Organizational Agility

Why organisations work with Aidan McCullen A working library of change thinking. The Innovation Show has put him in long-form conversation with hundreds of named authors and practitioners on transformation, which feeds directly into the frameworks he brings into a room. A book with institutional weight. Undisruptable is a Wiley title with a foreword by Visa founder Dee Hock, and sits on a defined three-part argument about reinvention rather than a generic change pitch. Credentialled by Thinkers50. The 2025 Innovation Award places him among a small group of named voices that the management research community treats as serious on this topic. A practitioner seat at Trinity. He built and teaches the Emerging Technology Trends module at Trinity Business School, which forces his material to hold up under repeated MBA-level scrutiny. Reinvention as lived experience. A decade as an Ireland international rugby player, then digital lead at Bauer Media, then Head of Innovation at RTE, then author and board director, gives him standing to talk about personal reinvention without it sounding theoretical. Biography highlights Author of Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention for Individuals, Organisations and Life, Wiley, with a foreword by Dee Hock, founder of Visa. Recipient of the Thinkers50 Innovation Award in 2025. Host and creator of The Innovation Show, broadcast on RTE Ireland and Finland’s Business FM. Adjunct Professor at Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin, where he developed the Emerging Technology Trends module. Non-Executive Director at National Broadband Ireland. Former Ireland rugby international with more than 100 senior appearances for Leinster, Toulouse and London Irish. Biography Reinvention is the part of change leadership that organisations consistently underprice. Strategy decks are easy. Sustaining the personal and cultural shift after the deck is signed off is where most transformation programmes quietly break, which is the territory Aidan McCullen has spent the last decade mapping. His book Undisruptable, published by Wiley with a foreword by Visa founder Dee Hock, sets out a three-part argument: change as opportunity, the cognitive biases that block it, and the language leaders need to carry an organisation through it. The book sits alongside The Innovation Show, his interview platform, where he has worked through the material in long-form conversation with several hundred named authors, founders and academics on change and innovation. That output earned him the Thinkers50 Innovation Award in 2025 and an adjunct seat at Trinity Business School, where he built the Emerging Technology Trends module. He also serves as a Non-Executive Director at National Broadband Ireland, which keeps the work close to live infrastructure decisions rather than pure commentary. His own track record is the unusual part of the case. A decade as an Ireland rugby international with Leinster, Toulouse and London Irish, followed by digital ecosystem work at Bauer Media, the Head of Innovation role at RTE, and now author, broadcaster and board director, gives him direct experience of the cost of reinvention, which is what senior audiences tend to want to interrogate when the topic is on the agenda. Key speaking topics Permanent reinvention as a leadership discipline Change management and transformation programmes Cognitive bias and decision-making under change Emerging technology trends for senior leaders Innovation culture and operating models Personal reinvention and career transitions Communicating change inside large organisations Ideal for CEOs, COOs and transformation leads running multi-year change programmes CHROs and senior HR leaders responsible for leadership development and culture Boards and executive committees stress-testing the organisation’s capacity to keep changing Innovation, strategy and digital leaders who own the operating-model side of reinvention Audience outcomes A working model for treating reinvention as a continuous capability, not a one-off programme Specific named cases (including Fujifilm) of organisations that survived structural disruption, and what they did differently A clearer view of the cognitive biases that stall senior teams during change Language and analogies leaders can use to carry their own organisations through reinvention A short reading list of the most useful change thinkers, drawn from his interview catalogue

Why organisations work with Lord Sebastian Coe He has led, end to end, one of the largest peacetime delivery programmes a UK organisation has ever attempted: the London 2012 bid, build, and Games. Few speakers can talk about institutional execution at that scale from inside the room. As President of World Athletics since 2015, he has run a global federation through doping scandals, Russian sanctions, prize-money reform, and gender-eligibility policy. The case material is contemporary, contested, and useful to any board navigating reputational risk. He moves credibly between elite performance, political office, and institutional governance. That breadth lets him address both the human side of leadership and the structural side without flattening either. He brings a working operator’s view of stakeholder management: IOC, host governments, sponsors, broadcasters, athletes, media. Buyers wrestling with multi-principal accountability get a practitioner, not a commentator. Biography highlights President of World Athletics since 2015; member of the International Olympic Committee since 2020. Chair of the London 2012 bid and of LOCOG, the organising committee that delivered the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Chairman of the British Olympic Association, 2012 to 2016. Conservative MP for Falmouth and Camborne, 1992 to 1997; Chief of Staff to William Hague as Leader of the Opposition; created Baron Coe of Ranmore in 2000. Two-time Olympic 1500m gold medallist (Moscow 1980, Los Angeles 1984); set twelve world records across middle-distance events. KBE (2006), Companion of Honour (2013); author of Running My Life: The Autobiography (Hodder & Stoughton, 2012). Biography The London 2012 bid was three points behind Paris in the final IOC stretch. The committee changed chairs, brought in a new presentation, and won the host vote in Singapore on 6 July 2005. The work that followed, seven years of build, contracts, security, transport, and ceremony, finished on time and inside its public envelope. That is the institutional record buyers come to hear about. What sits behind it is unusual. Coe was an Olympic 1500m champion in 1980 and 1984 and held twelve world records before he left the track. He then served as a Conservative MP for Falmouth and Camborne, became