Scenario Planning & Strategic Foresight

Why organisations work with Yu Yongding He sat inside China’s central bank monetary policy deliberations (2004–2006) and inside the post-crisis UN commission that attempted to redesign the global financial architecture – a combination no Western-based economist on China can replicate His publicly argued position that China’s US Treasury holdings generate negative real returns and constitute a geopolitical liability gives boards and investment committees a named, verified analytical framework – not commentary, but a specific thesis with a public record His analysis consistently diverges from both official Chinese positions and from prevailing Western narratives, which is precisely what makes it useful for stress-testing institutional assumptions about China’s trajectory He has published alongside Barry Eichengreen, Raghuram Rajan, and Jean Pisani-Ferry at Bruegel, and contributes regularly to Project Syndicate, meaning his arguments are already in circulation in the rooms where senior policy and investment decisions are made As editor-in-chief of China and World Economy and former Director-General of IWEP, he has shaped the research agenda that feeds into Chinese policymaking: he knows not just the conclusions but the institutional reasoning behind them Biography highlights Academician, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; D.Phil. in economics, University of Oxford (1994) Director-General, Institute of World Economics and Politics (IWEP), CASS – China’s leading international economics research institution – for over a decade, 1998–2009 Member, Monetary Policy Committee, People’s Bank of China, 2004–2006 President, China Society of World Economy, 2003–2011 Member, UN Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System (Stiglitz Commission), convened in response to the 2008 global financial crisis Member, UN High-Level Panel on Financial Accountability, Transparency, and Integrity (FACTI Panel) Regular contributor to Project Syndicate, South China Morning Post, Wire China, and Bruegel; published alongside Eichengreen, Rajan, and Pisani-Ferry Editor-in-chief, China and World Economy (Wiley); also editor-in-chief of World Economy and International Review of Economics Biography The global reserve currency system has a structural problem that most institutional risk frameworks are not built to assess. The US dollar’s dominant position rests on arrangements; surplus-country accumulation of US Treasuries, capital account conventions, and geopolitical assumptions that are under visible strain. The economists who advise China’s central bank and finance ministries have been debating this openly for two decades. Their conclusions rarely reach Western boardrooms with the precision or independence that makes them actionable. Yu Yongding’s career has placed him at the centre of that debate, on both sides of it. As Director-General of the Institute of World Economics and Politics at CASS from 1998 to 2009, he led the institution that shapes China’s engagement with international economic policy. As a member of the People’s Bank of China Monetary Policy Committee from 2004 to 2006, he participated directly in the monetary decisions of one of the world’s most consequential central banks. Few economists working on China have held both roles. His analytical contribution is specific and verifiable. He has argued publicly that China’s accumulation of US Treasuries constitutes a structural misallocation, producing negative real returns while creating the kind of geopolitical vulnerability that became concrete when US sanctions froze Russian central bank assets. He has written on the Mundell-Fleming trilemma as it applies to China’s exchange rate constraints, on the conditions for sustainable Chinese growth, and on the reform of the international monetary architecture. These arguments are his own; they sometimes diverge from official Chinese positions, which is what gives them credibility for external audiences. He contributed to the Stiglitz Commission’s post-2008 work on reforming the international monetary and financial system, and served on the UN FACTI Panel on financial accountability for sustainable development. His published work appears in Project Syndicate, the South China Morning Post, East Asia Forum, and Bruegel, where he has co-authored with Barry Eichengreen, Raghuram Rajan, and Jean Pisani-Ferry. He holds a D.Phil. in economics from Oxford and is editor-in-chief of the Wiley journal China and World Economy. Key speaking topics China’s macroeconomic framework and growth trajectory Global reserve currency system and dollar dependency RMB internationalisation and capital account reform Exchange rate policy and the Mundell-Fleming trilemma Reform of the international monetary and financial system China’s foreign exchange reserves: composition, risk, and strategy Financial stability and systemic risk in the global economy Post-crisis international economic governance Ideal for Senior investment committees and sovereign wealth fund leadership assessing China exposure or dollar-denominated reserve strategy Central bank governors, finance ministry officials, and financial regulators engaged in monetary policy or international monetary reform Global risk forums and geopolitical strategy sessions where China’s macroeconomic trajectory is a first-order variable International financial institutions and policy bodies working on the architecture of the global financial system Audience outcomes A specific, independently argued framework for assessing the structural vulnerabilities in China’s monetary position, not a summary of official positions Clearer analytical language around the dollar’s reserve status and the conditions under which it is likely to erode A more precise understanding of the policy tensions inside China’s macroeconomic framework: exchange rate, demand management, fiscal space, and reserve composition Context for interpreting China’s monetary and fiscal policy signals that goes beyond what circulates in Western financial media Familiarity with the arguments shaping China’s policy debates, including the positions that diverge from official government framing

Why organisations work with Vítor Constâncio He offers direct insider perspective on ECB monetary policy design and execution across an eight-year term as Vice-President: a vantage point that cannot be replicated by academic analysis or market commentary alone. His active role in building the ECB’s macroprudential governance framework, including the development of its systemic risk indicators (FSRI and CSRI), gives audiences a conceptual map for understanding financial stability risk that goes beyond standard risk management frameworks. His unusual combination of central bank leadership, national finance ministry experience, and private-sector board roles provides a rare triangulation of how monetary, fiscal, and regulatory decisions interact; directly relevant to boards navigating rate cycles, sovereign risk, and banking regulation. Through his Bruegel contributions and MacroViews Substack, he remains an active, citable analyst on current ECB and Fed policy, eurozone fiscal governance, and international financial risk: making his perspective current, not merely historical. For European and internationally exposed organisations, his forensic understanding of euro area crisis mechanics, including Portugal’s €78bn bailout programme, Banking Union design, and Capital Markets Union architecture, offers a level of granularity that generic economic speakers cannot match. Biography highlights Vice-President of the European Central Bank and member of its Executive Board, 2010-2018, selected by Eurozone finance ministers for an eight-year mandate Governor of the Banco de Portugal in two separate terms (1985-86 and 2000-2010); member of the ECB Governing Council throughout the second term Finance Minister of Portugal (1977-78) and Secretary of State for Planning and Budget (1974-76) Secretary-General of Portugal’s Socialist Party (1986-89) and member of the Portuguese Council of State (1995-99) Co-architect of the ECB’s macroprudential governance framework; named author of ECB Occasional Paper on macroprudential policy at the ECB; developer of the ECB’s Financial Stability Risk Index and Cyclical Systemic Risk Indicator Professor at the School of Economics & Business Administration, University of Navarra; President of the School Board, ISEG – Lisbon School of Economics and Management, University of Lisbon Active contributor to Bruegel policy debates; extensive BIS-published speech record; author of MacroViews (Substack), a widely-read publication on monetary policy and European economic governance Biography Central banks rarely advertise the tensions behind their decisions. The trade-offs between price stability and financial stability, the institutional