Scenario Planning & Strategic Foresight speakers

Why organisations work with Ramy Nassar He brings a published, structured method for AI product design from idea to launch, set out in the AI Product Design Handbook and used by enterprise teams who need a repeatable process rather than another inspiration deck. He has run innovation inside Mattel and led design and strategy at Architech for Apple, Air Canada, CIBC, Facebook and Rogers, so the operational reality of shipping new products inside large organisations is in the room. His work separates “AI Now, Next and Never,” giving boards a defensible position on what to deploy, what to wait on, and where to draw governance lines. He teaches design thinking and innovation at McMaster University and Toronto Metropolitan University, and executive programmes at Schulich ExecEd, which keeps the frameworks tested against working leaders. Client engagements span Apple, TD Bank, TELUS, Verizon, New Balance and the Government of Canada, covering both regulated and consumer environments. Biography highlights Author, AI Product Design Handbook, and the forthcoming The World After AI (early 2027) Former Head of Innovation, Mattel, where he launched the company’s first innovation lab Former Managing Director, Design and Strategy, Architech Founder, 1000 Days Out, advisory practice on AI and emerging technology Faculty: McMaster University, Toronto Metropolitan University, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Schulich ExecEd at York University Featured by CPA Canada at The ONE national conference; speaker at FITC, IxDA, FWD50 and World Usability Congress Biography Most AI projects inside large organisations have the same shape. A pilot ships, attention moves on, and the operating model does not change. Boards then have to decide whether the next round of spend should go into more experiments or into the harder work of getting AI into the product and into the workflow. That is the decision Ramy Nassar is built to inform. The AI Product Design Handbook sets out a repeatable process for taking AI products from idea to launch, with explicit attention to user trust, transparency and governance. It is used by product and design leaders who need a method, not a manifesto. The argument is grounded in his time as Head of Innovation at Mattel, where he launched the company’s first innovation lab and led emerging-technology work for Barbie and Hot Wheels, and earlier as Managing Director of Design and Strategy at Architech, where he ran client work for Apple, Air Canada, CIBC, Facebook and Rogers. Through 1000 Days Out he advises senior teams at Apple, TD Bank, TELUS, Verizon, New Balance and the Government of Canada on AI adoption, strategic foresight, and product strategy. His forthcoming book, The World After AI, extends that foresight work, with the argument that the decisive variable in any AI future is the set of choices leaders make, not the technology itself. His framing of “AI Now, Next and Never” is built for boards that need to commit capital and set governance lines at the same time. Faculty roles at McMaster University, Toronto Metropolitan University, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and Schulich ExecEd at York University keep the frameworks tested against working executives. CPA Canada featured him at The ONE national conference on turning insights into measurable impact, and his international speaking includes FITC, IxDA, FWD50, and the World Usability Congress. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence adoption and product design Responsible AI and governance Strategic foresight and scenario planning Innovation strategy Emerging technology and exponential change Digital product and customer experience design Ideal for Boards and C-suite teams setting AI investment and governance policy Chief Product Officers, Chief Design Officers and Chief Innovation Officers moving from pilots to deployed AI Heads of Strategy and corporate development running scenario planning under technology uncertainty Public-sector leaders shaping responsible AI policy and procurement Audience outcomes A defensible “now, next, never” view of where to deploy AI, where to wait, and where to refuse A structured method for taking AI features from concept to launch with governance built in Sharper foresight tools for testing strategy against multiple long-range scenarios Concrete language for communicating AI risk, ethics and product trade-offs to non-technical executives and customers

Why organisations work with Ray Kurzweil A documented forecasting record stretching from 1990’s The Age of Intelligent Machines through to The Singularity Is Nearer in 2024, allowing leaders to test their own planning assumptions against predictions that have already been scored against reality. Foundational practitioner credibility: Kurzweil invented the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the Kurzweil 250 synthesiser, and the first commercially viable large-vocabulary speech recognition. He is a technologist who built the technology he describes. Thirteen years at Google leading work on natural language understanding, ending in 2025, give audiences direct insight into how today’s frontier AI labs actually think about machine intelligence. The Law of Accelerating Returns is the most cited framework for why technology trajectories defeat linear planning, giving boards a structured way to argue about long-range bets. Currently Chief AI Officer at Beyond Imagination, the humanoid robotics company he co-founded in 2018, which puts him inside the operating problems of deploying AI into physical industrial environments rather than at a remove from them. Biography highlights Recipient of the 1999 U.S. National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the highest U.S. honour in technology, awarded by President Clinton. 