Scenario Planning & Strategic Foresight

Why organisations work with Tom Solomon He has run the UK research response to Ebola, Zika and COVID-19 through the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit he founded in 2014, giving boards a direct line into how national systems actually react under pressure. He translates frontier infectious-disease science into the language of operational risk, capital allocation and continuity planning, which is rare among clinicians at his level. His role as Director of The Pandemic Institute means he sees the next wave of biosecurity, antimicrobial resistance and zoonotic threats before they reach the public-policy conversation. He carries the institutional weight of CBE, FMedSci, the Academy of Medical Sciences vice presidency and the Royal College of Physicians academic vice presidency, which earns him a hearing in rooms that would discount commentators. He communicates with the clarity of a science journalist and the authority of a clinician, a combination senior audiences pick up on within the first ten minutes. Biography highlights Professor of Neurology, University of Liverpool, and Director of The Pandemic Institute Founding Director, NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Emerging and Zoonotic Infections Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), 2021 Birthday Honours Vice President (International), Academy of Medical Sciences; Academic Vice President, Royal College of Physicians Author, Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Medicine (Liverpool University Press, 2016) Royal College of Physicians Moxon Medal for outstanding observation and research in clinical medicine Biography Pandemic and emerging-infection risk has stopped behaving like a tail event. Ebola, Zika, COVID-19 and a steady stream of zoonotic threats have made it a recurring exposure for organisations whose operations depend on movement, contact and supply. Tom Solomon has been inside the national response to each of these. He founded the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Emerging and Zoonotic Infections in 2014 and now directs The Pandemic Institute at the University of Liverpool, a coordinated hub bringing infectious-disease science, public health and policy into one operational picture. He chaired government research funding committees during COVID-19 and advised the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency on vaccine safety. The brief was practical, not theoretical. The scientific work runs in parallel. His Liverpool Brain Infections Group has secured more than £25 million in research funding from the Medical Research Council, Wellcome Trust and NIHR for work on Japanese encephalitis, enterovirus 71 and meningitis, with field programmes across Asia, Africa and Latin America. He has held the Vincenzo Marcolongo Memorial Lectureship and the RCP Moxon Medal, and was elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2021. What makes Solomon useful to leadership audiences is that he speaks the language of risk and decision-making, not the language of the clinic. He writes regularly for The Guardian, The Independent and The Conversation, and his book Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Medicine, based on his time treating Dahl as a junior doctor at the John Radcliffe in Oxford, demonstrated early that he could translate clinical material for a general reader. Boards looking for an authoritative voice on biosecurity find a clinician who is fluent in both registers. Key speaking topics Pandemic preparedness and biosecurity risk Emerging and zoonotic infectious disease Antimicrobial resistance Brain infections and neurological disease Lessons from the COVID-19, Ebola and Zika responses Science communication and public trust in expertise Global health and one-health systems Ideal for Boards and risk committees adding pandemic and biosecurity exposure to the standing risk register Chief Risk Officers, Chief Medical Officers and continuity leads in pharma, insurance, logistics and global manufacturing Government, regulatory and policy audiences shaping pandemic preparedness frameworks Senior teams in life sciences, public health and global development Audience outcomes A clearer view of which emerging-infection threats matter most over the next five to ten years and why A working vocabulary for treating pandemic risk as a board-level exposure, not a medical externality Insight into how the UK national response was organised, what worked, and what did not A frame for evaluating biosecurity, AMR and zoonotic risk against other forms of systemic exposure

Why organisations work with Nina Khrushcheva A primary read on Russian political culture from a scholar who has travelled and reported across the country’s eleven time zones, not a Moscow-watcher working from secondary sources. Author or co-author of three books on Russian power, including In Putin’s Footsteps (St. Martin’s Press, 2019) with Atlantic contributing editor Jeffrey Tayler, and The Lost Khrushchev, both grounded in original interviews and field research. A standing column at Project Syndicate, where she edits the Russia series, and a publication record across the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and Newsweek that boards and investment committees already read. Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and former director of the Russia Project at the World Policy Institute, with the institutional standing expected for closed-room conversations on sanctions, geopolitical exposure, and political risk. A family inheritance, as the great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, that she uses as a lens on Soviet and post-Soviet authoritarianism rather than a biographical talking point. Biography highlights Professor of International Affairs at The New School, New York. Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, Princeton University; former research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. Author of Imagining Nabokov (Yale University Press) and The Lost Khrushchev (Tate); co-author of In Putin’s Footsteps (St. Martin’s Press) with Jeffrey Tayler. Contributing Editor at Project Syndicate; bylines in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Newsweek. Member of the Council on Foreign Relations; former director of the Russia Project at the World Policy Institute. Recipient of the Carnegie Corporation’s Great Immigrants Award and the Trinity College Dublin Gold Medal of Honorary Patronage. Biography The Kremlin is not best understood through Western political vocabulary. It runs on a logic shaped by Russian literature, Soviet bureaucratic instinct, and a long memory of empire. Reading it from the outside, on quarterly briefings alone, has cost organisations real money over the past decade. Nina Khrushcheva works that gap. A professor of international affairs at The New School, with a Princeton doctorate in comparative literature, she teaches courses on comparative propaganda, international media, and Russian contemporary politics. Her academic register is unusual: she reads the Kremlin the way a literary scholar reads a text, while also reporting from inside it. That dual method runs through her books. In Putin’s Footsteps, written with Jeffrey Tayler of The Atlantic, is the product of travel across all eleven of Russia’s time zones. The Lost Khrushchev draws on her family inheritance as the great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev to read the Soviet project from inside its own argument. Imagining Nabokov preceded both, with Yale University Press. She edits the Russia series at Project Syndicate and writes regularly for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and Newsweek. She sits on the Council on Foreign Relations and previously directed the Russia Project at the World Policy Institute. The Carnegie Corporation named her among its Great Immigrants in 2013, and Trinity College Dublin awarded her its Gold Medal of Honorary Patronage in 2019. Key speaking topics Russia under Putin Authoritarian governance and propaganda Post-Soviet political culture Geopolitical risk and sanctions exposure US-Russia relations Russia, China and the contested global order Soviet history and its modern uses Ideal for Boards and investment committees with direct or indirect Russia exposure, including energy, commodities, and dual-use technology Chief risk officers, general counsel, and government affairs leads weighing sanctions and political risk Policy audiences, foundations, and academic institutions briefing on the post-Soviet space Senior diplomatic, defence and foreign-policy convenings on Russia, Ukraine, and the wider rules-based order Audience outcomes A read of current Kremlin behaviour rooted in Russian political and literary tradition, not Western projection A clearer sense of where Putin’s regime is brittle and where it is durable, with implications for sanctions and exposure Context on how Soviet history is being repurposed in present-day propaganda and policy A sharper map of where Russia, China, and the United States actually intersect, beyond headline framings Specific reference points for how to test the assumptions in any internal Russia or geopolitics brief

Why organisations work with James Henderson He treats strategy as a sequence of staged commitments, not a single plan, which is what boards facing capital decisions in volatile sectors actually need. His teaching draws on more than 50 published case studies built with named companies, so the room is working with operating examples, not abstractions. He has run IMD’s Strategic Partnerships and Leading Sustainable Business Transformation programs, giving him a working view of how ecosystems and sustainability commitments are reshaping competitive strategy. As a former Dean of Programs and Innovation at IMD, he has built and led large executive programs himself, which translates into sessions designed for senior decision-makers rather than classroom delivery. Biography highlights Professor of Strategic Management, IMD Lausanne, since 2006. Program Director of IMD’s Strategic Partnerships course; Co-Director of Leading Sustainable Business Transformation. Former Dean of Programs and Innovation at IMD (2012 to 2016); launched the Global Leadership in the Cloud online portfolio. Co-edited Restructuring Strategy (Strategic Management Society, 2005); editorial board, Strategic Management Journal. EFMD Excellence in Practice Gold Award (2018); Academy of Management Carolyn Dexter Award (2009); ECCH Best Selling Case in Europe. PhD, INSEAD; MBA, Ivey School of Business; BA Economics, University of Western Ontario. Biography Strategy textbooks describe choices that have already been made. The harder work is the period before, when leaders must commit capital, build partnerships and reshape portfolios while the underlying competitive logic is still moving. That is the territory Henderson has spent twenty years teaching at IMD. He treats strategy as a discipline of staged commitment. Where many frameworks assume a stable view of advantage, his work focuses on options-based investment, corporate venturing, and the timing of moves into new positions. The argument is that senior teams overestimate the cost of acting early and underestimate the cost of waiting for clarity that does not arrive. That work is grounded in operating cases. Henderson has developed more than 50 published case studies, including the Heineken Buckler Beer case that became ECCH’s best-selling case in Europe. He co-edited the Strategic Management Society’s Restructuring Strategy and sits on the editorial board of the Strategic Management Journal, the field’s flagship journal. Inside IMD he has carried operating responsibility as well as faculty responsibility. As Dean of Programs and Innovation he launched the school’s Global Leadership in the Cloud online portfolio. He directs the Strategic Partnerships course and co-directs Leading Sustainable Business Transformation, two of IMD’s anchor programs on how ecosystems and sustainability are reshaping commercial strategy. Key speaking topics Strategy under uncertainty Strategic agility and options-based investment Corporate strategy and portfolio decisions Strategic partnerships and ecosystems Strategy execution Sustainable business transformation Corporate entrepreneurship and new growth platforms Ideal for Boards and executive committees facing capital allocation decisions in volatile or transitioning markets. CSOs, heads of corporate development and strategy teams running portfolio and partnership reviews. CEOs and senior leadership teams working through sustainable business transformation. Senior leadership programs and offsite agendas focused on commitment and execution under uncertainty. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for staging strategic commitments rather than treating strategy as a single decision. A sharper read of when to invest early, when to hold optionality, and when waiting becomes the costlier choice. Operating examples from named companies that map onto the audience’s own portfolio and partnership questions. A view of how ecosystem and sustainability pressures are restructuring competitive advantage in capital-intensive industries.

