – before co-founding Siri, Inc. in 2007 with Dag Kittlaus and Tom Gruber. When Apple acquired the company in 2010, he stayed as Director of Engineering in the iPhone/iOS group, leading the AI and server-side development that put Siri on more than 500 million devices. He has repeated this cycle three more times. Viv Labs, which he co-founded and led as VP R&D, was acquired by Samsung in 2016 and became the technical foundation for Bixby. Sentient Technologies – an early large-scale distributed machine learning platform – was acquired by Cognizant. GamePlanner.AI was acquired by Airbnb in late 2023, where Cheyer served as VP AI Experience, applying generative AI to transform how users engage with the platform. He holds more than 50 patents and has authored more than 60 peer-reviewed publications in AI, machine learning, and conversational systems. He serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and received the 2024 Brandeis Alumni Achievement Award for contributions to technology entrepreneurship. Key speaking topics Conversational AI and intelligent personal assistants Generative AI and enterprise application AI product development and commercial scaling Technology entrepreneurship and venture building Human-computer interaction and intelligent interfaces Large-scale and distributed machine learning AI integration in consumer and enterprise platforms Ideal for Chief Technology Officers and product leadership teams navigating AI product strategy Innovation and R&D functions evaluating AI investment decisions Executive and board audiences assessing AI-enabled product development or acquisition C-suite leaders who need a practitioner’s account of where AI integration succeeds and where it fails Audience outcomes A practitioner’s account of how conversational and generative AI systems are designed, built, and scaled – distinct from analyst or vendor perspectives Understanding of the architectural and organisational decisions that determine whether AI products deliver at scale Direct insight into how Apple, Samsung, and Airbnb have each integrated acquired AI technology into their core platforms Lessons from founding, scaling, and exiting AI ventures across four separate acquisition cycles A grounded, evidence-based framework for assessing which AI capabilities are commercially transformational and which remain overstated

Why organisations work with Keith Ferrazzi He works at the level above leadership development: the operating system of the senior team itself, where most strategy execution actually breaks down. Twenty years of applied research at Ferrazzi Greenlight, including the dataset behind Never Lead Alone, gives him a defensible model of what the top 15 percent of teams do differently. He named and codified co-elevation, a vocabulary CEOs and CHROs already use to describe peer accountability without formal authority. Five New York Times bestsellers, including Never Eat Alone and Never Lead Alone (USA Today bestseller, Forbes Top 10 Business Books of 2024), give him reach and credibility with senior audiences before he walks on stage. His sessions are diagnostic rather than inspirational: leadership teams typically leave with a read on their own performance against the teamship shifts and a starting point for what to change. Biography highlights Founder and chairman of Ferrazzi Greenlight, a research and consulting firm focused on executive team performance and the future of work. Founder of the Radical Innovators Collaborative, a peer network of Fortune 500 CIOs and CHROs working inside live enterprise transformation. Author of five New York Times bestsellers, including Never Eat Alone, Leading Without Authority, Competing in the New World of Work, and Never Lead Alone. Never Lead Alone (HarperCollins, 2024): USA Today bestseller and one of Forbes’ Top 10 Business Books of 2024. Former Chief Marketing Officer of Deloitte and Starwood Hotels and Resorts. Named a Global Leader of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum. Regular contributor to Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fortune, Inc., and the Wall Street Journal. Biography Most senior teams are designed to report, not to collaborate. Members are accountable to the CEO, not to each other, and that asymmetry shows up the moment the organisation tries to move at speed. This is the problem Ferrazzi Greenlight has been studying for two decades, and it is the territory Keith Ferrazzi has made his own. The work began with relationships. Never Eat Alone, published in 2005, became a business classic by treating networking as a discipline of generosity rather than transaction. Three books later, the focus has shifted from individual influence to what happens between peers at the top of an organisation. Leading Without Authority introduced co-elevation as the mechanism. Never Lead Alone, a USA Today bestseller and a Forbes Top 10 Business Book of 2024, sets out ten specific shifts that distinguish the highest-performing teams in his research dataset. The same logic now sits behind the Radical Innovators Collaborative, a peer community Ferrazzi convenes for Fortune 500 CIOs and CHROs working through AI-driven transformation. The credibility behind that work is operational, not academic. Ferrazzi was Chief Marketing Officer of Deloitte and then of Starwood Hotels and Resorts, after Yale and Harvard Business School. He was named a Global Leader of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum and contributes regularly to Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fortune, and the Wall Street Journal. What he brings to a senior audience is not a talk on collaboration in the abstract. It is a diagnostic frame for the team in the room: where peer accountability is real, where it is theatre, and which of the teamship shifts would change the most about how the organisation actually executes. Key speaking topics Executive team performance Teamship and co-elevation Leading without authority Peer-to-peer accountability Future of work and radical adaptability Organisational collaboration across silos AI and the redesign of team operating models Ideal for CEOs and executive committees are rebuilding how the top team works together CHROs and chief people officers leading culture and leadership transformations Boards and senior leadership offsites focused on execution speed Transformation leads inside organisations, breaking down functional silos Audience outcomes A clear read on where their own senior team sits against the teamship shifts that distinguish the top performers in Ferrazzi’s research. Specific behaviours that move accountability from vertical to peer-to-peer without dismantling the reporting line. A working vocabulary of co-elevation that senior teams can use to call out unhelpful patterns in real time. A view of how AI-native ways of working are changing what a high-performing leadership team looks like.