pressures on monetary union governance, the limits of macroprudential tools when the financial cycle turns: these are not visible in official communiqués. They are visible only to those who have sat inside the institution at the moments when those decisions were made. Vítor Constâncio served as Vice-President of the European Central Bank for eight years, from 2010 to 2018, a period that encompassed the eurozone sovereign debt crisis, the design and early operation of the Banking Union, and the gradual construction of a macroprudential policy architecture for the euro area. As a member of the ECB’s Executive Board, he was among the principal architects of the framework that now governs systemic risk oversight across European financial markets; including the ECB’s own Financial Stability Risk Index and Cyclical Systemic Risk Indicator, developed under his leadership. His authority on these questions is grounded in institutional breadth as much as seniority. He served as Governor of the Banco de Portugal across two separate terms, representing Portugal on the ECB Governing Council throughout the second; held senior government roles as Finance Minister and Secretary of State; and served as Executive Director at Banco Português de Investimento with non-executive board exposure to major Portuguese corporates. This layered experience – from national treasury to private board to European monetary authority – gives him a perspective on how macroeconomic policy, financial regulation, and institutional design interact that few practitioners can claim. Since leaving the ECB, Constâncio has remained an analytically active voice. He publishes regularly on monetary policy and eurozone governance through his MacroViews commentary platform and continues to contribute to Bruegel, the leading European economic policy research institution. He teaches banking and financial regulation at the University of Navarra and chairs the school board at ISEG. For organisations seeking clarity on the forces shaping credit conditions, regulatory direction, and European financial architecture, he brings the rarest combination available: the institutional memory of someone at the centre of the decisions, and the continued intellectual engagement of someone who has not stopped thinking about them. Key speaking topics Monetary policy design and the limits of central banking Macroprudential policy and systemic risk frameworks European financial governance and Banking Union architecture Sovereign risk and euro area crisis management Banking regulation and the post-Basel III landscape Capital Markets Union and European financial integration Global macro conditions and the outlook for interest rates Ideal for CFOs, CROs, and board risk committees at banks, insurers, and asset managers navigating rate cycles and regulatory change Investment and treasury leaders requiring granular perspective on ECB and eurozone monetary dynamics Government and supranational policy forums focused on European financial architecture and sovereign risk Executive leadership conferences in financial services where strategic macro context is central to the agenda Audience outcomes A clearer understanding of how macroprudential policy frameworks function and where their limits lie – grounded in the experience of building them Practical perspective on how central bank decisions are actually made: the trade-offs, institutional constraints, and dissenting pressures that official statements do not capture An informed view of the structural risks in European and global financial systems, and the regulatory tools available to address them Greater ability to distinguish signal from noise in central bank communication and monetary policy signalling Context for assessing how eurozone governance, Banking Union architecture, and Capital Markets Union development affect corporate and institutional financial strategy

Why organisations work with Vito Di Bari He has run the discipline at scale. As Innovation Designer for Milan’s Expo 2015 candidacy he turned futures thinking into a 25-project urban programme, the kind of translation work most futurist speakers never attempt. He carries genuine institutional weight: former Executive Director of UNESCO’s International Multimedia Institute, contract professor at Politecnico di Milano and Bocconi, founder of the Next Media Lab. He authored “The Neofuturistic City Manifesto” and is the named thought leader of the Neo-Futurism art and architecture movement, giving leadership teams a vocabulary for what comes after the current digital cycle. He is one of a small number of European voices the Financial Times has labelled a “guru of innovation,” which travels well in front of European boards and ministries. He works in English, Italian and across global stages, with TEDx and corporate keynotes spanning five continents, useful for groups planning multi-region leadership offsites. Biography highlights Innovation Designer for Milan’s Expo 2015 candidacy Former Executive Director, UNESCO International Multimedia Institute (IMI), Paris Former contract professor of Design and Management of Innovation, Politecnico di Milano; and of Cross Media Communication, Bocconi University Founder and Scientific Director, Next Media Lab; founder of Di Bari & Associates innovation design studio Author of more than ten books on innovation, including “The Neofuturistic City Manifesto” Described by the Financial Times as “the new European guru of innovation” Biography The hardest job inside a board agenda on AI is not deciding which tools to buy. It is deciding which technological trajectory the organisation is betting on. That is the territory Di Bari has worked in for two decades, first inside UNESCO’s IMI in Paris, then as Innovation Designer for Milan’s Expo 2015 candidacy, where his job was to translate a futures vision into a 25-project urban programme. His academic base is Italian and serious. He held contract chairs at Politecnico di Milano in design and management of innovation, and at Bocconi in cross-media communication. Around that he built Next Media Lab as an international research laboratory and Di Bari & Associates as a design studio, so the ideas he speaks about have been carried into installations, products and city projects, not only into print. The intellectual signature is Neo-Futurism. His 2007 “Neofuturistic City Manifesto” set out a vision of arts, architecture and urbanism after the digital turn, and he is widely credited as the thought leader of the movement. The Financial Times called him “the new European guru of innovation,” and bureau profiles routinely place him in the company of John Naisbitt and Alvin Toffler. For an executive audience, the value is concrete. He has authored more than ten books on innovation, contributed to outlets including Wired, and now anchors his keynote work in AI transformation, with talks such as “Welcome to the AI Transformation” and “A Day in the Future.” A board leaves the room with a structured view of how AI, IoT and emerging technologies will reshape its sector, and a sharper sense of which bets to place now. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and generative AI in business Innovation strategy and design Internet of Things and emerging technologies Future of work and organisational AI adoption Neo-Futurism, urbanism and the design of the future Long-range scenario thinking for leadership teams Ideal for Boards and executive committees stress-testing their AI and digital strategy CEOs, CIOs and chief innovation officers planning multi-year technology roadmaps Industry events in retail, manufacturing, financial services and the public sector commissioning a serious futures keynote Leadership offsites in Europe and globally that need a credible practitioner voice on innovation, not abstract trend commentary Audience outcomes A structured forward view of how AI, IoT and emerging technologies will reshape the audience’s sector A clearer language for talking about innovation as a design discipline, not a marketing label Specific examples of how futures thinking has been translated into urban-scale projects, including Expo 2015 Milan Concrete prompts for which AI and digital bets to prioritise inside the next planning cycle

