Scenario Planning & Strategic Foresight

Why organisations work with Peter Fisk He brings a structured framework for business reinvention. Business Recoded sets out seven mindset shifts and 49 codes drawn from deep work with senior leaders at companies including Microsoft, Adidas and Patagonia. Senior teams leave with a shared model to argue from. He sits in the rare overlap between marketer and strategist. As former CEO of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and now Professor of Strategy and Innovation at IE Business School in Madrid, he treats marketing, customer thinking and innovation as parts of one growth discipline. Most organisations still split them across separate functions and budgets. He has worked with senior leaders across more than 300 companies in over 55 countries, with particular depth in Asian innovation and emerging-market growth. The case material is current and varied, not the same handful of examples a leadership team has already seen. As former Thinkers50 Global Director and founder of the annual European Business Forum, he has unusual curatorial access to the leading management thinkers in the world. Sessions draw on what is actually moving across the field. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of GeniusWorks, a London-based strategy and innovation consultancy Professor of Leadership, Strategy and Innovation at IE Business School, Madrid; academic director of the Global Advanced Management Program Former Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Marketing Former Thinkers50 Global Director; founder of the annual Thinkers50 European Business Forum Author of nine business books, including Business Recoded, Gamechangers, and the Genius series, translated into 35 languages; Business Recoded shortlisted for the CMI Management Book of the Year Earlier commercial career at British Airways, including responsibility for the Concorde brand Biography The Chartered Institute of Marketing is the world’s largest professional marketing organisation. Peter Fisk ran it before founding GeniusWorks. He used the role to argue that marketing, customer and innovation belong inside growth strategy, where most organisations still treat them as separate functions. That argument has shaped his work since. His career started in physics, in a superconductivity lab. He moved into commercial roles at British Airways, including managing the Concorde brand, before consulting work at PA Consulting Group and Brand Finance. After CIM he founded GeniusWorks, a London consultancy, and joined IE Business School in Madrid as Professor of Strategy and Innovation. His 2020 book Business Recoded sets out seven mindset shifts and 49 codes for reinventing how a business creates value. It is built on deep interviews with leaders at companies including Microsoft, Adidas, Patagonia and Spotify. The Financial Times reviewed it as “the book you have to read now”. It was shortlisted for the CMI Management Book of the Year. Through the Thinkers50 European Business Forum, which he founded in 2017 as Thinkers50 Global Director, he convenes the world’s leading management thinkers each year. Recent stages have brought together Michael Porter, Rita McGrath, Erin Meyer and Alex Osterwalder. That curatorial position is unusual for a working consultant. The frameworks in his sessions are continually refreshed by direct contact with the academics and practitioners writing the next generation of management ideas. Key speaking topics Growth strategy in fast-changing markets Business model reinvention Innovation strategy and execution Customer strategy and brand growth The Business Recoded framework: seven shifts for reinventing the business Asian innovation and emerging-market growth Sustainable growth and purposeful business Ideal for CEOs and boards facing slowing growth in mature markets Strategy and innovation leaders responsible for new business models or category growth CMOs and customer experience leaders rethinking how marketing connects to commercial strategy Executive leadership teams running annual strategy or transformation offsites Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for the seven shifts that separate business reinvention from incremental change Case material from Asian innovators and global category leaders that most leadership teams will not have seen A connected view of innovation, customer and marketing strategy as one growth discipline Specific direction on where to stop investing, alongside where to grow

Why organisations work with Graeme Codrington The TIDES framework (Technology, Institutional change, Demographics, Environment, and Social values) gives leadership teams a named, structured lens for distinguishing structural disruption from short-term noise, something generic trend-watching rarely provides. His research on generational dynamics, anchored in Mind the Gap (Penguin), is one of the most analytically grounded treatments of multigenerational workforce tension available to leadership teams: it goes beyond labelling generations to explaining the mechanisms that drive the differences. Keynote insight does not stop at the room door: through TomorrowToday Global, organisations can move directly from a session to structured consulting and implementation, which means the analysis has a clear pathway to operational change. He is the only professional speaker inducted into two international speaking Halls of Fame: in South Africa and the UK/Ireland – an independently verified measure of sustained content quality across different professional and cultural contexts. His Seven Grey Elephants model and antifragility framework give boards a structured vocabulary for confronting the major forces that most organisations acknowledge but rarely analyse with discipline. Biography highlights Co-founder and lead futurist, TomorrowToday Global, a research and strategy firm operating across 150-plus countries Author of multiple Penguin bestsellers, including Mind the Gap (with Sue Grant-Marshall) and Leading in a Changing World (with Keith Coats) Guest lecturer at London Business School, Duke Corporate Education, Cornell, and the Gordon Institute of Business Science Only professional speaker inducted into two international speaking Halls of Fame: Southern Africa and UK/Ireland (Professional Speaking Association Award of Excellence) Global Certified Speaking Professional, Global Speakers Federation; Fellow and Honorary Fellow, Professional Speakers Association of UK and Northern Ireland TEDx Top Picks 2021; speaks to approximately 100,000 people annually across more than 20 countries Biography Graeme Codrington has spent over two decades arguing that most organisations are solving the wrong problem. The disruptions they face are not technical challenges requiring better execution, they are adaptive challenges requiring entirely new thinking. His co-founded firm TomorrowToday Global was built around that distinction, and around helping organisations act on it. Codrington is co-founder and lead futurist of TomorrowToday Global, a research and strategy firm tracking the