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

Why organisations work with Patrick Kramer Few European voices speak from inside the technology they describe. Kramer carries multiple working implants and has implanted chips publicly on stage, which gives boards a concrete reference point for a debate that usually stays theoretical. Founder and CEO of Digiwell, one of Europe’s most visible commercial biohacking platforms, and founding member of VivoKey Technologies alongside Amal Graafstra. That puts him at the operating end of subdermal identity, not on the commentary side. Twenty years in IT and consulting, including IBM, gives him fluency in enterprise digital transformation language. The cyborg material lands in vocabulary boards already use. Sustained press presence in WIRED, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and PCWorld on under-the-skin technology, which signals he can carry a serious conversation with both technical and general audiences. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Digiwell – Upgrading Humans, founded 2014, Hamburg. Founding member, VivoKey Technologies, a subdermal identity and authentication platform. Twenty-plus years in international IT and consulting, including IBM. TEDxBucharest speaker, “Super-humans: interconnected cyborgs.” Featured in WIRED, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Computerworld, PCWorld, and Red Bull Media. Professional member of the German Speakers Association and the Global Speakers Federation. Biography Most enterprise debates about human augmentation never leave the slide deck. Patrick Kramer carries the technology under his skin and runs a company that fits it to other people. Through Digiwell, the Hamburg-based platform he founded in 2014, he has built one of Europe’s most visible commercial operations in subdermal NFC and RFID implants used for access, payment, identity, and medical data. The work sits at the edge of mainstream digital transformation, but it grew out of it. Twenty years in international IT and consulting, including a long period at IBM, gave him the enterprise vocabulary that most biohacking voices lack. As a founding member of VivoKey Technologies, the cryptographic identity platform launched with Amal Graafstra, he is also embedded in the engineering side of the field rather than only its public-facing narrative. His TEDxBucharest talk, “Super-humans: interconnected cyborgs,” set out the argument that has since been picked up by WIRED, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and PCWorld. Technology that started on the desk, then on the wrist, is now moving under the skin, and the implications for security, HR, healthcare, and product design are practical rather than speculative. For senior audiences, the value is in the translation. Kramer takes a category that boards tend to dismiss as fringe and connects it back to questions they already own: identity, authentication, employee health data, and the long arc of digital transformation as it stops being external to the human body. Key speaking topics Human augmentation and biohacking Subdermal identity and authentication Digital transformation and the Internet of Things Future of human-machine integration Longevity and performance enhancement Smart cities and connected environments Ethics of under-the-skin technology Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting digital identity, security, and authentication strategy CIOs, CTOs, and CDOs running enterprise digital transformation programmes HR and benefits leaders evaluating health, wellbeing, and workforce technology Innovation, R&D, and product teams in healthcare, financial services, and consumer technology Audience outcomes A working mental model for where biohacking and human augmentation fit inside an enterprise digital transformation roadmap A concrete view of subdermal identity and what it changes for authentication, payments, and access control Sharper vocabulary for the ethical, legal, and HR questions that arise when technology moves from the device to the body Specific examples from Digiwell and VivoKey of what is already operational, separated from what is still speculative

Why organisations work with Jerry Kaplan He has built the technology he now teaches. Two of his four startups went public, his team at GO Corporation produced the first commercial tablet operating system, and he co-founded the first internet auction site five months before eBay. He teaches the social and economic impact of AI at Stanford and writes the Oxford University Press primers that policymakers and boards actually cite. That sits between technical depth and decision-grade clarity. His framing of AI’s labour market consequences in Humans Need Not Apply was selected by The Economist as a top ten science and technology book of 2015, well before generative AI made the question urgent. He approaches AI as a question of competitive advantage, regulation, and capital allocation, not as a feature roadmap. Boards leave with a sharper view of what they are actually deciding. Biography highlights Adjunct Lecturer, Stanford University (Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy; Department of Computer Science) Fellow, Centre for Legal Informatics, Stanford Law School Founding CEO, GO Corporation (PenPoint OS, tablet computing) Co-founder, Onsale Inc., the first internet auction site (IPO 1997) Author, Generative Artificial Intelligence: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2024) and Humans Need Not Apply (Yale University Press, 2015), an Economist top ten book PhD in Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania; inventor on more than a dozen patents; over twenty peer-reviewed papers across ACM and IEEE journals Biography Tablet computing, online auctions, expert systems, and one of the first commercial personal information managers were all built in Silicon Valley before most people had heard of them. Kaplan was inside each of those stories. He was founding CEO of GO Corporation, the company whose PenPoint operating system anticipated the iPad by two decades, and he co-founded Onsale, the first internet auction site, five months