Scenario Planning & Strategic Foresight

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

Why organisations work with Magnus Lindkvist He built the academic discipline he speaks from. In 2008 he created the world’s first accredited course in trendspotting and future thinking at the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship, which gives the work an unusually serious intellectual base for the futurist category. His books are a connected argument, not a back catalogue. Everything We Know Is Wrong, The Attack of the Unexpected, and When the Future Begins set out why most forecasting fails, and his 2025 book with MIT research scientist Bryan Reimer, How to Make AI Useful, applies the same method to the one technology every forecast now has to reckon with. He treats unexpected events as a strategic category, not a footnote. Boards used to thinking in trends get a sharper framework for the shocks that trends cannot predict. He has spent three decades inside the meeting rooms of Fortune 500 boards, ministries, and global institutions, which means the material is calibrated for senior audiences rather than conference floors. The delivery is a deliberate performance. He calls it intellectual acupuncture, and senior buyers consistently book him for sessions where the brief is to change how a leadership team thinks, not to brief them on a topic. Biography highlights Co-author, with MIT research scientist Dr Bryan Reimer, of How to Make AI Useful: Moving Beyond the Hype to Real Progress in Business, Society and Life (LID Publishing, 2025). Creator, in 2008, of the world’s first academically accredited course in trendspotting and future thinking at the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship, and founder of the consultancy Pattern Recognition (2005). Author of further books on creativity and crisis recovery, including Minifesto, Creative Friction (with music journalist Jan Gradvall), The Reset Book, and The Dare to be Different Book. Has advised and presented to Fortune 500 boards, government ministries, and global institutions. MSc in Business and Economics, Stockholm School of Economics; degree in film production, UCLA. Over 1,000 keynotes delivered to corporate, institutional, and government audiences across roughly three decades. Biography Most forecasting fails for the same reason. It extrapolates the present and underweights everything that arrives from outside the model. Magnus Lindkvist has spent three decades building a more honest discipline around that problem, and a body of work that takes long-term thinking seriously as a leadership skill. The intellectual base is unusual for the futurist category. In 2008 he created the world’s first accredited course in trendspotting and future thinking, at the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship, after founding his consultancy Pattern Recognition in 2005. The trio of books that anchors his speaking work, Everything We Know Is Wrong, The Attack of the Unexpected, and When the Future Begins, runs as a connected argument: trends matter, the events that break them matter more, and organisations need a different mental architecture for the long horizon. The delivery is the second reason senior buyers commission him. He treats a keynote as a performance designed to shift a room’s assumptions, which is why boards, ministries, and global firms tend to use him when the leadership team needs to think differently, not simply hear an update. The same instinct runs through his shorter books: Minifesto makes the case for small ideas inside organisations dominated by grand narratives, and The Dare to be Different Book sets out what it takes to produce genuinely original work. His most recent book takes that discipline straight to the technology now reshaping every forecast. How to Make AI Useful, written with MIT research scientist Bryan Reimer and published in 2025, sets aside both the utopian and the apocalyptic framings of artificial intelligence and asks a narrower question: where AI is actually useful, and for whom. It is the foresight method applied to the defining uncertainty of the decade. Key speaking topics Long-term thinking and strategic foresight Trendspotting and turning points in industries The strategic role of unexpected events Making artificial intelligence useful in business Creativity and the conditions for original work Reset and recovery after crisis Innovation under uncertainty The future of technology and society Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting multi-year strategy under high uncertainty CSOs, heads of strategy, and corporate development leaders responsible for long-range planning Innovation, R&D, and foresight leads inside large incumbents Leadership offsites where the brief is to change how the team thinks, not to deliver an update Audience outcomes A sharper sense of where current forecasting habits are likely to mislead a leadership team A practical vocabulary for distinguishing trends, turning points, and genuinely unexpected events A more honest framework for long-term thinking, drawn from his book When the Future Begins A renewed view of creativity and small ideas as strategic assets, not cultural ornaments A clearer view of where AI is genuinely useful in their business and where current enthusiasm outruns the evidence, drawn from How to Make AI Useful

