Scenario Planning & Strategic Foresight

Why organisations work with Nick Bostrom He authored Superintelligence, the text credited with bringing AI existential risk into mainstream policy, technology and boardroom discussion. The vocabulary leaders are now using to debate frontier AI traces back to this work. He led the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford for nineteen years, a research programme whose alumni now staff AI safety teams at the major frontier labs and policy units in Washington, London and Brussels. His simulation argument and work on anthropic reasoning have made him one of the few philosophers whose primary papers are read inside technical AI research, not just adjacent to it. Deep Utopia, his 2024 follow-up, addresses the strategic question most leadership teams have not yet started on: what an organisation is for in a world where AI systems can perform almost any cognitive task better than humans. He treats AI governance as a question about the shape of the future, not a compliance exercise, which is the register most senior leaders need but rarely get from technical or regulatory briefings. Biography highlights Founding Director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford, 2005 to 2024. Founder and Principal Researcher, Macrostrategy Research Initiative. Author of Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, New York Times bestseller, Oxford University Press. Author of Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World, Ideapress, 2024. Twice named on Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers. Recipient of the Eugene R. Gannon Award; ranked on Prospect magazine’s World Thinkers list as the highest-placed analytic philosopher. Biography Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies arrived in 2014 with a thesis few mainstream readers were ready for: that advanced AI systems would, on plausible development paths, present a control problem of civilisational importance. A decade later the book sits on the desks of frontier lab leadership, AI policy officials and the boards of companies whose products now depend on the technology it described. The work came out of the Future of Humanity Institute, which Bostrom founded at Oxford in 2005 and led until its closure in 2024. FHI built the early academic infrastructure for what is now a global field, training researchers who now sit inside OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepMind and the UK AI Safety Institute. His earlier paper on the simulation argument, published in The Philosophical Quarterly in 2003, became one of the few philosophical works to be taken seriously by technical AI researchers and physicists. His 2024 book, Deep Utopia, turns the lens around. The question is no longer whether humanity survives advanced AI, but what people and organisations do in a world where machines can perform almost any cognitive task. For executives whose strategic plans assume scarce human cognitive labour as their basic input, this is the next problem to think about, and very few credible voices have started. Bostrom is now Founder and Principal Researcher of the Macrostrategy Research Initiative, continuing the long-range work on technology, governance and the human future that began at Oxford. Foreign Policy has twice named him among its Top 100 Global Thinkers; Prospect ranked him as the highest-placed analytic philosopher on its World Thinkers list. Key speaking topics Frontier AI and existential risk AI governance and alignment under uncertainty Long-range technology strategy The simulation argument and the limits of knowledge Post-AGI economics and the meaning problem Anthropic reasoning and decision-making under deep uncertainty The future of human enhancement Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting AI strategy and risk posture for the next decade Heads of state, regulators and policy units shaping national AI governance Frontier technology leadership and corporate venture teams Investor and asset-allocator audiences thinking about exposure to AI-driven structural change Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for talking about AI risk, capability and alignment with the same precision used inside frontier labs A clearer view of which AI governance questions are tractable now and which require long-range thinking A grounded sense of how to plan for a post-instrumental economy where human cognitive labour is no longer the scarce input Recognition of how anthropic reasoning and scenario thinking apply to corporate decisions under deep uncertainty Familiarity with the arguments shaping how regulators, AI labs and national security communities are now framing frontier AI

Why organisations work with Misha Glenny He treats cybersecurity as a geopolitical and criminal-economy problem, not an IT one, which is the framing senior boards now need. McMafia and DarkMarket are built on direct fieldwork with traffickers, money launderers and hackers. The case material is his own, not borrowed from analyst desks. As former Rector of the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and incoming host of BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time, he brings institutional weight that few commercial speakers in this category carry. He can move between a finance board on sanctions exposure, a security committee on ransomware, and a leadership audience on Russia, China and the fracturing global order, without changing voice. Biography highlights Former BBC Central Europe Correspondent. Reported the 1989 revolutions and the Yugoslav wars. Rector, Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), Vienna, May 2022 to March 2026. Incoming presenter of BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time, succeeding Melvyn Bragg from January 2026. Author of McMafia, DarkMarket, The Balkans 1804 to 2012 and Nemesis: One Man and the Battle for Rio. Executive producer of the BBC One and AMC drama series McMafia. Sony Radio Academy Award for outstanding contribution to broadcasting. BT Information Security Journalist of the Year. Visiting Professor at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, teaching Crime in Transition. Biography International organised crime is no longer a vice problem on the edge of the economy. It is woven into legitimate supply chains, banking flows and the cyber infrastructure that companies depend on. The argument that organised crime could account for a significant share of global GDP, first set out in McMafia in 2008, has aged into a description that finance, security and policy audiences now treat as a working assumption. Misha Glenny built that argument on direct reporting. As the BBC’s Central Europe Correspondent through the 1989 revolutions and the Yugoslav wars, he reported the collapse of the old order from inside it. McMafia and the follow-up book DarkMarket took the same method into the criminal economy itself, with sustained fieldwork among traffickers, money launderers and the hackers running early carding forums. The BBC One and AMC drama series of McMafia, which he executive produced, gave the analysis a second life with a much wider audience. The institutional record matches the reporting. Glenny served as Rector of the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna from 2022 to 2026, one of central Europe’s serious advanced research institutions, and held a visiting professorship at Columbia’s Harriman Institute teaching crime in transition. In December 2025 the BBC announced him as the next host of In Our Time, succeeding