Speaker

Alex Adamopoulos
Chief Executive Officer, Emergn Limited

Alex is a hands-on executive with more than 25 years experience and a successful track record in global professional services and technology organizations. Alex founded Emergn Limited in 2009. His work has spanned early stage and startup organizations and also Fortune 1000 companies.  Alex has extensive international experience with a deep understanding of culture, work, and life ethics especially in relation to establishing alignment and crossing cultural barriers.

Alex has served in several key leadership roles in his career with well known organizations always with a distinct focus on leadership  development, change management and international growth and expansion. Emergn‘s education led transformation approach is a culmination of a career centered on learning as a change agent.

Speaker

Simone Ahuja
CEO Blood Orange, global thought leader on innovation, bestselling author

Dr. Simone Bhan Ahuja is the founder of Blood Orange, a global innovation and strategy firm. The co-author of the international bestseller, Jugaad Innovation, the author of intrapreneurship playbook Disrupt-It-Yourself, and a regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review, Simone is a keynote speaker and innovation advisor to global organizations including 3M, Procter & Gamble, Stanley Black & Decker, and the World Economic Forum. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Walker Art Center and a practitioner of improvisational comedy. Simone resides in Minneapolis with her family.

Speaker

Tal Ben-Shahar
Lecturer Harvard University, Author and Co-founder The Happiness Studies Academy & Potentialife

An expert on leadership and the science of happiness, Tal Ben-Shahar combines scientific studies, scholarly research, self-help advice, and spiritual principles to teach people how to optimize their success and wellbeing.

After graduating from Harvard with a BA in Philosophy and Psychology and a PhD in Organizational Behavior, Tal taught two of the  most popular courses in Harvard’s history: Positive Psychology and The Psychology
of Leadership.

He is an international, best-selling author whose books have been translated into more than 25 languages.

Tal is the co-founder of The Happiness Studies Academy and Potentialife.

He is a certified yoga instructor whose work bridges Eastern and Western traditions, ancient wisdom and modern technology, science and art.

Recent book:

Happier, No Matter What: Cultivating Hope, Resilience, and Purpose in Hard Times

Speaker

Amy Bernstein
Editor, Harvard Business Review & VP Harvard Business Publishing

Amy Bernstein is the Editor of Harvard Business Review and Vice President and Executive Editorial Director for Harvard Business Publishing, where she leads the company’s Educational and Learning Content unit. Prior to joining HBR in 2011, she had been VP, Global Thought Leadership, at ManpowerGroup. She has also held senior editorial positions at strategy+business, Business 2.0, The Industry Standard, Brill’s Content, and U.S. News & World Report.

Speaker

Mathis Bitton
Student of philosophy and political theory, Yale University

Mathis Bitton is a student of philosophy and political theory at Yale, currently working at the magazine Palladium. Hailing from Rabat, Morocco, he edits the Yale Historical Review and the Yale Herald, writes columns for the Yale Daily News, and serves as the Vice President of the Yale Political Union. A former intern at the American Enterprise Institute, the French National Assembly, and the Tikvah Fund, his work has appeared in National Review.

Speaker

Steve Blank
Adjunct Professor at Stanford and Senior Fellow for Innovation at Columbia

Steve Blank is an Adjunct Professor at Stanford and Senior Fellow for Innovation at Columbia. He has been described as the Father of Modern Entrepreneurship. Credited with launching the Lean Startup movement the curriculums for the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps and Hacking for Defense and Diplomacy he’s changed how startups are built; how entrepreneurship is taught; how science is commercialized, and how companies and the government innovate.

Steve is the author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany and The Startup Owner’s Manual which revolutionized how startups were built-- and his May 2013 Harvard Business Review cover story redefined how large companies can innovate at speed.

Steve's latest class at Stanford is Technology, Innovation and Modern War, which is providing crucial insight on the impact of commercial technology on the future of warfare.
 
Steve blogs at www.steveblank.com.

Conference Chair

Eduardo P. Braun
Leadership expert, consultant and author

Eduardo Braun is a leadership expert and consultant, keynote speaker, and author. For more than 15 years Eduardo has traveled the globe and interviewed -both on-stage and before cameras- world-renowned management leaders, heads of state, and top academics and entrepreneurs, including personalities such as Pope Francis, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Jack Welch, among others. His new book "People First Leadership" is the result of these many conversations, where he shares intimate stories and practical life lessons of successful leaders who use culture and emotion to drive unprecedented results, and introduces a new vision of leadership where The New CEO -Chief Emotions Officer- establishes stronger connections that get better results and create a culture of inspiration and success. Eduardo is an industrial engineer from the University of Buenos Aires, he has an MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He worked in the US, Europe and Latin America for more than two decades in companies such as Booz Allen & Hamilton, Etex Group, and The HSM Group -global multimedia management company and organizer of the World Business Forum. Eduardo lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with his 6 children.

Speaker

Gonzalo Brujó
Global President, Interbrand Group; Professor, IE Bus. School, LVMH Academy, and author

Gonzalo is Global President at Interbrand Group. He leads the day-to-day operations of the global corporate group, spearheading the growth agenda and supporting marketing and consulting efforts in all the regions.

He has been Global Chief Growth Officer of the Interbrand Group for three years. Prior to that, he spent more than fifteen years scaling the Interbrand business in Europe, Latin America and the Middle East.

Gonzalo is a trusted partner of a diverse array of leading companies, multinationals and public institutions, managing strategic projects across every aspect of branding, marketing and communication. He has worked with well-known prestigious companies across all sectors: banking & financial services, telecommunications, automotive, airlines, transport, fashion, luxury, FMCG, food & beverages and technology, amongst others.

He is passionate about helping companies in all sectors drive growth. He has advised many of the world’s best-known brands, including Santander, The Coca- Cola Company, Iberia, Volkswagen Group, Zara, Renault, Huawei, Uber, LatAm and Axa.

Additionally, Brujó is a professor at several business schools including IE Business School, the University of Navarra and the LVMH Academy, and is the author of a number of top-selling brand books, including: The Secrets of Luxury, Managing Brands in Fashion, The New Generation of Value, and Lanmarq.

Before joining Interbrand, Gonzalo was the Managing Director for Futurebrand and Executive Vice-President and Director of Green Team Advertising in New York.

Gonzalo holds a BA in Communications, Political Science and Sociology from Wheaton College, Norton, MA. He also attended Harvard, MA, the American University of Paris and the College for International Studies in Madrid, in affiliation with Bentley College, Waltham, MA.

Speaker

Bernard Charnwut Chan
Non-official Member of Hong Kong's Executive Council, President of Asia Financials Holdings Ltd.

Bernard Charnwut Chan is a deputy to the National People’s Congress of China, a non-official member of Hong Kong’s Executive Council (2004-09 and from 2012) and (from 2017) the Convenor of the Non-Official Members of the Executive Council. He is also a former member of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council (1998-2008).

A graduate of Pomona College in California, he is the President of Asia Financial Holdings and Chairman of Asia Insurance. He is Chairman of the Hong Kong – Thailand Business Council and an advisor to Bangkok Bank (China) Co. Ltd.  He sits on the boards of several local and overseas companies in financial services and is a director of Bumrungrad Hospital Public Company in Thailand.