Why organisations work with Lucas Papademos A direct, first-hand account of ECB Governing Council decision-making through the 2007–2008 financial crisis and the pre-crisis debates over the Stability and Growth Pact – insight not available from any published report, and accessible only through testimony from those who were in the room. Co-originator of the NAIRU framework (Modigliani & Papademos, 1975, 1978), which remains embedded in how central banks approach the inflation–unemployment trade-off – giving him standing to explain that framework from the inside, not as an interpreter of others’ work. Managed Greece’s euro transition as central bank governor, then led the country’s sovereign debt restructuring negotiations as its prime minister – a full-cycle perspective on monetary union fragility, institutional failure, and crisis resolution that no commentator or external analyst holds. As a member of the G20 Financial Stability Board, the EU Economic and Financial Committee, and the BIS Central Bank Governance Group, he can illuminate how global financial governance actually operates under systemic stress – not as it is documented, but as it is practised. Biography highlights ECB Vice President, 2002–2010, serving under both Wim Duisenberg and Jean-Claude Trichet; member of the ECB Executive Board and Governing Council Governor, Bank of Greece, 1994–2002; architected Greece’s monetary transition from the drachma to the euro Prime Minister of Greece, November 2011–May 2012; led national unity government through the sovereign debt crisis and the largest debt restructuring in EU and OECD history at that time PhD in Economics, MIT, 1978; doctoral supervisor Franco Modigliani (Nobel laureate); co-authored the Modigliani-Papademos NAIRU papers (1975, 1978), foundational to modern monetary policy Faculty positions at Columbia University, University of Athens, and Harvard Kennedy School; Senior Fellow, Center for Financial Studies, Goethe University Frankfurt Member: Academy of Athens (President 2017–2018); G20 Financial Stability Board and Steering Committee; BIS Central Bank Governance Group; EU Economic and Financial Committee Biography Greece’s entry into the eurozone was not a ceremonial event. It required a decade of monetary tightening, institutional credibility-building, and disciplined policy execution. As Governor of the Bank of Greece from 1994 to 2002, Lucas Papademos was the architect of that process, managing the currency transition and imposing the monetary discipline that euro membership demanded. His academic work reaches to the foundations of modern monetary theory. A PhD from MIT under Nobel laureate Franco Modigliani produced the Modigliani-Papademos papers of 1975 and 1978, which introduced the NAIRU concept: the unemployment rate consistent with stable, non-accelerating inflation. The framework shaped how central banks think about price stability trade-offs and continues to be cited in current monetary policy literature. At the ECB, where Papademos served as Vice President from 2002 to 2010, he sat at the centre of European monetary decision-making through the global financial crisis. He was a consistent advocate for the integrity of the Stability and Growth Pact, arguing (before the crisis) that weakening fiscal rules would generate the sovereign debt imbalances that later threatened the currency union’s existence. In 2011, those warnings proved prescient. Papademos returned to Athens as Prime Minister – appointed without parliamentary affiliation to lead a national unity government – and negotiated directly with the IMF, European Commission, and ECB on what became, at the time, the EU and OECD’s largest sovereign debt restructuring. The combination of original macroeconomic theory, eight years inside the ECB’s governing architecture, and crisis governance under extreme political pressure defines a perspective with no close equivalent. Key speaking topics Eurozone sovereign debt and crisis management Monetary policy architecture and central bank strategy European financial stability and macroprudential frameworks Fiscal discipline and European economic governance The political economy of monetary union Sovereign debt restructuring and creditor negotiations Global financial risk and institutional design Ideal for CFOs, chief risk officers, and sovereign debt investors assessing European financial and monetary risk Central bank and treasury audiences engaging with monetary policy frameworks and eurozone governance Board members and senior executives in financial services with exposure to European sovereign or systemic risk Conference conveners and senior programme curators framing high-level discussions on global financial governance or geopolitical economic risk Audience outcomes A grounded understanding of how ECB decision-making operates in practice – including the tensions between fiscal rules, monetary mandates, and political reality that standard accounts do not capture First-hand perspective on the sequence of decisions and institutional failures that produced the 2011 eurozone sovereign debt crisis, and what the resolution process actually involved A framework for distinguishing between sovereign debt fragility, monetary transmission risk, and structural economic weakness – distinctions that matter for investment positioning and policy planning Practical context for evaluating European economic governance reform proposals against the precedents of the most recent crisis – including what was agreed, what was deferred, and why Insight into how technocratic governance functions under democratic pressure, and the institutional limits it encounters

Why organisations work with Konstantin von Eggert Three decades of first-hand reporting from inside Russia, including running the BBC Russian Service Moscow bureau as Editor-in-Chief from 1998 to 2009. A rare dual perspective: editor of a major Western newsroom in Moscow and former Vice-President for Public and Government Affairs at ExxonMobil Russia, so he understands both how the Kremlin signals and how Western corporates absorb those signals. Honorary MBE from Queen Elizabeth II and Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of Lithuania, both awarded in 2008, mark a credibility recognised on both sides of the Russia-West divide. Bilingual moderator and host (Russian and English) with on-air experience at BBC, Kommersant FM, and TV Rain, so he can chair sensitive conversations as well as deliver the keynote. Writes weekly for Deutsche Welle from Vilnius, which means his commentary stays current with Russian domestic politics, Baltic security, and the post-2022 risk landscape. Biography highlights Editor-in-Chief, BBC Russian Service Moscow bureau, 1998 to 2009. Vice-President for Public and Government Affairs, ExxonMobil Russia Inc., 2009 to 2010. Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Kommersant FM, Russia’s first 24-hour news station, 2010 to 2015. Program host and political commentator, TV Rain, 2016 to 2018. Columnist and program host, Deutsche Welle, based in Vilnius since 2016. Honorary MBE (2008) and Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of Lithuania (2008); Member of Chatham House. Biography Russia is one of the few country files where the gap between official narrative and operating reality is large enough to wreck a strategy. Reading it well requires sources, language, and a feel for how the Kremlin actually communicates. Konstantin von Eggert has spent more than thirty years inside that gap. He ran the BBC Russian Service Moscow bureau as Editor-in-Chief from 1998 to 2009, after starting as a reporter at the Moscow daily Kuranty in 1990 and serving as Diplomatic Correspondent and Deputy Foreign Editor at Izvestia. In 2008 Queen Elizabeth II appointed him an Honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire for his work at the BBC. The same year he received the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of Lithuania. What makes his perspective unusual is the year he spent on the other side of the table. From 2009 to 2010 he was Vice-President for Public and Government Affairs at ExxonMobil Russia Inc., responsible for relations with the Russian government and political and economic analysis for one of the world’s largest investors in the country. He then returned to Russian media as Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Kommersant FM, and later as a program host at the independent channel TV Rain. Since 2016 he has been based in Vilnius, writing a weekly column on Russian affairs and the Baltic States for Deutsche Welle and consulting on communications, reputation, and political risk for investors in Russia and the post-Soviet space. He is a Member of Chatham House and has served on the editorial boards of Pro et Contra at the Carnegie Moscow Centre and the Security Index quarterly. He holds an honours MA in history and Arabic from the Moscow University Institute of Asian and African Studies and speaks English, French, and Arabic. Key speaking topics Russia under Putin: domestic politics and foreign policy Geopolitics of the post-Soviet space Baltic security and the European frontline Sanctions, energy, and Western corporate exposure to Russia Information, propaganda, and independent media inside Russia Political risk for investors in Russia and the CIS Ideal for Boards and executive teams of multinationals with residual Russia, CIS, or Baltic exposure Energy, commodities, and infrastructure leadership teams reassessing political risk Defence, foreign affairs, and security policy audiences Conferences and private gatherings that need a bilingual (Russian and English) chair or moderator on Russia or geopolitical themes Audience outcomes A clearer read of how decisions are actually taken in the Kremlin and how its signals are designed to be received. A sharper view of the post-2022 risk picture for Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltic States. An informed sense of where Western corporates have historically misread Russia, drawn from inside ExxonMobil’s government affairs operation. Concrete reference points on Russian media, propaganda, and the space that remains for independent reporting.

Why organisations work with Klisman Murati The Global Power Index, a proprietary quantitative model assessing 194 countries across ten dimensions of national power and 30 years of data. Clients drawing on it include NATO, the European Commission, Shell, JP Morgan, and HSBC. A documented forecasting record. The GPI signalled Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Germany’s 2024 recession before consensus, and informs the way shipping, energy, and capital-allocation leaders read their geopolitical exposure. Two frameworks that give boards a shared language for hard problems: geo-risk, his term for reading political, technological, demographic, and capital forces as one compounding system, and segmented polarity, his alternative to the developed and emerging categories for seeing where capability is actually accumulating. A live read on where power is moving rather than a retrospective. He brings specific current calls, from Gulf capital as a new power centre to India’s climb from 24th to 6th on the index since 1994, and why blocs like BRICS cohere in some domains and fragment in others. A multidisciplinary lens that single-discipline analysts cannot replicate. His training spans anthropology, political economy, energy policy, security studies, and financial crime, which is what allows him to read AI, protectionism, capital flows, and demographic change as one connected system. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Pareto Economics, the London-based strategic intelligence firm behind the Global Power Index Creator of the Global Power Index, built on 88 variables and more than 500,000 data points, with a methodology developed alongside Dr Karim Abadir, Emeritus Professor of Financial Econometrics at Imperial College London Originator of the geo-risk and segmented polarity frameworks, the latter set out in his macro thesis How to Think in First Principles About Global Affairs and the basis of his forthcoming book, Segmented Polarity: Why the World’s Most Important Economies Are Being Dangerously Misread Forecasts arriving ahead of consensus include Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Germany’s 2024 recession Clients include NATO, the European Commission, Shell, JP Morgan, HSBC, Vanguard, Telia, and Stena Bulk, with audiences in more