Topic: Innovation

Sunnie J. Groeneveld

Sunnie J. Groeneveld is the Managing Partner of the consultancy Inspire 925 and co-founder of its two spin-off companies LunchLottery and Inspire 529. She serves as the Associate Dean of Studies at the HWZ University of Applied Sciences in Business Administration in Zurich, where she is responsible for the EMBA in Digital Leadership. She is also a board member of the engineering company HHM, the media group Galledia, the insurance company Sympany and the agency Jung von Matt/Limmat.

Past engagements include serving as the first managing director of digitalswitzerland, the nation’s largest cross-industry initiative on digital transformation. She authored the book “Inspired at Work” (Versus Verlag) and graduated in Economics from Yale -University.

Danilo McGarry

Digital transformation, Ai, Innovation and future of work are the most important topics in any company today. Every board, C level and decision maker is grappling how to lead and run such initiatives. Danilo McGarry is a speaker that can add significant value in relation to these topics.

Danilo McGarry is not just a speaker, he has circa 2 decades of designing, delivering and scaling numerous global technology & operational board level critical initiatives through effective enterprise-wise digital vision and strategy. He has ran some of the largest and most respected Transformation, Ai, Data and Innovation programs in market leading blue-chip companies (such as Citigroup, UnitedHealth Group) in multiple countries and industries. Danilo also has proven board & advisory level experience as well as Public and Private (listed & unlisted) experience. Extensive technical and global people management experience.

Danilo’s work has been published in The Financial Times, The Times, Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance, Computer Weekly – who have coined him as an industry thought and practitioner leader. Danilo is ranked as the 20 most influential people in Ai in the world, top 10 in the world by research and consultancy firms in various other tech domains such as Innovation, Digital Transformation, CRS and Data. He is also hyper connected in tech circles due to active involvement with tech & advisory companies, with whom he develops synergised digital strategy and digital ecosystems.

Danilo’s approach drives and builds a culture of unparalleled efficiency, drastically improved services, new and improved revenue streams and products. He is a digital leader that is technically able but with an entrepreneurial mind set. His speeches are well known for delivering real impact and value, where everyone can walk away from what he delivers wiser and with up-to-date market insights in how to lead and run their technology initiatives better.

David Plouffe

David Plouffe leads the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s policy and advocacy team. For more than 25 years, David has developed strategies to bring people together around common causes.

He has held senior positions in government and the private sector including his role as manager of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. David also served as White House Senior Advisor to President Obama and Chief Advisor at Uber Technologies, Inc, where he remains a member of the Board of Directors.

He is a veteran of several congressional, gubernatorial and presidential campaigns and served as Executive Director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and senior staff member to Democratic leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives.

He holds a BA from the University of Delaware and is the author of of the New York Times bestseller, The Audacity to Win.

Fredrik Haren

Fredrik Haren is an author and keynote speaker on Business Creativity, Change and Global Business who has delivered 2,000 presentations in over 60 countries on 6 continents.

He is the author of 10 books, including "The Idea Book" which was included in "The 100 Best Business Books of All Time” as well as the author of "One World. One Company” - a book about what it means to be a Truly Global Company.

Fredrik knows how to craft a speech so that, let’s say, an American, a Brazilian, a German and a Chinese all will be inspired and laugh and the same time feel that they walk away from the session with meaningful take-aways that were relevant to them. Just last year Fredrik spoke at 23 different global (or international conferences), and he was - again, just last year - invited to speak in 23 different countries on 4 continents. Fredrik is a truly global speaker, with examples from all over the world - suitable for your global (or international) conference.

Fredrik Haren was one of the keynote speakers at GLS, the world’s largest leadership conference with 10,000+ live in the audience, and a total of 400,000 (!) people in 128 countries around the world watching via video link. He shared the stage with speakers like Marcus Buckingham, Angela Duckworth and Sheryl Sandberg.

Mike Hoefflinger

As a 25-year Silicon Valley insider and author of Becoming Facebook who has worked with legendary leaders like Andy Grove, Sheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg, Mike Hoefflinger provides an engaging and insightful look at the biggest consumer technology stories of the past, present, and future.

Mike Hoefflinger offers unique insight as a Silicon Valley insider who helped to shape Facebook’s vision at a crucial stage of that brand’s development. Author of Becoming Facebook, which earned the 2017 Beverly Hills Book Award for Business, Hoefflinger can not only tell the biggest business stories of Silicon Valley’s past, present, and future, but he also gets to the heart of how legendary leaders and companies are able to build the future for us and can help audiences grow their careers, products, and companies in similar ways.

Dhairya Dand

Dhairya is an award winning researcher, designer and engineer, currently running ODD Industries (futurist factory X lab) in NYC, and sits on the advisory board of the XPRIZE Foundation.

Dhairya’s work investigates the human body as a medium for computation, new materials as a tool to embody interactions and design as a vehicle for mindfulness. His work is situated in the belief that human well-being in an increasingly computational world can be achieved at the intersection of thoughtful design, innovative engineering and radical paradigms. Most of his work is quirky, funny, provocative and ugly.

He has created shoes that tickle, a 2.5D malleable elastic display, synthetic muscles, ice-cubes that know how much you drink, toys made from electronic waste materials, emotionally intelligent flowers, wearable telepresence apparatus, optically invisible fibre-optics among other useless/useful inventions.

In Seattle, Dand was part of Amazon’s secretive Concept Lab, where he is credited for key inventions and Alexa devices. Some of his inventions which are public, involve invisible interfaces and using hand gestures to use the air as a medium for computing.