Among his public service activities, he is Chairperson of the Hong Kong Council of Social Service, Chairman of the Hong Kong Palace Museum Ltd, Chairman of Tai Kwun Culture & Arts Co. Ltd., Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Hong Kong Chronicles Institute, Chairman of the Committee on Reduction of Salt and Sugar in Food and Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of Our Hong Kong Foundation.  Past positions include Council Chair of Lingnan University, Chairman of the Council for Sustainable Development, Chairman of the Antiquities Advisory Board, Chairman of the Advisory Committee on Revitalisation of Historic Buildings and Chairman of the two Standing Committees on Disciplined Services and Judicial Salaries and Conditions of Service. He is also a Trustee Emeritus of Pomona College.

He was appointed a Justice of the Peace in 2002, and a Commander (3rd Class) of the Most Noble Order of the Crown of Thailand in 2004.  In 2006, he was awarded the Gold Bauhinia Star by the Hong Kong SAR Government, and in 2020 he received Hong Kong’s highest honor, the Grand Bauhinia Medal. He has been conferred honorary degrees from Lingnan University, City University of Hong Kong, the Open University of Hong Kong and Savannah College of Art and Design.

He is married and has two children.

Speaker

Nand Kishore Chaudhary
Social entrepreneur; Chairman and Managing Director, Jaipur Rugs

Nand Kishore Chaudhary, a globally acclaimed social entrepreneur, is the founder of Jaipur Rugs, one of India's largest manufacturers of hand knotted rugs and is often referred to as ‘Gandhi of the Carpet Industry’.

With just two looms and nine artisans in 1978, his journey four decades later stands at Jaipur Rugs becoming a global social enterprise exporting to over 60 countries while providing sustainable livelihood to 40,000 artisans in 600 remote villages across five states in India, out of which 80% of them are women.

Management guru, C.K. Prahalad featured his revolutionary business philosophy in his globally acclaimed book - The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. Mr Chaudhary has also been termed as ‘father of modern social enterprises’ by Prof. Jagdish N. Sheth from Emory University, USA. Sheth said, “Jaipur Rugs has become a role model, that business can serve society and at the same time ... can be a capitalistic institution”.

In 2019, Raj Sisodia featured Jaipur Rugs and NK Chaudhary in his book, ‘The Healing Organization’ for ‘The Power of innocence’. The book highly celebrated NK Chaudhary’s steps towards healing the customers and transforming the society with love.

He has won awards including E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year Award, CNBC TV18 Emerging India Award, Social Impact Award conferred by former president Pranav Mukherjee among others.
As a simple man, he is devoted to the Indian hand-knotted rug industry with an aim to position it rightly in the world and to empower its real owner and creator - the Indian weaver.
His philosophy of totality, inclusion and for-profit solutions to society are widely discussed.

Speaker

Gemma D’Auria
Senior Partner McKinsey

Gemma is the global leader of McKinsey’s Leadership Practice. She began her career at the Firm in New York, and is currently based in Dubai.

Gemma is passionate about helping executives enhance the organizational effectiveness of their companies. She drives transformational change programs that lead to stronger performance while also boosting overall organizational health. Her areas of focus are organizational learning and leadership development, two of the most critical levers in driving sustainable and long-lasting change.

In her advisory work, Gemma primarily works with consumer and retail-oriented businesses. She also has served leading financial institutions, principal investors, and family-owned businesses.

She leads McKinsey’s leadership and learning work in EEMA, which offers leadership development and capability building opportunities to leaders across the public and private sectors. She has co-authored a number of articles on organizational topics (most recently, “Leadership in a crisis: Responding to the coronavirus outbreak and future challenges”, “Tuning in, turning outward: Cultivating compassionate leadership in a crisis”, and “Reimagining the post-pandemic organization”) and is one of the contributors to a book recently published by McKinsey, called Leadership at Scale, focused on how to effectively enhance leadership capacity in organizations.

Speaker

Tom Davenport
Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management, Babson College; Senior Advisor to Deloitte U.S.

Tom Davenport is the President’s Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College, a Visiting Professor at Oxford University’s Saïd School of Business, a Fellow of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, and Senior Advisor to Deloitte’s Analytics and AI practice. His most recent book is The AI Advantage from MIT Press, and he’s written twenty books and over 300 articles for Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, and many other publications. He has been named one of the world’s Top 25 Consultants by Consulting magazine, one of the 100 most influential people in IT by Ziff-Davis magazines, and one of the world’s top fifty business school professors by Fortune magazine.

Speaker

Erica Dhawan
CEO Cotential and global thought leader on Connectional intelligence

Erica Dhawan is an internationally recognized leading authority, speaker and advisor on 21st century teamwork, collaboration and innovation. Named by Thinkers50 as the “Oprah of Management Thinkers”, she is the author of two books Get Big Things Done: The Power of Connectional Intelligence and Digital Body Language: How to Build Trust and Connection, No Matter the Distance. It’s 2021, the world of business is increasingly digital and work practices have changed at a blistering rate. Erica shares innovative strategies to unlock the collective power of teams, build a culture of trust across any distance and create authentic engagement to ensure competitiveness. Rated #1 on the Top Women Keynote Speakers of 2020 and featured as one of the management thinkers most likely to shape the future of business, Erica frequently appears in Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and Wall Street Journal.

Erica speaks on global stages ranging from the World Economic Forum at Davos to TEDx and for companies such as Coca-Cola, FedEx, Goldman Sachs, Walmart, SAP, and Cisco. She has degrees from Harvard University, MIT Sloan, and The Wharton School.

Learn more at ericadhawan.com

Speaker

Emmanuelle Duez
CEO, The Boson Project

On completing her pluralistic studies (Law,  Sciences Po Paris, ESSEC, Bocconi), Emmanuelle founded WoMen'Up in 2011: the 1st association to interweave the themes of gender and generation.

In 2012 she launched 'The Boson Project'  (named after the Boson of Higgs,' the elementary particle of the universe, infinitely small but indispensable to the whole): an atypical and committed consulting firm and research center, which carries and offers with every mission the response to the following question: what if human capital were a treasure and the only lever worthy enough to transform organizations in a sustainable way? The Boson Project focuses on creating within organizations, may they be public or private, the conditions for the full expression  of human potential, individual and collective. In 2016, the consulting firm used its expertise to set foot in the real estate sector hence creating yet another vector for human excellence.

In 2014, Emmanuelle put her energy and convictions to the service of the French Navy. Upon becoming a Navy Reserve Captain, she worked on building bridges between civil society and the military to make the most of the managerial and organizational teachings from both universes. She thus created in 2017, with the War College, the annual event 'À la Croisée des Mondes,' which brings together civilian and military perspectives to inspire leaders and commanders on the notion of leadership.

The power to grasp contemporary issues  is what she wants to give to organizations as well as to collaborators and citizens on the whole. So, in 2018, she ventured outside the company's walls with an original concept: 'Tchatche', a festive and crazy free-fight oratorical show whose ambition is social and civic: to rehabilitate complex thinking, present information in all its nuances, and provide informed debate. In 2019, the civil citizen component was extended upon by opening 'Belleville by Boson', a Parisian agora for people to question  their commitment, their companies, their city. She also joined 'Bugali', a project of non-invasive edutech at the service of toddlers to awaken them to the humanities.

In 2019, Emmanuelle appeared in "Thinkers  50 Radar Class", which lists 30 prominent people to follow for their revolutionary ideas in terms of leadership, business, and management.

Speaker, author of numerous articles and  surveys, she has made it her mission to disseminate information on the opportunities for this new world.

In short, what are the core themes she takes  to heart? New relationships in the workplace, resilience through human excellence, the responsibility of organizations and leaders, managerial transformations, the role of space in transformations, management, the alignment of organizations, and the leadership  of tomorrow.

