Innovation & Disruption

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

Why organisations work with Bill Fischer Primary-source access to Haier’s rendanheyi model, one of the most studied organisational experiments of the last two decades, with direct consulting engagement rather than secondary commentary. A working framework for turning a commodity business into a platform of autonomous micro-enterprises, grounded in Reinventing Giants and a decade of fieldwork inside Chinese and Western incumbents. Co-direction of IMD’s Driving Strategic Innovation programme with MIT Sloan gives him a live executive audience and a tested pedagogy, not only a book. A Thinkers50 Hall of Fame induction and a former CEIBS presidency signal range: he reads Chinese industrial strategy and Western corporate transformation from the inside of both. Two decades of work on creative teams, from Virtuoso Teams to The Idea Hunter, give him a practitioner language for how ideas actually get found and executed inside organisations. Biography highlights Professor Emeritus of Innovation Management at IMD, Lausanne. Inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame, 2019. Former President of China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), Shanghai, 1997-1999; recipient of Shanghai’s Silver Magnolia award. Co-founder and co-director of IMD’s Driving Strategic Innovation programme with MIT Sloan. Author of Reinventing Giants (Wiley, 2013), The Idea Hunter (Wiley, 2011), and Virtuoso Teams (FT/Prentice Hall, 2005). Forbes columnist, “The Ideas Business”; management innovation consultant to Haier Group. Biography Haier was a near-bankrupt Qingdao refrigerator maker when Fischer first studied it. Three decades later it is the world’s largest home appliance group and the most watched organisational experiment in global management, run as a platform of thousands of autonomous micro-enterprises. Fischer’s book Reinventing Giants documented how that happened, and he has advised the company on its rendanheyi model since. That work sits inside a longer argument. Fischer’s research treats innovation as a social problem, not a creativity problem. Virtuoso Teams looked at how small groups of strong talents produce original work under pressure. The Idea Hunter showed that good ideas are mostly found, not invented, and that the hunt is a disciplined practice. Reinventing Giants pushed the question up one level, to the architecture of the firm itself. His institutional track record reinforces the range. He held an endowed chair at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for more than two decades, led CEIBS in Shanghai at the point when it became China’s first serious global business school, and has been on the IMD faculty in Lausanne since 1990. With MIT Sloan he co-directs Driving Strategic Innovation, one of the longer-running senior executive programmes on the subject. For buyers, that means a speaker who can move from the CEO question, how do we stop strangling new businesses inside the old one, to the concrete organisational moves that Haier and a small number of other firms have actually made. Key speaking topics Business model innovation in mature incumbents Haier and the rendanheyi platform model Organisational design for innovation Creative teams and talent Corporate transformation in China Leadership of innovation programmes Ecosystems and micro-enterprise structures Ideal for CEOs and boards of large incumbents under pressure to generate new businesses from the core. Chief Strategy, Chief Innovation and Chief Transformation officers redesigning operating models. Senior leadership teams at industrial and consumer-goods firms competing against Chinese platform companies. Executive development audiences on innovation, strategy, and organisational design. Audience outcomes A clear read of what Haier actually did, beyond the slogans, and what parts travel to other firms. Sharper vocabulary for diagnosing why new ideas die inside the existing structure. A working model of the firm as a platform of micro-enterprises, with the trade-offs named. A practitioner frame for finding, developing and scaling ideas through small strong teams. Perspective on Chinese management practice from someone who has taught and led inside it.