2001 Lemelson-MIT Prize ($500,000) and inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002. Author of The Age of Intelligent Machines (1990), The Age of Spiritual Machines (1999), The Singularity Is Near (2005), How to Create a Mind (2012), and The Singularity Is Nearer (2024). Co-founder of Singularity University at NASA Ames Research Center; co-founder and Chief AI Officer of Beyond Imagination, valued at $500 million in its 2025 Series B. Director of Engineering, then Principal Researcher and AI Visionary at Google from 2012 to 2025, focused on natural language understanding. Named to the Time 100 AI list (2024); holds 21 honorary doctorates and a Technical Grammy Award. Biography By 2009, computers were supposed to be in our pockets, recognising speech well enough to take dictation and reading text aloud to blind users. They were. The predictions came from a 1999 book that struck many of its original readers as fanciful. The inventor who wrote it had already built the first three of those technologies himself. That inventor is Ray Kurzweil. His Law of Accelerating Returns, articulated in that 1999 book and elaborated in The Singularity Is Near in 2005, holds that information technologies progress along smooth exponential curves. As one paradigm exhausts itself, capital and talent flow toward whatever comes next, and the underlying curve continues. The authority comes from rare breadth. Kurzweil invented omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the Kurzweil 250 synthesiser, and the first commercial large-vocabulary speech recognition. President Clinton awarded him the 1999 National Medal of Technology. He spent thirteen years at Google leading work on natural language understanding, ending in 2025 as Principal Researcher and AI Visionary. The 2024 sequel The Singularity Is Nearer revisited those predictions in light of the AI advances of the preceding decade and concluded that human-level AI by 2029 still held. Since 2025 he has served as Chief AI Officer at Beyond Imagination, the humanoid robotics company he co-founded, which raised $100 million in Series B funding at a $500 million valuation that year. The work places him inside the operational reality of deploying AI into physical industrial environments. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and the path to AGI The Law of Accelerating Returns and exponential technology Long-range AI and computing forecasts Human-machine convergence and brain-computer integration Biotechnology, longevity, and the merging of biology with computation Innovation cycles and the economics of technological disruption Ideal for CEOs, CTOs, and chief strategy officers planning multi-year technology investments Boards and executive committees stress-testing long-range corporate plans Innovation, R&D, and AI leadership teams inside large enterprises Industry conferences on AI, future of technology, healthcare innovation, and technology strategy Audience outcomes An empirical map of how computing power, gene sequencing speed, and AI capability have actually doubled over recent decades, against which to test internal forecasting assumptions. Concrete forecast dates for human-level AI, brain-computer integration, and the Singularity, with the reasoning behind each. A view of which earlier Kurzweil predictions have been validated by the current AI moment and which remain open. Sharper instincts for spotting linear extrapolations sitting inside long-range corporate plans. A common reference point for boards and leadership teams arguing about long-range technology investment.

Why organisations work with Richard Haass His “nonpolarity” framework – first published in Foreign Affairs and developed in A World in Disarray – gives leadership teams a structural vocabulary for geopolitical risk that goes beyond the U.S.-China binary and accounts for the dozens of state and non-state actors now shaping outcomes. He has not only analysed diplomatic crises – he has chaired them. His role as chair of the 2013 Northern Ireland multiparty negotiations, which provided the foundation for the 2014 Stormont House Agreement, gives him practitioner credibility that no purely academic or analytical peer can replicate. Twenty years at the head of the Council on Foreign Relations means organisations gain access to the framework that has shaped U.S. policy thinking across four administrations – not a commentary on that framework, but the source of it. He served inside U.S. foreign policy across four presidencies and both parties – at the Pentagon, State Department, and White House – and can translate the actual mechanics of how foreign policy decisions are made into the strategic implications for non-government actors operating across borders. His New York Times bestseller The Bill of Obligations demonstrates a capacity rare among foreign policy figures: the ability to make complex geopolitical argument legible and actionable for non-specialist audiences, including boards with no background in international relations. Biography highlights President of the Council on Foreign Relations (2003–2023); now President Emeritus – twenty years leading the United States’ most influential foreign policy institution Director of Policy Planning, U.S. Department of State; principal adviser to Secretary of State Colin Powell Senate-confirmed