Why organisations work with Carlos Cordon Direct advisory experience with Johnson and Johnson, Nestlé, Coca-Cola, Merck, Mondelez, Unilever, Heineken, Danone, and General Motors, which means the examples on stage come from rooms he has sat in. Reframes the supply chain conversation at board level as a revenue and growth discussion, shifting it away from the familiar cost-defence framing and into competitive territory. Teaching material that other business schools pay to use. His cases have twice placed him on The Case Centre’s Top 50 Bestselling Case Authors globally. Sits on Coca-Cola European Partners’ Digital Advisory Board, which gives him a working view of how a global consumer business is actually pricing digital and AI bets at the top. Writes regularly for TIME on supply chain and geopolitics, so a board gets someone whose argument has already been tested against an international editorial audience. Biography highlights Professor of Strategy and Supply Chain Management at IMD Business School, Lausanne. Director of IMD’s Strategies for Supply Chain Digitalization program. Author of Strategy is Digital (Springer), The Power of Two (Palgrave Macmillan), and Strategic Supply Chain Management (Routledge). Twice listed on The Case Centre’s Top 50 Bestselling Case Authors (#18 in 2020/21, #36 in 2023/24). Winner of the EFMD Case Writing Competition in 2017 and of The Case Centre’s Production and Operations Management Award in 2011 and again in 2026 for Apple’s Supply Chain Transformation. Regular contributor to TIME and to I by IMD; board advisor to Coca-Cola European Partners on digital. Biography Most supply chain conversations in the boardroom are still framed as cost questions. Cordon’s work reframes them as revenue questions. His argument, developed across three books and a case portfolio used in MBA programmes globally, is that how a company sources, makes, moves, and digitises its value chain now decides whether it can grow at all in a fragmenting world. At IMD, where he holds the chair in Strategy and Supply Chain Management, he directs the Strategies for Supply Chain Digitalization program and teaches senior executives from the companies shaping the consumer, pharma, and industrial economy. Johnson and Johnson, Nestlé, Coca-Cola, Merck, Mondelez, Unilever, Heineken, Danone, and General Motors are on his client list. He sits on Coca-Cola European Partners’ Digital Advisory Board, which keeps his perspective grounded in live commercial decisions. His published work tracks the trajectory of the field. The Power of Two (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) set out how smart customer-supplier partnerships create value that neither party could capture alone. Strategy is Digital (Springer, 2016) argued that big data and digital platforms had become the value chain, not an overlay on it. The current research programme tackles the hardest question leaders now face: how to reconfigure sourcing, manufacturing footprints, and operating models when tariffs, geopolitical risk, and Gen-AI are all moving at once. The case writing is a second form of evidence. He has twice placed in The Case Centre’s Top 50 Bestselling Case Authors globally and won the Production and Operations Management category in 2011 and again in 2026 for Apple’s Supply Chain Transformation. The EFMD Case Writing Competition recognised his Adidas case in 2017. Few supply chain academics are read this widely by other teachers of the subject, which is what gives his perspective on a live boardroom problem the weight it carries. Key speaking topics Supply chain reconfiguration under geopolitical and tariff pressure Reshoring, nearshoring, and manufacturing footprint strategy Digital value chains and the commercial use of Gen-AI in operations Customer-supplier partnership models Supply chain as a driver of revenue and competitive advantage Digital lean and process redesign Operating model resilience in consumer goods, pharma, and industrial sectors Ideal for Board and ExCo sessions where supply chain redesign is on the strategic agenda Chief Supply Chain Officers, COOs, and Chief Procurement Officers managing global footprint decisions Strategy and transformation leads working on reshoring, digitisation, or tariff response Consumer goods, pharma, and industrial leadership teams rethinking how operations create commercial value Audience outcomes A sharper read on how tariff fragmentation and geopolitical risk are reshaping operating model choices in the next three to five years. A working vocabulary for arguing the supply chain case at board level as a growth lever. Worked examples from named multinationals showing how reshoring, digitisation, and Gen-AI are being priced into real operating model decisions. A sharper test for where digital and AI investment in the value chain earns its cost, and where it does not.

Why organisations work with Brahma Chellaney He named the concept boards and ministries now use to discuss Chinese lending. Debt-trap diplomacy entered the policy lexicon through his January 2017 Project Syndicate column and is now cited by three successive US administrations. He wrote the canonical book on Asian water security. Water: Asia’s New Battleground won the Asia Society’s Bernard Schwartz Award in 2012, ahead of nearly 90 other titles. For organisations with manufacturing, agricultural or infrastructure exposure across South and Southeast Asia, he treats water as a hard strategic variable, not a sustainability slide. He helped draft India’s nuclear doctrine in 1999 as convener of the National Security Advisory Board’s External Security Group. When directors ask what New Delhi is actually thinking on Pakistan, China or the Quad, they are getting analysis from someone who has sat in the room. His distribution is institutional. Project Syndicate, Nikkei Asia, The Japan Times, The Hill, with op-eds in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Le Monde and the South China Morning Post. The same readers who set strategy on Asia are reading him in primary sources. Biography highlights Professor of Strategic Studies, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. Richard von Weizsacker Fellow, Robert Bosch Academy, Berlin; affiliate, International Centre for the Study of Radicalization, King’s College London. Former adviser to India’s National Security Council and convener of the External Security Group of the National Security Advisory Board. Author of nine books on strategic affairs, including Water: Asia’s New Battleground (Georgetown University Press), Asian Juggernaut (HarperCollins) and Water, Peace, and War (Rowman and Littlefield). Winner of the 2012 Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Book Award. Columnist for Project Syndicate, The Hill, Nikkei Asia and The Japan Times; visiting appointments at Harvard, Brookings, the Nobel Institute in Oslo, Johns Hopkins SAIS and the Australian National University. Biography Debt-trap diplomacy entered the language of Western policy in a single Project Syndicate column in January 2017. The author was Brahma Chellaney, writing on China’s Belt and Road lending. Within five years the phrase was being used by three successive US administrations, congressional committees and finance ministries across Asia and Africa. That trajectory is the clue to what he offers. Chellaney works on the structural fault