Scenario Planning & Strategic Foresight

Why organisations work with Libby Jackson She ran live operations on the European module of the International Space Station as Columbus Flight Director, a seat where decisions are made in minutes with crew lives in the loop. That experience is rare on a corporate stage. She built and led the UK Space Agency education programme for Tim Peake’s Principia mission, an outreach effort that reached more than two million students and around one in three UK schools, evidence of operational leadership at national scale. Her account of decision-making under pressure draws on procedures used in mission control rooms, not metaphor, giving senior teams a working vocabulary for handling ambiguity and failure. An OBE for services to the space sector and the 2023 Leif Erikson Exploration History Award place her credentials inside the small group of British human spaceflight leaders that buyers can name. She translates highly technical environments for non-technical audiences without softening the substance, useful for boards and leadership teams that want rigour without the jargon. Biography highlights Columbus Flight Director, European Space Agency Mission Control for the International Space Station, Munich. Head of Space, Science Museum, London, since March 2025, the first holder of the role. Former Head of Space Exploration, UK Space Agency, with prior responsibility for the Human Exploration Programme. OBE, 2023 New Year Honours, for services to the Space Sector. 2023 Leif Erikson Exploration History Award, Exploration Museum, Iceland. BSc Physics, Imperial College London; MSc Astronautics and Space Engineering, Cranfield. Honorary DSc, University of Kent. Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society. Author of A Galaxy of Her Own (2017) and Space Explorers (2020), both Penguin. Regular BBC science contributor including Stargazing Live. Biography A Flight Director on the International Space Station has minutes, not hours, to make calls that involve crew safety, multinational politics, and millions of pounds of hardware. Libby Jackson held that seat at the European Space Agency’s Columbus Control Centre in Munich, the European module of the ISS. Seven years inside mission control gave her a working knowledge of how senior teams hold together when consequences are immediate and irreversible. She moved to the UK Space Agency in 2014, where she ran education and outreach for Tim Peake’s Principia mission, the British astronaut’s flight to the ISS. The programme reached more than two million students and around one in three UK schools, an operational result on a national scale. She later became Head of Space Exploration, coordinating UK investments across human and robotic missions, the ISS, and lunar and Mars activity. In March 2025 she took up a new post as Head of Space at the Science Museum in London, the first person to hold that title. Her two books, A Galaxy of Her Own and Space Explorers, both published by Penguin, sit alongside an OBE for services to the space sector and the 2023 Leif Erikson Exploration History Award from the Exploration Museum in Iceland. For corporate audiences, the value sits in what mission control teaches about composure, sequencing and trust under load. Jackson does not offer the space career as inspiration. She uses it as a working case study in how trained teams make decisions when the data is incomplete, the clock is short, and the cost of error is absolute. Key speaking topics Decision-making under operational pressure Mission control leadership and team coordination Human spaceflight and the future of exploration Risk, failure, and recovery in complex systems The Artemis programme and the return to the Moon Women in science and engineering Translating technical work for non-technical audiences Ideal for Boards and executive teams preparing for crisis decision-making and incident leadership Heads of operations, engineering and safety in high-consequence sectors such as energy, aviation, healthcare and defence Transformation and innovation leaders working through high-stakes technical change Corporate STEM, early careers and women in leadership programmes seeking a credible British voice in space Audience outcomes A working picture of how mission control teams structure decisions when consequences are immediate Specific lessons from the Columbus and Principia missions on coordination across multinational expert teams A clearer view of where corporate decision processes break down compared with operational environments built around failure Renewed confidence in the value of preparation, role clarity and handover discipline as leadership tools A sharper sense of where the next decade of human spaceflight is heading, and what that means for industries adjacent to it

Why organisations work with Jeff de Kleijn Two decades inside HP and Canon across Asia Pacific and Europe, including running HP’s Large Format Printing business for APJ, gives him operating credibility with senior leaders who have lived through global restructures. Works fluently across Western systems thinking and Chinese strategic philosophy, useful for European and US executive teams navigating Asia exposure without simplifying it. Frames leadership as an operating system question, where decision rights, rhythm and supervisory clarity are the variables, not personality or style. Brings a working executive’s vantage point through his current role leading Dilaco, so the room hears a peer, not a retired commentator. Biography highlights Former General Manager, Large Format Printing Division, HP Asia Pacific and Japan. Senior executive roles at Canon across Europe and Asia. Chief Executive of Dilaco Group since 2019. Founder of Cortlandt Gulch, his leadership advisory and writing platform. Forthcoming book, Postmodern Leadership: Navigating Crises and Complexity in the Information Era. Trained in theatre and improvisation at the Bruges Conservatory of Music & Arts; works in English, Dutch and Chinese. Biography Most large organisations are still wired to push decisions up and instructions down. That structure is breaking against the speed and interdependence of the systems leaders now operate in. Jeff de Kleijn’s work begins from that mismatch, and from the specific question of how senior teams behave once they accept it. His authority on the subject is operational, not theoretical. He spent two decades in senior roles at HP and Canon, including running HP’s Large Format Printing business across Asia Pacific and Japan, before taking over Dilaco, a Belgian IT services group, in 2019. The throughline is leading commercial organisations through restructure, geographic complexity and technology shifts while the formal authority structure was always slightly behind events. He writes and advises through Cortlandt Gulch, and is finishing a book, Postmodern Leadership: Navigating Crises and Complexity in the Information Era, that sets out his core argument. Power inside large organisations has already moved from position to network connectivity. The leaders who are getting traction are the ones rebuilding their operating rhythm, supervisory cadence