Why organisations work with Bertrand Piccard The Solar Impulse Foundation’s portfolio of more than 1,000 independently certified, profitable environmental solutions gives organisations a verified, searchable evidence base – not an aspiration but a commercially assessed library of technologies available today, spanning energy, construction, mobility, agriculture, and industry. His “qualitative growth” framework – articulated in his book RÉALISTE – gives leaders a specific language for presenting sustainability to boards, investors, and governments as a source of economic development rather than a compliance cost. Few speakers can point to a named framework, a published thesis, and twenty years of testing it with heads of state and global executives. As a trained psychiatrist, Piccard applies behavioural insight to the structural reason sustainability arguments fail at decision-making level: not a lack of belief, but the absence of a financial narrative that aligns with existing incentive structures. His diagnosis is precise – and so is the alternative he offers. His advisory roles – Special Advisor to the European Commission and member of the European Investment Bank’s Climate and Environment Advisory Council – provide direct intelligence on the regulatory and financial frameworks that will shape corporate energy transition decisions this decade. The Solar Impulse round-the-world flight covered 43,000 km on commercially available solar technology alone. Organisations working through assumptions about what clean energy can realistically deliver hear this not as a metaphor but as an audit: the gap between what these technologies can do and what most boards believe they can do is not a future problem. Biography highlights Completed the first non-stop round-the-world balloon flight, Breitling Orbiter 3, with Brian Jones (1999) – the longest flight in aviation history by both distance and duration at that time Co-initiated and piloted Solar Impulse: the first solar-powered aircraft to circumnavigate the globe (2016, 43,000 km, zero fuel), with André Borschberg Founder and Chairman, Solar Impulse Foundation – has certified more than 1,000 clean and profitable environmental solutions via the Solar Impulse Efficient Solution Label UN Champions of the Earth Award (2012, UNEP); UN Goodwill Ambassador for the Environment; Special Advisor to the European Commission; member, European Investment Bank Climate and Environment Advisory Council Mungo Park Medal, Royal Scottish Geographical Society (2018); Harmon Trophy; FAI Gold Air Medal; holds 22 FAI world records in solar and electric aviation categories Author of RÉALISTE, The Greatest Adventure, and Changer d’Altitude; keynote speaker at the United Nations, World Economic Forum, TED, and major UN Climate Change Conferences Biography The argument Bertrand Piccard has advanced for two decades is specific: ecology and economy are not opposites. Clean technology is where the next generation of industrial value is being created. His Solar Impulse Foundation has certified more than 1,000 profitable environmental solutions – available today – to demonstrate that the energy transition is already a market, not a future aspiration. The Solar Impulse round-the-world flight – 43,000 km with zero fuel, completed with André Borschberg in 2016 – was designed to carry a message as much as a pilot. When Piccard landed in Abu Dhabi, the point was not the distance but the technology: every solar system and electric motor that had just circled the planet was commercially available. Most organisations had simply not been shown a coherent financial case for using it. That case is the work of the Solar Impulse Foundation, which Piccard founded and chairs. The Foundation’s Efficient Solution Label certifies technologies, products, and processes across energy, construction, mobility, agriculture, and industry – providing governments, corporations, and investors with a vetted evidence base for capital and policy decisions. His advisory roles extend this work directly into policy: he is Special Advisor to the European Commission and a member of the European Investment Bank’s Climate and Environment Advisory Council, positions that give him current intelligence on the regulatory environment shaping energy transition this decade. Trained as a psychiatrist, Piccard applies behavioural insight to the precise reason sustainability strategies fail at board level: the financial argument is missing. His book RÉALISTE sets out the case for his named framework – “qualitative growth” – as a practical alternative to both degrowth and unlimited consumption. The Climate Impulse project, a hydrogen-powered aircraft designed for a non-stop round-the-world flight, is his current proof-of-concept: another first, built to demonstrate what the next generation of clean technology can already do. Key speaking topics Clean technology and the commercial case for energy transition Qualitative growth: sustainability as an economic strategy The Solar Impulse Efficient Solution Label and cleantech certification Climate policy, regulation, and the role of business Mission-driven leadership and the explorer’s mindset The psychology of organisational change and resistance to transition Hydrogen and the future of sustainable aviation Ideal for Boards and C-suites working through the commercial and investment case for energy transition Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG leads under pressure to translate environmental commitments into language investors and boards will act on Government and policy audiences involved in clean energy planning, regulatory design, or climate target-setting Global executive leadership summits where the intersection of sustainability, growth strategy, and industrial policy is on the agenda Audience outcomes A reframed understanding of the sustainability-profitability relationship – with a specific named framework, “qualitative growth,” that can be used internally to move the conversation forward Awareness of a verified portfolio of more than 1,000 commercially available clean technologies, and how the Solar Impulse Efficient Solution Label works as a practical decision-making tool A clear diagnosis of why sustainability arguments typically fail at board and investment level – and what to substitute for the standard cost-and-compliance framing Insight into the European and global regulatory and financial architecture that will shape energy transition investment decisions over the next decade A more precise distinction between sustainability as an organisational cost and sustainability as a source of new industrial markets – presented with the proof points to make that argument to investors, regulators, and governments

