Innovation & Disruption

Why organisations work with Randi Zuckerberg She created Facebook Live – a verifiable, specific product decision made inside one of the most consequential platform companies in history – giving her first-hand insight into how media formats shape audience behaviour at scale that no advisory role can replicate. Pick Three (2018) provides a named, counter-intuitive framework with a specific thesis: sustainable performance – individual and organisational – comes from deliberate daily prioritisation across five competing demands, not from attempting balance across all of them simultaneously. Her knowledge of how Facebook made its foundational decisions on elections, political partnerships, and live video predates the broader public and regulatory reckoning with platform power by nearly a decade – and comes from inside the decisions, not from observing them. Her active angel investment portfolio – 53% female founders, 30% diverse founders – means her perspective on digital entrepreneurship and media ventures is commercially current, not retrospective. Multiple Tony Award wins as a Broadway co-producer alongside a technology career demonstrates a consistent and applied understanding of commercial storytelling across very different formats and audience types – directly relevant to organisations trying to build brand authority rather than brand noise. Biography highlights One of the first ten employees at Facebook (2005–2011); Director of Market Development and Spokesperson Creator of Facebook Live, now used by more than two billion people globally Emmy nomination, 2011, for the pioneering integration of television and social media in U.S. midterm election coverage Founder and CEO, Zuckerberg Media (est. 2011); clients include the United Nations, Condé Nast, Clinton Global Initiative, and Cirque du Soleil New York Times bestselling author: Dot Complicated: Untangling Our Wired Lives (HarperCollins, 2013) and Pick Three: You Can Have It All (Just Not Every Day) (2018) Multiple Tony Award-winning Broadway co-producer, including Hadestown (Best Musical, 2019); also Drama Desk Award and Kidscreen Award Host, Randi Zuckerberg Means Business, SiriusXM; board member, Life360 BA in Psychology, Harvard University Biography Facebook Live was built by a team of fewer than ten people making decisions about media format, political partnerships, and audience engagement that nobody had made before. Randi Zuckerberg led that work. The choices her team made – about what live video could do for commercial storytelling, for political communication, for media partnerships – shaped how organisations and audiences interact in real time to this day. After leaving Facebook in 2011, she founded Zuckerberg Media, producing content and advisory work for organisations including the United Nations, Condé Nast, Cirque du Soleil, and the Clinton Global Initiative. The question her firm consistently addresses is strategic rather than technical: how does an organisation translate digital presence into an audience it actually owns, rather than one it rents from a platform? Her 2018 book Pick Three formalised a framework she had developed through practice. The argument is specific and deliberately counter-intuitive: sustainable performance – individual or organisational – does not come from balance across five competing demands (Work, Sleep, Family, Fitness, Friends). It comes from deliberate daily prioritisation of three. That specificity is what makes the framework usable in executive development conversations, rather than aspirational. Her Tony Award wins as Broadway co-producer, her weekly SiriusXM programme, and an angel investment portfolio with a deliberate diversity mandate are not incidental to her commercial thinking. They reflect the same underlying argument – that strategic storytelling, deployed with intent and discipline across different formats, builds audiences that advertising cannot replicate. Key speaking topics Digital media strategy and platform intelligence Entrepreneurship and venture building Commercial storytelling and brand media The creator economy and audience ownership Technology and society: the platform era in retrospect Productivity and prioritisation: the Pick Three framework Women in technology and entrepreneurship Ideal for CMOs, brand directors, and communications executives navigating digital media strategy and audience ownership Entrepreneurial leadership communities, founder networks, and innovation-focused executive programmes Executive teams building media presence as a commercial strategy rather than a communications function CHROs and leadership development leads running programmes on performance, prioritisation, and sustainable leadership Audience outcomes A clearer distinction between digital activity and digital strategy, grounded in how platform companies actually make decisions about media and audience Practical application of the Pick Three framework for daily prioritisation – applicable to individual performance, team leadership, and organisational resource allocation First-hand perspective on how media partnerships, content formats, and platform intelligence were developed inside Facebook during its most formative years A more operationally grounded view of the creator economy: what «owning your audience» actually requires versus what platforms provide Greater confidence in making active, deliberate trade-offs between competing strategic priorities rather than attempting to progress all of them simultaneously