before eBay. That operating history is the reason his current work on artificial intelligence is taken seriously by board-level audiences. He teaches the social and economic impact of AI at Stanford and is a Fellow at the Centre for Legal Informatics at Stanford Law School. The Oxford University Press primers he writes, including Generative Artificial Intelligence: What Everyone Needs to Know, are designed for readers who need to decide, not just to understand. His 2015 book Humans Need Not Apply, published by Yale University Press and named one of The Economist’s top ten science and technology books that year, argued that AI’s labour market effects would arrive faster than most institutions were preparing for. The argument has aged unusually well. It now reads as a brief on the question every executive committee is asking about generative systems. The combination of a working technologist, a serial founder with two IPOs, and a current Stanford lecturer is rare. Kaplan uses it to translate AI from a procurement conversation into a strategic one, and to tell senior audiences where they are exposed. Key speaking topics Generative AI and the executive agenda AI and the future of work AI regulation and public policy Competitive advantage in an AI-led economy Industry-specific AI disruption AI risks, dangers, and safety Silicon Valley entrepreneurship and innovation Ideal for Boards and executive committees weighing capital allocation to AI C-suite leaders setting AI strategy, governance, and workforce policy Policy and regulatory audiences confronting AI rules and competition Industry leadership offsites in financial services, technology, healthcare, and professional services Audience outcomes A working mental model of what generative AI can and cannot do, stripped of vendor framing A sharper read on where AI will reshape the workforce and on which timelines A view of the regulatory and geopolitical pressures shaping AI competition Specific questions a board should be asking management about its AI exposure A historical perspective on technology adoption cycles, from someone who has run several

Why organisations work with Richard van Hooijdonk He maps the intersection of multiple converging technologies – AI, robotics, quantum computing, biotech, autonomous systems – in a single strategic framework. Most technology speakers go deep on one domain; van Hooijdonk shows how these forces compound, which is where the strategic risk and opportunity actually sits. His material comes from an active research operation. Trendforce.one (Futurezone.ai) runs a permanent international research team, meaning his content reflects current technological trajectories rather than the publication date of a book or the half-life of a conference circuit. He speaks credibly across both commercial and institutional mandates. Clients range from Interpol, the European Commission, and NATO to Google, Deloitte, and Heineken – giving him a grounded view of how the same technology behaves under different regulatory, security, and commercial conditions. His RFID chip implants – used in daily life to open doors and operate his vehicle – are a verifiable, concrete expression of a research philosophy built on direct experience rather than observation. It is unusual, and it is documented. His Dutch-language bestseller De wereld van morgen and his multi-year recognition as the most sought-after futurist in the Netherlands demonstrate a sustained public credibility that extends well beyond the conference stage. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Trendforce.one / Futurezone.ai, a future intelligence agency with a permanent international research team tracking emerging and disruptive technologies Author of De wereld van morgen (The World of Tomorrow), a Dutch bestseller published by Bertram + De Leeuw Uitgevers (2017); author of 2,000+ articles and 60+ books, e-books, and whitepapers Delivered presentations to more than 600,000 attendees across 30+ countries since 2014 Clients include Google, Microsoft, IBM, Gartner, Interpol, NATO, the European Commission, PwC, Deloitte, Heineken, Unilever, and Nike Guest lecturer at Nyenrode University and Erasmus University Regular television contributor on RTL (RTL Late Night, RTL Boulevard, RTLZ) and former host of Mindshift on BNR Nieuwsradio Voted most sought-after trendwatcher and futurist in the Netherlands for multiple consecutive years from 2015 Biography Technology leaders have been warning organisations about AI and automation for years. What has changed is the simultaneity: AI, robotics, quantum computing, and biotech are not a sequence of challenges to address in turn – they are arriving together, and their combined effect on business models is harder to read than any single technology in isolation. Richard van Hooijdonk has built his practice around exactly this problem. His research base is institutional rather than individual. As founder and CEO of Trendforce.one – now operating as Futurezone.ai – he leads a permanent international research team that tracks emerging technologies across sectors, geographies, and regulatory environments. Where many futurists work from published sources and their own networks, van Hooijdonk’s content is generated from ongoing intelligence work. The material he brings to a board conversation reflects the current state of the field. His client base spans both sides of the public-private boundary. Organisations including Interpol, NATO, the European Commission, and Dutch Customs sit alongside Google, Deloitte, Heineken, and Samsung in his client history. That cross-sector exposure matters: the same autonomous system or generative AI application functions differently under a security mandate than under a commercial growth brief, and van Hooijdonk can articulate both. His public platform extends his research reach beyond the executive audience. De wereld van morgen (The World of Tomorrow), a Dutch-language bestseller, brought his frameworks to a wider readership. Regular appearances on RTL television and BNR Nieuwsradio – where he hosted the Mindshift programme – and guest lectureships at Nyenrode University and Erasmus University have established him as a sustained public voice on technological change, not simply a conference circuit presence. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and generative AI Robotics and autonomous systems Quantum computing and frontier technologies Technology-driven sector transformation The organisation of the future Cybercrime, security, and technology-enabled risk The future of work and human-machine collaboration Ideal for Boards and executive leadership teams making technology investment decisions with long strategic horizons Chief Digital Officers, Chief Technology Officers, and Chief Innovation Officers Strategy and innovation functions within large enterprises navigating multi-technology disruption Public sector, government, and law enforcement organisations managing the security and governance implications of emerging technology Audience outcomes A framework for assessing multiple converging technologies simultaneously, rather than evaluating each in isolation Sector-specific perspective on how AI, robotics, and adjacent technologies will alter competitive dynamics in their industry Practical orientation on where to begin with AI adoption – which processes are immediately affected, and how to sequence the transition Awareness of the security and governance risks created by emerging technologies, including AI-enabled crime and deepfakes Strategic clarity on the leadership behaviours and organisational structures required to adapt continuously, not reactively

Why organisations work with Matthew Luhn He spent more than 20 years inside Pixar’s story room, working on Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, Up and Ratatouille, so the principles he teaches are the ones that actually shipped some of the most commercially successful films ever made. His book The Best Story Wins (Morgan James, 2018) gives buyers a named, documented methodology, not a generic storytelling pitch. Teams leave with a structure they can apply to a keynote, a sales call, or a brand campaign. He is one of very few speakers who has been inside a working creative culture at scale, and can speak credibly to how Pixar’s Braintrust process produces honest creative feedback without breaking trust. His client list on this material includes Apple, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Capital One, Procter and Gamble, Sony and Target, which signals that senior brand, marketing and innovation leaders are the audience he is built for. He treats storytelling as a commercial competency, not a soft skill. The work is aimed at sharper messaging, stronger brand recall, and better internal communication of strategy. Biography highlights Story artist and story supervisor at Pixar Animation Studios across more than two decades, with credits on Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, Cars, Ratatouille, Up, Toy Story 3 and Monsters University. One of the original 12 animators hired on the first Toy Story film in 1995. Youngest animator hired on The Simpsons at age 19, with credits on six 1992 episodes including Kamp Krusty and Lisa’s Pony. Author of The Best Story Wins: How to Leverage Hollywood Storytelling in Business and Beyond, Morgan James Publishing, 2018. TEDx speaker (TEDxUCSB), and corporate keynote speaker for Apple, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Capital One, Procter and Gamble, Sony, Target, Vrbo, Adidas and Lego. Trained at the California Institute of the Arts character animation program; BFA from the Academy of Art University. Biography Pixar built one of the most reliable creative engines in modern business by treating story as a discipline, not a talent. Inside that engine sat a small group of story artists whose job was to find, in every film, the emotional truth a global audience would respond to. Matthew Luhn was one of them, across more than 20 years and films including Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, Up and Ratatouille. That work began early. He was the youngest animator hired on The Simpsons at 19, then joined Pixar in 1995 as one of the first 12 animators on Toy Story. He moved into the story room for Toy Story 2 and stayed there, eventually as story supervisor, through some of the most commercially successful animated films ever made. The carry-over to business is direct. The same questions a story artist asks about a film, what does the audience need to feel, what is the change, what is the one thing they should remember, are the questions a leader should be asking about a strategy launch, a sales pitch or a brand campaign. His book, The Best Story Wins (Morgan James, 2018), turns those questions into a working methodology. Buyers tend to find him through a specific tension. Their messages are accurate but not memorable. Their brand is recognised but not loved. Their internal communications inform but do not move people. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Capital One, Procter and Gamble, Sony and Target have used his work to address those gaps. Key speaking topics Business storytelling Brand narrative and customer engagement Creative culture and the Pixar Braintrust process Innovation and creative differentiation Leadership communication Sales and pitch storytelling Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and content leaders rebuilding how the company shows up to customers. Innovation leads and product organisations that need to make new ideas land internally and externally. Sales leadership and revenue teams sharpening pitch craft and customer-facing narrative. Internal communications and HR leaders running large town halls, change programmes or culture launches. Audience outcomes A working structure for building a story around any business message, drawn from the Pixar story process. Sharper sense of what makes a brand or product narrative memorable rather than merely accurate. Tools for giving and receiving honest creative feedback, modelled on the Pixar Braintrust. A clearer separation between information delivery and persuasion, applied to keynotes, pitches and internal comms. Specific, repeatable techniques the team can apply to the next campaign, all-hands or customer presentation.