Melvyn Bragg. For a leadership audience, the combination is unusual. Few speakers can talk about Russian power, Balkan history, Chinese strategy, ransomware economics and sanctions exposure as a single connected system. Glenny can, because he has spent thirty years reporting it as one. Key speaking topics Geopolitics and global disorder Cybersecurity as a board and national risk Global organised crime and illicit finance Russia, the Balkans and post-Soviet power Cryptocurrency, dark markets and the criminal internet Critical minerals and the new resource competition China, the United States and the contested world order Ideal for Boards and executive committees confronting sanctions, cyber and geopolitical exposure together CISOs, CROs and general counsel framing cyber and crime risk to the wider business Financial services, energy and industrial leadership teams exposed to sanctions, illicit flows and supply chain risk Policy, defence and intelligence audiences working at the seam of geopolitics and organised crime Audience outcomes A working model of how organised crime, cybercrime and state power now operate as one system A clearer view of where their own sector sits inside that system, from finance to energy to technology Specific case material from McMafia and DarkMarket that translates to live risk conversations Sharper questions to put to their security, legal and strategy functions on geopolitical exposure

Why organisations work with Mike Walsh He works on the leadership and operating-model question that AI keynotes usually skip: who decides, with what data, supported by which machine systems, and what that means for org design. His thesis is published, not improvised. The Algorithmic Leader (Page Two, 2019) sets out ten principles for leading in the algorithmic age and has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, Polish and Russian. His next book, Abundant Intelligence, is being published by Harvard Business Review Press with Deloitte’s Global Head of AI Nitin Mittal, giving boards a current reference point on hybrid human and machine workforces. He brings in-the-room exposure to Fortune 500 reinvention programmes through Tomorrow, with named advisory work across the BBC, HSBC, Philips, Fujifilm, Richemont and Televisa. He writes for the audience he speaks to. As a regular Harvard Business Review columnist, his arguments are pressure-tested with the same readers buying him. Biography highlights CEO of Tomorrow, a global consultancy on designing companies for the 21st century. Author of The Algorithmic Leader (Page Two, 2019), translated into six languages. Forthcoming book Abundant Intelligence with Harvard Business Review Press, co-authored with Deloitte’s Global Head of AI, Nitin Mittal. Regular Harvard Business Review columnist; bylines in Inc., BusinessWeek, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal. Host of the Between Worlds podcast and the YouTube series The Future is Elsewhere. Founder of Jupiter Research in Asia Pacific and former senior strategy executive at News Corporation in the region. Biography Boards now buy AI tools faster than they redesign the organisations using them. The Algorithmic Leader, published by Page Two in 2019, was an early attempt to put that mismatch into a framework senior leaders could use, with ten principles for working in an environment where machine systems share the decision load. The book has since been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, Polish and Russian. The work sits inside a longer career arc. Tomorrow, the consultancy Walsh founded in Hong Kong, advises CEOs and executive teams of multinationals including the BBC, HSBC, Philips, Fujifilm, Richemont and Televisa on reinvention in the algorithmic age. Earlier roles include founding Jupiter Research in Asia Pacific, an early tracker of e-commerce and digital business adoption, and senior strategy positions at News Corporation in the region. Publishing has been the spine of the practice. Futuretainment, published by Phaidon in 2009, won an Art Directors Club design award in New York. The Dictionary of Dangerous Ideas followed in 2014. As a regular Harvard Business Review columnist, with bylines in Inc., BusinessWeek, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, Walsh writes for the same audience he advises and speaks to. The forthcoming work is where the operating-model question gets sharper. Abundant Intelligence, due from Harvard Business Review Press, is co-authored with Nitin Mittal, Deloitte’s Global Head of AI, and examines how organisations orchestrate hybrid human-and-machine workforces. The thread across the books, the consultancy and the keynotes is consistent: the leadership question, not the technology question, is the one boards keep underestimating. Key speaking topics Algorithmic leadership and decision-making AI agents and digital labour Designing organisations for the 21st century Disruptive innovation and new business models Digital ethics in machine-led decisions The future of work in an AI-driven economy Strategic foresight for senior leaders Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting AI strategy beyond pilots CEOs, COOs and Chief Strategy Officers redesigning operating models Chief AI Officers, Chief Digital Officers and transformation leads Leadership and learning programmes preparing senior cohorts for AI-era decision-making Audience outcomes A clearer language for the leadership question inside AI investment, not just the technology question A framework, drawn from The Algorithmic Leader, for ten shifts in how senior teams decide and operate Named cases of how multinationals are restructuring around hybrid human-and-machine work A sharper view of which executive habits, hiring patterns and decision rights age badly in an AI-driven business A working definition of digital labour and what it changes for org design, talent and accountability

Why organisations work with Michio Kaku An active research physicist and co-founder of string field theory, not a commentator translating other people’s science. The substance underneath the foresight is his own. A read on AI, quantum computing and biotechnology that is grounded in physical constraints, useful for boards trying to test the credibility of internal technology roadmaps. A track record of corporate keynotes for Microsoft, Cisco, Morgan Stanley, HSBC, Sony, GE, Siemens and SAP, meaning he has briefed senior leadership in sectors with very different technology assumptions. The Henry Semat Chair at CCNY and four New York Times bestsellers give him a level of public authority that travels across investor days, leadership offsites and customer events. Biography highlights Henry Semat Chair in Theoretical Physics, City College of New York and CUNY Graduate Center. Co-founder of string field theory; PhD, UC Berkeley; AB, Harvard, summa cum laude. Author of four New York Times bestsellers including The God Equation and The Future of the Mind. Most recent book: Quantum Supremacy (2023). Host of Science Fantastic, a nationally syndicated US science radio show; presenter of science series for BBC and Discovery Channel. Contributor to Time, Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, Wired, New Scientist and the New York Times. Keynote speaker for Microsoft, HP, Cisco, HSBC, Morgan Stanley, Sony, GE, Siemens, SAP, L’Oreal, Walt Disney and Barclays, among others. Biography Most corporate strategy processes work in three to five year horizons. The technologies most likely to reshape those strategies, including quantum