Innovation & Disruption

Why organisations work with Lewis Dartnell Translates planetary-scale science into commercial foresight that leadership teams can actually use in strategy work. Author of The Knowledge, a Sunday Times bestseller built around a question every operator should be able to answer: which technologies in your value chain are foundational, and which are replaceable. Connects geology, biology and climate to the present-day shape of supply chains, geopolitics and consumer behaviour, drawing on the Origins thesis translated into thirty languages. Brings broadcast-grade communication craft from BBC Horizon, Stargazing Live and a main-stage TED talk, calibrated for board and executive audiences, not lecture rooms. One of a small number of working research scientists who can hold a 45-minute keynote at the level required by a CEO offsite without losing scientific rigour. Biography highlights Professor of Science Communication, University of Westminster. PhD in Astrobiology, University College London. Former UK Space Agency Research Fellow at the University of Leicester. Author of The Knowledge, Origins, and Being Human, plus Life in the Universe and a guide to the solar system; Sunday Times bestsellers translated into more than thirty languages. Main-stage TED speaker (TED2015) and regular BBC presenter across Horizon, The Sky at Night and Stargazing Live. Bylines and contributions in The Guardian, The Times, New Scientist and The Daily Telegraph. Scientific consultant on HBO Max’s Station Eleven and on Brian Cox documentaries. Biography Modern organisations sit on top of scientific systems that almost no one in the room can explain. Energy, materials, communication networks, food chains, the climate envelope they operate within. When those systems shift, the strategic consequences arrive quickly, and the executive team often lacks the language to see them coming. Lewis Dartnell’s work attacks that gap directly. The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch, a Sunday Times bestseller, asks which technologies a civilisation would have to recover first, and why. It is a thought experiment with a hard commercial edge. Strip away the assumptions, and what is actually foundational? A copy sits on the surface of the moon. The book has been adopted as a thinking tool in industries that depend on long-horizon decisions. Origins extended the argument to geology, plate tectonics and climate as drivers of human history, and has been translated into thirty languages. Being Human, his most recent book, examines how human biology and psychology continue to shape political, economic and consumer behaviour. The through-line is consistent: deep scientific structure explaining surface-level outcomes that boards spend their time arguing about. He holds a chair in science communication at the University of Westminster after research roles at University College London and the UK Space Agency programme at Leicester. His broadcast work for the BBC, his TED talk and his scientific consultancy on shows such as Station Eleven mean he speaks at a register designed for general audiences without losing the underlying rigour. For a senior leadership team trying to think clearly about technology, resources and the next twenty years, he is one of a small number of speakers who can hold both ends at once. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and first-principles thinking Resilience and civilisational technology Long-range science and the future of business Geopolitics, resources and climate Space exploration and the commercial space economy Astrobiology and the search for life Human biology and behaviour as commercial forces Science communication and clear thinking Ideal for Board offsites and CEO leadership summits requiring scientific perspective on long-range risk CSOs, heads of strategy and corporate development teams running scenario work Innovation, R&D and technology leadership groups CHRO and leadership development audiences building first-principles thinking capability Audience outcomes A sharper view of which technologies and resources are foundational to the business, and which are substitutable A grounded understanding of the planetary and biological forces shaping geopolitics, supply chains and consumer behaviour A working vocabulary for long-range scientific risk that senior teams can use in their own strategy conversations A more disciplined first-principles approach to questioning assumptions inside the organisation Genuine intellectual engagement from senior audiences who normally tune out of “future trends” content

Why organisations work with Ulrich Walter He brings the credibility of a flown astronaut and a sitting university chair to AI and robotics conversations that usually rely on consultants or vendor analysts. He works on AI from both ends a board cares about: national policy, through the Bavarian Ethics Council, and live corporate implementation, as a supervisory board member responsible for AI and transformation at the Die Bayerische insurance group. Disruptive-innovation content drawn from NASA mission cases and his own IBM project-management work, not from secondhand business literature. A working researcher in geriatronics and service robotics, which gives him a concrete view of what AI-assisted hardware can and cannot do today, beyond the generative-AI conversation. Comfortable in technical depth and broad audience formats. Eleven books, a weekly TV programme on Welt TV, and a Spiegel bestseller indicate a speaker who can carry a non-specialist room without softening the science. Biography highlights Payload Specialist, NASA Space Shuttle Columbia, Spacelab D-2 mission (STS-55), 1993. Chair of the Institute of Astronautics, Technical University of Munich, 2003 to 2023, now emeritus. Member, Bavarian Ethics Council on robotics and artificial intelligence. Member of three supervisory boards within the Die Bayerische insurance group, responsible for the group’s AI implementation and transformation programme. Senior Executive Advisor, Deloitte Space, Germany. German Professor of the Year 2008 in engineering sciences and informatics. Author of eleven books including the Spiegel bestseller Im Schwarzen Loch ist der Teufel los, and host of the weekly Welt TV documentary Spacetimes. Biography Most leadership teams are asked to make decisions about AI and robotics without a working understanding of how the underlying systems behave. That gap is where Ulrich Walter does his most useful work. Trained as a physicist at the University of Cologne, with postdoctoral years at Argonne National Laboratory and UC