Scenario Planning & Strategic Foresight speakers

Why organisations work with Aaron Frank As one of only two lead facilitators of Singularity University’s flagship five-day Executive Program, he translates emerging technology trajectories into specific decisions a senior team can make this quarter, not abstract futures. He has taught the same material to the United States Marine Corps, the Central Bank of Denmark, Ernst & Young, FC Barcelona, GE, and The Economist Group, which means his frame is tested across regulators, militaries, sports bodies, and Fortune 500 operators. He guest lectures inside Oxford’s Saïd Business School Digital Transformation course, evidence that his content survives peer scrutiny in a serious executive-education environment. He writes a steady stream of analysis for Singularity Hub, Wired, Forbes, Vice, and VentureBeat, and authored Singularity’s 2026 executive briefing on Physical AI, so audiences get a speaker whose arguments are already pressure-tested in print. His current research focus is the convergence of generative AI, spatial computing, 3D simulation, and physical AI, a frame that gives him a concrete read on where the next wave of enterprise infrastructure is heading. Biography highlights Principal Faculty, Singularity University, and one of only two lead facilitators of its flagship five-day Executive Program. MBA, University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, where he also guest lectures on the Digital Transformation course. Bylines in Vice, Wired, Forbes, VentureBeat, and Singularity Hub. Author of A Business Leader’s Introduction to Physical AI (Singularity, 2026). Has spoken to or advised the United States Marine Corps, the CIA, the Department of Defense, the Central Bank of Denmark, Ernst & Young, GE, The Economist Group, Coca-Cola, Under Armour, FC Barcelona, the NBA, Sony, and Honeywell. Board member, Saint Francis Living Room, a community kitchen in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. Biography Generative AI is now familiar territory for most senior leaders. What comes after is the harder question: which emerging shifts genuinely reshape an industry, and where capital should actually move. That interpretive read is what Aaron Frank does for a living. He is one of only two lead facilitators of Singularity University’s flagship Executive Program. The five-day intensive puts him in a room with around a hundred senior leaders, working through emerging technology trajectories as a structured curriculum. Few speakers test their arguments against a senior audience that often. His range covers rapid technological change, spatial computing and 3D simulation, digital twins as enterprise infrastructure, and the move toward physical AI. He has taught that material to the United States Marine Corps, the Central Bank of Denmark, Ernst & Young, FC Barcelona, and GE. His bylines appear in Wired, Forbes, Vice, VentureBeat, and Singularity Hub. Outside Singularity, he holds an MBA from Oxford’s Saïd Business School and guest lectures on its Digital Transformation course. He also sits on the board of Saint Francis Living Room, a community kitchen in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. His current research focus is the rise of physical AI, set out for Singularity in a 2026 executive briefing on the convergence of robotics, simulation, and spatial intelligence. Key speaking topics Exponential technology trajectories and leadership decisions Innovation strategy under technology acceleration Spatial computing, 3D simulation, and digital twins Physical AI and robotics Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting AI and emerging technology investment direction CTO, CIO and head of digital transformation audiences Industrial, manufacturing, defence and supply chain leadership planning around physical AI and digital twins Strategy and innovation leads in financial services, sport, media and government Audience outcomes A clearer read on which emerging technology shifts actually reshape their industry, and which are noise. A working vocabulary for generative AI, spatial computing, digital twins, and physical AI that a senior team can use in the same conversation. Specific examples of how regulators, militaries, sports bodies, and Fortune 500 operators are deploying these technologies today. A view on the next two to five years of enterprise AI infrastructure beyond the chatbot, drawn from operating deployments.

Why organisations work with Abishur Prakash He defined the geopolitics-of-technology field early and keeps naming what comes next. His 2016 book Next Geopolitics set out a scenario framework for state competition over AI and robotics that boards are now living through. His latest, The Great Fracturing, maps the broken order they operate in today. He gives executives a working vocabulary for the new operating environment. Concepts he coined, including Vertical Globalization, Geopolitics of AI and Business Iron Curtain, name dynamics that buyers can otherwise only describe in fragments. His work at the Center for Innovating the Future has been cited by the World Economic Forum, Brookings, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs, signalling that policymakers and corporates draw on the same analysis. He briefs in two registers. He has testified to the Senate of Canada and writes regularly in CNBC, Nikkei Asia, BBC, Politico, Fortune and the WSJ, so he is fluent with both heads of state and operating executives. He runs an advisory firm, The Geopolitical Business, that is built specifically for corporate decision-makers, not academic audiences. The reading frame is always: what does this mean for your next investment, supplier, market or product launch. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of The Geopolitical Business, a Toronto-based advisory firm. Author of six books, including his latest, The Great Fracturing: How Geopolitics Is Breaking the World (2026), The World Is Vertical, and Next Geopolitics Volumes One and Two. Former geopolitical futurist at the Center for Innovating the Future; represented CIF in testimony to the Senate of Canada in 2017. Work cited by the World Economic Forum, Brookings Institution, Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Bylines and commentary in CNN, BBC, CNBC, WSJ, Nikkei Asia, Reuters, Politico, Fortune, The Telegraph, Scientific American and SCMP. Coined frameworks now used in corporate strategy discussions: Next Geopolitics, Vertical Globalization, Geopolitics of AI, Business Iron Curtain. Biography The intersection of state power and corporate strategy is where most boardroom assumptions are now breaking. Export controls on chips, sanctions regimes that shift quarterly, severed supply corridors and AI rivalry between Washington and Beijing are no longer macro context. They sit on the operating P&L. Abishur Prakash has been mapping this terrain since 2013, when he first set out the case that geopolitics and technology had become a single field. Six books built that argument in stages. Next Geopolitics Volumes One and Two used scenario-based chapters to show how AI, robotics and biotech would force governments and companies into new postures. Go.AI examined the state-level race for artificial intelligence advantage. The Age of Killer Robots looked at autonomy in defence. The World Is Vertical: How Technology Is Remaking Globalization argued that the flat, integrated world of the 1990s and 2000s is being replaced by a layered, segmented one in which corporates choose blocs rather than markets. His latest book, The Great Fracturing: How Geopolitics Is Breaking the World, widens the lens from technology to the whole order. It traces how trade, ideology, connectivity and alliances are breaking into rival systems, reshaping everything from capital flows to how AI is deployed. His vantage point is built on both policy and corporate exposure. As a futurist at the Center for Innovating the Future, his work was cited by the World Economic Forum, Brookings and the UAE foreign ministry, and he testified to the Senate of Canada in 2017. He now runs The Geopolitical Business, a firm built to convert that analysis into decisions for executives, central banks and investors. His commentary appears regularly in CNBC, BBC, Nikkei Asia, the WSJ, Politico and Fortune. What boards take from him is not a worldview, but a working method. Concepts he coined, Vertical Globalization, Geopolitics of AI, Business Iron Curtain, give leadership teams a vocabulary for things they were already feeling on supply, capital and market access. The output is concrete: which corridors are closing, which blocs are forming, where the next sanction or subsidy is likely to land, and what that means for the next investment cycle. Key speaking topics Geopolitics of technology and AI US-China strategic and technology competition Vertical Globalization and the end of flat-world supply chains Sanctions, export controls and the Business Iron Curtain Scenario planning for boards and investors Long-range geopolitical foresight Bloc formation and the future of trade corridors The fracturing of the global order Ideal for Boards, CEOs and CSOs setting strategy across multiple geopolitical blocs CFOs and treasury leaders running capital allocation under sanctions and currency volatility Heads of supply chain, procurement and manufacturing footprint Investors, central banks and policy leaders responsible for long-horizon risk Audience outcomes A clearer reading of how state-level technology rivalry is reshaping their specific industry Named frameworks for describing geopolitical change inside their own strategy process Sharper questions for the next board, investment committee or supply review A view of which corridors, blocs and choke points to watch over the coming cycle Confidence to act on geopolitical risk before it becomes a balance-sheet event

Why organisations work with Adam Braun He is a working CEO, not a retired one. Clarasight’s carbon planning software is in active commercial deployment with clients representing over $1 trillion in market capitalisation, so his content reflects current operating reality. He has built three organisations across three categories: a nonprofit started with $25 that grew to hundreds of schools globally, a venture-backed education startup acquired by WeWork, and a B2B sustainability platform. The pattern recognition across founder modes is rare. His “Build For Where The World Is Headed” framework gives leaders a teachable structure for anticipating change and committing capital before consensus forms, rather than another model for reacting after the fact. His Pencils of Promise origin story translates cleanly into a corporate room. Audiences leave with a specific argument about how individual conviction scales into institutional outcomes, evidenced by a real organisation, not an analogy. He pairs commercial credibility with a published, bestselling book on purpose-driven leadership, which means leadership development and culture briefs can be served by the same speaker without a register switch. Biography highlights CEO and Co-Founder of Clarasight, carbon planning and intelligence software, formerly Climate Club Founder and Chairman of Pencils of Promise, a nonprofit started with $25 that has built schools across Ghana, Guatemala, Laos and Nicaragua Co-Founder and CEO of MissionU, acquired by WeWork in 2018; subsequently served as a senior executive in the WeGrow business New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Promise of a Pencil, Simon & Schuster Selected by the World Economic Forum as one of the original ten Global Shapers; named to Business Insider 40 Under 40 and Wired’s “50 People Who Are Changing the World” Brown University graduate; began his career at Bain & Company Biography The hard part of strategy is not seeing change. It is committing capital and people before the change is obvious to competitors. Most operating cultures are built to do the opposite. Adam Braun has spent his career sitting in that gap as a founder. Pencils of Promise began with $25 and grew into a nonprofit operating schools across Ghana, Guatemala, Laos and Nicaragua. MissionU, the income-share-agreement college alternative he co-founded, was acquired by WeWork in 2018, where he then served as a senior executive in the WeGrow business. Clarasight, his current company, sells carbon planning software into enterprise clients representing more than $1 trillion in market value. That arc gives him an unusual operating vocabulary. He has launched a category from zero capital, raised venture funding and exited through acquisition, and is now running a B2B SaaS business in a buyer-relevant category. The framework he teaches, “Build For Where The World Is Headed,” is the synthesis of those three founder modes into a structure leaders can use to evaluate where to deploy effort before the market rewards it. His book The Promise of a Pencil, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller published by Simon & Schuster, gives the same argument a leadership-development register. He was an original World Economic Forum Global Shaper, has been named to Business Insider 40 Under 40 and Wired’s “50 People Who Are Changing the World,” and built his early career at Bain & Company after graduating from Brown. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and founder leadership Building organisations for future operating conditions Innovation under uncertainty Corporate sustainability as commercial advantage Purpose-driven business strategy Social entrepreneurship and scaled impact Ideal for Founders, CEOs and executive committees setting growth or transformation agendas Heads of strategy, innovation and sustainability shaping medium-term capital decisions Leadership development programmes for high-potential operators and emerging executives Conferences focused on entrepreneurship, scale-up leadership, or corporate climate strategy Audience outcomes A working framework for committing to direction before market consensus forms A founder’s view of how scaled impact actually compounds, drawn from three different ventures A practical read on where corporate sustainability becomes commercial advantage rather than reporting overhead A renewed argument for individual agency inside large organisations, evidenced rather than asserted

