Learning & Development

Why organisations work with Vinh Giang His communication framework is rooted in the psychology of illusion; specifically, how professional magicians manage audience perception, belief, and attention. This gives organisations access to a model of influence that is empirically grounded in audience psychology, not generic presentation technique. His signature concept: that every professional has a habitual voice, not a natural one, and that this voice can be deliberately rebuilt, gives individuals a concrete, actionable framework rather than general advice about confidence or impact. He built 52Kards, an online magic education platform that reached 800,000 students globally, demonstrating that he has applied the same principles of skill transfer and engagement he teaches to others at commercial scale. The STAGE Academy programme translates his performance methodology into structured organisational training, giving companies a repeatable development pathway, not a one-off motivational event. He was named South Australia’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2013 and has delivered over 80 live events internationally, including a TEDx appearance at Macquarie University: his credibility is practitioner-built, not academic. Biography highlights Co-founder of 52Kards (formerly Encyclopedia of Magic), an online education platform with over 800,000 enrolled students worldwide CEO of Luminary Productions, a training, development, and video production company Creator of the STAGE Academy, a structured public speaking and communication programme for professionals South Australia Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award (2013) Multiple award-winning performer at the Adelaide Fringe Festival: Top Voted Show and Top Reviewed Show, three consecutive years (2012-2014) TEDx speaker, Macquarie University, on communication and professional performance Biography Vinh Giang’s central argument is that most professionals communicate well below the standard their thinking deserves, and that the gap between expertise and expression is a learned problem with a learnable fix. His methodology doesn’t come from corporate training or academic research. It comes from 15 years of studying what professional magicians do: how they control attention, manage belief, and shape the experience of an audience in real time. The insight he took from performance is precise. Robert-Houdin’s principle: that a magician is an actor playing the part of a magician, reframes communication as a discipline of craft, not personality. Applied to business, this means that a leader’s authority in a room is not fixed. It is a set of habits, many of them inherited from childhood, that can be replaced with deliberate ones. That argument is the foundation of the STAGE Academy, his structured communication programme for professionals. Giang is not a theorist. He dropped out of a commerce and law degree at the University of Adelaide to build 52Kards, an online magic education platform that eventually reached over 800,000 students worldwide. That business – built before the term “creator economy” existed – earned him the South Australia Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2013. His performance work at the Adelaide Fringe Festival, where his shows won Top Voted and Top Reviewed for three consecutive years, gave him a practical laboratory for the same principles he now teaches to senior professionals. His clients have included Microsoft, Facebook, and LinkedIn. The organisations that engage him are not looking for motivational uplift; they are investing in a measurable upgrade in how their people present, persuade, and lead under pressure. Key speaking topics Performance-based communication for leaders The psychology of influence and audience perception Vocal presence and professional authority Storytelling and high-stakes persuasion Confidence and mindset in professional communication Communication as a teachable skill set Entrepreneurship and the business of building trust Ideal for Senior leadership teams and C-suite executives seeking to sharpen influence and executive presence Sales and commercial leaders whose teams communicate and persuade in high-stakes environments CHROs and L&D leads commissioning communication capability programmes Conference audiences drawn from professional services, financial services, or technology – where credibility depends on the ability to make complex ideas land clearly Audience outcomes A concrete model for understanding why their current communication habits underperform, and what specifically to change Practical tools for rebuilding vocal presence and delivery authority, drawn from professional performance training A framework for structuring high-stakes communication; presentations, negotiations, and leadership conversations, that moves audiences to action Greater awareness of the gap between how they intend to come across and how they are actually received A shift from treating communication as a soft skill to treating it as a professional discipline with measurable standards

Why organisations work with Travis Bradberry His four-quadrant EQ model – self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship management – gives HR and L&D teams a structured, easy-to-assess framework that can be integrated into existing leadership development and performance programmes, rather than treated as a standalone concept. TalentSmart’s reach into more than 75% of Fortune 500 companies means Bradberry’s frameworks have been stress-tested at enterprise scale across sectors and leadership levels, rather than drawn from a single industry or a handful of client cases. Emotional Intelligence 2.0 has sold over 3 million copies and been translated into 28 languages – a degree of market validation that signals genuine professional resonance, and that typically eases internal buy-in when positioning an EQ-based leadership initiative. His dual Ph.D. spanning both Clinical and Industrial-Organizational Psychology grounds a high-profile popular message in the research disciplines most directly relevant to behavioural change at work; a combination few speakers in the EQ space hold. With 2.5 million LinkedIn followers and Top Voice designation, his platform reflects an active, senior professional audience and demonstrates Bradberry’s credibility. Biography highlights Dual Ph.D. in Clinical and Industrial-Organizational Psychology, California School of Professional Psychology Co-author of Emotional Intelligence 2.0 – the bestselling EQ title in its category, with over 3 million copies sold and translated into 28 languages across 150+ countries Co-founder and President of TalentSmart (later TalentSmartEQ) – the EQ assessment and training business embedded in more than 75% of Fortune 500 companies Author of subsequent titles including Emotional Intelligence Habits and The New Emotional Intelligence; total book sales across all titles exceed 5 million copies Chief People Scientist at LEADx, a mobile-first leadership development platform applying behavioural science and AI to EQ training at scale LinkedIn Top Voice with over 2.5 million followers; written