Why organisations work with Vijay Govindarajan The Three-Box Solution gives leadership teams a concrete operating model for the hardest resource allocation decision in strategy: how much of the organisation’s attention, talent, and capital belongs to managing the present, letting go of outdated practices, and building the future – simultaneously, with different disciplines for each. His 2009 HBR article «How GE Is Disrupting Itself,» co-authored with GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt, introduced reverse innovation to the management canon; Harvard Business Review later named it one of the Great Moments in Management in the Last Century – a designation that marks a genuinely new idea rather than a refinement of an existing one. Fusion Strategy (HBR Press, 2024) gives leaders of industrial and asset-heavy companies a specific strategic answer to the AI competitive threat – not a general AI primer, but a framework for how manufacturers, infrastructure operators, and physical-product businesses can fuse operational excellence with real-time data intelligence. He developed these frameworks inside a Fortune 10 company: as GE’s first-ever Professor in Residence and Chief Innovation Consultant (2008–2010), he applied the ideas under operational conditions alongside a sitting CEO – a form of proof that most strategy academics cannot point to. Inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 2019, and the only thinker to win Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Awards in two separate categories, VG’s standing in the field is independently credentialed – not a function of self-promotion. Biography highlights Coxe Distinguished Professor, Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College – a Dartmouth-wide chair and the highest distinction awarded to Dartmouth faculty Inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame (2019); recipient of the Thinkers50 Distinguished Innovation Award (2019) and Breakthrough Idea Award (2011) – the only management thinker to win Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Awards in two categories Two-time McKinsey Award winner for best article in Harvard Business Review: «Engineering Reverse Innovations» (2015) and «Stop the Innovation Wars» (2010) Author of 15 books, including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller Reverse Innovation, The Three-Box Solution, and Fusion Strategy (HBR Press, 2024) First Professor in Residence and Chief Innovation Consultant at General Electric; former Marvin Bower Fellow at Harvard Business School Prior faculty at Harvard Business School, INSEAD (Fontainebleau), and the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad Inducted into the Academy of Management Journals’ Hall of Fame; HBR contributor with multiple all-time top-50 best-selling articles Biography Vijay Govindarajan has one central argument: that managing today’s performance and inventing tomorrow’s business require fundamentally different logic, and that running both inside one organisation is the hardest problem in strategy. His Three-Box Solution – now four decades in development at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business – gives executives a structural answer. Box 1 is the discipline of running the present core at peak efficiency. Box 2 is the harder discipline of letting go of practices, assumptions, and investments that made the organisation successful but will impede what comes next. Box 3 is the work of creating the future from genuinely non-linear ideas. The concept of reverse innovation, which VG introduced in his 2009 HBR article co-authored with GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt, extended this thinking to global strategy. Rather than adapting developed-world solutions for emerging markets, VG argued that innovation should begin in the developing world – where constraints force ingenuity – and then move upward. Harvard Business Review later named reverse innovation one of the Great Moments in Management in the Last Century. His most recent book, Fusion Strategy (HBR Press, 2024), addresses the AI disruption challenge directly – not in the abstract, but for a specific set of organisations. The three-quarters of global GDP produced by industrial and asset-heavy companies has yet to be transformed by digital technology. VG’s argument is that these companies must fuse their physical product strength with AI-powered, real-time data intelligence – or be eclipsed by digital-native rivals who will. It is the most commercially urgent application of his frameworks to date. VG served as GE’s first-ever Professor in Residence and Chief Innovation Consultant from 2008 to 2010, developing these ideas under operational conditions inside one of the world’s most complex industrial organisations. He is a two-time McKinsey Award winner in Harvard Business Review, a former Marvin Bower Fellow at Harvard Business School, and was inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 2019 – the only management thinker to receive Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Awards in two separate categories. Key speaking topics The Three-Box Solution: managing present, past, and future simultaneously Reverse innovation and emerging-market growth strategy Fusion Strategy: AI, real-time data, and the industrial competitive frontier Business model reinvention in established organisations Innovation execution inside large corporations Global strategy and cross-border competitive advantage Scenario planning and strategic foresight Ideal for CEOs and executive teams of established or asset-heavy industrial companies facing digital disruption Chief Strategy Officers and heads of corporate innovation managing tension between core business performance and growth investments Boards and senior leadership teams evaluating long-term portfolio strategy against near-term performance pressure Global organisations with significant emerging-market presence or expansion ambitions Audience outcomes A working understanding of the Three-Box Solution and how to apply its logic to their organisation’s specific resource allocation, governance, and portfolio decisions A clear framework for identifying which current practices are protecting value versus those quietly preventing the next phase of growth A strategic lens for evaluating how AI and real-time data can be fused with their company’s physical product or service base to generate competitive advantage Recognition of the specific organisational tensions – in staffing, structure, incentives, and culture – that prevent innovation from scaling inside established businesses Practical language for taking the strategy-versus-innovation conversation to board level with greater precision and less abstraction

Why organisations work with Václav Klaus He is the primary architect of the Czech Republic’s post-communist economic transition, not as an external adviser, but as the Finance Minister who designed it, the Prime Minister who implemented it, and the President who observed its long-run consequences. No other figure on the international speaking circuit holds that complete a first-person record of a major market transformation. His sustained, published intellectual case, developed across books including Europe: The Shattering of Illusions and a decade of presidential addresses that EU supranational governance creates structural democratic deficits offers boards a coherent counter-framework to mainstream European institutional narratives. His analysis of the relationship between regulatory ideology and economic freedom, framed from the position of a practising economist who held executive power, gives risk and strategy teams a perspective that is distinct from both academic economics and professional political commentary. As a founding member of the Mont Pelerin Society tradition and a consistent critic of consensus-driven policy, he surfaces the assumptions embedded in mainstream geopolitical and economic risk frameworks, which is precisely what senior decision-makers need when those frameworks are under stress. Biography highlights Second President of the Czech Republic, serving two full terms (2003–2013) First Prime Minister of the independent Czech Republic (1993–1998); previously Prime Minister under the Czechoslovak federation (1992–1993) First non-communist Finance Minister of Czechoslovakia following the Velvet Revolution (1989–1992) Principal co-founder and chairman (1991–2002) of the Civic Democratic Party (ODS), the Czech Republic’s primary centre-right party PhD in Economics, Czech Academy of Sciences; Professor of Finance, University of Economics, Prague Author of more than 30 books, including Blue Planet in Green Shackles (Competitive Enterprise Institute) and Europe: The Shattering of Illusions (Bloomsbury) Contributor to the Financial Times; keynote speaker at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the National Press Club, Washington D.C. Founder of the Václav Klaus Institute; member of the Mont Pelerin Society Biography The question of how a country transitions from a centrally planned economy to a functioning market, and what that process reveals about the relationship between political institutions, economic policy, and individual freedom, has preoccupied Václav Klaus for his entire career. It is not an abstract question for him. As Czechoslovakia’s first non-communist Finance Minister from 1989, as the Prime Minister who managed the peaceful dissolution of the federation and guided