computing, advanced AI, brain-machine interfaces and fusion energy, will mature on much longer timelines and from physical principles most boards never have cause to revisit. Michio Kaku is one of the few public scientists with the standing to brief senior leadership on that gap. He holds the Henry Semat Chair in Theoretical Physics at City College of New York, where he has taught for over four decades, and he is a co-founder of string field theory, a working contribution to the search for a unified description of the fundamental forces. Alongside his research, Kaku has built a parallel public role. Four of his books, Physics of the Impossible, Physics of the Future, The Future of the Mind and The God Equation, have been New York Times bestsellers, and his most recent, Quantum Supremacy, sets out what quantum computing will and will not do for medicine, materials and AI. He hosts Science Fantastic, a nationally syndicated US science radio programme, and has presented science series for the BBC and Discovery Channel. For corporate audiences he has keynoted for Microsoft, Cisco, HSBC, Morgan Stanley, Sony, GE, Siemens and SAP, among others. The reason buyers keep returning to him is straightforward: they want a physicist’s read on which long-horizon technologies are real, on what timeline, and at what cost. Key speaking topics Quantum computing and its commercial implications Artificial intelligence in medicine, finance and pandemic response The next two decades of technology and the economy The physics of long-horizon innovation Brain-machine interfaces and the future of the mind The search for a unified theory and what it means for computing Science communication for senior audiences Ideal for Boards and executive committees making long-horizon technology and capital allocation decisions CEO and CTO leadership offsites focused on AI, quantum and biotechnology roadmaps Investor days, customer events and flagship conferences in technology, financial services, industrials and pharma Strategy and innovation teams testing internal assumptions against external scientific reality Audience outcomes A clearer view of which emerging technologies are bounded by physics and which are bounded by engineering effort A working sense of what quantum computing will and will not change in finance, materials and drug discovery A read on AI’s near-term and long-horizon trajectory from a physicist rather than a vendor Reference points for stress-testing internal technology and innovation roadmaps A vocabulary for senior leaders to discuss long-range science with their own technical teams

Why organisations work with Michael Raynor He has built a quantitative case, across more than 25,000 companies and forty-five years of data, for what actually separates exceptional performers from the rest. Boards get an evidence base, not an opinion. His Strategy Paradox framework gives leadership teams a way to commit hard to a chosen direction while building real options against the futures that strategy could not foresee. He is one of the few strategy thinkers to have co-authored disruption theory’s primary sequel with Clayton Christensen and to have stress-tested it experimentally with Intel’s new venture group and MBA cohorts. The work is field-validated, not theoretical. Two decades of Deloitte client work in telecoms, pharma, medical devices, energy and media means the frameworks land in operational language, not academic abstraction. Biography highlights Author of The Strategy Paradox, named one of BusinessWeek’s 10 Best Business Books of 2007 and a strategy+business top-five strategy pick. Co-author with Clayton M. Christensen of The Innovator’s Solution, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. Co-author with Mumtaz Ahmed of The Three Rules: How Exceptional Companies Think, based on a five-year study of more than 25,000 US-listed companies. Sole author of The Innovator’s Manifesto: Deliberate Disruption for Transformational Growth, applying disruption theory to controlled experiments at Intel and across MBA programmes including Harvard. Doctorate from Harvard Business School, recognised with the Dively Award for research excellence; MBA with distinction from Ivey Business School. Associate Professor (Strategy) at Ivey Business School; long-tenured Deloitte advisor, including fifteen years as a Managing Director. Biography Most strategy is built on forecasts that turn out to be wrong. The interesting question is not whether forecasts will fail, but what a leadership team should do about that fact when it has to commit capital, talent and reputation to a single direction. This is the territory Michael Raynor has worked for over three decades, in research, in the boardroom and in print. Raynor’s first major contribution was The Strategy Paradox, which argued that the same commitments that produce extraordinary success also produce catastrophic failure, and that managing strategic risk requires building real options into the corporate structure itself. The book was named one of BusinessWeek’s 10 Best Business Books of 2007 and a strategy+business top-five strategy pick. With Clayton Christensen he co-authored The Innovator’s Solution, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller and the principal sequel to The Innovator’s Dilemma. The work that followed put the frameworks under empirical pressure. The Innovator’s Manifesto reported controlled experiments at Intel’s New Business Initiatives group and replications with 300+ MBA students at Harvard and elsewhere, showing measurable improvement in predictive accuracy when disruption theory was applied as a decision rule. The Three Rules, written with Mumtaz Ahmed, analysed more than 25,000 US-listed companies from 1966 to 2010 and identified 344 exceptional performers, distilling their behaviour to two priorities: better before cheaper, revenue before cost. This is what brings Raynor into board conversations. He arrives with a doctorate from Harvard Business School (Dively Award for research excellence), an MBA with distinction from Ivey, more than two decades of Deloitte client work across pharma, telecoms, medical devices, energy and media, and a current Associate Professorship in Strategy at Ivey. The frameworks are tested, the language is direct, and the argument is consistently the same: serious organisations need a defensible answer to the question of how they will commit, and to what. Key speaking topics Corporate strategy under uncertainty Strategic commitment and real options Disruptive innovation and growth Drivers of sustained superior corporate performance Innovation portfolio decisions Strategy execution at the board level Ideal for Boards and CEOs setting multi-year strategic direction in industries where forecasts are unreliable Chief Strategy Officers and corporate development leaders sizing innovation portfolios and capital commitments Executive leadership teams in pharma, telecoms, energy, medical devices and media wrestling with disruption risk Audience outcomes A direct argument for why strategic commitment is the source of risk, not its solution, and what that implies for the next planning cycle. The Better-before-Cheaper, Revenue-before-Cost decision rule as a working benchmark for everyday operating choices. A structured way to separate strategic uncertainty from operational uncertainty, and to push each to the right level of the organisation. An empirically grounded view of what 344 exceptional companies did differently over four decades, and how to test their behaviour against the audience’s own.