“The future, you don't have to foresee it, but allow it. "
– Antoine de St Exupéry

Speaker

Juan Enríquez
Author, academic, life sciences venture capitalist; Research affiliate at MIT’s synthetic neurobiology lab; Co-Founder Excel Venture Management;

Juan Enriquez author and teacher on the economic impact of life sciences and brain research on business and society. Business leader and entrepreneur.  He is a bestselling author, a life sciences venture capitalist and a research affiliate at MIT’s synthetic neurobiology lab. He co-founded Excel Venture Management. Author and co-author of multiple bestsellers including As the Future Catches You: How Genomics Will Change Your Life, Work, Health, and Wealth (1999), The Untied States of America: Polarization, Fracturing and Our Future (2005), Evolving Ourselves: Redesigning Humanity One Gene at a Time (2015), and RIGHT/WRONG: How Technology Transforms Our Ethics (2020). Works with the CEOs of a number of Fortune 50 global companies, as well as heads of state, on how to adapt to a world where the dominant language is shifting from the digital towards the language of life. A TED All-Star with ten TED talks on a variety of subjects, as well as dozens of TEDx talks. Serves on multiple for profit boards as well as a variety of non-profits including The National Academy of Sciences, The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, GBH, The Boston Science Museum, Harvard Medical School, and  Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center. He was the founding Director of the Harvard Business School's Life Sciences Project. He sailed around the world on an expedition that increased the number of know genes a hundredfold and was part of the peace commission that negotiated the cease fire with the Zapatistas. Graduated from Harvard with a B.A. and an M.B.A., both with honors.

Recent publication (2020): Right/Wrong-How Technology Transforms Our Ethics

Speaker

Tamara J. Erickson
Leadership Advisor; top ranked management thinker, T50

Tamara J. Erickson is a McKinsey Award-winning author and a widely-respected authority on new approaches to leadership, the changing workforce, collaboration and innovation, and the nature of work in intelligent organizations.  At London Business School, Erickson has designed and directs the school’s leadership programme for senior-most executives, Leading Businesses into the Future, works with executives in a number of custom programmes, and teaches in the School’s Masters programmes.

She has five times been named one of the 50 most influential living management thinkers in the world by Thinkers50, the respected ranking of global business thinkers. Her leading-edge work is consistently showcased in the prestigious Global Drucker Forum, an international conference of prominent business leaders. She has authored five books and numerous widely-cited articles.

An experienced executive and global advisor, Erickson has also served on the Board of Directors of two Fortune 500 corporations, where she served on Governance, Audit, and Compensation Committees and as the Lead Independent Director.

Erickson holds a BA degree from the University of Chicago and an MBA from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, where she was the recipient of the James Thomas Chirurg Fellowship.

Speaker

Claudio Fernández Aráoz
Executive Fellow, Harvard Business School

Claudio Fernández-Aráoz is a top global expert on leadership and talent, family businesses, and personal growth. He was ranked by Bloomberg as one ofthe most influential executive search consultants in the world and selected by Thinkers50 as one of the world’s leading thinkers on talent.

An Executive Fellow for Executive Education at Harvard Business School, Claudio teaches at the school’s comprehensive leadership executive programs for company owners, CEOs, senior executives and general managers.

Upon graduation at Stanford’s GSB he worked initially for McKinsey & Company in Europe, and then for over three decades for Egon Zehnder, where as a partner he was a member of its global executive committee for more than ten years. He founded the firm’s assessment and development practice, and served as global leader of its professional development, people processes, and intellectual capital development.

Claudio is an acclaimed keynote speaker in all continents.

He selectively advises and coaches global CEOs, company owners, next generation family leaders, and managing partners of professional service firms.

His latest book, It's Not the How or the What but the Who, was the winner of the Axiom Gold Award for the best HR book in English in the whole world. His previous book, Great People Decisions, has 15 international editions inall major languages.

He is also the author of several bestselling Harvard Business Review articles on leadership and talent, family businesses, and personal growth, including “21st Century Talent Spotting”,“Leadership Lessons from Great family Businesses”,“Turning Potential into Success: The Missing Link in Leadership Development”, and “The Definitive Guide to Recruiting in Good Times and Bad”.

Claudio earned a master’s in science in Industrial Engineering from the Argentine Catholic University (Gold Medal, highest GPA everin that university) and an MBA from Stanford University, where he also graduated with honors as an Arjay Miller Scholar.

Speaker

Gerd Gigerenzer
Director of the Harding Center for Risk Literacy, University of Potsdam

Gerd Gigerenzer is Director of the Harding Center for Risk Literacy at the University of Potsdam, Faculty of Health Sciences Brandenburg and partner of Simply Rational - The Institute for Decisions. He is former Director of the Adaptive Behavior and Cognition (ABC) Center at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and at the Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research in Munich, Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago and John M. Olin Distinguished Visiting Professor, School of Law at the University of Virginia. In addition, he is Member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, the German Academy of Sciences and Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He was awarded honorary doctorates from the University of Basel and the Open University of the Netherlands, and is Batten Fellow at the Darden Business School, University of Virginia. Awards for his work include the AAAS Prize for the best article in the behavioral sciences, the Association of American Publishers Prize for the best book in the social and behavioral sciences, the German Psychology Award, and the Communicator Award of the German Research Foundation. His award-winning popular books Calculated Risks, Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious, and Risk Savvy: How to make good decisions have been translated into 21 languages. His academic books include Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart, Rationality for Mortals, Simply Rational, and Bounded Rationality (with Reinhard Selten, a Nobel Laureate in economics). In Better Doctors, Better Patients, Better Decisions (with Sir Muir Gray) he shows how better informed doctors and patients can improve healthcare while reducing costs. Together with the Bank of England, he is working on the project “Simple heuristics for a safer world.” Gigerenzer has trained U.S. federal judges, German physicians, and top managers in decision making and understanding risks and uncertainties. The Swiss Duttweiler Institute has distinguished Gigerenzer as one of the top-100 Global Thought Leaders worldwide.

Speaker

Alice Guilhon
Dean, SKEMA Business School

Profile upcoming soon.

Speaker

Rita Gunther McGrath
Professor, Columbia Business School

Rita McGrath is a best-selling author, a sought-after speaker, and a longtime professor at Columbia Business School. She is widely recognized as a premier expert on leading innovation and growth during times of uncertainty. Rita has received the #1 achievement award for strategy from the prestigious Thinkers50 and has been consistently named one of the world’s Top 10 management thinkers in its bi-annual ranking. As a consultant to CEOs, her work has had a lasting impact on the strategy and growth programs of Fortune 500 companies worldwide.

Rita is the author of the best-selling The End of Competitive Advantage (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013). Her new book is Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019). She has written three other books, including Discovery Driven Growth, cited by Clayton Christensen as creating one of the most important management ideas ever developed. She is a highly sought-after speaker at exclusive corporate events around the globe, such as the Global Peter Drucker Forum.

She received her Ph.D. from the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania) and has degrees with honors from Barnard College and the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs.

Follow Rita on Twitter @rgmcgrath. For more information, visit RitaMcGrath.com.

Speaker

Jyoti Guptara
Business Storytelling expert, novelist, and executive coach

A consultant, coach and international speaker, Jyoti Guptara is the author of ‘Business Storytelling from Hype to Hack: Unlock the Software of the Mind’.

When Jyoti dropped out of school at the age of 15 to become a full-time writer, teachers couldn’t imagine they’d be inviting him back three years later to speak as a bestselling novelist.