His work has been exhibited at various places around the world including the V&A, MIT Museum, Singapore Arts House; his research published at academic conferences including CHI, TEI, UIST; and has been written and interviewed in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, TIME Magazine, CNN, BBC, ABC, Forbes Magazine, NPR, Discovery among others. He has given keynotes at major international technology and innovation forums including; W3C Annual Summit, Tencent, TEDx, 72andSunny, Second Home, INK Talks, Contagious Future Flash, MIT Museum and WIRED.

He was part of the Forbes ’30 under 30’ list, ELLE’s ’20 Names To Know’ list, was named as the first WIRED Innovation fellow ‘innovators who will change our world’ and an INK Fellow, part of Globe’s ‘Top 25 Innovators’ list, the Smithsonian’s National Design Award and Vogue’s ‘Cool People’ list.

Previously he was a researcher at the MIT Media Lab in Boston and prior to that he was an amateur geologist in Saudi Arabia, a sensorial researcher in Tokyo, a toy designer in Phnom Penh, activist and researcher in Singapore, social-political entrepreneur/researcher in Bombay.

He holds a master’s degree in Media, Arts and Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied at the Media Lab with Pattie Maes (Fluid Interfaces Group), Henry Holtzman (Information Ecology Group) and was advised by Jun Rekimoto (University of Tokyo/Sony CSL), Ethan Zuckerman (Civic Media) and Philipp Schmidt (P2PU).

He has also taught semester-long studio-focused graduate courses at the Art Institute and several week-long innovation workshops with the MIT Media Lab Initiative of which he is also the Founding Director.

He has managed to live, work and study in Seattle, Cambridge, New York, London, Ad-Dammam, Tokyo, Phnom Penh, Singapore and Bombay and wishes to continue this cross-cultural wandering.

Bob Baxley

Bob Baxley is a design executive who lives and works in Silicon Valley. He most recently served as the Head of Product Design at Pinterest where he built, led, and managed a multifaceted design team responsible for both the consumer and business facing elements of Pinterest.

Prior to that, Bob spent over eight years at Apple, where he served in senior leadership roles for Apple’s retail and e-commerce teams. As a Director of Design, Bob hired and led the creative team responsible for a broad variety of applications including the Apple Online Store, the Apple Store app, and the transactional areas of iPhoto and GarageBand

As Director of Design for Yahoo! Search, Bob built and led the design team that created Yahoo! Answers and designed other search-centric properties. Bob’s career as a designer began at Claris Corporation where he was Lead UI Designer for the initial releases of ClarisWorks and MacProject Pro.

The author of “Making the Web Work”, Bob is also a sought after public speaker sharing his experiences and observations about a range of topics related to design, technology, innovation, and the culture of Silicon Valley.

Bob holds a B.A. in History and a B.S in Radio/Television/Film from the University of Texas at Austin as well as a Master of Liberal Arts from Stanford University.

Bill Fischer

Bill Fischer is a Professor of Innovation Management at IMD. He co-founded and co-directs the IMD program on Driving Strategic Innovation, in cooperation with the Sloan School of Management at MIT and also authors a regular column for Forbes.com entitled “The Ideas Business”.
Professor Fisher is an engineer by training and American by citizenship; Bill has lived much of his life in Asia and Europe. He held a full-professorship and endowed chair on the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1976-1998), first moved to China in 1980, and later became the President of the China Europe International Business School [CEIBS], in Shanghai (1997-1999). He has been awarded the Silver Magnolia award, Shanghai’s highest award for foreigners contributing to the city’s development, in 1999.
He first joined IMD in 1990, and was part of the IMD team that developed the Managerial Deep Dive process for improved innovation conversations.
His most recent books include: Reinventing Giants: How Chinese Global Competitor Haier has Changed the Way that Big Companies Transform [with Umberto Lago & Fang Liu], The Idea Hunter (2011) and Virtuoso Teams (2005) [both coauthored with Andy Boynton]. All of these books address issues of innovation and talent development and expression in a variety of organizational settings.
In 2011, Bill was named by The Independent [U.K.] as one of the most influential tweeters on business issues; and by InnovationExcellence.com as one of the “Top 50 Innovation Tweeters of 2012”, as well as one of InnovationManagement.com's 40 top innovation bloggers in 2012. In 2013, he was included among “The Top 50 Business School Professors on Twitter,” and Innovation Excellence’s “Top 50 Innovation Twitter Sharers of 2013”. Also, in 2013, Reinventing Giants, which addresses business model and corporate culture reinvention in a mature, commodity business, has been short-listed for Thinkers50 “book of the year” award.
His resents cases include: West side story: The team behind its creation, Boynton, Andrew; Fisher, William A; Boynton, Andrew. Ideo's Tech Box: The Crystallization of Experience, Fisher, William A; Boynton, Andrew. Wendy Simpson in China (B): (Overhead Case), Fisher, William A; Chung, Rebecca, etc.
Currently William A. Fisher is working on the following project: Virtuoso Teams Matter: Big Company Change Needs Big Talent, Managed Differently.