Why organisations work with Michael G Jacobides He is the academic most directly associated with ecosystem strategy as a formal discipline. His Strategic Management Journal paper “Towards a Theory of Ecosystems” is one of the most-read articles the journal has published, and is the reference point others build on. He gives leadership teams a working language for a question they keep asking badly. Are we an orchestrator, a complementor, or a component, and what does each role earn under AI. His policy work gives the room a regulatory lens most strategy speakers cannot offer. He served as Chief Expert Advisor on the Digital Economy to the Hellenic Competition Commission and contributes to the World Economic Forum’s AI Governance Alliance. He has been ranked on the Thinkers50 list of the world’s top 50 management thinkers in four consecutive cycles since 2019, which is the credential boards recognise without needing to be briefed. His advisory base, BCG Henderson Institute and Evolution Ltd, keeps the content tested against live corporate decisions rather than against the conference circuit. Biography highlights Sir Donald Gordon Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Professor of Strategy, London Business School. Thinkers50 ranked management thinker in 2019, 2021, 2023 and 2025; Strategy Award shortlist, 2019. Co-Editor, Industrial and Corporate Change. Author of “Towards a Theory of Ecosystems” (Strategic Management Journal) and “How to Compete When Industries Digitize and Collide” (California Management Review, article-of-the-year). Academic Advisor to the BCG Henderson Institute; Lead Advisor of Evolution Ltd; contributor to the World Economic Forum’s AI Governance Alliance. Former Chief Expert Advisor on the Digital Economy, Hellenic Competition Commission. Visiting Scholar, Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Regular contributor to Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Financial Times and Forbes; commentator for BBC and CNN. Biography The boundary between industries is no longer the boundary between competitors. A bank now competes with a phone, a car company with a software platform, a retailer with an ad network. Jacobides has spent two decades building the academic framework that explains this, and turning it into language strategy teams can use. His paper “Towards a Theory of Ecosystems” in the Strategic Management Journal is the reference point most other ecosystem writing now builds on. The follow-up in California Management Review, on competing as industries digitise and collide, won the journal’s article-of-the-year and is widely used inside corporate strategy functions. The work is academic in origin and operational in use. That dual register is the reason boards book him. He holds the Sir Donald Gordon Chair at London Business School, co-edits Industrial and Corporate Change, and has been ranked on the Thinkers50 list of the world’s top management thinkers across four cycles. He also advises the BCG Henderson Institute, leads the advisory boutique Evolution Ltd, and contributes to the World Economic Forum’s AI Governance Alliance. His former role as Chief Expert Advisor on the Digital Economy to the Hellenic Competition Commission means he reads platform and AI regulation as a participant, not a spectator. What a senior buyer gets in the room is a strategist who can take an executive team from “AI is reshaping our industry” to a specific decision about where in the new value architecture the firm should sit, what it should orchestrate, what it should cede, and what regulators will let it own. Key speaking topics Ecosystem strategy and value migration Generative AI and competitive advantage Digital platforms and industry convergence Orchestrator, complementor and component positioning AI governance and competition policy Business model reinvention under digital disruption Boardroom strategy in technology-driven industries Ideal for Boards and group executive committees redrawing strategy as AI and platforms reshape their industry Chief Strategy Officers, Chief Digital Officers and Heads of Corporate Development assessing ecosystem positioning Banking, telecommunications, FMCG, healthcare and industrial leadership teams facing convergence pressure Private equity and investor audiences pricing platform exposure and ecosystem risk Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for ecosystem roles: orchestrator, complementor, component, and what each earns A clearer view of where AI shifts value inside the audience’s specific industry, not in general A framework for testing current strategy against the way industry boundaries are actually moving Sharper questions for the next board strategy session on platform exposure and regulatory risk A read on how competition policy and AI governance will constrain the playing field

Why organisations work with Sir Michael Arthur He has sat on both sides of the table that boards now worry about: thirty-eight years inside the British Foreign Office at the most senior level, then eight years inside Boeing as a vice president and council member. He led the Maastricht Treaty negotiating team and the EU Single Market legislation team. When he speaks about how European policy is actually made, he is describing rooms he was in. As President of Boeing International he was the first non-American on the Executive Council, with operational responsibility for Boeing in 65 countries. That is rare ground for a former diplomat to occupy. His four years as High Commissioner in New Delhi give boards a Europe specialist who is also fluent on India, at a moment when very few people credibly cover both. He speaks German and French and held the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. On Berlin, he is read inside Berlin. Biography highlights British Ambassador to Germany, 2007 to 2010. British High Commissioner to India, 2003 to 2007. Director General for Europe and Economic Affairs, Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Led the Maastricht Treaty negotiating team and the EU Single Market legislation team. Senior Vice President of Boeing and President of Boeing International, 2019 to 2023; first non-American member of the Boeing Executive Council. Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG); recipient of the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Board of Directors, Stimson Center; Non-Executive Director of a Tata Consultancy Services UK subsidiary; co-founder of The Ambassador Partnership LLP. Biography Most boards are now exposed to political decisions they cannot price. Tariffs, sanctions, industrial policy, export controls, the next German coalition, the next Indian budget. The standard inputs (bank research, consultant briefings, the FT) tell you what happened. They rarely tell you what the people who made the decision were trying to achieve, and what they will do next. Sir Michael Arthur has spent his career on the inside of those rooms. As British Ambassador to Germany from 2007 to 2010 and High Commissioner to India from 2003 to 2007, he ran two of the UK’s most consequential bilateral relationships at a moment when both countries were redefining their place in the global economy. Earlier he led the Maastricht Treaty negotiating team and the team that wrote the EU Single Market legislation. The European architecture that companies now operate inside is partly his handiwork. What sets him apart from the diplomatic-speaker norm is what came next. In 2014 he joined Boeing as President of Boeing UK and Ireland; in 2019 he became Senior Vice President of Boeing and President of Boeing International, the first non-American on the Boeing Executive Council. For four years he carried operational responsibility for the company in 65 countries and 18 regional offices. He left the diplomatic register and learned the executive one. The result is a speaker who can move between a board’s geopolitical question and its commercial answer without losing precision in either direction. He sits on the Board of Directors of the Stimson Center, on the board of a Tata Consultancy Services UK subsidiary, and co-founded The Ambassador Partnership LLP. He is a fluent German and French speaker and holds the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Key speaking topics Germany, the Eurozone and the European political economy UK and EU relations after Brexit India as a strategic partner for Western business Transatlantic relations and the US-Europe-China triangle International negotiation and corporate diplomacy Political risk inside global supply chains Ideal for Boards and executive committees with material exposure to Europe, India, or transatlantic policy. Heads of strategy, government affairs, and corporate affairs at multinationals. Industrial, aerospace, defence, and financial services leadership teams managing political risk. Investor and partner gatherings where senior decision makers want a credible read on Berlin, Brussels, New Delhi, and Washington in the same room. Audience outcomes A grounded read on what Berlin and Brussels are likely to do next, from someone who has been on both sides of those negotiations. A clearer view of India as a commercial partner, drawn from four years running the UK’s mission in New Delhi. A useful frame for thinking about political risk as an operational variable, not a footnote in the strategy deck. A sharper sense of how diplomatic and commercial logic interact inside large international firms.

Why organisations work with Max Tegmark He sits at the centre of the global AI safety conversation. As President of the Future of Life Institute, he organised the 2023 “Pause Giant AI Experiments” open letter signed by Yoshua Bengio, Stuart Russell, Elon Musk and more than 30,000 others, and FLI’s policy work fed directly into the EU AI Act. He brings a working physicist’s discipline to AI claims, not a commentator’s. His MIT research group studies the physics of intelligence itself, which lets him tell a board what current systems can and cannot do without selling either fear or excitement. He has shaped how non-specialists think about AI through a New York Times bestseller. Life 3.0 framed the alignment problem and the long-run scenarios for governments, executives and the public, and remains a reference point for senior policy and corporate audiences. He is one of the few speakers TIME placed on its inaugural TIME100 AI list whose authority rests on peer-reviewed research rather than commercial position. He talks to leaders the way he talks to physicists. Specific mechanisms, named risks, concrete governance options, no jargon stack. Biography highlights Professor of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Co-founder and President, Future of Life Institute Author, Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (Knopf, 2017), New York Times bestseller Author, Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality (Knopf, 2014) Named to TIME100 AI, the inaugural TIME list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence Fellow of the American Physical Society; Packard Fellow; Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Science Gold Medal (2019); contributor to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Biography The 2023 open letter calling for a six-month pause on training AI systems more powerful than GPT-4 was the moment AI safety stopped being a niche concern and became a board-level question. The letter was organised out of the Future of Life Institute. Its president is Max Tegmark. Tegmark is a Professor of Physics at MIT whose research moved from precision cosmology, including significant work on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, to the physics of intelligence itself. That trajectory matters. He approaches AI not as a technology commentator but as a working scientist asking what these systems are, what they can be made to do safely, and where the limits of current understanding sit. Through the Future of Life Institute, which he co-founded with Anthony Aguirre, Tegmark has built one of the most consequential policy voices in AI. FLI’s work shaped key provisions of the EU AI Act, and the 2023 pause letter, signed by Yoshua Bengio, Stuart Russell, Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak and Yuval Noah Harari among more than 30,000 others, reframed the global conversation about frontier model risk. His writing carries the same authority into a wider audience. Life 3.0 became a New York Times bestseller and remains a reference text for leaders trying to understand what alignment means and why it is hard. Our Mathematical Universe, published by Knopf in 2014, lays out his case that physical reality is, at the deepest level, a mathematical structure. He was named to TIME’s inaugural TIME100 AI list in 2023, awarded the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Science Gold Medal in 2019, and elected Fellow of the American Physical Society for his contributions to cosmology. Key speaking topics Frontier AI capability and risk AI governance and regulation AI safety and alignment The future of work in an age of capable AI Existential risk and transformative technology Cosmology and the nature of reality Physics of intelligence Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting AI strategy and governance Policy, regulatory and public-sector leaders working on AI rules Chief Technology Officers, Chief AI Officers and heads of research Investor and academic audiences engaging with frontier technology Audience outcomes A clearer view of what current AI systems can and cannot do, separated from vendor and media framing A working mental model of the alignment problem and why frontier-model governance is hard Concrete reference points from the EU AI Act and the FLI policy agenda for corporate AI policy Sharper questions to put to internal AI leads, vendors and external advisers A scientifically grounded sense of which long-run AI scenarios are plausible and which are not