disruptive forces shaping organisations since the early 2000s. His TIDES model maps five forces: Technology, Institutional change, Demographics, Environment, and Social values that drive disruption across any sector. His book Mind the Gap, published by Penguin, applied this thinking to generational dynamics and became a widely used text in leadership development programmes internationally. He lectures at London Business School, Duke Corporate Education, Cornell, and the Gordon Institute of Business Science, and speaks to roughly 100,000 people annually across more than 20 countries. His frameworks have expanded to include the Seven Grey Elephants (a structured analysis of the major forces leaders tend to acknowledge but avoid confronting directly) and an antifragility model that helps organisations move beyond resilience to building systems that actually strengthen under pressure. Codrington is the only professional speaker inducted into two international speaking Halls of Fame, in South Africa and the UK. He holds the Global Certified Speaking Professional designation from the Global Speakers Federation and is a Fellow and Honorary Fellow of the Professional Speakers Association of UK and Northern Ireland. For organisations wanting to move beyond a single session, TomorrowToday Global’s consulting team provides structured follow-through from keynote insight to practical implementation. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and futurist methodology Future of work and workforce transformation Multigenerational leadership and generational dynamics Adaptive leadership in disruptive environments Organisational antifragility and resilience Innovation culture and next practice approaches The TIDES framework and disruptive forces mapping Ideal for C-suite and board-level leaders building adaptive strategy for permanent disruption CHROs and people leaders managing multigenerational workforce complexity Transformation leads and strategy teams moving beyond traditional planning horizons Executive development programmes at business schools and corporate leadership academies Audience outcomes A working understanding of the distinction between technical problems and adaptive challenges, and practical tools for identifying which they are facing Familiarity with the TIDES framework for mapping the disruptive forces most relevant to their sector and strategic context Concrete methods for scanning the business environment for weak signals and translating them into actionable strategy Clarity on what the future of work means for their organisation’s people strategy, including multigenerational dynamics and AI integration A framework for building antifragility into their team or organisation, moving beyond survival-mode resilience

Why organisations work with Dean van Leeuwen His Grey Elephant framework gives boards a named, structured radar for seven megatrends – distinguishing the forces that demand a strategic response from background noise and positioning leaders to act before disruption arrives, not after His McKinsey consulting background means the output of his foresight work is strategic choices, not predictions – he applies commercial strategy discipline to futures thinking in a way that most futurists do not His book “Quest: Competitive Advantage and the Art of Leadership in the 21st Century” codifies a three-quality leadership model drawn from case research on high-performing organisations, giving teams a shared model they can apply after the event He teaches in executive leadership programmes at Saïd Business School, Henley Business School, and CEDEP, Fontainebleau – his frameworks are tested against senior leadership cohorts, not developed solely for conference stages He co-hosts the “Elephants in the Boardroom” podcast, a named monthly research output that applies the Grey Elephant framework to live signals – keeping his content current and substantiated rather than recycled from a fixed talk Biography highlights Co-founder of TomorrowToday Global, a futurist and strategy consultancy operating across more than 50 countries; founder of TomorrowToday UK Former consultant at McKinsey and Company, with work that included advising on South Africa’s largest bank merger Executive lecturer at Saïd Business School (University of Oxford), Henley Business School, and CEDEP, Fontainebleau Author of “Quest: Competitive Advantage and the Art of Leadership in the 21st Century” (self-published, available on Amazon) TEDx speaker MSc in Business Strategy, Henley Management College; undergraduate background in economics and law Named clients include L’Oreal, Anglo American, BNP Paribas, GSK, John Lewis Partnership, and Deloitte Biography Most organisations have access to trend data. What they are missing is a structured way to turn that data into decisions their boards will commit to and their teams will execute. Dean van Leeuwen, co-founder of TomorrowToday Global, has spent two decades building exactly that – a practical bridge between foresight and strategic action. His most distinctive intellectual contribution is the Grey Elephant framework, a proprietary megatrend radar developed by TomorrowToday and built around seven named forces identified as highly probable, high-impact, and consistently underacted upon. The framework helps leadership teams name the forces they can already see coming and design responses before the window closes. He also applies the BANI diagnostic – Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible – as a lens for teams operating in conditions where cause and effect no longer follow predictable patterns. Earlier in his career, he worked at McKinsey and Company, where his work included advising on South Africa’s largest bank merger. That grounding in commercial strategy discipline is what separates his foresight practice from abstract futurism where the output is decisions and trade-offs, not trend catalogues. He now teaches in senior executive programmes at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, Henley Business School, and CEDEP in Fontainebleau. He is the author of “Quest: Competitive Advantage and the Art of Leadership in the 21st Century,” which decodes what leaders at high-performing organisations actually do through a three-quality model grounded in case research. He co-hosts the “Elephants in the Boardroom” podcast with Graeme Codrington, applying the Grey Elephant framework monthly to live signals across geopolitics, technology, and the global economy. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and megatrend analysis Leadership decision-making under uncertainty Innovation as organisational capability Strategic transformation and competitive advantage The BANI operating environment Antifragility and organisational resilience Human-technology collaboration Ideal for Boards and C-suite leadership teams facing strategic inflection points, technology shifts, or competitive disruption Strategy, transformation, and innovation directors responsible for long-range planning Organisations navigating sector disruption, regulatory change, or structural market shifts Executive education cohorts focused on future-ready leadership and strategic foresight Audience outcomes A named framework for distinguishing megatrends that demand a strategic response from trends that can safely be monitored Shared language for leading teams in conditions where cause and effect are nonlinear and outcomes are hard to predict Practical tools for converting trend intelligence into decisions that commit direction and resources A clearer view of the specific forces most likely to reshape their competitive environment in the near and medium term Improved confidence in making strategic choices under uncertainty without waiting for conditions to stabilise