Berkeley, he combines an active scientific career with a policy seat that few keynote speakers can match. In 1993 he flew Spacelab D-2 aboard Space Shuttle Columbia as Payload Specialist, running 89 experiments across materials science, life sciences and robotics in just under ten days in orbit. After the mission he managed satellite imaging programmes at the German Aerospace Center, then ran development projects at IBM, before being appointed to the Chair of Astronautics at TU Munich in 2003. At TUM he led research on service robotics, geriatronics, and the systems engineering behind human spaceflight. He also sits on the Bavarian Ethics Council on robotics and AI, advising on where the operational and moral limits of these technologies should fall. The work is technical, and it is current. For corporate audiences, the most useful translation is the one between high-risk technical environments and ordinary business decision-making. How does NASA assess disruptive change? How does a project manager at IBM apply mission-grade discipline? What does a working scientist on Germany’s AI ethics body actually think a board should worry about? Walter is unusually direct on all three. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and ethics Disruptive innovation Space technology and the NewSpace economy Robotics and geriatronics Systems engineering and project management The future of human spaceflight Science communication for non-specialist audiences Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting governance on AI and emerging technology Engineering, R&D and innovation leadership at industrial and aerospace firms Senior project and programme managers in complex, high-risk environments Conferences and offsites looking for a substantive technology keynote that can also carry a non-technical room Audience outcomes A working view of where AI and robotics genuinely change the operating picture, and where the hype runs ahead of the science. A practical translation of NASA-style risk management and project discipline into commercial settings. A clearer sense of how European regulators and ethicists are framing the limits of AI deployment. Exposure to the NewSpace economy and what it signals about the next generation of commercial technology. A reset of perspective on long-horizon strategic thinking from someone who has spent ten days looking at the planet from orbit.

Why organisations work with Fabian Hemmert He brings a working academic’s depth to a question most strategy teams treat too lightly: what does good human-computer interaction actually look like when AI is in the loop. His “Research Through Design” approach produces tested prototypes, not slideware. The “Data Touch” project, a finger ring that advances presentations by recognising objects, is the kind of artefact that shifts how a leadership team thinks about interface design. He speaks fluently across audiences. A PhD from Berlin University of the Arts, prior commercial work at Nintendo and Marvel, and stage time at SXSW, Lift and the Chaos Communication Congress give him range from board to design floor. He reframes AI as a design problem rather than a deployment problem. For organisations wrestling with adoption, that reframing tends to unlock conversations the technical roadmap cannot. Biography highlights Professor of Interface and User Experience Design, University of Wuppertal, heading the department since 2016. Dr.-Ing. from Berlin University of the Arts, with doctoral research at the Design Research Lab in collaboration with Telekom Innovation Labs. TEDxBerlin speaker; talk “The shape-shifting future of the mobile phone” hosted on TED.com. Conference platforms include SXSW, Lift, Chaos Communication Congress, EuroVision TV Summit, CeBIT, TEDxSalzburg and TEDxInnsbruck. Earlier industry experience at Nintendo of Europe and Marvel Comics during interface design studies. Published academic work on tangible interfaces and design research methodology, including a PhD thesis and book chapter on the Repertory Grid Technique. Biography Most digital products are built for the system, not the human using it. That mismatch is becoming harder to hide as AI moves from the back office into daily work. Fabian Hemmert’s research at the University of Wuppertal is a sustained attempt to close that gap through design rather than user training. He runs the Interface and User Experience Design department at Wuppertal’s industrial design school and earned his Dr.-Ing. at Berlin University of the Arts, working alongside Telekom Innovation Labs. The methodology is “Research Through Design”: build a prototype, put it in front of people, learn what changes. Projects such as “Data Touch”, a finger ring that controls a presentation by recognising the objects in a speaker’s hand, are how the research becomes argument. Earlier in his career he worked for Nintendo of Europe and Marvel Comics, which gives the academic frame a commercial spine. His public platform includes TEDxBerlin, SXSW, Lift, the Chaos Communication Congress, the EuroVision TV Summit and CeBIT. The through-line is consistent across all of them: intuitive technology is a design outcome, not an accident. For senior leaders, the value is a corrective. Strategy decks treat AI and digital tools as capability questions. Hemmert’s work makes the case that adoption, engagement and trust are decided much earlier, at the interface, and that organisations underestimate how much of their digital strategy is being shaped by design defaults they never examined. Key speaking topics Human-computer interaction Designing for AI in everyday use Tangible and embodied interfaces The future of mobile and personal devices Research Through Design methodology Design education and creative capability Play as a method for innovation Ideal for Chief design officers, heads of product and CX leaders rethinking digital interfaces in light of AI. Innovation and R&D teams looking for an academic perspective grounded in built prototypes. Leadership audiences at technology, telecoms, consumer electronics and media organisations. Universities, design schools and conferences focused on the future of human-machine interaction. Audience outcomes A sharper sense of why interface design, not model capability, often decides whether an AI deployment lands. Exposure to working prototypes that reframe assumptions about how digital systems should feel to use. A vocabulary for discussing tangibility, embodiment and intuition as commercial design variables. Confidence to challenge default assumptions about screens, devices and digital workflows in their own organisation.