Despite his profession, Jyoti did not appreciate the value of storytelling in business until he was a Fellow at the GCSP, a United Nations partner organisation. There, he realised that some of the best content came after and between presentations, informally – when people told stories. Jyoti was quickly able to apply his decade of experience with fiction to executive education, helping business leaders find and tell stories to give better talks, pitch ideas and influence meetings, and improve internal communications, government relations, and investor relations. He also helps companies use narrative techniques to research, formulate and implement company strategy.

Of British and Indian descent, Jyoti lives in Switzerland with his wife and consults internationally. He has spoken on four continents.

Speaker

Valerie Hackl
Managing Director of Austro Control GmbH, Vienna

Dr. Valerie Hackl has been Managing Director of Austro Control since January 2019, except for the short-term appointment as Federal Minister for Transport, Innovation and Technology as part of the transitional government in Austria in May/June 2019.

Austro Control is a public, privately organized Austrian company responsible for the safe air traffic management in Austrian airspace. The company spectrum ranges from of the passenger aviation up to the approval of drones.

Before she became Member of the Board of ÖBB-Personenverkehr AG in 2015, Austria's largest mobility service provider, she was Head of Group Strategy at ÖBB-Holding AG and worked as a consultant for Bain & Company, one of the world’s leading management consulting companies.

Valerie is a native Austrian and studied Business Management at the Vienna University of Economics and Business and the University of British Columbia / Vancouver. She obtained her doctoral degree at the Swiss Research Institute of Small Business and Entrepreneurship at the University of St. Gallen.

Speaker

John Hagel III
Author; Faculty Member, Singularity University; Member Board of Trustees, Santa Fe Institute

John Hagel III has more than 40 years’ experience as a management consultant, author, speaker and entrepreneur. After recently retiring as a partner from Deloitte, McGraw Hill will be publishing in May his new book, The Journey Beyond Fear, that addresses the psychology of change and he is developing a series of programs to help people navigate through change at many levels. John has founded a new company, Beyond Our Edge, LLC, that works with companies and people who are seeking to anticipate the future and achieve much greater impact.

While at Deloitte, John was the founder and chairman of the Silicon Valley-based Deloitte Center for the Edge, focusing on identifying emerging business opportunities that are not yet on the CEO’s agenda.  Before joining Deloitte, John was an independent consultant and writer and prior to that was a principal at McKinsey & Company and a leader of their Strategy Practice as well as the founder of their E-Commerce Practice.  John has served as senior vice president of strategy at Atari, Inc., and is the founder of two Silicon Valley startups.

John is also a faculty member at Singularity University where he gives frequent talks on the mounting performance pressure created by digital technology and promising approaches to help traditional companies make the transition from a linear to an exponential world. He is also on the Board of Trustees at the Santa Fe Institute, an organization that conducts leading edge research on complex adaptive systems. He has also led a number of initiatives regarding business transformation with the World Economic Forum.

John is the author of The Power of Pull, published by Basic Books in April 2010.  He is also the author of a series of best-selling business books, Net Gain, Net Worth, Out of the Box, and The Only Sustainable Edge. He is widely published and quoted in major business publications including The Economist, Fortune, Forbes, Business Week, Financial Times, and Wall Street Journal, as well as general media like the New York Times, NBC and BBC. He has won two awards from Harvard Business Review for best articles in that publication and has been recognized as an industry thought leader by a variety of publications and institutions, including the World Economic Forum and Business Week.

John has his own website at www.johnhagel.com, and for many years wrote personal blogs at www.edgeperspectives.typepad.com as well as contributing postings on the Harvard Business Review, Fortune and Techonomy websites. He is active in social media and can be followed on Twitter at @jhagel and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jhagel/

John holds a BA from Wesleyan University, a B.Phil. from Oxford University, and a JD and MBA from Harvard University.

Speaker

Charles Handy
Social Philosopher and author

Charles Handy is a social philosopher and a writer and lecturer. He regularly features among the top names in Thinkers Fifty. His books on the changing shape of work and its effects on our lives and organizations have sold almost two million copies around the world - his most recent book is ”The Second Curve“, published in 2015.

With Elizabeth Handy, a photographer, he has collaborated on a number of books including ”The New Alchemists“ and ”A Journey through Tea“.

In his career, he has been an oil executive with Shell, a business economist, a professor at the London Business School, the Warden of St. George’s House in Windsor Castle (a study centre for social and ethical issues) and the Chairman of the Royal Society of Arts in London. He was appointed a CBE in the New Year’s Honours List in 2000 in recognition of his contribution to the human Resource profession.

Charles is an Honorary member of the Peter Drucker Society Europe.

He is Irish and grew up in Kildare, but now lives in UK with his family.

Speaker

Rahaf Harfoush
Digital Anthropologist; Visiting Policy Fellow, Oxford Internet Institute

Rahaf Harfoush is a Strategist, Digital Anthro-pologist, and Best-Selling Author who focuses on the intersections between emerging technology, innovation, and digital culture. She is currently working on her third book entitled “Hustle & Float,” about our contemporary work culture and the realities of a post-work society. Her second book, “The Decoded Company: Know Your Talent Better Than You Know Your Customers,” was a NYT and USA Today Best Seller, and winner of a Gold Axiom Award.

Formerly, Rahaf was the Associate Director of the Technology Pioneer Programme at the World Economic Forum in Geneva where she helped identify disruptive-startups that were improving the state of the world.

Rahaf is the founder of Red Thread Inc., Think Tank and Special Projects Agency that supports organizations in transforming digital trends into strategic opportunities. She teaches “Innovation & Emerging Business Models” at Sciences Po’s MBA program in Paris. She was recognized a top future thinker by the Hay Literary Festival and as a Young Global Shaper by the G20 Think Tank Summit. Rahaf is also named a Young Global Shaper by the World Economic Forum and a Rising Talent  by the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society.

Speaker

Hermann Hauser
Co-founder and Venture Partner, Amadeus Capital Partners

In 2015 Hermann was awarded an KBE for services to Engineering and Industry.

Serial Entrepreneur and Co-founder of Amadeus Capital Partners, Dr Hermann Hauser KBE has wide experience in developing and financing companies in the information technology sector. He co-founded a number of high-tech companies including Acorn Computers which spun out ARM, E-trade UK, Virata and Cambridge Network. Subsequently Hermann became vice president of research at Olivetti. During his tenure at Olivetti, he established a global network of research laboratories. Since leaving Olivetti, Hermann has founded over 20 technology companies. In 1997, he co-founded Amadeus Capital Partners. At Amadeus he invested in CSR, Solexa, Icera, Xmos and Cambridge Broadband.

Hermann is a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Institute of Physics, the Royal Society of Chemistry and of the Royal Academy of Engineering, as well as an Honorary Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. In 2001 he was awarded an Honorary CBE for ‘innovative service to the UK enterprise sector’. In 2004 he was made a member of the Government’s Council for Science and Technology and in 2013 he was made a Distinguished Fellow of BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT.

Hermann has honorary doctorates from the Universities of Loughborough, Bath, Anglia Ruskin, Strathclyde, Glasgow and York.

Speaker

Pierre Hessler
Senior Adviser, Capgemini

Pierre Hessler is a Capgemini Fellow and Chairman’s delegate. He focuses on technology business and new business behaviors.

He is also head of Actideas.

Pierre Hessler started his career in 1965 in IBM Switzerland, holding executive positions in Europe and in the United States, notably as corporate vice-president for marketing, and general manager for marketing, services and operations of IBM Europe.

In 1993, he joined Cap Gemini, where he served in several executive positions, notably as a member of the Directoire and as chairman and CEO of Gemini Consulting. He was on the Board of directors between 2000 and 2012.