Why organisations work with Adjiedj Bakas His analytical framework tracks six categories of structural change simultaneously – economic, technological, demographic, environmental, spiritual and security – giving leadership teams a coherent map rather than a trend list. No single category is read in isolation; the interactions between them are where the real strategic insight lives. His “#Forwardism” thesis reframes megatrend analysis as a source of opportunity rather than a catalogue of threat. This is a deliberate intellectual stance, not a motivational gloss – it changes how an organisation positions itself in response to disruption. His biography is genuinely differentiating in a field dominated by Western vantage points. Of Indian descent, raised in Suriname and based in the Netherlands for three decades, Bakas brings a Global South perspective to questions about the shifting balance of economic and cultural power that most European or American futurists cannot replicate. His material has been tested against the most demanding institutional audiences on the circuit: the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, the parliaments of Hungary, Shell’s major futures conferences, and central banking and financial institutions across Africa and Asia. A Shell audience of senior executives elected him one of the top two speakers from a field of fifty. His books – including World Megatrends and Beyond the Crisis – have been used as course material at CEIBS in Shanghai, and the intellectual rigour of his framework has earned consistent media recognition from CNN, the BBC, The Guardian and China Daily. Biography highlights Founder of Trend Office Bakas, Amsterdam – a trendwatching practice serving multinationals, financial institutions and governments internationally Author of more than ten books on global megatrends, distributed across 40+ countries; titles include World Megatrends, Beyond the Crisis, Megatrends Europe and #Forwardism Elected Trendwatcher of the Year 2009 and Immigrant Entrepreneur of the Year 2008 in the Netherlands Covered as a leading voice on global futures by CNN, BBC, The Guardian, Times of India and China Daily Keynote engagements include Shell, Deloitte, Google, Microsoft, ABN AMRO, KPMG, Rabobank, Credit Suisse and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly Course material at CEIBS (China Europe International Business School, Shanghai) and Emory University, Atlanta Biography Most organisations run their long-term strategy on a three-to-five year horizon. The megatrends that actually reshape industries – demographic reordering, geopolitical power shifts, energy transitions, technological discontinuities – operate on timescales of twenty years or more. Adjiedj Bakas, founder of Trend Office Bakas in Amsterdam, has spent his career helping senior leaders read those slower, more consequential signals before they arrive as operational emergencies. His body of work – more than ten books published across 40 countries, including World Megatrends, Beyond the Crisis and Megatrends Europe – develops a consistent analytical lens across six categories of structural change: economic, technological, demographic, environmental, spiritual and security. His most recent work, #Forwardism, introduces the concept of “Happynomy” – the argument that the most powerful megatrends are better interpreted as sources of strategic opportunity than as threats to be mitigated. The perspective he brings is shaped by biography as much as by research. Of Indian descent, raised in Suriname and based in the Netherlands for three decades, Bakas has a genuinely non-Western vantage point on shifts in global economic and cultural power that most European futurists cannot replicate. His engagements span Shell, Deloitte, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, the parliaments of Hungary, and financial institutions across Africa, Asia and Europe – audiences for whom a view of the future that goes beyond the Western horizon is not optional. Elected Trendwatcher of the Year in the Netherlands in 2009, his work has been covered by CNN, the BBC, The Guardian and China Daily. His books have been used as course material at CEIBS in Shanghai and Emory University in Atlanta. Key speaking topics Global megatrends and structural futures Geopolitical power shifts and the rise of the Global South Demographic change and its economic consequences Long-cycle economic forecasting and scenario planning Energy and environmental transitions Technology and innovation futures Opportunity-centred strategic foresight (#Forwardism / Happynomy) Ideal for C-suite and board leaders developing long-range organisational strategy Strategy and foresight teams in multinationals requiring a structured macro-trend framework Financial institutions and investment firms assessing long-term geopolitical and economic risk Government and public-sector organisations navigating demographic and geopolitical change Audience outcomes A structured, six-category framework for mapping structural megatrends across economic, technological, demographic, environmental and geopolitical dimensions Greater confidence in distinguishing long-cycle structural shifts from short-term cyclical noise Exposure to the Global South’s increasing influence on economic and cultural direction – a perspective absent from most standard futures briefings A reframed strategic posture: tools for reading disruption as a source of opportunity rather than purely a risk management challenge A renewed and evidence-based basis for organisational optimism in conditions of uncertainty

Why organisations work with Albrecht Enders His Solvable framework – Frame, Explore, Decide – gives leadership teams a replicable method for complex decisions, not a diagnostic template. It addresses the two failure modes his research identifies most consistently: solving the wrong problem, and deciding without adequate stakeholder input. His academic work on discontinuous change, published in Administrative Science Quarterly and the Academy of Management Journal, explains why established firms with strong strategies still get disrupted – and what the firms that adapt successfully did differently. This gives his executive work a research foundation most strategy practitioners cannot draw on. His specific argument – that stakeholder engagement must be embedded throughout a decision process, not appended at the end – is a named, testable position that directly challenges how most senior teams structure their strategy work. He brings both sides of the strategy question: his IMD research and teaching work on how organisations should decide, and his consulting work with organisations including Siemens, Vodafone, Deutsche Bank, Novartis, and Thyssen Krupp on what that looks like under real operating conditions. Biography highlights Professor of Strategy and Innovation at IMD; former Dean of Programs and Innovation Co-author of Solvable: A Simple Solution to Complex Problems (Pearson, 2022), co-authored with Arnaud Chevallier; proposes the Frame, Explore, Decide methodology for complex problem-solving Research published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, and Research Policy Contributor to Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, and the Financial Times EFMD Excellence in Practice Gold Award (2014); Academy of Management BPS Division Glueck Best Paper Award (2011 and 2013) Co-director of IMD’s Complex Problem Solving and Transition to Business Leadership programs Former consultant, Boston Consulting Group (Cologne); board member, Agathon AG Biography The decisions that define an organisation’s direction are rarely the ones with clean answers. They involve competing stakeholder priorities, incomplete information, and environments that may not resemble anything the leadership team has navigated before. Albrecht Enders, Professor of Strategy and Innovation at IMD, has spent two decades studying why these decisions go wrong – and building the tools to improve them. His core argument is structural. Most leadership teams separate the act of deciding from the act of engaging the people who will be affected. They analyse, choose, then communicate. Enders’ research shows this sequence is both intellectually and politically costly: involving key stakeholders throughout a decision process produces better choices and creates the sense of fair process that drives implementation. His book