Ambassador; U.S. Special Envoy to the Northern Ireland peace process; U.S. Coordinator for the Future of Afghanistan Chaired the 2013 Northern Ireland multiparty negotiations, which formed the foundation for the 2014 Stormont House Agreement Presidential Citizens Medal; State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award; Tipperary International Peace Award; diplomatic decorations from South Korea and Japan Rhodes Scholar; DPhil, Oxford University; formerly on faculty at Harvard Kennedy School of Government Author or editor of sixteen books, including A World in Disarray, the New York Times bestseller The Bill of Obligations, and the originating Foreign Affairs article “The Age of Nonpolarity” Senior Counselor, Centerview Partners; Distinguished University Scholar, NYU School of Professional Studies Biography The post-war international order – the system of alliances, institutions, and rules that governed trade, security, and diplomacy for seven decades – is no longer doing what it was designed to do. For boards operating across borders, that is not an abstract observation. It changes what capital commitments are credible, which supply chains are secure, and which alliances will hold under pressure. Richard Haass led the Council on Foreign Relations for twenty years, shaping U.S. foreign policy debate across the Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations. Before that, he was Director of Policy Planning at the State Department, principal adviser to Secretary of State Colin Powell. His government service spans four presidencies and both parties – beginning at the Pentagon under Carter, continuing at the State Department under Reagan, and reaching the National Security Council under George H.W. Bush, where he received the Presidential Citizens Medal for his contributions during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. His intellectual contribution is specific. In his Foreign Affairs article “The Age of Nonpolarity” and the book A World in Disarray, he argues that the current era is neither unipolar nor multipolar – it is nonpolar. Power is distributed across dozens of state and non-state actors, alliances are conditional rather than fixed, and the mechanisms that once imposed order are no longer sufficient. For organisations that have built strategy on the assumption of a rules-based international system, that argument has direct consequences for how risk is modelled and where long-term commitments are made. His experience is not only analytical. In 2013, he chaired the multiparty negotiations in Northern Ireland that formed the foundation for the 2014 Stormont House Agreement – making him one of the few people in the world who has both theorised about diplomatic complexity and navigated it at the table. His most recent book, The Bill of Obligations, a New York Times bestseller, extends the argument into democratic governance: what the erosion of civic responsibility means for the political stability on which international order ultimately depends. Key speaking topics Nonpolarity and the fracture of the post-war international order U.S. foreign policy and geopolitical risk Diplomacy, conflict resolution, and negotiation Transatlantic relations and the future of alliances Russia-Ukraine and the reshaping of European security Middle East dynamics and regional instability American democracy, civic obligation, and domestic political risk Geopolitical implications for global business and investment Ideal for Boards and C-suite teams with material exposure to geopolitical risk Financial services, asset management, and investment leadership requiring structured country and political risk assessment Global corporations navigating multi-market operations, trade exposure, or supply chain complexity Government affairs, public policy, and strategic foresight leadership Audience outcomes A structural framework – “nonpolarity” – for understanding why the old geopolitical playbook is no longer reliable, and what the distributed power landscape actually looks like Clarity on the strategic implications of specific flashpoints – Russia-Ukraine, U.S.-China competition, Middle East instability – beyond event-by-event commentary Understanding of how U.S. foreign policy is made, where it is likely to go, and what that means for organisations operating across borders A clearer picture of how domestic political instability in democratic societies feeds into international risk and affects the conditions under which institutions and agreements hold Frameworks for scenario planning in a nonpolar environment, where alliances and trade rules are situational rather than fixed

Why organisations work with Richard van Hooijdonk He maps the intersection of multiple converging technologies – AI, robotics, quantum computing, biotech, autonomous systems – in a single strategic framework. Most technology speakers go deep on one domain; van Hooijdonk shows how these forces compound, which is where the strategic risk and opportunity actually sits. His material comes from an active research operation. Trendforce.one (Futurezone.ai) runs a permanent international research team, meaning his content reflects current technological trajectories rather than the publication date of a book or the half-life of a conference circuit. He speaks credibly across both commercial and institutional mandates. Clients range from Interpol, the European Commission, and NATO to Google, Deloitte, and Heineken – giving him a grounded view of how the same technology behaves under different regulatory, security, and commercial conditions. His RFID chip implants – used in daily life to open doors and operate his vehicle – are a verifiable, concrete expression of a research philosophy built on direct experience rather than observation. It is unusual, and it is documented. His Dutch-language bestseller De wereld van morgen and his multi-year recognition as the most sought-after futurist in the Netherlands demonstrate a sustained public credibility that extends well beyond the conference stage. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Trendforce.one / Futurezone.ai, a future intelligence agency with a permanent international research team tracking emerging and disruptive technologies Author of De wereld van morgen (The World of Tomorrow), a Dutch bestseller published by Bertram + De Leeuw Uitgevers (2017); author of 2,000+ articles and 60+ books, e-books, and whitepapers Delivered presentations to more than 600,000 attendees across 30+ countries since 2014 Clients include Google, Microsoft, IBM, Gartner, Interpol, NATO, the European Commission, PwC, Deloitte, Heineken, Unilever, and Nike Guest lecturer at Nyenrode University and Erasmus University Regular television contributor on RTL (RTL Late Night, RTL Boulevard, RTLZ) and former host of Mindshift on BNR Nieuwsradio Voted most sought-after trendwatcher and futurist in the Netherlands for multiple consecutive years from 2015 Biography Technology leaders have been warning organisations about AI and automation for years. What has changed is the simultaneity: AI, robotics, quantum computing, and biotech are not a sequence of challenges to address in turn – they are arriving together, and their combined effect on business models is harder to read than any single technology in isolation. Richard van Hooijdonk has built his practice around exactly this problem. His research base is institutional rather than individual. As founder and CEO of Trendforce.one – now operating as Futurezone.ai – he leads a permanent international research team that tracks emerging technologies across sectors, geographies, and regulatory environments. Where many futurists work from published sources and their own networks, van Hooijdonk’s content is generated from ongoing intelligence work. The material he brings to a board conversation reflects the current state of the field. His client base spans both sides of the public-private boundary. Organisations including Interpol, NATO, the European Commission, and Dutch Customs sit alongside Google, Deloitte, Heineken, and Samsung in his client history. That cross-sector exposure matters: the same autonomous system or generative AI application functions differently under a security mandate than under a commercial growth brief, and van Hooijdonk can articulate both. His public platform extends his research reach beyond the executive audience. De wereld van morgen (The World of Tomorrow), a Dutch-language bestseller, brought his frameworks to a wider readership. Regular appearances on RTL television and BNR Nieuwsradio – where he hosted the Mindshift programme – and guest lectureships at Nyenrode University and Erasmus University have established him as a sustained public voice on technological change, not simply a conference circuit presence. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and generative AI Robotics and autonomous systems Quantum computing and frontier technologies Technology-driven sector transformation The organisation of the future Cybercrime, security, and technology-enabled risk The future of work and human-machine collaboration Ideal for Boards and executive leadership teams making technology investment decisions with long strategic horizons Chief Digital Officers, Chief Technology Officers, and Chief Innovation Officers Strategy and innovation functions within large enterprises navigating multi-technology disruption Public sector, government, and law enforcement organisations managing the security and governance implications of emerging technology Audience outcomes A framework for assessing multiple converging technologies simultaneously, rather than evaluating each in isolation Sector-specific perspective on how AI, robotics, and adjacent technologies will alter competitive dynamics in their industry Practical orientation on where to begin with AI adoption – which processes are immediately affected, and how to sequence the transition Awareness of the security and governance risks created by emerging technologies, including AI-enabled crime and deepfakes Strategic clarity on the leadership behaviours and organisational structures required to adapt continuously, not reactively

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

Why organisations work with Robert B Tucker He has spent four decades inside the innovation practice of large companies, with named research underpinning each book: 50+ innovator interviews behind Winning the Innovation Game, 23 vanguard companies behind Driving Growth Through Innovation. His Forbes column and his international bestseller Managing the Future give him an unusually wide read on what is actually shifting in markets, technology and customer behaviour, not what is trending in the innovation press. He brings named frameworks the room can use afterwards: the seven I-Skills, the D.I.T.O. method, the seven navigational mindsets. Each maps to a specific leadership decision. His client work spans Nokia, IBM, American Express, Nestle and the economic development ministries of Singapore, Dubai and Morocco, so he speaks to commercial and public-sector audiences with equal grounding. He treats innovation as a portfolio and capability question, not a