Why organisations work with Frits van Paasschen Two Fortune 500 CEO seats, Coors Brewing and Starwood Hotels and Resorts, give him a perspective most disruption speakers do not have: he has actually run the kind of company being disrupted, with shareholders, a board, and a quarter to report. Author of The Disruptors’ Feast, a book built from travel to more than 100 countries and interviews with operators rather than academics, which gives board conversations a concrete evidence base rather than a theoretical one. Still sits inside the rooms he advises. Current directorships at Amadeus, Williams-Sonoma, dsm-firmenich, and Sonder mean his view of governance under disruption is current, not retrospective. Credible on the international dimension in a way US-centric speakers are not. Dutch-American, ran Nike’s EMEA business out of the Netherlands, speaks five languages, led Starwood during its China expansion. A Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute fellowship and a Harvard MBA Teaching Fellowship in Economics signal the same thing his book does: he treats the CEO job as an intellectual problem, not a performance. Biography highlights President and CEO, Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, 2007 to 2015 President and CEO, Coors Brewing Company, 2005 to 2007 Corporate Vice President and General Manager, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Nike Author, The Disruptors’ Feast: How to Avoid Being Devoured in Today’s Rapidly Changing Global Economy Current directorships at Amadeus IT Group, Williams-Sonoma (Chair, Audit and Finance Committee), dsm-firmenich, and Sonder Holdings Fellow, Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute; MBA, Harvard Business School; BA Economics and Biology, Amherst College Biography Starwood Hotels and Resorts was acquired by Marriott in 2016. In the years immediately before that, the company was navigating Airbnb, the rise of China as its fastest-growing market, a mobile-first guest, and an activist investor. Frits van Paasschen ran it through most of that period, from 2007 to 2015, having arrived from the CEO seat at Coors Brewing and, before that, Nike’s EMEA business. Three different consumer industries, three different disruption stories, one operator. That operating lineage is what makes his view on disruption unusual. The Disruptors’ Feast, his 2017 book, is not a consultant’s map of “the future of” anything. It is reporting, drawn from more than 100 countries he has worked in or travelled to, on how the combination of connectivity, demographic shift, and capital flows actually lands inside companies. The argument is that most incumbents do not lose to a single disruptor; they lose to the compounding of several forces they treated as separate problems. He remains inside the governance conversation rather than outside commentating on it. He chairs the Audit and Finance Committee at Williams-Sonoma, sits on the boards of Amadeus, dsm-firmenich, and Sonder, and recently completed a two-year fellowship at the Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute. That combination matters for a speaking audience of directors and C-suite leaders: when he talks about how a board should read a strategic threat or a management succession under pressure, he is describing the seat he is currently in. The value for a serious leadership audience is not the disruption taxonomy. It is watching a former public-company CEO think out loud about the decisions he got right, the ones he did not, and what a director should actually be asking when the operating model starts to strain. Key speaking topics Leadership under disruption Global strategy and international expansion Board governance in volatile markets Consumer and hospitality business transformation CEO decision-making and accountability Cross-cultural leadership of global organisations Ideal for Boards and non-executive directors working through strategic threats to the core business CEO and C-suite offsites where the agenda is how to lead an incumbent through sustained disruption Global consumer, retail, hospitality, and travel-industry leadership audiences Senior strategy, transformation, and corporate development teams inside multinationals Audience outcomes A sharper read on which disruptive forces compound inside an incumbent and which are noise A working vocabulary for how boards and CEOs should talk about risk, governance, and pace of change together rather than separately Specific, named examples from Starwood, Coors, Nike, and the companies he now sits on the boards of, rather than generic case studies A more honest framework for what a global leadership role actually requires, from someone who has run one on three continents

Why organisations work with Stéphane J.G. Girod Co-author of Resetting Management (Kogan Page, 2021), shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2022 in Change & Sustainability, with diagnostic tools tested against the agility journeys of LEGO, General Electric, LVMH and ING. Co-edited the Summer 2023 California Management Review special issue on business agility with Julian Birkinshaw of London Business School and Christiane Prange, placing him at the academic centre of how agility is studied and taught. Directs IMD’s Luxury 2050 initiative and the Reinventing Luxury Lab, with named C-suite client work at Richemont, La Prairie, Cartier, PUIG, Mazda and Telenor. His Harvard Business Review article “Restructure or Reconfigure?” (with Samina Karim of Northeastern) gives executives the working distinction that one in three reorganisations get wrong: when to change the underlying structure and when only to recombine units within it. Biography highlights Professor of Strategy and Organizational Innovation at IMD Business School, Lausanne. Co-author, Resetting Management: Thrive with Agility in the Age of Uncertainty (Kogan Page, 2021); shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2022 in Change & Sustainability. Co-editor of the Summer 2023 California Management Review special issue on business agility, with Julian Birkinshaw and Christiane Prange. Forbes columnist on innovation and transformation in luxury industries. Research published in Harvard Business Review, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal and Long Range