and decision rights around that fact, rather than working harder inside the old chart. What he brings to a room is the combination of a sitting executive’s vocabulary, exposure to both European and Asian operating cultures, and a stage discipline shaped by training in theatre at the Bruges Conservatory. Senior audiences leave with a sharper view of where their own authority architecture is misfiring, and a vocabulary for fixing it. Key speaking topics Networked and decentralised leadership Decision rights and supervisory clarity in complex organisations Leadership operating models under systemic uncertainty AI as an institutional, not technological, force Eastern and Western strategic thought in executive practice Restructuring and post-transformation leadership Ideal for Boards and executive committees redesigning how authority and decision rights operate post-restructure CEOs and group MDs of multi-region businesses with significant Asia exposure Private equity portfolio leadership teams under pressure to operate with fewer layers Transformation and strategy leads working on the leadership operating model, not just structure Audience outcomes A clearer read on where their current authority structure is the bottleneck, not the workload Specific language for separating control, coordination and supervision as distinct leadership tasks A working frame for combining Western strategic analysis with Chinese strategic thinking in real decisions A more honest internal conversation about what their organisation actually needs from its top team

Why organisations work with Sean Pillot de Chenecey He turned the trust collapse into a working brand discipline. The Post-Truth Business, his Kogan Page bestseller, gives commercial leaders a concrete language for authenticity at a time when most marketing advice is still optimising for awareness. He sits inside formal futures-studies practice, not only commercial consulting. As UK Associate Partner at the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies, he runs the institute’s Foresight-Driven Innovation course, which he applies to client brand and innovation work. He holds office in the global futures-studies field. As Director of Public Affairs at the World Futures Studies Federation, the UNESCO-partnered global body for futures studies scholarship, he operates inside the same institutional network as the academics, policy specialists and foresight practitioners shaping how organisations think about long-range change. He has been doing trends and foresight long enough to know what holds. Co-founding The Future Laboratory in the 1990s, then operating his own consultancy Brand Positive, gives him three decades of pattern recognition across consumer, cultural and commercial cycles. His podcast, The New Abnormal, approaching 300,000 downloads, keeps him in continuous dialogue with academics, operators and activists shaping how organisations are perceived, which feeds directly into client work. Biography highlights Author of The Post-Truth Business (Kogan Page), No. 1 Business Bestseller, on rebuilding brand authenticity in a distrusting world. Author of Influencers and Revolutionaries (Kogan Page), shortlisted for the Business Book of the Year Awards. UK Associate Partner, Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies, leading the Foresight-Driven Innovation course. Director of Public Affairs, World Futures Studies Federation, the UNESCO-partnered global body for futures studies scholarship. Co-founder of trend forecasting agency The Future Laboratory; founder of independent strategy consultancy Brand Positive. Host of The New Abnormal podcast, approaching 300,000 downloads. Agenda contributor to the World Economic Forum; visiting lecturer at University of the Arts London (Central Saint Martins, London College of Fashion), the Royal College of Art, the University of Brighton and other leading creative and business schools for more than two decades. Biography Most brand thinkers stop at narrative. Most futurists stop at the macro picture. Sean Pillot de Chenecey works the join between the two, and that is where his commercial value sits. His Kogan Page bestseller The Post-Truth Business argued that brand authenticity, not louder advertising, is the operating answer to collapsing customer trust, and gave senior marketers a working framework rather than a critique. His career put him in the right place to take that argument seriously. In the 1990s he co-founded The Future Laboratory, the trend forecasting agency, before running his own consultancy Brand Positive for clients across consumer, financial services and technology. The Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies brought him in as UK Associate Partner, and he leads the institute’s Foresight-Driven Innovation course, used by organisations who want innovation work grounded in real scenario method rather than ideation theatre. He also serves as Director of Public Affairs at the World Futures Studies Federation, the UNESCO-partnered global peak body for futures studies scholarship. His second book, Influencers and Revolutionaries, shortlisted for the Business Book of the Year Awards, mapped the founders, technologists and activists actually moving markets. The New Abnormal, his podcast, has crossed 250,000 downloads and now functions as a working research instrument; he is in continuous conversation with the academics, operators and cultural figures who shape how organisations are perceived. He has lectured on strategy and innovation at Central Saint Martins, the Royal College of Art, Chelsea College of Art, LSBU Business School, Miami Ad School, OMNES/INSEEC and the University for the Creative Arts for more than twenty years, and contributes to the World Economic Forum’s agenda. The combination, three decades of trends practice plus a formal futures-studies foothold plus a published thesis on trust, is what brings him into rooms where the brief is brand authenticity, customer trust or innovation strategy under uncertainty. Key speaking topics Brand authenticity and customer trust Foresight-driven innovation Megatrends and scenario planning Consumer behaviour in a post-truth environment Marketing strategy under uncertainty Anticipatory leadership Politics, philosophy and the future of business Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and customer experience leaders rebuilding trust with sceptical audiences. Chief strategy officers and innovation leads who need foresight integrated into commercial planning. Boards and executive committees setting brand and reputation direction in a low-trust environment. Marketing, communications and insight teams refreshing their approach to consumer and cultural change. Audience outcomes A working definition of brand authenticity that holds up against current consumer scepticism. A clearer view of which megatrends actually intersect with the audience’s commercial decisions, and which are noise. A method for moving from trend awareness to innovation choices that survive contact with the operating plan. Sharper questions about where customer trust is being earned, eroded or faked inside the organisation today.