Why organisations work with Nikolas Badminton He brings a published, named foresight methodology to the room. The Positive Dystopia Canvas, set out in Facing Our Futures, is a structured tool for stress-testing strategy against scenarios leaders would rather not entertain. He has worked the discipline at scale, with leadership teams at NASA, JP Morgan, Disney, Rolls Royce, the United Nations, and the UK Home Office. The methods on stage have been tested in serious rooms first. He bridges AI capability and strategic foresight in a way few speakers can. Most AI speakers stop at adoption. Most foresight speakers treat AI as one signal among many. Badminton treats AI as the variable that breaks existing planning horizons, and shows leaders how to plan accordingly. He served as a key advisor to The Age of A.I. documentary series with Robert Downey Jr., and his work is regularly cited by the BBC, The Atlantic, Forbes, and Fast Company. The audience tends to recognise him before he is introduced. Biography highlights Chief Futurist at Futurist.com, the international strategic foresight consultancy founded by Glen Hiemstra in 1993. Author of Facing Our Futures (Bloomsbury Business, 2023), JP Morgan Private Bank’s Next Gen Pick on its Summer Reading List and a Top-50 Business Book of 2023 by The Next Big Idea Club. Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) and a member of Chatham House. Advisor to The Age of A.I. documentary series with Robert Downey Jr. Research cited by the BBC, VICE, The Atlantic, Fast Company, Business Insider, Forbes, and Sunday Telegraph. Engagements with NASA, the United Nations, Google, Microsoft, JP Morgan, Disney, Rolls Royce, Procter & Gamble, the US Department of State, and the UK Home Office. Biography Most organisations cannot describe the future they are planning toward. They have a five-year strategy and a quarterly forecast, with very little real method in between. This gap is where Nikolas Badminton works. As Chief Futurist at Futurist.com, the strategic foresight consultancy founded by Glen Hiemstra in 1993, he advises executives and government leaders on how to build anticipatory capability into how they plan. His method is set out in Facing Our Futures (Bloomsbury Business, 2023). The book gives executives the Positive Dystopia Canvas, a structured tool for stress-testing strategy against scenarios leaders would rather not entertain. JP Morgan Private Bank named it a Next Gen Pick for its Summer Reading List, and The Next Big Idea Club listed it among the Top-50 Business Books of 2023. The client list reflects the demand for that work. NASA, Disney, JP Morgan, Microsoft, Rolls Royce, the United Nations, the US Department of State, and the UK Home Office have used Badminton’s foresight work to inform planning that runs longer than the political or quarterly cycle. A Fellow of the RSA and a member of Chatham House, he served as a key advisor to The Age of A.I. documentary series with Robert Downey Jr., and his research is cited by the BBC, The Atlantic, Forbes, and Fast Company. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and futures design Artificial intelligence in the enterprise Anticipatory governance and long-range planning Innovation under disruption Energy transition and the future of resources Geopolitical scenarios and technology futures Ideal for CEOs and CSOs building foresight capability inside annual planning cycles. Boards and executive committees stress-testing strategy against long-range scenarios. Innovation, transformation, and R&D leaders responsible for moving beyond pilot stage on AI. Public-sector leaders and policymakers designing decisions with consequences beyond the political cycle. Audience outcomes A working understanding of the Positive Dystopia Canvas and how to apply it to current strategic decisions. Specific signals and scenarios in AI, energy, and geopolitics mapped onto the organisation’s actual planning horizon. The language to make the case for foresight capability inside a strategy function built around quarterly forecasting. Confidence to extend the planning conversation past 18 months without it becoming abstract or speculative.

Why organisations work with Roger Spitz His background gives him unusual commercial authority. Before Techistential and the Disruptive Futures Institute, he led Technology M&A at BNP Paribas globally, where he advised on more than 50 transactions with a combined value over $25 billion. That record matters to boards and institutional investors whose advisers often lack operating experience. His book Disrupt With Impact won the 2024 Chanticleer International Book Awards first place in Business and Enterprise, and the four-volume Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption is used as a practitioner reference on strategic foresight. The AAA Framework (antifragility, anticipation, agility) gives leadership teams a concrete lens to apply to their own operating environment rather than another abstract call to “embrace change”. Techistentialism, the concept he coined, is specifically about human agency and decision-making under AI, which is the question most executive teams are quietly asking themselves about the technology their organisations are deploying. Institutional anchors at the World Economic Forum’s Global Foresight Network, Thinkers360 Top 10 for Management Leadership and the AI Council of the Indian Society for Artificial Intelligence place him inside the forums his audiences either belong to or want to. Biography highlights President of Techistential and Chair of the Disruptive Futures Institute, San Francisco Former Global Head of Technology M&A at BNP Paribas; 50-plus transactions with a combined value exceeding $25 billion Author of Disrupt With Impact and the four-volume Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption 2024 Chanticleer International Book Awards first place in Business and Enterprise Non-Fiction Thinkers360 Top 10 for Management Leadership WEF Global Foresight Network member; AI Council, Indian Society for Artificial Intelligence Biography Traditional strategy runs on prediction. The trouble is that the systems senior leaders now operate in, AI, geopolitics, climate, capital markets, are non-linear in ways prediction cannot catch. Roger Spitz’s work is built around the alternative: a discipline of antifragility, anticipation and agility that allows organisations to benefit from volatility rather than simply endure it. His authority starts in finance. He was Global Head of Technology M&A at BNP Paribas, where he advised on more than 50 transactions with combined value over $25 billion, which is a different foundation to most futurists and is visible in how he handles boards. He now runs Techistential, the climate and foresight strategy advisory he founded, and chairs the Disruptive Futures Institute in San Francisco, where he coined the term “Techistentialism” to describe human agency and decision-making in an AI-mediated world. The body of published work is substantial. Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World won first place in Business and Enterprise Non-Fiction at the 2024 Chanticleer International Book Awards, and the four-volume Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption is used as a practitioner reference on strategic foresight. He sits in the World Economic Forum’s Global Foresight Network, ranks in the Thinkers360 Top 10 for Management Leadership, and serves on the AI Council of the Indian Society for Artificial Intelligence. For CEOs, boards, institutional investors and policy leaders, what Spitz offers is both specific and operational. The AAA Framework gives them a lens. The AI and techistentialism work gives them a language for what autonomous systems are doing to their operating model. And the M&A record gives them a speaker who has been on the other side of the capital-markets conversation they are probably also having. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and the AAA Framework (antifragility, anticipation, agility) AI, techistentialism and human agency in an automated world Non-linear disruption and scenario thinking Geopolitical and technological risk Boardroom strategy under unpredictability Building antifragile organisations Ideal for Boards, CEOs and executive committees revisiting strategic planning assumptions under accelerating disruption Chief strategy officers, chief AI officers and heads of corporate development Institutional investors, asset managers and private equity leadership teams Policy leaders and central banks running foresight and resilience briefs World Economic Forum and high-level industry forums Audience outcomes A clearer view of why linear forecasting is failing and what replaces it in current conditions A working grasp of the AAA Framework and how to apply it to the audience’s own strategy cycle Specific framing for human-AI decision-making drawn from Disrupt With Impact and the techistentialism work Case material from M&A, frontier technology and foresight consulting usable in the audience’s own sector Reference material from the published books that leadership teams can circulate after the session

Why organisations work with Caspar Veldkamp Direct working experience as the foreign minister of an EU member state during the 2025 NATO summit year, including hosting the first NATO summit ever held in the Netherlands. A documented record of policy principle: he resigned the foreign ministry over the cabinet’s refusal to advance further measures on Israel, and authored the EU review proposal that bears his name. Constituency-level experience of China at the EBRD board, now extended into the EU’s most senior diplomatic post in Beijing from summer 2026. Frontline diplomatic service through two of Europe’s hardest decades of crisis: ambassador to Israel from 2011 to 2015 and to Greece during the Eurozone and migration emergencies. Comfort moving between the transatlantic and Brussels frames, grounded in early service on Senator Richard Lugar’s staff and political counsellor work in Washington. Biography highlights Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, 2024 to 2025. EU Ambassador to China designate, taking up post in Beijing in summer 2026. Board Director, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, London, 2020 to 2023. Ambassador of the Netherlands to Israel (2011 to 2015) and to Greece (2015 to 2019). Hosted the 2025 NATO Summit in The Hague. Author of “the Caspar proposal” for EU review of the EU to Israel Association Agreement. Biography The cabinet meeting on 22 August 2025 ended with the Dutch foreign minister resigning his post. Caspar Veldkamp had proposed further measures on Israel over the conduct of the war in Gaza, including an import ban on goods from settlements in the occupied territories. The cabinet would not move. He left office the same evening, and the New Social Contract ministers followed him out in solidarity. It was the kind of public exit that explains in one moment what a leader’s working principle is. The career that led there is unusually broad for a sitting politician. Veldkamp ran the Dutch embassies in Israel from 2011 to 2015 and in Greece from 2015 to 2019, the second through the Eurozone and migration crises. Between politics and diplomacy he sat on the EBRD board in London for three years, with constituency responsibility for the Netherlands, China, Mongolia, North Macedonia and Armenia, chairing the Board Steering Group during a period of governance reform and active climate and Ukraine work. As foreign minister he hosted the 2025 NATO summit in The Hague, the first summit held in the Netherlands. He argued publicly that the two-percent NATO defence benchmark was no longer adequate, backed sustained military support for Ukraine, and authored what came to be called the Caspar proposal: a formal EU review of Israel’s compliance with the EU to Israel Association Agreement. The proposal drew broader member state support than expected and reframed the conversation inside the bloc. In summer 2026 he takes up the post of European Union Ambassador to China, the first Dutch national appointed to the role. For organisations sitting on China exposure, transatlantic supply chain decisions, or the next round of EU sanctions logic, the perspective he carries into Beijing is the one boards are now looking to brief against. Key speaking topics European geopolitics and EU foreign policy NATO, transatlantic security and Ukraine EU to China relations and the Brussels view of Beijing Sanctions, ESG and the Middle East Diplomacy under coalition and parliamentary constraint Crisis-period leadership in foreign ministries and embassies Ideal for Boards and executive committees with material China, Israel or Russia exposure CEO and CFO offsites focused on geopolitical scenario planning Banking, insurance and energy leadership teams sizing sanctions and policy risk Public affairs, government relations and risk leadership functions Audience outcomes A clearer read on how EU foreign policy decisions are actually formed across capitals. A working framework for what the next phase of EU to China relations is likely to demand of European businesses. Specific reference points on Ukraine support, NATO posture and the trajectory of sanctions logic into 2026 and beyond. A first-person account of holding a foreign ministry under coalition strain, useful for any leader managing decisions that carry public principle as well as commercial weight.