Between 2003 and 2019, he was first chairman, then member, of the Board of Bureau Veritas and also chairing its Compensation and Appointments Committee.

Swiss and French citizen, married with 2 children, graduate of the University of Lausanne with degrees in law and economics, author of “Media and Corporate Scandals”.

Speaker

Xavier Huillard
Chairman and CEO, Vinci SA

Born in 1954, Xavier Huillard is a graduate of the École Polytechnique and the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées. He has spent most of his working life in the construction industry in France and abroad. Mr Huillard joined Sogea in December 1996 as Deputy Chief Executive Officer in charge of international activities and specific projects, and then became its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer in 1998. He was appointed Deputy General Manager of VINCI in March 1998 and was Chairman of VINCI Construction from 2000 to 2002. He was appointed Co-Chief Operating Officer of VINCI and was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of VINCI Energies from 2002 to 2004, then Chairman of VINCI Energies from 2004 to 2005. Mr Huillard became Director and Chief Executive Officer of VINCI in 2006 and was appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer of VINCI on 6 May 2010. He served as Chairman of the Institut de l’Entreprise from January 2011 until January 2017. He was appointed Chairman of VINCI Concessions SAS on 20 June 2016.

Speaker

Herminia Ibarra
Professor for Organizational Behaviour, London Business School

Herminia Ibarra is the Charles Handy Professor of Organizational Behavior at London Business School. Prior to joining LBS, she served on the INSEAD and Harvard Business School faculties.

An authority on leadership and career development, Thinkers 50 ranks Ibarra among the top management thinkers in the world. She is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network, a judge for the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award, and one of the 100 most influential people in gender policy around the world, according to Apolitical.

Ibarra is the author of the best-selling Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader (Harvard Business, 2015), which explains how managers step up to bigger leadership roles, and Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career, which describes the process of reinventing one’s career. Her current research investigates enablers and barriers in the adoption and implementation of cognitive technologies in established organizations.

Author of numerous articles in the Harvard Business Review and leading academic journals, she also writes for business publications including the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times, and speaks internationally on leadership and organizational transformation.

Ibarra received her M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University, where she was a National Science Fellow.

Speaker

Michael Jacobides
Chair of Entrepreneurship & Innovation, London Business School

Michael G Jacobides is the Sir Donald Gordon Professor of Entrepreneurship & Innovation and Professor of Strategy at London Business School. He is Academic Advisor to the Boston Consulting Group, Visiting Scholar at the New York Fed, and Visiting Fellow at Cambridge. In 2019 he was selected as one of the Thinkers50, the top 50 management thinkers worldwide, and is a leading expert on business ecosystems, and how firms navigate shifting, digital environments. A frequent keynote speaker, he engages in corporate, industry, and broad-appeal events such as TEDx and the Global Drucker Forum. A winner of the 2018 Theory to Practice Award from the StrategieForum, he advises disruptive start-ups and Fortune500 firms alike in Europe, the US and Asia. He works on thought leadership with consultants such as McKinsey, IDEO, Accenture, PwC, Deloitte, Keystone and ECSi, and on strategy with corporates such as Haier, Huawei, Spotify, MasMovil, Vodafone, Nokia, SAP, Enel, Santander, Helvetia, Zurich, CS, Airbus, DeBeers, Burberry, MerckSerono and the NHS.  He has visited Harvard, NYU, Cambridge, Imperial, Bocconi and Wharton, where he obtained his PhD, after studying at Athens, Cambridge and Stanford. His work, which has received the Sloan Foundation Award, has appeared in the top academic journals such as SMJ, AMJ, AMR, OrgSci and Industrial & Corporate Change, where he is a co-Editor, as well as HBR and FT. He appears on CNN and BBC. On policy, he has worked with the UK parliament (on the future of financial services), the European Council (on innovation in Europe) and has spearheaded RedesignGreece. He served on the Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum, he is a co-author of the WEF’s White Paper on Digital Platforms and Ecosystems, and has presented in the Davos Annual meetings.

Speaker

Elsbeth Johnson
Senior Lecturer MIT's Sloan School of Management, Managing Director, SystemShift

Dr. Elsbeth Johnson is a Senior Lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics. Prior to joining MIT, she taught at London Business School for five years, having previously worked as an equity analyst and a corporate strategist.

She is a regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review and the Sloan Management Review, as well as the author of the book, “Step Up, Step Back: How to Really Deliver Strategic Change in Your Organization” (Bloomsbury, 2020).

Elsbeth is the founder of the consulting firm, SystemShift, which works with organizations and their leaders on issues of leadership, strategy and change. She is based in London.

Speaker

Hubert Joly
Senior Lecturer, Harvard Business School

Hubert Joly is a senior lecturer at the Harvard Business School and the former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Best Buy.

He is also a member of the board of directors of Johnson & Johnson and Ralph Lauren Corporation, a member of the International Advisory Board of HEC Paris, and a Trustee of the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Joly has been recognized as one of the top 100 CEOs in the world by the Harvard Business Review, one of the top 30 CEOs in the world by Barron’s and one of the top 10 CEOs in the U.S. by Glassdoor.

He is the author of the highly acclaimed book “The Heart of Business – Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism.”

Speaker

Luc Julia
Chief Scientific Officer, Renault Group

Dr. Luc Julia, Chief Scientific Officer for Renault, was CTO and Senior Vice President of Innovation for Samsung Electronics, directed Siri at Apple, was Chief Technologist at Hewlett-Packard and cofounded a number of start-ups in the Silicon Valley. While conducting research at SRI International, he was involved in the creation of Nuance Communications, now the world leader in speech recognition.

Recipient of Légion d’Honneur, the highest order of France, and member of its National Academy ofTechnologies, he holds degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris and earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications de Paris.

He is the bestselling author of the book “There is no such thing as Artificial Intelligence”, holds dozens of patents and is recognized as one of the top 100 most influential French developers in the digital world.

Speaker

David J. Kappos
Partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP

David J. Kappos is a partner at Cravath. He is a leader in the field of intellectual property, including IP management and strategy, the development of global IP norms, laws and practices as well as commercialization and enforcement of innovation-based assets.

From 2009 to 2013, Mr. Kappos served as Under Secretary of Commerce and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). In that role, he advised the President, the Secretary of Commerce and the Administration on IP policy matters and was instrumental in achieving the greatest legislative reform of the U.S. patent system in generations through passage and implementation of the 2011 Leahy-Smith America Invents Act.

Prior to leading the USPTO, Mr. Kappos held several executive posts in the legal department of IBM. From 2003 to 2009, he served as the company’s chief intellectual property lawyer. In that capacity, he managed global IP activities for IBM. During his more than 25 years at IBM, he also served in a variety of other roles including litigation counsel and Asia Pacific IP counsel.

Mr. Kappos has received numerous accolades for his contributions to the field of IP, including being named one of the “Top 25 Icons of IP” by Law360, one of the “50 Most Influential People in IP” and the “Outstanding Practitioner of the Year in IP Transactions” by Managing IP, one of the “Top 50 IP Trailblazers & Pioneers” and one of the “100 Most Influential Lawyers in America” by The National Law Journal, “IP Professional of the Year” by the Intellectual Property Owners Association and being inducted into the Intellectual Property Hall of Fame by Intellectual Asset Management Magazine in 2012.

Mr. Kappos serves on the Boards of Directors of the Partnership for Public Service, the Center for Global Enterprise and the Intellectual Property Owners Education Foundation. He is the Chair of the Advisory Council of the Naples Roundtable, and the U.S. Chair of the U.S.-China IP Cooperation Dialogue. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Columbia Law School, where he teaches copyright litigation, and Cornell Law School, where he teaches legal advising for the start-up general counsel.