creativity exhortation, which is what senior leaders need when the board is asking why pilots are not producing returns. Biography highlights President of The Innovation Resource, Santa Barbara; consultant and keynote speaker since 1986. Former adjunct professor, UCLA. Author of Managing the Future: 10 Driving Forces of Change (international bestseller, translated into 13 languages, endorsed by Andy Grove of Intel), Driving Growth Through Innovation, Innovation Is Everybody’s Business (John Wiley), Winning the Innovation Game, and Build a Better Future: 7 Mindsets for Navigating the Age of Acceleration. Forbes contributor on innovation trends; published in Strategy & Leadership, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Journal of Business Strategy, Harvard Management Update. Recipient of the BrandLaureate Brand Personality Award from the Asia Pacific Brands Foundation for contributions to innovation. Featured on PBS, Bloomberg and CNBC’s The Business of Innovation series. Biography Innovation as a corporate function is now mature; innovation as a corporate discipline often is not. Robert B Tucker has spent forty years documenting the difference. His first book, Winning the Innovation Game, was built on interviews with more than fifty leading innovators in 1986, before innovation had a department or a budget line. The argument then, and now, is that companies which produce repeatable growth treat innovation as an operating practice, not a posture. That argument runs through his later work. Driving Growth Through Innovation studied 23 vanguard companies and isolated the practices that separated them from peers who talked the same language but produced different results. Innovation Is Everybody’s Business, published by John Wiley, sets out the seven I-Skills he sees as the practical competence behind those practices. Managing the Future, an international bestseller endorsed by Intel’s Andy Grove and translated into thirteen languages, broadened the lens to the macro forces leadership teams have to read. His most recent book, Build a Better Future, addresses what he calls the Age of Acceleration: a period in which climatological, geopolitical, technological and social shifts compound faster than most planning cycles can absorb. The book introduces the D.I.T.O. framework and seven navigational mindsets aimed at senior leaders deciding where to place capital, talent and attention. Tucker is president of The Innovation Resource in Santa Barbara, a former UCLA adjunct professor, and a Forbes contributor on innovation trends. His client work, from IBM, Nokia, American Express and Nestle to the economic development ministries of Singapore, Dubai and Morocco, gives him a working brief on what innovation discipline looks like when the operating reality is complex and the upside is contested. Key speaking topics Innovation as a managed discipline Strategic foresight and the Age of Acceleration Driving growth through innovation portfolios Innovation skills for individual contributors and leaders The seven navigational mindsets for senior leaders Future trends and market disruption Building a culture that produces innovation outcomes Ideal for CEOs, CSOs and corporate strategy teams wrestling with where the next growth wave actually comes from Heads of innovation, R&D and transformation responsible for converting pilots into operating advantage Boards and senior leadership teams setting long-range direction under accelerating change Public-sector and economic development leaders shaping national or regional innovation agendas Audience outcomes A clearer view of which innovation practices separate vanguard companies from peers that talk the same language A named framework, the seven I-Skills, that maps innovation behaviour to individual and team capability The D.I.T.O. method and the seven navigational mindsets as a working reference for senior decisions under acceleration A read on the macro forces that change the assumptions underneath strategy, capital allocation and talent A more honest internal conversation about which innovation activity is producing returns and which is theatre

Why organisations work with Robert Cringely Four decades of first-person reporting on Silicon Valley, from the InfoWorld “Notes from the Field” column (1987 to 1995) through PBSs “Triumph of the Nerds” and “NerdTV” to the long-running I, Cringely site, give him a pattern memory across every major computing wave that few other speakers can match. He runs a public, self-graded annual technology prediction column, which forces a level of accountability about where the industry is heading that most futurists avoid. His book “Accidental Empires” remains a reference text on how the personal computer industry actually got built, used by leaders who want to understand the cultural mechanics of Silicon Valley rather than the press-release version. He has written for The New York Times, Forbes, Newsweek and Worth on technology business, so the framing he brings to a corporate audience is editorial and argument-led, not a vendor pitch. Biography highlights Author of the 1992 best-seller “Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition and Still Can’t Get a Date”. Wrote the “Notes from the Field” column at InfoWorld for eight years, 1987 to 1995. Host and writer behind the PBS documentary series “Triumph of the Nerds” (1996) and “Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet” (1998). Producer and host of “NerdTV” on PBS (2005 to 2006); wrote the “I, Cringely: The Pulpit” column on PBS.org through 2008. Bylines as Cringely have appeared in