Chief of Staff to William Hague, and was created a life peer in 2000. By the time he chaired LOCOG he had already worked at close range on how political institutions actually function under stress. Since 2015 he has been President of World Athletics. The federation he inherited was in the middle of the Russian doping crisis and faced an open question about whether its own governance was credible. The decade since has involved sanctions, reform of integrity systems, the introduction of prize money at the Olympic Games, and contested decisions on transgender and DSD eligibility in elite competition. None of those calls were uncontested; all of them were made. He brings to a corporate audience a working knowledge of leadership where the stakeholders are not aligned, the deadline does not move, and the public verdict arrives the same week as the decision. That is the part of the experience that translates. Key speaking topics Leadership of complex institutions under public scrutiny Delivering large-scale programmes against fixed deadlines Governance reform and integrity in international organisations Stakeholder management across political, commercial, and civic principals Building and sustaining high-performance cultures Legacy, reputation, and long-horizon decision-making Transitioning from individual performance to institutional leadership Ideal for Boards and executive teams running multi-stakeholder organisations where regulators, governments, and the public are all in the room CEOs and transformation leads delivering large programmes against fixed external deadlines Public-sector and federated bodies facing reform under reputational pressure Senior leadership audiences in sport, broadcasting, infrastructure, and major-event delivery Audience outcomes A working frame for setting and holding direction when stakeholders do not share interests Specific case material from London 2012 and a decade at World Athletics on integrity, reform, and crisis response Sharper sense of how to manage the gap between elite performance and institutional leadership Perspective on legacy, reputation, and the trade-offs that surface late in long programmes A direct read on what high-stakes accountability looks like from the inside of the room

Why organisations work with Margaret Heffernan She gives executive teams a precise vocabulary for organisational failure. “Wilful Blindness” turned the cognitive mechanics of why leaders ignore the obvious into a working diagnostic, and the Financial Times named it one of the most important business books of the decade. She has run companies, not just studied them. Five CEO roles across media and technology mean her arguments about hierarchy, dissent and decision-making are tested against the operational reality buyers actually face. She offers a serious counterweight to forecasting culture. “Uncharted” makes the case that prediction is a poor tool for navigating uncertainty, and gives leaders a more honest set of practices for acting without it. Thinkers50 inducted her into its Hall of Fame in 2023 for lasting contribution to management thinking, which places her among the most established voices on organisational behaviour working today. She is trusted in the room with senior leaders. Through Merryck & Co. she mentors CEOs of major global organisations, and she serves as Lead Faculty for the Forward Institute’s Responsible Leadership Programme. Biography highlights Professor of Practice, University of Bath School of Management. Thinkers50 Hall of Fame inductee, 2023. Author of eight books including “Wilful Blindness”, “A Bigger Prize” (Transmission Prize winner), “Beyond Measure”, “Uncharted” and “Embracing Uncertainty”, published by Simon & Schuster and Bristol University Press. TED Global speaker; four TED talks with more than 12 million combined views. Former Chief Executive of InfoMation Corporation, ZineZone Corporation and iCast Corporation; senior multimedia roles at Intuit, The Learning Company and Standard & Poor’s. Thirteen years as a BBC producer of drama and documentary programmes; regular Financial Times contributor and BBC Radio 4 broadcaster. Biography Most leadership teams do not lack information. They lack the conditions to act on the information they already have. That is the problem Margaret Heffernan has spent two decades naming, first as a CEO and now as one of the most respected voices on organisational behaviour in Europe. “Wilful Blindness”, her third book, set out the cognitive and cultural reasons people in organisations ignore what they can plainly see. The Financial Times listed it among the most important business books of the decade. “A Bigger Prize” challenged the assumption that competition reliably produces the best outcomes and won the Transmission Prize. “Uncharted” pressed further into the territory of how leaders should think, plan and decide when prediction stops working. The credibility behind the writing is operational. Heffernan ran five companies, including InfoMation Corporation, ZineZone Corporation and iCast Corporation, after thirteen years producing drama and documentary programmes for the BBC. She holds a Professor of Practice post at the University of Bath, leads faculty for the Forward Institute’s Responsible Leadership Programme, and mentors chief executives through Merryck & Co. Thinkers50 inducted her into its Hall of Fame in 2023. Her TED talks, including “Dare to Disagree” and “The human skills we need in an unpredictable world”, have been viewed more than 12 million times. The reason senior teams keep returning to her work is simple: she gives them a serious account of why organisations fail to see, and a usable set of responses. Key speaking topics Organisational blindness and decision-making Leadership under uncertainty The limits of efficiency and forecasting Dissent, candour and constructive conflict Collaboration and the costs of competition Responsible leadership and corporate ethics Building organisational resilience Ideal for CEOs, board members and ExCo teams confronting strategic uncertainty CHROs and senior leadership development heads building executive judgement Audit, risk and governance leaders working on early-warning culture Partner-track and senior leadership programmes inside professional services and regulated industries Audience outcomes A clearer language for the cognitive and structural reasons organisations miss the obvious. A working alternative to forecasting-led strategy when conditions will not hold still. Concrete practices for surfacing dissent and constructive conflict at senior levels. A sharper view of where the pursuit of efficiency is quietly degrading resilience. Confidence to act on partial information rather than wait for certainty that will not arrive.