Solvable (Pearson, 2022), co-authored with Arnaud Chevallier, translates this into a three-step method – Frame, Explore, Decide – designed to stop executive teams from jumping to solutions before they have properly defined the problem. His academic research, published in Administrative Science Quarterly, the Academy of Management Journal, and Research Policy, focuses on the specific question of how established firms respond to technological discontinuities. This work explains not just that incumbents struggle with disruptive change, but why the structural and behavioural conditions inside large organisations make poor responses predictable – and what distinguishes the firms that adapt. It gives his practitioner work an empirical foundation that strategy consulting alone does not provide. At IMD, Enders co-directs the Complex Problem Solving program and the Transition to Business Leadership program, and served as Dean of Programs and Innovation until 2020. Before joining IMD, he spent three years at the Boston Consulting Group in Cologne, working on strategy development and reorganisation across financial services, energy, and industrial goods. He sits on the board of Swiss precision toolmaker Agathon and is a founding member of the E4S (Enterprise for Society) executive committee, the sustainability initiative launched jointly by IMD, the University of Lausanne, HEC Lausanne, and EPFL. Key speaking topics Strategic decision-making processes Managing discontinuous and technological change Complex problem-solving frameworks Top-team strategy development Incumbent response to disruption Corporate strategy in uncertain environments Stakeholder engagement in strategic decisions Ideal for C-suite and executive leadership teams reviewing or rebuilding their strategy processes Chief Strategy Officers and corporate strategy functions navigating market discontinuities Senior leaders in established industries facing disruption from new technologies or entrants Executive education and leadership development programmes at board and senior management level Audience outcomes A structured understanding of where strategic decision-making processes typically break down – and the specific interventions that address each failure point Familiarity with the Frame, Explore, Decide methodology from Solvable and how to apply it to live organisational problems Insight into the research evidence on why incumbents underperform in discontinuous environments, and which organisational conditions predict better responses A reframed view of stakeholder engagement – not as communication management, but as an integral part of building a better decision Practical tools for structuring strategy conversations with senior teams that produce both better choices and greater commitment to implementation

Why organisations work with Aleksander Kwasniewski He was President of Poland through the single most consequential decade in the country’s modern foreign policy, signing the 1997 Constitution and overseeing accession to NATO in 1999 and the EU in 2004. As the mediator of Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution and a long-time EU envoy on Ukraine-EU negotiations, he holds one of the deepest first-hand views of the Russia-Ukraine-EU interaction now dominating European risk analysis. His current institutional footprint is substantive: Chairman of Yalta European Strategy, Distinguished Scholar at Georgetown, former member of the Atlantic Council International Advisory Board and former board member of the International Crisis Group. Club de Madrid membership places him alongside more than 120 former heads of state and government, reinforcing the peer-level standing corporate audiences expect when a former President speaks. His long-standing reconciliation and tolerance work, including chair of the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation and the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center board, gives him credibility across a range of cross-cultural and public-diplomacy briefs. Biography highlights President of Poland, 1995 to 2005 (two terms) Led Polish accession to NATO (1999) and the European Union (2004); signed the 1997 Constitution Mediated the 2004 Ukraine Orange Revolution; co-led the European Parliament monitoring mission on Ukraine to November 2013 Distinguished Scholar in the Practice of Global Leadership, Georgetown University Chairman of Yalta European Strategy; founder of Amicus Europae; member of Club de Madrid and the Global Commission on Drug Policy Chair of the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation; supervisory board, Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center Biography The generation that designed modern Poland’s international position included a short list of people who had to take the decisions in real time. Aleksander Kwasniewski, President of Poland from 1995 to 2005, is the one with the clearest record on the outcomes that still shape the continent: a new Constitution in 1997, accession to NATO in 1999 and to the European Union in 2004. Two terms, each won at the ballot box, in a country that had become a democracy less than a decade before he took office. His post-presidential record is built around Ukraine and European security. He mediated the 2004 Orange Revolution, brokering the settlement that ended the crisis and placed Viktor Yushchenko in the Ukrainian presidency. From then until late 2013 he co-led the European Parliament’s monitoring mission in Ukraine and headed EU talks with Ukraine on the association agreement whose collapse in 2013 triggered the Euromaidan protests the following year. Few external politicians have as long an unbroken view of the Ukraine-EU-Russia triangle as he does. The current institutional portfolio reflects that expertise. He is Chairman of Yalta European Strategy, founder of the Amicus Europae Foundation, and Distinguished Scholar in the Practice of Global Leadership at Georgetown University. He sits on the Club de Madrid and the Global Commission on Drug Policy, on the supervisory board of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center in Kyiv, and on the International Advisory Council to Uzbekistan. His earlier international board roles included the Atlantic Council of the United States International Advisory Board and the International Crisis Group. For governments, multinational corporations, financial institutions and policy audiences trying to read European security, Eastern European risk and the trajectory of Ukraine, Kwasniewski is among the small group of former heads of state who speak with both political experience and current institutional engagement. His register is direct, and his material is built for executive audiences working on decisions that have consequence. Key speaking topics European security and the future of the EU and NATO Ukraine, Russia and the Eastern European geopolitical picture Poland’s transition, EU accession and political economy International diplomacy and mediation under pressure Reconciliation, tolerance and post-conflict public policy Global drug policy reform Ideal for Boards, CEOs and investment committees assessing European and Eastern European geopolitical risk Financial institutions, energy companies and multinationals with Central and Eastern European exposure Policy forums, think tanks and international affairs audiences Diplomatic, EU and NATO-adjacent events Audience outcomes A head-of-state reading of the forces shaping European security and Ukraine’s position Inside account of the 2004 Orange Revolution mediation and the 2013 EU-Ukraine association talks Historical context from Poland’s NATO and EU accession directly applicable to emerging-market strategy conversations A clearer view of how current international institutions are likely to respond to ongoing crises, from someone who has advised them