for or covered by Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fortune, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and TIME Biography The performance gap that most leadership development programmes fail to close is not a knowledge gap. Leaders who derail by alienating teams, making reactive decisions under pressure, or losing influence at senior levels, rarely lack technical expertise. The pattern that consistently predicts who performs and who struggles sits elsewhere: in the ability to perceive, regulate, and apply emotional information at the moments that matter most. Dr. Travis Bradberry holds a dual Ph.D. in Clinical and Industrial-Organizational Psychology and has spent his career making that domain measurable and actionable for organisations. As co-founder of TalentSmart, he built the dominant infrastructure for EQ assessment and training, working with more than 75% of Fortune 500 companies. The company’s proprietary Emotional Intelligence Appraisal and associated training programmes embedded EQ into leadership development at a scale most researchers and authors never reach. His co-authored book Emotional Intelligence 2.0 became one of the most widely read management titles of its generation, selling over 3 million copies and appearing in 28 languages across 150 countries. The book’s four-quadrant model gave organisations a structured, assessable framework rather than an abstract aspiration. Subsequent works including Emotional Intelligence Habits and The New Emotional Intelligence extend that framework with more recent research in neuroscience and habit formation. As Chief People Scientist at LEADx, Bradberry’s current work focuses on applying EQ research through AI-assisted behavioural coaching at scale; a model increasingly relevant to organisations that need leadership development to produce lasting behavioural change beyond the classroom. His writing has reached a global executive audience through Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fortune, and the Wall Street Journal. Key speaking topics Emotional intelligence and leadership performance Self-awareness and self-management at work Measuring and developing EQ in organisations Behavioural science of decision-making under pressure Leadership effectiveness and derailment Talent development through emotional intelligence Performance culture and workplace behaviour Ideal for CHROs and People leaders designing or refreshing leadership development programmes Executive teams and senior leadership cohorts working on behavioural effectiveness and team dynamics L&D leads building EQ capability into management pipelines Organisations implementing performance culture or investing in measurable behaviour change Audience outcomes A clear understanding of the four-quadrant EQ model and how each domain directly affects leadership behaviour and organisational outcomes Awareness of how EQ predicts performance across roles and levels, grounded in TalentSmart’s enterprise-scale data Practical strategies for developing self-awareness and self-management under pressure – applicable immediately in leadership practice Frameworks for integrating EQ assessment into existing coaching, development, and performance programmes A sharper distinction between EQ as an abstract concept and EQ as a measurable, developable capability – with implications for how organisations design and evaluate leadership investment

Why organisations work with Steve Wozniak He is the only living engineer who designed both the Apple I and Apple II from scratch – making him the sole speaker who can give an unmediated, first-hand account of the technical and creative decisions that launched the personal computer industry, not a retelling of someone else’s story. His account of innovation is engineering-first, not strategy-first: the Apple II preceded the business plan, not the other way round. That distinction gives organisations a direct counterpoint to the assumption that great products are the output of structured innovation programmes. The National Medal of Technology (1985) and the Heinz Award for Technology, The Economy and Employment (2000) – awarded specifically for “single-handedly designing the first personal computer” – are among the most rigorously assessed technology honours in the United States, and are publicly verifiable by any due-diligence process. His three decades of direct involvement in technology education – from adopting a school district to co-founding Woz U in 2017 – extend his argument about curiosity-driven invention into how organisations build and develop technical talent, not just how they manage innovation strategy. His signature format is a moderated conversation, not a fixed keynote: organisations set the agenda, and Wozniak engages directly with the specific challenges the audience brings. The result is different from – and harder to replicate than – a pre-packaged talk. Biography highlights Sole engineer on the Apple I (1976) and Apple II (1977); listed as sole inventor on four Apple patents National Medal of Technology, 1985 – awarded by President Ronald Reagan, jointly with Steve Jobs, for the development and introduction of the personal computer ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award, 1979; Heinz Award for Technology, The Economy and Employment, 2000; National Inventors Hall of Fame inductee, 2000 Computer History Museum Fellow, 1998 Author of iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon (W.W. Norton, 2006) – a New York Times bestselling autobiography BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley; co-founded Woz U in 2017, a postsecondary software engineering and technology training platform Founding sponsor of the Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose and The Tech Interactive, Silicon Valley’s technology museum Biography The Apple II was built by one engineer, on his own time, because the problem interested him. Steve Wozniak had no brief, no product committee, and no market research – just an engineering puzzle he found compelling. That creative condition is what produced the personal computer industry, and it is what Wozniak has spent decades trying to explain and, through his education work, replicate. That engineering-first perspective sets his account apart from those who discuss innovation as a strategic discipline. The Apple II preceded the business, not the other way round. Its colour graphics, integrated keyboard, and floppy disk drive were engineering decisions, not market-research conclusions. The product that launched a global industry was a technical artefact made by a person who loved making things. That distinction matters to any organisation asking why its own innovation efforts consistently underperform. The recognition that followed has been rigorous and specific. Wozniak received the National Medal of Technology in 1985 – jointly with Steve Jobs, for the development and introduction of the personal computer – the highest honour for technological achievement awarded by the United States government. The ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award recognised his contributions in 1979. In 2000, the Heinz Award