Dennis Hong

Dr. Dennis Hong, a TED alumnus, is a Professor and the Founding Director of RoMeLa (Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory) of the Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Department at UCLA.
His research focuses on robot locomotion and manipulation, autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots. He is the inventor of a number of novel robots and mechanisms, including the ‘whole skin locomotion’ for mobile robots inspired by how amoeba move, a unique three-legged waking robot STriDER, an air-powered robotic hand RAPHaEL, and the world’s first car that can be driven by the blind.
His work has been featured on numerous national and international media. Washington Post magazine called Dr. Hong “the Leonardo da Vinci of robots.” Dr. Hong has been named to Popular Science’s 8th annual “Brilliant 10”, honoring top scientists younger than 40 years of age from across the United States, “Forward Under 40” by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Alumni Association, and also honored as “Top 40 Under 40” alumni by Purdue University. Hong’s other past awards include the National Science Foundation’s CAREER award, the SAE International’s Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award, and the ASME Freudenstein / GM Young Investigator Award to name a few.
Dr. Hong also actively leads student teams for various international robotics and design competitions winning numerous top prizes including the DARPA Urban Challenge where they won third place and the $500,000 prize, and the RoboCup, the international autonomous robot soccer competition where his team won First Place in both the Kid-Size and Adult-Size Humanoid divisions and brought the Louis Vuitton Cup Best Humanoid Award to the United States for the very first time. Dr. Hong received his B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1994), his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University (1999, 2002).
He is also a serious gourmet chef and a magician performing annual charity magic shows and lectures on the science of magic.

Umair Haque

Umair Haque is one of the world's leading management thinkers. He is the youngest member of the Thinkers50, the world's authoritative ranking of the globe's fifty most widely recognized management experts. He has written hundreds of articles at his widely read blog at Harvard Business Review, published two books about the economy and business through Harvard Business Publishing. He has held senior positions in finance and strategy, and holds degrees from McGill University and London Business School.

He is director of "The Havas Media Lab" which is a platform for a new kind of strategic advisor that helps investors and entrepreneurs experiment with radical management business models and strategic innovation.

His book "Betterness" Economics for Humans, is a powerful call to arms for a post-capitalist economy. Umair Haque argues that just as positive psychology revolutionized our understanding of mental health by recasting the field as more than just treating mental illness, we need to rethink our economic paradigm. Why? Because business as we know it has reached a state of diminishing returns—though we work harder and harder, we never seem to get anywhere. This has led to a diminishing of the common wealth: wage stagnation, widening economic inequality, the depletion of the natural world, and more. To get out of this trap, we need to rethink the future of human exchange. In short, we need to get out of business and into betterness.

His previous book, "The New Capitalist Manifesto:" Building a Disruptively Better Business published in 2011, contends that companies must orient their business models around: “Renewal in order to maximize efficiency; equity in order to maximize productivity; meaning in order to maximize effectiveness; democracy in order to maximize agility; and peace in order to maximize evolvability.”

In 2006 he founded Bubblegeneration, an agenda-setting advisory boutique that shaped strategies across media and consumer industries. He has been ranked the 5th most influential business user of Twitter in the UK by the Independent, his various media appearances and citations include the FT, the New York Times, Wired, Forbes, the Guardian, MSNBC, and CNN.

Umair studied neuroscience at McGill, did his MBA and research with Gary Hamel at London Business School, and more postgraduate work in economics, strategy, and innovation at Oxford.

Ulrich Dietz

Ulrich Dietz, born in 1958, founded the internationally leading IT service provider GFT in 1987 and has been Chairman of the Executive Board of GFT Technologies AG since its IPO in 1999.

The GFT Group currently employs around 1,200 full-time and around 1,500 freelance employees at 20 locations in seven countries.

In 2009, GFT’s turnover totaled approx. € 220 million.

Ulrich Dietz studied mechanical engineering and product engineering at the university of Reutlingen and Furtwangen and graduated as a certified engineer.

He is the co-founder of the Transfer Centre for Information Technology (TZI) at the Steinbeis Foundation for business development. Apart from his function as CEO of GFT Technologies AG, Ulrich Dietz is active as a member in international boards.

In 2003, Ulrich Dietz became a member of the Presiding Committee of BITKOM (the German Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media).

In this role, he is particularly committed to the promotion and the expansion of international relations in the German IT industry. Furthermore, he is a member of the task force which represents “ICT country Germany and innovative business applications” within the scope of the federal government’s National IT Summit.

Within the framework of his activities it is Mr Dietz’s main aim to improve Germany’s position as an innovative country, as well as to promote entrepreneurship in the area of ICT.

Hermann Simon

Hermann Simon is the Founder and Honorary Chairman of Simon-Kucher & Partners. He is an expert in strategy, marketing and pricing. He is the only German in the “Thinkers50 Hall of Fame” of the most important management thinkers in the world. In German-speaking countries he has been continuously voted the most influential living management thinker since 2005. The magazine Cicero ranks him in the top 100 of the 500 most important intellectuals.

Before committing himself entirely to management consulting, Simon was a professor of business administration and marketing at the Universities of Mainz (1989-1995) and Bielefeld (1979-1989). He was also a visiting professor at Harvard Business School, Stanford, London Business School, INSEAD, Keio University in Tokyo and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1995 to 2009 he was CEO of Simon-Kucher & Partners.

Professor Simon has published over 35 books in 27 languages, including the worldwide bestsellers Hidden Champions (Boston 1996, cover story of BusinessWeek in 2004) and Power Pricing (New York 1997), as well as Manage for Profit, Not for Market Share (Boston 2006). Hidden Champions of the 21st Century, Success Strategies of Unknown World Market Leaders (New York 2009) investigates the strategies of little known market leaders. Confessions of the Pricing Man was published by Springer, New York in 2015. His newest textbook Price Management has been published in 2019.