the Czech Republic through its founding years, and as a two-term President, he lived the consequences of every decision he and his colleagues made. His contribution to post-communist economic theory was substantive and contested. The voucher privatisation programme he championed as Prime Minister transferred shares in over 1,800 state enterprises to more than six million Czech citizens in three years: the most radical monetarist reform programme undertaken by any former Comecon state, according to Oxford Reference. The programme’s outcomes – both its achievements and its limitations – remain a core reference point in debates about transition economics and the sequencing of institutional and market reform. Beyond the Czech experience, Klaus has developed a consistent and systematic critique of supranational governance that distinguishes him from most former heads of state on the international circuit. His book Europe: The Shattering of Illusions and his decade of presidential statements argue that the EU’s integration model generates a structural democratic deficit: that decisions affecting citizens are progressively removed from accountable national institutions and transferred to bodies that cannot be held to account through normal democratic mechanisms. This is not a position he arrived at recently; it was central to his resistance to the Lisbon Treaty and to his public intellectual work throughout his presidency. His analytical frame, rooted in the free-market tradition of Hayek and Friedman, positions him as a consistent critic of consensus-driven policy thinking – on European integration, on climate regulation, and on the trade-offs between regulatory ambition and economic freedom. For boards and senior strategy teams working to understand the structural forces behind today’s geopolitical fragmentation, his perspective offers something genuinely scarce: a first-person account of what happens when political institutions, economic doctrine, and sovereign interests collide. Key speaking topics Post-communist economic transformation and market transition National sovereignty and the limits of supranational governance European political and institutional fragmentation Fiscal and monetary policy in practice The political economy of climate and environmental regulation Geopolitical risk and the return of economic nationalism The relationship between political institutions and economic freedom Ideal for Boards and C-suite teams in financial services, energy, and industrial sectors with significant European or Central and Eastern European exposure Government relations, public affairs, and policy teams navigating regulatory and geopolitical risk Senior strategy and scenario planning functions working on European institutional risk Organisations convening executive or leadership audiences on geopolitics, sovereign risk, or the future of the multilateral economic order Audience outcomes A first-hand, practitioner-level account of how post-communist economic transformation was designed and executed – including what worked, what did not, and what the trade-offs reveal about sequencing institutional and market reform A developed analytical framework for understanding the structural tensions between national sovereignty and supranational governance, grounded in lived political experience rather than theoretical modelling A counter-perspective to mainstream consensus on European institutional development – useful for stress-testing assumptions embedded in geopolitical risk and scenario planning work Greater clarity on the political and ideological drivers behind regulatory trends in climate, energy, and fiscal policy, framed through the lens of economic freedom and democratic accountability Historical and structural context for the fragmentation currently visible in European and global governance, from a figure who anticipated and publicly argued for its likelihood

Why organisations work with Tim Bouverie A prize-winning historian whose two books, Appeasing Hitler and the Duff Cooper Prize-winning Allies at War, sit on exactly the questions boards now face: when to confront, when to compromise, and how to hold a fragile coalition together. Trained as a political journalist at Channel 4 News under Michael Crick, so the material is delivered as argument and narrative, not lecture. Brings a specific, named angle on negotiation: the Big Three at Tehran and Yalta as a working case study for M&A, joint ventures and competitive collaboration. Comfortable in serious rooms. Has interviewed George Osborne, Peter Mandelson and Alan Johnson on stage at the Chalke Valley History Festival, and lectures regularly across the UK and US, including at the Hoover Institution. An Oxford-trained historian (Christ Church, Alistair Horne Fellow at St Antony’s) whose readership includes Max Hastings, Antony Beevor and Margaret MacMillan, all of whom have publicly endorsed the work. Biography highlights Author of Appeasing Hitler: Chamberlain, Churchill and the Road to War (Bodley Head, 2019), Sunday Times bestseller, Orwell Prize shortlist. Author of Allies at War: The Politics of Defeating Hitler (Bodley Head), winner of the 2026 Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize. Christ Church, Oxford. 2020-21 Alistair Horne Visiting Fellow, St Antony’s College, Oxford. Political journalist at Channel 4 News, 2013-2017, working with Michael Crick on Dispatches and covering two general elections, the Scottish referendum and the EU referendum. Regular contributor of book reviews on history and politics to the Spectator, the Observer and the Daily Telegraph. Speaker and interviewer at the Chalke Valley History Festival and at the Hoover Institution, with public sessions alongside George Osborne, Peter Mandelson and Alan Johnson. Biography The diplomatic record of the 1930s is one of the best-documented examples of senior decision-makers misreading a hostile counterparty. It is also one of the most relevant to today’s boardroom. Tim Bouverie’s first book, Appeasing Hitler, took that record apart in detail, working from cabinet papers, private diaries and Foreign Office files to show how a generation of competent, well-informed leaders talked themselves into a strategic disaster. The book became a Sunday Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize. His second, Allies at War: The Politics of Defeating Hitler, drew on more than a hundred archives to reconstruct the Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin coalition as the brittle, mistrustful negotiation it actually was. It won the 2026 Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize, one of the most credited awards in narrative non-fiction. The training behind the work matters to a corporate audience. Bouverie read history at Christ Church, Oxford, and held the 2020-21 Alistair Horne Visiting Fellowship at St Antony’s College. Before the books, he spent four and a half years as a political journalist at Channel 4 News, working with Michael Crick across two general elections and the Scottish and EU referendums. The combination shows up in the keynotes: archival depth, delivered with a working journalist’s instinct for argument. On stage he is a fluent interviewer as well as a lecturer, having questioned George Osborne, Peter Mandelson and Alan Johnson at the Chalke Valley History Festival, and presented at the Hoover Institution and at festivals across the United States. The signature talks pull directly from the books: appeasement as a study in strategic miscalculation, and the Big Three as a working manual on how to negotiate inside an alliance you cannot afford to walk away from. Key speaking topics Lessons from appeasement and strategic miscalculation Alliance management and coalition negotiation Leadership decisions under geopolitical pressure Diplomatic history of the Second World War The fragility of the rules-based order Negotiation in M&A, joint ventures and competitive collaboration Narrative history and archival research Ideal for Board and ExCo offsites focused on geopolitical risk and long-horizon strategy CEO and senior leadership audiences negotiating major partnerships, alliances or M&A Heads of strategy, government affairs and corporate affairs working on sanctions, China exposure and political risk After-dinner audiences at industry conferences where intellectual seriousness is part of the brief Audience outcomes A sharper read on how senior leaders misjudge hostile counterparties, with named historical examples that stick. Specific lessons from the Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin alliance applicable to coalition negotiations today. A historical frame for current debates on the rules-based order, sanctions and Western unity that goes beyond the news cycle. A model for how to use evidence and narrative together when communicating high-stakes decisions internally.