Why organisations work with Matteo Renzi His grasp of European political risk comes from having run a G7 government, chaired the EU Council Presidency, and participated in three G7 and three G20 summits – not from studying these institutions but from operating inside them at the highest level. His current role as Strategic Counsellor at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change connects his analysis to live government reform agendas across more than 40 countries, making his perspective current rather than retrospective. The Renzi government’s Jobs Act labour market overhaul, Madia Reform of public administration, and gender-equal cabinet were each delivered against significant institutional resistance – giving him specific, hard-won insight into what it actually takes to move reform through complex political systems. His co-authorship of the 2025 Tony Blair Institute paper “Europe in the Age of AI” – alongside Tony Blair and former Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin – positions him as a substantive current voice on technology governance and European competitiveness, not only on political history. For boards assessing exposure in Italy or the broader Southern European bloc, he provides a counterweight to the Germany-and-France framing that tends to dominate European political risk analysis in international advisory markets. Biography highlights Prime Minister of Italy, 2014 to 2016 – youngest ever Italian PM and youngest G7 leader at appointment Mayor of Florence 2009-2014; President of the Province of Florence 2004-2009; Senator for Florence since 2018 Founder and leader of Italia Viva (since 2019); previously Secretary of the Democratic Party, 2013-2018 Ranked #3 on Fortune’s 40 Under 40 (2014); included in Foreign Policy’s 100 Global Thinkers Strategic Counsellor, Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (since 2024); co-author of “Europe in the Age of AI” (2025) with Tony Blair and Sanna Marin Author of 15+ published books on Italian politics and governance; teaches “The Challenges of Europe” at Stanford University’s Florence programme Biography EU Council negotiations, coalition formation, and regulatory direction are shaped by decisions made under intense political pressure by a small number of insiders. Matteo Renzi was one of them. He served as Prime Minister of Italy from 2014 to 2016, becoming at 39 the youngest person ever to hold that office and the youngest leader in the G7. His government moved fast. The Jobs Act overhauled Italy’s labour market. The Madia Reform digitised public administration and introduced digital ID as a central pillar of state infrastructure. His cabinet became the first in Italian history to achieve gender equality between women and men. He chaired the EU Council Presidency in the second half of 2014 and represented Italy at three G20 and three G7 summits. Italy’s signature on the Paris Agreement on climate change was made under his government. Since leaving government, Renzi has stayed operationally active. He serves in the Italian Senate and leads the centrist party Italia Viva. Since 2024, he has been a Strategic Counsellor at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, advising political leaders on reform strategy across more than 40 countries. His course “The Challenges of Europe” at Stanford University’s Florence programme brings that accumulated experience directly into academic debate. For organisations that need to understand how European coalitions form, how reform agendas succeed or fail under institutional pressure, and where geopolitical risk translates into policy, Renzi provides the granular, first-hand intelligence that covers the full range – from city government to the G7 table. Key speaking topics European political risk and governance EU institutional mechanics and reform Coalition politics and government formation Italian and Southern European political economy G7 and multilateral decision-making Digital transformation in government and public administration Political leadership under institutional pressure Ideal for Boards and C-suite executives with significant EU or Italian market exposure Government affairs and public policy functions within multinational organisations International business forums focused on European geopolitical and regulatory risk Senior leadership programmes and policy institutes requiring first-hand governmental perspective Audience outcomes A clearer working model of how EU institutions make decisions and where the real pressure points are – moving beyond election-watching to structural analysis Specific insight into how reform agendas succeed or collapse inside complex political systems, drawn from the Renzi government’s own record A realistic account of what political risk in Italy and the Southern European bloc means for organisations with exposure in those markets Context on how European governments are approaching digital transformation, labour market flexibility, and AI governance A framework for separating structural political change from short-term electoral noise in European markets

Why organisations work with Mark Greeven He brings a working model of ecosystem competition built on close study of Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi and other Asian firms, not a Silicon Valley template. He has spent two decades inside Chinese innovation, which lets him translate what is happening in Asia into specific implications for European and North American boards. His “dual transformation” frame gives leadership teams a way to fund and govern the next growth engine without starving the current business. He has built what he advises others to build. He founded IMD China in Shenzhen, scaled it into a multi-million-dollar executive education business in three years, and co-directs IMD’s Future-Ready Enterprise programme with MIT Sloan. Thinkers50 has ranked him in 2023 and 2025 and described him as their “oracle for innovation in China,” and his recent HBR co-authored piece on Chinese AI was a finalist for the 2025 HBR Prize. Both give buyers a defensible third-party signal. Biography highlights Professor of Management Innovation at IMD; founder of the IMD China Initiative and of IMD China in Shenzhen. Co-director of three IMD programmes: Building Digital Ecosystems, Strategy for Future Readiness, and Future-Ready Enterprise (the last delivered jointly with MIT Sloan School of Management). Author of Pioneers, Hidden Champions, Changemakers, and Underdogs (MIT Press, 2019), The Future of Global Retail (Routledge, 2021), and Business Ecosystems in China (Routledge, 2018). Co-author of “How Savvy Companies Are Using