Why organisations work with Alessandro Lanteri The CLEVER Framework and the Innovation Pyramid are named, peer-reviewed tools – not proprietary consulting models – giving leadership teams a shared analytical language for strategy in technology-disrupted markets that can be used well beyond the event itself. His PhD in Philosophy and Economics from Erasmus University Rotterdam brings disciplinary rigour to AI ethics and strategic decision-making that management-trained advisors rarely provide; his arguments sit at the intersection of decision theory, ethics, and competitive strategy – a combination that is demonstrably scarce in this speaker category. Two commercially published books – CLEVER (Amazon #1 bestseller in Italy and the UK) and Innovating with Impact (The Economist Books, 2023) – confirm that his frameworks have been validated by mainstream leadership audiences, not just academic peer reviewers. Teaching engagements at Saïd Business School (Oxford), London Business School, and ESCP mean his content has been stress-tested against senior executive cohorts in multiple institutional contexts before it reaches the conference stage. His TEDx talk “Why Driverless Cars Need Philosophers” – over 200,000 views – demonstrates an ability to make the ethics and competitive logic of emerging technology land with audiences who are not technical specialists, which is precisely the audience most organisations need to bring along. Biography highlights Full Professor of Strategy and Innovation, ESCP Business School (Turin campus) Author of the CLEVER Framework (CLEVER: The Six Strategic Drivers for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Amazon #1 bestseller in Italy and the UK) and the Innovation Pyramid (Innovating with Impact, The Economist Books, 2023, with Ted Ladd) Contributing writer to Harvard Business Review, MIT Technology Review, World Economic Forum Agenda, and Forbes TEDx speaker – “Why Driverless Cars Need Philosophers” (TEDxHultAshridge), over 200,000 views Executive education faculty, Saïd Business School (University of Oxford) and London Business School PhD in Philosophy and Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam; MSc in Economics, Bocconi University Biography The gap between technology adoption and competitive strategy is one of the most consistent failure points in corporate innovation – organisations make significant investments in AI, digital platforms, and emerging technologies without the strategic architecture to turn those investments into competitive position. Alessandro Lanteri’s body of work is a direct response to that problem. Lanteri is Full Professor of Strategy and Innovation at ESCP Business School, where his research and teaching focus on how organisations compete in environments shaped by technological disruption. He also contributes to executive education at Saïd Business School (University of Oxford) and London Business School. His PhD in Philosophy and Economics from Erasmus University Rotterdam gives his strategic frameworks an analytical foundation that is uncommon in management education – his thinking on AI ethics, decision-making under uncertainty, and competitive logic draws on disciplines that sit well outside the standard strategy canon. His two books give organisations structured tools for navigating this terrain. CLEVER: The Six Strategic Drivers for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, an Amazon #1 bestseller in Italy and the UK, identifies the deep forces reshaping competitive advantage in technology-driven markets and provides a diagnostic framework for leadership response. Innovating with Impact – co-authored with Ted Ladd and published in the Economist Edge series – introduces the Innovation Pyramid, a model that sequences the cultural foundations, methods, and strategic themes organisations need to move from isolated innovation experiments to systematic, measurable impact. His practitioner writing appears in Harvard Business Review, MIT Technology Review, the World Economic Forum Agenda, and Forbes. A TEDx talk on the ethics and strategic implications of autonomous AI decision-making has been viewed over 200,000 times – evidence of an unusual capacity to make complex arguments about technology and strategy accessible to the leadership audiences that most need to hear them. Key speaking topics Innovation strategy and competitive advantage The CLEVER Framework and the Fourth Industrial Revolution Artificial intelligence and business strategy The Innovation Pyramid: from innovation experiments to strategic impact Digital transformation and emerging technologies AI ethics and responsible technology adoption in organisations Strategic foresight and scenario planning in uncertain markets Ideal for Strategy directors and C-suite leaders defining competitive positioning in technology-disrupted markets Corporate innovation and digital transformation leads Executive education cohorts at business schools and senior leadership development programmes Boards reviewing innovation governance and technology investment strategy Audience outcomes A named, structured framework (CLEVER) for diagnosing how AI, digital platforms, and emerging technologies affect their specific competitive environment A step-by-step model (the Innovation Pyramid) for building the organisational cultures, processes, and strategic themes needed for consistent, high-impact innovation Clarity on which technology investments are likely to yield strategic advantage – and the diagnostic tools to distinguish those from investments that produce activity without impact A framework for approaching AI and digital transformation through a competitive strategy lens, rather than a purely technical one Practical methods for aligning innovation activity with long-term strategic positioning

Why organisations work with Alex Hibbert Holds a Guinness World Record for the longest unsupported ski expedition on the Greenland Ice Sheet, giving board-level audiences a verified rather than rhetorical reference point for endurance and risk. Works with a named concept he calls “coping headroom”, the margin a team needs before pressure turns into chaos, which maps directly onto how leaders think about capacity, reserves and pacing. Rejects motivational framing on record, building talks around stark assessment and realistic planning, which travels into strategy, risk and finance functions rather than only conference-style audiences. Combines first-hand expedition leadership with a science background from Oxford and an honorary doctorate from the University of Portsmouth, so credibility holds in technical and executive rooms. Repeat client list including Rolls-Royce Deutschland, Royal Bank of Canada, Stryker and Aberdeen Asset Management signals that the content lands with engineering, financial services and regulated industries, not only general audiences. Biography highlights Guinness World Record holder for the longest unsupported ski expedition on the Greenland Ice Sheet, 2,211 km over 113 days with George Bullard. Founder of the Dark Ice Project, a multi-year expedition programme to reach the Geographic North Pole from northwest Greenland in winter. Author of four books on polar travel and the Arctic: The Long Haul, Maybe, Kalaallit Nunaat and Polar Eskimo. Honorary doctorate from the University of Portsmouth, 