The New York Times, Forbes, Newsweek and Worth. M.A. in Communication Research from Stanford University; B.A. from the College of Wooster. Biography Silicon Valley keeps selling boards a story that the next wave will look nothing like the last one. The track record says otherwise. The same patterns of overfunding, platform consolidation, and quiet operating change show up in the PC era, the internet era, the cloud era, and now in generative AI. Robert Cringely has been writing those patterns down in real time since 1987. His column “Notes from the Field” ran in InfoWorld through the formative years of the PC industry, and the 1992 book “Accidental Empires” turned that reporting into the canonical account of how Silicon Valley actually behaves under pressure. PBS adapted the book into the three-part series “Triumph of the Nerds” in 1996, followed by “Nerds 2.0.1” on the rise of the internet, and later the “NerdTV” interview series. As Cringely, he has written for The New York Times, Forbes, Newsweek and Worth. What sets the work apart is the prediction discipline. Each January he publishes specific calls on where computing, networks and now AI are heading, and each year he goes back and grades the prior years record in public. Few commentators in the field do this; almost none have done it for as long. For a corporate audience, the value is editorial judgement on a noisy market. Cringely will tell a leadership team which AI claims are doing real operating work, which look like the dot-com years repeating, and where the durable economics of compute, data and platforms actually sit. Key speaking topics Generative AI and the next phase of enterprise computing The economics and geopolitics of cloud and compute Silicon Valley business models and platform consolidation Annual technology predictions and the discipline of forecasting The history of the PC, internet and cloud as a guide to the AI cycle Cybersecurity and infrastructure risk in a connected economy Ideal for Boards and executive committees forming a view on AI investment and platform exposure Strategy, technology and innovation leaders responsible for the corporate AI agenda Industry conferences and offsites in technology, financial services, telecoms and media Investor and analyst audiences seeking an editorial read on Silicon Valley signals Audience outcomes A clearer read on which AI and platform claims are durable and which are cycle-driven Pattern recognition across the PC, internet, cloud and AI waves applied to the audience’s own bets Sharper questions for vendors, partners and internal technology teams A practical framework for tracking and grading technology predictions over time

Why organisations work with Robert Swan Lived proof that renewable energy can meet extreme operating conditions, drawn from the 2018 South Pole Energy Challenge powered by solar, advanced biofuels and lithium batteries in temperatures below minus forty. A founder’s perspective on the Antarctic Treaty’s 2041 review window, which gives leadership teams a concrete date and policy anchor for long-range climate scenario work. Two decades of practical engagement with corporate sustainability through the 2041 Foundation, having taken more than 4,000 young leaders from over 35 countries to Antarctica. A first-walked-to-both-Poles credential, recognised with the Polar Medal and OBE by HM Queen Elizabeth II, that gives ESG and energy-transition messages cut-through with sceptical senior audiences. A position recognised by the UN and UNESCO, useful when a board wants the climate conversation framed by someone who has worked the policy side as well as the field. Biography highlights First person in history to walk to both the South Pole (1986) and the North Pole (1989). Awarded the Polar Medal (1988) and appointed OBE (1995) by HM Queen Elizabeth II. Founder of the 2041 Foundation, dedicated to the preservation of Antarctica and to scaling renewable energy. Co-author of Antarctica 2041: My Quest to Save the Earth’s Last Wilderness with Gil Reavill, published by Broadway Books. Led the South Pole Energy Challenge in 2017 to 2018, the first polar expedition powered solely by renewable energy, reaching the Pole on 15 January 2018. UN Goodwill Ambassador for Youth and Special Envoy to the Director General of UNESCO (1994). Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Biography The Antarctic Treaty’s environmental protocol comes up for potential review in 2041. That date is the operating premise of the 2041 Foundation, established by Robert Swan after his 883-mile walk to the South Pole in 1986 and his subsequent trek to the North Pole in 1989. The Foundation has since taken more than 4,000 young leaders from over 35 countries to the Antarctic to study what is at stake. The exploration credentials are the platform, not the point. Swan was awarded the Polar Medal by HM Queen Elizabeth II in 1988 and appointed OBE in 1995. He was named UN Goodwill Ambassador for Youth and, in 1994, Special Envoy to the Director General of UNESCO. The intellectual work that followed is about how serious organisations move from climate language to climate decisions. The clearest evidence of that work is the South Pole Energy Challenge of 2017 to 2018. Swan and his son Barney travelled the final 600 miles to the geographic South Pole on solar power, advanced biofuels and lithium batteries, with NASA-designed ice melters for water. They reached the Pole on 15 January 2018. The expedition was not a stunt. It was a controlled proof that renewable systems can deliver in operating conditions most boardrooms will never