Why organisations work with Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian She built the experience function at WeTransfer from inside the executive team across ten years, a rare track record of innovation craft sustained at commercial scale rather than delivered as one-off consulting. She has a method for staging ideas in public, tested at the scale of a 17,500-seat Hollywood Bowl performance with NASA scientists and at the scale of small-room design studios at Google, Mattel and Unilever. Her academic foundation is unusual for a creative director: a PhD in Human Geography and Political Philosophy from Royal Holloway alongside an RCA Design Interactions MA, which gives her work argumentative spine rather than spectacle alone. She runs the University of the Underground, a tuition-free postgraduate institution whose advisory board includes Noam Chomsky, Paola Antonelli and Jill Tarter, so she arrives in a room with an active network of researchers and practitioners across science, design and politics. Design Week inducted her into its Hall of Fame in 2023 alongside Jonathan Ive, Es Devlin and Neville Brody, the field’s most explicit signal that her practice has moved from emerging to canonical. Biography highlights Chief of Experiences at WeTransfer from 2012 to 2022, ten years on the executive team during the company’s growth into a global creative platform. Founder and director of the University of the Underground, a tuition-free MA programme hosted at Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam. Designer of Experiences at the SETI Institute since 2013; Vice Chair of the IAF Committee for the Cultural Utilisation of Space. Founder and director of the International Space Orchestra, performed with Sigur Ros at the Hollywood Bowl to 17,500 people. PhD, Royal Holloway, University of London (Human Geography and Political Philosophy); MA, Royal College of Art (Design Interactions, Dunne and Raby). Design Week Awards Hall of Fame, 2023. WIRED Innovation Fellowship, 2014. Karman Fellowship, 2022. Arts Council England Exceptional Award for Disaster Playground. Biography Most companies treat innovation as an internal practice: research teams, pilots, internal demos, the occasional product launch. The harder discipline is staging an idea so that customers, staff and the broader public feel it. Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian has spent fifteen years building a method for that second discipline, first inside a scaling technology company, then as a commissioned director for brands and cultural institutions. She joined WeTransfer in 2012 as its first Head of Experiences and stayed for a decade, eventually serving as Chief of Experiences on the executive team. Nelly Ben Hayoun Studios operated inside WeTransfer as its user experience and innovation department, with a remit that grew from public projects with creative communities to B Corp development, US business expansion, and the founding of the editorial platform WePresent and the University of the Underground. Her parallel practice is anchored by the International Space Orchestra, which she founded in 2012 with scientists and astronauts from NASA Ames, the SETI Institute and the International Space University. The project produced a feature film, a Hollywood Bowl performance with Sigur Ros, and a recording that was played from the International Space Station. It is the clearest example of her core craft, which is the orchestration of scientific and institutional collaborators into something a non-expert audience can feel. In 2017 she founded the University of the Underground, a tuition-free postgraduate programme at Sandberg Instituut whose advisory board includes Noam Chomsky, Paola Antonelli and Jill Tarter. Design Week inducted her into its Hall of Fame in 2023 alongside Jonathan Ive, Es Devlin and Neville Brody. Key speaking topics Immersive experiences as innovation practice Building creative communities inside commercial organisations Public-facing storytelling for science and technology Cultural strategy and brand Interdisciplinary collaboration across science, design and the arts Space culture and the public communication of complex science Independent institution building Ideal for Chief Marketing Officers, Chief Brand Officers and creative directors at consumer or technology brands looking to move from advertising-led growth to experience-led growth. Heads of Innovation and Chief Strategy Officers whose pilots are not translating into customer-visible products or cultural relevance. Cultural institutions, design and architecture studios, and science communication leads commissioning ambitious public projects. Senior leadership teams inside scale-up technology companies considering how to build a brand that creators and partners care about. Audience outcomes A working definition of what an experience function does inside a commercial company, drawn from ten years of operating one at WeTransfer. Concrete patterns for staging an idea publicly, from Hollywood Bowl scale down to a small studio activation. A view of how scientific institutions, creative communities and commercial brands can be brought into the same room without flattening any of them. A reading on where the experience economy is heading, grounded in her current work at SETI, the International Astronautical Federation and the University of the Underground.