Mr. Kappos received a B.S. summa cum laude in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Davis in 1983 and a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1990.

Speaker

John Kay
Economist; Editorial contributor to FT; former Chair at LSE, LBS and Oxford; Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to economics

John Kay is an economist whose career has spanned the academic world, business and finance, and public affairs. He has held chairs at the London Business School, the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics and is a Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford, where he began his academic career in 1970. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

John is a director of several public companies and a contributing editor of the Financial Times. He chaired the Review of UK Equity Markets and Long-Term Decision-Making which reported to the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills in July 2012. He is the author of many books, including The Truth about Markets (2003), The Long and the Short of It (2009, new revised edition 2016) and Obliquity (2010). Other People’s Money was published by Profile Books and (in North America) by PublicAffairs in September 2015, was a book of the year for Bloomberg, The Economist and the Financial Times, winner of the Saltire Literary Prize for non-fiction, and was short-listed for the Orwell Prize for political writing. Radical Uncertainty, jointly written with Mervyn King, was published in March 2020. His latest book, Greed is Dead, co-authored with Paul Collier, was published in July 2020.

Speaker

Julia Kirby
Senior Editor, Harvard University Press

Julia Kirby has been with Harvard Business Review for over a decade and in that time worked with hundreds of expert authors to bring their ideas to the magazine’s managerial audience. Marketing management and strategy are particular areas of interest; she stays on top of the issues facing marketers in leading firms and seeks out new academic research with important managerial implications. She is also the author of a book (with Christopher Meyer) on how the rules of capitalism will change as the center of gravity of global commerce shifts to emerging economies: “Standing on the Sun: How the Explosion of Capitalism Abroad Will Change Business Everywhere“ and Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines (with Thomas H. Davenport)

Speaker

Eric Kohlmann
Principal Arc Ventures

Eric Kohlmann, Principal at Arc Ventures, joined in 2020 to build its profile as a leading venture firm. Eric sits on the investment committee.

Prior to his role at Arc, Eric was the Founding Partner and Chief Executive Officer at Trinnacle Capital Management, a quantitative hedge fund, applying machine learning to unique datasets for algorithmic trading. In 2019, Trinnacle announced the acquisition of its IP in alternative data and machine learning by a large, international hedge fund.

Through his Switzerland-based family holding Kohlmann & Co AG, which he co-founded in 2013, Eric has been an active angel investor in leading technology companies. Most recently, he was an investor in the New York-based neuroscience startup CTRL-Labs, which announced its sale to Facebook in October 2019 in one of its largest acquisitions to date.

A classical music enthusiast (and hobby pianist), Eric is a regular at many concert halls and loves discovering new composers, venues and festivals.

Eric holds a Masters in Finance from IE Business School in Madrid and started his academic career at Eton College in the UK, going on to study at ETH Zurich and TU Munich where he successfully completed his Bachelor in Physics, researching the electrochemical properties of titanium oxy carbide nanotubes in 2011.

Eric speaks English, German, Portuguese and some Japanese.

Speaker

Philip Kotler
S.C. Johnson & Son Professor of International Marketing, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

Philip Kotler is the S.C. Johnson & Son Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg™ School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. Kellogg was voted the “Best Business School” for six years in Business Week’s survey of U.S. business schools. It is also rated as the “Best Business School for the Teaching of Marketing.” Professor Kotler has significantly contributed to Kellogg’s success through his many years of research and teaching there.

He received his Master’s Degree at the University of Chicago and his PhD Degree at MIT, both in economics. He did post-doctoral work in mathematics at Harvard University and in behavioral science at the University of Chicago.

Professor Kotler is the author of 57 books including: Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning, Implementation and Control, the most widely used marketing book in graduate business schools worldwide; Principles of Marketing; Marketing Models; Strategic Marketing for Nonprofit Organizations; The New Competition; High Visibility; Social Marketing; Marketing Places; Marketing for Congregations; Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism; The Marketing of Nations; Kotler on Marketing, Building Global Biobrands, Attracting Investors, Ten Deadly Marketing Sins, Marketing Moves, Market Your Way to Growth, Winning Global Markets, and Confrontiing Capitalism. He has published over one hundred and fifty articles in leading journals, several of which have received best-article awards.

Professor Kotler was the first recipient of the American Marketing Association’s (AMA) “Distinguished Marketing Educator Award” (1985). The European Association of Marketing Consultants and Sales Trainers awarded Kotler their prize for “Marketing Excellence”. He was chosen as the “Leader in Marketing Thought” by the Academic Members of the AMA in a 1975 survey. He also received the 1978 “Paul Converse Award” of the AMA, honoring his original contribution to marketing. In 1989, he received the Annual Charles Coolidge Parlin Marketing Research Award. In 1995, the Sales and Marketing Executives International (SMEI) named him “Marketer of the Year.” In 2011, he was given the title of being a Legend in Marketing; in 2012, he was #1 on the Management A-List of Academics; in 2013 he became the first recipient of the William L. Wilkie American Marketing Association Foundation’s “Marketing for a Better World” Award for significant contributions to marketing theory and practice; also in 2013, he was inducted in the Management Hall of Fame; also in 2013, he became the first recipient of the Sheth Foundation Medal for Exceptional Contribution to Marketing Scholarship and Practice.

Professor Kotler has consulted for such companies as IBM, General Electric, AT&T, Honeywell, Bank of America, Merck and others in the areas of marketing strategy and planning, marketing organization and international marketing.

He has been Chairman of the College of Marketing of the Institute of Management Sciences, a Director of the American Marketing Association, a Trustee of the Marketing Science Institute, a Director of the MAC Group, a former member of the Yankelovich Advisory Board, and a member of the Copernicus Advisory Board. He is a Member of the Board of Governors of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Member of the Advisory Board of the Drucker Foundation. He has received honorary doctoral degrees from the Stockholm University, University of Zurich, Athens University of Economics and Business, DePaul University, the Cracow School of Business and Economics, Groupe H.E.C. in Paris, the University of Economics and Business Admininstration in Vienna, Budapest University of Economic Science and Public Administration, and the Catholic University of Santo Domingo.

He has traveled extensively throughout Europe, Asia and South America, advising and lecturing to many companies about how to apply sound economic and marketing science principles to increase their competitiveness. He has also advised governments on how to develop and position the skill sets and resources of their companies for global competition.

Education
PhD, 1956, Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MA, 1953, Economics, University of Chicago

Academic Positions
S.C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 1988-present
Harold T. Martin Professor of Marketing, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 1973-1987
Montgomery Ward Professor of Marketing, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 1969-1972
Associate Professor of Marketing, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 1965-1968
Assistant Professor of Market, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 1962-1964

Honors and Awards
Honorary Doctorate, Plekhanov Russian Academyu of Economics
16th Place in Ratings of Top Global Management Gurus, Global Gurus Organization and Management Gurus.Net
Marketing for a Better World, American Marketing Association
Wroe Alderson Distinguished Lecturer, Wharton School
Schaffner Award, Kellogg School of Management
Sheth Foundation Medal for Exceptional Contribution to Markeitng Scholarship and Practice, Sheth Foundation
Badge of Honor of Officer of the Order of Academic Palms, Order of the Academic Palms
Management Hall of Fame, www.thinkers50.com
Honorary Doctorate Degree, HHL, Leipzig, Germany, 2012
Ranked first on the A-List of Management Academics, 2011
Kellogg Alumni Professor of the Year Award, Kellogg School of Management, 1991

Speaker

Karim R. Lakhani
Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

Karim R. Lakhani is the Charles E. Wilson Professor of Business Administration and the Dorothy and Michael Hintze Fellow at the Harvard Business School. He is founder and co-director of the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard, the principal investigator of the NASA Tournament Laboratory at the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science, faculty co-founder of the Harvard Business School Digital Initiative, and co-founder and co-chair of the Harvard Business Analytics Program.