Why organisations work with Rachel Botsman She has built a discrete intellectual territory around trust, with three named frameworks (Trust Leap, Trust Shift, Risk–Trust Lens) that give leadership teams a working vocabulary rather than a motivational concept. She holds the first Trust Fellowship at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, a position created around the subject she defined. Few speakers in this category have a comparable academic anchor. Her thinking on AI is grounded in fifteen years of work on how humans transfer trust to new systems, which is why boards use her to pressure-test AI adoption plans before they reach the workforce. Thinkers50 ranked her among the world’s 30 most influential management thinkers and gave her the 2015 Breakthrough Idea Award, signalling that her ideas have been judged consequential by peers, not only by bureau marketing. She works directly with boards and senior executives as an advisor, so the keynote is the visible part of a deeper practice on culture and governance. Biography highlights Trust Fellow, Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, the first such fellowship at the school. Author of What’s Mine is Yours, Who Can You Trust? and How to Trust & Be Trusted; books translated into 14 languages. Three TED talks with more than 5 million combined views. Named one of the world’s 30 most influential management thinkers by Thinkers50; winner of the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award. Young Global Leader, World Economic Forum. Contributor to and subject of coverage in The New York Times, Financial Times, TIME, Wired, The Guardian and Fast Company; writer of the Rethink newsletter. Biography Most leadership crises are described as strategy problems and turn out to be trust problems. A workforce that has been through three restructures will not run faster because the new operating model is sharper. A board that has lost confidence in a CEO will not be rebuilt by a clearer plan. The active variable is whether people believe enough in the institution, the leadership, and each other to take risks on its behalf. Rachel Botsman has spent two decades turning that observation into a working discipline. As the first Trust Fellow at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, she designed and teaches courses on trust and technology, and advises boards, senior leaders and governments on the same questions in live operating contexts. Her books, including Who Can You Trust? and How to Trust & Be Trusted, redefine trust as a confident relationship with the unknown rather than a synonym for assurance or predictability. Her named frameworks give that idea operational form. The Trust Leap explains how people move from familiar to unfamiliar behaviour, which is why it has been useful for organisations deploying AI and automating workflows. The Trust Shift maps how authority has migrated from institutions to individuals and platforms. The Risk–Trust Lens gives senior leaders a way to read where their cultures sit on the spectrum between paralysis and recklessness. Thinkers50 has ranked her among the 30 most influential management thinkers in the world and gave her its Breakthrough Idea Award. The World Economic Forum named her a Young Global Leader. Her three TED talks have been watched more than five million times. The reason her work has carried that distance is that it gives leaders something specific to do on a subject that most speakers can only describe. Key speaking topics Trust as a leadership capability Trust and AI adoption Culture and decision-making under change The Trust Shift from institutions to individuals Designing for trust in new products and systems The future of work and the social contract Authority and accountability in modern organisations Ideal for CEOs, CHROs and chief people officers leading organisations through restructure, integration, or cultural reset. Boards and risk committees evaluating AI deployment, governance, and workforce trust. Transformation, technology and product leaders responsible for adoption of new systems by employees or customers. Executive education and senior leadership programmes building common language around trust, accountability and decision-making. Audience outcomes A working definition of trust that holds up to scrutiny inside a leadership team, not a motivational phrase. A read on where the organisation sits on the risk–trust spectrum and what that implies for current decisions. A clearer view of why specific change programmes, AI rollouts, or cultural initiatives are stalling, and where the trust gap actually lives. Specific language and frameworks (Trust Leap, Trust Shift, Risk–Trust Lens) that travel from the keynote into board and executive conversations. A sharper position on how authority, accountability, and AI intersect inside the organisation over the next two to three years.