Why organisations work with Nicholas Hopton A serving British Ambassador to four of the region’s most sensitive postings inside a decade: Yemen, Qatar, Iran and Libya. That working contact list is not replicable from outside government. Reopened the British Embassy in Tehran as the first UK Ambassador to Iran since 2011, giving a first-hand reading of how Iranian decision-making actually functions under sanctions and confrontation. Runs Belmont Advisory, a private geopolitical consultancy, alongside the Middle East Association: advice is shaped by what clients have actually done with it, not by think-tank distance from the deal. Current platforms at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and as a RUSI Distinguished Fellow keep the analysis tested against serious peer scrutiny. Comfortable with senior business audiences and broadcast media in equal measure, including Bloomberg, the New Statesman and The Spectator, which means a board briefing lands without needing translation from policy register. Biography highlights British Ambassador to Libya, 2019 to 2021; Iran, 2015 to 2018; Qatar, 2013 to 2015; Yemen, 2012 to 2013. First British Ambassador to Iran after the embassy’s reopening, following the 2011 closure. Director General of the Middle East Association. Founder and Managing Director of Belmont Advisory, a geopolitical consultancy. Nonresident Senior Fellow, Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative, Atlantic Council; Distinguished Fellow, Royal United Services Institute. Led the drafting team for the UK’s first National Security Strategy in 2008; Private Secretary to four UK Ministers for Europe, 1998 to 2000. Biography The reopening of the British Embassy in Tehran in 2015 closed a four-year diplomatic break with Iran. Nicholas Hopton was the ambassador who walked back in. Running a mission in a country that had just expelled the previous one is a particular kind of education in how power, sanctions and personal access actually interact. That posting sits inside a 35-year career in the British Diplomatic Service that ran from junior roles in Paris, Rome, Morocco and Mauritania to four ambassadorships in under a decade. Yemen during the early collapse, Qatar at the moment Gulf finance reshaped global asset flows, Iran through the nuclear deal years, then Libya. Each post was the kind of brief in which the embassy is the analytical asset, not a passive observer. In Whitehall he led the team that drafted the UK’s first National Security Strategy in 2008 and served as senior UK official at the 2011 Perth Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. He spent 1998 to 2000 as Private Secretary to four successive Ministers for Europe. The London grounding matters for clients: he understands how the British system actually decides, not just how it appears to. He now runs the Middle East Association as Director General, founded the geopolitical consultancy Belmont Advisory, and holds research positions at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and at RUSI. The combination gives boards something most political-risk providers cannot: a practitioner who can still place the phone calls, and whose interpretation has been tested in real negotiating rooms. Key speaking topics Iran: politics, sanctions and the post-Khamenei trajectory The Gulf states and the geopolitics of capital Libya, North Africa and Mediterranean security UK and European policy towards the Middle East Political risk and market access in conflict-adjacent economies The mechanics of British and European decision-making on foreign policy Ideal for Board and executive committee briefings on Middle East exposure Chief risk officers and heads of government relations in firms with regional operations Investor and family-office audiences weighing Gulf capital allocation Foreign-policy and defence audiences in think tanks, universities and policy fora Audience outcomes A working map of where power actually sits in Tehran, Doha, Riyadh and Tripoli, separated from media shorthand A clearer view of how sanctions regimes affect commercial decision-making in practice An informed read on the UK and European policy posture toward the region, and where it is likely to move Direct answers to the questions a senior team would otherwise be unable to ask in the open

Why organisations work with Byron Reese He places today’s AI moment inside a 100,000-year arc of technology shifts, giving senior leaders a framework for long-range decisions that vendor briefings cannot supply. As CEO of Gigaom, he sits at the intersection of independent technology analysis and operating leadership, which lets him speak to both the engineering reality and the boardroom question. His five books, published by Simon & Schuster and BenBella, take positions on machine consciousness, automation, and the future of work that are specific and contestable, not generic optimism. He addresses AI without the doom-or-hype binary that dominates the speaking circuit, which is what most leadership audiences are quietly asking for. Biography highlights CEO and publisher of Gigaom, an independent technology research firm. Author of five books, including The Fourth Age (Simon & Schuster, 2018), described by The New York Times as “entertaining and engaging”. Founder of multiple technology companies, with two NASDAQ IPOs and several US patents to his name. Hosts podcasts on artificial intelligence, including Voices in AI and The Agora Podcast. Featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Bloomberg Businessweek, USA Today and the Financial Times. Bloomberg Businessweek credited him with “quietly pioneer[ing] a new breed of media company”. Biography Most futurists work in five-year horizons because that is what corporate planning cycles demand. The cost is that the most important question, which is what AI actually does to the human story, gets answered by analogy and anecdote rather than by argument. Byron Reese works in a different timeframe. In The Fourth Age, published by Simon & Schuster in 2018, he argues that technology has reshaped humanity three times: fire and language, agriculture and cities, the wheel and writing. Artificial intelligence and robotics, he argues, are now driving the fourth. The book reframes machine consciousness, automation and the future of work as questions of philosophy and history rather than software roadmaps, and The New York Times called it “entertaining and engaging”. His credibility is operational as well as intellectual. As CEO and publisher of Gigaom, he runs one of the better-known independent technology research firms. Before that he founded and sold multiple companies, took two through NASDAQ IPOs, and built consumer internet platforms that Bloomberg Businessweek described as “a new breed of media company”. He holds several US patents in crowdsourcing and content technology. Reese is, by his own description, the “Future of” guy: he has written and spoken on the future of AI, work, banking, education, agriculture, and the planet. His later books, Stories, Dice, and Rocks That Think and We Are Agora, extend the same long-range argument into how humans forecast and how human collectives behave. The thread that connects all of it, and the reason boards keep booking him, is that he is willing to take a position on where this is going. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and the future of work The long arc of technology and human civilisation Automation and workforce redesign Machine consciousness and AI ethics Innovation in conditions of rapid technological change Reasoned optimism as a leadership stance on technology The future of education, banking and agriculture Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting long-range AI and automation strategy CHROs and workforce planners redesigning roles around AI capability Innovation and strategy leaders in financial services, education and industrial sectors Conference audiences looking for a substantive counterweight to AI hype and AI doom Audience outcomes A clearer mental model of where AI sits in the longer history of human technology Sharper questions for internal AI strategy conversations, particularly on workforce and capital allocation A credible counter-position to the dominant doom-or-hype framing of AI in the press A specific account of how automation reshapes employment, drawn from Reese’s published argument rather than generic forecasts Renewed confidence that leadership decisions on technology can be made with intellectual rigour, not faith

Why organisations work with Katie Hilborn She has spent two decades making high-stakes calls in environments where missing a signal carried immediate human cost, so her account of judgment under pressure is operational, not theoretical. The Architect’s Read gives leaders a repeatable way to trace a problem from surface event to root structure, rather than a set of principles to admire and forget. As founder of Regenerative Infrastructure Holdings, she is building AI infrastructure in practice, which makes her credible on the human judgment the technology cannot replace. Recognition includes a Silver Anthem Award in the same cycle as the Dalai Lama and Jane Goodall, multiple Telly Awards, and the President’s Volunteer Service Award for Lifetime Achievement. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Compass Rose International, the nonprofit behind the Girls INpowerment Center in Nepal, which holds the GuideStar Platinum Seal of Transparency. Founder of Regenerative Infrastructure Holdings, developing AI data centres powered by renewable energy and governed by community trusts, with a first site under way in Nepal. Led 13 aid missions in Nepal after the 2015 earthquake; uncovered and reported a child-trafficking ring during relief operations. 10x award-winning humanitarian, including a Silver Anthem Award in the same cycle as the Dalai Lama and Jane Goodall, multiple Telly Awards, and the President’s Volunteer Service Award for Lifetime Achievement (AmeriCorps); member of the Forbes Nonprofit Council. Has spoken at RegenWorld, EarthX, the Global Family Office Investment Summit, and Northern Illinois University; featured in New York Magazine, NBC, and ABC. B.A., Colorado Mesa University; M.Ed., Grand Canyon University; certified secondary teacher. Biography The 2015 Nepal earthquakes flattened entire villages in minutes. Katie Hilborn flew in with no organisation behind her, led 13 aid missions across remote districts, and read what the relief effort had dismissed as chaos for what it was: a child-trafficking network preying on displaced girls. Spotting it was the easy part. Tracing it to the structure producing it, and building something that addressed it at the source, became the work of the next decade. That skill has a name in her work: pattern recognition under pressure. It is the ability to catch the weak signal everyone else rationalises away and to act while acting is still cheap. As organisations hand routine decisions to AI, this is the judgment that does not automate, and the one leaders need most when the stakes are highest. Hilborn now applies the same read at infrastructure scale. As founder of Regenerative Infrastructure Holdings, she is developing AI data centres powered by renewable energy and governed by community trusts, with a first site under way in Nepal. She continues to lead Compass Rose International, the nonprofit behind the Girls INpowerment Center, which holds the Guidestar Platinum Seal of Transparency. Her flagship keynote, Seeing What Others Miss, turns this into The Architect’s Read: a method for catching a problem at the surface, tracing it to the structure beneath, and acting where it resolves. The credibility behind it is a field record built under real operational stakes. She is a Silver Anthem Award winner recognised in the same cycle as the Dalai Lama and Jane Goodall, holds multiple Telly Awards and the President’s Volunteer Service Award for Lifetime Achievement, and sits on the Forbes Nonprofit Council. Key speaking topics Purpose-driven culture and leadership Heart-centric leadership through change Resilience and decision-making under pressure Social entrepreneurship and impact at scale Intuition and leadership judgment Employee engagement and meaning at work Humanitarian leadership lessons for business Ideal for CHROs and people leaders rebuilding engagement after restructure or mission drift CEOs and executive teams setting culture through integration, transformation, or strategic reset Foundations, family offices, and impact investors framing purpose for portfolio leadership teams All-hands and emerging-leader audiences where the brief is conviction and resilience, not content depth on a technical topic Audience outcomes A working definition of purpose that survives contact with budget, headcount, and reorganisation decisions A specific lens, drawn from frontline humanitarian operations, for making heart-led decisions that still hold up to scrutiny Renewed belief among leaders that conviction is a strategic asset, not a soft skill, with examples to back it up A vocabulary for talking about meaning at work that does not collapse into cliche when senior leaders use it Practical takeaways from Compass Rose’s operating record on building and sustaining mission-led teams

Why organisations work with Henrik von Scheel He is one of the named architects of Industry 4.0 as it was formalised in Germany’s high-tech strategy, so his frame of reference is the policy and standards layer most strategists only read about. His advisory seat on the EU AI Act and on the EU Climate Change Board (Green Deal, FIT for 55, CBAM) lets him brief boards on regulation that is still being written, not regulation that has already shipped. He sits inside the Institute of Strategic Intelligence, whose trend material feeds the World Economic Forum, so the inputs he uses with clients are the same inputs shaping global agenda papers. His 2024 Wiley handbook “Strategy in the Age of Disruption” gives clients a documented method for sequencing disruption response rather than a slide deck of trends. Co-authorship of 153 business, architecture and IT standards, including the SAP implementation method and the NATO Architecture Framework C3 Taxonomy meta-model, means he moves from boardroom narrative to operational specification inside the same engagement. Biography highlights Originated the term “Fourth Industrial Revolution” in 2011 as a member of the Advisory Group to the