Planning. DPhil in Strategic Management, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford; MBA, Aalto University; speaks seven languages. Forthcoming with Wiley: Purposeful Luxury, on positive-impact sustainability strategies in luxury industries. Member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Entertainment and Lifestyle Economy, 2025 to 2026. Biography Most large organisations are not built for the speed at which their markets now change. Strategy cycles run on multi-year horizons. Org charts assume stable competitive advantage. Both premises are under sustained strain in consumer goods, banking, retail and luxury. Stéphane Girod has spent his academic career on the diagnostic question this raises: when planning fails, what replaces it? His book Resetting Management, co-authored with Martin Králik and shortlisted for the 2022 Business Book Awards in Change & Sustainability, sets out a framework for business agility tested against case studies of LEGO, General Electric, LVMH and ING. Agility, in his account, lives at three distinct levels: strategic, organisational, and leadership. Most companies confuse one for another. His base is IMD, where he is Professor of Strategy and Organizational Innovation, leads the Luxury 2050 initiative, and directs the Reinventing Luxury Lab. He works directly with executive teams at Richemont, La Prairie, Cartier, PUIG, Mazda and Telenor on strategy and transformation. His sectoral focus on luxury, retail and consumer goods places him close to the industries where the agility question has become most urgent, where consumer behaviour, digital channels and sustainability pressure are now moving faster than strategic planning can absorb. His research has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal and Long Range Planning. With Samina Karim of Northeastern University, his 2017 HBR article “Restructure or Reconfigure?” gave executives a working distinction between two organisational change strategies that produce very different financial results. He co-edited the Summer 2023 California Management Review special issue on business agility with Julian Birkinshaw of London Business School and Christiane Prange. Girod holds a DPhil from Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, and speaks seven languages. He writes a Forbes column on innovation and transformation in luxury industries. His forthcoming book with Wiley, Purposeful Luxury, addresses how luxury houses move sustainability from brand narrative into operating substance. Key speaking topics Business agility in established organisations Strategy under uncertainty Organisational design and reconfiguration Digital execution in large companies Innovation and disruption in the luxury sector Sustainability strategy in luxury and consumer goods Leading large-scale transformation Ideal for Executive teams in luxury, consumer goods, retail and banking facing structural disruption Chief strategy officers and transformation leads designing the next planning cycle Boards of luxury and premium brands navigating polarisation, sustainability pressure and shifts in the Chinese market C-suites running a major reorganisation who need to choose between restructuring and reconfiguring Audience outcomes A working distinction between strategic, organisational and leadership agility, with a diagnostic for which one their company needs first A test for whether the next reorganisation should be a restructure or a reconfiguration, and what each implies financially Specific examples of how LEGO, ING, LVMH and General Electric have succeeded and failed at agility, with the lessons that travel across sectors A sector-specific read on how luxury and consumer-goods incumbents are responding to digital channels, sustainability pressure and shifts in the Chinese market

Why organisations work with Maher Mezher He holds a patent on the Innovators Process, a four-phase method filed across multiple jurisdictions, and uses it as the operating system inside the workshops he runs. His credibility is built on shipped products, not models on paper. The Fertility Loan he created in retail banking is a teaching case in Philip Kotler’s Principles of Marketing. He works in the languages and industries where innovation is hardest to land: regulated banking, telecom and pharma across the Middle East and Europe. He brings a tool stack, not just a talk. The Innovators Tool app, Innovators Habits and Become an INNOVATOR methodology give teams something to use the day after the keynote. He sits inside the regional innovation infrastructure, including Georgetown University in Qatar’s executive education and Qatar Foundation’s Stars of Science programme. Biography highlights Founder of Innovators League, a consulting and training firm focused on installing innovation capability inside large organisations. Inventor of the Innovators Process, a four-phase innovation method protected by patent filings. Creator of the Innovators Tool, an app for guiding teams from idea to commercial concept. Faculty for Leading Change through Innovation at Georgetown University in Qatar Executive Education. Mentor at Stars of Science, the Qatar Foundation pan-Arab innovation programme. Originator of the Fertility Loan, a retail banking product cited as a case study in Philip Kotler’s Principles of Marketing. Biography Most innovation programmes fail at the same point. Ideas are generated, pilots are funded, and then the work stalls between the lab and the line. Maher Mezher built his career on closing that gap, first as a banker shipping products, then as the operator of a method designed to make innovation behave like a managed process. His starting move was the Fertility Loan, a retail banking product he created that ran into a real customer need rather than a marketing brief. It later appeared as a case in Philip Kotler’s Principles of Marketing, which is the kind of citation that signals practitioner credibility rather than academic positioning. From that base he built Innovators League, the consulting firm through which he now works with banks, telcos, pharma companies and government bodies. The intellectual core is the Innovators Process, a patented four-phase method, supported by the Innovators Tool app and the Become an INNOVATOR methodology used inside