Why organisations work with Ben Hammersley His practice of Cognitive Risk gives organisations a named framework for understanding how confusion, overload, and misinformation degrade leadership decisions, a problem most risk frameworks don’t address at all. He has advised at the intersection of technology and national security, Brookings Institution’s security and intelligence centre, the UK Foreign Office, the European Commission, giving him credibility with both commercial and governmental boards that few foresight voices can match. He coined the word “podcast” in 2004, not as a boast, but as evidence of a track record: he identified a structural shift in media before it had a name, and that discipline, spotting the real signal in a noisy environment, is the practical substance of what he sells to organisations. His BBC World News series on cybercrime, and his conflict reporting from Afghanistan and Beirut, give him a concrete understanding of how digital systems are weaponised, not a theoretical one. Boards dealing with cyber and geopolitical risk hear something different from a speaker who has actually operated in those environments. His 64 Things You Need to Know Now for Then makes an argument that is harder than it sounds: that most of what organisations are told about the future is wrong, and that the skill leaders actually need is better epistemic hygiene, not more prediction. Biography highlights Founder and Principal, Hammersley Futures, international strategic foresight consultancy advising corporations and government agencies Former UK Prime Minister’s Ambassador to East London Tech City (2011-13) Non-Resident Fellow, Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence, Brookings Institution; Fellow, Robert Schuman School, European University Institute, Florence; Member, European Commission High Level Expert Group on Media Freedom Associate Editor and Editor-at-Large, WIRED UK (at launch) Presenter, Cybercrimes with Ben Hammersley, six-part BBC World News series, distributed internationally on Netflix and Amazon Prime War correspondent for The Times and The Guardian, reporting from Afghanistan, Beirut, Mindanao, and Tokyo Widely credited with coining the term “podcast” (2004, The Guardian), named New Oxford American Dictionary Word of the Year 2005 Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) and Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (FRGS) Author, 64 Things You Need to Know Now for Then (2012) and Now for Then (2013) Biography When the UK government needed someone to represent its technology ambitions to the world, it appointed Ben Hammersley as Prime Minister’s Ambassador to Tech City. When the Brookings Institution wanted a practitioner-fellow in its Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence, it brought in the same person. That combination – tech credibility and security credibility, held simultaneously – is the foundation of his work. Hammersley spent years as a conflict journalist for The Times and The Guardian, reporting from Afghanistan, Beirut, and beyond. What he noticed in those environments, how non-state actors adopted innovation faster than the institutions opposing them, became the intellectual core of his foresight practice. The question he returned with wasn’t what technology can do. It was: who adopts it first, and why does that matter? That question runs through his BBC World News series on cybercrime, his advisory work with the European Commission and UK Foreign Office, and his named practice areas: Adaptive Futurism and Cognitive Risk. The latter is his most pointed argument – that the principal threat to organisational decision-making is not lack of information, but the inability to think clearly under conditions of noise, complexity, and deliberate manipulation. His book 64 Things You Need to Know Now for Then makes a pointed case: most organisational thinking about the future is based on misread signals and borrowed frameworks, and the antidote is a discipline, not a prediction. That argument is what Hammersley Futures exists to deliver, to boards, executive teams, and government agencies across Europe and North America. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and scenario planning Cognitive Risk and organisational decision-making under uncertainty Cybercrime and national security in the digital era Technology and geopolitical risk The future of work and institutional adaptation Digital misinformation and information warfare Innovation as discipline: separating signal from noise Ideal for Boards and C-suites navigating technology-driven geopolitical or security risk CISOs, risk officers, and national security-adjacent leadership teams Strategy and foresight functions inside large corporations or government bodies Senior leadership conferences where the audience needs to reconcile technology optimism with institutional caution Audience outcomes A named framework – Cognitive Risk – for understanding how confusion and misinformation degrade strategic decisions, and practical methods for defending against it Clearer ability to distinguish technologies and trends that carry real strategic weight from those that are simply loud A more structured approach to scenario planning that goes beyond trend extrapolation Grounded understanding of how digital systems are used as instruments of geopolitical and commercial conflict Stronger shared language across leadership teams for discussing long-term uncertainty without defaulting to hype or paralysis