face. For organisations weighing energy-transition strategy, supply chain redesign and long-range climate scenarios, Swan offers something most ESG speakers cannot: a corroborated record of testing the technology in the most hostile environment on earth, and a Foundation built around the year by which the policy framework for Antarctica may be rewritten. Key speaking topics Climate action and Antarctic stewardship Renewable energy in operating conditions Sustainability leadership for boards and executives Long-range environmental policy and the 2041 horizon Resilience and team leadership under extreme conditions Youth engagement and the next generation of climate leaders Ideal for CEOs, COOs and board members setting net zero and energy-transition strategy Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG leads moving from disclosure to operational delivery Energy, industrial and resource sector leadership teams reviewing renewable deployment Graduate, early-career and emerging leader programmes focused on climate and stewardship Audience outcomes A grounded sense of what renewable systems can do in extreme operating conditions, taken from the South Pole Energy Challenge. A clearer reading of the 2041 policy horizon for Antarctica and what it implies for long-range scenario planning. Renewed conviction at senior level that climate ambition can survive contact with real budgets and real operations. A vocabulary for resilience and team performance under sustained pressure, drawn from two completed polar walks.

Why organisations work with Robert Tercek He has run the digital businesses he now advises on. President of Digital Media at OWN, first SVP of Digital Media at Sony Pictures, Creative Director at MTV. That operating record gives his framing weight that pure analysts cannot match. Vaporized won the 2016 International Book of the Year at the Frankfurt Book Fair from a field of 10,000 titles. The thesis, that whole categories of physical product and intermediary dissolve into software, has held up across a decade of platform and AI shifts. He works in long horizons. General Creativity, his advisory firm, is built around scenario work and ten-year strategic planning, not next-quarter trend commentary, which suits boards making capital-allocation decisions on AI, metaverse and infrastructure. He treats emerging technology as a governance problem, not a hype cycle. His current speaking on the industrial metaverse, digital twins and platform power foregrounds the questions executives and policymakers actually have to answer. Biography highlights Author of Vaporized: Solid Strategies for Success in a Dematerialized World, named 2016 International Book of the Year by getAbstract at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Former President of Digital Media, OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network. Sony Pictures Entertainment’s first Senior Vice President of Digital Media. Creative Director at MTV, where he helped launch the network across more than 20 international markets. Founder and CEO of General Creativity, advising Fortune 500 clients including AT&T, IBM, Microsoft, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and NBC Universal. Strategic Advisor to the Johnny Carson Foundation and the Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; taught the first interactive media course at USC School of Cinematic Arts. Biography Whole categories of business have already been replaced by software, and most boards still treat that as a channel question. Retail shelves, classroom hours, hotel desks, broadcast schedules, payment rails: each one has been thinned out or absorbed into a platform layer. The pattern Tercek named “dematerialisation” in 2015 is the same pattern now driving the AI and platform conversation in 2026. That naming is documented. Vaporized: Solid Strategies for Success in a Dematerialized World won the 2016 International Book of the Year at the Frankfurt Book Fair, selected by getAbstract editors from a field of 10,000 business titles. A decade on, the book reads less like prediction and more like a manual that incumbents wish they had taken seriously when it landed. The credibility comes from operating, not commentary. Tercek was Creative Director at MTV when the network launched into more than 20 international markets, Sony Pictures Entertainment’s first SVP of Digital Media when multiplayer games first ran in a browser, and President of Digital Media at OWN when Oprah Winfrey’s 2009 webcasts pulled the largest live online education audience on record. He now runs General Creativity, advising Fortune 500 clients on digital transformation and long-horizon strategy. His current work focuses on the industrial metaverse, digital twins and the governance questions sitting underneath platform power: who owns the rules, who carries the risk, and what serious organisations should be building rather than buying. He is also a Strategic Advisor to the Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and holds, with collaborators, 12 US patents covering decentralised entertainment and cryptocurrency systems. Key speaking topics Dematerialisation and the virtual economy Industrial metaverse and digital twins Digital transformation strategy Platform power and technology governance AI, automation and the future of work Long-range scenario planning under exponential change Decentralised systems and Web3 Ideal for Boards and CEOs setting ten-year capital allocation against AI, platform and infrastructure shifts Chief Strategy Officers, Chief Digital Officers and transformation leads in incumbent industries facing software-driven disruption Industrial, energy and infrastructure leaders evaluating digital twin and industrial metaverse investments Policy, regulatory and public-sector audiences working on platform governance and technology risk Audience outcomes A working model for spotting which parts of a business are most exposed to dematerialisation, and on what time horizon A clear read on where the industrial metaverse and digital twins create real operating advantage, and where they do not A sharper framework for ten-year scenario planning that survives short-term hype cycles Specific reference points from MTV, Sony, OWN and current Fortune 500 advisory work, not generic futurist commentary