for Technology, The Economy and Employment cited him explicitly for designing the first personal computer and redirecting his work toward education. He holds four Apple patents and is a Fellow of the Computer History Museum. His commitment to education has been sustained and direct. He adopted the Los Gatos School District, co-founded Woz U in 2017 to expand access to software engineering training, and has taught computer literacy in classrooms. His autobiography, iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon (W.W. Norton, 2006), was a New York Times bestseller. His BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley was completed years after Apple had already become a global company – a fact that says something about what he values and why. Key speaking topics Engineering-led innovation and market creation The founding of Apple Computer Entrepreneurial thinking inside large organisations The origins of the personal computer industry Robotics, AI, and automation Technology education and technical talent development Creative freedom and engineering culture Ideal for CEOs and board-level audiences examining why large-organisation innovation consistently underperforms relative to investment CTOs, Chief Innovation Officers, and engineering leadership teams seeking a primary-source perspective on invention rather than innovation methodology Corporate innovation programmes and R&D functions looking to ground strategy in engineering-first thinking Technology and digital transformation conferences requiring a speaker whose credibility is structural, not positional Audience outcomes A first-hand account of the technical decisions and working conditions that produced the Apple I and Apple II – the machines that defined personal computing A clearer understanding of why genuine invention tends to emerge from curiosity and freedom rather than process and planning cycles Practical perspective on what organisations can do – and stop doing – to allow engineering talent and technical curiosity to produce commercially significant results Insight into the relationship between education, hands-on technical skill, and the kind of innovation that creates new industries rather than improves existing ones Exposure to a model of entrepreneurship that began with engineering before it had a business – and what that sequence reveals about how lasting technology companies are actually built

Why organisations work with Sebastian Thrun He has shipped autonomous AI at production scale. The Stanford team he led won the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005, and the Google self-driving project he co-founded became Waymo. He built the playbook that boards now ask about. Google X, founded under his leadership, codified moonshot methodology for capital-intensive technology bets. He has direct experience reskilling enterprise workforces in AI, data and cloud through Udacity, including programmes for IBM, Mercedes-Benz and Google before the 2024 acquisition by Accenture. He explains AI without dumbing it down. Senior audiences leave with a working sense of what current systems can and cannot do, and where the real operational risk sits. Biography highlights Co-founder of Google X and the Google self-driving car project that became Waymo Led the Stanford Racing Team whose vehicle Stanley won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge; Stanley now sits in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History Co-founder and chairman of Udacity, acquired by Accenture in 2024 to power the LearnVantage reskilling platform Co-founder and former CEO of Kitty Hawk, the eVTOL “flying car” company backed by Larry Page Member of the National Academy of Engineering and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina; Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award (Education, 2012) Co-author of Probabilistic Robotics (MIT Press), the standard graduate text on the mathematics behind autonomous systems Biography Stanley crossed the finish line of the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge after 132 miles of desert, the first autonomous vehicle to do so. The Stanford Racing Team that built it was led by Sebastian Thrun, then director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Stanley now sits in the Smithsonian. The technology grew into Waymo and the modern autonomous vehicle industry. That arc, from research lab to production AI, is what makes his perspective valuable to senior teams. He gave up tenure at Stanford to become a Google Fellow, co-founded Google X, and built the moonshot model that boards now reference when they talk about long-horizon technology bets. Probabilistic Robotics, the textbook he co-authored with Wolfram Burgard and Dieter Fox, remains the standard graduate reference in the field. The second half of his career addresses the constraint that most boards now feel acutely. Talent. Udacity, which he co-founded in 2012, built the Nanodegree model with employers including IBM, Mercedes-Benz and Google, then sold to Accenture in 2024 to anchor the LearnVantage reskilling platform. He also co-founded Kitty Hawk with Larry Page to commercialise eVTOL aircraft. Audiences get something specific from him. A clear read on what current AI systems do well, where they fail, what production deployment actually requires, and how to build a workforce that can operate the technology rather than admire it. Key speaking topics Production AI and autonomous systems Moonshot methodology and long-horizon technology bets AI workforce reskilling and the talent constraint The future of mobility and self-driving vehicles AI for the board and the executive committee Online learning and the economics of education Ideal for Boards and executive committees moving from AI strategy to operating deployment CHROs and CLOs commissioning enterprise reskilling at scale Automotive, mobility and industrial leadership teams facing autonomy CTOs and chief AI officers benchmarking moonshot and R&D portfolios Audience outcomes A working mental model of where current AI systems succeed and where they fail in production A concrete view of the workforce capability required to run AI inside a large organisation A read on how moonshot bets are structured, governed and shut down inside a serious technology company A clearer sense of where autonomy is heading in mobility, logistics and adjacent sectors