Chinese AI” (HBR, 2025), named a finalist for the 2025 HBR Prize. An earlier HBR piece was selected for HBR’s 10 Must Reads 2023. Ranked on the Thinkers50 list in 2023 and 2025; Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2017. Founder of cross-border programmes earlier in his career, including the Chinese Economy and Business Programme at Erasmus University Rotterdam and the Global Entrepreneurship Programme at Zhejiang University. PhD in Innovation Management from Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. Biography Most established companies are organised to defend a position they already hold. The harder problem is running that business at full performance while building a different one beside it, in markets where competitors do not play by the same rules. Mark Greeven’s work sits squarely on that problem. He is Professor of Management Innovation at IMD and Director of the IMD China Initiative, with earlier faculty positions at Zhejiang University and Rotterdam School of Management, where he also took his PhD in Innovation Management. Two decades of fieldwork in China give his arguments an empirical base that most innovation speakers do not have. His three books, Business Ecosystems in China (Routledge, 2018), Pioneers, Hidden Champions, Changemakers, and Underdogs (MIT Press, 2019), and The Future of Global Retail (Routledge, 2021), trace how named Asian firms, including Alibaba, Tencent, and Xiaomi, organise around platforms, partners, and continuous reinvention. He writes regularly for Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review. One of his HBR pieces was selected for HBR’s 10 Must Reads 2023; a more recent HBR co-authored piece on how companies are using Chinese AI was named a finalist for the 2025 HBR Prize. His current ecosystem research at IMD is supported by a three-year corporate sponsorship from AVEVA, Schneider Electric’s industrial software business. He also publishes Red Thread, a bi-weekly LinkedIn newsletter on China and global strategy. Greeven has also built what he writes about. He founded the IMD China Initiative in 2019 and established IMD China in Shenzhen, growing it into a multi-million-dollar executive education business within three years. He has launched cross-border programmes at four institutions, from the Chinese Economy and Business Programme at Erasmus and the Global Entrepreneurship Programme at Zhejiang to IMD’s Future-Ready Enterprise Programme with MIT Sloan. In parallel, he has founded private companies in cross-border e-commerce, technology scouting, and management innovation advisory. Thinkers50 has ranked him in 2023 and 2025, calling him their “oracle for innovation in China.” That mix of research, programme-building, venture creation, and direct access to Chinese firms is what gives his counsel weight for boards trying to read what Asian competition means for their next five years, and for executives trying to build a credible second growth engine without breaking the first. Key speaking topics Business ecosystems and platform competition Innovation in China and Asia Dual transformation and second growth engines Future of retail and digital business models Strategy under sustained uncertainty Organising for innovation in large incumbents US-China commercial and technology dynamics Ideal for CEOs and strategy leaders setting a multi-year growth agenda in the face of Asian competition. Boards and executive committees deciding how to fund and govern a second growth engine alongside the core. CSOs, CIOs, and innovation leads designing partner ecosystems rather than standalone product roadmaps. Multinationals with material exposure to China who want a clear read on competitive moves and policy direction. Audience outcomes A clear read on how Chinese and Asian incumbents are competing, with named firms and specific moves. A working language for ecosystem strategy that boards can use without retreating to platform jargon. A practical view of how to run today’s business and build the next one in parallel, with the trade-offs named. Sharper questions for the next strategy cycle on innovation governance, partner choice, and capital allocation.

Why organisations work with Mark Esposito He brings a named foresight framework, DRIVE, that gives leadership teams a shared vocabulary for the five megatrends shaping their markets, rather than a generic “future of” briefing. His positions sit on both sides of the AI conversation. He advises the World Economic Forum’s Global AI Alliance on policy while working as Chief Economist at micro1, a Silicon Valley AI lab, so the board hears how regulation and deployment actually meet. He has built the institutional access most academic speakers cannot. Harvard Kennedy School, Northeastern, Cambridge Judge, Georgetown, and government advisory roles across the GCC and Eurasia. The work is current and published. Fourteen books, two Amazon bestsellers, The Great Remobilization with MIT Press, and forthcoming titles with Routledge and Penguin Random House give a senior buyer a reading list to brief their team from. Biography highlights Professor of Strategy and Technology Policy at Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business, with Harvard affiliations at the Kennedy School’s Center for International Development, the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, and Harvard Law School’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society Chief Economist at micro1, a Silicon Valley AI lab, and co-founder of Nexus FrontierTech, the AI Native Foundation, the Circular Economy Alliance, and The Chart ThinkTank Co-developer of the DRIVE megatrends framework with Terence Tse Author or co-author of 14 books and over 150 publications, including two Amazon bestsellers, plus The Great Remobilization (MIT Press, 2023) and Digitizing the Emerging Economies (Cambridge University Press, 2024) Named to the Thinkers50 Radar of 30 thinkers most likely to shape the future; recognised by MIT Technology Review and Thinkers360 for AI influence Member of the World Economic Forum’s Global AI Alliance and policy advisor to governments across the GCC and Eurasia Biography The hard part of governing AI is not writing the principles. It is keeping a strategy coherent while the technology, the regulation, and the workforce implications all change inside the same planning cycle. That is the gap Mark Esposito’s work has occupied for the past decade, first through strategic foresight, now through applied AI policy and deployment. The intellectual anchor is DRIVE, the megatrends framework he developed with Terence Tse and laid out in Understanding How the Future Unfolds. DRIVE gives leadership teams five named forces, from demographic change through enterprising dynamics, that organise the noise of long-range planning into something a board can actually use. The framework underpins his teaching as