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

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

Why organisations work with Rohit Talwar His “Very Human Future” argument that the central strategic task is keeping human outcomes at the centre of AI and technology adoption, not merely managing adoption itself gives leadership teams a framing that is both commercially grounded and defensible at board level. He edits and contributes to multi-author research books that aggregate the work of 60+ futurists and practitioners across a single question; this publishing model means his content draws on current collective intelligence rather than a single perspective frozen at a point in time. As Co-Chair of the UK Node of The Millennium Project, he sits inside a global futures research network. His material reflects active scenario-building methodology, not retrospective trend commentary. He builds entire talks around sector-specific strategic implications: financial services, aviation, local economies, rather than delivering a generic future-of-technology keynote with surface-level industry references. Ranked among the Global Gurus Top 30 Futurist Professionals for 2025, he is a verifiably credentialled figure in an industry where credibility is difficult to assess. Biography highlights CEO and founder of Fast Future, a foresight research, publishing, and advisory firm Editor or lead contributor to more than eight books including A Very Human Future, Beyond Genuine Stupidity: Ensuring AI Serves Humanity, and The Future of Business Co-Chair of the UK Node of The Millennium Project, a global futures research organisation Ranked in the Global Gurus Top 30 Futurist Professionals for 2025; previously profiled by The Independent as a top 10 global futurist MBA from London Business School; BA in Electronics and Computer Science from the University of Keele; early career at British Telecom on AI research and at Andersen Consulting Delivered more than 1,500 keynotes and workshops across 70+ countries on six continents; regular contributor to international news networks on technology and innovation Biography Fast Future is not a typical consultancy. Rohit Talwar built it as a research and publishing operation, an ongoing mechanism for aggregating the work of futurists, practitioners, and emerging thinkers into books and advisory frameworks. That structural choice shapes the quality of what he brings to a leadership conversation. His central argument, developed across titles including A Very Human Future and Beyond Genuine Stupidity: Ensuring AI Serves Humanity, is specific: the question organisations are not asking clearly enough is not whether to adopt AI, but what kind of organisation they want to be when the adoption is complete. Strategy that treats AI as a technical problem consistently misses the governance, cultural, and human-capital decisions that determine whether the investment pays off. Talwar holds an MBA from London Business School and began his career in AI research at British Telecom before moving into management consulting. His foresight work is grounded in structured methodology: he serves as Co-Chair of the UK Node of The Millennium Project, a global futures research body, and brings scenario-building rigour to topics that, in other hands, often remain speculative. The Global Gurus research organisation ranked him among the Top 30 Futurist Professionals for 2025. The effect on senior audiences evidenced consistently across client feedback is a specific one: not inspiration, but productive disruption of existing strategic assumptions. His talks are built to destabilise complacent planning rather than to validate it. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and exponential technologies Strategic foresight and scenario planning Human-centred responses to digital transformation Business model innovation in the face of disruption Global megatrends and drivers of change The future of financial services and fintech Long-range futures and organisational resilience Ideal for Executive leadership teams and boards stress-testing long-range strategy Chief Strategy Officers and Chief Innovation Officers building foresight capability Financial services leadership navigating AI and platform disruption Conference and association audiences in technology, aviation, professional services, and public sector Audience outcomes A structured vocabulary for discussing AI strategy that goes beyond adoption and automation Practical scenario-thinking tools that can be applied directly in strategy workshops Clearer understanding of which emerging technologies require immediate strategic response versus longer-horizon monitoring A sharper framing of the organisational and human-capital implications of accelerating technological change Reduced gap between awareness of disruption and the leadership confidence to act on it