Why organisations work with Robert Winston A first-hand pioneer of in vitro fertilisation and the team that, with Alan Handyside in 1990, developed pre-implantation genetic diagnosis at Hammersmith Hospital. Few speakers can explain the genetic revolution from inside the laboratory that built it. Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize winner for communicating science, with three decades of presenting flagship BBC science series, including The Human Body, Child of Our Time and Walking with Cavemen. The translation skill is verified by the audience and by the Society. An active legislator on biomedical policy in the House of Lords, named Peer of the Year in 2008 for his work on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. Buyers get the scientist, the broadcaster and the lawmaker in one room. Chairman of the Genesis Research Trust, which has raised more than £13 million to fund women’s reproductive health research at Imperial College London. The credentials are operational, not honorary. Biography highlights Professor of Science and Society and Emeritus Professor of Fertility Studies, Imperial College London. Life peer as Baron Winston of Hammersmith, 1995; Labour peer in the House of Lords; Peer of the Year, 2008. Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize, 1999, for the public communication of science. Presenter of BBC series Your Life in Their Hands, The Human Body, Child of Our Time, Walking with Cavemen and The Story of God; The Human Body won three BAFTAs. Chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University, 2001 to 2018; founder of Imperial’s Wohl Reach Out Lab for school-age science. Author of more than 20 books and over 300 peer-reviewed scientific papers on human reproduction and genetics. Biography Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis was developed at Hammersmith Hospital in 1990 by a team including Alan Handyside and Robert Winston. That single breakthrough redrew the moral and commercial map of reproductive medicine: it allowed embryos to be screened for inherited disease, and it forced a generation of legislators, ethicists and clinicians to argue out where the limits of human genetic intervention should sit. Winston was at the centre of that argument, and has stayed there. His credentials are unusually operational. He is Professor of Science and Society and Emeritus Professor of Fertility Studies at Imperial College London. He chairs the Genesis Research Trust, which has raised more than £13 million for reproductive health research at Imperial. As Baron Winston of Hammersmith, he sits as a Labour peer in the House of Lords and was voted Peer of the Year in 2008 for his work on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, the legislation that defines what is and is not permissible in UK fertility science. The public face is just as substantial. The Royal Society awarded him the Michael Faraday Prize in 1999 for communicating science. Three decades of BBC science programming, including The Human Body, Child of Our Time and Walking with Cavemen, have given him an unusual ability to make complex biology comprehensible to non-specialist audiences. The Human Body alone won three BAFTAs. For organisations, the value is direct. Winston speaks with the authority of a scientist who built the technology, the political experience of a legislator who has to govern it, and the practiced clarity of a broadcaster who has spent thirty years explaining it. Key speaking topics Genetics and the future of human reproduction Ethics of biomedical and reproductive technology Public understanding of science IVF, fertility and pre-implantation diagnosis Innovation in medical research Science policy and regulation Health, ageing and the human body Ideal for Boards and executive teams in pharmaceuticals, biotech, healthcare and medical devices. Healthcare and life sciences leadership conferences, clinical academies and research bodies. Innovation, R&D and technology strategy forums where biomedical ethics is on the agenda. After-dinner audiences at university, livery, professional society and corporate events. Audience outcomes A clear, non-technical account of how genetic science actually works, and where it is going next. Informed perspective on the ethical and regulatory questions that follow from genetic and reproductive technology. Direct exposure to the thinking of a scientist who has shaped both UK fertility law and frontline IVF practice. A sharper sense of how to communicate complex science to non-specialist boards, regulators and publics.

Why organisations work with Peter Senge Built the framework that defined organisational learning. The Fifth Discipline has sold over two million copies; Harvard Business Review named it one of the seminal management books of the past 75 years, and the Financial Times listed it among the five most important management books ever published. Treats systems thinking as a leadership discipline. The Five Disciplines (personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking) give executives a working method for changing the structures that produce their hardest recurring problems. Three decades of applied work with Ford, Shell, BP, Unilever, Intel, and Saudi Aramco, alongside cross-sector initiatives on global food systems, climate, and education. Named “Strategist of the Century” by the Journal of Business Strategy, one of 24 figures judged to have had the greatest influence on 20th-century business strategy. The Fifth Discipline is now in its fourth decade of continuous use on MBA syllabuses and inside operating companies. Biography highlights Senior Lecturer in Leadership and Sustainability at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Founding Chair of the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL) and co-founder of the Academy for Systemic Change. Author of The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, with over two million copies sold worldwide. Co-author of The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, The Dance of Change, Schools That Learn, Presence, and The Necessary Revolution. Named “Strategist of the Century” by the Journal of Business Strategy; ranked among the world’s top management thinkers by the Financial Times and BusinessWeek. Convened the Sustainable Food Lab, bringing major food companies and NGOs into shared work on sustainable agriculture. Biography The Fifth Discipline, published in 1990, gave senior executives a working vocabulary for something they kept hitting in practice but could not name: the structure of an organisation tends to produce the very problems its leaders are trying to solve. Thirty-six years later the book is still in print and still the reference text for the field. Peter Senge wrote it at MIT, where he is Senior Lecturer in Leadership and Sustainability at the Sloan School of Management. He is founding chair of the Society for Organizational Learning and co-founder of the Academy for Systemic Change. The Fifth Discipline has sold more than two million copies. Harvard Business Review named it one of the seminal management books of the past 75 years; the Financial Times listed it among the five most important management books ever published. The book is organised around five disciplines: personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking. The core argument is that the only sustainable competitive advantage is an organisation’s ability to learn faster than its environment changes. Senge’s later work extended the method into education through Schools That Learn, into large-scale change through The Dance of Change, and into sustainability through The Necessary Revolution. His applied work has run through Ford, Shell, BP, Unilever, Intel, and Saudi Aramco, and across cross-sector initiatives including the Sustainable Food Lab, which brought major food companies and NGOs into shared work on sustainable agriculture, and the