client workshops. He sits inside the region’s innovation infrastructure as much as he speaks at it: faculty for Georgetown University in Qatar’s executive education on leading change through innovation, and a mentor on Stars of Science, the Qatar Foundation programme that backs Arab inventors. That mix of patent holder, product builder and teacher is what large organisations book him for. Key speaking topics Structured innovation process Innovation capability inside regulated industries Digital leadership and AI for non-technical leaders Creative leadership under uncertainty Innovator habits and behaviour change Product and business model innovation Innovation in financial services Ideal for CEOs and innovation leads in banks, telcos and pharma planning a multi-year innovation programme Heads of product and transformation responsible for moving concepts to launch Executive education and leadership academies in the Middle East and Europe Government and sovereign innovation bodies building national capability Audience outcomes A working understanding of the four phases of the Innovators Process and where their organisation breaks them A vocabulary for separating ideas, concepts and innovations, so teams stop conflating activity with progress Concrete examples of innovations that shipped in regulated industries, with the trade-offs named A method and tool set leaders can put into rotation the week after the session A sharper read on which innovation behaviours to hire for and which to coach

Why organisations work with Karl Lillrud He speaks about AI from the seat of someone who has run digital commerce businesses since the late nineties and is currently building one. PodManager AI, his AI-driven podcast production platform, is shipping to paying customers as he speaks about AI to other operators. His work connects AI directly to revenue mechanics: pricing, conversion, retention, and customer acquisition, the parts of the P&L the C-suite is actually accountable for. Nine published books, including «You, Me and AI» and «AI, Your Second Brain: Evolve or Go Extinct», give leadership teams a shared language for the second-order effects of AI on work, governance, and customer trust, beyond the productivity headlines. Membership of the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council and recognition in Thinkers360’s AI thought-leader rankings signal that the perspective travels at board level, not just at the developer conference. The client footprint, including Volvo, Spotify, Klarna, H&M, AstraZeneca, and 3, gives him pattern recognition across regulated and consumer-facing businesses that few AI speakers can match. Biography highlights Founder of PodManager AI, an AI-driven podcast production platform he is currently building. Founder of Pricelizer, a Swedish e-commerce startup named to CNBC’s 20 hottest startups list in 2015. Author of nine books on AI and digital business, including «You, Me and AI» and «AI, Your Second Brain: Evolve or Go Extinct». Member of the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council since August 2024. Two-time TEDx speaker. Recognised across multiple years in Thinkers360’s AI thought-leader rankings and Global Gurus’ Top 30 Motivational Speakers list. Public engagement footprint includes Volvo, Spotify, Klarna, H&M, AstraZeneca, Qliro, 3, Tele2, and TUI. Biography Most AI keynote speakers have never run a checkout flow at scale. Karl Lillrud has. He has been building digital businesses since the late nineties, founded Pricelizer in 2013 to solve the abandoned-cart problem he kept hitting as an operator, and watched it land on CNBC’s 20 hottest startups list in 2015. He is now building PodManager AI, an AI-driven podcast production platform shipping to paying customers. That operator history, still in present tense, is the through-line for everything he says about artificial intelligence. His books reflect the same instinct. «You, Me and AI» treats the technology across 54 chapters covering work, creativity, education, governance, and the human-machine boundary, rather than as a productivity story. «AI, Your Second Brain: Evolve or Go Extinct» focuses on how leaders and their teams should actually integrate the tools day to day. The two sit inside a wider catalogue of nine published books, written for people who have to make decisions, not people studying the field. The institutional signals followed the work. Thinkers360 has recognised him across its AI thought-leader rankings. Global Gurus has placed him repeatedly in its Top 30 Motivational Speakers ranking. In August 2024 he joined the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council. Volvo, Spotify, Klarna, H&M, AstraZeneca, Qliro, and 3 sit on a public client list that runs across consumer retail, telecoms, and pharma. What a buyer is paying for is the translation layer between board ambition and operating reality. Lillrud has been the person trying to ship the next quarter’s numbers, and he is still in the chair, building an AI product while advising executives who have AI strategies they cannot yet execute. The argument lands because he has been on both sides of the table. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and the C-suite agenda AI in retail and consumer experience Digital commerce and customer acquisition Innovation and business model reinvention Leadership in technology-driven organisations AI ethics and governance Future of work in the AI era Ideal for Boards and executive committees moving from AI strategy approval to execution. CEOs, CMOs, and chief digital or commerce officers in retail, telecoms, and consumer brands. Innovation, transformation, and AI leads inside large enterprises building the operating model for AI. Founder and growth-stage leadership teams using AI as a commercial wedge. Audience outcomes A sharper read on which AI use cases move commercial metrics and which are theatre. A vocabulary for discussing AI’s second-order effects on customers, employees, and brand trust at board level. Concrete reference points from operators who have shipped AI inside consumer-facing businesses. A clearer view of where leadership attention should sit next versus where it can wait. Confidence to challenge vendor narratives and refocus internal AI portfolios on revenue impact.