Why organisations work with Thomas Sargent The rational expectations framework he helped build is now embedded in the operating logic of central banks, the IMF, and finance ministries worldwide. Sargent doesn’t explain this framework from the outside. He built it. His policy-ineffectiveness proposition (developed with Neil Wallace) gives organisations a precise analytical basis for understanding why government interventions routinely fall short of stated intentions, and how to plan around that gap. His co-authored work on Robustness (with Nobel laureate Lars Peter Hansen) addresses something most economic frameworks ignore: what rigorous decision-making looks like when the decision-maker doesn’t fully trust their own model. This is directly applicable to scenario planning and capital allocation under genuine uncertainty. His directorship of SIQEF at Peking University HSBC Business School gives him unusual depth on Chinese macroeconomic institutions and decision-making; relevant to any organisation navigating US-China economic dynamics. His Nobel lecture – «United States Then, Europe Now» – applied the lessons of US fiscal-monetary coordination to the European debt crisis in real time. He has a demonstrable track record of applying formal economic theory to live policy problems, not just historical ones. Biography highlights Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, 2011 (shared with Christopher Sims), cited for empirical research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy W.R. Berkley Professor of Economics and Business, New York University (joint appointment, Department of Economics and Stern School of Business) Donald L. Lucas Professor in Economics, Emeritus, Stanford University; Senior Fellow (adjunct), Hoover Institution, Stanford (since 1987) Past President of the American Economic Association, the Econometric Society, and the Society for Economic Dynamics Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 1983); Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics, Northwestern University (1997) Director, Sargent Institute of Quantitative Economics and Finance (SIQEF), Peking University HSBC Business School; co-founder, QuantEcon (2016) Biography Monetary policy has consequences that depend not just on what governments and central banks do, but on what everyone else expects them to do next. Thomas Sargent is one of the economists who formalised that insight – and in doing so, changed the way economic policy is designed and communicated globally. His contribution to the rational expectations revolution, developed through close collaboration with Robert Lucas and Neil Wallace at the University of Minnesota in the 1970s, established that households and firms adjust their behaviour in anticipation of policy moves. The practical implication – often called the policy-ineffectiveness proposition – is that surprise stimulus and systematic intervention operate by fundamentally different mechanisms. Central bank communication strategy, inflation targeting, and the design of fiscal rules all carry the influence of this work. The 2011 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, shared with Christopher Sims, recognised his empirical methods for identifying cause-and-effect relationships in complex macroeconomic systems. His subsequent work with Lars Peter Hansen, published as Robustness, extended this into a formal framework for decision-making under model uncertainty; the condition in which a leader knows their economic model might be wrong, but must act anyway. It is a framework with direct application well beyond academic economics. He is currently the W.R. Berkley Professor of Economics and Business at NYU, a Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, and Director of the Sargent Institute of Quantitative Economics and Finance at Peking University HSBC Business School, a role that gives him active engagement with macroeconomic thinking across both Western and Chinese institutional contexts. Key speaking topics Rational expectations and macroeconomic policy Monetary policy design and central bank strategy Fiscal-monetary coordination Economic modelling under uncertainty Inflation dynamics and policy regime change Robustness and decision-making under model uncertainty Quantitative tools in economic analysis Ideal for Boards and C-suite executives making long-horizon capital allocation or strategic planning decisions in uncertain macroeconomic environments Financial services organisations (asset managers, insurers, investment banks) with direct exposure to central bank policy and interest rate cycles Government and public sector leadership teams engaged in fiscal or monetary policy design Economists, analysts, and research leads in institutions where formal macroeconomic modelling is central to decision-making Audience outcomes A working understanding of how rational expectations theory changes the analysis of monetary and fiscal policy, and why this matters for corporate planning A clearer framework for distinguishing between policy signals that will hold and those that markets and households have already priced or neutralised Exposure to the robustness approach to decision-making: how to act rationally when you know your model of the world may be incomplete Greater confidence in reading macroeconomic indicators in relation to institutional behaviour, not just headline data Context on the historical record of policy regime transitions – disinflation, fiscal consolidation, currency crises – and the conditions under which those transitions succeed or fail

Why organisations work with Steven Pinker His argument that human cognitive biases – availability, confirmation, narrative distortion – are not random errors but predictable and correctable patterns gives organisations a diagnostic framework that most behavioural science speakers only gesture towards. The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now provide leaders with a rigorously evidenced counterweight to crisis-driven decision-making: a data-grounded case for long-run institutional progress that challenges the assumption that things are categorically worse than before. Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters grew out of a Harvard course on reasoning, and offers organisations a structured, named toolkit – logic, Bayesian probability, causal inference, game theory – applied directly to the kinds of collective judgments institutions face. His work on language and common knowledge (the study of what people know that others know they know) gives communicators and senior leaders rare analytical precision about why messaging fails, why consensus breaks down, and how shared understanding is actually constructed. Recognised by the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award and elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Pinker brings a level of peer-validated scholarly authority that very few public-facing intellectuals in this space can match. Biography highlights Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology, Harvard University; faculty career spanning Harvard, MIT (1982–2003), and Stanford Elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (2016) Author of thirteen books, including The Better Angels of Our Nature, Enlightenment Now, and Rationality BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Humanities and Social Sciences (shared with Peter Singer) William James Book Prize (three times); Los Angeles Times Science Book Prize; Cundill Recognition of Excellence in History Award Ranked by Academic Influence as the second most influential psychologist in the world, 2010–2020 Regular contributor to The New York Times, Time, and The Atlantic; named to Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World and Foreign Policy‘s 100 Global Thinkers Biography Organisations that operate in complex, information-saturated environments face a specific and underappreciated failure mode: not a shortage of data, but a systematic distortion in how that data is processed. Leaders overweight vivid recent events, underweight statistical baselines, and build strategy around narratives that feel coherent rather than evidence that is reliable. The cognitive science underlying these failures is well-documented – but rarely applied with rigour inside institutions. Steven Pinker has spent