Compassionate Systems community in primary and secondary education. The Journal of Business Strategy named him a “Strategist of the Century,” one of 24 figures judged to have had the greatest influence on 20th-century business strategy. Key speaking topics Systems thinking Organisational learning Leadership in complex systems Sustaining change in large organisations Cross-sector collaboration Sustainability and systemic change Ideal for CEOs and senior executive teams running multi-year transformation programmes Heads of strategy and transformation leads diagnosing why change initiatives stall Chief sustainability officers and ESG leads working across sector and stakeholder boundaries Senior leaders in education, healthcare, and government addressing complex public-system challenges Audience outcomes A new vocabulary for talking about why their hardest organisational problems keep returning The Five Disciplines as a working method, applied through cases drawn from Ford, Shell, Unilever, and the Sustainable Food Lab Language to make the structural causes of organisational performance visible to senior teams A sharper read on what leadership in complex, multi-stakeholder environments demands

Why organisations work with Miha Pogacnik His Macro Violin concept is cited by C. Otto Scharmer in Theory U and across MIT Sloan’s leadership writing. Senior teams engage with an arts-based framework that already has standing in serious management thought. He has worked inside the leadership floors of IBM, Microsoft, Bosch, Nike, Shell, Novartis and Porsche. The frame of reference is decades of access to people running companies that compete on judgment. His Resonance Platform method, taught at IEDC-Bled and in client sessions, moves a leadership group from positional debate into composed creative dialogue around the actual decision on the table. He has taught at Harvard, INSEAD, IMD, IESE Barcelona, CEIBS Shanghai and THNK Amsterdam, alongside his appointment at IEDC-Bled. The work is taken seriously inside management academia and in client rooms. Biography highlights Adjunct Professor of Arts and Leadership at IEDC-Bled School of Management; has taught at Harvard, INSEAD, IMD, IESE Barcelona, CEIBS Shanghai and THNK Amsterdam Macro Violin concept attributed to him is cited by C. Otto Scharmer in Theory U and across the MIT Sloan body of work on systemic leadership Founder of IDRIART (Institute for Development of Intercultural Relations through the Arts); originated the Chartres Festival d’Eté in 1981 Ambassador of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia Has worked with leadership teams at IBM, Microsoft, Nike, Shell, Novartis, Bosch, Coca-Cola and Porsche Speaker at the World Economic Forum (Davos and China), European Forum Alpbach and UN agencies; TEDx talk “A Creative Detour to Unleash Human Potential” Biography Most senior teams have absorbed every available framework for leadership. None of those frameworks change how they listen, or how they bring a room of expert voices into a coherent decision. The capacity that matters at the top is closer to conducting an orchestra than to running an analysis. That is the territory Miha Pogacnik has worked in for four decades. As Adjunct Professor of Arts and Leadership at IEDC-Bled School of Management, he uses musical performance to develop the listening and composed judgment that leadership at the top requires. His Resonance Platform method, taught in sessions with leadership teams at IBM, Microsoft, Bosch, Nike, Shell and Porsche, walks executives through the structural intelligence of a Bach fugue or a Brahms violin concerto and back to the decision on their desk. His distinctive intellectual contribution is the Macro Violin: the principle that a leader, like a violinist inside Chartres Cathedral, cannot perform on instrument alone but has to play the whole space. C. Otto Scharmer cites the concept in Theory U and across the MIT Sloan body of work on systemic leadership. That principle now sits at the centre of how arts-based leadership is taught at IEDC-Bled. The work has roots in something larger than corporate audiences. Pogacnik founded IDRIART in the early 1980s and went on to direct more than 200 intercultural festivals in crisis regions, including the Adriatic during the breakup of Yugoslavia and Central Europe in the years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. He serves as Ambassador of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia. The first IDRIART festival ran at Chartres Cathedral in 1981, the same setting in which Pogacnik first identified the Macro Violin principle, and where the entire body of work begins. Key speaking topics Arts-based leadership development Listening as a leadership discipline Creativity and innovation through musical structure Cultural intelligence in international business Organisational learning through artistic practice The Resonance Platform method for senior teams The Macro Violin and ensemble leadership Ideal for CHROs and Chief Learning Officers designing executive development programmes CEOs and Chief Strategy Officers convening senior teams for board offsites or strategic dialogue Business school deans and EMBA directors integrating arts and humanities into leadership education Conference programmers leading flagship events on creativity and leadership Audience outcomes A demonstration of how musical structure reveals complex team dynamics, with a Bach fugue or Brahms violin concerto used as the diagnostic Live application of the Resonance Platform method to the strategic question the leadership team brings into the room A working vocabulary for leadership drawn from musical performance: composition, ensemble, listening from the periphery, and the macro violin The shift from treating the conductor as a metaphor to treating conducting as a working model of leadership

Why organisations work with Matthew Syed He has named two of the most widely adopted ideas in modern leadership vocabulary, Black Box Thinking and Rebel Ideas, and uses them to give leadership teams a shared language for failure and dissent. He brings the rare triangulation of two-time Olympian, Times columnist since 1999 and Sunday Times number one bestselling author, which lets him hold the room with executives, boards and entire workforces. His arguments are built from primary case material across aviation, healthcare, intelligence, sport and government, not from generic management literature, so leaders leave with examples they can use in their own decision forums. Through Matthew Syed Consulting he has converted the books into psychometrics and culture programmes deployed in named organisations, which makes the keynote a credible entry point to longer-term work rather than a one-off appearance. Biography highlights Two-time Olympic table tennis player for Great Britain (Barcelona 1992, Sydney 2000) and three-time Commonwealth singles champion. First-class honours in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Balliol College, Oxford. Columnist for The Times and The Sunday Times since 1999, with two British Press Awards Sports Journalist of the Year wins. Author of Bounce, Black Box