Why organisations work with Polly LaBarre She co-built, with Gary Hamel, the most concrete body of practice on post-bureaucratic management, drawing on case studies from named companies rather than abstract principles. She wrote the bestselling field guide to original organisations, Mavericks at Work, and has spent two decades adding to that evidence base through Fast Company and HBR. She brings a working operator’s view on what actually frees creative capacity inside large firms, sharpened through running the HBR/McKinsey M-Prize and the MIX Mashup. She lands as a journalist first, which means specific stories about specific companies, not slide-deck frameworks recycled from other speakers in the same topic area. Biography highlights Co-author, Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win, named a Book of the Year by The Economist Co-founder, Management Lab, with Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini Co-founder and editorial director, MIX (Management Innovation eXchange), partnered with HBR and Fortune Founding member and senior editor, Fast Company magazine, for eight years Business and innovation correspondent, CNN, with recurring on-air segments on American Morning and Your Money Contributor to Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune and McKinsey Quarterly Biography Most companies were engineered for a world that no longer exists. They reward consistency, suppress dissent and treat management as a control function. That mismatch, between how organisations are built and what they now need to do, is the problem Polly LaBarre has been studying, writing about and trying to fix for more than two decades. She was a senior editor and founding team member at Fast Company, the magazine that reframed how a generation of leaders thought about work. With William C. Taylor she wrote Mavericks at Work, a New York Times bestseller that The Economist called a Book of the Year and put alongside In Search of Excellence. The book set out, through detailed company case studies, what it actually takes to compete with originality at scale. That work led directly into the Management Lab, which she co-founded with Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini, and into the MIX (Management Innovation eXchange), the open platform partnered with Harvard Business Review and Fortune and backed by McKinsey, Red Hat and Gartner. Through the HBR/McKinsey M-Prize and the MIX Mashup, she has spent the past decade pulling together a working catalogue of progressive management practice from companies inside the Fortune 500 and well beyond it. Her background as a journalist shows in how she works on stage. She speaks in named cases, names sources and concrete mechanisms, and her writing in HBR, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Fortune and McKinsey Quarterly is the basis for most of what she puts in front of an audience. CNN used her as a business and innovation correspondent for exactly that reason. Key speaking topics Post-bureaucratic management and organisational redesign Resilience and adaptability in large organisations Innovation as a managed discipline Corporate culture and the human edge Talent, autonomy and the future of work Leadership for purpose-driven change Ideal for CEOs, COOs and executive teams confronting the limits of their current operating model CHROs and chief people officers redesigning work and culture for a more capable workforce Heads of innovation, transformation and strategy looking for evidence rather than slogans Boards and leadership offsites wanting a sharp, journalist’s read on what original organisations actually do differently Audience outcomes A clear-eyed picture of why traditional management practices are now a constraint on competitiveness Concrete examples, drawn from named companies, of how organisations have rebuilt for adaptability A working vocabulary for diagnosing where their own management model is leaking energy and initiative A sharper sense of what to change first when the goal is more resilience and originality, not more control

Why organisations work with Pippa Malmgren She has sat inside the room where US economic policy is set. As Special Assistant to President George W. Bush on the National Economic Council, she advised on the response to 9/11 from a financial markets and Pentagon technology procurement standpoint, which is a different vantage point from any academic economist. She bridges currency markets and geopolitics in a way few speakers can. She ran Bankers Trust Asset Management in Asia and was Deputy Head of Global Strategy at UBS, which means her geopolitical reads land with FX, fixed income and treasury audiences. She is a working operator, not just a commentator. Co-founding H Robotics, a CogX and National Technology Award winning industrial drone business, gives her a real seat at the table on industrial AI, autonomous systems and the defence-tech investment cycle. Her book The Leadership Lab won UK Business Book of the Year 2019 and her follow-up The Infinite Leader won the International Press Award for Best Book on Leadership 2021, which means leadership-track briefs are met with credentialed material rather than improvisation. She holds a Senior Associate Fellowship at RUSI, the UK defence and security institute, and judges the King’s Awards for Enterprise. Boards using her for geopolitics get an analyst whose reads are taken seriously inside the UK security and industrial establishment. Biography highlights Special Assistant to President George W. Bush on the National Economic Council and member of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets. Former Deputy Head of Global Strategy at UBS and head of Bankers Trust Asset Management in Asia. Author of Signals (Weidenfeld and Nicolson), Geopolitics for Investors, The Leadership Lab and The Infinite Leader. Co-founder of H Robotics, winner of the CogX Award for Autonomy and the 2020 National Technology Award. Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and a Fellow of the Bertelsmann Stiftung Foundation 2022 to 2024. PhD and MSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics. Biography The job of reading geopolitics for boards used to belong to a small circle of former diplomats and bank chief economists. That circle is no longer wide enough. Currency moves now sit downstream of sanctions decisions, supply chain costs sit downstream of industrial policy, and AI capex sits downstream of export controls. Reading those linkages is a working discipline, not a generalist’s hobby. Malmgren was inside that linkage early. She advised President George W. Bush on the National Economic Council and served on the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, including the post-9/11 work on terrorism risk to the economy and Pentagon technology procurement. Before the White House, she ran Bankers Trust Asset Management in Asia and was Deputy Head of Global Strategy at UBS. The combination of policy seat and trading-floor seat is rare, and it shapes how she briefs. The published work makes the argument visible. Signals reads consumer behaviour, magazine covers and shop fronts as evidence about inflation, social pressure and political risk. The Leadership Lab, co-written with Chris Lewis, won UK Business Book of the Year 2019. The Infinite Leader followed it with the 2021 International Press Award for Best Book on Leadership. None of these are commentator books. They argue specific theses about how decisions get made under volatile conditions. She also runs an operating business in the territory she briefs on. H Robotics, the industrial drone company she co-founded, won the CogX Award for Autonomy and the 2020 National Technology Award. She holds a Senior Associate Fellowship at RUSI, sits on the judging panel of the King’s Awards for Enterprise and was a Fellow of the Bertelsmann Stiftung from 2022 to 2024. When she briefs a board on industrial AI, defence-tech, the new space economy or the strategic-minerals fight, she is briefing as a participant, not a watcher. Key speaking topics Geopolitics and the global economy Macroeconomic volatility and capital allocation Industrial AI, autonomous systems and defence technology Currency markets and inflation signals The new space economy and strategic infrastructure Leadership under conditions of disruption Political risk and sovereign decision-making Ideal for Boards, CEOs and CFOs setting capital allocation policy under sanctions, currency and supply chain pressure. Treasury, FX and asset management leadership teams whose mandates now hinge on geopolitical reads. Strategy and corporate development teams in defence, energy, industrials, semiconductors and infrastructure. Investment committees of pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and family offices reassessing global exposure. Audience outcomes A working framework for translating geopolitical events into specific capital, currency and operating consequences. A clearer reading of where US, Chinese and European industrial policy is forcing reallocation of supply chains and capital. Specific signals to track in commodities, currencies and consumer behaviour as leading indicators of macro stress. A grounded view of where AI, autonomous systems and the space economy intersect with national security and corporate strategy. Confidence at board level that geopolitical scenarios have been pressure-tested by someone who has briefed at presidential level.

Why organisations work with Melissa Sterry She brings primary scientific research, not commentary. Her doctorate at the University of Greenwich AVATAR group produced an original framework, Panarchistic Architecture, for designing wildland urban-interface resilience to wildfires. She runs Bionic City, the consultancy she founded in 2010 to ask how nature would design a city, and translates biomimicry, bioengineering and biotechnology into specific implications for buildings, infrastructure and utilities. She has briefed senior audiences at the World Bank, Unilever, Toyota, Schneider Electric, Balfour Beatty, McKinsey and the UK Ministry of Defence, and presented at the University of Oxford Climate Forum and the University of Cambridge Festival of Ideas. Her work crosses architecture, materials, urban planning and corporate strategy without losing scientific rigour, which makes her credible to engineers, planners and procurement teams as well as to boards and marketing functions. She is a Chartered Scientist with the UK Science Council, a Fellow of the Design Research Society and the Institute of Science and Technology, and sits on the Design Council Expert Network. Biography highlights PhD from the AVATAR research group at the University of Greenwich on wildfire resilience for the wildland urban interface Founder of Bionic City (2010) and Bioratorium (2019), her biofuturism and biodesign consultancy practices Chartered Scientist (UK Science Council); Fellow of the Design Research Society and the Institute of Science and Technology Contributor to The Routledge Companion to Ecological Design Thinking and The Routledge Companion to Smart Design Thinking Presenter of Leonardo’s City for BBC Radio 4’s The Five Faces of Leonardo and interviewed by Neil deGrasse Tyson on StarTalk Mensa Education and Research Foundation International Award; Global Women Inventors and Innovators Network Hall of Fame inductee Biography Most sustainability strategy is written in the language of disclosure. The buildings, materials and supply choices it has to deliver against are physical, and they are increasingly exposed to fire, heat, water stress and biodiversity collapse. Melissa Sterry works in that gap. Her doctorate at the University of Greenwich AVATAR group set out a framework she calls Panarchistic Architecture, which models wildland urban-interface resilience on the way fire-adapted ecosystems behave. From the same body of research she developed Pyrophytic and Xerophytic Architecture, design responses to wildfire and to extreme heat and aridity. The work is grounded in ecological systems theory, not in metaphor. Her practice connects this research to organisations. Bionic City, founded in 2010, applies biomimetics, bioengineering and biotechnology to urban planning and the built environment. Bioratorium, established in 2019, extends that into a wider biofuturism consultancy with an integrated biodesign