four decades studying the mechanisms of language, reasoning, and human cognition at Harvard, MIT, and Stanford. His research is not popularised work drawn from others’ findings: it is original experimental scholarship in visual cognition, psycholinguistics, and the psychology of social relations, conducted at the Johnstone Family Chair in Harvard’s Department of Psychology. What distinguishes his public work is the consistent application of that scientific foundation to questions that organisations – and civilisations – actually face. His most argued books form a coherent intellectual project. The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011) used historical data across centuries to make the case that violence and conflict have declined measurably – not as opinion, but as documented empirical fact – and identified the institutional and psychological forces responsible. Enlightenment Now (2018) extended that analysis across all major indicators of human welfare, arguing that reason, science, and Enlightenment institutions remain the engines of progress. Rationality (2021) turned the lens directly onto decision-making: what cognitive tools are required to think clearly, why they are rarely applied, and how organisations and democracies can build structures that reason more reliably. The book emerged from a course Pinker teaches at Harvard and addresses logic, Bayesian probability, causal inference, and game theory as practical instruments for institutional judgment. Recognised by the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Humanities and Social Sciences – for contributions to the understanding of human rationality and progress that have entered the mainstream of public debate – and elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Pinker occupies a rare position: a research scientist whose work is directly legible to senior leaders grappling with the quality of organisational reasoning and the reliability of their own institutions. Key speaking topics Cognitive biases and institutional decision-making Rationality and evidence-based reasoning Language, communication, and common knowledge The psychology and history of violence Enlightenment values and organisational progress Human nature and social behaviour Clarity and effectiveness in professional communication Ideal for C-suite and board audiences wrestling with strategic decision-making under uncertainty Policy, government, and public affairs leadership Strategy, risk, and scenario planning functions Executive development and leadership faculty programmes Audience outcomes A working understanding of how specific cognitive biases – availability, confirmation, narrative distortion – shape organisational decisions, and what structures can correct them A data-grounded framework for assessing long-run institutional and societal progress, reducing reliance on media-driven perception of perpetual crisis Practical reasoning tools from logic, probability, and causal inference, applied to the kinds of collective judgments senior leaders actually face Greater precision about how language shapes shared understanding – and why institutional communication so often fails to build the common knowledge it intends A clearer sense of where human nature helps and where it hinders, grounded in evolutionary psychology rather than management metaphor

Why organisations work with Steve Faktor He works from a proprietary, named methodology, the 4C’s of Innovation™, developed inside Fortune 100 innovation programmes at American Express, Citi and MasterCard, not adapted from case studies of others’ work. His operating record is concrete. As head of the $50M Chairman’s Innovation Fund at American Express, he launched commercial products including Zync, LoyaltyEdge, and the Private Sales joint venture with Vente Privée. His 9 Corporate Personality Types™, the viral Forbes piece picked up by NPR, gives audiences a working tool for diagnosing why innovation initiatives die inside specific corporate cultures. He carries a 750,000-strong LinkedIn following from his status as one of the platform’s original 160 Influencers, alongside figures like Richard Branson. Buyers hiring him get a futurist whose calls are public and dated. The voice in Econovation, sharp and satirical, is the same voice on stage. Senior leaders get an honest read on innovation work without the consultant gloss. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of IdeaFaktory, the innovation incubator behind multiple $100M+ businesses for Fortune 100 brands, built on its proprietary 4C’s of Innovation™ process. Former Vice President of Growth and Innovation and Head of the $50M Chairman’s Innovation Fund at American Express, where he launched Zync, LoyaltyEdge and the Private Sales joint venture with Vente Privée. Former SVP of Innovation and Growth Ventures at Citigroup; senior strategy and innovation executive at MasterCard; former management consultant at Arthur Andersen. Author of Econovation: The Red, White, and Blue Pill for Arousing Innovation (Wiley, 2011). Forbes and Harvard Business Review contributor; one of LinkedIn’s original 160 Influencers, with a 750,000-strong executive following. Host of The Trendaddy show; media credits include The Wall Street Journal, NPR, Bloomberg Radio and MSNBC. Graduate of NYU Stern School of Business. Biography At American Express, the Chairman’s Innovation Fund came with a $50M budget and a brief to launch new businesses inside the company. Steve Faktor ran it. Out of that role came Zync, LoyaltyEdge and a Private Sales joint venture with Vente Privée. The same period produced the methodology he has since codified as the 4C’s of Innovation™: context, creativity, capabilities and culture. That methodology is the operating logic he now applies through IdeaFaktory, the innovation firm he founded after leaving AmEx. IdeaFaktory has helped Fortune 100 clients launch multiple $100M+ businesses by partnering with vetted startups and rebuilding their internal innovation programmes from the culture out. The ‘culture out’ part matters. His viral Forbes piece on the 9 Corporate Personality Types, picked up by NPR, came from watching innovation initiatives die at the hands of identifiable, predictable internal characters. Faktor’s second strand of work is futurist. Econovation (Wiley, 2011) argued that consumerism was ending and producerism was emerging, with economic value shifting to those who make rather than those who consume. As one of LinkedIn’s original 160 Influencers, with a 750,000-strong executive following and Forbes and Harvard Business Review columns, he has built more than a decade of dated, public predictions clients can audit. In a boardroom, both strands earn their seat. Senior teams get a working framework rooted in real product P&Ls, the AmEx ones with his name on them, not someone else’s case studies. They also get a voice that has been right enough, often enough, in public, that buyers can audit the work before they commission it. Key speaking topics Innovation strategy and methodology Corporate-startup partnerships and commercialisation Growth strategy in financial services and consumer goods Futurism and trend forecasting Innovation culture and corporate change Business model innovation Digital commerce, payments and loyalty Ideal for Chief Innovation Officers and Heads of Strategy in Fortune 500 firms whose innovation programmes have plateaued at pilot stage. Growth and commercial leadership teams in financial services, payments and consumer goods evaluating where to commit capital next. Boards and executive committees commissioning a candid, externally validated read on internal innovation capability. Founders and corporate venture teams looking for an operator’s view of how large enterprises actually make buying decisions. Audience outcomes A specific diagnostic for why their innovation programmes are stalling, anchored to the 4C’s of Innovation™. A working vocabulary for the cultural archetypes that block or enable change inside large organisations, drawn from the 9 Corporate Personality Types. A view of which trends in technology, economics and consumer behaviour are most likely to disrupt their P&L over the next five to ten years. A short list of the highest-leverage moves a senior team can make to convert innovation budget into commercial product launches.