lines of Asia, Chinese statecraft, India’s strategic posture, and the contest over rivers that sustain nearly half the world’s population, and gives them names that policymakers can act on. The work is grounded in primary sources and in years inside India’s own strategic apparatus, where he served as adviser to the National Security Council and convened the External Security Group of the National Security Advisory Board that drafted India’s nuclear doctrine in 1999. His books have set the terms of two distinct debates. Asian Juggernaut, published in the United States by HarperCollins in 2010, became a reference point for how China, India and Japan compete economically and militarily. Water: Asia’s New Battleground, published by Georgetown University Press, won the Asia Society’s Bernard Schwartz Book Award in 2012, beating nearly 90 other titles, and remains the canonical treatment of transboundary water risk in Asia. A follow-up, Water, Peace, and War, broadened the analysis to the global water crisis. His current platform is institutional and global. He holds the Richard von Weizsacker Fellowship at Berlin’s Robert Bosch Academy, is affiliated with King’s College London’s International Centre for the Study of Radicalization, and has held visiting appointments at Harvard, Brookings, the Nobel Institute in Oslo, Johns Hopkins SAIS and the Australian National University. His columns run in Project Syndicate, Nikkei Asia, The Japan Times and The Hill, with op-eds in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Le Monde and the South China Morning Post. For boards wrestling with China exposure, water-stressed supply chains, or the strategic logic of the Indo-Pacific, he is one of the very few analysts whose framing tends to be cited back to them by their own regulators. Key speaking topics China’s strategic statecraft and debt diplomacy The Indo-Pacific power balance and the rise of Asia India’s foreign and security policy Transboundary water risk and resource geopolitics Asian supply chain and infrastructure exposure Nuclear and security dynamics in South Asia Great-power competition and the fracturing global order Ideal for Boards and executive committees with material exposure to China, India or the wider Indo-Pacific CEOs, CSOs and government affairs leads reassessing political risk and country exposure Infrastructure, utilities, agriculture and manufacturing leaders facing water-related operational risk in Asia Investor and policy forums focused on geopolitical risk and capital allocation Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for Chinese economic statecraft, including the original mechanics of debt-trap diplomacy A sharper read on how Beijing, New Delhi and Tokyo each calculate strategic risk, and where their interests collide A defensible view of where transboundary water disputes are likely to disrupt supply chains, agriculture and infrastructure A clearer sense of what India’s foreign and security policy is, beyond Western reporting of it Frames for board-level conversations on Asia exposure that hold up under scrutiny from policy and regulatory readers

Why organisations work with Arnaud Chevallier His “Frame, Explore, Decide” process – the core of Solvable (Pearson, 2022) – gives leadership teams a shared language for problem diagnosis that reduces the organisational cost of premature solution-jumping; this is a named, teachable framework, not a consulting philosophy. His research on the five types of strategic questions – published in Harvard Business Review (May-June 2024) and selected for HBR’s 10 Must Reads 2026 – gives executives a tool they can apply immediately to ambiguous, high-stakes discussions. His PhD in nonlinear stochastic mechanics, combined with strategy consulting at Accenture, produces frameworks that are simultaneously more rigorous in their evidence base and more usable in practice than most management academic alternatives. He has worked on genuinely complex, high-ambiguity problem-solving with the International Committee of the Red Cross, Gavi (the Vaccine Alliance), and Tetra Pak – organisations whose decision environments require structured diagnosis, not generic strategy advice. As director of IMD’s Global Management Foundations program and its Complex Problem Solving program, he brings institutional proof that serious executive audiences return to his frameworks at multiple career stages. Biography highlights Professor of Strategy, IMD Business School; joined in 2018 Author, Strategic Thinking in Complex Problem Solving (Oxford University Press, 2016) Co-author, Solvable: A Simple Solution to Complex Problems (Pearson FT, 2022), with Albrecht Enders Contributor to Harvard Business Review; “The Art of Asking Smarter Questions” (May-June 2024) selected for HBR’s 10 Must Reads 2026 Director, IMD Global Management Foundations program; Director, MSc Sustainable Management and Technology (IMD/EPFL/University of Lausanne); Co-Director, IMD Complex Problem Solving program Former Accenture strategist (Houston and London); former Associate Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, Rice University; former graduate dean, University of Monterrey PhD in mechanical engineering, Rice University; engineering degrees, Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Biography Arnaud Chevallier began teaching strategic thinking to engineers at Rice University – a combination that turned out to be revealing. Technically sophisticated minds, trained in rigorous analysis, still defaulted to the same error: they solved problems they had never properly defined. That observation has driven his work at IMD Business School, where he is now Professor of Strategy. His two books – Strategic Thinking in Complex Problem Solving (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Solvable (Pearson FT, 2022, co-authored with Albrecht Enders) – give executives a cross-disciplinary framework for navigating complexity: Frame, Explore, Decide. Both make the same foundational argument. Most strategic failures are framing failures. Organisations commit to solutions before the actual problem is understood. His research on decision quality extends to the questions executives ask. His article “The Art of Asking Smarter Questions,” published in Harvard Business Review in May-June 2024 and co-authored with Frédéric Dalsace and Jean-Louis Barsoux, identifies five types of strategic inquiry that consistently improve decision outcomes. The piece was selected for HBR’s 10 Must Reads 2026 – an editorial signal that the question of how leaders think has moved to the centre of the management agenda. At IMD, Chevallier directs the Global Management Foundations and Complex Problem Solving programs. His consulting work includes Shell, the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and Gavi (the Vaccine Alliance) – organisations whose challenges require structured diagnosis before any solution can be considered. Before entering academia, he worked in Accenture’s Strategy and Business Architecture practice across Houston and London, a background that grounds the frameworks in the reality of high-pressure institutional decisions. Key speaking topics Complex problem-solving frameworks Strategic decision-making under uncertainty Problem framing and diagnosis Cognitive bias and de-biasing in executive decisions Structured questioning for strategic clarity T-shaped thinking and cross-disciplinary problem-solving Evidence-based reasoning in organisations Ideal for Chief Strategy Officers and senior leadership teams navigating high-ambiguity decisions Transformation leads and strategy functions working through complex, multi-stakeholder challenges Engineering and technical leaders transitioning into general management or executive roles Executive MBA cohorts and senior leadership development programmes Audience outcomes A named, deployable framework – Frame, Explore, Decide – for structuring complex, ill-defined problems in real organisational contexts Practical tools for identifying problem misframing before resources and credibility are committed to the wrong solution A working method for recognising and reducing cognitive bias in high-stakes group decisions The five types of strategic question to apply in ambiguous, politically charged, or time-pressured discussions Sharper habits of structured reasoning that can be applied independently after the session