lab. Through these vehicles she has briefed the World Bank, Unilever, Toyota, Interface, Schneider Electric, McKinsey, Balfour Beatty and the UK Ministry of Defence. She is a Chartered Scientist with the UK Science Council, a Fellow of the Design Research Society, a Fellow of the Institute of Science and Technology, and sits on the Design Council Expert Network. Her writing appears in publisher series from Routledge, McGraw-Hill and Hachette, including chapters in The Routledge Companion to Ecological Design Thinking and The Routledge Companion to Smart Design Thinking. Key speaking topics Biofuturism and biodesign Climate and wildfire resilience in the built environment Bioinspired innovation in materials and manufacturing Future of cities and urban systems Sustainability strategy beyond disclosure Design science and complex systems thinking Ideal for Boards and CSOs setting sustainability and resilience strategy Real estate, infrastructure and built-environment leadership teams Heads of innovation, R&D and materials in industrials and consumer goods Climate, ESG and risk leads inside financial services and insurance Audience outcomes A working understanding of how ecological systems theory applies to fire, heat and resource resilience in physical assets A sharper view of where biomimicry and biodesign produce commercial advantage, and where they are still research Specific examples of nature-modelled responses to wildfire, aridity and urban hazard A more honest reading of the gap between sustainability narrative and operating reality Language to connect sustainability commitments to capital, design and procurement decisions

Why organisations work with Margaret Doyle She is a working Deloitte partner inside UK Financial Services, not a retired commentator. The questions she asks on stage are the questions she asks Deloitte’s banking and insurance clients during the week. Two careers reinforce each other on the platform: a decade at The Economist and The Daily Telegraph, and Reuters Breakingviews, plus presenting Today, The World Tonight and Analysis on BBC Radio 4. The result is a chair who can read a room and rewrite a question on the fly. She authors and oversees Deloitte’s UK Financial Services research, including the bi-annual London Office Crane Survey and reports on banking culture, insurance disruption and talent. Conference content benefits from her own data, not a generic deck. She has chaired and moderated for Economist Conferences, the European Commission, Allen and Overy, ING and Procter and Gamble. The reference list reads like the buyer’s own peer set. Harvard Business School Baker Scholar, Fulbright Scholar, and a member of the HBS European Advisory Board since its 2003 founding. The credential signals the seniority of the rooms she has been in. Biography highlights Partner at Deloitte UK and Chief Insights Officer for Financial Services; member of the UK Financial Services Executive. Former financial journalist with bylines at The Economist, The Daily Telegraph and Reuters Breakingviews. Editor of Global Agenda, the magazine of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting at Davos. Presenter on BBC Radio 4 (Today, The World Tonight, Analysis), the BBC World Service (The World Today) and Five Live (Wake Up to Money). Economics graduate of Trinity College Dublin (Entrance Exhibitioner and Foundation Scholar); MBA from Harvard Business School, where she was a Fulbright Scholar and Baker Scholar. Member of the Harvard Business School European Advisory Board since its inception in 2003; British-American Project Fellow. Biography Banking, insurance and investment management leaders are running their businesses through a period when interest rate paths, regulation and customer behaviour are all moving at once. The conversations that matter on stage are no longer one-topic panels. They demand a chair who can hold a CEO, a regulator and an institutional investor in the same exchange and pull a usable line out of it. Margaret Doyle has spent her career in that exchange from both sides. As Chief Insights Officer for Financial Services at Deloitte UK, she sits on the UK Financial Services Executive and oversees research on innovation, culture and talent across banking, insurance and investment management. Her team produces the bi-annual London Office Crane Survey, a benchmark dataset on the London commercial property market. Before Deloitte she covered business and finance for The Economist and The Daily Telegraph, edited Global Agenda for the World Economic Forum’s Davos meeting, and wrote on investment banking for Reuters Breakingviews. She also presented Today, The World Tonight and Analysis on BBC Radio 4, alongside The World Today on the BBC World Service and Wake Up to Money on Five Live. She read economics at Trinity College Dublin as an Entrance Exhibitioner and Foundation Scholar, took an MBA at Harvard Business School as a Fulbright Scholar and graduated as a Baker Scholar. She has been a member of the HBS European Advisory Board since its 2003 inception. Her chairing credits include Economist Conferences, the European Commission, Allen and Overy, ING, Procter and Gamble and Trinity College Dublin. Key speaking topics Financial services strategy and disruption Banking, insurance and investment management outlook Macroeconomic trends and global markets Culture and talent in financial services Real estate and the London office market Conference chairing and panel moderation Media and current affairs in financial services Ideal for CEOs, CFOs and board chairs in banking, insurance and investment management Investor and analyst conferences in financial services Industry conferences requiring an informed chair across regulation, capital markets and macro Senior client and partner events at professional services firms and law firms Audience outcomes A clearer view of where macro pressure is biting in banking, insurance and investment management An honest read of disagreement among the senior voices on stage, not a managed consensus Sharper questions to take back into board and executive conversations A working sense of how Deloitte’s UK Financial Services research is reading the cycle