Why organisations work with Stephen Roach His false narratives framework, argued across two Yale University Press books and cited by senior Financial Times columnists Martin Wolf, Gillian Tett, and Rana Foroohar, as well as multiple Nobel laureates in economics, gives leaders a forensically grounded alternative to the prevailing decoupling consensus. Three decades as Morgan Stanley’s Chief Economist and then Chairman of its Asia operations means he has spent equal time analysing the US macro economy and operating inside Asian financial markets: a bilateral vantage point that most China analysts or US economists hold separately, not together. His analysis attributes much of the US-China conflict to domestic failures on both sides – America’s savings shortfall, China’s failed economic rebalancing – rather than to strategic malice. This reframes the risk calculus for leaders making long-term decisions about market exposure and technology strategy. As a monthly columnist for Project Syndicate and an active commentator on current US-China developments, he tracks the relationship in real time, not from a static academic framework. He was among the earliest economists identified as having predicted the structural conditions leading to the 2008 financial crisis – a forecasting record that lends credibility to his current warnings about the misread trajectory of US-China conflict escalation. Biography highlights Senior Research Scholar, Paul Tsai China Center, Yale Law School; formerly Senior Fellow, Yale Jackson Institute for Global Affairs (2010–2022) and Senior Lecturer, Yale School of Management Chief Economist, Morgan Stanley (from 1982), heading a global team across New York, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Paris; Chairman, Morgan Stanley Asia (2007–2010), based in Hong Kong Research staff, Federal Reserve Board; Research Fellow, Brookings Institution Author of Accidental Conflict: America, China, and the Clash of False Narratives (Yale University Press, 2022) – Financial Times Best Book of the Year: Economics; endorsed by Nobel laureates Robert Shiller and Robert Engle Author of Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China (Yale University Press, 2014) and The Next Asia (Wiley, 2009) Monthly columnist, Project Syndicate; Member, Council on Foreign Relations PhD in Economics, New York University Biography The US-China relationship is the most consequential and most misread economic partnership of the 21st century. Most boardroom analysis of the conflict treats it as a zero-sum structural rivalry between two incompatible powers. Stephen Roach’s argument is more uncomfortable: much of the conflict is self-inflicted, driven not by genuine strategic incompatibility but by false narratives that each nation has constructed to deflect accountability for its own economic shortcomings. That argument is made with unusual authority. Roach spent thirty years at Morgan Stanley, first as Chief Economist leading a global team across six major financial centres, then as Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, where he worked directly with governments, financial institutions, and multinationals operating at the intersection of the two economies. When he joined Yale in 2010, first at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and subsequently at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center, he brought that bilateral operating experience into academic research and graduate teaching, developing courses including «The Next China» and «The Lessons of Japan.» His two Yale University Press books make a cumulative argument. Unbalanced (2014) identified the structural codependency binding the two economies. Accidental Conflict (2022), named a Financial Times Best Book of the Year in Economics, diagnosed the false narratives on both sides now pushing that codependency toward confrontation. The analysis drew endorsements from Nobel laureates Robert Shiller and Robert Engle, and was reviewed by Financial Times senior columnists Martin Wolf, Gillian Tett, and Rana Foroohar. For boards making consequential decisions about market exposure, supply chain configuration, and technology strategy, the practical question is not which side of the conflict to believe. It is whether the conflict they are planning for is the conflict that actually exists. Key speaking topics US-China economic and geopolitical relations Global macroeconomic risk and policy Trade conflict and the structural limits of decoupling Asian economies and market dynamics False narratives and strategic misperception International trade and globalisation US savings, fiscal imbalance, and structural economic vulnerability Ideal for Boards and executive committees with material exposure to US or China market risk CFOs, Chief Risk Officers, and heads of strategy in global financial services, technology, and industrial manufacturing Government, diplomatic, and policy audiences engaged in trade, investment, or security posture toward China Investment management firms and sovereign wealth funds requiring a rigorous bilateral economic framework for allocation decisions Audience outcomes A structured framework for separating the rhetoric driving US-China conflict from the underlying structural economic forces that actually shape it Sharper clarity on what decoupling, reshoring, and geopolitical hedging strategies address – and what they leave unexamined A more rigorous basis for assessing China-related risk in capital allocation, supply chain design, and technology partnership decisions Exposure to a track record of independent, contrarian macroeconomic forecasting, including early identification of conditions leading to the 2008 financial crisis Greater confidence in framing the US-China trajectory for boards, investors, and senior stakeholders

Why organisations work with Stephane Garelli He created the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook in 1989, the reference benchmark used by governments and multinationals for more than three decades. When he interprets a country’s position, he is the source, not a commentator on the source. His 2025 book World Competitiveness: Rewriting the Rules of Global Prosperity (Wiley) is the first sustained reframing of his own thesis for the post-globalisation era, which gives boards a coherent argument for capital allocation under fragmentation rather than a list of risks. Thirteen years running the World Economic Forum and the Davos Annual Meetings, plus twelve years advising the European management of Hewlett-Packard, mean his counsel is informed by how senior executives and heads of state actually decide, not how they describe themselves on stage. His positions at IMD and the University of Lausanne, alongside long board service at Sandoz Financial and Banking Holding and Le Temps, place him at the intersection of academic originality and Swiss-grade institutional discipline, an unusual combination among economic speakers. Biography highlights Founder of the IMD World Competitiveness Center and creator of the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook, the leading annual ranking of national competitiveness since 1989. Professor Emeritus of World Competitiveness at IMD Business School and Professor Emeritus at the University of Lausanne. Former Managing Director of the World Economic Forum and the Davos Annual Meetings for 13 years. Author of Top Class Competitors (Wiley) and World Competitiveness: Rewriting the Rules of Global Prosperity (Wiley, 2025). Former Chairman of FF Sandoz Financial and Banking Holding and long-tenured Chairman of Le Temps, the leading French-language Swiss newspaper. Member of the International Olympic Committee Commission on Sustainability