Simon was and is a member of the editorial boards of numerous business journals, including the International Journal of Research in Marketing, Management Science, Recherche et Applications en Marketing, Décisions Marketing, European Management Journal as well as several German journals. For several decades he regularly wrote columns for the German business monthly Manager Magazin. As a board member of numerous foundations and corporations, Professor Simon has gained substantial experience in corporate governance. From 1984 to 1986 he was the president of the European Marketing Academy (EMAC). Simon is co-founder of the first Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) listed on the German Stock Exchange in Frankfurt, and the first search fund in Germany.

A native of Germany, he studied economics and business administration at the universities of Bonn and Cologne. He received his diploma (1973) and his doctorate (1976) from the University of Bonn. Simon has received numerous international awards and holds honorary doctorates from IEDC Business School of Bled (Slovenia), from the University of Siegen (Germany) and from Kozminski University Warsaw (Poland). He is a honorary professor at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. In China, the “Hermann Simon Business School” is named after him.

In 2022 Simon released his brand-new book Beating Inflation–An Agile, Concrete and Effective Corporate Guide, co-authored with Adam Echter, partner in Simon-Kucher’s San Francisco Office.

Marc Tarpenning

Tarpenning was raised in Sacramento, Calif., and earned a bachelor’s degree (1985) in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.

He began his career working for the conglomerate Textron in Saudi Arabia. Tarpenning then developed software and firmware products for several companies, including Seagate Technology and Bechtel, and later served as vice president of engineering at Packet Design, a network technology company.

In 1997 Eberhard and Tarpenning cofounded NuvoMedia, an e-book venture that produced the Rocket eBook (1998). Eberhard served as CEO and Tarpenning led development until 2000, when NuvoMedia was sold to Gemstar–TV Guide International for $187 million. In 2003 Eberhard and Tarpenning teamed up again to launch Tesla Motors, a company dedicated to developing an electric sports car. Funding for the company was obtained from a variety of sources, most notably PayPal cofounder Elon Musk, who contributed more than $30 million to the new venture and served as chairman of the company.

In 2006 Tesla Motors announced that its innovative, completely electric Tesla Roadster prototype had achieved an unprecedented range of 245 miles (394 km) on a single charge in company tests. Additional tests showed that the then $98,000 (later $109,000) sports car could accelerate from 0 to 60 mph (96 km/h) in less than four seconds and could reach a top speed of 125 mph (200 km/h). The lightweight car body was made of carbon fiber. The roadster produced no tailpipe emissions, as it did not use an internal-combustion engine. Tesla Motors found that the car attained efficiency ratings that were equivalent to a gasoline mileage of 135 miles per gallon (57 km per liter). The vehicle’s electric motor was powered by lithium-ion cells—often used in laptop-computer batteries—that could be recharged from a standard electric outlet. The initial roadsters were delivered to owners in 2008. Following the success of the roadster, the company diversified its product line by developing prototypes for more affordable electric cars.

Tarpenning was vice president of electrical engineering, supervising the development of electronic and software systems for the roadster, and was CFO for several years. He also left the company in 2008.

Marty Neumeier

Marty Neumeier is an author, designer, and business adviser whose mission is to bring the principles and processes of creativity to industry.

Neumeier attended Art Center College of Design from 1967 to 1969. For 15 years he worked in advertising and brand design, as a communication designer and writer in Southern California. In 1984 he moved to Silicon Valley to work with clients such as Adobe, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, and Symantec. By 1998 his firm Neumeier Design Team created retail packaging for software products, including Filemaker, Norton Antivirus, Apple system software, and HP LaserJet. During this time he served as a contributing editor for the magazine Communication Arts.

In 1996 he founded the "seminal but now-defunct design magazine Critique", a quarterly publication about design thinking.

In 2002, Neumeier started Neutron, a San Francisco consulting firm that specialized in internal branding. There he wrote three books on branding: The Brand Gap, Zag, and The Designful Company. He also served on the Board of Directors of AIGA, known until 2005 as the American Institute of Graphic Arts, developing the organization's first mission statement. He was president of AIGA Center for Brand Experience, where he edited and published The Dictionary of Brand.

In 2009, Neutron merged with Liquid Agency, which named Neumeier the firm's Director of Transformation. At Liquid he wrote two books on business creativity, Metaskills and The 46 Rules of Genius, as well as an updated version of The Dictionary of Brand for Google.

Pau Garcia-Milà Pujol

Pau García-Milà is the founder of eyeOS which he founded at the age of 17. The company was founded at the start of the Cloud Computing and Social Networking era. Pau is also the founder of Bananity, a social networking company.

As an entrepreneur, Pau has achieved significant recognition and won several awards as the Innovator of the Year for 2011 by MIT (TR-35), the Prince of Asturias & Girona award "IMPULSA Empresa 2010" and the National Communications Award 2009 (Spain).

A frequent speaker, Pau is also the youngest professor of ESADE (in Digital Business Master). In the audiovisual field, Pau has contributed to a number of radio programmes (Catalunya Radio, RAC1) and is the presenter of Empenta, the only radio program dedicated 100% to entrepreneurs.

On television, Pau appears on a weekly programme, Catalunya Divendres about entrepreneurship. Pau also codirected a mini-series in the summer of 2012 with Andreu Buenafuente called Verano Amarillo.

Haiyan Wang

Haiyan Wang is Managing Partner of the China India Institute, a research consultancy with a focus on creating winning global strategies that leverage the transformational rise of China and India. She is also an Adjunct Professor of Strategy at INSEAD. Ms. Wang serves as a regular columnist for BusinessWeek, a Contributing Editor for the Chief Executive magazine, and a regular blogger for Harvard Business Review.