Thinking, Rebel Ideas, The Greatest, plus the You Are Awesome series for younger readers, with over two million copies sold and translations into more than thirty languages. Presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Sideways since 2021, examining the ideas that shape behaviour and decision-making. Co-founder of Matthew Syed Consulting and trustee of Greenhouse Sports. Biography Most organisations are not structured to learn from failure. They are structured to defend against it. The aviation industry, by contrast, treats every incident as data and rewrites procedure accordingly. That contrast is the spine of Black Box Thinking, the Sunday Times number one bestseller that turned a clinical engineering practice into a leadership argument. Syed builds his case from primary material, not from the management canon. Aviation, healthcare, intelligence agencies, elite sport and government feature as case studies in his work because each shows how culture either invites or suppresses honest information. Rebel Ideas extends the argument to cognitive diversity, making the case that homogenous teams fail at complex problems even when each member is individually brilliant. The credibility behind the argument is unusual. Two Olympic Games for Great Britain, nearly a decade as England’s number one in table tennis, three Commonwealth singles titles, and a first-class PPE degree from Balliol College, Oxford. Since 1999 he has written for The Times and The Sunday Times, winning Sports Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards twice and multiple awards from the Sports Journalists’ Association. The work continues across formats. He presents BBC Radio 4’s Sideways, now in multiple series, and through Matthew Syed Consulting has turned Black Box Thinking and Rebel Ideas into diagnostic tools and culture programmes used inside organisations. The keynote is the most condensed expression of that body of work, and the route many leadership teams use to start a longer conversation about how their own institution treats failure and dissent. Key speaking topics Learning from failure and the Black Box Thinking model Cognitive diversity and the Rebel Ideas thesis High-performance culture and growth mindset Decision-making under uncertainty Innovation and creative problem-solving Leadership and team learning Ideal for CEOs and executive committees redesigning how the organisation handles error, post-mortems and accountability. Boards and senior leadership teams concerned that groupthink is shaping major decisions. Heads of innovation, R&D and transformation looking to build cognitive range into team composition. CHROs and learning leaders embedding growth-mindset and high-performance culture at scale. Audience outcomes A working definition of Black Box Thinking that leaders can apply to their own incident reviews. A clear test for cognitive diversity inside their teams, separate from demographic diversity. Specific case examples from aviation, medicine and elite sport that translate into their own decision forums. A sharper view of where their organisation currently rewards consensus over dissent. Language and frameworks that travel from the keynote into ongoing leadership conversations.

Why organisations work with Jef Staes He gives leaders a working language for the conflict at the heart of innovation: the Red Monkey model treats the awkward, radical idea as the asset, and the cultural reflex to suppress it as the real problem to solve. His 2D to 3D framework names the specific shift companies are stuck in, from organisations built on standardised competence to ones that run on passion and continuous learning. He has lived both sides of the argument. Two decades inside Siemens and GTE ATEA as software designer, training manager and Corporate Learning Officer, then twenty more building the Red Monkey Company around what he learned was missing. His work is grounded in the academic mainstream of Belgian management education, with visiting lectureships at Vlerick, UAMS and EHSAL, but his delivery is built for general audiences, including four TEDx stages. He addresses culture and innovation as one problem, not two. Most speakers pick a side; Staes argues you cannot fix one without rewiring the other. Biography highlights Author of the Red Monkey trilogy: “I was a sheep”, “My manager is a hero”, and “My organisation is a jungle”. Founder of Red Monkey Company, where he develops the Red Monkey Story and the Engine of Innovation Mindset with client organisations. Former Corporate Learning Officer at Siemens Belgium; earlier career as software designer at GTE ATEA in Belgium and the USA. Visiting lecturer at Vlerick Business School, the University of Antwerp Management School (UAMS), and EHSAL. TEDx speaker on multiple occasions, including TEDxUtrecht with “Behave, brake for red monkeys”. Recurring keynote at OEB Global (Online Educa Berlin), including the Spotlight Stage session “Red Monkey Disruption”. Biography Most organisations are not built to change. They are built to standardise, to repeat, to filter out the awkward. That is the tension Jef Staes has spent four decades inside, first as a software designer at GTE ATEA, then as a training manager and Corporate Learning Officer at Siemens Belgium, and now as the founder of Red Monkey Company. His central argument is that innovation does not fail because organisations lack ideas. It fails because the cultural reflex of any mature company is to reject the radical idea and the person who carries it. The Red Monkey is his name for both. The work, then, is not to generate more ideas, but to redesign the conditions under which a Red Monkey can survive long enough to be tested. Around that core sit two sharper frames. The 2D to 3D shift describes how companies move from running on standardised competence to running on passion-fed expertise. The Power Defect names the structural mismatch between formal authority and actual capability in an information-rich economy. Together they give leaders a vocabulary for problems they usually only feel. Staes writes in metaphor on purpose. The trilogy (“I was a sheep”, “My manager is a hero”, “My organisation is a jungle”) is built for the operator, not the academic, and his TEDx and OEB Global stages reach the same audience. The argument lands because it is unsentimental about how organisations really behave when something new walks in. Key speaking topics Innovation culture and the management of disruptive ideas The 2D to 3D organisational shift The Red Monkey conflict model Learning organisations in the information age Leadership in environments resistant to change Talent, passion and the limits of standardised competence Ideal for Boards and executive teams whose innovation programmes consistently stall after launch CHROs and Chief Learning Officers redesigning learning and talent systems for a knowledge economy Transformation leads and innovation directors trying to protect radical ideas inside conservative cultures Leadership conferences in technology, manufacturing, financial services and the public sector Audience outcomes A working model for why their best ideas keep dying inside their own organisation Language to describe the conflict between standardised competence and passion-driven expertise A clear position on what 3D leadership demands of managers, and where most stop short Recognition of the Power Defect inside their own structure and where it is costing them speed A reframing of resistance to change as an organisational design problem, not a people problem