Why organisations work with Eddie Obeng He has spent thirty years on a single, consequential argument: that the management playbook built for a slower world now actively harms organisations trying to move at current speed. Boards get a framework, not a pep talk. His project typology (Painting by Numbers, Quest, Film, Foggy Project) gives leadership teams a language for matching management style to the kind of uncertainty a project actually contains, instead of defaulting to one method for every initiative. He built and runs QUBE, one of the earliest avatar-based virtual campuses, used to teach and coach distributed executive teams. He is speaking about distributed leadership from inside a working example, not from theory. The 2011 Sir Monty Finniston Award from the Association for Project Management recognises a lifetime contribution to how organisations deliver complex work, which is the substance underneath his keynotes. He is genuinely provocative in a room. The Financial Times called him “an agent provocateur” for a reason; he is comfortable telling a senior audience that what they are doing will not work. Biography highlights Founder and Executive Director of Pentacle (The Virtual Business School), established 1994. Professor at Henley Business School’s School of Entrepreneurship and Innovation; previously Executive Director at Ashridge Business School. 2011 Sir Monty Finniston Award for lifetime achievement, Association for Project Management. Author of All Change! The Project Leader’s Secret Handbook (Financial Times Pearson), Perfect Projects, Making Re-Engineering Happen and New Rules for the New World. TED Global 2012 speaker, “Smart failure for a fast-changing world”. Creator of QUBE, a virtual learning and collaboration environment covered by The Wall Street Journal and The Economist. Biography The gap between how quickly the world changes and how quickly organisations learn has been widening for three decades. Eddie Obeng has built a career arguing that this gap, more than any single technology or disruption, is the defining problem of modern management. He calls the condition the “New World After Midnight”. Pentacle, the business school he founded in 1994, was an early attempt to answer the problem practically. Its teaching is built around immediate application rather than case-study reflection, and it runs on QUBE, an avatar-based virtual campus Pentacle developed in 2010 that The Wall Street Journal described in its coverage of virtual workplaces and The Economist flagged as a future digital place to work. Running it means he has been leading distributed teams for longer than most of the organisations he advises. The intellectual spine of his work sits in project management, where he is credited with the four-type model (Painting by Numbers, Quest, Film, Foggy Project) that reframes delivery around how much is known at the start rather than how big the budget is. The Association for Project Management gave him its Sir Monty Finniston Award for lifetime achievement in 2011. His books, beginning with All Change! The Project Leader’s Secret Handbook in 1995, translate that model for practising leaders. He also holds a chair at Henley Business School’s School of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and has sat on the UK Design Council board. In front of an audience he is sharp and direct; the Financial Times has used the words “leading revolutionary” and “agent provocateur”, which is closer to the experience of being in the room than the usual speaker billing. Key speaking topics Leading organisations in a fast-changing environment Project leadership and delivery under uncertainty Distributed and virtual team leadership Innovation and smart failure Organisational change and transformation The future of work and digital collaboration Ideal for Boards and executive committees confronting a change agenda that their current operating model cannot support Transformation, strategy and innovation leaders responsible for delivery across distributed teams Project and programme leadership communities inside large, complex organisations Partner meetings and leadership offsites where the brief is to unsettle assumptions, not confirm them Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for the types of change a leadership team is actually managing, rather than treating every initiative as the same problem A sharper view of why current planning and governance rituals slow organisations down in fast-moving conditions Permission and structure for “smart failure” as a deliberate mechanism for learning, not a slogan A working sense of what leading a distributed team looks like when it is built from scratch, not retrofitted onto office norms A harder question to take back into the next executive meeting

Why organisations work with Kian Gohar Brings primary research, not commentary. The Ferrazzi-Gohar study of 2,000 leaders during the pandemic and his Stanford-partnered four-company experiment on AI-assisted brainstorming give boards an evidence base for decisions, not anecdote. Co-author of a Wall Street Journal bestseller, “Competing in the New World of Work” (Harvard Business Review Press, translated into seven languages), with a working framework for high-return team practices that leaders can apply directly. Operational track record from inside XPRIZE Foundation and Singularity University, where he ran innovation programmes for Fortune 500s and helped design corporate moonshot work, so the advice connects to how large organisations actually execute. Published in Harvard Business Review on the failure modes of generative AI in team creativity, with specific guidance on how to redesign ideation workflows so AI raises output rather than flattening it. Speaks five languages and has built innovation programmes across the US, Europe, and China, which translates into sharper sessions for global leadership teams than a US-only perspective offers. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Geolab, a research lab on Human-AI collaboration, future of work, and innovation. Co-author with Keith Ferrazzi of “Competing in the New World of Work” (Harvard Business Review Press, 2022), a Wall Street Journal bestseller in seven languages. Co-author of “Don’t Let Gen AI Limit Your Team’s Creativity,” Harvard Business Review, March-April 2024, with Jeremy Utley of Stanford. Former Executive Director, XPRIZE Foundation and Singularity University. Member, Council on Foreign Relations; Henry Luce Scholar in Shanghai; alumnus of Northwestern, London School of Economics, and Harvard Business School. Research and commentary featured in the Financial Times, NPR, and the Wall Street Journal. Biography Most teams adopted hybrid work and generative AI inside the same eighteen months, and most leaders are still guessing at what good looks like. Kian Gohar’s research sits in that gap. With Keith Ferrazzi he interviewed more than 2,000 leaders during the pandemic; the resulting book, “Competing in the New World of Work” (Harvard Business Review Press, 2022), became a Wall Street Journal bestseller and was translated into seven languages. His more recent work moves the same lens onto AI. With Jeremy Utley of Stanford, he ran a four-company experiment on AI-assisted brainstorming and published the findings in Harvard Business Review in 2024. The headline is uncomfortable for vendors: teams using generative AI produced only modestly more ideas, and several underperformed. The article gives leaders a specific diagnosis of why and what to change in the ideation workflow. Before Geolab, Gohar was Executive Director of the XPRIZE Foundation and Singularity University, where he built corporate moonshot and innovation programmes for Fortune 500 leadership teams. That operational background is why his keynotes carry weight in boardrooms; the advice is grounded in running real programmes, not modelling them. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Henry Luce Scholar, and a graduate of Northwestern, the London School of Economics, and Harvard Business School. For a senior team trying to work out how to make hybrid actually productive and how to introduce AI without quietly degrading creativity, Gohar offers a rare combination of evidence and operating instinct. Key speaking topics Radical adaptability and high-return team practices Human-AI collaboration in knowledge work Generative AI and team creativity Hybrid and remote workplace design Innovation strategy and corporate moonshots Future of work and workforce transformation Leadership through structural change Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers redesigning hybrid operating models Chief strategy and chief innovation officers integrating generative AI into team workflows Executive teams running enterprise-wide transformation programmes Boards and senior leadership groups setting an AI and future-of-work agenda Audience outcomes A clear read on what 2,000 leaders learned about hybrid work that actually raises team performance. Specific reasons teams underperform with generative AI and the workflow changes that reverse it. A working vocabulary for radical adaptability that senior teams can use to evaluate their own practices. Concrete examples from XPRIZE moonshot work showing how ambitious goals get organised inside large companies. A sharper sense of which AI and future-of-work investments will compound, and which will not.