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

Why organisations work with Zanny Minton Beddoes She edits the publication that shapes how the world’s finance ministers, central bankers, and institutional investors read the global economy: her vantage point is not advisory, it is editorial, which means she sees patterns across geographies, sectors, and governments simultaneously rather than from within any single industry or country. Her pre-journalism career – macroeconomic adjustment programmes at the IMF and economic reform work in post-communist Poland as part of the Jeffrey Sachs team – gives her an understanding of what policy looks like under institutional stress, not just in theory. She has written and overseen major special reports on the world economy, European stagnation, Latin American finance, Central Asian development, and U.S. fiscal sustainability. Her depth on structural economic themes goes well beyond the commentary that most media-figure speakers provide. Two Gerald Loeb Awards (2012 and 2017, the latter for breaking the Saudi Aramco story) signal editorial credibility of a different order from standard speaker-bureau economics commentary. For financial services, institutional investors, and multinational boards, she offers a rare combination: the institutional authority of The Economist brand with the direct analytical access of someone who has run the publication for a decade. Biography highlights Editor-in-Chief of The Economist since February 2015 – the first woman to lead the publication in its 180-year history; also serves on the board of directors of The Economist Group Held successive senior roles at The Economist over 30 years: emerging markets correspondent, US Economics Editor, Economics Editor (Washington DC), Business Affairs Editor Economist at the IMF (1992-1994), working on macroeconomic adjustment programmes in Africa Economic reform adviser to Poland’s Minister of Finance under Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Harvard University Oxford PPE (St Hilda’s College); master’s degree, Harvard Kennedy School (Kennedy Scholar) Gerald Loeb Award winner in 2012 (economic journalism) and 2017 (Breaking News, Saudi Aramco scoop) Trustee, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; member, Research Advisory Board, Committee for Economic Development Named among Forbes’ «Most Powerful Women in the World»; featured in Debrett’s 500 as «one of the most influential voices in financial journalism» Biography The challenge that keeps most boards and strategy teams off-balance is not a lack of information about the global economy. It is the absence of a coherent framework for integrating macroeconomic dynamics, geopolitical risk, and policy shifts into decisions that were never designed to carry that weight. Very few people are positioned to provide that framework with both practitioner rigour and editorial breadth. Zanny Minton Beddoes is one of them. As Editor-in-Chief of The Economist – the first woman to hold that position in the publication’s 180-year history – she oversees the analytical infrastructure that shapes how central bankers, finance ministers, and institutional investors read the global economy. Her perspective is not that of an adviser operating within a single sector or region; it is the perspective of someone who has spent three decades at the editorial centre of the world’s most closely watched economics publication, watching structural forces play out across geographies and cycles. Before journalism, she was inside the machinery of policy under pressure. At the IMF she worked on macroeconomic adjustment programmes in Africa. In Poland, as part of the Jeffrey Sachs team, she was present during one of the most consequential economic transitions of the post-Cold War period. That experience of watching institutions, incentives, and political constraints interact in real time, is audible in the way she talks about markets and policy today: not as abstractions, but as systems with observable failure modes. Her special reports for The Economist – covering the world economy, European stagnation, Latin American finance, Central Asian development, and U.S. fiscal sustainability – reflect a career-long engagement with structural economic questions, not topical commentary. Combined with two Gerald Loeb Awards and a decade leading the publication, that record gives her a credibility in a board or leadership setting that no amount of media presence alone can substitute for. Key speaking topics Global macroeconomic outlook and structural economic change Geopolitics and the fracturing of the multilateral economic order U.S. fiscal sustainability and dollar dynamics European economic stagnation and structural reform Emerging market resilience and vulnerability The intersection of energy transition and economic growth Trade, protectionism, and the rewiring of global supply chains Democracy, governance, and economic performance Ideal for Corporate boards and C-suite leadership teams navigating macro-level strategic uncertainty Financial services, asset management, and institutional investment audiences Government, policy, and international institutions requiring independent editorial-grade analysis Global leadership summits and senior forums where geopolitical and economic context is the primary agenda Audience outcomes A structured framework for reading the interaction between political, macroeconomic, and institutional forces – rather than treating each as a separate news event Calibrated perspective on where structural economic risk is concentrated, versus where conventional wisdom is overstating or understating it Clearer language for discussing macro uncertainty internally – specifically, the difference between cyclical disruption and structural shift An updated analytical map of the major economies and how their trajectories affect sector-level and investment decisions Context for evaluating specific strategic choices – expansion, capital allocation, supply chain configuration – against a coherent view of the global environment