than 120 countries Visiting Professor at the Helsinki Geoeconomics Institute; commentator across BBC, Al Jazeera, CGTN, the Financial Times, and Investment Week; author of more than 250 published articles Biography Pareto Economics called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Germany’s 2024 recession ahead of consensus. Behind those calls sits the Global Power Index, a proprietary model of 194 countries built on more than 85 variables and over half a million data points across 30 years. Klisman Murati founded the firm in 2017 to fix a specific failure in country-risk analysis. Conventional models rank economies by income thresholds and credit ratings. The GPI instead measures capability across ten structural dimensions, from energy and critical-minerals security to industrial capacity, technological leadership, human capital, and financial resilience, and reads each on two axes: where a country stands today, and how fast it is moving. The methodology was built with Dr Karim Abadir, Emeritus Professor of Financial Econometrics at Imperial College London. His work rests on two ideas. Geo-risk treats geopolitics, globalisation, technology, and societal change as a single compounding system rather than separate stories. Segmented polarity, the basis of his forthcoming book of the same name, replaces both the developed-and-emerging divide and the catch-all of multipolarity with a sharper read of how countries actually accumulate power, selectively, in the domains where they can compete. Both let leaders price change before it reaches consensus. That work has put him in the room with the people allocating capital under geopolitical exposure: NATO, the European Commission, Shell, JP Morgan, HSBC, Vanguard, Stena Bulk, and Telia, with audiences in more than 120 countries. His current reads from the index include Gulf capital as a new power centre, India’s climb from 24th to 6th place since 1994, and why groupings like BRICS hold together in some domains and fragment in others. Key speaking topics Geoeconomic strategy and country risk The Global Power Index and quantitative country forecasting Geo-risk and the compounding of political, technological, and capital forces Segmented polarity and emerging-market reassessment Geopolitical risk and capital allocation Fragmentation of the global trade and investment order AI, protectionism, and the redistribution of global power Long-horizon strategic foresight Ideal for Boards, investment committees, and CIOs setting country and exposure strategy in a fracturing global order Asset managers and family offices repositioning capital ahead of geopolitical shocks Corporate strategy leadership in energy, shipping, financial services, and technology with material cross-border exposure Policymakers and government officials shaping long-horizon economic and security strategy Audience outcomes A clearer view of which forces will actually shape the next five to ten years, separated from headline noise A working framework for pricing geopolitical risk into specific capital allocation, market entry, and exposure decisions Specific signals to track in their own industry, sector, or geography, drawn directly from the GPI’s underlying data Replacement of outdated categories like “emerging markets” with a sharper, data-driven read of country capability

Why organisations work with Kjell A. Nordstrom The «Karaoke Capitalism» framework names a specific competitive failure – the institutional imitation produced by benchmarking and best practice – that most strategy teams recognise but lack precise language to challenge or dismantle. His «multi-urban corporation» thesis, developed in Urban Express, gives multinationals a practical alternative to national market segmentation: a model for deciding where to compete based on urban density, talent pools, and city-level economic power rather than country borders. His argument that urbanisation and the feminisation of skilled workforces are structural economic forces – not social policy questions – translates demographic change into a direct input for strategic planning and talent decisions. Three decades of advisory work with large multinationals and the UK government, grounded in academic research into the internationalisation of firms, means his structural arguments have been pressure-tested against real strategic decisions at board level. Funky Business, translated into 33 languages and ranked among the greatest business books ever published, demonstrates that his frameworks have been tested and adopted in every major market – giving leadership teams confidence the thinking travels beyond any single regional or cultural context. Biography highlights PhD in International Business, Stockholm School of Economics (1991); former Assistant Professor at the Institute of International Business (IIB), same institution Co-author of Funky Business: Talent Makes Capital Dance, translated into 33 languages and ranked 16th greatest business book of all time; co-author of Karaoke Capitalism and Funky Business Forever with Jonas Ridderstrale Co-author of Urban Express and Momentum with Per Schlingmann; sole author of The Monkey and the Money: A History of Capitalism (Bokförlaget Stolpe, 2023) Ranked #9 in the Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers (2005); featured in multiple subsequent editions of the ranking Advisory and consulting work with large multinational corporations and the UK government Media appearances across CNN, CNBC, Fortune, Fast Company, Time Magazine, and the Financial Times; keynote presentations delivered in over 100 countries Biography The rules of competitive strategy seemed settled for most of the twentieth century. Identify a national market. Deploy capital and scale. Benchmark against rivals. Kjell A. Nordstrom, a Swedish economist with a PhD from the Stockholm School of Economics, has spent three decades building the case that those rules are losing their purchase – and