German Federal Ministry of Education & Research, with Prof August Wilhelm Scheer and Prof Henning Kagermann. Co-author of Germany’s Digital Agenda (2009 to 2010), later adopted as the European Commission’s Europe Digital Agenda 2020. Managing Director of the Institute of Strategic Intelligence and Professor of Economics and Strategy Management. Author of “Strategy in the Age of Disruption: A Handbook to Anticipate Change and Make Smart Decisions” (Wiley, 2024). Advisory Council Member on the EU Artificial Intelligence Act and on the EU Climate Change Board (Green Deal, FIT for 55, CBAM Scope 1 to 3); co-author of 153 business, architecture and IT standards, including the SAP implementation method and the NATO Architecture Framework C3 Taxonomy meta-model. Recipient of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Award (2019), the prize popularly described as the Nobel of knowledge sharing; named a leading authority on strategy by the Financial Times and a most influential futurist of the century by CNBC. Biography The phrase “Industry 4.0” was first written into a German federal policy paper in 2011, and the working group behind it had three names on it. One of them was Henrik von Scheel, then advising the Federal Ministry of Education & Research alongside August Wilhelm Scheer and Henning Kagermann. Two years later the concept was published as Germany’s high-tech strategy and became the dominant frame for industrial digitalisation across most advanced economies. That origin story matters because most strategists discuss digital transformation from outside the room. Von Scheel works from inside it. He co-authored Germany’s Digital Agenda with Scheer in 2009 to 2010, which the European Commission adopted as the Europe Digital Agenda 2020. He sits on the advisory council for the EU Artificial Intelligence Act and on the EU Climate Change Board, where he is contributing to the Green Deal, FIT for 55 and CBAM. He is briefing boards on rules he is helping draft. The operational layer is just as concrete. Through the Institute of Strategic Intelligence, where he is Managing Director, he supplies trend research used by the World Economic Forum. He has co-authored 153 business, architecture and IT standards, including the SAP implementation method and the NATO Architecture Framework C3 Taxonomy meta-model. This is what lets him move a conversation from megatrend to operational specification without losing the room. His 2024 Wiley handbook “Strategy in the Age of Disruption”, co-written with Ciprian Popa and Joshua von Scheel, sets out a method for anticipating change and sequencing decisions rather than reacting to disruption after the fact. Current demand reflects that range: law firms working through the future of legal practice, defence, banking, automotive and manufacturing leaders working through the move from automation to intelligence. Key speaking topics Industry 4.0 and industrial digitalisation Artificial intelligence strategy and the EU AI Act From automation to intelligence in industrial operations Strategic foresight and megatrend analysis Future of legal practice in the age of AI Digital transformation execution Supply chain and operations reinvention Sustainability, ESG and energy transition Ideal for Boards and CEOs in manufacturing, automotive, defence and banking setting AI, digital and Industry 4.0 strategy at group level Managing Partners and innovation leads in law firms working through how AI restructures legal practice and client work Chief Strategy Officers and transformation leads sequencing capital and operating bets under disruption COOs and operations leaders reinventing factories, supply chains and service operations Government and policy audiences shaping national digital, AI or industrial agendas Audience outcomes A clear read on which megatrends are commercially actionable in the next planning cycle and which are still ten years out A defensible logic for sequencing AI, automation and digital investments against P&L impact An insider view of where EU AI and climate regulation is going before it lands A working method, drawn from his Wiley handbook, for making strategic decisions when the operating environment keeps shifting Confidence that the digital and Industry 4.0 narrative inside the organisation matches what is happening at policy and standards level

Why organisations work with Lewis Dartnell Translates planetary-scale science into commercial foresight that leadership teams can actually use in strategy work. Author of The Knowledge, a Sunday Times bestseller built around a question every operator should be able to answer: which technologies in your value chain are foundational, and which are replaceable. Connects geology, biology and climate to the present-day shape of supply chains, geopolitics and consumer behaviour, drawing on the Origins thesis translated into thirty languages. Brings broadcast-grade communication craft from BBC Horizon, Stargazing Live and a main-stage TED talk, calibrated for board and executive audiences, not lecture rooms. One of a small number of working research scientists who can hold a 45-minute keynote at the level required by a CEO offsite without losing scientific rigour. Biography highlights Professor of Science Communication, University of Westminster. PhD in Astrobiology, University College London. Former UK Space Agency Research Fellow at the University of Leicester. Author of The Knowledge, Origins, and Being Human, plus Life in the Universe and a guide to the solar system; Sunday Times bestsellers translated into more than thirty languages. Main-stage TED speaker (TED2015) and regular BBC presenter across Horizon, The Sky at Night and Stargazing Live. Bylines and contributions in The Guardian, The Times, New Scientist and The Daily Telegraph. Scientific consultant on HBO Max’s Station Eleven and on Brian Cox documentaries. Biography Modern organisations sit on top of scientific systems that almost no one in the room can explain. Energy, materials, communication networks, food chains, the climate envelope they operate within. When those systems shift, the strategic consequences arrive quickly, and the executive team often lacks the language to see them coming. Lewis Dartnell’s work attacks that gap directly. The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch, a Sunday Times bestseller, asks which technologies a civilisation would have to recover first, and why. It is a thought experiment with a hard commercial edge. Strip away the assumptions, and what is actually foundational? A copy sits on the surface of the moon. The book has been adopted as a thinking tool in industries that depend on long-horizon decisions. Origins extended the argument to geology, plate tectonics and climate as drivers of human history, and has been translated into thirty languages. Being Human, his most recent book, examines how human biology and psychology continue to shape political, economic and consumer behaviour. The through-line is consistent: deep scientific structure explaining surface-level outcomes that boards spend their time arguing about. He holds a chair in science communication at the University of Westminster after research roles at University College London and the UK Space Agency programme at Leicester. His broadcast work for the BBC, his TED talk and his scientific consultancy on shows such as Station Eleven mean he speaks at a register designed for general audiences without losing the underlying rigour. For a senior leadership team trying to think clearly about technology, resources and the next twenty years, he is one of a small number of speakers who can hold both ends at once. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and first-principles thinking Resilience and civilisational technology Long-range science and the future of business Geopolitics, resources and climate Space exploration and the commercial space economy Astrobiology and the search for life Human biology and behaviour as commercial forces Science communication and clear thinking Ideal for Board offsites and CEO leadership summits requiring scientific perspective on long-range risk CSOs, heads of strategy and corporate development teams running scenario work Innovation, R&D and technology leadership groups CHRO and leadership development audiences building first-principles thinking capability Audience outcomes A sharper view of which technologies and resources are foundational to the business, and which are substitutable A grounded understanding of the planetary and biological forces shaping geopolitics, supply chains and consumer behaviour A working vocabulary for long-range scientific risk that senior teams can use in their own strategy conversations A more disciplined first-principles approach to questioning assumptions inside the organisation Genuine intellectual engagement from senior audiences who normally tune out of “future trends” content

Why organisations work with Yuval Noah Harari The NEXUS framework – which distinguishes self-correcting from self-reinforcing information networks – gives boards and governance teams a precise conceptual tool for evaluating AI strategy and regulatory exposure, grounded in historical evidence rather than prediction. Sapiens introduced the argument that large-scale human cooperation is built on shared fictions. For leadership teams, this reframes how institutions, legal systems, and monetary frameworks actually hold power – and what causes them to fail. Direct conversations with heads of state including Macron, Merkel, and Rutte put his arguments at the level of active geopolitical decision-making, not commentary. Audiences engage with someone whose thinking is tested at the highest levels of governance. His Distinguished Research Fellowship at Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk anchors his arguments on AI in active institutional research on civilisational-scale risk – not opinion or futurism. The 100,000-year historical lens is genuinely rare in this space. It gives senior audiences a method for distinguishing structurally permanent change from cyclical volatility – applicable immediately to strategy, regulation, and organisational design. Biography highlights Professor of History, Department of History, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; PhD from the University of Oxford, 2002 Author of Sapiens, Homo Deus, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, and NEXUS – published in more than 65 languages; Sapiens held the Sunday Times bestseller top three for 96 consecutive weeks and ranked #10 in the NYT’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century (2024) Distinguished Research Fellow, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of Cambridge Two-time Polonsky Prize for Creativity and Originality (2009, 2012); Moncado Award, Society for Military History (2011); Handelsblatt German Economic Book Award for Homo Deus (2017) WEF Davos keynote speaker in 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2026; CBS 60 Minutes profile (2021) Regular contributor to the Financial Times, The Guardian, The Economist, New York Times, and Nature Biography Organisations making decisions about AI governance are operating without historical context. The scale of information networks has changed before – with writing, printing, and broadcasting – and power has reorganised around each transition. What makes AI structurally different is not its speed or scale, but the fact that, for the first time, the network itself can generate and act on information without human instruction. Yuval Noah Harari is a Professor of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Distinguished Research Fellow at Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. His four major works – Sapiens, Homo Deus, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, and NEXUS – form a sustained argument about the relationship between information, power, and human agency, tracing it from the deep past to the governance decisions of the AI era. NEXUS, published in 2024, made that argument most directly relevant to organisations. Harari’s central distinction – between information systems that are self-correcting and those that reinforce existing power – gives leaders a practical framework for evaluating AI governance, regulatory exposure, and institutional design. The book argues that how organisations and governments navigate this distinction is the defining question of the current period. NEXUS reached number two on both the New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller lists within a week of publication. Harari has held public conversations with heads of state including Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, and Mark Rutte on the future of AI and information. He has delivered keynote addresses at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2026, and contributes regularly to the Financial Times, The Guardian, The Economist, and Nature. His books have been translated into more than 65 languages. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and information governance The history and future of information networks Geopolitical risk and global power Long-term civilisational change and strategic foresight Human agency and technological disruption Shared fictions, institutions, and how societies hold together AI regulation and democratic resilience Ideal for Boards and C-suite leadership teams navigating AI governance, information strategy, or long-term geopolitical risk Policy, government affairs, and strategic foresight functions at senior level Global conference and forum audiences at CEO, minister, or board director level Technology strategy and corporate affairs teams working on the societal and regulatory implications of AI Audience outcomes A macro-historical framework for reading which changes are structurally significant vs cyclical – applicable to strategy, governance, and regulatory positioning Practical understanding of the NEXUS distinction between self-correcting and self-reinforcing information systems, and its implications for AI governance design Clearer thinking about where power resides in information networks, and what that means for institutional and organisational decisions Historical context for positioning AI decisions within the longer pattern of how information technologies have redistributed political and economic power Sharper questions to bring back to leadership, board, and regulatory conversations already underway