Why organisations work with Beau Lotto His central argument is scientific, not motivational: the brain did not evolve to see the world accurately, it evolved to survive, which means every leader’s judgment is shaped by assumptions they cannot see. That insight reframes the innovation problem from a strategic failure to a perceptual one. Lab of Misfits designs Experiential Experiments: structured immersive experiences that demonstrably shift how audiences perceive in real time, not merely inform them about perception. An audience leaves having experienced a change in how they see, not having heard a case for why change is necessary. His awe research, conducted with Cirque du Soleil and published in peer-reviewed form, is a named organisational experiment demonstrating that specific emotional states measurably alter perception and behaviour, giving executives evidence-based ground for culture and creativity investment. The Blackawton Bees project, which produced the first peer-reviewed scientific paper authored by primary school children, published in the Royal Society’s Biology Letters, is proof that his participative science method changes how non-experts engage with uncertainty and discovery. Over 70 peer-reviewed articles give hard scientific grounding to conclusions that most innovation and leadership speakers make from anecdote or case study alone. Biography highlights PhD in Cellular and Molecular Developmental Neuroscience, University of Edinburgh Medical School; BSc in anatomy and physiology, UC Berkeley; postdoctoral fellow at Duke University Lecturer then Reader at University College London; currently Visiting Scholar at New York University Founder of Lab of Misfits (2001), described across multiple independent sources as the world’s first neuro-design studio; clients include Cirque du Soleil, Microsoft, and L’Oréal Author of Deviate: The Science of Seeing Differently (Hachette Books, 2017); co-author of Why We See What We Do with Duke neuroscientist Dale Purves Three mainstage TED talks; combined online viewership of over 1.6 million Led the Blackawton Bees project, which produced the first peer-reviewed scientific paper authored by primary school children (Royal Society’s Biology Letters, 2010) Featured in BBC Horizon; Lab of Misfits held a two-year public residency at London’s Science Museum (2010–2012) Biography When the brain processes information, it does not reflect the world. It predicts it. That is the central finding of Beau Lotto’s 25 years of research into human perception, and it has a direct organisational consequence: the assumptions leaders cannot see are the ones most reliably shaping their decisions. Lotto earned his PhD in Cellular and Molecular Developmental Neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh, completed postdoctoral work at Duke University under neuroscientist Dale Purves, and went on to become a Reader at University College London. His research, spanning more than 70 peer-reviewed articles, examines how the brain constructs reality at the cellular, computational, and perceptual levels, with the aim of understanding how biologically-inspired systems adapt to uncertainty. That research became the basis for Deviate: The Science of Seeing Differently (Hachette Books, 2017), which argues that the next significant innovation, in business as in science, is not a new technology but a new way of seeing. To put the thesis into practice, Lotto founded Lab of Misfits, the world’s first neuro-design studio, which has designed Experiential Experiments for organisations including Cirque du Soleil, Microsoft, and L’Oréal, and conducted peer-reviewed awe research with Cirque du Soleil that demonstrated measurable psychological and behavioural effects from specific experiential conditions. His three mainstage TED talks and a two-year residency at London’s Science Museum, where his Lottolab studio ran live public experiments in perception, establish a rare combination: a working scientist who has spent decades translating rigorous neuroscience into experiences that change how both individual leaders and large audiences actually perceive. For organisations serious about adaptation, that distinction matters. Key speaking topics Neuroscience of perception and decision-making Leading and adapting under uncertainty Perceptual constraints on innovation The science of awe and its organisational applications Assumptions, context, and behavioural change Experiential science and participative learning Creativity and the ecology of innovation Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership teams navigating significant strategic or cultural change Transformation and innovation leads looking for evidence-based frameworks rather than motivational framing CHROs and learning and development leaders building cultures of curiosity and adaptability Boards and strategy forums grappling with decision-making quality under conditions of complexity Audience outcomes A neuroscientific understanding of why assumptions – not a lack of information – are the primary constraint on leadership judgement and organisational change Direct, first-person experience of how perception can be altered, not just an explanation of why it matters A reframed understanding of uncertainty: why it is a precondition for discovery and adaptation, not simply a risk to be managed Concrete vocabulary for discussing perceptual bias and assumption in team and leadership contexts Awareness of how experiential design and structured questioning can expand the range of what an organisation is able to see