Professor of Strategy and Technology Policy at Northeastern University, and his research affiliations at Harvard Kennedy School, the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, and the Berkman Klein Center. He pairs that academic base with an operator’s vantage point. As Chief Economist at micro1, a Silicon Valley AI lab, he works inside the commercial reality of building and deploying AI at scale. The AI Native Foundation, which he co-founded, extends that into capability building for institutions trying to become genuinely AI-native rather than AI-curious. His seat on the World Economic Forum’s Global AI Alliance connects both sides to the policy conversation. The body of work is now substantial. Fourteen books and over 150 publications, two Amazon bestsellers, The Great Remobilization with MIT Press, and forthcoming titles with Routledge and Penguin Random House. Thinkers50 named him to its Radar of thinkers most likely to shape the future; MIT Technology Review and Thinkers360 have recognised his AI influence. For boards trying to make defensible decisions on AI while the ground moves under them, that combination of foresight discipline, policy access, and a frontier-AI operating role is rare in a single voice. Key speaking topics AI strategy and AI-native organisations Strategic foresight and megatrends The DRIVE framework AI policy and governance Fourth Industrial Revolution and emerging economies Circular economy and resource strategy Geopolitics of technology Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting AI strategy and governance posture CSOs, transformation leads, and chief strategy officers running long-range planning under technological uncertainty Government and public sector leaders shaping AI policy and industrial strategy Senior leadership teams in emerging markets navigating the Fourth Industrial Revolution Audience outcomes A shared, named vocabulary (DRIVE) for the five megatrends reshaping their sector A clearer view of where their AI agenda is running ahead of, or behind, their operating model Specific examples of how governments and large enterprises are translating AI policy into deployment A reading map across his published work for follow-up briefing inside the organisation

Why organisations work with Marc Randolph He did not study the Netflix founding from the outside – he ran it. The decisions, the wrong turns, and the business model that eventually disrupted an entire industry are first-hand material, not case-study reconstruction. His central argument challenges a reflex most leadership teams share: that the quality of an idea determines whether it deserves to be pursued. His counter – that testing discipline matters more than idea quality – is specific, actionable, and uncomfortable in the right way. The Netflix founding includes the Blockbuster meeting, where Netflix was offered for $50 million and turned down. That episode alone reframes how organisations should think about incumbent advantage, competitive threat, and the cost of certainty. “That Will Never Work” is not a memoir dressed as business advice. It is a structured argument about how good companies are actually built – through iteration, testing, and the willingness to be wrong in public, not in a boardroom. He runs an active mentorship programme with working founders, which means his frameworks are tested against current entrepreneurial reality – not fixed in the past. Biography highlights Co-founder and first CEO of Netflix, which he helped build from a dismissed DVD-by-mail startup into the foundation of the platform that redefined global entertainment Author of “That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea” (Little, Brown and Company, 2019) Serial entrepreneur with multiple companies founded across direct marketing, software, and technology Former senior marketing executive at Borland International and Macromedia Guest on NPR’s “How I Built This” and other leading entrepreneurship platforms Active mentor to early-stage founders through a structured programme he runs directly Biography Netflix was not an overnight success. In its early years it was dismissed by almost everyone – including, famously, the executives at Blockbuster, who were offered the company for $50 million and said no. Marc Randolph was in that room. He co-founded Netflix in 1997 and served as its first CEO, navigating the business from an idea most people thought would never work to the foundation of what became one of the most disruptive companies in modern business history. His book, “That Will Never Work,” published by Little, Brown in 2019, does not simply recount that journey. It makes a specific argument: that entrepreneurial success has less to do with the quality of an idea than with the discipline of testing it. Most organisations spend considerable energy debating whether an idea is good enough to act on. Randolph’s contention is that the debate itself is the problem – that deciding in advance kills more valuable ideas than the market ever would. That argument is not abstract. It comes from years of direct experience – not only co-founding Netflix, but building and failing at other companies before it, and mentoring hundreds of founders since. Randolph runs an active programme for early-stage entrepreneurs, which means his frameworks are under continuous pressure from people trying to apply them in real conditions today. For organisations wrestling with innovation culture, the fear of failure, or the gap between strategy and action, Randolph offers something most speakers in this space cannot: a first-hand account of what it actually took, and a framework built from that experience rather than written about it. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and the discipline of idea-testing Business model innovation and iteration Innovation culture in established organisations Risk, failure, and commercial decision-making Leadership in early-stage and high-growth companies The Netflix founding – strategy, competition, and disruption Mentorship and building founder capability Ideal for CEOs and senior leadership teams building or renewing innovation culture Chief Strategy Officers and heads of new ventures or corporate innovation labs Entrepreneurship conferences and startup ecosystem events Leadership development programmes focused on commercial risk-taking and decision-making under uncertainty Audience outcomes A reframe of how ideas should be evaluated – replacing debate with testable hypotheses Practical language for separating idea quality from execution discipline A clearer understanding of what distinguishes organisations that build new things from those that discuss them Direct exposure to the decision-making logic behind one of the most studied company-founding stories in modern business A more honest framework for thinking about failure as evidence rather than verdict