Why organisations work with Norbert Csizmadia He brings the operating perspective of someone who has sat inside national economic planning, as State Secretary at Hungary’s Ministry for National Economy and Executive Director at the country’s central bank. His Geofusion framework gives leadership teams a map-based vocabulary for connectivity, complexity and long-term sustainability, drawn from a published body of work that includes Geofusion, GeoFuture and GeoVision. He sits inside the institutions that shape Eurasian strategy, including the Fudan Institute of Belt and Road and Global Governance in Shanghai and the Board of Bank of China CEE, which gives clients a perspective on the East that few European speakers can match. He treats geography as a strategic asset, not background context, which is useful for boards trying to make sense of supply chain reconfiguration, energy corridors and shifting trade blocs. In 2025 the World Complexity Science Academy awarded him its Medal for Sustainability for the Geofusion research, a signal that the work is taken seriously beyond bureau circuits. He delivers through cartography, not slideware. Two decades of building visual maps means a keynote reads as a guided journey across regions and time horizons, which holds large executive and conference audiences on complex material. Biography highlights Former State Secretary at Hungary’s Ministry for National Economy and former Executive Director at the Central Bank of Hungary, responsible for economic strategy and planning. Author of the Geofusion series (LID Publishing / World Scientific), published in English and Chinese, including Geofusion, GeoFusion 2.0, GeoFuture and GeoVision. 2025 recipient of the World Complexity Science Academy Medal for Sustainability for the Geofusion research. Member of the International Advisory Board, Fudan Institute of Belt and Road and Global Governance, Shanghai, and Independent Director, Bank of China CEE. Goodwill Ambassador of the Association of Universities of Asia and the Pacific (AUAP). Founder of the Turquoise Zones concept, presented across higher-education and city forums in Central Asia and Southeast Asia through 2025 and 2026, including keynotes covered by The Astana Times. Biography Geography is making a return to the strategy room. Trade corridors, energy routes, semiconductor chokepoints and sanctions maps are once again decisive variables for capital allocation. Norbert Csizmadia’s work, gathered under the Geofusion banner across four published volumes with LID Publishing and World Scientific, treats this return as the central organising fact of twenty-first century strategy. The argument is built from inside the machinery, not from a desk. As State Secretary for Planning Coordination at Hungary’s Ministry for National Economy, and later as Executive Director at the Central Bank of Hungary, he helped design national economic strategy at the level where geopolitics, infrastructure and capital allocation meet. That experience is rare in the geopolitics speaker pool, where commentary often dominates over operating perspective. His institutional footprint runs East as well as West. He sits on the International Advisory Board of the Fudan Institute of Belt and Road and Global Governance in Shanghai, is an Independent Director at Bank of China CEE, and chairs the Boards of Trustees at John von Neumann University Foundation and the Pallas Athene Domus Meriti Foundation. For European audiences, this gives him an unusually direct line of sight into Chinese strategic thinking on Eurasian connectivity. In 2025 the World Complexity Science Academy recognised the Geofusion body of work with its Medal for Sustainability, citing the research’s ability to map the interconnections between places, disciplines and long-term sustainability questions. That recognition matters because his proposition rests on it: that a map-based, cross-disciplinary reading of the world produces sharper strategic decisions than topic-by-topic analysis. Key speaking topics Geoeconomics and global strategy Eurasian connectivity and the Belt and Road Long-term sustainability and complexity The geography of trade, capital and supply chains Hungarian and Central European economic policy The role of maps in twenty-first century strategy Digitalisation and AI in a geopolitical frame The geography of livable and sustainable places (Turquoise Zones) Ideal for Boards and executive committees stress-testing geopolitical exposure across Europe and Asia Strategy, corporate development and policy leads in industries exposed to Eurasian trade corridors and energy flows Family offices, sovereign investors and asset allocators with capital deployed across East-West blocs Universities, foundations and policy bodies running long-horizon scenario work on connectivity and sustainability Audience outcomes A map-based reading of how Eurasian connectivity, energy and trade corridors are reshaping commercial and capital decisions A clearer view of how Chinese strategic thinking on Belt and Road frames European exposure A working vocabulary from the Geofusion framework for talking about complexity, connectivity and sustainability inside the same conversation A perspective on long-term sustainability that is grounded in geography and capital allocation rather than ESG narrative Strategic questions a leadership team can take into its own scenario planning

Why organisations work with Josef Joffe Four decades inside the engine room of European opinion-shaping as publisher-editor of Die Zeit and columnist for Suddeutsche Zeitung, giving boards a primary source on how Berlin, Paris and Brussels actually think. A contrarian intellectual record on American power. The Myth of America’s Decline (Liveright, 2013) dismantled the standard declinist consensus and predicted China’s strategic limits years before they became conventional wisdom. Co-founder of The American Interest with Brzezinski, Cohen and Fukuyama, and of its successor American Purpose. He has shaped the most serious post-Cold War conversation on the West’s strategic future. Stanford Hoover and Freeman Spogli affiliations alongside teaching at Harvard, Johns Hopkins SAIS and Stanford. Boards get an academic seriousness uncommon among geopolitical commentators. Bilingual fluency in the German and American political mind. He is one of the few public intellectuals who can address a transatlantic audience without translating awkwardly between the two political cultures. Biography highlights Publisher-editor of Die Zeit, 2000 to 2023, after fifteen years as editorial page editor of Suddeutsche Zeitung. Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution and courtesy professor of political science at Stanford; Senior Fellow of Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. PhD in Government from Harvard; MA from Johns Hopkins SAIS; BA from Swarthmore. Author of The Myth of America’s Decline (2013), Uberpower: The Imperial Temptation of America (2007) and The Limited Partnership (1987). Co-founder of The American Interest (2005) and American Purpose (2020), with Brzezinski, Cohen and Fukuyama. Recipient of the Theodor Wolff Prize, the Ludwig Borne Prize and Germany’s Federal Order of Merit. Biography The post-1945 international order is being rewritten in real time. War has returned to Europe, the China-US contest has hardened, and Germany has begun a defence and energy reorientation that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. Reading these shifts is now part of board-level strategic work, not foreign policy commentary. Josef Joffe has been working this territory for forty years. As publisher-editor of Die Zeit from 2000 to 2023, and before that as editorial page editor of Suddeutsche Zeitung, he shaped how the German political class understood its place in the Atlantic alliance. His books, including The Myth of America’s Decline (Liveright, 2013) and Uberpower: The Imperial Temptation of America (W.W. Norton, 2007), argue against the prevailing declinist reading of US power, drawing on demographic, economic and military fundamentals that he was naming well before they became consensus. At Stanford he is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, courtesy professor of political science, and Senior Fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He took his PhD in Government from Harvard and has taught at Harvard, Johns Hopkins SAIS and Stanford. In 2005 he co-founded The American Interest with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Eliot Cohen and Francis Fukuyama; in 2020 the successor publication American Purpose. What Joffe offers leadership teams is rare. A working bilingual command of the German and American political minds, an analytical record that has been right on the durability of American power, and the willingness to make a contrarian argument in front of a room that expects the conventional one. Key speaking topics US foreign policy and the future of American power Transatlantic relations and the Atlantic alliance Germany and the European political order China, Russia and the great-power contest The Middle East and Israel The fracturing post-1945 international order Ideal for Boards and executive committees with material exposure to US-China decoupling, Russia sanctions or European political risk CEOs and strategy leaders of transatlantic firms briefing their leadership on geopolitical scenarios CFOs and treasurers making capital allocation decisions against macro-political volatility Investor and partner forums where senior audiences expect serious foreign-policy analysis rather than commentary Audience outcomes A clearer reading of where US power, the China contest and European politics are actually heading, against the prevailing headlines A frame for distinguishing structural shifts from cyclical noise in transatlantic politics Direct insight into how Berlin, Paris and Brussels are recalibrating after the war in Ukraine A contrarian’s stress test of the assumptions their organisation is currently working from on geopolitics

Why organisations work with Calum Chace He has built two books and two operating ventures around the same argument: that AI changes capability, then labour, then the structure of the economy. Boards hear a coherent thesis, not a trend update. He coined the term “economic singularity” and wrote the book on it. Leadership teams trying to think clearly about technological unemployment get the original framing, not a recycled version. Through Conscium, the AI safety company he co-founded in 2024, and the linked PRISM research non-profit, he speaks from inside the live debate on machine consciousness and agent evaluation, not from the sidelines. Thirty years across BBC journalism, Financial Times writing, KPMG strategic intelligence and CEO roles mean he frames AI for commercial audiences in language they already use. Biography highlights Co-founder of Conscium (2024), an AI safety company working on neuromorphic computing, AI agent evaluation, and machine consciousness. Co-founder of the Economic Singularity Foundation, a think tank on the future of jobs in an AI economy. Author of Surviving AI and The Economic Singularity, plus the techno-thrillers Pandora’s Brain and Pandora’s Oracle. Co-host of the London Futurist Podcast and the PRISM Podcast on sentient machines. Read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford; trained as a journalist with the BBC; contributed to the Financial Times. Former director of KPMG’s strategic and commercial intelligence media practice and CEO of several businesses before moving to full-time writing and speaking in 2012. Biography Artificial intelligence is two distinct strategic questions for a board, not one. The first is what AI does to the products and services a business sells. The second is what it does to the labour the business buys. Calum Chace has spent a decade arguing that the second question is the one most organisations are underprepared for, and that the gap between AI as a capability story and AI as an economic story is where the strategic risk sits. His two non-fiction books frame that gap. Surviving AI deals with the long-term safety question once machines start to match and then exceed human capability. The Economic Singularity gave a name to the moment when technological unemployment becomes the dominant labour reality, and made the case that this is a question of decades, not centuries. The economic singularity is now a term other writers use; he wrote the book it came from. The work has continued into operating ventures. In 2024 he co-founded Conscium, an AI safety company developing neuromorphic computing, agent evaluation methods and research on machine consciousness. Conscium has since seeded PRISM, a non-profit researching sentient machines, which he co-hosts as a podcast. Earlier, he co-founded the Economic Singularity Foundation, a think tank on the future of jobs. Before any of that, Chace read PPE at Oxford, trained as a BBC journalist, wrote for the Financial Times, ran the media practice at KPMG’s strategic and commercial intelligence group, and held several CEO roles. That commercial background is why his talks for senior audiences sound like strategy conversations rather than technology briefings, and why he can argue both sides of the AI question, capability and consequence, in the same room. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and the two singularities The economic singularity and the future of jobs AI safety, alignment and machine consciousness Digital transformation and AI in the enterprise AI in healthcare AI in education The philosophy of AI Ideal for Boards and executive committees building a long-range AI strategy CHROs and people leaders facing workforce redesign around AI capability Conferences for technology, financial services, healthcare and professional services leadership Government, regulator and policy audiences working on AI governance and labour-market policy Audience outcomes A clearer separation between AI as a product question and AI as a labour question, and a sense of which one their organisation is more exposed to. A working definition of the economic singularity and a view on whether the case for serious technological unemployment is credible. A more informed position on AI safety, machine consciousness and agent evaluation as governance issues, not laboratory topics. Language and reference points senior leaders can use in their own board and investor conversations about AI.