Why organisations work with Andrew Hessel He is one of a small group of people actually running a human-genome-scale project. Co-founding Genome Project-write with George Church and Jef Boeke gives him a direct line of sight into what will be technically and commercially real in the next ten years, not a commentator’s view. He has built companies in this space, not just written about it. Miikana Therapeutics, Pink Army Cooperative and Humane Genomics each tested a different commercial model for synthetic biology, which is what boards want when they are sizing their own exposure. His Autodesk work made the abstract concrete. The phiX174 genome his team synthesised sits in the Museum of Modern Art’s collection, which is a useful anchor for a room that has not yet understood that genomes can be printed. The Genesis Machine, co-authored with Amy Webb, gives leadership teams a shared reference point. It was named a New Yorker Best Book of 2022 and is already on the reading lists of strategy and R and D functions thinking through biotech platform bets. He speaks to risk as fluently as opportunity. Biosecurity, governance and dual-use are part of his core argument, which matters for regulated industries and for any board that has to sign off on a biology-forward strategy. Biography highlights Co-founder, Genome Project-write (GP-write), the international effort to engineer large genomes including the human genome, launched in 2016 with George Church, Jef Boeke and Nancy J. Kelley. Co-founder and President, Humane Genomics, a synthetic-virus cancer therapeutics company based in New York. Distinguished Researcher, Autodesk Bio/Nano Programmable Matter group, 2012 to 2018; led the synthesis of bacteriophage phiX174, a print of which entered the Museum of Modern Art’s collection. Founding faculty and former co-chair of Bioinformatics and Biotechnology, Singularity University. Co-author with Amy Webb of The Genesis Machine: Our Quest to Rewrite Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology (PublicAffairs, 2022), a New Yorker Best Book of 2022. AAAS-Lemelson Invention Ambassador, 2015; contributor to Scientific American. Biography Genome Project-write launched in 2016 with a plan to engineer genomes at the scale of the human genome. Hessel co-founded it with Harvard geneticist George Church, NYU’s Jef Boeke, and Nancy J. Kelley, after a period advocating that biology needed an equivalent to the software industry’s write phase, not just the read phase delivered by the original Human Genome Project. That framing runs through his career. As Distinguished Researcher at Autodesk from 2012 to 2018, he led the team that designed and printed the bacteriophage phiX174 genome in three weeks for roughly a thousand dollars, a demonstration that biology had become a design discipline. A copy of that print entered the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Before Autodesk he was founding faculty at Singularity University, where he built and co-chaired the Bioinformatics and Biotechnology track. He is also an operator. He co-founded Miikana Therapeutics in 2002, launched Pink Army Cooperative in 2009 as an open-source biotech experiment in personalised cancer therapy, and co-founded Humane Genomics in 2017 to develop synthetic oncolytic viruses, starting with a veterinary indication before moving to human oncology. Each company is a different bet on how synthetic biology gets to market. His 2022 book with futurist Amy Webb, The Genesis Machine, is the clearest articulation of his argument: synthetic biology is on the same kind of curve that digital computing was in the 1970s, with the same mix of platform opportunities and governance risks. The book was named a New Yorker Best Book of 2022 and is widely used by strategy teams trying to build a common vocabulary for biotech decisions. He was named an AAAS-Lemelson Invention Ambassador in 2015 and contributes to Scientific American. Key speaking topics Synthetic biology and the future of medicine Programmable genomes and the write phase of biotechnology Biosecurity and governance of engineering biology Personalised and precision cancer therapies Platform economics of bioengineering Convergence of AI, software and biology Ideal for Pharma, biotech and medtech boards sizing long-horizon platform bets CTOs, Chief Scientific Officers and heads of R and D in regulated industries Insurance, agriculture, food and materials leaders exposed to biological innovation Strategy and foresight teams building scenarios for the next decade of life sciences Audience outcomes A working model of synthetic biology as an industrial platform, not a research topic A clearer read on which biology-driven shifts are near-term commercial and which are still speculative Named examples of where programmable biology is already changing medicine, agriculture and materials A sharper view of the biosecurity and governance questions that sit alongside the commercial upside Language and reference points leadership teams can use to brief their own boards

Why organisations work with Andrew Grill He gives leadership teams a working vocabulary for AI, quantum, blockchain, and adjacent technologies, built on the 200+ concepts codified in “Digitally Curious” and tested on boards at Vodafone, Dell, Nestle, and the NHS. His engineering training and former IBM Global Managing Partner role mean technical claims hold up under scrutiny from a CTO, while the framing stays legible to a CFO or CHRO. Each session ends with the “Curious Five”, a concrete set of follow-up actions, so the room leaves with decisions to make rather than slides to forward. He has delivered five TEDx talks and advises at board level, so the same material scales from a 1,500-person keynote to a closed strategy session. Biography highlights Former Global Managing Partner, IBM Social Consulting Author, “Digitally Curious” (Wiley, 2024), international bestseller Host, the Digitally Curious Podcast, running since 2019 Named to the AI 100 UK List 2025 for responsible AI leadership Five TEDx talks delivered in London and Cardiff Non-Executive Director, Britain Australia Society Bachelor of Electronic Engineering plus two Master’s degrees (Engineering, MBA) Biography Every board now has AI on its agenda. Far fewer have a clear view of which decisions inside the business actually change because of it. Andrew Grill built his career in the gap between those two positions, first as a telecoms engineer at Optus and Telstra in Australia, then as Global Managing Partner in IBM’s Social Consulting practice, working with some of the largest enterprises in the world on how technology reshapes the way they operate. “Digitally Curious”, published by Wiley in 2024, is the distilled version of that experience. It walks executives through more than 200 technology concepts, from generative AI and quantum to blockchain and 5G, and ends every chapter with the Curious Five, a short set of concrete actions. The book reached international bestseller status and has become the spine of his keynote and advisory work. The podcast of the same name, running since 2019 with more than 60 interviews, gives him a working library of case material. That shows up in the room. Boards at Vodafone, Dell, Nestle, DHL, Sanofi, Bupa, and the NHS have brought him in for sessions that move from technology explanation to specific organisational choices, usually in the same hour. He has delivered five TEDx talks across London and Cardiff, appears regularly on BBC, Sky News, Channel 4, and in The Economist and Financial Times, and was named to the AI 100 UK List in 2025 for his work on responsible AI. The throughline is consistent: make the technology legible to the people who actually have to decide what to do about it. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and generative AI for business Digital transformation at board level Responsible AI and AI governance The future of work Emerging technology: quantum, blockchain, Web3 Customer experience in an AI-mediated economy Digital fluency for senior leaders Ideal for Boards and executive committees sequencing their AI strategy CIOs, CDOs, and transformation leads building internal buy-in for technology roadmaps CHROs and people leaders reshaping roles around AI-augmented work Industry conferences addressing senior commercial and technology audiences Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary across the executive team for AI, generative AI, and adjacent technologies A concrete short list of next actions, drawn from the Curious Five framework, tailored to the brief Sharper judgement on which vendor claims and use cases deserve investment and which do not A clearer view of where AI changes roles, processes, and customer experience inside their own organisation

Why organisations work with Andrés Oppenheimer His sector-by-sector analysis of automation’s job impact – developed through the same investigative methodology that produced a Pulitzer Prize – gives leadership teams a specific, evidence-built picture of workforce risk rather than a generalist technology forecast. “The Oppenheimer Report” column runs twice weekly across 60+ newspapers in the US and Latin America, meaning his read on political and economic shifts is drawn from live, primary reporting – not filtered retrospective analysis. He can address geopolitical risk and AI-driven workforce disruption in a single conversation, from a single credible position – organisations operating across the Americas do not need separate voices to cover both agendas. His television programme “Oppenheimer Presenta” on CNN en Español gives him direct, ongoing access to heads of state, finance ministers, and regional business leaders – a source network that shapes the quality and specificity of his intelligence. Nine books across four decades of reporting on Latin American competitiveness means his arguments carry empirical ballast: when he makes a forecast, he can point to the precedents it rests on. Biography highlights Latin America editor and syndicated foreign affairs columnist, The Miami Herald; “The Oppenheimer Report” appears twice weekly in 60+ US and international newspapers Anchor, “Oppenheimer Presenta,” CNN en Español – broadcast across 19+ countries in the US, Latin America and the Caribbean Co-winner, 1987 Pulitzer Prize, as part of the Miami Herald team that broke the Iran-Contra scandal Author of nine books, including The Robots Are Coming! (Vintage/Random House, 2019) and Innovate or Die! (2014), translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese Awards include: Ortega y Gasset Award (El País, 1993), Maria Moors Cabot Award (Columbia University, 1998), King of Spain Award (2001), Overseas Press Club Award (2002) Master’s degree in Journalism, Columbia University; freelance contributor to The New York Times, The Washington Post, BBC, and CBS’ 60 Minutes Biography The Americas produce a particular kind of strategic risk – one where political instability, trade volatility, and currency pressure arrive together and faster than most organisations expect. Andrés Oppenheimer has spent four decades reporting from inside that complexity, as Latin America editor and syndicated foreign affairs columnist for The Miami Herald, with “The Oppenheimer Report” appearing twice weekly in more than 60 newspapers across the US and internationally. His investigative credentials are substantive. He was part of the Miami Herald team awarded the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for uncovering the Iran-Contra affair – a grounding in primary-source journalism that has shaped every argument he has made since. His awards from El País (Ortega y Gasset, 1993), Columbia University (Maria Moors Cabot, 1998), and the Spanish news agency EFE (King of Spain Award, 2001) confirm a standing in the Spanish-speaking world that extends well beyond the conference circuit. His book The Robots Are Coming! (Vintage/Random House, 2019) applied that same investigative rigour to the future-of-work debate. Oppenheimer interviewed Oxford economists, Silicon Valley engineers, and sector specialists across Japan, South Korea, Israel, and Europe to build a profession-by-profession account of what automation is actually doing to legal work, banking, medicine, and manufacturing – and what the evidence says about whether new industries will replace what is being lost. The earlier Innovate or Die! (2014) set out his argument that innovation capacity is the defining variable in national competitiveness in the knowledge economy. As anchor of “Oppenheimer Presenta” on CNN en Español, he interviews heads of state, policymakers, and business leaders across a region that remains both strategically critical and consistently misread by organisations operating from outside it. That combination – live political intelligence, investigative depth, and a published analytical framework on automation and competitiveness – is what distinguishes his contribution in a board conversation on international risk. Key