2017. Corporate speaking clients include Rolls-Royce Deutschland, Royal Bank of Canada, Stryker, Grant Thornton UK, Aberdeen Asset Management and Fresenius Medical Care. Guest speaker at the Oxford Union and Cambridge University, with media commentary for Sky News, the BBC and national newspapers. Biography In 2008, two young Britons skied 2,211 km across the Greenland Ice Sheet and back, unsupported, in 113 days. The journey still sits on the Guinness World Records list as the longest unsupported ski expedition on that ice cap. One of them was Alex Hibbert, then twenty-one, with an Oxford biology degree and a plan that did not depend on luck. What followed was not a career of flag-planting. Hibbert founded the Dark Ice Project, a sustained attempt to reach the Geographic North Pole from Qaanaaq in northwest Greenland during the Arctic winter, and has returned to that region across multiple iterations and years. More than five hundred days in cold regions, close to two hundred of them genuinely unsupported, sit behind the work he now does with leadership audiences. The speaking proposition is deliberately unsentimental. He argues that the adventure-story version of endurance, the triumphant narrative, is the least useful part for serious organisations. What boards and operating committees need is a way to think about pressure that accounts for reserves, changing conditions and the point at which capable people start making poor decisions. His concept of “coping headroom”, the margin a team carries before it starts losing grip on the plan, maps onto how senior leaders actually think about capacity, risk and pacing. Evidence of fit sits in the client list. Rolls-Royce Deutschland, Royal Bank of Canada, Stryker, Grant Thornton UK, Aberdeen Asset Management and Fresenius Medical Care have all booked him, alongside Oxford and Cambridge platforms. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Portsmouth in 2017, has authored four books on polar travel, and has been a BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year finalist on three occasions. Key speaking topics Decision-making under sustained pressure Risk assessment and operational margin Leadership of small teams in hostile conditions Endurance and the limits of preparation Polar exploration and unsupported travel Honest planning and the rejection of wishful thinking Ideal for Board and executive leadership gatherings where risk, judgement and reserves are on the agenda Strategy, risk and operational resilience functions in regulated industries Engineering, energy and financial services leadership forums where technical credibility is essential Audience outcomes A sharper working vocabulary for pressure, reserves and the point at which plans start to fail A practical sense of what honest risk assessment looks like before, during and after a high-stakes decision A reference case, drawn from a verified world-record expedition, that senior teams can return to in their own planning conversations A different register from typical adventure speakers, with content built for strategy rooms rather than conference-floor inspiration

Why organisations work with Alex Osterwalder The Business Model Canvas is used by millions of practitioners across industries. When Osterwalder presents it, he brings the doctoral research that produced it – giving leadership teams not just a tool but the underlying architecture for why it works and how to apply it to their specific strategic situation. The Value Proposition Canvas addresses a precise and expensive commercial failure: the gap between what organisations build and what customers actually need. For B2B marketing and product teams, this is the difference between offerings that generate revenue and those that absorb it. Strategyzer’s live programmes span three distinct commercial challenges – business model strategy, value proposition design, and innovation governance – through a single interconnected system. Leadership, marketing, strategy, and product functions can work with the same shared language rather than operating on separate frameworks. The Invincible Company framework gives executive teams a structural answer to the portfolio question: how to manage existing revenue-generating business models while simultaneously building new growth engines, with separate governance and metrics for each. Consistent top-10 placement across five consecutive Thinkers50 global rankings (2015-2025), with two Thinkers50 Strategy Awards, provides independent verification of Osterwalder’s standing – outside bureau self-attribution. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Strategyzer; co-founded 2010 following the publication of Business Model Generation Co-creator, with Yves Pigneur and Alan Smith, of the Business Model Canvas, Value Proposition Canvas, and Business Portfolio Map Business Model Generation (2010): international bestseller, more than 5 million copies sold, translated into nearly 40 languages Consistently ranked in the Thinkers50 global top 10 across five biennial rankings (2015-2025); two-time Thinkers50 Strategy Award recipient Visiting Professor, IMD; co-directs the Driving Strategic Innovation programme with MIT Sloan Contributor to Harvard Business Review; PhD, HEC Lausanne – doctoral thesis on business model ontology; recipient of the EU’s inaugural Innovation Luminary Award (2013) Biography Alex Osterwalder’s doctoral thesis at HEC Lausanne, completed in 2004, proposed a formal architecture for how value is created, delivered, and captured in any business. That thesis became the Business Model Canvas. Co-developed with Yves Pigneur, it is now in use across millions of teams at organisations including Microsoft, Nestlé, Mastercard, and Merck. The Value Proposition Canvas extended that system into one of the most consistently expensive failures in commercial strategy: building products and propositions without a clear picture of what customers actually need. For B2B marketing and product leaders, this is an operational problem. Strategyzer’s programmes on value proposition design, sales and marketing alignment, and customer understanding apply the same structured, testable approach to go-to-market challenges that the Canvas brought to strategy. The Invincible Company, co-authored with Pigneur, Smith, and Frederic Etiemble, addressed the portfolio dimension. Large organisations fail not from lack of innovation intent but from having no structural mechanism to run exploration and exploitation in parallel. The book provides that mechanism: separate governance, separate metrics, and a distinct decision logic for the existing business and the growth bets being built alongside it. Osterwalder is founder and CEO of Strategyzer, a Visiting Professor at IMD, and a Thinkers50 top-10 thinker across five consecutive rankings from 2015 to 2025. Whether the challenge is growth strategy, value proposition design, or innovation governance, a leadership team, a marketing function, and an innovation unit in the same organisation can each engage with the same interconnected system. Key speaking topics Business model design and competitive strategy Value proposition design and customer fit Go-to-market strategy and offering management Sales, marketing, and product alignment Innovation portfolio management Customer discovery and assumption testing Competing on business model advantage Ideal for CEOs and executive leadership teams working on growth strategy and business model resilience Chief Marketing Officers and commercial leaders in B2B organisations designing and testing value propositions Chief Strategy Officers and heads of corporate development managing business model portfolios Innovation leaders and transformation directors responsible for testing and scaling new growth engines Audience outcomes A working understanding of the Business Model Canvas, Value Proposition Canvas, and Portfolio Map, and how to apply each to live strategic and commercial challenges A shared language across leadership, marketing, strategy, and product functions for discussing business model design and value proposition fit Practical methods for testing assumptions about customer needs and market demand before committing significant resource A structural framework for running exploration and exploitation in parallel, with the governance logic each requires Clearer diagnostic tools for identifying where value propositions are failing to match real customer needs, and what to do about it