Why organisations work with Kim Darroch A first-hand reading of US, EU, and UK political dynamics from someone who has sat opposite the people now setting policy, not a commentator interpreting from the outside. A decade at the operational core of UK national security and European policy, covering Brexit, the Trump administration, Russian aggression in Ukraine, the rise of Daesh, and the Libya collapse. Author of Collateral Damage, the most senior insider account of the UK-US relationship under the first Trump presidency, published by HarperCollins and reviewed in Foreign Affairs. A career-long perspective on the transatlantic alliance at the moment it is under the most pressure since the Cold War, useful for boards exposed to US, European, and China risk in the same quarter. Biography highlights British Ambassador to the United States, 2016 to 2019. National Security Adviser to Prime Minister David Cameron, 2012 to 2015. UK Permanent Representative to the European Union, 2007 to 2011. Head of the Cabinet Office European Secretariat and EU adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair, 2004 to 2007. Crossbench life peer, House of Lords; Chairperson, Best for Britain. Author, Collateral Damage: Britain, America and Europe in the Age of Trump (HarperCollins, 2020). KCMG (2008). Biography The British Ambassador to Washington is meant to be the cable channel between Downing Street and the White House. In July 2019, Kim Darroch’s frank diplomatic cables about the Trump administration were leaked to the British press, and the post became untenable. He resigned, closing a forty-year career in HM Diplomatic Service from inside the most public diplomatic incident in modern British memory. That career was built at the centre of UK foreign policy. As National Security Adviser to David Cameron from 2012 to 2015, he chaired the brief covering Daesh in Iraq and Syria, Russian operations in Ukraine, and the collapse of state authority in Libya. Before that he was UK Permanent Representative to the European Union, and before that Tony Blair’s senior EU adviser inside the Cabinet Office. Few living British diplomats have held that range of senior posts in sequence. His memoir, Collateral Damage, is the closest thing to a Washington-side account of how the UK read the Trump administration through Brexit and the early trade negotiations. Foreign Affairs reviewed it; HarperCollins published it in the UK and PublicAffairs in the US. He served as a Resident Fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics in spring 2020 and now sits as a crossbench peer in the House of Lords, chairing Best for Britain. What boards get from him is unusual at the senior diplomatic level. He speaks operationally about how Washington, Brussels, and Whitehall actually decide, who holds the file, what moves the principal, where the brittle points are. That is the reading senior executives need when they are asked to price political risk into a five-year plan. Key speaking topics US politics and the Washington decision-making system The transatlantic alliance under strain The war in Ukraine and European security China, the US, and strategic competition UK foreign policy after Brexit Geopolitical risk for boards and investors Ideal for Boards and audit committees pricing political and sanctions exposure into strategy CEOs and CFOs of multinationals with significant US, European, or China revenue General counsel, government affairs, and strategy heads reading regulatory and trade risk Investor and asset management audiences exposed to sovereign and policy risk Audience outcomes A grounded reading of the current US administration’s foreign policy trajectory from someone who has worked with the principals. A clearer view of where the transatlantic alliance is brittle and where it still holds. The questions a senior leadership team should be asking its risk function about geopolitics, not the headlines. A sharper sense of how Washington, Brussels, and London actually negotiate, useful when planning lobbying, market entry, or sanctions response.

Why organisations work with Rita McGrath The transient advantage framework directly challenges an assumption most leadership teams still operate on: that the goal of strategy is to build and protect durable competitive positions. McGrath makes the cost of that assumption explicit, and offers a named, practitioner-tested alternative. Discovery-driven planning, co-created with Ian C. MacMillan and introduced through the Harvard Business Review, gives organisations a structured methodology for committing to uncertain growth initiatives: one that Clayton Christensen described as among the most important management tools ever developed. She holds the Thinkers50 #1 Strategy Award (2013) alongside four subsequent Thinkers50 Strategy Awards and a 2025 global ranking of #6, a record of credentials in strategy thinking that is without parallel on the conference circuit. Her Seeing Around Corners framework provides a concrete vocabulary for the specific problem boards face most acutely: detecting the leading indicators of strategic inflection before they become corporate crises. As a regular HBR contributor whose work is cited in the FT, WSJ, and New York Times, her ideas arrive in board rooms before she does: senior audiences already speak her language. Biography highlights Professor of Management and Academic Director in Executive Education, Columbia Business School; leads Leading Strategic Growth and Change executive programme Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Award in Strategy (2013); five-time Thinkers50 Strategy Award winner; ranked #6 globally on the Thinkers50 overall list (2025) C.K. Prahalad Award (2022), Strategic Management Society: awarded for scholarly impact on practice; inducted into the Business Excellence Hall of Fame (2022) Author of five books including The End of Competitive Advantage (HBR Press) and Seeing Around Corners (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt); Discovery-Driven Growth named to Thinkers50 Management Classics Booklist Co-creator of discovery-driven planning, introduced through the Harvard Business Review (1995); cited by Clayton Christensen as among the most important management and strategy tools ever developed Ph.D., Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania); honours degrees from Barnard College and Columbia School of International and Public Affairs Work covered by the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times, CNN Business, and NPR Marketplace; one of HBR’s most frequent contributors Biography Competitive advantage used to be the organising idea behind business strategy. Build it, protect it, sustain it. In markets defined by rapid technology cycles, boundary-free competition, and compressing product lifecycles, that idea has become a liability, and most organisations do not realise it until the decision has already been made for them. Rita Gunther McGrath has spent three decades at Columbia Business School building the alternative. Her framework of transient advantage, set out in The End of Competitive Advantage, argues that the objective