speaking topics Geopolitics and political risk across the Americas AI, automation, and the future of work Latin American economic trends and competitiveness Innovation strategy in the knowledge economy The impact of automation on professional sectors Global economic forecasting and scenario analysis Ideal for C-suite and board-level leaders in organisations with commercial exposure or operations across Latin America and the Americas Risk, strategy, and policy leads navigating geopolitical uncertainty in international markets Senior leadership teams examining the intersection of AI-driven workforce disruption and macroeconomic risk Global business conferences and economic forums seeking analytical depth on hemispheric political and technological change Audience outcomes A clearer framework for understanding how geopolitical risk and automation interact as compounding – not separate – forces on competitive strategy Sector-specific insight into which professional roles and industries face the earliest automation pressure, grounded in published research rather than prediction A more accurate and current picture of Latin American political and economic dynamics, drawn from active reporting rather than retrospective analysis A working understanding of why innovation capacity determines national and organisational competitiveness in the knowledge economy Confidence to brief boards and senior colleagues on the forces reshaping international markets – with the evidence and context to withstand scrutiny

Why organisations work with Alex Cicelsky His 2024 peer-reviewed paper in MRS Energy and Sustainability on Lightweight Straw and Clay Blocks – a self-supporting, carbon-sequestering insulation material fabricated from post-harvest crop residue – is one of the few published, field-tested proofs of concept for low-embodied-carbon construction, giving sustainability teams a citable alternative to conventional materials. He brings thirty years of active construction experience in extreme desert conditions from Kibbutz Lotan’s carbon-neutral EcoCampus: a monitored, measurable, functioning built environment – not a model, but a standing result. His work connects supply chain sustainability to concrete materials decisions: agricultural waste, natural binders, and thermal building performance are his research domain, not a framing device. For organisations whose sustainability commitments have not yet reached their built-environment procurement, he provides both the science of what is possible and a living demonstration of what has already been built. For sustainability education programmes, his curriculum experience spans the Green Apprenticeship at Kibbutz Lotan – a globally recognised programme that has trained hundreds of practitioners in ecological design, natural building, and permaculture across decades of continuous operation. Biography highlights Co-founder and core faculty member, Center for Creative Ecology, Kibbutz Lotan – a carbon-neutral EcoCampus in Israel’s Arava Valley desert and internationally recognised sustainability education centre Founding member, Kibbutz Lotan; member community of the Global Ecovillage Network PhD researcher, Department of Energy Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; BSc in Soil and Water Sciences and Environmental Quality in Agriculture, Hebrew University Faculty of Agriculture Published in MRS Energy and Sustainability (2024): peer-reviewed research on Lightweight Straw and Clay Blocks – carbon-sequestering construction insulation derived from post-harvest wheat straw Center for Creative Ecology: Israel Ministry of Environment Shield Award for Environmental Education (2000); Global Ecovillage Network Ecovillage Excellence Prize (2006) Lectures at universities and professional seminars internationally on ecological design, sustainable construction, and regenerative systems Biography Buildings carry two kinds of carbon footprint: what they consume after occupation, and what was spent building them. The second, larger figure is fixed at construction and is invisible to most operational sustainability programmes. Alex Cicelsky has spent three decades designing, constructing, and researching structures that address both – in one of the world’s most demanding climates. He is co-founder and core faculty of the Center for Creative Ecology at Kibbutz Lotan, a carbon-neutral desert community in Israel’s Arava Valley and a member of the Global Ecovillage Network. The Centre’s EcoCampus, designed and monitored by Cicelsky and his colleagues, operates as a live demonstration and research site. It has been recognised by the Israel Ministry of Environment and the Global Ecovillage Network for its contribution to environmental education, and its buildings have been the subject of formal post-occupancy research. That research has produced peer-reviewed results. A 2024 paper in MRS Energy and Sustainability – co-authored with colleagues at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, where Cicelsky holds a PhD research affiliation in the Department of Energy Engineering – documents the thermal and mechanical performance of Lightweight Straw and Clay Blocks (LSCBs). Fabricated from post-harvest wheat straw bound with clay, LSCBs are self-supporting and carbon-sequestering. In field tests against autoclaved aerated concrete and expanded polystyrene, they demonstrated superior thermal performance in extreme summer heat, with a two-hour thermal lag that reduced peak indoor temperatures measurably below ambient. The practical implication for any organisation with ESG commitments that extend to its built environment is direct: the materials exist, the performance has been independently measured, and the construction has been done. What Cicelsky brings to a serious sustainability conversation is not a proposition but a record. Key speaking topics Embodied carbon in the built environment Natural and low-carbon construction materials Ecological design and permaculture systems Carbon sequestration through agricultural-waste materials Regenerative community and ecovillage development Sustainable building in extreme climates ESG strategy and the built