She is the co-author of two highly acclaimed books: Getting China and India Right (which received the 2009 Axiom Book Awards’ Silver Prize as one of the world’s two best books on globalization/international business) and The Quest for Global Dominance. Her opinion pieces have appeared in top international media such as The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Chief Executive, The Economic Times, China Daily, The Times of India, as well as other outlets.

She has also been frequently interviewed by CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, India Today, CNN Expansión, Shanghai Daily, and other prominent business media.

A highly sought-after speaker at major industry and corporate conferences, Ms. Wang has also spoken at TEDx, Economist, and other high profile conferences. A native of China, Ms. Wang has spent the last twenty years consulting for and managing multinational business operations in China and the United States in several different industry sectors. Haiyan serves regularly as a keynote speaker at major conferences and corporate forums in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Latin America.

Eugene Kaspersky

Eugene Kaspersky’s love for mathematics determined his “technical” future. One of his hobbies during high school was to solve problems published in mathematical journals.

During his last few years in high school, he attended extracurricular classes in physics and mathematics at a dedicated program organized by the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. Eugene spent his last two years of high school taking physics and mathematics courses in a specialized program for gifted students organized by and affiliated with Moscow State University. In 1987, Eugene graduated from the Institute of Cryptography, Telecommunications and Computer Science, where he studied mathematics, cryptography and computer technology, majoring in mathematical engineering. After graduating, Eugene worked at a multi-disciplinary research institute. It was there that Eugene first began studying computer viruses after detecting the Cascade virus on his computer in October 1989. Eugene analyzed the virus and developed a disinfection utility for it – the first such utility he developed. He started collecting malicious programs and disinfection modules for them.

This exotic collection later formed the foundation of the famous antivirus database in Kaspersky Anti-Virus. Today, this database includes more than 4 million records and is one of the most complete antivirus databases in the world. In 1991, Eugene joined the KAMI Information Technologies Center, where he and a group of colleagues developed the AVP antivirus project, which became the prototype for Kaspersky Anti-Virus. International recognition of the project arrived in 1994, when the virtually unknown AVP won a contest conducted by Hamburg University’s test lab, demonstrating a higher virus detection rate than the most popular antivirus programs at the time.

In 1997, Eugene and his colleagues decided to establish an independent company, becoming the founders of Kaspersky Lab. From that moment, he has headed the company's antivirus research.

In 2007, Eugene was named CEO of Kaspersky Lab.

Eugene was voted the World’s Most Powerful Security Exec by SYS-CON Media in 2011, awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Science from Plymouth University in 2012, and named one of Foreign Policy Magazine’s 2012 Top Global Thinkers for his contribution to IT security awareness on a global scale.

Janjaap Ruijssenaars

Architect, urban planner and inventor Janjaap Ruijssenaars is internationally known for his innovative projects, such as: Gravity Energy - a patented technique that harnesses the omnipresent force of gravity to generate electricity in a more efficient way, Floating Bed - a piece of furniture on a magnetic field that was awarded best invention of the year, Landscape House - an infinite building without an end or a beginning that will be 3d printed and Square House - a world premier that revolutionised terraced housing by giving more living quality at a higher density.

Janjaap talked on his inventions at many venues amongst which TEDX Maastricht (Netherlands), University of Cambridge (England) and NEXT Berlin (Germany). In his talks he elaborates on the creation ofan eco-system of internationally acclaimed partners to make those inventions a reality.

He will share the latest hurdles he took and progress he is making towards success.

Janjaap was educated at the Technical University Delft (Netherlands), University Barcelona (Spain) and Western State College of Colorado (USA). After graduating as an architect he started Universe Architecture Ltd. and, later on, Gravity Energy Ltd. As senior urban designer he works with stakeholders on the densification of Amsterdam. The city is facing an enormous task of building 50.000 houses before 2025.

Dan Burrus

Daniel Burrus is considered one of the world’s leading technology forecasters and business strategists, and is the founder and CEO of Burrus Research, a research and consulting firm that monitors global advancements in technology driven trends to help clients better understand how technological, social and business forces are converging to create enormous, untapped opportunities. He is the author of six books, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal best seller Flash Foresight: How to See the Invisible and Do the Impossible as well as the highly acclaimed Technotrends.

The New York Times has referred to Daniel Burrus as one of Americas top three business “gurus” in the highest demand as a speaker. In 1983, Burrus became the first and only futurist to accurately identify the twenty technologies that would become the driving force of business and economic change for decades to come.

Since then, he has continued to establish a worldwide reputation for his exceptional record of predicting the future of technological change and its direct impact on the business world. He has helped hundreds of clients identify new opportunities and develop successful competitive strategies based on the creative application of leading-edge technologies, and has delivered over 2,500 keynote speeches to corporations, associations, and professional organizations worldwide.

He is also a featured blogger on the topics of innovation, change and the future for CNBC, Huffington Post, and Wired Magazine to name a few. In his keynote presentations, Mr. Burrus is a master at tailoring his message to each individual audience as he addresses relevant trends and offers powerful, practical guidance for turning rapid technology-driven change into a competitive advantage. His captivating style blends timely and provocative insights and actionable knowledge with just the right amount of humor and motivation. He has founded and managed six businesses, three of which were national leaders in their first year. As a highly successful entrepreneur, he knows how to translate research findings into practical business advantages.

Burrus’ client list encompasses a wide range of industries, and includes many Fortune 500 companies such as GE, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, DuPont, Google, Toshiba, Procter & Gamble, American Express, Northwestern Mutual, ExxonMobil, and Sara Lee. He has been the featured subject of several PBS Specials, has appeared on programs such as CNN, CNBC and Bloomberg, and is quoted in a variety of publications, including The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Fortune and Industry Week.