Why organisations work with Chris Lyons Direct line into a16z’s deal flow across AI, Web3, and consumer technology, the same intelligence the firm uses to commit capital to companies like OpenAI, Airbnb, and Lyft. A named thesis on culture as a distribution channel for technology, built into the Cultural Leadership Fund, which moved this idea from observation to a fund structure with institutional limited partners. Operator credibility on Web3 specifically, in his role as President, Web3 Media at a16z crypto, at a moment when most boards still treat crypto and AI as separate strategic questions. A perspective on consumer adoption shaped by deep relationships with founders and cultural leaders, useful for brand, media, and consumer-facing organisations trying to understand what the next decade looks like. Biography highlights General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz; President, Web3 Media at a16z crypto. Founder of the a16z Cultural Leadership Fund, Silicon Valley’s first venture fund with 100% African American Limited Partners. Helped launch a16z’s first $400M Seed Fund in 2021. Board director at Yuga Labs, The James Beard Foundation, The Black Economic Alliance, and New Story Charity. Kauffman Fellow, Class of 2019. Closing keynote, Harvard Business School Black Investment Club Conference, on “Culture as an Asset Class.” Biography Most boards now have AI and Web3 on the agenda. Far fewer have a credible read on which companies and behaviours inside those categories will actually scale. That read is the working asset of a senior venture partner at Andreessen Horowitz, and it is what Chris Lyons brings into a room. Lyons joined a16z in 2013 as Chief of Staff to co-founder Ben Horowitz, with an internal mandate to build deep relationships with founders regardless of investment status. That work became the architecture for the firm’s later positions in companies including OpenAI, Airbnb, and Lyft. He was promoted to General Partner in 2021 and helped launch a16z’s first $400M Seed Fund the same year. In 2018 he founded the Cultural Leadership Fund, a vehicle built on the thesis that cultural leaders, athletes, entertainers, and executives, drive how new technology gets adopted. CLF was structured with 100% African American Limited Partners, with fees and carry directed to organisations advancing Black participation in technology. The fund made the cultural distribution argument institutional. He now leads Web3 Media at a16z crypto and sits on the boards of Yuga Labs, The James Beard Foundation, The Black Economic Alliance, and New Story Charity. The combination of operator inside the firm and connector across culture, capital, and consumer technology is rare at his level of venture seniority. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and generative AI Web3 and digital ownership Venture capital and emerging technology Consumer technology adoption Culture as a driver of technology distribution Entrepreneurship and scale Diversity in technology and capital Ideal for Chief executives, boards, and corporate development leaders setting strategy on AI, Web3, and consumer technology CMOs and brand leaders rethinking how cultural relevance translates into commercial advantage Investment committees and family office principals reading the next venture cycle Innovation, partnerships, and ventures teams scouting categories and founders Audience outcomes A clearer view of which AI and Web3 categories are attracting serious capital and why A working framework for thinking about cultural influence as a real distribution mechanism, not a marketing layer Specific examples from inside a16z’s portfolio that illustrate how consumer technology actually scales A more grounded read on where venture conviction sits today, set against media noise

Why organisations work with Philipp Kristian He treats trust as an operating variable in digital and AI transformation, not a soft cultural theme, and equips leaders with language to discuss it at board level. His thesis predates the current AI debate. The Trust Economy was published in 2017 and has since been translated into German by Springer Gabler, giving his framework a longer track record than most current AI-trust voices. He brings an Asia-anchored view of technology adoption, drawing on a decade of work with Fortune 500s in Singapore and across JAPAC, which most Western-based speakers in this space cannot offer. He has lectured inside INSEAD Executive Education, CEDEP, Singapore Management University, and Civil Service College Singapore, so executive audiences encounter material that has been pressure-tested with senior cohorts. Biography highlights Author of The Trust Economy (Marshall Cavendish, 2017) and RESET: Rethinking Our World And Creating A Different Future (World Scientific, 2021). German edition of The Trust Economy published by Springer Gabler in 2018. Faculty and lecturer engagements at INSEAD Executive Education, CEDEP, Singapore Management University, and Civil Service College Singapore. World Economic Forum Global Shaper, Kairos Society Fellow, and Leader of Tomorrow at the St Gallen Symposium. TEDx speaker, with keynote audiences including Meta, BCG, EY, Munich Re, Standard Chartered, Salesforce, LVMH, Microsoft, Deloitte, P&G, and Zillow. Based in Singapore, with a decade of innovation work across Asia for Fortune 500 corporations and high-growth scale-ups. Biography Trust is the part of digital transformation that the engineering plan does not solve. AI rollouts stall, data products fail to land, and customer adoption flattens for reasons that sit outside the technology stack. Philipp Kristian has spent more than a decade arguing that this is the real bottleneck, and that organisations need a strategy for it. His 2017 book The Trust Economy, published by Marshall Cavendish and later translated into German by Springer Gabler, set out an early framework for how digital businesses earn and lose trust at scale. RESET, published by World Scientific in 2021, extends the argument into the post-pandemic shift in how people relate to institutions, technology, and each other. The work has been refined inside executive classrooms. He has held faculty and lecturer engagements at INSEAD Executive Education, CEDEP, Singapore Management University, and the Civil Service College in Singapore, where the material is taught to senior public and private sector cohorts. The World Economic Forum named him a Global Shaper; the Kairos Society named him a Fellow; the St Gallen Symposium named him a Leader of Tomorrow. Based in Singapore, he brings a non-Western reading of how trust travels through markets, regulators, and customer bases that most boards no longer treat as peripheral. Keynote audiences include Meta, BCG, EY, Munich Re, Standard Chartered, Salesforce, LVMH, Microsoft, Deloitte, and Zillow. Key speaking topics Trust in AI and data systems Digital transformation and adoption Customer experience in digital businesses Future of work and human-technology collaboration Leadership in the digital economy Brand trust and reputation under technological change Ideal for Boards and executive committees overseeing AI, data, and digital transformation programmes CIO, CTO, CDO, and Chief Trust Officer functions working through adoption and governance questions CMO and customer experience leaders rebuilding brand credibility in digital channels Financial services, professional services, and regulated industries facing trust and reputation pressure from AI deployment Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for discussing trust as an operating asset in digital and AI strategy at board level A reading of why AI and data initiatives lose momentum at the adoption stage, with the levers leaders can use to keep them moving An Asia-anchored perspective on how trust is built and broken across regulators, customers, and employees in fast-digitising markets Specific examples drawn from a decade of innovation work with Fortune 500 corporations and scale-ups in Singapore and across JAPAC