Why organisations work with Alf Rehn His central argument runs against the grain of the innovation industry: that most of what organisations call innovation is performance, not practice – and that rebuilding the real thing requires dismantling the very frameworks many have paid consultants to install. Innovation for the Fatigued (Kogan Page) provides a named, publishable framework – “deep innovation” – that gives leadership teams a vocabulary to diagnose and address innovation theatre without discarding ambition. His current research at SDU’s Center for Organizational Datafication and its Ethics in Society gives him a credible, peer-reviewed lens on how AI and algorithmic systems are reshaping management and innovation decisions – a perspective grounded in data, not trend commentary. Having held chairs at three universities across Finland, Denmark and Sweden, and served on the board of a billion-dollar corporation, he operates across the researcher-practitioner boundary in a way that is rare in the innovation speaking space. His Thinkers50 Guru Radar inclusion (2016) and coverage in the Financial Times, The Sunday Times and Harvard Business Review give buyers a named, verifiable body of external endorsement to anchor the engagement. Biography highlights Professor of Innovation, Design and Management, University of Southern Denmark Head of the Center for Organizational Datafication and its Ethics in Society, SDU – researching AI’s effects on management, innovation and algorithmic ethics Previously held the Chair of Management and Organisation at Åbo Akademi University, Finland; and a professorship in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden Named to Thinkers50 Guru Radar (2016) – listed among “the 30 management thinkers most likely to shape the future of management” Author of Innovation for the Fatigued (Kogan Page) and Dangerous Ideas – the latter translated into eight languages Featured in the Financial Times, The Sunday Times and Harvard Business Review; over 1,000 keynotes delivered across five continents Biography Alf Rehn has spent much of his academic career making the same uncomfortable argument: that organisations are not suffering from a lack of innovation, but from an excess of innovation theatre. His book Innovation for the Fatigued, published by Kogan Page, names this problem directly – and his concept of “deep innovation” offers a framework for distinguishing creative cultures that produce real output from those that have learned to imitate one. That critique has weight because of where it comes from. Rehn holds a chair in Innovation, Design and Management at the University of Southern Denmark, where he also leads the Center for Organizational Datafication and its Ethics in Society – a research unit examining how AI and algorithmic technologies are changing the way executives, engineers and managers make decisions. He has previously held professorships at Åbo Akademi University in Finland and KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, combining research across critical management studies, creativity and organisational theory. His earlier book Dangerous Ideas – translated into eight languages – argues that the ideas organisations most need are precisely the ones they are instinctively disposed to dismiss. Together, the two books form a coherent intellectual position: that genuine innovation requires not better processes but the courage to engage with what is uncomfortable, inconvenient and structurally difficult. Named to the Thinkers50 Guru Radar in 2016 and covered by the Financial Times, The Sunday Times and Harvard Business Review, Rehn engages boards and executive teams on the strategic gap between innovation ambition and innovation reality – and on how emerging technologies, including AI, are creating new versions of the same problem. Key speaking topics Innovation strategy and organisational creativity Innovation fatigue and deep innovation Creative cultures and their destruction Dangerous and unconventional ideas in business AI, datafication and ethics in management Leadership paradox and contradictory demands on leaders Scenario planning and taboo futures Contrarian and critical thinking in strategy Ideal for Chief Innovation Officers and strategy leads seeking to audit and rebuild innovation culture Executive leadership teams who have invested in innovation programmes with limited return Boards and C-suite audiences examining how AI is reshaping organisational decision-making CHROs and transformation leads working on the cultural conditions for sustained creativity Audience outcomes A clearer diagnostic for distinguishing genuine creative capacity from performative innovation activity Practical language and frameworks from Innovation for the Fatigued to challenge and rebuild internal innovation practice A more rigorous approach to unconventional and uncomfortable ideas, informed by the argument of Dangerous Ideas Familiarity with how AI and algorithmic systems are reshaping management decisions, grounded in current academic research A more honest account of what leadership under contradictory demands actually requires – and how to navigate it without resolving it

Why organisations work with Ali Rebaie He reads AI adoption through anthropology and phenomenology, which exposes cultural and behavioural risks that pure technical assessments miss. He founded Rebaie Analytics Group in his early twenties and has since advised Fortune 500 clients across sectors on AI strategy, giving him pattern recognition across industries that a single-sector advisor cannot offer. Through Kiangle.ai he has built METIS, a generative AI scenario-planning platform, so his advice to boards comes from someone actively shipping the technology, not only commenting on it. He speaks to the human sciences side of AI, covering machine consciousness, decision intelligence, and the effects on children and future generations, which lets him hold a boardroom conversation that moves past tooling into governance and values. His analyst background, including a seat on the Boulder BI Brain Trust advisory board, gives him access to the vendor landscape most executives only see through sales decks. Biography highlights Founder and President, Rebaie Analytics Group, an AI and human sciences strategy and research firm with Fortune 500 clients. Founder of Kiangle.ai, Portugal-based, building METIS for generative AI scenario planning. Keynote speaker at MWC Barcelona and Hannover Messe. Advisory Board member, Boulder BI Brain Trust (BBBT). Developed an AI and Machine Learning for Engineering course hosted via UC Berkeley Global. Listed among the top 100 AI influencers globally (self-reported). Biography Enterprise AI