He specializes in technology management and innovation. His research examines crowd-based innovation models and the role of analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) in the digital transformation of business and operating models. Karim is known for his pioneering scholarship on how communities and contests can be designed and managed to achieve innovative outcomes. He has partnered with NASA, Topcoder, Harvard Medical School, the Broad Institute and Linux Foundation to conduct field experiments on the design of crowd innovation programs. He serves on the Board of Directors of Mozilla Corporation, Local Motors and advisor to several AI-based startups including StormForge and VideaHealth.

Karim was awarded a Ph.D. in management and an SM degree in technology and policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Management from McMaster University. Prior to coming to HBS he served as a Lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Karim has published over 150 papers and teaching cases, is the co-editor of Revolutionizing Innovation: Users, Communities and Open Innovation (2016) and Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software (2005). He is the co-author of the book Competing in the Age of AI (2020).

Speaker

Erik J. Larson
Computer scientist and tech entrepreneur whose writings help to shape society’s discourse about artificial intelligence

Erik J. Larson is a computer scientist and tech entrepreneur whose writings help to shape society’s discourse about artificial intelligence. His new book, with Harvard University Press, is The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can’t Think the Way We Do. The founder of two DARPA-funded AI startups, Larson is currently working on core issues in natural language processing and machine learning. He has also written for The Atlantic and for professional journals, and been able to test the technical boundaries of artificial intelligence in work with the IC2 tech incubator at the University of Texas at Austin.

Speaker

Maurice Lévy
Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Publicis Groupe

Maurice Lévy is Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Publicis Groupe, the leader in business, marketing and communications transformation. He joined Publicis in 1971 as IT Director, and was appointed CEO of Publicis Conseil, the Groupe’s flagship agency, in 1981. He was named CEO of Publicis Groupe in 1987, a role that he fulfilled for 30 years until being named Chairman of the Supervisory Board as of June 1, 2017. He was responsible for transforming Publicis from a great, French creative agency into a global leader, covering all segments of the advertising industry. With spectacular acquisitions such as Saatchi & Saatchi, Bcom3 (Leo Burnett, Starcom, Mediavest) Zenith or in the digital space with Digitas, Performics, Razorfish, Rosetta and Sapient, today Publicis represents more than 80,000 talents, $10 billion in revenue and is present in more than 104 countries.

In 2016, to celebrate Publicis Groupe’s 90th anniversary, Maurice Lévy was determined to look to the future rather than the past, keeping in line with Publicis’ pioneering spirit. The result was two initiatives – Publicis90, through which Publicis Groupe invested in 90 promising startups and Viva Technology Paris, a global event dedicated to the collaboration between large companies and startups.

Widely recognized as a leading figure in the communications industry, Mr. Lévy also co-founded the French Brain Institute (ICM) in 2005, and serves as the Chairman of the board for several entities, including the International Board of Governors for the Peres Center for Peace. In 2015, he was appointed Chairman of the Pasteur-Weizmann Institute. Mr. Lévy has been honored with numerous distinctions and accolades for his contributions to media, business leadership, tolerance and peace. Mr. Lévy holds the distinctions of Commandeur of the French Légion d’Honneur and Grand Officier of the Ordre National du Mérite.

Speaker

Mickael Locoh
VP Southern Europe & Africa, Steelcase

Passionate about people, leadership and change management, Mickael Locoh, Vice President Southern Europe & Africa,  is with his team, helping companies all around the globe to have a workplace supporting their company’s strategic ambitions.

With a finance mathematics engineer background, he began his career in the financial sector at BNP Paribas as business continuity & crisis manager all around the world. Coordinating and dealing with the major crisis with the executive committee of the bank, he was in front line during key events like the subprime, Lehman Brother and all main ones impacting the business and image of the bank.

In 2011, to use his scientific background combined with more “soft skills”, he joined Steelcase. Part of the the EMEA leadership team, he is now in charge of the Southern Europe including countries like France, Luxembourg, Italy and also the African coutinent. He is also leading the team called “Clients without borders” working with fast growing companies expanding in Europe.

Speaker

James M. Loree
CEO, Stanley, Black & Decker

Jim Loree is Chief Executive Officer of Stanley Black & Decker, a leading $14.5 billion global diversified industrial. He leads more than 53,000 employees across 60 countries who make the tools, products and solutions to deliver on the company’s Purpose, For Those Who Make The World. The company operates the world’s largest tools and storage company; the world’s second largest commercial electronic security company; and is a global industrial leader of highly engineered solutions within its engineered fastening and infrastructure businesses.

Under Jim’s leadership, the company continues to gain recognition for industry leadership in advanced manufacturing, operational excellence, responsible business practices, and as a best workplace for innovators and diversity and equality.

To win in the 2020s, Jim is accelerating an ambitious 2025 growth strategy to deliver sustainable profit and societal good though its innovations and business model approach. To deliver on these goals, the company is focused on three priorities: continue delivering top-quartile performance, become known as one of the world’s leading innovators and elevate its commitment to corporate social responsibility.

Jim joined the company, then Stanley Works, as CFO in 1999 when the company generated just over $2 billion in revenue. In that role, he led a massive restructuring of the business and began a re-architecting of the company’s portfolio. Since that time, he was promoted to COO, President and then CEO in 2016.

Jim is a director of Whirlpool Corporation, and serves as a trustee of his alma mater, Union College, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in Economics. He lives with his wife Rebecca in Connecticut and is the proud father to four young women.

Speaker

Wolf Lotter
Journalist and Essayist; Co-founder brand eins

Profile upcoming soon.

Speaker

Roger L. Martin
Strategy advisor; former Dean, Martin Prosperity Institute

In 2017, Roger Martin was named the world’s #1 management thinker by Thinkers50, a biannual ranking of the most influential global business thinkers. He was ranked 2nd, 3rd, 6th and 7th in the other ranking years over the past decade.

Roger is a trusted strategy advisor to the CEOs of companies worldwide including Procter & Gamble, Lego and Ford.

Roger Martin is a Professor Emeritus at the Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto where he served as Dean from 1998-2013, Academic Director of the Michael Lee-Chin Family Institute for Corporate Citizenship from 2004-2019 and Institute Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute from 2013-2019. In 2013, he was named global Dean of the Year by the leading business school website, Poets & Quants.

Prior to his time at Rotman, he spent 13 years as a Director of Monitor Company, a global strategy consulting firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he served as co-head of the firm for two years.

His research work is in Strategy, Democratic Capitalism, Integrative Thinking, Design of Business, Incentives & Governance, and Social Innovation. His extensive writing includes 12 books and 28 Harvard Business Review articles. His newest book is When More is Not Better: Overcoming America’s Obsession with Economic Efficiency (Harvard Business Review Press, 2020). His previous 11 books include: Creating Great Choices written with Jennifer Riel (HBRP, 2017), Getting Beyond Better written with Sally Osberg (HBRP, 2015) and Playing to Win written with A.G. Lafley (HBRP, 2013); Fixing the Game (HBRP, 2011); The Design of Business (HBRP, 2009); The Opposable Mind (HBRP, 2007); and The Responsibility Virus (Basic Books, 2002). Both Getting Beyond Better and Playing to Win won best book awards at Thinkers 50.