Why organisations work with Nick Ayton More than four decades inside computer science and ten founded start-ups give him a working operator’s view of where deep tech actually breaks, not a consultant’s slide on where it might. He translates AI, quantum, and longevity science into capital allocation questions a CFO or investment committee can act on, which is rare among futurists who stop at the trend. His book The Slow Bleed sets out Cash Conversion Velocity, a diagnostic he uses to show CEOs why a profitable business is draining cash and what to fix first, in days rather than quarters. His Living to 150 book and ongoing work on AI-assisted healthcare give him a specific, defensible position on longevity, a topic most technology speakers cannot credibly hold. He chairs global summits where deep tech meets investor capital, including the Family Office Summit in Abu Dhabi, so the audience he speaks to most often is the one buyers are trying to reach. Biography highlights Author, The Slow Bleed: A CEO Field Guide to Cash Conversion Velocity (Redline Press, 2026), with a foreword by Ian Wright, founder of VirtualNonExecs. Author, Living to 150: A New Era in Personalised AI Healthcare (2024). Founder of Crix.io, a regulated crypto-exchange, and Chainstarter Ventures, advising family offices on deep tech investment. Named Blockchain Visionary of the Year by Cointelegraph (2018); founding writer of the “Sage of Shoreditch” column. Named Top Futurist Speaker at the Family Office Summit, Abu Dhabi (2023). Has delivered keynotes and faculty addresses at MIT, Harvard, LSE, and Berkeley, alongside more than 100 global summits, working between the UK and the UAE. Biography Most futurist commentary on AI, quantum, and longevity stops at the trend line. Ayton’s work starts where the boardroom question starts: what does this technology mean for the next ten-year capital decision? After more than four decades in computer science and ten founded companies, he speaks to investors and operators in their own language. His early move into blockchain produced Crix.io, one of the first regulated crypto-exchanges, and the Cointelegraph column that named him Blockchain Visionary of the Year in 2018. The work has since broadened into quantum computing, synthetic biology, and longevity science. His book Living to 150 argues for personalised AI healthcare as the next investable frontier, and he advises family offices on how to position capital around it. A second strand of his work asks why profitable businesses quietly fail. His 2026 book The Slow Bleed sets out Cash Conversion Velocity, a way to measure the real health of an operating model in days, and a structured programme to fix it in months rather than years. The same instinct runs through his keynotes on why digital transformation so often optimises dysfunction instead of removing it. What separates Ayton from the futurist field is the audience he was built for. Family offices, founders, and the investment committees behind frontier-tech bets do not want a vision deck. They want someone who has built companies in the category, taken the losses, and can name which signals matter and which numbers lie. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and the next decade of enterprise value Quantum computing and its commercial timeline Data sovereignty and the post-cloud era Biological computing and synthetic biology Longevity sciences and personalised AI healthcare Frontier technology investment for family offices Cash Conversion Velocity and operating-model diagnosis Why digital transformation fails Ideal for Boards and investment committees making long-horizon capital decisions on AI, quantum, or biotech Family offices and private capital allocators positioning around frontier technologies Founders and CTOs in deep tech who need a credible external voice on category direction CEOs, PE operating partners, and family office principals who suspect a profitable business is quietly losing cash Audience outcomes A clearer read on which deep tech signals carry commercial weight and which are noise A working vocabulary for AI, quantum, and longevity that holds up in front of technical and capital audiences Specific examples of where capital is already moving in frontier tech, drawn from family office and founder networks A way to tell whether a profitable business is actually healthy, using cash conversion rather than the backward-looking metrics on the board pack A sharper sense of which technology bets compound over a decade and which expire within two

Why organisations work with Gordon Hewitt Direct intellectual lineage from C.K. Prahalad at Michigan Ross, applied for two decades to live board agendas at Pfizer, IBM, AstraZeneca, HSBC, Sony, and Deutsche Post/DHL. A working method that treats strategy as a thinking system for senior teams, not a planning cycle, so boards leave with sharper questions about value creation, not a deck. Demonstrated range across pharma, financial services, consumer goods, telecoms, and logistics, which lets him connect cross-industry disruption patterns most sector specialists miss. CBE for services to management and international business, plus Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, signal a level of institutional credibility boards trust at chair and CEO level. A genuine practitioner-academic: still teaching at Michigan Ross and Glasgow’s Adam Smith Business School while advising sitting CEOs. Biography highlights CBE for services to management and international business, 2007 New Year Honours. Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Visiting Distinguished Professor, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. Professor of Strategy Practice, Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow. Distinguished Professor of Corporate Strategy, Duke Corporate Education. Long collaboration with the late C.K. Prahalad on corporate value-creation, innovation, and strategic transformation. Advised CEOs and boards at Pfizer, IBM, AstraZeneca, Philips, Sony, Honeywell, PwC, Verizon, Ericsson, HSBC, Credit Suisse, Time Warner, PepsiCo, Syngenta, Biocon, and Deutsche Post/DHL. Biography Most strategy frameworks assume the rules of the industry hold still long enough for a plan to play out. They no longer do. The companies that struggle are often the ones that ran the previous playbook best. Gordon Hewitt has spent two decades helping senior leaders work in that more unstable terrain. At the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, he formed a long partnership with the late C.K. Prahalad, working at the front edge of thinking on corporate value-creation, innovation, and strategic transformation in what they described as a game-changing world. That body of work continues to anchor how he talks to boards. The list of organisations he has advised reads like a cross-industry map of where disruption hits hardest: Pfizer and AstraZeneca in pharma, IBM and Verizon in technology, HSBC and Credit Suisse in financial services, Sony, PepsiCo, and Time Warner in consumer-facing businesses, Deutsche Post/DHL in logistics. He chairs CEO and chairman peer groups in Europe and the United States on the future of corporate strategy and governance. He was awarded a CBE in 2007 for services to management and international business, and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He continues to hold appointments at Michigan Ross, Glasgow’s Adam Smith Business School, and Duke Corporate Education, which is unusual for a working board advisor and is one of the reasons CEOs treat him as a serious thinking partner rather than a speaker. Key speaking topics Strategy under industry disruption Corporate value creation in complex markets Innovation as a discipline Strategic transformation in incumbent businesses Strategic collaboration and ecosystem strategy Overcoming industry and organisational orthodoxies The CEO and board agenda in a game-changing world Ideal for CEOs, boards, and executive committees of incumbent businesses facing rule-changing competition. CSOs, heads of strategy, and transformation leads. Pharma, financial services, telecoms, consumer goods, and logistics leadership teams contending with cross-industry disruption. Senior leadership development programmes that want a serious strategy voice rather than a motivational one. Audience outcomes A sharper account of how value is created and lost when industry rules are being rewritten. A working language for separating planning from strategic thinking inside their own executive team. Cross-sector patterns of disruption they can test against their own market. A clearer view of where current orthodoxies inside their organisation are quietly working against them. Specific provocations for the next board strategy conversation, not generic frameworks.