Why organisations work with Tan Le A working neurotech CEO. EMOTIV’s brainwear is used by researchers and enterprises in over 140 countries and cited across more than 4,000 peer-reviewed studies. Her view of where neurotechnology meets business is built on shipped products and enterprise pilots with companies like Dell and JLL. A defined thesis for the next decade. Her book The NeuroGeneration sets out how brain science, AI, and consumer-grade neurotechnology are converging into a new generation of human-machine integration. Leadership audiences leave with a structured way to think about a domain most have only encountered through headlines. Credibility at the level boards take seriously. She holds a board seat at ASX-listed QBE Insurance Group, sits on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Neurotechnologies and Brain Science, and writes for the Forbes Technology Council. The cognitive workplace, made tangible. EMOTIV’s enterprise products measure attention and cognitive stress in everyday work settings. For leadership teams thinking about productivity and wellbeing as separate questions, she shows how cognitive measurement is starting to bring them together. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of EMOTIV, the Silicon Valley neurotechnology company whose EEG-based brain-computer interface technology is used in over 140 countries and validated across more than 4,000 peer-reviewed studies Author of The NeuroGeneration: The New Era in Brain Enhancement That Is Revolutionizing the Way We Think, Work, and Heal (BenBella/Simon & Schuster, 2020), endorsed by Klaus Schwab and David Eagleman Non-Executive Director of QBE Insurance Group, an ASX-listed multinational insurer with over 11,700 employees across more than 27 countries Member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Neurotechnologies and Brain Science, and a WEF Young Global Leader since 2009 Three-time TED speaker; her TEDxWomen talk “My Immigration Story” has been viewed more than 1.4 million times Recipient of the Industrial Research Institute Achievement Award (2018), Young Australian of the Year (1998), Fast Company Most Influential Women in Technology (2010), Forbes 50 Names You Need to Know (2011), and National Geographic Emerging Explorer (2013); her portrait is held in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery of Australia Biography Wireless EEG technology has crossed out of the research lab into everyday environments. Offices, classrooms, and consumer products are starting to use brain data in ways that were impossible a decade ago. EMOTIV has been one of the companies opening that path. Tan Le founded EMOTIV in 2011 and runs it today. The company’s headsets and earbuds turn brain activity into usable data for researchers and enterprises in more than 140 countries, with citations across over 4,000 peer-reviewed studies. Pilots with Dell and JLL apply that measurement to attention and cognitive stress in real workplace settings. Her book The NeuroGeneration (Simon & Schuster, 2020) traces how brain-computer interfaces, neural stimulation, and AI are converging into human-machine integration that reshapes work, healthcare, and learning. The book carries endorsements from Klaus Schwab and David Eagleman. Le sits on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Neurotechnologies and Brain Science. She also holds a board seat at ASX-listed QBE Insurance Group and writes for the Forbes Technology Council. That biographical arc adds to the institutional credibility. She arrived in Australia as a four-year-old refugee from Vietnam and was named Young Australian of the Year at 21. Today, she runs one of the most cited platforms in mobile EEG research. Her portrait sits in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery of Australia. Key speaking topics Brain-computer interfaces and neurotechnology The future of work and human-machine integration AI, automation, and cognitive augmentation Workplace wellbeing and cognitive performance Innovation and entrepreneurship in deep technology The ethics and governance of neurotechnology Reinvention and outsider thinking Ideal for Boards and CEOs setting long-range technology strategy in financial services, healthcare, technology, and consumer industries Chief Technology Officers and Chief Innovation Officers are thinking about the convergence of AI, neurotech, and human performance CHROs and Chief People Officers looking for substantive content on cognitive workplace design beyond the wellness category Founders and growth-stage entrepreneurs working at frontier-technology intersections Audience outcomes A clear-eyed view of which neurotechnology and brain-computer interface applications are operating today and which are still emerging The argument behind The NeuroGeneration, with concrete examples from enterprise pilots and clinical research A practical frame for how cognitive measurement is starting to change how leaders think about workplace productivity and wellbeing A view of the ethical and governance questions board-level decision-makers will face as neurotechnology moves into enterprise use Sharper questions to ask vendors and internal teams making claims about brain-related products