Why organisations work with Blaire Palmer She brings a BBC journalist’s instinct for the question leaders are avoiding, then makes the boardroom answer it in plain language. Her book Punks in Suits gives organisations a shared vocabulary for why old management habits, not strategy, are the real brake on growth. She has coached boards and executive teams across Airbus, Roche, Mattel, Santander, The FA, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, so the challenge lands with commercial credibility. She runs That People Thing as her own consultancy, which means the keynote is the leading edge of a deeper body of work on leadership transformation, not a standalone act. Biography highlights Chief Executive and founder of That People Thing, a leadership consultancy working with boards and executive teams on culture and change. Author of four books including Punks in Suits: How to Lead the Workplace Reformation (Rethink Press, 2024) and What’s Wrong with Work? (John Wiley and Sons, 2010). Former producer on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, where she spent a decade in UK news and current affairs. Trained as one of Europe’s first accredited executive coaches after leaving the BBC. Named clients include Airbus, Roche, Mattel, Santander, The FA, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Govia Thameslink Railway, and Centre for Army Leadership. Regular contributor to Medium and Authority Magazine on leadership and the future of work. Biography Most organisations are not structured to change. They are structured to protect the habits that made them successful, and the people defending those habits are often the most senior in the room. Palmer’s work starts from that observation and builds out. She spent a decade as a producer on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, interrogating ministers and chief executives at eight minutes past seven in the morning. The habit of asking the uncomfortable question did not leave her when she moved into coaching at 29. It became the method. Since then she has spent more than two decades advising boards and executive teams at Airbus, Roche, Mattel, Santander, The FA, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. She founded That People Thing to house that work. Her fourth book, Punks in Suits: How to Lead the Workplace Reformation, published by Rethink Press in 2024, sets out the argument that entrenched management orthodoxy, not competitive pressure, is what stalls most organisations trying to evolve. What a senior team gets from her is rare in the category. She has the reporter’s ability to cut through executive language, the coach’s patience to stay with a difficult conversation, and a published thesis specific enough to be argued with. That makes the keynote a starting point for a real internal debate rather than a motivational interval. Key speaking topics Leadership behaviour and change Workplace reformation and culture Trust and candour in senior teams Future of work Decision-making under pressure Leadership myths and orthodoxies Ideal for Boards and executive committees facing a culture or performance inflection point. CHROs and chief people officers leading leadership development at scale. CEOs integrating acquisitions or navigating a strategic reset. Leadership conferences for senior management populations. Audience outcomes A clearer view of which leadership habits are acting as a ceiling on organisational performance. A specific argument, drawn from Punks in Suits, that senior teams can take back into their own decision forums. Language for the conversations leaders have been avoiding with peers and direct reports. Recognition that culture and strategy move together, and a concrete starting point for aligning them.

Why organisations work with Brian Keating His argument about incentive systems is not borrowed from management theory. He conceived a Nobel-contending experiment, experienced a public retraction, served as a Nobel nominator, and co-founded the Simons Observatory: a $100M project involving 380+ scientists across 40+ institutions. The authority is operational. Losing the Nobel Prize (W.W. Norton, 2018) makes a specific structural case that endorsers including Brian Greene and reviewers in Nature, Science, and Scientific American have engaged with seriously: the systems organisations use to reward individuals actively prevent the inclusive, rigorous, collaborative work that produces real discovery. Into the Impossible (2021) draws from first-person conversations with 11 Nobel laureates to identify the specific mental habits (disciplined curiosity, tolerance for failure, sustained collaboration), that distinguish people who achieve genuine breakthroughs from those who optimise for recognition. He gives boards and senior leaders a precise structural vocabulary for why innovation programmes underperform: not insufficient ambition or budget, but reward architecture that was never designed for collaborative, long-horizon work. As co-director of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for the Human Imagination at UC San Diego, he bridges frontier scientific thinking and the broader question of how organisations cultivate the conditions for original thought. Biography highlights Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics, Center for Astrophysics & Space Sciences, University of California San Diego Principal Investigator and co-founder, Simons Observatory – a four-telescope array in Chile’s Atacama Desert involving 380+ scientists and engineers from 40+ institutions, with approximately $100M in funding raised Inventor of the BICEP (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) telescope; co-leads the POLARBEAR2 and Simons Array experiments Author of Losing the Nobel Prize (W.W. Norton, 2018), reviewed in Nature, Science, and Scientific American, and endorsed by theoretical physicist Brian Greene Author of Into the Impossible (2021) and Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner (2025), drawing on first-person interviews with Nobel laureates across physics, economics, and beyond U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers; Fellow of the American Physical Society; Buchalter Cosmology Prize; 2022 Legend of Flight, International Air & Space Hall of Fame Host of the Into the Impossible podcast – long-form conversations with Nobel laureates, scientists, and technologists – with more than 200,000 subscribers Biography Organisations that fund innovation but reward speed tend to get neither. The dynamic is structural, not cultural: when recognition flows to individuals who move fast and announce loudly, the slow, rigorous, collaborative work that genuine breakthroughs require becomes a career liability. Brian Keating has spent more than two decades inside that tension. Not observing it from the outside, but navigating it at the frontier of experimental cosmology. Keating is the Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of California San Diego and Principal Investigator of the Simons Observatory, a four-telescope array in Chile’s Atacama Desert that he co-founded in 2016. The project grew to involve more than 380 scientists and engineers from over 40 institutions, with Keating raising approximately $100 million in funding from the Simons Foundation. Keating teaches undergraduate quantum mechanics at UC San Diego in the same weeks he records long-form conversations with Nobel laureates on the Into the Impossible podcast. Guests