of strategy must shift from sustaining positions to developing the organisational capacity to find, exploit, and exit advantages on the organisation’s own terms. Discovery-driven planning provides the operational methodology: a structured process for committing to growth initiatives under uncertainty without betting the business on invalid assumptions. Her intellectual standing in strategy is well-documented. Thinkers50 awarded her the #1 Strategy Award in 2013 and has continued to recognise her work across four subsequent award cycles, ranking her sixth globally in 2025. The Strategic Management Society’s C.K. Prahalad Award (2022) recognised her scholarly impact on practice, a distinction that acknowledges both rigour and application. Clayton Christensen placed her discovery-driven growth tools among the most important management tools ever developed. McGrath directs Columbia’s Leading Strategic Growth and Change executive programme and founded Valize, a platform that operationalises the discovery-driven methodology for organisations at scale. Her advisory work runs into the C-suites of Fortune 1,000 companies: helping boards and senior leadership teams navigate the specific transition her research describes: from the strategy they were trained to run, to one that fits the market they are actually in. Key speaking topics Transient advantage and the limits of competitive positioning Strategic inflection points and early warning signals Discovery-driven planning and growth under uncertainty Business model evolution and renewal Organisational agility in volatile markets Strategic decision-making under ambiguity Innovation as a managed, repeatable discipline Ideal for CEOs, CSOs, and board members wrestling with strategy refresh in disrupted or fast-moving sectors Strategy and corporate development teams whose existing planning frameworks are producing diminishing returns Senior leadership teams in large incumbents facing the transition from mature to declining competitive positions Executive education participants on leadership programmes where strategic thinking is the primary development objective Audience outcomes A clear understanding of why durable competitive advantage is an increasingly dangerous strategic objective, and what to replace it with Practical command of the discovery-driven planning process for evaluating and resourcing uncertain growth initiatives A named framework for identifying strategic inflection points before they become visible to the wider market Language and tools to initiate an honest internal conversation about which parts of the current business model are in decline Sharpened criteria for strategic resource allocation when outcomes cannot be forecast with confidence

Why organisations work with Marcelo Carvalho He has run a global economics function at a major European universal bank, which means his read on rates, currencies and country risk is the same view senior fund managers and corporate treasurers are paying for. He has been Chief Economist for Brazil at three global investment banks (J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America), giving him a depth on Latin America and emerging markets that very few generalist macro speakers can match. He bridges markets and policy: two years at the IMF, two decades on the sell side, now a Senior Research Associate at ODI Global, the London-based development and policy think tank. He briefs CFOs and finance ministers with equal fluency. He has been recognised repeatedly by Institutional Investor and Latin Finance for Brazil macro coverage, signalling that his calls have been judged credible by the buy-side audience that uses his research commercially. He briefs in English, Spanish and Portuguese, which matters for organisations whose leadership team or investor base sits across the Americas and Europe. Biography highlights Senior Research Associate, ODI Global, London Former Global Head of Economics at BNP Paribas, after leading the bank’s Global Emerging Markets Research and Latin America Research desks Former Chief Economist for Brazil at J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Two years as an economist at the International Monetary Fund PhD in Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; MSc and BA in Economics, University of Sao Paulo Multiple Institutional Investor and Latin Finance awards for Brazil macro research; regular contributor to Bloomberg, CNBC, Reuters, Financial Times, The Economist and Wall Street Journal Biography The macro environment that institutional investors and corporate boards built their playbooks around between 1990 and 2020 is no longer the environment they are operating in. Trade is fragmenting, monetary policy is diverging across the major blocs, and emerging markets are once again a source of structural opportunity and structural risk at the same time. Reading that map well is now a board-level skill, not a back-office function. That is the territory Marcelo Carvalho has worked in for three decades, now as Senior Research Associate at ODI Global, the London-based development and policy think tank where he contributes to its macroeconomic research series. He was previously Global Head of Economics at BNP Paribas in London, leading the bank’s economics function across developed and emerging markets, having earlier run its Global Emerging Markets Research and Latin America Research desks from Sao Paulo. His earlier career sits squarely on the trading floor of global investment banking. He was Chief Economist for Brazil at J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, the kind of seat where the call has to be defensible to portfolio managers within the hour. Two years as an economist at the IMF before joining BNP Paribas in 2010 give him a public-sector perspective that most sell-side economists do not have. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Masters and Bachelor degrees from the University of Sao Paulo. His research on Brazil has been recognised in successive Institutional Investor and Latin Finance polls. He briefs boards and investor audiences in English, Spanish and Portuguese, and is a regular voice on Bloomberg, CNBC, Reuters, Financial Times, The Economist and the Wall Street Journal. Key speaking topics Global macroeconomic outlook Geopolitics and global markets Emerging markets strategy Latin America macroeconomics Monetary policy and inflation Trade policy and supply-chain fragmentation Currency dynamics and capital flows Ideal for Boards and investment committees setting medium-term capital allocation against a shifting macro backdrop CFOs, treasurers and CIOs at corporates and asset managers with exposure to emerging markets or currency risk Banking, insurance and financial services leadership teams briefing clients on global outlook Policy forums, sovereign investor conferences and economic summits with a Latin America or emerging-markets agenda Audience outcomes A clearer read on which macro shifts are cyclical noise and which are structural enough to change planning assumptions A working view of where rates, inflation and currencies are likely to diverge across major economies and what that means for cross-border decisions A specific assessment of emerging market risk and opportunity, with Brazil and wider Latin America treated in detail rather than as a sidebar An understanding of how trade policy, supply-chain fragmentation and political risk are being repriced by global investors Macroeconomic content delivered as a narrative a leadership audience can repeat back to its own board, not a research deck