Gabor George Burt

Gabor is an internationally recognized expert on Blue Ocean Strategy and Value Innovation; the highly acclaimed, new approach to high-growth strategy formation and implementation conceived by INSEAD professors W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne. He is also regarded as a thought leader on the cognitive perspective of Defying Conventional Wisdom. Taken together, his two spheres of expertise are especially relevant in helping organizations to create successful strategies during times of economic uncertainty.

Gabor is also the chief architect and original host of the Blue Ocean Executive Experience series, an exclusive immersion forum on Blue Ocean Strategy and Defying Conventional Wisdom. He is actively involved in shaping strategy with a diverse group of international clients spanning from Fortune 500 firms to successful start-ups, as well as in his own wide-ranging application of the Blue Ocean and DCW concepts.

An engaging and provocative presenter, Gabor aims to uncover the core concepts of Blue Ocean Strategy and the mindset of Defying Conventional Wisdom in a way that makes them immediately accessible for his audiences. He is a frequent lecturer and advisor to companies on the topic of innovation and strategies that lead to uncontested market space. 

 In addition to a BA degree in psychology from Amherst College, Gabor holds an MBA degree from INSEAD in France.

Michael Tushman

Michael Tushman holds degrees from Northeastern University (B.S.E.E.), Cornell University (M.S.), and the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T. (Ph.D.). Tushman was on the faculty of the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University, from 1976 to 1998; he was Phillip Hettleman Professor of Business from 1989 to 1998. He has also been a visiting professor at MIT (1982, 1996) and INSEAD (1995-1998).

Professor Tushman is internationally recognized for his work on the relations between technological change, executive leadership and organization adaptation, and for his work on innovation streams and organization design. He has published numerous articles and books including Winning Through Innovation: A Practical Guide to Leading Organizational Renewal and Change (with C. O’Reilly); Navigating Change: How CEOs, Top Teams, and Boards Steer Transformation (with D. Hambrick and D. Nadler); Competing by Design: A Blueprint for Organizational Architectures (with D. Nadler); and Managing Strategic Innovation: A Collection of Readings (with P. Anderson).

Tushman teaches courses on managing organizations, managing innovation, and managing strategic change. At Columbia, he won the first W. H. Newman Award for excellence and innovation in the classroom. In 2005, Tushman was named Lecturer of the Year at CHAMPS, Chalmers University of Technology. Tushman has supervised many Ph.D. students, several who have won national awards for their dissertation research.

Tushman is an active consultant and instructor in corporate executive education programs around the world. His clients have included: J&J, BT,Hewlett Packard, Agilent, GKN, Roche, Novartis, Pfizer, The World Bank, General Electric, BOC, Merck, Ericsson, Grand Met, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Xerox, GTE, ALCOA, Tele Finland, Anglo-American, IBM, Neste, Corning, and AT&T. Tushman has also worked with executive programs at California Institute of Technology, Berkeley, Nomura School of Business (Tokyo), Stanford, Chalmers University of Technology, INSEAD, Wharton, the Australian Institute of Management, and the American Electronics Association.

Professor Tushman has also served on the boards of many scholarly journals including Administrative Science Quarterly, Management Science, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Human Relations, Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Journal of Management Studies, Organizational Dynamics, and IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management.

Tushman was elected Fellow of the Academy of Management in 1996, and received the distinguished scholar awards in both the Technology and Innovation Management (1999) and Organization Management and Theory (2003) Divisions of the Academy of Management. His paper with Mary Benner won the Academy of Management Review’s best paper award in 2004.

He received Honorary Doctorate of the University of Geneva in 2008. He has also served as chairperson of the Organization and Management Theory and the Technology and Innovation Management Divisions of the Academy of Management. He was senior advisor to the Delta Consulting Group and past trustee of IBM Credit Corporation. He was awarded the Academy of Management’s Career Achievement Award for Distinguished Scholarly Contributions to Management as well as the 2013 Academy of Management Review Decade Award for his paper with Mary J. Benner, “Exploitation, Exploration and Process Management: The Productivity Dilemma Revisited". He is also the recipient of the 2013 Apgar Award for Innovation in Teaching.

Tim Smit

Sir Tim Smit KBE was born in Holland on 25 September 1954. He read Archaeology and Anthropology at Durham University. Tim worked for ten years in the music industry as composer/producer in both rock music and opera. In 1987 Tim moved to Cornwall he and John Nelson together ‘discovered’ and then restored the Lost Gardens of Heligan. Tim remains a Director of the gardens to the present day.

Tim is Executive Vice-Chairman, and Co-founder of the Award winning Eden Project near St Austell in Cornwall. Eden began as a dream in 1995 and opened its doors to the public in 2000, since when more than 18 million people have come to see what was once a sterile pit turned into a cradle of life containing world-class horticulture and startling architecture symbolic of human endeavour.  Eden has contributed over £1.7 billion into the Cornish economy.  Eden is proud of its success in changing people’s perception of the potential for and the application of science, by communicating and interpreting scientific concepts through the use of art, drama and storytelling as well as living up to its mission to take a pivotal role in local regeneration. It demonstrates once and for all that sustainability is not about sandals and nut cutlets, it is about good business practice and the citizenship values of the future.

Tim is a Trustee, Patron and Board Member of a number of statutory and voluntary bodies both locally and nationally. He has received a variety of national awards including The Royal Society of Arts Albert Medal (2003).