have included Roger Penrose, Frank Wilczek, Sara Seager, and Andrei Linde. Active experimental research alongside sustained engagement with the field’s most consequential thinkers is the working basis from which he addresses two questions senior audiences are now asking him directly: what AI does to the scientific method, and what is happening to the research university as a credentialing and funding institution. Managing that collaboration across disciplines, institutions, competitive pressures, and high-stakes scientific uncertainty is the practical foundation on which his speeches rest. That argument appears explicitly in Losing the Nobel Prize (W.W. Norton, 2018). Keating, who conceived the original BICEP telescope and was closely involved in the BICEP2 collaboration whose findings made global headlines before being retracted, uses the experience to make a case that extends well beyond physics: the Nobel Prize, as structured, rewards individual speed and competition while punishing the inclusive, methodical, collaborative work that real discoveries require. Reviewed in Nature, Science, and Scientific American, and endorsed by physicist Brian Greene, the book gives senior audiences a precise structural vocabulary for a problem most organisations recognise but struggle to name. The follow-up volumes, Into the Impossible (2021) and Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner (2025), draw on first-person interviews with Nobel laureates across physics and economics to identify the working habits that distinguish genuine breakthrough thinkers from those who optimise for recognition. Keating is also co-director of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for the Human Imagination at UC San Diego, a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and a 2022 Legend of Flight inductee at the International Air & Space Hall of Fame. His podcast, also titled Into the Impossible, has reached more than 200,000 subscribers and has hosted over 11 Nobel Prize winners. Key speaking topics Incentive systems, innovation culture, and the structural conditions for breakthrough Large-scale scientific collaboration and high-stakes research leadership AI and the future of scientific discovery, peer review, and the research workflow The structural future of higher education and the research university Cosmology, the cosmic microwave background, and the science of the early universe The culture of ambition and discovery in high-performance environments Failure, resilience, and the creative habits of exceptional thinkers The future of curiosity-driven research in an era of AI and data Ideal for Chief Innovation Officers, R&D leaders, and boards wrestling with why innovation programmes underdeliver Senior executive teams in science- and technology-intensive industries (pharma, aerospace, deep tech, energy) where collaboration at scale is a strategic challenge University presidents, provosts, and trustee boards addressing the AI-driven restructuring of higher education and the legitimacy questions facing research institutions Foundations, philanthropic funders of science, and policy bodies designing the next generation of research grants, prizes, and incentive structures Audience outcomes A clear structural diagnosis of why incentive systems that reward individual speed and visibility tend to suppress the collaborative, rigorous work that genuine breakthroughs require Practical examples – drawn from one of the most ambitious scientific projects of the past decade – of how large, distributed collaborations can be designed and sustained under uncertainty A set of mental habits and working practices, sourced from conversations with Nobel laureates, that distinguish breakthrough thinkers from those who optimise for recognition A more precise vocabulary for discussing innovation culture with boards and leadership teams – one grounded in evidence, not aspiration Perspective on how organisational ambition can be redirected from visible short-term wins toward the patient, inclusive work that produces durable results

Why organisations work with Tim Munden His “inner and outer game” framework gives leadership teams a practical diagnostic for the gap between leadership intent and leadership behaviour – and a structured path to close it He built and ran global leadership development for Unilever’s 135,000-person workforce, including pipeline programmes for the most senior roles in the organisation; he knows what works at enterprise scale, not just in the classroom Unilever’s “Discover Your Purpose” programme, which he designed and led, reached 56,000 employees and was validated through randomised controlled trials – a level of rigour that most leadership interventions never reach He co-founded the Global Business Collaboration for Better Workplace Mental Health, giving him a credible and practical perspective on the link between psychological safety, energy, and sustained organisational performance His Senior Associate role at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership connects his leadership frameworks to the strategic context – purpose, resilience, and transformation for the longer term – that boards increasingly expect their senior teams to navigate Biography highlights Former Chief Learning Officer and Head of Wellbeing, Unilever – responsible for leadership development and learning across a 135,000-person global workforce Former HR Vice President, Unilever UK & Ireland – a €2.5bn business unit Senior Associate, Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), University of Cambridge Founder and Director, Kairon – an executive leadership and culture consultancy Co-founded the Global Business Collaboration for Better Workplace Mental Health; represented Unilever on the UK Thriving at Work Leadership Council Developed Unilever’s “Discover Your Purpose” programme, reaching 56,000 employees with outcomes validated through randomised controlled trials Joined Unilever as a graduate trainee in 1993; career spans roles across the Netherlands, Belgium, the US, and the UK Holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from the University of Manchester and Manchester School of Management Biography Leadership development in large organisations has a persistent failure mode: it develops individuals in isolation from the organisational culture that will either enable or undermine everything they have learned. Tim Munden spent the better part of three decades inside one of the world’s most complex multinationals working on both sides of that problem simultaneously. As Chief Learning Officer and Head of Wellbeing at Unilever, Munden was accountable for leadership capability across a 135,000-person workforce. His approach centred on what he describes as the “inner and outer game” of leadership – the inner being the psychological clarity, purpose, and resilience that allows a leader to act under pressure; the outer being the cultural architecture and organisational design that gives people the conditions to perform. Neither works without the other. That dual framework now shapes how he advises executive teams and consults with organisations across financial services, technology, pharmaceuticals, and consumer goods. The practical rigour behind his work is verifiable. The “Discover Your Purpose” programme Munden designed at Unilever was completed by 56,000 employees, with outcomes – including improved psychological safety, work fulfilment, and discretionary effort – tested through randomised controlled trials. He also co-founded the Global Business Collaboration for Better Workplace Mental Health and represented Unilever on the UK Thriving at Work Leadership Council, establishing workplace wellbeing not as a wellbeing initiative but as a leadership strategy with measurable business consequences. Since leaving Unilever, Munden has continued this work through Kairon, his consulting practice, and as a Senior Associate at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership – where the connection between leadership capability and long-term organisational resilience is a central research concern. He brings to boards and senior leadership teams the rare combination of having operated at CLO level inside a global organisation and having built the frameworks to explain – and replicate – what makes leadership development work in practice. Key speaking topics Leadership capability for disruption and transformation Purpose-driven culture and organisations The inner and outer game of leadership Workplace wellbeing as a performance strategy Leadership development at enterprise scale Psychological safety and organisational agility Future of leadership in complex organisations Ideal for CHROs, Chief People Officers, and senior HR leadership teams designing enterprise leadership strategy CEOs and executive committees navigating significant transformation or cultural change Learning and development leaders building or evaluating large-scale leadership programmes Boards and remuneration committees examining the link between leadership culture and long-term organisational resilience Audience outcomes A clear model – the inner and outer game – for diagnosing where leadership capability is breaking down and what to do about it Practical understanding of how purpose can be embedded in organisational culture at scale, with evidence from a large, tested programme A more precise vocabulary for the link between psychological safety, wellbeing, and sustained performance – moving the conversation beyond wellbeing as an HR initiative Insight into what enterprise-scale leadership development actually requires, drawn from direct experience at one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies Clearer thinking on the leadership capabilities most needed to maintain performance in periods of sustained uncertainty

Why organisations work with Chris Roebuck He designed and ran the leadership programme for UBS’s top 500 that is now taught at Harvard Business School as UBS: Towards the Integrated Firm. Few speakers can point to a live HBS case as evidence that their approach works at scale. He coined the corporate application of entrepreneurial leadership and has spent twenty years refining it in banks, government, healthcare, and the military. The Wikipedia entry on entrepreneurial leadership cites his definition. He operates as a practitioner first and a speaker second: former British Army officer, Head of Management Development at HSBC Investment Bank, Global Head of Leadership at UBS, Head of Culture Change at London Underground. The credibility in a boardroom is built in. HR Magazine named him one of HR’s Most Influential Thinkers ten times between 2009 and 2021, and inducted him into the HR Hall of Fame in 2025. That is the longest sustained recognition of any thinker on the list. Biography highlights Global Head of Leadership and Talent, UBS (2004 onward), leading the development programme for the bank’s top 500 leaders that became Harvard Business School case UBS: Towards the Integrated Firm Honorary Visiting Professor of Transformational Leadership, Cass Business School (2009–2021, the institution later rebranded Bayes) Inducted into the HR Hall of Fame by HR Magazine, July 2025; named one of HR’s Most Influential Thinkers ten times between 2009 and 2021, a record on the list Author of five leadership books, including Lead to Succeed (2014) and Strategic Leadership Development, co-authored with Professor Colin Carnall Expert panel member for the UK Government’s Engaging for Success review (2009), and author of The King’s Fund report on NHS leadership (2011) Contributor to Newsweek; quoted on leadership and organisational performance in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, and Harvard Business Review China; 350+ television interviews across BBC, CNN, Bloomberg, CNBC, Sky, and Al Jazeera Biography UBS between 2002 and 2006 is a useful place to start. A newly integrated global bank, 70,000 staff, a top team of 500 whose behaviour had to shift if the merger was going to hold. Chris Roebuck was the person, as Global Head of Leadership and Talent, who designed and ran the programme that got that behavioural shift. The work is now a Harvard Business School case study, UBS: Towards the Integrated Firm, and it is where the concept of entrepreneurial leadership, taking the behaviours of successful entrepreneurs and transplanting them into a large corporate, was first systematically applied in the corporate world. That practitioner record sits behind everything he now says from a stage. Before UBS, he was Head of Management Development at HSBC Investment Bank and ran culture change at London Underground during the partial privatisation. After UBS, he was commissioned by The King’s Fund to report to the UK Government on leadership in the NHS, and sat on the expert panel behind Engaging for Success, the UK Government’s review of employee engagement. He was Honorary Visiting Professor of Transformational Leadership at Cass Business School, now Bayes, from 2009 to 2021. The argument Roebuck brings to senior audiences is a hard one, because it refuses the usual levers. He tells leaders that the performance they are looking for is not hiding in a new strategy, a new tech stack, or a restructure. It is hiding in the way their top 200 people behave on a Tuesday morning. His Accelerate Your Success approach is built to make that behavioural gap visible, then close it, with the bottom line as the test. HR Magazine has named him one of its Most Influential Thinkers ten times; in July 2025 it inducted him into the HR Hall of Fame. The rare thing he does is connect that leadership argument to hard numbers. He is a trained economist, not a behavioural coach; he served as an officer in the British Army before moving into business; he has run programmes inside a global bank, the UK Civil Service, and a 1.4-million-person healthcare system. When he says ten percent of organisational performance is sitting unused, the claim is backed by work done at UBS, in the NHS, and at KPMG rather than by a slide deck. Key speaking topics Leadership during integration, transformation, and culture change Entrepreneurial leadership in large organisations Senior team behaviour and executive performance Talent identification and leadership pipelines Employee engagement as an organisational lever Leadership in conditions of uncertainty Human leadership in the AI era Ideal for CEOs, COOs, and C-suite teams running integrations, post-merger transformations, or major operating model change CHROs and Chief People Officers building a leadership and talent strategy that senior business leaders will take seriously Board and executive committee offsites where the subject is how top leadership needs to behave differently for the organisation to perform Public sector and military audiences looking at leadership reform in large, complex institutions Audience outcomes A clear view of where performance is being lost inside their own organisation, and which leadership behaviours are causing it The specific mechanics of how entrepreneurial leadership was built at UBS, and which elements transfer to their own sector A short set of actions senior leaders can take in the weeks after the session, tied to business outcomes rather than general development A more useful language for talking about leadership with their board, their HR function, and their top 100