Why organisations work with Stefan Löfven Direct head-of-government experience of running a minority coalition through migration shock, terror response, the pandemic, and a vote of no confidence, useful for boards weighing political risk in their own operating geographies. Chair of SIPRI, the institute whose annual data on military expenditure, arms transfers and conflict is the reference set used by foreign ministries and defence analysts globally. Co-Chair of the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism, which produced the 2023 report A Breakthrough for People and Planet on reforming global governance. Co-led, with Cyril Ramaphosa, the ILO Global Commission on the Future of Work, the body whose 2019 report shaped the ILO Centenary Declaration on labour standards and social protection. Career rooted on the factory floor as a welder and union leader, which gives a credibility on labour, industrial policy and the social contract that very few former heads of state can claim. Biography highlights Prime Minister of Sweden, 2014 to 2021, across two coalition governments. Chair of the Governing Board, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), since 2022. Co-Chair, UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism, 2022 to 2023. Co-Chair, ILO Global Commission on the Future of Work, with President Cyril Ramaphosa. President, Party of European Socialists, elected 2022. Resident Fellow, Institute of Politics, Harvard Kennedy School, Fall 2022. Biography The seven years of Löfven’s premiership covered the European migration crisis, a fatal terror attack on central Stockholm, a vote of no confidence that briefly removed him from office, and the COVID-19 response in a country that diverged from most of its neighbours on lockdown policy. Few European leaders held office continuously across that span. Fewer still did so while running minority governments dependent on votes from across the political spectrum. That experience is the foundation of the international roles he now holds. As Chair of SIPRI’s Governing Board since 2022, he sits over the institute that produces the data foreign ministries rely on for arms transfers, military spending, and conflict trends. As Co-Chair, with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, of the UN High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism, he led the 2023 report A Breakthrough for People and Planet, which set out concrete reforms to the global financial architecture and the UN system itself. The labour and industrial dimension of his work is harder to fake. Trained as a welder at Hagglunds and active in the Swedish Metalworkers’ Union from his twenties, he became the first president of IF Metall in 2006 before entering elected politics. That background is why the ILO chose him, with Cyril Ramaphosa, to co-chair its Global Commission on the Future of Work, and why the Global Deal he launched in 2016 with the OECD and ILO is built around social dialogue rather than purely fiscal levers. For audiences, what travels is the practical weight of having held the line on multilateral cooperation when the politics moved against it, and the clarity that comes from briefing other heads of state, not from observing them. Key speaking topics Geopolitical risk and the rules-based order Multilateral cooperation and UN reform Crisis leadership in coalition government Future of work and the social contract European political alignment and the rise of the populist right Industrial policy and the labour market Peace, security and disarmament Ideal for Boards and executive teams scoping geopolitical exposure, sanctions risk, and operating decisions in a fracturing global order. CHRO and policy leaders working on the social contract, labour standards, and the future of work agenda. Government affairs, sustainability, and ESG functions tracking multilateral reform and UN-level policy direction. Senior leadership audiences at financial institutions, defence and dual-use industries with direct exposure to peace, security and arms-control data. Audience outcomes A first-hand account of how a head of government weighs political risk, security, and economic exposure inside the same decision. A clearer reading of where multilateral institutions are likely to bend, break, or reform over the next cycle. A grounded view of the European political map, including the rise of the populist right and its operating consequences. An informed perspective on labour, social dialogue and the future of work from a leader who has lived both sides of the table. Confidence that the briefing reflects current institutional reality, not commentary from the outside.

Why organisations work with Rohit Bhargava He brings a decade of annual trend research, distilled into the Non-Obvious and Megatrends book series, into a board or strategy off-site as a working method, not a slide deck. The SIFT framework gives marketing, innovation and strategy teams a shared language for separating durable shifts from passing noise, which most trend keynotes leave unresolved. His client list (NASA, Disney, World Bank, Intel, American Express) signals a track record with organisations that have to make capital decisions on long horizons, not just generate quarterly campaigns. Beyond Diversity, co-authored with Jennifer Brown, gives him a credible second register on inclusion as a commercial and cultural question, useful when a single keynote needs to cover both growth strategy and people. He works as a trained marketer (15 years at Ogilvy and Leo Burnett), which means innovation and trend content lands with sales, brand and customer leaders rather than staying at the level of abstract foresight. Biography highlights 3-time Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of ten books, including #1 WSJ bestseller Non-Obvious Megatrends. Adjunct professor of marketing and storytelling at Georgetown University. Co-founder of Ideapress Publishing and founder of the Non-Obvious Company. Co-author of Beyond Diversity with Jennifer Brown (Simon & Schuster / Ideapress); WSJ bestseller. Keynote and workshop work for NASA, Disney, Intel, American Express, World Bank, Coca-Cola, Microsoft. Featured speaker at five SXSW events; keynote at SXSW Sydney 2023, the first SXSW outside the United States. Biography Trend forecasting is crowded. Most of what circulates inside large organisations is a recycled version of the same six themes: AI, sustainability, hybrid work, generational change, geopolitics, the consumer. The harder question for a senior team is which of those headlines actually changes how they should allocate capital next year, and which signals further out are not yet on anyone’s deck. That gap is