Why organisations work with Stephanie Flanders She has operated inside all three institutions most relevant to corporate economic decision-making – government policymaking (US Treasury under Secretary Lawrence Summers), financial markets (J.P. Morgan Asset Management), and global economic journalism (BBC, Bloomberg) – in senior roles across all three. That convergence is not common at this level. As Head of Economics and Government at Bloomberg, she directs a team of approximately 250 economists and reporters globally, meaning her read on any macro development is backed by institutional-scale, real-time intelligence rather than public data alone. Her Trumponomics podcast – Bloomberg’s weekly tracker of US trade policy, tariffs, and monetary shifts – keeps her analysis immediately current on the exact questions boards and CFOs are most actively navigating. The RSA Inclusive Growth Commission she chaired (2016–2017) produced a policy framework that entered UK government debate – demonstrating an ability to move from macro diagnosis to practical recommendations that organisations and policymakers can act on. The Harold Wincott Foundation and the Political Studies Association each recognised her specifically for making economics decision-relevant to non-specialist audiences – the most direct indicator of her value in a board or senior leadership setting. Biography highlights Head of Economics and Government at Bloomberg News; leads Bloomberg Economics, a team of approximately 250 economists and reporters worldwide Former BBC Economics Editor (2008–2013); creator and host of the BBC Radio 4 programme Stephanomics Former Chief Market Strategist for Europe, J.P. Morgan Asset Management (2013–2017) Speechwriter and senior advisor to US Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers, Clinton Administration (1997–2001) Chair, RSA Inclusive Growth Commission (2016–2017); produced a published policy framework for place-based inclusive growth adopted in UK policy debate Harold Wincott Foundation Award (2010); Wincott Foundation Broadcaster of the Year (2011); Political Studies Association Broadcaster of the Year (2012) Honorary Fellow, Balliol College, Oxford; Fellow, Society of Professional Economists Kennedy Scholar, Harvard Kennedy School (MPA); first-class PPE degree, University of Oxford Biography Economic signals have never been harder to read – or more consequential to misread. Tariff shocks, central bank divergence, and geopolitical realignment are arriving on the desks of boards and CFOs as direct operational challenges, not background conditions. Stephanie Flanders has spent three decades building the analytical toolkit to respond to exactly this. As Head of Economics and Government at Bloomberg News, she leads a global team of approximately 250 economists and reporters whose analysis informs governments, investors, and corporate leaders worldwide. Her authority comes from a career that spans all three domains most relevant to organisational economic decision-making: policy, markets, and media. As speechwriter and senior advisor to US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers under the Clinton administration, she worked inside economic policymaking at its highest level. As Chief Market Strategist for Europe at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, she translated macro signals directly into investment positioning. At the BBC, where she served as Economics Editor for five years, she developed the rare skill of making those dynamics legible to senior non-specialist audiences – work recognised by the Harold Wincott Foundation Award in 2010 and the Political Studies Association’s Broadcaster of the Year award in 2012. At Bloomberg, she hosts Trumponomics, the weekly podcast tracking how US trade policy, tariffs, and monetary decisions are reshaping global markets and corporate strategy. Her chairmanship of the RSA Inclusive Growth Commission (2016–2017) reflects a parallel capacity: taking economic analysis beyond description and into practical frameworks that governments and organisations can use – the commission’s final report directly shaped UK government policy thinking on inclusive economic development. Flanders holds a first-class degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Balliol College, Oxford – of which she is an Honorary Fellow – and a Master of Public Administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School, where she studied as a Kennedy Scholar. She is a Fellow of the Society of Professional Economists. Key speaking topics Global macroeconomic conditions and market dynamics US trade policy, tariffs, and protectionism Geopolitical risk and the fracturing global economic order Central bank policy and monetary divergence Economic forecasting and scenario planning Inclusive growth and the political economy of inequality Translating economic signals for strategic decision-making Ideal for Boards and C-suite leadership teams making capital allocation, market, or supply chain decisions under macro uncertainty CFOs, treasurers, and chief investment officers assessing policy and geopolitical risk exposure Financial services organisations, institutional investors, and asset managers Public affairs and policy leaders tracking the implications of US trade policy and global regulatory shifts Audience outcomes A working framework for reading macro-economic and geopolitical signals in terms of their direct strategic implications – rather than as headline events Clearer understanding of how current US trade and monetary policy is likely to affect specific sectors, markets, and corporate exposure Greater confidence separating signal from noise in fast-moving economic and geopolitical news cycles Practical language and conceptual tools for board-level conversations about macro risk and economic uncertainty A more grounded sense of where the global economic order is heading and what the realistic scenarios are for business planning

Why organisations work with Stephanie Akkaoui Hughes She brings the discipline of a long-term investor to the questions boards usually approach as innovation, strategy or M&A. The argument running through her work is that value compounds when capital, attention and design choices are aligned to long time horizons; few speakers can make that case from the operator, founder and investor seats at once. As Co-Founder and CEO of EdenMountain, she has built a marketplace around an entirely new asset class, Enterprise Non-Operating Rights, that lets companies monetise dormant intellectual property without taking on debt or diluting equity. This gives her examples of capital allocation that audiences have not heard from other speakers. Her thesis on innovation, set out in Architecting Interaction (BIS Publishers), translates directly into how she thinks about wealth and value: that lasting outcomes are produced by the contexts and structures you build around them, not by isolated brilliance. She works fluently across institutional and entrepreneurial audiences, from DHL, Guardian Glass, Saint Gobain, the European Commission and Dutch ministries on the corporate side, to the international value investing community at VALUEx and the World of Allocators. She speaks credibly to the behavioural side of long-term decisions: why patience, valuation discipline and time horizon are commercial advantages most organisations are structurally unable to use. Biography highlights Co-Founder and CEO of EdenMountain, the venture pioneering Enterprise Non-Operating Rights (ENORs) as a new asset class for monetising dormant intellectual property. Founder and CEO of AKKA Architects, the Amsterdam