Why organisations work with Neil Martin He built the probabilistic strategy modelling systems now used by more than half the current Formula One grid – not a commentator on F1 decision-making, but the person who changed how the sport models decisions under uncertainty. Two specific, named race outcomes are directly attributed to his calls: Red Bull Racing’s first Formula One win at the 2009 Chinese Grand Prix, and Räikkönen’s win at the 2005 Monaco Grand Prix – both the product of real-time probabilistic reasoning under extreme competitive pressure. He translates a specific, working methodology – Monte Carlo simulation and game theory applied to real-time competitive decisions – into frameworks organisations can use when multiple futures must be weighed against each other with no time to wait for certainty. His experience spans the full decision chain: building the analytical models, leading the strategy team live in the race, and managing the operational culture of teams working against non-negotiable deadlines with global coordination demands. As Co-Founder of PACETEQ GmbH, he continues to build and deploy competitive analytics tools across motorsport, which means his perspective is operational and current rather than retrospective. Biography highlights BSc in Mathematics with Computer Science and MSc in Operational Research, University of Southampton; MSc project on optimal pit-stop and refuelling strategies secured a full-time role at McLaren Racing Pioneered the application of Game Theory and Monte Carlo simulation to F1 race strategy at McLaren from 1998, replacing deterministic planning with stochastic models that could account for uncertain events in real time Team Leader of Operational Research at McLaren Racing; Chief Strategist at Red Bull Racing; Head of Operations Research and Strategy at Scuderia Ferrari (2011-2015) Strategic calls directly credited with Red Bull Racing’s first-ever Formula One win at the 2009 Chinese Grand Prix and Räikkönen’s victory at the 2005 Monaco Grand Prix Co-Founder of PACETEQ GmbH, an AI-powered motorsport analytics business; software originating from his work in active use across more than half the Formula One grid Covered in the Financial Times; featured speaker at the Gartner Data and Analytics Summit Biography Neil Martin joined McLaren Racing in 1996 to solve a specific problem: race strategy was being built on deterministic models that assumed a single most-likely future. He replaced those models with stochastic ones, applying Game Theory and Monte Carlo simulation to uncertain events. Traffic patterns, overtake probabilities, safety car timing – these could now be modelled, and strategy built around a range of probable outcomes rather than one. That shift produced verifiable results at the highest level. At the 2005 Monaco Grand Prix, Martin sent an email from McLaren’s Woking base instructing Räikkönen to stay out under a safety car; the call won the race. At the 2009 Chinese Grand Prix, as Red Bull Racing’s Chief Strategist, he kept both cars out in wet conditions when almost every competitor pitted. It was the team’s first-ever Formula One win – a 1-2 finish built on asymmetric risk reasoning under pressure. Martin joined Scuderia Ferrari in 2011 as Head of the newly created Operations Research department, brought in alongside Pat Fry to rebuild the team’s race operations. He left in 2015. Since then, he has founded Random Logic and co-founded PACETEQ GmbH, an AI-powered analytics business whose tools now run on more than half the current Formula One grid. For senior leaders, the argument is direct. Performance under pressure is not determined by the quantity of data available. It is determined by the quality of the frameworks used to act on it. Martin’s career is a proof of concept for what that discipline looks like when competitive stakes are at their highest. Key speaking topics Decision-making under uncertainty Probabilistic risk modelling Data-driven competitive strategy High-performance operations Risk management in live environments Marginal gains and continuous improvement Analytics-led performance optimisation Ideal for C-suite and senior strategy leaders making high-stakes decisions with incomplete data and competitive time pressure Risk, analytics, and data science functions seeking to operationalise probabilistic thinking across the organisation Boards and executive teams benchmarking their decision culture against elite performance environments Corporate conferences in financial services, technology, and professional services where data-driven decision-making is a strategic priority Audience outcomes A named conceptual shift: from deterministic “most likely scenario” planning to probabilistic mapping of multiple futures and their associated likelihoods Clarity on the conditions under which data produces better decisions, and the organisational habits that close the gap between having information and acting on it with confidence Specific, race-derived examples of asymmetric risk reasoning applicable to resource allocation, market entry, and competitive response decisions Practical understanding of how high-performance teams coordinate under non-negotiable deadlines without sacrificing analytical discipline A benchmark for what genuinely data-driven operational culture looks like when competitive stakes leave no margin for deterministic thinking

Why organisations work with Karun Chandhok He has lived inside two of the most exposed environments in elite sport: the cockpit of a backmarker F1 team trying to build a car around him, and a Sky Sports broadcast booth analysing the same paddock in real time. He sits on the Motorsport UK Board and the FIA Drivers’ Commission, so the governance, safety and DEI conversations he brings into the room are ones he is actively shaping, not commenting on from the outside. He translates how F1 teams turn millions of data points per race into decisive calls that engineers, strategists and a driver all act on within seconds, with examples a non-motorsport audience can follow. He is one of only two Indians ever to race in Formula One, which gives weight to his work on talent pipelines, representation and what it takes to break into a closed competitive system. He is a working broadcaster for a global audience, so the keynote is paced and structured for the room rather than delivered as a career retrospective. Biography highlights 11 Formula One Grand Prix starts for Hispania Racing in 2010 and Team Lotus in 2011. Sky Sports F1 analyst, co-commentator and pit-lane reporter, full-time since 2019. Board Director, Motorsport UK, and member of its Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee. Founding member of the FIA Drivers’ Commission since 2013, with further roles on the FIA Single Seater Commission and Driver Grading Committee. Williams Heritage driver since 2016, demonstrating the team’s championship-winning cars. Author of “Drive to Victory: Incredible True Stories from the Fastest Sport in the World”, Hachette