projects fail more often on culture than on code. A model ships, a workflow changes, and the people working inside it start making decisions differently, often without anyone noticing until the results move. That is the territory Ali Rebaie works in. He runs Rebaie Analytics Group, the AI and human sciences strategy firm he founded in his early twenties, which now advises Fortune 500 clients on how to adopt AI without losing the judgement and cultural fabric that made them worth automating in the first place. His method treats AI rollout as an anthropological event, something that reshapes how a team thinks, decides, and relates, not only what it produces. The analytical background is substantive. He sits on the advisory board of the Boulder BI Brain Trust, the long-running industry analyst consortium, and developed an AI and Machine Learning for Engineering course hosted via UC Berkeley Global. That gives him a working view of the vendor landscape most executives only see through procurement cycles. The most recent work is operational. Through Kiangle.ai, his Portugal-based venture, he is building METIS, a generative AI scenario-planning platform that combines mathematical simulation with insights from human sciences to stress-test strategic decisions under uncertainty. Boards get an advisor whose views on AI governance are informed by the pressures of actually building one of these systems. Key speaking topics AI strategy and adoption Scenario planning and strategic foresight Decision intelligence Generative AI and enterprise risk Human sciences and AI Future of work and future skills AI governance and responsible technology Ideal for CIOs, CDOs, and CTOs scoping enterprise AI adoption beyond proof-of-concept. Boards and executive committees setting AI governance and risk posture. Strategy and transformation leads running scenario planning on AI-driven market shifts. Industry conferences on AI, data, and the future of technology. Audience outcomes A clearer read on how AI adoption changes behaviour and decision-making inside teams, not only workflows. A working vocabulary for AI scenario planning under genuine uncertainty. Sharper questions for vendors, framed by an analyst who has seen how the market actually sells. A considered position on AI governance that accounts for cultural and human consequences alongside technical ones.

Why organisations work with Aljan de Boer A structured research model, not trend commentary. TrendsActive’s trend model draws on two decades of social science research – psychology, sociology, anthropology – to convert cultural signals into strategic implications. Audiences receive a framework, not a list of observations. Direct access to what 400+ CMOs are actually doing. As Community Director at the Institute for Real Growth, de Boer works inside a practitioner network of senior marketing leaders navigating the same pressures he describes. His insight is tested against real decisions, not desk research. The IRG Growth and Impact Studies as evidence base. His talk on humanized growth draws on two large-scale global studies produced by IRG in partnership with the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford – giving commercial teams a peer-reviewed foundation for strategies that go beyond shareholder primacy. Translation from complexity to commercial action. Where other trend speakers describe what is happening, de Boer’s focus is on what organisations should do about it – specifically for brand strategy, customer understanding, and growth planning at C-suite level. Named-brand consulting experience behind the research. TrendsActive’s client list includes Disney, Vodafone, and Hugo Boss – organisations where the same analytical approach has been stress-tested against real strategic choices. Biography highlights Head of Inspiration, TrendsActive – Netherlands-based trend consultancy applying social science to brand and business strategy Community Director, Institute for Real Growth – leads CMO leadership programme and connects a global community of 400+ senior marketing leaders IRG Impact Study, produced in partnership with Saïd Business School, University of Oxford – foundational research underpinning his humanized growth framework Board member, Dutch Platform of Innovative Marketing, for close to a decade Regular speaker and moderator, Dutch Marketing Awards; three-time winner, Best of MIE Senior Lecturer (Hoofddocent), Iris Academy; advisory and teaching roles in marketing and trends Biography Brands lose relevance not because their products deteriorate, but because the people they serve quietly change around them. Aljan de Boer has spent the past two decades helping commercial leaders see that shift before it becomes a crisis – using social science, not sentiment analysis, as the primary instrument. As Head of Inspiration at TrendsActive, de Boer works with a methodology that draws on psychology, sociology, and anthropology to decode fundamental changes in how people think, trust, and make decisions. The consultancy’s client list runs to major international brands across consumer, financial services, and technology sectors. Its trend model is designed not to describe what is fashionable but to identify what is structurally different about the human context organisations are operating in. Alongside his work at TrendsActive, de Boer serves as Community Director at the Institute for Real Growth, where he leads a global CMO leadership programme and connects a practitioner network of more than 400 senior marketing leaders. The IRG’s work – including its Growth and Impact Studies, developed in partnership with the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford – provides the empirical backbone for his argument that durable commercial growth requires creating value for colleagues, customers, communities, and capital markets simultaneously. He calls this humanized growth; the research quantifies why it outperforms narrower models. The result is a speaker who brings an evidence base to questions that typically attract only opinion: what is actually changing in consumer behaviour, why geopolitical and generational pressure shifts brand expectations at a structural level, and what a marketing or commercial leadership team should concretely do next. Key speaking topics Sociocultural trends and brand strategy Humanized growth and multi-stakeholder value creation Consumer behaviour under economic and geopolitical pressure Generation Z and generational change Future-proofing organisations through social science ESG and sustainability as commercial strategy The polycrisis and its implications for business Ideal for CMOs and senior marketing leadership teams Chief Commercial Officers and growth strategy leaders Executive committees preparing for medium-term strategic planning Corporate conference programmes focused on brand relevance, customer strategy, or commercial resilience Audience outcomes A structured framework for identifying which sociocultural shifts are commercially significant, and which are noise Clearer understanding of the specific psychological, sociological, and generational forces reshaping customer and employee expectations Language and evidence for making the case internally for human-centred growth strategies, grounded in the IRG research base Sharper perspective on what Generation Z’s formative context – climate anxiety, political polarisation, pandemic – means for brand and product strategy A practical lens for translating societal complexity into near-term decisions on brand positioning, customer engagement, and organisational priorities