environment Ideal for Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG leads responsible for Scope 3 and built-environment carbon reporting Real estate, infrastructure, and facilities teams developing low-carbon construction or procurement strategies Sustainability education programmes at universities and professional bodies Organisations and communities developing regenerative development or ecovillage frameworks Audience outcomes A clear understanding of embodied carbon in construction and why it falls outside most current ESG reporting frameworks Awareness of peer-reviewed materials alternatives – including agricultural-waste insulation blocks – that reduce and sequester carbon in new construction A working reference point in the Kibbutz Lotan EcoCampus: a carbon-neutral built environment designed, constructed, and monitored over thirty years in an extreme desert climate Practical orientation to permaculture design as an organising framework for regenerative buildings and communities A sharper understanding of the gap between operational efficiency targets and whole-life carbon commitments – and what closing it requires at the procurement stage

Why organisations work with Adam Morgan Morgan coined the challenger brand concept in a named, commercially researched framework – the eight challenger credos in Eating the Big Fish – giving organisations a specific strategic vocabulary that has been in active use across global marketing for over two decades. His most recent research project, The Extraordinary Cost of Dull, quantifies in IPA-backed data what strategic sameness actually costs a business: dull communications require up to 2.6× the media spend of interesting ones to generate the same commercial result – a figure that reframes brand strategy as a finance conversation. Where most brand strategists stop at positioning, Morgan extends the argument to internal culture: The Pirate Inside addresses the behavioural and organisational conditions needed to sustain a challenger strategy over time. A Beautiful Constraint gives leadership teams a practical method for treating budgetary and structural limitations as strategic inputs rather than blockers – directly applicable to any growth brief operating under resource pressure. His work sits at the junction of brand strategy, marketing effectiveness, and organisational behaviour – a combination that is unusually rare in a single practitioner. Biography highlights Founder and Chair of eatbigfish, the international challenger brand consultancy Author of Eating the Big Fish (Wiley, 1999; 2nd ed. 2009) – international bestseller, translated into eight languages; coined the term “challenger brand” Author of The Pirate Inside (Wiley, 2004) and co-author of A Beautiful Constraint (2015, with Mark Barden) Former Joint European Planning Director, TBWA\Chiat\Day; TBWA clients included Apple, Absolut, and Sony PlayStation Co-creator of The Extraordinary Cost of Dull – multi-partner research with Peter Field, System1, the IPA, and Dr Karen Nelson-Field Speaker at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2023 and 2024 Host of the Let’s Make This More Interesting podcast (eatbigfish) Consultancy clients have included IKEA, Unilever, Lexus, and PepsiCo Biography Adam Morgan spent the formative years of his career at TBWA\Chiat\Day, the agency behind Apple’s relaunch, Absolut, and Sony PlayStation. When he left to found eatbigfish in 1997, his question was specific: how do brands with fewer resources than the market leader compete – and win? Eating the Big Fish, published in 1999, answered that question with a named framework: eight challenger credos drawn from research into forty brands that had grown rapidly against dominant incumbents. The book introduced the term “challenger brand” to a global marketing audience, became an international bestseller in eight languages, and established a body of research – The Challenger Project – that has continued to evolve through four further books and three decades of consultancy work. The most recent extension of that work is The Extraordinary Cost of Dull, a research collaboration with Peter Field, System1, the IPA, and Dr Karen Nelson-Field. Analysing IPA Effectiveness Databank data, the project quantifies what strategic sameness costs organisations at the P&L level: brands running dull communications need up to 2.6 times the media investment of those running interesting ones to achieve equivalent commercial returns. The finding moves brand strategy from a marketing conversation into a boardroom one. What makes Morgan’s perspective directly useful to senior leaders is the consistency of the underlying argument across all three registers – strategy (Eating the Big Fish), culture (The Pirate Inside), and resource constraint (A Beautiful Constraint). The thesis is the same in each case: ambition and specificity of point of view are not optional extras for challengers. They are the mechanism. Key speaking topics Challenger brand strategy Differentiation and market positioning Growth under resource constraint The commercial cost of strategic sameness Brand culture and internal challenger behaviour Marketing effectiveness and creative impact Constraint as competitive advantage Ideal for CMOs and marketing leadership teams responsible for brand growth and differentiation CEOs and strategy directors in organisations competing against dominant category incumbents CFOs and senior leadership teams seeking to connect brand investment to commercial return Brand and innovation teams operating under budget or resource pressure Audience outcomes A working definition of challenger strategy – and a clear way to assess whether it applies to their organisation’s current position Familiarity with the eight challenger credos as a practical diagnostic and planning tool A data-backed understanding of what strategic sameness costs in media spend terms, and how to use that argument internally A framework for identifying where organisational constraints can be reframed as strategic advantages rather than blockers Specific behavioural markers of a challenger culture – and how to diagnose whether their organisation has them