and Legacy, chaired by Prince Albert of Monaco. Biography Most economic commentary on the new global order describes the symptoms. Garelli wrote the underlying framework. In 1989, he founded the IMD World Competitiveness Center and created the World Competitiveness Yearbook, the first systematic annual ranking of how nations build and sustain prosperity. The Yearbook now benchmarks more than sixty economies across hundreds of indicators and remains the reference governments and multinationals reach for when they want to know where a country actually stands. His 2025 book, World Competitiveness: Rewriting the Rules of Global Prosperity, published by Wiley, extends that work into the period after the “golden era of globalization”, the four decades from China’s 1978 opening to the COVID shock. The argument is that the world will remain global but no longer united, and that competitiveness now has to be rebuilt around bloc-level alignment, industrial policy, and resilience rather than open markets. For boards setting capital allocation under sanctions, tariffs, and supply chain rewiring, this is operating guidance, not theory. The institutional spine behind the work is unusual. Thirteen years as Managing Director of the World Economic Forum and the Davos Annual Meetings, twelve years as permanent senior adviser to the European management of Hewlett-Packard, and chairmanship of FF Sandoz Financial and Banking Holding and of Le Temps, the leading French-language Swiss newspaper. He has sat on the IOC Commission on Sustainability and Legacy chaired by Prince Albert of Monaco. He has held faculty positions at IMD and the University of Lausanne, where he is Professor Emeritus at both. The credentials matter because the analysis is informed by how senior leaders actually decide, not how they describe their decisions in retrospect. The earlier Wiley book, Top Class Competitors, defined competitiveness as the ability to manage a set of disparate competencies, including education, security, brand, and individual reinvention, to achieve prosperity. The 2025 work argues that the components have changed but the discipline has not. Key speaking topics World competitiveness in a fragmented global economy The end of the golden era of globalisation National strategy under bloc-level alignment Enterprise competitiveness and value chain reconfiguration Capital allocation and country selection under fragmentation The competitiveness implications of industrial policy Ideal for Boards and executive committees rewriting global strategy under sanctions, tariffs, and bloc-level alignment. CFOs, CSOs, and corporate development leaders making country-level capital allocation decisions. Government, sovereign, and policy audiences benchmarking national competitiveness against credible peers. Senior leadership offsites where the agenda turns on what comes after the open-markets era. Audience outcomes A working frame for what competitiveness now means when blocs, not markets, set the rules. Sharper questions for the board on country exposure, supply chain dependence, and capital allocation under fragmentation. A clearer read on how industrial policy, sanctions, and multi-alignment strategies are reshaping where prosperity now accrues. The vocabulary and evidence base of the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook applied directly to the audience’s strategic situation.

Why organisations work with Stefan Hyttfors He translates AI, climate and geopolitical signals into the specific operating choices a board actually has to make, rather than leaving leaders with a trend deck. His thesis in Yoga for Leaders connects disruptive technology to human behaviour, which gives the room a usable language for the cultural side of transformation, not just the technology side. Two-time Swedish Speaker of the Year, with more than 1,000 engagements across 40+ countries, including IKEA, Microsoft, H&M, Spotify, Deloitte and AstraZeneca. A journalist’s instinct for narrative means complex foresight content lands with senior, mixed-discipline audiences without being diluted. Nordic register, low on hype, high on argument, which suits boards that have already heard the standard Silicon Valley futurism pitch and want something sharper. Biography highlights Author of Yoga for Leaders: How to manage self-disruption in a world of self-destruction, LID Publishing, 2016. Twice named Swedish Speaker of the Year by Talarforum. TEDx speaker, including “We don’t need jobs” (TEDxArendal) and “Can we really trust human intelligence?” (TEDxStockholm). Former photo journalist at Expressen and Photo Editor-in-Chief at a Swedish daily; trained economist. Co-founder of Swedish PR agency Wenderfalck. Client roster includes IKEA, Microsoft, Klarna, Spotify, H&M, Deloitte, AstraZeneca, Gartner, Ericsson, BMW, Toyota, Unilever, Nike, Skanska and E.ON. Biography Most organisations still treat foresight as a forecasting exercise. The default question is what is going to happen, and the default output is a slide of trends. The harder question, what kind of organisation can keep deciding well when the trend lines stop being reliable, is the one Stefan Hyttfors works on with leadership teams across Europe. His thesis is that disruption is misread when it is treated as a purely technological event. In Yoga for Leaders: How to manage self-disruption in a world of self-destruction, published by LID in 2016, he sets technology alongside human behaviour and argues that the binding constraint on adaptation is rarely the tool, it is the mind of the leader using it. That argument has carried into his current work on AI, climate, and geopolitical instability, where he frames the leadership task as composure under accelerating change rather than mastery of any single trend. The credibility sits on volume and range. More than a thousand keynotes across forty-plus countries, twice named Swedish Speaker of the Year by Talarforum, TEDx talks at Arendal and Stockholm, and a client list that runs from IKEA, H&M and Spotify to Microsoft, Deloitte and AstraZeneca. His training as a journalist and economist shows in how the material is built: trend data on one side, behavioural and cultural argument on the other, no filler in between. What buyers tend to single out is the tone. Hyttfors is sceptical of futurism that sells inevitability, and equally sceptical of leadership content that ignores the technology shift underneath. The talk lands as a working brief for the next twelve months, not a prediction about 2035. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight under accelerating change Artificial intelligence and the future of work Digital transformation and behavioural change Leadership in unstable conditions Sustainability and climate as strategic variables Disruptive technology and business model change Trust as a commercial differentiator Ideal for Board and ExCo offsites setting direction under AI, climate and geopolitical uncertainty CHRO and CPO audiences re-scoping workforce strategy around AI capability CSO and strategy leadership teams refreshing planning assumptions for the next cycle Industry conferences in financial services, technology, industrials and consumer where future-of-business framing anchors the programme Audience outcomes A working language for distinguishing signal from noise across AI, climate and geopolitical shifts A clearer view of where their own organisation is over-indexed on predictability and under-indexed on adaptive capacity A behavioural read on why transformation programmes stall, beyond the usual technology or governance explanations Specific prompts for the conversations the leadership team should be having internally in the next two quarters