Why organisations work with Fredrik Haren His formula IDEA = P(K+I) – a person combining existing knowledge with new information – converts creativity from an abstract value into a model that managers can act on; this is the foundation of how he runs workshops, not just a rhetorical device The Idea Book has been deployed as an internal training tool by HP, Ericsson, Volvo, China Mobile, and GE – demonstrating that his framework translates from conference platform to in-organisation application His research base is genuinely cross-cultural: 25 years of field interviews across 75 countries, including fieldwork in North Korea and Mongolia, gives him material that no Western-campus-based creativity theorist can replicate He holds the Global Speaking Federation’s International Ambassador Award – given to fewer than 15 speakers globally since 2001 and, at the time of his award, never previously to a non-native English speaker based in Asia – a peer-verified credential, not a self-declared one His most recent book, The World of Creativity (Capstone/Wiley), entered for The Business Book Awards 2026, signals that his thinking continues to develop rather than recycle the same material Biography highlights Author of 10 books including The Idea Book, listed among the 100 Best Business Books of All Time Recipient of the International Ambassador Award from the Global Speakers Federation – awarded to fewer than 15 speakers globally since 2001 One of approximately 30 Global Speaking Fellows (CSPGlobal) worldwide Speaker of the Year, Sweden (2007); founder of interesting.org 2,000+ speeches delivered across 75 countries and 6 continents over a 25-year career Clients include KPMG, Grant Thornton International, HP, IKEA, BMW, Ericsson, GE, Volvo, and American Express Biography Fredrik Haren’s starting point is a question most organisations avoid asking directly: if you need a new idea tomorrow, where does it come from? His formula – IDEA = P(K+I), meaning a person combining existing knowledge with new information – strips creativity of its mystique and reframes it as something organisations can design for. The Idea Book, first published in 2004, applied that thinking in a concrete format: 150 pages of frameworks combined with 150 blank pages for working. It became an internal training tool at HP, Ericsson, Volvo, China Mobile, and GE, and was listed among the 100 Best Business Books of All Time. His most recent book, The World of Creativity (Capstone/Wiley), draws on 25 years of field research – interviews with thousands of people across 75 countries including North Korea – to map how creativity is both universal and shaped by culture. That fieldwork is the differentiator. Where most speakers on innovation draw from research or theory, Haren’s material comes from direct observation across markets and contexts that Western organisations rarely access. It gives global conference audiences – whose reference points span multiple continents – a framework that holds across cultures rather than one that travels badly. His credentials within the professional speaking community are a useful proxy for depth: Certified Speaking Professional, one of approximately 30 Global Speaking Fellows worldwide, and recipient of the Global Speakers Federation’s International Ambassador Award – given to fewer than 15 speakers since 2001 and, at the time of his award, the first to a non-native English speaker based in Asia. Key speaking topics Business creativity and idea generation Innovation as a repeatable organisational process Cross-cultural creativity and global mindset Creativity in the age of AI Building creative capability in organisations Future skills and the innovation-ready workforce Ideal for Global conference audiences spanning multiple nationalities where a single Western-centric perspective will not land CHROs and Learning & Development leads seeking to build creative capability beyond individual talent acquisition Senior leadership teams of multinationals where innovation is a stated priority but no reliable process exists to support it Innovation and transformation executives accountable for sustaining competitive differentiation Audience outcomes A working model – IDEA = P(K+I) – for understanding how ideas are generated and how to apply it in their own context Practical techniques for stimulating idea generation individually and with teams, applicable on return to the office A cross-cultural perspective on how creative practice differs across markets – relevant for any organisation operating across geographies A reframe of creativity from personal talent to organisational skill, with direct implications for how teams are developed A clearer read on how AI changes – and does not change – the fundamentals of human creativity

Why organisations work with David Thomas Measurable cognitive credentials that a buyer can name in one sentence: Guinness record for reciting Pi to 22,500 digits, International Grandmaster of Memory, US Memory Champion. Most motivational speakers cannot point to anything comparable. A lived story of reinvention from a troubled start and 11 years in the Fire Service to a global speaking career, which lands with audiences who are themselves being asked to reinvent roles, teams, and businesses. A practical toolkit, not a biography. Audiences leave with specific techniques for recall, preparation, and presenting under pressure that they can apply the next morning. 30 years of professional speaking across more than 30 countries, including after-dinner, keynote, and executive coaching formats, which gives the booker flexibility on room, tone, and length. A rare bridge between motivational storytelling and hard cognitive science, useful for sales kick-offs, leadership offsites, and learning events where a generic inspirational keynote would fall flat. Biography highlights Guinness World Record holder for reciting Pi to 22,500 digits from memory (1998), breaking an 18-year-old record. International Grandmaster of Memory and 2007 US Memory Champion; world record holder for memorising 100 individually shuffled packs of playing cards. Former operational firefighter with the UK Fire Service for 11 years before his speaking career. Author of “Improving Your Memory” in the DK Essential Managers series, published by Dorling Kindersley / Penguin Random House. Featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2003, with further coverage cited across BBC World Service, Wall Street Journal and The Times. Has delivered keynotes, workshops and after-dinner talks in more than 30 countries, with venues including Caesar’s Palace, Wembley and the Tower of London. Biography Most organisations treat memory and attention as personality traits. They are not. They are trainable, measurable disciplines, and the people who treat them