studio behind workplace and learning projects for DHL, Guardian Glass, Saint Gobain, the European Commission and several Dutch ministries. Author of Architecting Interaction: How to Innovate through Interactions (BIS Publishers, ISBN 9789463450478). Five years at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in Rotterdam under Rem Koolhaas before founding AKKA in 2012. Active speaker on the international value investing circuit, including VALUEx Switzerland, VALUEx Middle East and the World of Allocators community. Multiple TEDx talks, including TEDxBelfastWomen, TEDxYouth@HNLBilthoven and TEDxAmsterdamED. Biography Most organisations are structured to optimise the next twelve months. Most investors are structured to optimise the next quarter. The discipline of designing for value that compounds over decades, in capital, in organisations and in the contexts that produce both, is the territory Stephanie Akkaoui Hughes has been working in for over a decade. Her route to it is unusual. Trained at the American University of Beirut and then at Rem Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam, she spent five years inside one of the most intellectually demanding studios in global architecture before founding her own practice, AKKA Architects, in Amsterdam in 2012. AKKA designs workplaces, public buildings and learning spaces for clients including DHL, Guardian Glass, Saint Gobain, the European Commission and a range of Dutch ministries. Her book, Architecting Interaction: How to Innovate through Interactions, sets out the thesis that runs through everything she has built since. Lasting outcomes are produced by the contexts you design around them, not by isolated talent or one-off effort. The same instinct now drives her work as Co-Founder and CEO of EdenMountain, the venture she co-founded around Enterprise Non-Operating Rights, a new asset class that lets companies monetise dormant intellectual property without debt or dilution. That intersection of operator, founder and investor seats shapes how she speaks to senior audiences today: on long-term capital allocation, on decision-making under uncertainty, and on the behavioural and structural conditions that let value compound across cycles. She is an active voice in the international value investing community, including VALUEx Switzerland, VALUEx Middle East and the World of Allocators. Key speaking topics Long-term value investing and capital allocation Decision-making under uncertainty Building value that endures: designing organisations and portfolios for the long term New asset classes and the monetisation of dormant intellectual property Behaviour, bias and patience in long-term commercial decisions Architecting Interaction: innovation as a designable practice Entrepreneurial leadership across architecture, fintech and capital Ideal for CEOs, founders and boards wrestling with how to allocate capital and attention against decade-long time horizons rather than quarterly cycles. Heads of innovation, strategy and corporate development looking at dormant IP and underused assets as a potential source of growth without dilution. Investor and family office audiences interested in long-term, fundamentals-driven approaches to capital allocation and decision-making. CHROs and heads of workplace responsible for offices and ways of working that have to produce more than seat efficiency. Audience outcomes A direct account of how patience and valuation discipline operate as commercial advantages, drawn from her practice as a private investor and active member of the international value investing community. A working definition of innovation as a property of designed contexts and interactions, not a property of individual talent, with the four-stage method from her book to test against. A concrete example of capital structuring in practice, through EdenMountain and the ENOR asset class, that audiences will not have encountered elsewhere. A vocabulary that lets strategy, innovation, capital and workplace functions argue for the same long-term outcome in the same terms.

Why organisations work with Rain Newton-Smith She makes the affirmative economic case that net-zero and growth are reinforcing – not competing – priorities, with CBI and OBR data showing the cost of failing to decarbonise is five times the cost of acting early. This reframes a question most boards are still treating as a trade-off. Her analysis of UK investment conditions is not retrospective commentary: as head of the CBI she is actively co-designing the UK Industrial Strategy with government, giving organisations access to intelligence that is live and consequential. Her China and emerging markets expertise – built as lead specialist at Oxford Economics – gives her a credible basis for the counter-consensus argument that full decoupling from China is economically untenable and inconsistent with any serious free-trade commitment. She bridges central bank monetary discipline (nine years at the Bank of England, IMF secondment) with the strategic language of the boardroom – a combination that is rare among economists who speak on UK macroeconomic and geopolitical risk. As Policy Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Department of Economics and Non-Executive Director of F&C Investment Trust, she operates simultaneously inside academic economic policy debate and at the institutional investor level. Biography highlights Chief Executive of the Confederation of British Industry – the UK’s principal business advocacy body, representing over 170,000 firms Former Chief Economist at the CBI (2014–2023); led economic analysis, policy teams, and HM Treasury engagement Nine years at the Bank of England, including global forecasting for the Monetary Policy Committee; seconded to the IMF as adviser to the UK Executive Director (2004–2006) Former Head of Emerging Markets at Oxford Economics; lead expert on China and Asia Former Managing Director, Strategy and Policy, Sustainability and ESG at Barclays Policy Fellow, Department of Economics, University of Oxford; Council Member, Royal Economic Society; Member, LSE Centre for Economic Performance Policy Committee Non-Executive Director, F&C Investment Trust WEF Young Global Leader (2012); WEF Global Future Council on Monetary and Fiscal Policy (2020) Management Today 35 Women Under 35 (2010) PPE, University of Oxford; MSc Economics, London School of Economics Biography The question of whether UK business can afford the green transition is being asked backwards. Rain Newton-Smith, Chief Executive of the Confederation of British Industry, has built the evidence to reframe it. OBR projections show the cost of failing to decarbonise is five times the cost of acting early – making this a capital allocation question, not an environmental one. Her analytical foundation spans nine years at the Bank of England preparing forecasts for the Monetary Policy Committee, followed by a secondment to the IMF as adviser to the UK Executive Director. She then led the emerging markets practice at Oxford Economics as its lead expert on China – work that now informs her publicly stated position that full decoupling from China is economically untenable and inconsistent with a commitment to free trade. Before becoming CBI Chief Executive in 2023, she served as CBI Chief Economist for nine years, leading its economic analysis and policy