that the structural forces displacing them are more powerful than most boards have yet absorbed. His 2000 book Funky Business, co-authored with Jonas Ridderstrale, argued that talent, not capital, had become the decisive competitive input. The book became an international bestseller in 33 languages and was ranked among the 16 greatest business books ever published. The follow-up, Karaoke Capitalism (2003), named a specific organisational failure: benchmarking and best practice had trained entire industries to imitate rather than differentiate, producing what the authors called a karaoke economy of second-rate cover versions. Both books remain in active circulation in serious management conversations. His subsequent work extended the analytical frame outward. Urban Express (2014), co-authored with Per Schlingmann, argued that multinationals are becoming multi-urban corporations. Cities, not nations, are the primary economic units of the coming decades, and an educated, urban, female workforce is the dominant skilled labour pool of the near future. Momentum (2023) examined how pandemic, geopolitical rupture, and climate pressure are accelerating this structural shift and what it demands from the next generation of leaders. Ranked #9 in the Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers (2005), and a regular presence in Fortune, the Financial Times, and on CNN, Nordstrom has advised large multinationals and the UK government on strategy and globalisation. His value in a boardroom conversation is specific: not scenario planning or trend forecasting, but structural argument about which forces are deterministic, and which are merely plausible. Key speaking topics Globalisation and competitive strategy Urbanisation and the rise of the multi-urban corporation The karaoke economy: imitation as competitive liability Talent as the primary driver of competitive advantage Demographic change as structural economic force The long-run trajectory of capitalism Crisis, geopolitical rupture, and strategic response Ideal for Executive and board-level strategy sessions at multinational organisations Government and public policy leaders navigating structural economic transformation Strategy, corporate development, and planning functions reviewing long-term competitive positioning International leadership forums and global business summits Audience outcomes A structural framework for identifying which macro forces are actually reshaping competition in their sector Language for naming and challenging institutional imitation within their own organisation A working understanding of the multi-urban corporation thesis and its implications for market entry and talent strategy Clearer thinking on how urbanisation and demographic change translate into actionable strategic planning inputs A longer-range perspective on the current moment in capitalism’s evolution and what it demands from senior leadership

Why organisations work with Kishore Mahbubani His analysis comes from Singapore’s structural position: a small, open economy that has always had to navigate between great powers without the luxury of strategic illusion. That vantage point produces insight unavailable from inside either Washington or Beijing. His ten books – including Has China Won?, Has the West Lost It?, and The Great Convergence, selected by the Financial Times as one of the best books of 2013 – give audiences a proven intellectual framework, not commentary. Leaders leave with a model for thinking, not just a briefing. He operated inside the machinery of global governance at its highest level – UN Security Council President in 2001 and 2002, Singapore’s Permanent Representative to the UN across two postings spanning two decades – during some of the most consequential shifts in the post-Cold War order. His argument that Western strategic errors, not Chinese aggression, are the primary driver of geopolitical instability gives boards and executive teams a more analytically useful starting point for risk decisions than the standard Western-media frame. Named by Foreign Policy magazine as a Top Global Thinker in both 2010 and 2011, and elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019, his standing as a public intellectual is verifiable and specific – not attributed to unnamed rankings. Biography highlights Two-time Singapore Permanent Representative to the United Nations (1984-1989 and 1998-2004); President of the UN Security Council, January 2001 and May 2002 Former Permanent Secretary, Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with earlier posting to Cambodia during the 1973-74 war Founding Dean, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore (2004-2017) Author of ten books including Has China Won? (2020), Has the West Lost It? (2018), and The Great Convergence (2013, selected by the Financial Times as one of its best books of the year) Elected honorary international member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2019); Foreign Policy Top Global Thinker (2010 and 2011); Prospect Top 50 World Thinkers (2014) Regular contributor to Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Financial Times, the New York Times, and the Washington Post; described by Foreign Policy as “the muse of the Asian century” Biography The geopolitical assumptions that shaped corporate strategy for two decades are fragmenting. China’s economic weight, the contested legitimacy of multilateral institutions, and the competing logics of Washington and Beijing are forcing organisations to rethink how they read the world. Very few people have been inside the machinery of that world – at the UN Security Council table, in bilateral diplomacy, and in sustained academic output across three decades – long enough to explain what the structural shift actually means. Kishore Mahbubani spent 33 years in Singapore’s foreign service, culminating in two terms as Singapore’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations and as President of the UN Security Council in 2001 and 2002. He also served as Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Singapore’s position – an open, trade-dependent city-state that cannot align itself exclusively with either Washington or Beijing – shaped an analytical disposition that is genuinely non-aligned. That is not a diplomatic posture; it is an intellectual asset. From 2004 to 2017 he built the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore into a leading institution, then turned to full-time writing and research. His ten books – from Can Asians Think? in 1998 to Has China Won? in 2020 and the memoir Living the Asian Century in 2024 – constitute a sustained intellectual project: arguing that the West’s two-century dominance was a historical anomaly, and that the world needs new frameworks for a genuinely multipolar order. The Great Convergence was selected by the Financial Times as one of the best books of 2013. He has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was described by Foreign Policy magazine as “the muse of the Asian century.” What distinguishes his value to senior audiences is not simply that he has held senior positions – many speakers have – but that he has argued a consistent, testable thesis about global power across four decades, in public, against the prevailing consensus. For boards and leadership teams navigating the US-China contest, that track record is the credential that matters. Key speaking topics US-China strategic competition Asia’s return to global economic centrality The future of multilateral institutions and global governance Geopolitical risk and corporate strategy Non-Western perspectives on the international order Singapore and Southeast Asia as strategic bellwethers Ideal for Corporate boards and C-suite teams with significant Asia-Pacific exposure or market decisions pending Financial services, investment, and asset management organisations pricing geopolitical risk Government and public sector leaders navigating multilateral relationships Strategy and scenario planning teams stress-testing assumptions about the global order Audience outcomes A working analytical model for the US-China contest – beyond news-cycle commentary Clearer understanding of how Asia’s rise is reshaping trade, technology standards, and institutional allegiances A non-Western frame for interpreting geopolitical signals that most Western analysis misreads Specific historical parallels and precedents for managing great-power transitions A more calibrated vocabulary for internal strategic conversations about geopolitical exposure

Why organisations work with Kaihan Krippendorff He runs Outthinker, a working peer network of chief strategy, innovation and growth officers from Fortune 500 companies. The research that feeds his keynotes is drawn from sitting CSOs, not desk study. His IDEAS process, Outthinker Playbook, and 9Ps business model framework give strategy teams a structured way to surface non-obvious options. These are taught inside Wharton Executive Education, NYU, and FIU. Proximity, co-authored with Robert Wolcott of Kellogg, is the most developed business-side thesis on what just-in-time production, AI, and on-demand services mean for where value is created. It earned Thinkers50 recognition and a Next Big Idea Club endorsement. He bridges strategy and internal entrepreneurship. Driving Innovation from Within (Columbia Business School Publishing) addresses the operational problem of getting new ideas through a corporate immune system, the issue most CSOs actually wrestle with. Biography highlights Founder of Outthinker, a peer network of chief strategy, innovation, growth and transformation officers from Fortune 500 and large private organisations. Former McKinsey consultant; senior fellow at Wharton; teaching roles at NYU School of Professional Studies and Florida International University. Author of six books including Outthink the Competition, Driving Innovation from Within, and Proximity (co-authored with Robert Wolcott, 2024). Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2019; shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Innovation Award (2019) and Strategy Award (2023). Host of three podcasts: Outthinkers, The Chief Strategy Officer Podcast, and Strategy at Scale Podcast. Contributor to Harvard Business Review and Fast Company. Biography Competitive advantage in most large companies is built on assumptions that quietly stop holding. The Outthinker network was set up to surface those assumptions early. It is a working group of chief strategy, innovation, growth and transformation officers from Fortune 500 and large private companies, convened by Kaihan Krippendorff to pressure-test where their industries are actually moving. Krippendorff trained at McKinsey before founding Outthinker. His doctorate is in economics and business; his engineering degree comes from the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering, with further study at Wharton, Columbia Business School, and London Business School. He is a senior fellow at Wharton Executive Education and teaches at NYU School of Professional Studies and Florida International University. His published work has the same emphasis. Outthink the Competition sets out the strategic patterns disruptors use that incumbents rarely consider. Driving Innovation from Within, published by Columbia Business School Publishing, addresses the harder operational problem of moving an idea through a corporate immune system. Proximity, co-authored with Robert Wolcott of Kellogg, argues that AI, on-demand production, and digital infrastructure are collapsing the distance between supply and demand, and that this shift, rather than any single technology, is what redraws competitive position. He hosts three podcasts aimed at the same audience: Outthinkers, The Chief Strategy Officer Podcast, and Strategy at Scale Podcast. Thinkers50 has ranked him on its