Why organisations work with Cornel Amariei Operator credibility on both sides of the innovation question: ran innovation as Head of Innovation at Continental Automotive with patents adopted across European electric vehicles, then built .lumen from research project to a venture-backed company. Built the first Romanian company to receive EIC Accelerator funding, with a €9.7M blended finance package and a €5M January 2025 round led by Catalyst Romania alongside the EIC Fund. The story is a working playbook on European deep-tech capital formation. Working at the intersection of autonomous driving, robotics and assistive technology, with a defensible patent portfolio. Useful to leadership teams thinking about how to convert AI and sensor capability into a product proposition with a real customer. Recognition from credible institutions, not bureau awards: Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe, JCI Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World, Global Business Hall of Fame. A personal stake that travels well into corporate audiences. Grew up in a family where every member had a disability, and built a company that addresses an underserved global market of 40 million blind people. Authority on social impact ventures without the activist framing. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, .lumen. Pedestrian Autonomous Driving technology, first deployed in glasses for blind users. Former Head of Innovation, Continental Automotive. Patents applied in European electric vehicles. First Romanian inductee, Global Business Hall of Fame, 2021. Innovators category, alongside Canva’s Melanie Perkins. Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe; JCI Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World. Author, “Arduino Development Cookbook” (Packt Publishing, 2015). Alumnus, Constructor University (formerly Jacobs University Bremen). Biography A research project inside a Romanian engineering team in 2018 became, by early 2020, a venture called .lumen. By 2025 the company had closed a €5M round led by Catalyst Romania with the European Innovation Council Fund and Tigrim Capital alongside it, the latest tranche in a €9.7M blended finance package that made it the first Romanian startup to take EIC Accelerator capital. The product, Pedestrian Autonomous Driving, was first demonstrated in glasses that replicate and extend the function of a guide dog. The global addressable problem is concrete: roughly 40 million blind people, fewer than 20,000 guide dogs. The biography behind the company matters because it explains the design choice. Cornel Amariei grew up in a family where every member had a disability: parents with locomotor conditions, a sister with cerebral palsy. The motivation is not a brand layer on top of a venture. It is the reason the venture exists. Before .lumen, Amariei was Head of Innovation at Continental Automotive, where his patent work was integrated into European electric vehicles. That experience matters for boards thinking about innovation governance. He has run the discipline inside a multinational tier-one and built it from scratch as a founder, which is rare in a market where most speakers have done only one. The recognition is from named institutions: Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe, JCI’s Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World, and induction into the Global Business Hall of Fame in 2021 as the first Romanian laureate, in the innovators category alongside Canva founder Melanie Perkins. He is also a published technical author with Packt and an alumnus of Constructor University in Bremen. Key speaking topics Deep-tech entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership Innovation management inside multinationals Assistive technology and accessibility ventures Autonomous driving and robotics applied to consumer products Patent strategy and IP-led product development European deep-tech capital and the EIC Accelerator route Social impact through technology commercialisation Ideal for Innovation, R&D and CTO leadership inside industrials, automotive and consumer technology Boards and executive committees reviewing how invention is governed and converted to product ESG, accessibility and inclusion programmes seeking a credible technology voice rather than an activist one Entrepreneurship summits, deep-tech investor events and scale-up programmes across Europe Audience outcomes A working view of how a research prototype becomes a regulated, funded, commercial product A founder’s account of building patent value inside both a multinational and a startup A grounded reference point for what European deep-tech capital, including EIC blended finance, actually requires of a company A clearer sense of where assistive and accessibility technology is going as autonomous driving capabilities scale down to wearables A reset on what social impact looks like when it is a product proposition rather than a corporate programme

Why organisations work with David McCandless He built the language of modern editorial data visualisation through Information is Beautiful, the blog and three books that defined the form for a generation of journalists and designers. He co-founded the Information is Beautiful Awards in 2012 with Kantar’s Aziz Cami, the global benchmark prize for data visualisation, giving him a panoramic view of what works across thousands of submissions. His work has been published by The Guardian, Wired, and Die Zeit and exhibited at MoMA, Tate Britain, and the Wellcome Trust gallery, evidence that the craft holds up to both editorial and curatorial scrutiny. His TEDGlobal 2010 talk, “The beauty of data visualization”, remains one of the most-watched introductions to the field and shapes how senior audiences think about visual storytelling. Biography highlights Author of Information is Beautiful (2009), Knowledge is Beautiful (2014), and Beautiful News (2023), published by HarperCollins. Founder of the Information is Beautiful blog and co-founder of the Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards (2012). TEDGlobal 2010 speaker: “The beauty of data visualization”. Information design featured in The Guardian, Wired, and Die Zeit. Work exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Tate Britain, and the Wellcome Trust gallery (London). Began his career as a journalist writing for The Guardian and Wired before building Information is Beautiful into a publishing platform. Biography The hardest problem in modern communication is not gathering data. It is making the data mean something to a reader who has eight seconds and a phone. That is the territory David McCandless has worked for nearly two decades, first as a journalist at The Guardian and Wired, then as the founder of Information is Beautiful. The blog became a publishing programme. Information is Beautiful (2009), Knowledge is Beautiful (2014), and Beautiful News (2023) collect more than 1,500 graphics that take subjects ranging from drug deaths to global wealth and turn them into images a non-specialist can read. The craft sits in the choices: what to compare, what to leave out, what visual metaphor lets a number argue with itself. In 2012 he co-founded what became the Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards with Aziz Cami, then Creative Director at Kantar. Through that platform McCandless has spent more than a decade looking at the best data visualisation work in the world, which gives him an unusually wide reference set when advising teams on what separates a chart that lands from one that does not. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Tate Britain, and the Wellcome Trust gallery, and his TEDGlobal 2010 talk on the beauty of data visualisation introduced the field to a mainstream audience. For organisations sitting on data they cannot translate into action, he offers the rarer skill: editorial judgement on what is worth showing, and how. Key speaking topics Data visualisation Information design Data storytelling Data journalism Visual communication Creativity and pattern recognition Infographics in business communication Ideal for CMOs, brand and marketing leaders rethinking how data shapes customer narratives Communications, internal comms, and corporate affairs leads briefing senior audiences Heads of data, analytics, and insight whose dashboards are not changing decisions Innovation and design leaders building visual literacy across the organisation Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for what makes a data visualisation land with a non-specialist audience Sharper editorial judgement on which numbers in a dataset are worth showing and which are noise Concrete examples from across journalism, design, and the IIB Awards archive of what good looks like A clearer view of how to brief designers, agencies, and internal teams on data-led communication

Why organisations work with Deborah Nas Her book Design Things That Make Sense sets out a codified methodology: 24 strategies to strengthen what technology offers users and 13 to reduce the resistance that causes adoption to fail. It gives innovation teams a structured diagnostic rather than a set of principles to interpret on their own. She founded the Centre for Quantum and Society at QuantumDelta NL – making her one of very few people who can address quantum technology’s ethical, legal, and organisational implications in terms senior teams can act on before the technology reaches commercial scale. Her position leading multidisciplinary research teams at TU Delft – on mobility futures, quantum societal readiness, and energy transition – means her perspective is shaped by live scientific frontier work, not commentary on published trends. She is on the investment committee of InnovationQuarter Capital, a €143 million deep tech fund, and on the supervisory board of Hardt Hyperloop – direct sight lines into where deep tech investment is moving, not just where it currently stands. Her starting point is the psychology of technology resistance – the reason most implementation initiatives stall – which is the question most organisations have not structured an answer to and the one that most directly explains expensive innovation failures. Biography highlights Professor of Strategic Design for Technology-based Innovation, Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, TU Delft Initiative Lead and founder, Centre for Quantum and Society, QuantumDelta NL Author, Design Things That Make Sense (BIS Publishers) – a practitioner framework of 37 named design strategies for technology-based product innovation Visiting professor, Politecnico di Milano Investment committee member, InnovationQuarter Capital (€143 million deep tech fund); supervisory board member, Hardt Hyperloop MSc Industrial Design Engineering with honours, TU Delft; 16 years co-founding and running a strategic innovation agency Biography Technology that works and technology that people will actually use are two different achievements. Deborah Nas, Professor of Strategic Design for Technology-based Innovation at TU Delft’s Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, has spent 25 years studying the gap between them. She began at Philips and KPN, then spent 16 years co-founding and running a strategic innovation agency before anchoring her work in research and teaching at TU Delft. Her core contribution is a codified methodology: 24 design strategies to strengthen what a technology product offers and 13 to reduce the user resistance that causes adoption to fail. Published in Design Things That Make Sense (BIS Publishers), the framework draws on consumer psychology and is structured for direct use by product teams and innovation managers. She also teaches it as a visiting professor at Politecnico di Milano. She has extended this work into the next generation of technology adoption challenges. As founder and Innovation Lead of the Centre for Quantum and Society at QuantumDelta NL, she is developing the ethical, legal, and societal frameworks organisations will need before quantum technology reaches commercial scale. She is also on the supervisory board of Hardt Hyperloop and on the investment committee of InnovationQuarter Capital, a €143 million deep tech fund. Organisations that work with her are not typically looking for enthusiasm about what emerging technology can do. They want a structured answer to why technology investments fail at