teams and its engagement with HM Treasury, and as Managing Director of Strategy, Policy, Sustainability and ESG at Barclays. The combination – central bank economist, institutional strategist, and now the UK’s leading business advocate – places her above the policy debate rather than within it. She is a Policy Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Department of Economics, a Council Member of the Royal Economic Society, and a Non-Executive Director of F&C Investment Trust. The World Economic Forum named her a Young Global Leader in 2012 and invited her to join its Global Future Council on Monetary and Fiscal Policy in 2020. Key speaking topics UK economic outlook and investment conditions Global trade, protectionism, and the China question Net-zero growth: the economic case for the green transition UK industrial strategy and business-government partnership Geopolitical risk and its consequences for capital allocation Emerging market dynamics and Asia ESG strategy and the business case for sustainability Ideal for Boards and C-suite leadership evaluating UK investment and growth strategy CFOs, CSOs, and heads of strategy in financial services, energy, and manufacturing Government affairs and regulatory teams navigating post-Brexit trade and policy Institutional investors and pension funds assessing UK macroeconomic and ESG risk Audience outcomes A framework for understanding how fiscal pressure, geopolitical risk, and the green transition interact as a single investment decision Clarity on the UK-EU, US tariff, and China dynamics that are directly affecting corporate capital allocation An evidence-based rebuttal to the assumption that net-zero and economic competitiveness are in conflict Better understanding of how UK industrial strategy is being shaped and what it means for investment planning Context on how financial stability risks – sovereign debt, monetary tightening, energy costs – are translating into business conditions in the near term

Why organisations work with Pippa Malmgren She has sat inside the room where US economic policy is set. As Special Assistant to President George W. Bush on the National Economic Council, she advised on the response to 9/11 from a financial markets and Pentagon technology procurement standpoint, which is a different vantage point from any academic economist. She bridges currency markets and geopolitics in a way few speakers can. She ran Bankers Trust Asset Management in Asia and was Deputy Head of Global Strategy at UBS, which means her geopolitical reads land with FX, fixed income and treasury audiences. She is a working operator, not just a commentator. Co-founding H Robotics, a CogX and National Technology Award winning industrial drone business, gives her a real seat at the table on industrial AI, autonomous systems and the defence-tech investment cycle. Her book The Leadership Lab won UK Business Book of the Year 2019 and her follow-up The Infinite Leader won the International Press Award for Best Book on Leadership 2021, which means leadership-track briefs are met with credentialed material rather than improvisation. She holds a Senior Associate Fellowship at RUSI, the UK defence and security institute, and judges the King’s Awards for Enterprise. Boards using her for geopolitics get an analyst whose reads are taken seriously inside the UK security and industrial establishment. Biography highlights Special Assistant to President George W. Bush on the National Economic Council and member of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets. Former Deputy Head of Global Strategy at UBS and head of Bankers Trust Asset Management in Asia. Author of Signals (Weidenfeld and Nicolson), Geopolitics for Investors, The Leadership Lab and The Infinite Leader. Co-founder of H Robotics, winner of the CogX Award for Autonomy and the 2020 National Technology Award. Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and a Fellow of the Bertelsmann Stiftung Foundation 2022 to 2024. PhD and MSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics. Biography The job of reading geopolitics for boards used to belong to a small circle of former diplomats and bank chief economists. That circle is no longer wide enough. Currency moves now sit downstream of sanctions decisions, supply chain costs sit downstream of industrial policy, and AI capex sits downstream of export controls. Reading those linkages is a working discipline, not a generalist’s hobby. Malmgren was inside that linkage early. She advised President George W. Bush on the National Economic Council and served on the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, including the post-9/11 work on terrorism risk to the economy and Pentagon technology procurement. Before the White House, she ran Bankers Trust Asset Management in Asia and was Deputy Head of Global Strategy at UBS. The combination of policy seat and trading-floor seat is rare, and it shapes how she briefs. The published work makes the argument visible. Signals reads consumer behaviour, magazine covers and shop fronts as evidence about inflation, social pressure and political risk. The Leadership Lab, co-written with Chris Lewis, won UK Business Book of the Year 2019. The Infinite Leader followed it with the 2021 International Press Award for Best Book on Leadership. None of these are commentator books. They argue specific theses about how decisions get made under volatile conditions. She also runs an operating business in the territory she briefs on. H Robotics, the industrial drone company she co-founded, won the CogX Award for Autonomy and the 2020 National Technology Award. She holds a Senior Associate Fellowship at RUSI, sits on the judging panel of the King’s Awards for Enterprise and was a Fellow of the Bertelsmann Stiftung from 2022 to 2024. When she briefs a board on industrial AI, defence-tech, the new space economy or the strategic-minerals fight, she is briefing as a participant, not a watcher. Key speaking topics Geopolitics and the global economy Macroeconomic volatility and capital allocation Industrial AI, autonomous systems and defence technology Currency markets and inflation signals The new space economy and strategic infrastructure Leadership under conditions of disruption Political risk and sovereign decision-making Ideal for Boards, CEOs and CFOs setting capital allocation policy under sanctions, currency and supply chain pressure. Treasury, FX and asset management leadership teams whose mandates now hinge on geopolitical reads. Strategy and corporate development teams in defence, energy, industrials, semiconductors and infrastructure. Investment committees of pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and family offices reassessing global exposure. Audience outcomes A working framework for translating geopolitical events into specific capital, currency and operating consequences. A clearer reading of where US, Chinese and European industrial policy is forcing reallocation of supply chains and capital. Specific signals to track in commodities, currencies and consumer behaviour as leading indicators of macro stress. A grounded view of where AI, autonomous systems and the space economy intersect with national security and corporate strategy. Confidence at board level that geopolitical scenarios have been pressure-tested by someone who has briefed at presidential level.