In 2002 he was awarded an Honorary CBE in the New Years Honours List and In January 2011 he was appointed an honorary Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Her Majesty the Queen in recognition of his services to public engagement with science.  This appointment was made substantive in June 2012 when he became a British Citizen.

He has received Honorary Doctorates and Fellowships from a number of Universities. Tim was voted ‘Great Briton of 2007’ in the Environment category of the Morgan Stanley Great Britons Awards.

In 2011 Tim was given a special award at the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards, which recognises the contribution of people who inspire others with their vision, leadership and achievement.  Tim has taken part in a quantity of television and radio programmes and has been the subject of ‘This is Your Life’ and a guest on ‘Desert Island Discs’. He is a regular speaker at conferences, dinners, Awards Ceremonies and other events.

Tim is the author of books about both Heligan and Eden and he has contributed to publications on a wide variety of subjects. He lives in Lostwithiel, Cornwall and in his free time he enjoys reading, film, music and art.

Nathan Schulhof

For more than 35 years, Schulhof has been involved in a wide variety of entrepreneurial ventures, ranging various entrepreneurial adventures as a young man growing up near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to starting an air charter service in Florida in the 1970s.

While attending two years at Lincoln University Law School in San Francisco, Schulhof worked as an agent for New York Life before deciding that neither law nor insurance were ideal matches for him. Schulhof entered the technology world in the late 1970s when he began working on a software idea that eventually bore fruit as Silicon Valley Systems, the developer of Word Handler, the first and best-selling high-resolution graphics word processor for the Apple II computer. SVS was also the first technology firm to implement a telemarketing effort targeting the retail channel.

Prior to co-founding audiohighway.com, Schulhof formed TestDrive Corporation, a pioneer in the distribution of encrypted computer software on CD-ROM and the first company to distribute a CD-ROM inside a magazine. TestDrive was later sold to R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co.

He also participated in the DotCom craze of the late 1990s, leading the transformation of Information Highway Media Corporation into audiohighway.com, one of the leading destination web sites for downloading and streaming media in the world. Schulhof also helped take audiohighway.com public in 1998 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Schulhof co-founded Solar Components, LLC, Silicon Valley-based firm in the solar power industry. His current focus is dedicated to finding a more productive use of alternative energy.

Through the years, Schulhof has been extensively quoted and featured in technology and consumer media, including pieces in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Businessweek, Inc., Success, among others. He has spoken extensively at industry events (including COMDEX, CES, Fall Internet World and Apple Computer’s Independent Developer Conference, among others), and has raised tens of millions of dollars in private and public equity.

Kjell Nordstrom

With Ghandi-like charisma and a unique ability to predict the future, Kjell A. Nordström is one of the world’s most loved and sought-after lecturers. An expert on multinational organizations, Nordström has helped companies – and, indeed, entire societies – to navigate periods of growth and crisis since the 1990s. His mastery of his craft, sharp eye for detail and deep experience infuse his keynotes and leave few in his audiences unaffected.

Dr. Nordström is a prolific writer, in his seventh book, Momentum (2023), co-written with Per Schlingmann, he examines how the world has been affected by the pandemic, the climate crisis and the war in Ukraine. His stance: we are in the middle of a historic moment where citizens, co-workers and capital all expect something new — and the consequences will be all-encompassing.

With a rare prophetic accuracy, Kjell A. Nordström has predicted several important keys to success for organisations in our rapidly changing world. He correctly identified difference and ‘otherness’ as competitive advantages, cities as the new primary agents of the world, and the subtle yet thorough effects of women permeating all levels of society — long before other great minds in business. And although we can only predict the future based on what we know today, a Nordström lecture is your chance to equip your organisation with the most up-to-date thinking.

Dr. Nordström bases his observations and predictions on reliable research, the latest movements on the global market and his unparalleled experience and insight. He conducted research in Lahore and Beijing in the 1990s and monitored and assisted in the reconstruction of countries like Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union. For three decades he has been engaging with the world’s most influential and cutting-edge companies and he consistently tops lists of the greatest management minds in Europe. As such, Nordström is uniquely positioned to observe the movement of powerful global forces and to show his audiences how the future will unfold. When Kjell A. Nordström enters the stage, be prepared for an elegant and captivating lecture that promises to inspire, inform and spellbind.

With several bestselling books and years of cutting-edge research behind them, Nordström’s lectures are guaranteed to make your organisation a stronger competitor in the international arena. Will our globalised world continue to expand, or will it fracture into regional ‘oligons’? Will the workforce of tomorrow be dominated by educated women in cities? How will working conditions and societies change when city centres are hollowed into donuts? Is climate change the greatest business opportunity since the industrial revolution?

These are just a few of the questions Dr. Nordström seeks to answer– and his answers will surprise you.

Be inspired to look to the future. Discover the hidden potential in your company. Explore the opportunities offered by global markets. Learn about next-generation business, work life and society structures. In a tailor-made and unique session with Nordström, be it a keynote speech or management workshop, you will learn how to spot and understand the global forces shaping the future, so that you can make your own predictions.

Kjell A. Nordström had his international breakthrough with the influential Funky Business (1999), co-written with Jonas Ridderstråle. His successful predictions about the new millennium launched his career as an international lecturer and led to frequent appearances on news channels including CNN and CNBC and countless interviews in other news outlets and magazines. Further success followed with Karaoke Capitalism (2003) and Funky Business Forever (2007).