Radar list and shortlisted him for both its Innovation and Strategy awards. Key speaking topics Strategy under accelerating disruption Business model innovation Corporate innovation and internal entrepreneurship AI and the proximity economy Outside-in strategic foresight Chief strategy officer practice Growth strategy for Fortune 500 organisations Ideal for CSOs, chief innovation officers, and chief growth officers running strategy refresh cycles Boards and executive teams reassessing competitive position in an industry under structural change Corporate transformation leads building internal innovation pipelines Audience outcomes A clearer view of which assumptions underpinning the current strategy have already expired A working vocabulary, drawn from the Outthinker Playbook and 9Ps, for generating non-obvious strategic options A framework for thinking about AI and on-demand technology as a shift in where value is created, not a productivity tool Sharper questions for the next strategy offsite, informed by what sitting CSOs in the Outthinker network are actually working on

Why organisations work with Joseph Stiglitz His Nobel Prize work demonstrated that markets systematically mis-price when participants have unequal access to information – a finding that maps directly onto corporate governance failures, credit risk models, and regulatory blind spots that boards encounter in practice. He is among the very few economists to have held operational control over both US domestic economic policy (Council of Economic Advisers) and global financial architecture (World Bank Chief Economist) – his critique of institutions carries authority because it comes from inside them. The commission he chaired for President Sarkozy in 2008 produced the framework now being advanced by the OECD as a formal alternative to GDP. Organisations engaged in ESG reporting, long-term value creation, and sustainability governance are already operating within the measurement landscape he helped design. The Price of Inequality (2012) and The Road to Freedom (2024) make the specific, evidence-based case that inequality is a structural drag on growth, market stability, and democratic governance – giving senior leaders a rigorous foundation for treating social outcomes as financial risk, not reputational noise. His analysis of globalisation – grounded in direct experience of how the IMF and World Bank made their most consequential decisions – gives organisations operating across emerging markets a more accurate model of where global financial governance fails and why. Biography highlights Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001), shared with Akerlof and Spence, for the theory of markets with asymmetric information – a finding that reshaped economics and became standard in policy analysis University Professor at Columbia University, the institution’s highest academic rank, with appointments in Economics, SIPA, and Columbia Business School Chair of the US Council of Economic Advisers (1995-97) under President Clinton; Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank (1997-2000) Chaired the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (2008-09) at President Sarkozy’s request; published as Mismeasuring Our Lives; continues to chair the successor High-Level Expert Group at the OECD John Bates Clark Medal (1979); more than 40 honorary doctorates, including from Cambridge and Oxford; named by Time as one of the 100 most influential people in the world (2011) Author of more than 10 books for general audiences, including Globalization and Its Discontents (2002), The Price of Inequality (2012), and The Road to Freedom (2024) Lead author of the 1995 IPCC Report, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize; regular contributor to Project Syndicate; regular coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Guardian Biography The strategic blind spot in most boardrooms is not a lack of data – it is a set of inherited economic assumptions that have been treated as fact. Markets clear. Prices reflect value. Deregulation improves outcomes. Joseph Stiglitz has spent five decades building the evidence against each of these claims, from the insurance market to the credit system to the global financial architecture. His Nobel Prize in 2001 recognised the foundational work. In markets where some participants know more than others, the outcomes that standard models predict do not materialise. Credit gets rationed below efficient levels. Insurance markets produce worse aggregate outcomes than pooling would allow. Labour markets generate unemployment that wage adjustments alone cannot resolve. These are not edge cases – they are the structural features of every market senior leaders navigate. Beyond the academy, Stiglitz has held the positions where those theories met consequences. He served as Chair of the US Council of Economic Advisers under Clinton and as Chief Economist of the World Bank. His subsequent criticism of those institutions – in Globalization and Its Discontents (2002) and The Price of Inequality (2012) – carries weight precisely because it was written by someone who watched the decisions being made. His more recent work extends the argument into measurement and institutional design. The commission he chaired for President Sarkozy produced Mismeasuring Our Lives (2009), a formal challenge to GDP as a reliable indicator of economic and social progress. That work now underpins the OECD’s ongoing effort to develop performance metrics beyond output. His 2024 book, The Road to Freedom, argues that the economic assumptions embedded in most policy and business planning are deliberate choices – with identifiable costs. For organisations navigating inequality risk, regulatory exposure, and ESG pressure, the distinction matters. Key speaking topics Information economics and market failure Economic inequality and structural risk Globalisation and its institutional consequences