Children’s, 2025. Biography A modern Formula One team is roughly a thousand engineers, strategists and operations staff who have to redesign their product every two weeks, inside a moving regulatory frame, while a driver they have never met executes the result on television. Karun Chandhok has been the driver in that picture, the analyst describing it for Sky Sports F1, and a director on the boards that write the rules around it. He raced 11 Grands Prix for Hispania Racing and Team Lotus, becoming the second Indian to compete in the championship. From there he moved into the FIA World Endurance Championship and five starts at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, then drove for Mahindra Racing in the inaugural Formula E season. The breadth matters: very few people have raced across the three categories actively reshaping motorsport’s relationship with technology, sustainability and global audiences. Since 2019 he has been part of the core Sky Sports F1 line-up as analyst, co-commentator and pit-lane reporter. The role is unusual because it sits between the engineers and the public; he has to read live telemetry, strategy calls and team radio quickly enough to explain them on air, and accurately enough that the paddock will keep talking to him next weekend. His governance work gives the keynote its third dimension. He has served on the FIA Drivers’ Commission since 2013 and joined the Motorsport UK board in 2021, where he sits on the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee. Those seats are why his material on talent pipelines, safety reform and competitive integrity carries authority that most sports speakers cannot match. Key speaking topics Decision-making in high-pressure performance environments Leadership and team coordination in elite motorsport Data, technology and human judgement in Formula One Safety, governance and regulatory change Diversity, inclusion and talent pipelines in closed competitive systems Continuous transformation under external pressure Global sport as a commercial and operational system Ideal for Executive teams and boards working through sustained operational or regulatory change. CHROs, DEI leads and talent functions building pipelines into historically closed industries. Engineering, technology and data leadership audiences interested in how F1 turns data into action. Sales conferences and client events where a credible, broadcast-quality headline speaker is needed. Audience outcomes A clearer view of how elite teams sustain judgement and coordination when conditions keep shifting. A working sense of how F1 organisations turn data and technology into faster human decisions. Specific examples of how regulation, safety and competitive performance trade against each other inside a sport. A more honest picture of what genuine inclusion looks like in a sector that historically locked talent out.

Why organisations work with Lisa Bodell She attacks the root cause most innovation programmes ignore. Her thesis is that complexity, not a lack of ideas, is what stops large companies from changing. She brings a tested operational toolkit, including the “Kill a Stupid Rule” exercise and the Why Simple Wins toolkit, that teams can run inside the business the week after the keynote. Her client list runs through hard-to-move organisations such as Pfizer, Lockheed Martin, Bloomberg, Google, SAP and Citigroup, where the simplification argument has to survive contact with regulated, matrixed environments. Her two Routledge books, Kill the Company (Axiom Best Business Book Award, 2014) and Why Simple Wins, give leadership teams a shared language and a structured method that outlasts the session. She is a working operator, not only a writer. She has run FutureThink for more than two decades and writes monthly for Forbes, so the material is being pressure-tested in the field continuously. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of FutureThink, an innovation and simplification training firm working with global enterprise clients since 2003. Author of Why Simple Wins (Routledge) and Kill the Company (Routledge / Bibliomotion), the latter an Axiom Best Business Book Award winner. Monthly contributor to Forbes; quoted or published in Fast Company, WIRED, The New York Times, Inc., Bloomberg Businessweek, Harvard Business Review, FOX News and CNN. TEDxNormal speaker, “How Simplification is the Key to Change”. Named to the Forbes “50 Leading Female Futurists” list in 2020. Has taught innovation at American University and Fordham University, and worked with clients including Pfizer, Lockheed Martin, Bloomberg, Google, SAP and Citigroup. Biography Most innovation problems inside large companies are not idea problems. The pipeline is full. The strategy decks exist. What is missing is room to act on any of it, because calendars, approval chains and legacy rules have absorbed the working week. This is the territory Lisa Bodell has built a career on. She is the founder and CEO of FutureThink, which she launched in 2003 to do something narrower and more useful than most innovation consulting. Rather than add another framework, FutureThink helps leadership teams remove. Remove low-value meetings, remove obsolete rules, remove the tasks that consume capacity without producing decisions. The argument is that simplification is the precondition for innovation, not a side benefit. That argument runs through her two books with Routledge, Kill the Company and Why Simple Wins. Kill the Company, which won the 2014 Axiom Best Business Book Award, is built around a simple inversion: instead of asking how to grow, ask how a competitor would put you out of business, and act on the answer. Why Simple Wins extends the method into a practical toolkit for stripping out the work that does not matter, with exercises like “Kill a Stupid Rule” that have been used inside companies including Pfizer, Lockheed Martin, Bloomberg and Google. Bodell writes monthly for Forbes and has been featured in Fast Company, WIRED, The New York Times, Harvard Business Review and Bloomberg Businessweek. Forbes named her to its 2020 list of 50 Leading Female Futurists. The reason senior teams keep booking her is narrower than that profile suggests. She gives leaders a defensible reason, and a method, for taking things off the plate. Key speaking topics Organisational simplification Innovation and disruption Killing complexity in large organisations Future of work and ways of working Change and culture transformation Provocative questioning as a leadership tool Creating capacity for higher-value work Ideal for CEOs and executive teams trying to free up capacity inside complex, matrixed organisations. Chief Strategy, Transformation and Innovation Officers running enterprise-wide change programmes. Operations and HR leaders auditing meetings, rules and processes that no longer earn their place. Leadership offsites and innovation summits where the brief is to provoke, not to inform. Audience outcomes A direct case for treating complexity, not idea generation, as the binding constraint on innovation. A set of named exercises, including “Kill a Stupid Rule” and the Why Simple Wins toolkit, that teams can run on Monday morning. A sharper question set for leadership meetings, modelled on the Kill the Company method. A shared language for distinguishing low-value busywork from work that produces decisions and outcomes. Permission, from a credible outside voice, to remove rather than add.