the work Rohit Bhargava has built a decade-long research practice around. His Non-Obvious book series, published annually from 2015 and culminating in the WSJ and USA Today #1 bestseller Non-Obvious Megatrends in 2020, reached more than a million readers. The follow-up, The Future Normal, co-authored with Henry Coutinho-Mason and launched at SXSW in 2023, covers thirty shifts shaping the next decade, from generative AI to biophilic design. The 2024 book Non-Obvious Thinking, written with Ben duPont, formalises the SIFT method, a four-step habit for curating ideas that audiences can take into their own teams. Before becoming a full-time author and speaker, Bhargava spent 15 years in brand strategy roles at Ogilvy and Leo Burnett, advising consumer brands on behaviour and storytelling. He teaches marketing and storytelling at Georgetown University as an adjunct professor, and writes a monthly column for Inc. on books that matter. With Jennifer Brown he co-authored Beyond Diversity, a Wall Street Journal bestseller published by Simon & Schuster and Ideapress, which examines inclusion across twelve domains including workplace, leadership and technology. The client list, NASA, Disney, the World Bank, Intel, American Express, Microsoft, signals where the work lands hardest: organisations that need to translate cultural and technological signals into product, capital and brand decisions on multi-year horizons. The point is not to predict the future but to teach a working team to spot it earlier than the competition. Key speaking topics Trend forecasting and the non-obvious method Innovation as a research discipline Marketing and brand in low-trust markets AI and the future of trust The Future Normal: thirty shifts reshaping commerce Inclusive growth and Beyond Diversity Storytelling for senior leaders Creative thinking and curation as a managed habit Ideal for Chief marketing officers, brand teams and customer experience leads navigating attention and trust in saturated markets Chief strategy officers, innovation leads and corporate development teams setting multi-year direction Boards and executive committees commissioning a sharper view of how cultural and technological shifts will hit their category Sales and partner kickoffs where a strategy team wants a working method, not a trend slide Audience outcomes A working knowledge of the SIFT method and how to use it inside a team A named set of cultural and commercial shifts that are relevant to the audience’s specific industry, not generic trend lists A shared vocabulary for separating durable signals from passing noise Practical examples of how organisations including NASA, Disney and World Bank have translated trend research into operating decisions Confidence that trend work can be a repeatable internal habit, not a one-off external report

Why organisations work with Christina Yan Zhang She co-writes the UN ITU standards her clients will eventually be measured against. Her CitiVerse evaluation framework spans 130 indicators across 14 domains, with input from more than 30 global authorities. She has converted that standards work into operational strategy for cities, including Tampere’s Metaverse Vision 2040, the first people-centred metaverse strategy adopted as a UN resource for governments. Her China innovation insight is grounded in direct operating experience, not commentary. As QS China Director from 2013 to 2020, she sat across hundreds of Chinese universities, national labs and science parks during the 13th Five-Year Plan. She holds advisory positions across the International Science Council’s Centre for Science Futures, The Economist Impact’s AI economy board, and TechUK’s Digital Twins Board, giving her unusually direct line of sight into where AI policy is heading. She was named in the 100 Global Women in AI 2025 list at Davos and chaired the jury of the 2024 Metaverse Entertainment World Awards under the patronage of Prince Albert II of Monaco. Biography highlights CEO, The Metaverse Institute Vice Chair, UN ITU Metaverse Working Group on Sustainability, Accessibility and Inclusion Co-Chair, UN ITU Task Group on Pre-standardisation for the CitiVerse Author of the UN’s first approved technical report on People-Centred CitiVerse China Director, QS World University Rankings, 2013 to 2020 100 Global Women in AI 2025 (announced at Davos) Biography The rules for AI in cities, public services and immersive environments are being written right now, mostly inside the UN ITU. Christina Yan Zhang is one of the people writing them. As Co-Chair of the UN ITU Task Group on Pre-standardisation for the CitiVerse, she leads the evaluation framework that 30 plus global authorities have shaped and that hundreds of cities are expected to align to before 2030. That standards work feeds directly into operational strategy. Her team at The Metaverse Institute produced Tampere Metaverse Vision 2040, the first people-centred metaverse strategy commissioned by a city government and subsequently published by the UN as a resource for other administrations. She is also the author of the UN’s first approved technical report on People-Centred CitiVerse, which set out an 8-level entry framework for governments and operators moving into virtual environments. She arrived at this work through an unusual route. Her PhD in 2012 was on digital twin applications for the construction industry, well before the term entered mainstream board conversations. Between 2013 and 2020 she was China Director for QS World University Rankings, building the firm’s China operation from scratch and sitting close to the universities, science parks and national labs that drove the country’s 13th Five-Year Plan in research and innovation. She now advises across the International Science Council’s Centre for Science Futures, The Economist Impact’s AI economy board, and TechUK’s Digital Twins Board. The throughline is consistent: where AI, digital twins and virtual environments meet public infrastructure, she has been writing the standards before most boards have read them. Key speaking topics AI governance and the UN CitiVerse standards Digital twins for cities and critical infrastructure Responsible deployment of virtual environments People-centred AI strategy for governments and operators China’s innovation system and research capacity Future of work in AI-enabled cities Ideal for Boards and C-suites setting AI, digital and immersive technology strategy Government and city leadership teams designing smart city or CitiVerse roadmaps Heads of innovation, digital and infrastructure inside regulated industries Investors and operators positioning capital around AI-powered urban and built-environment plays Audience outcomes A working map of where UN ITU standards on AI and the CitiVerse are heading, and what that means for their own roadmap A clearer view of how digital twins move from technical pilot to citywide operating system Direct insight into China’s innovation engine from someone who operated inside it for seven years A framework for testing whether their current AI and virtual-environment plans will hold up against emerging international standards