Along with co-author Per Schlingmann, Nordström wrote the bestselling Urban Express (2014) and Corona Express (2021), books dealing with the workplaces, cities and societies of the future. In their latest book Momentum (2023) they describes how the leaders and managers of tomorrow will be shaped by war, pandemics and climate change. His first book for teens, The Monkey and the Capital, will also be in bookshops soon.

Nordström has a doctoral degree in International Business from the Stockholm School of Economics, where he has also played a central role at the prestigious Institute for International Business as one of the founders of the schools most sought after management programs, “The Advanced Management Program – AMP”. AMP was a top-management program that attracted the elite of Scandinavian executives.

When Kjell A. Nordström is not researching or delivering keynote speeches, he is an active investor, committed entrepreneur and theatre aficionado. He runs a prominent Shakespeare group, putting on performances on the Swedish vacation paradise island of Gotland. He serves as advisor to many international companies and makes regular appearances on TV.

Peter Keen

Peter Keen works globally as a professor, advisor to senior management in business and government organizations, author, executive educator and public speaker.

Keen has held faculty positions at Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Duke, Fordham, Wharton and The London Business School.

He has been awarded honorary doctoral degrees by Marist College and Abo Akademi University (Finland) for his career-long "pioneering contributions and key theory work in the interface between information technology, management theory and the managerial use of information systems."

Peter Keen was named as one of the top 100 business "gurus" in the world - thought leaders with impact - in a 2003 survey. This ranking is based on objective measures of citations of his work in the scholarly literature (influence as a thought leader), Google search engine "hits" on his name (public impact and interest), and media references on Lexis/Nexus (newsworthiness). He is also regularly ranked in the top ten consultants in the world in the IT field, but the business guru rating indicates the extent to which his work is more general than just IT.

Keen is first of all a thinker, teacher and adviser in the area of business innovation, with IT as a core enabler, but only that. His strengths in IT add to his other strengths in organization (especially competing via business processes), international business, and corporate finance. Peter's consulting focuses on helping private and public sector organizations make the management difference in exploiting technology and process capabilities to build a sustainable innovation advantage. His executive education programs are centered on leadership in practice rather than theory and good intentions, through an "imperatives" and "beachhead" approach to accelerating change and reducing its risks.

Peter Keen is a prolific writer and the author of close to 30 books, including Shaping the Future: Business Design through Information Technology, The Process Edge, The eProcess Edge, Every Manager's Guide to IT, Trust by Design, The Freedom Economy, Competing in Time, and Decision Support Systems: an Organizational Perspective. Mr. Keen's view on business effectiveness and innovation is that they rest on a fusion of people, process, technology and economics; the role of leadership is to ensure that fusion.

A major area of his current research and consulting centers on the opportunities and challenges of mobile technology: building the business models for a new generation of mobile value services, knowledge mobilization as organizational advantage, mobile supply chain management, and the use of mobile for social and economic development.

Peter Keen regards himself as a "voyager" between many worlds, a translator and an integrator. He is a European who lives in the United States, holds a senior professorship position in Europe and works across the world bringing insights and experiences from and to each of the regions and nations he works in. Peter is a consultant with a distinguished academic track record, and is actively involved in both the public and private sectors.

Sahar Hashemi

In 1995 Sahar Hashemi and her brother Bobby founded Coffee Republic, the UK’s first coffee bar chain. Within 5 years they built Coffee Republic into one of the UK’s most recognized high street brands with 110 bars and turnover of £30m.

Hashemi was a lawyer and her brother was an investment banker. They gave up their highly paid professional jobs and staked everything on a dream. They made Coffee Republic one of the main players in the ‘coffee revolution’ that transformed a nation of tea drinkers to one obsessed with ‘triple grande vanilla skinny lattes.’ How they came to build a nationwide coffee chain is a fascinating and inspirational tale of the ups and downs of following your dream.

Hashemi left the day-to-day management of Coffee Republic in 2001 and wrote a book about her journey of entrepreneurship, Anyone Can Do It - Building Coffee Republic from Our Kitchen Table. Anyone Can Do It has become the 2nd highest selling book ever published in the UK on entrepreneurship after Richard Branson’s book - according to Nielsen Bookscan. Hashemi believes that if she can make it as an entrepreneur, anyone can make it.

In 2005, she launched her new business Skinny Candy, a brand of sugar free confectionary, low-fat sweets and chocolates. Skinny Candy was sold to confectionery conglomerate Glisten PLC in 2007.

Her most recent book, Switched On, published in 2010, focuses on 8 habits that foster a more entrepreneurial mindset for employees.  It is based on her experience of the transformation in culture when a small entrepreneurial company becomes big and successful, when the obvious and easy entrepreneurial habits are often forgotten as bureaucracy take over.

In 2011 Sahar was nominated by Director magazine as one of its Top 10 Original Thinkers. The magazine praised her view that “Entrepreneurially minded talent shouldn’t have to leave large corporations in order to achieve fulfillment. Entrepreneurial behaviour, including ideas like bootstrapping, prototyping and celebrating failure, can help turn stuffy corporations into creative environments. They can also transform automatons into valued, engaged employees”.

In 2011 she was invited to join the Entrepreneurs Forum set up by UK Business Secretary Vince Cable to give informal personal advice to the government on enterprise policies.

In June 2012 Sahar was awarded an OBE for services to the UK economy and to charity.

She was also awarded: Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Top 10 original thinkers by Director Magazine, ‘Pioneer to the Life of the Nation’ by her Majesty The Queen, 100 most influential women in Britain by Daily Mail, one of the 35 top women in British business by Management Today and 20 most powerful women in Britain by Independent on Sunday, Top 5 in a Shell Livewire survey of inspirational role models.