Beyond-GDP measurement and performance metrics Progressive capitalism and regulatory design Global financial architecture and reform Political economy of growth and distribution Ideal for Boards, CFOs, and chief economists assessing macroeconomic risk and long-term structural exposure Policy-facing organisations, government affairs functions, and institutions engaged in regulatory strategy Organisations navigating ESG, sustainability reporting, and long-term value measurement Financial services and investment institutions operating across global and emerging markets Audience outcomes A clearer understanding of why standard economic metrics – GDP, market efficiency assumptions, deregulation as growth driver – systematically obscure real performance and risk Insight into how information failures produce predictable market outcomes that corporate governance frameworks routinely miss A framework for interpreting the structural forces – inequality, regulatory shift, political backlash against globalisation – now reshaping the operating environment for large organisations Familiarity with the alternative performance metrics emerging from the OECD and the international standards community, and how they apply to strategic decision-making A more accurate model of where global financial governance fails and why – grounded in direct institutional experience at the World Bank and within the US government

Why organisations work with Jonathon Porritt Three decades inside the rooms where government, business, and civil society negotiate climate policy, including nine years chairing the UK Sustainable Development Commission for three prime ministers. Co-founder of Forum for the Future, the consultancy that has worked with Marks & Spencer, Unilever, and other FTSE boards on serious sustainability strategy rather than reporting compliance. Author of Capitalism as if the World Matters, a book that argues capitalism is the only viable vehicle for sustainability and sets out what reshaping it actually demands; cited as a foundational text in corporate sustainability curricula. Independence from any single corporate paymaster; willingness to tell senior teams what their own sustainability advisors will not. A long view that connects climate, biodiversity, inequality, and population; useful for boards trying to understand how environmental risks compound across a strategic horizon. Biography highlights Co-founder and Founder Director of Forum for the Future (1996-2023), one of the world’s leading sustainability charities, with offices in the UK, US, India, and Southeast Asia. Chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, 2000-2009, advising the Blair and Brown governments on environmental policy. Director of Friends of the Earth (UK), 1984-1990; former Co-Chair of the UK Green Party. Co-founder of The Prince of Wales’s Business and Sustainability Programme, delivered through the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. Author of Hope in Hell (Simon & Schuster, 2020), The World We Made (Phaidon, 2013), and Capitalism as if the World Matters (Earthscan, 2005). CBE for services to environmental protection (2000); Chancellor of Keele University, 2012-2022. Biography The corporate climate agenda has run into its first credibility test. A decade of net-zero pledges, ESG reporting, and sustainability committees has not closed the gap between what boards say and what their capital plans deliver. Porritt has spent his working life inside that gap. He co-founded Forum for the Future in 1996 with Sara Parkin and Paul Ekins, and ran it as Founder Director for nearly thirty years. Forum has worked with Marks & Spencer, Unilever, and other FTSE-100 boards on the harder questions of business model change, not the softer ones of disclosure. Before that, he ran Friends of the Earth (UK) through the late 1980s and co-chaired the Green Party. For nine years he chaired the UK Sustainable Development Commission, advising Tony Blair and Gordon Brown directly. He also co-founded the Prince of Wales’s Business and Sustainability Programme, now part of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, where senior executives go to interrogate their own sustainability strategies. Few people have spent as much time on both sides of that table. His books map the argument. Capitalism as if the World Matters made the case that capitalism is the only viable engine for a sustainable future, and set out the reforms that case requires. The World We Made imagined 2050 as if those reforms had landed. Hope in Hell, written into the climate emergency, is sharper and more impatient. Read together, they explain why he is taken seriously by chief executives and climate activists alike, even when he is telling each of them something they would rather not hear. Key speaking topics Sustainability strategy and ESG governance Climate risk and the energy transition Reforming capitalism for environmental limits Net-zero credibility and corporate accountability Long-term scenario planning and systems change Biodiversity, nature, and business Intergenerational responsibility and the next decade Ideal for Board directors and CEOs reviewing the credibility of their net-zero and ESG commitments Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG leads building serious, board-ready strategy Investor relations and capital allocation teams under increasing scrutiny on transition planning Strategy and risk leaders trying to integrate climate and biodiversity into long-range planning Audience outcomes A clearer reading of where their own organisation’s climate strategy is exposed to investor, regulator, and employee scrutiny A working understanding of what credible, board-level sustainability looks like beyond reporting compliance A sharper sense of how climate, biodiversity, inequality, and capital allocation compound as connected risks Direct, unflattering challenge from someone with no commercial interest in their answer