that way outperform the ones who do not. David Thomas built a career on that distinction. The shift from the UK Fire Service to the World Memory Championships happened in under a year. Eight months after buying his first memory book to help him pass exams, Thomas placed fourth at the Championships. On 1 May 1998 he recited Pi to 22,500 digits, breaking an 18-year Guinness World Record. He later became an International Grandmaster of Memory, a US Memory Champion, and a world record holder for memorising 100 shuffled packs of playing cards. Those credentials matter because they separate him from the generic motivational field. When he talks about change, resilience, or performance under pressure, he is not borrowing language from the leadership canon. He is describing a discipline he has competed in at world level, published on through the DK Essential Managers series, and taught to more than 250,000 people across 30 countries. The work in the room is practical. Audiences leave with techniques they can use that week: how to remember names in a sales context, how to hold a room without notes, how to prepare when the stakes are real. It is why he still gets booked for sales kick-offs, leadership offsites, and after-dinner events nearly 30 years into the career, including a 2003 appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show that took the message to a global audience. Key speaking topics Memory and cognitive performance Resilience and personal reinvention Change and adaptability Presentation and communication skills Peak performance under pressure Motivation and mindset Ideal for Sales kick-offs and commercial conferences where recall of product, client, and context is a direct revenue lever. Leadership offsites and learning events where a keynote needs to bridge inspiration with practical cognitive skills. After-dinner and awards audiences looking for a serious credential paired with a human story rather than generic motivational fare. Learning and development leaders building programmes on performance habits, attention, and executive presence. Audience outcomes Specific, named memory techniques audiences can apply the next day to recall names, data, and presentation content. A sharper sense of what trainable performance actually looks like, anchored in world-record discipline rather than slogans. Renewed appetite for personal reinvention, drawn from a first-person story of moving from the Fire Service to world-level competition. Practical approaches to preparing for and performing in high-stakes rooms, from boardroom pitches to stage presentations.

Why organisations work with Sir Clive Woodward Built the same culture system in two radically different contexts. In rugby, England moved from sixth in the world to World Cup winners. Across Team GB’s 26 Olympic sports he contributed to the country’s most successful modern Games at London 2012. The framework travels. His “Teamship” model is a written operational system. England’s Black Book ran to roughly 240 rules across 35 sections, drafted and owned by the players themselves. Audiences work with a documented method they can apply. One of the very few elite sports coaches to have turned his own methodology into an enterprise learning platform. Hive Learning, founded with Blenheim Chalcot in 2012, now works with Sky, Deloitte, Jaguar Land Rover, PepsiCo, Halma and the International Olympic Committee among others. Named tools audiences can use: Teamship, TCUP (thinking correctly under pressure), the DNA of a Champion and critical non-essentials. Each is a specific leadership discipline with a defined practice. Biography highlights Head Coach of the England men’s rugby union team from 1997 to 2004, winning the 2003 Rugby World Cup. England reached world number one during his tenure and remain the only Northern Hemisphere side to have won a World Cup. Director of Sport at the British Olympic Association, supporting Team GB across the Beijing, Vancouver and London Olympic Games. London 2012 produced Britain’s most successful modern Games by medal count. Head Coach of the British & Irish Lions for their 2005 tour to New Zealand. Founder of Hive Learning, a digital learning platform built with Blenheim Chalcot and now working with organisations including Sky, Deloitte and Jaguar Land Rover. Author of Winning! (2004) and How to Win (2019), both setting out the Teamship methodology. Inducted into the World Rugby Hall of Fame; knighted in the 2004 New Year Honours; member of the IOC Entourage Commission since 2012. Biography England rugby were sixth in the world when Woodward took the head coach’s role in 1997. Six years later the team lifted the Rugby World Cup in Sydney, holding the world number one ranking and an unbeaten home record at Twickenham. England remain the only Northern Hemisphere team to have won the tournament. The underlying framework was what Woodward called Teamship: a written, player-owned set of behavioural standards covering everything from punctuality to media conduct. The Black Book that held these rules ran to roughly 240 entries across 35 sections. Its premise was that values only matter when they translate into specific daily behaviours, and that the team should write those rules itself. He took the same approach into the British Olympic Association from 2006, serving as Team GB’s Director of Sport through the Beijing, Vancouver and London cycles. London 2012 produced Britain’s most successful modern Games by medal count. The task across 26 Olympic sports was closer to running a diversified business than to coaching a single squad. In 2012 he founded Hive Learning with Blenheim Chalcot, codifying the Teamship approach into an enterprise learning platform now used by Sky, Deloitte and Jaguar Land Rover, among others. His books Winning! (2004) and How to Win (2019) document the same method in full. The underlying conviction: culture is a design problem, and the rules that sustain it should be written down. Key speaking topics High-performance culture Leadership under pressure Team performance and behavioural standards Building winning teams Learning cultures Performance in elite environments Culture change across large, federated organisations Ideal for Executive teams and boards treating culture as a measurable performance lever CEOs, CPOs and heads of learning leading organisation-wide behaviour and capability programmes Leadership teams integrating businesses after mergers or major reorganisations Organisations operating in high-stakes environments where team cohesion directly affects outcomes Audience outcomes A working method for writing behavioural standards that teams author and enforce themselves, drawn directly from England’s Black Book Specific language for diagnosing culture problems in behavioural terms A framework for running performance culture change across large, federated organisations where no single leader commands the whole system Perspective on building through setbacks, grounded in the six-year arc between the 1999 and 2003 Rugby World Cup campaigns Named leadership tools including Teamship, TCUP (thinking correctly under pressure), the DNA of a Champion and critical non-essentials