the point of adoption – and a methodology that gives their teams a way to act on it. Key speaking topics Technology adoption and consumer resistance Human-centred design for technology-based innovation AI strategy and organisational readiness Quantum technology and societal implications Deep tech ecosystem and investment landscape Future of work and intelligent systems Innovation strategy for established organisations Ideal for Chief Innovation Officers, R&D leads, and product strategy teams working with emerging technologies Boards and senior leadership teams making investment decisions on AI, quantum, or deep tech Corporate innovation functions examining why technology projects stall or fail at adoption Government and public sector bodies engaging with the organisational and societal implications of advanced technologies Audience outcomes A clear framework for understanding why technology-based products fail at adoption – and what design decisions change that outcome Working familiarity with the Tech Design Strategies methodology: 24 strategies to strengthen product benefits and 13 to reduce user resistance Practical orientation to how AI and quantum technologies will affect their specific industry or sector Ability to separate technological capability from technology adoption as distinct strategic problems requiring different organisational responses Insight into how organisations and investors at the deep tech frontier are currently making decisions about technology bets

Why organisations work with Tim Gregory He works inside the industry he speaks about. Day to day, he measures the chemistry and radioactivity of nuclear materials at Sellafield, which gives his policy arguments a footing most energy commentators do not have. His book Going Nuclear, published by Bodley Head and Pegasus in 2025, is a structured commercial case for atomic energy in the transition, not a general science book. Audiences leave with the argument, not impressions of it. He translates technical content for non-technical rooms. A decade of BBC science broadcasting, including The Sky at Night and BBC Breakfast, has trained him to take a board-level audience through reactor design, waste, and medical isotopes without losing them. He covers the adjacent commercial opportunities, not only generation: nuclear medicine, isotope supply chains, and nuclear power for space missions. This matters to boards in pharma, advanced manufacturing and aerospace, not just utilities. He is one of the few public-facing voices on nuclear who is a working scientist rather than a former regulator or executive, which gives him independence on contested questions about waste, safety and cost. Biography highlights Senior nuclear chemist at the UK National Nuclear Laboratory, Sellafield. Author of Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World (Bodley Head/Pegasus, 2025). Author of Meteorite: How Stones from Outer Space Made Our World (John Murray, 2020). PhD in cosmochemistry, University of Bristol; MEarthSci First Class, University of Manchester. BBC science presenter and contributor: The Sky at Night, BBC Bitesize, BBC Breakfast, Channel 4 News, Sky News Australia. Final three on BBC2’s Astronauts: Do You Have What It Takes?, the astronaut selection series with Chris Hadfield. NASA Johnson Space Center intern, working on water-rich asteroids. Biography The UK plans to meet net zero with a grid that does not yet exist. Wind and solar capacity is rising, but firm low-carbon power is not. Gregory works at Sellafield, where the operational reality of nuclear, its fuel cycle, its waste, its economics, is closer than it is for most commentators on energy policy. Going Nuclear, published in 2025 by Bodley Head in the UK and Pegasus in the US, sets out his argument in detail. It is not a defence of the existing nuclear estate. It is a case that atomic energy is the most environmentally responsible way to generate firm power, and that the wider applications of the atom, in medicine, forensics, agriculture and space, are systematically underweighted in public debate. His credibility on the subject is anchored in primary research. He holds a PhD in cosmochemistry from the University of Bristol, completed a NASA internship at Johnson Space Center on water-rich asteroids, and wrote Meteorite (John Murray, 2020) about how the chemistry of meteorites maps the formation of the Solar System. That training in isotope chemistry is the same toolkit he applies at Sellafield. He is also a working broadcaster. BBC Sky at Night, BBC Breakfast, BBC Bitesize and Channel 4 News have used him as a science contributor, and he reached the final three on BBC2’s Astronauts: Do You Have What It Takes? under Chris Hadfield. For boards working through the gap between net zero policy and capital allocation, he is rare in being both a practitioner and a public communicator on the same subject. Key speaking topics Nuclear power and net zero Energy transition and capital allocation Nuclear waste, recycling and advanced reactors Nuclear medicine and isotope-based cancer treatment Nuclear power for space exploration Cosmochemistry and the formation of the Solar System Curiosity-driven research and commercial innovation Ideal for Boards and executive teams in energy, utilities and infrastructure setting decarbonisation strategy. Investor and capital allocation audiences weighing nuclear exposure against renewables and gas. Pharmaceutical, advanced manufacturing and aerospace leadership teams interested in isotopes, nuclear medicine and space-grade power. Policy, regulatory and public-affairs audiences working on the UK and EU energy transition. Audience outcomes A clearer view of where nuclear fits in a credible net zero pathway, and where the renewables-only argument runs out of road. Working knowledge of the economics and physics of waste, including why “waste” is increasingly a misnomer for current fuel cycles. A grounded read on nuclear medicine and isotope supply, and what it implies for pharma and healthcare strategy. A frame for thinking about nuclear-powered space missions and lunar or Martian infrastructure. The ability to push back, with data, on the most common public objections to nuclear power.