In 2010, he was named one of the 27 most influential designers in the world by Business Week. In 2007 he was named a Business Week 'B-School All-Star' for being one of the 10 most influential business professors in the world. Business Week also named him one of seven 'Innovation Gurus' in 2005.

He serves as Chair of The Good Jobs Institute and the I-Think Initiative, and on the Board of The Nine Dots Prize.

Roger received his BA from Harvard College, with a concentration in Economics, in 1979 and his MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1981. in 2018, he was awarded a Doctor of Laws (honoris causa) by the Royal Military College of Canada. He lives in South Florida with his wife Marie-Louise Skafte.

Moderator

Ade McCormack
Digital leadership expert with focus on creating super-resilient organizations

Ade McCormack is a former technologist who today is focused on leadership and creating super-resilient organisations. Such organisations are more akin to living organisms than inert factories His work focuses on empowering organisations to harness the cognitive capital lying dormant in their people. Thus transforming the organisation requires transforming the talent from ‘cogs in the machine’ to cognitive athletes.

Ade studied astrophysics and worked for over a decade as a software engineer. This included working with the European Space agency, but also included a variety of sectors ranging from defence to finance.

• He is a former Financial Times opinion columnist, whose column focused on guiding leaders on digital leadership matters.
• Ade has lectured at MIT Sloan School of management on digital leadership.
• Ade works with the University of Cambridge on executive education programmes.
• He has written 6 books on digital matters.
• Ade has global experience, having worked in 40 countries.
• He has worked with many global brands across multiple sectors.
   

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ademccormack/
Ade’s perspectives: https://www.ademccormack.com/digital-strategy-blog/

Speaker

Alan Mulally
Former President & CEO, Ford Motors Company; former CEO, Boeing Commercial Airplanes

Profile upcoming soon.

Speaker

Ikujirō Nonaka
Professor Emeritus, Hitotsubashi University

Speaker

Michael Ong
Founder & Chairman Innovative Business Foundation Limited

Mr. Ong holds a Bachelor’s degree in Law from the University of Leicester. Mr. Ong has been involved in private equity and corporate finance over 20 years. He assisted large organizations on PRC issues; fund-raising, legal structuring, negotiation, documentation and external counsel management of several large-scale investments/joint-venture.

Mr. Ong is a co-founder and CEO of MiLOC Group Limited which is a public listed company on AQUIS Exchange in London. Mr. Ong is Ambassador of Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings for Hong Kong and China Bay Area, Director of Nanjing Sinar Mas & ZiJin Venture Capital Management Co., Ltd., Consultant of Red Carpet Culture Fund, Honorary President of Hong Kong Society of Economists, Think Tank Member of Dashun Foundation and Board Advisory Chairman of Science.Now GmbH.

Previously, he was CEO/Directors for a number of investment, technology, construction and project management companies. He also sat as directors on numerous public listed companies of different jurisdictions.

Speaker

Muriel Pénicaud
Ambassador, Permanent Representative of France to the OECD

Muriel Pénicaud was Minister of Labour of France from May 2017 to July 2020.

She led several structural reforms leading to a significant decrease of unemployment: the reform of the Labour law (2017), the “Professional future” law for apprenticeship, continuing education, and gender equality (2018), inclusive programs for vulnerable people, and short-time work system during the COVID-19 crisis. She was also heavily involved in negotiating European directives, including on posted workers.

In 2019, she chaired the “G7 Social” of ministers of labour, concluding a tripartite declaration between G7 countries and global business and workers’ organizations, aiming to build social protection for all worldwide.
Previously, from May 2014 to May 2017, Muriel Pénicaud was CEO of Business France and French Ambassador for International Investments. Business France is the national agency supporting the international development of the French economy, responsible for fostering export growth by French businesses, as well as facilitating international investments in France and promoting France attractiveness. Ms Pénicaud led the creation of Business France by merging two agencies (AFII and UbiFrance).

From 2008 to 2014, Ms. Pénicaud held the position of Executive Vice-President, Human Resources at Groupe Danone, where she was a member of the Executive Committee, and also served as the Chairman of the Board of the Danone Ecosystem Fund for societal innovation and ESG. She founded and produced the Eve program to develop Women’s Leadership in business, and created “Dan’Cares” a program providing social protection for all employees worldwide.

From 2002 to 2008, she was Executive Vice-President, responsible for Organization, Human Resources and Sustainable Development and member of the Executive Committee at Dassault Systèmes, a global leader company in 3D technology.

After starting her career as a local government administrator (1976-1980), she held a number of management assignments as non-profit organizations director (1981-1985), and then at the French Ministry for Labour from 1985 to 1991. She was a member of the ministerial Cabinet from 1991 to 1993. From 1993 to 2002, she held several international executive positions in Human Resources at Group Danone.

Board positions

Between 2011 and 2014, Ms. Pénicaud was a member of the Board of Orange, chairing the Governance and Corporate Social & Environmental Responsibility Committee.

From 2013 to 2015, she was member of the Board of SNCF, chairing the Transport and Logistics Committee, and she has been a member of the Supervisory Board from 2015 to 2017.

In 2014, she was appointed as a board member at Aéroports de Paris until 2017.

Ms. Pénicaud has also chaired AgroParisTech (Paris Institute of Technology for Life, Food and Environmental Sciences) in 2013 and the French Committee for Economy and Education in 2014.

She previously co-founded (2010) and became Vice-President of TV DMA, the leading academic TV channel for Corporate Management and Business Law at Paris-Panthéon la Sorbonne until 2017. Since 2016, she has been a member of the International Planning Committee of the Global Summit of Women.

Since 2020, as Ambassador of France to the OECD, she is a member of the OECD Council, which is the governance body of the international organization.
 

Education

Master degrees in History and Educational Sciences, post-degree in Clinical Psychology. An executive alumna of INSEAD Business School.

She has also been awarded Chevalier of the French Legion of Honour, Officer of the Order of Merit and Commander of the Swedish Royal Order of the North Star.

She was born in March 1955. She has 2 children.

Speaker

Daniel H. Pink
Author

Daniel H. Pink is the author of six provocative books about business and human behavior. His books include the long-running New York Times bestsellers When and A Whole New Mind — as well as the #1 New York Times bestsellers Drive and To Sell is Human. Dan’s books have won multiple awards, have been translated into 41 languages, and have sold more than three million copies. He lives in Washington, DC, with his family.

Speaker

Patricia Pomies
Chief Delivery & People Officer, Globant

Patricia is a rising star at Globant as she takes on new and diverse leadership roles. Her mission is to ensure key elements of the business: the speed, quality and services of product delivery. As Globant’s operative leader, she oversees the revenue and margin for company-wide operations so that Globant can smartly execute its strategy with maximum value for clients and stakeholders.

Recognizing the importance of Globers’ wellbeing, training and skill development, her responsibilities have recently expanded to include oversight of the People department. Bridging the gap between the People and Delivery areas is a pillar of Globant’s strategy to provide greater value to its clients. To execute her duties efficiently, Patricia regularly takes the pulse of the global company, whether it be consulting with regional management across Globant’s markets, or joining happy hours with software developers to hear their stories.

Her role has become ever more complex as the company has grown to what is today a publicly traded company of 12,000 people working in seventeen countries worldwide. To rapidly scale up the company from startup to multinational, Patricia and her team were the architects of Globant’s secret sauce of agile pods. This industry-disruptive approach gave more autonomy and resources to company teams, putting them at the center of the organizational framework.

Shaped by her experience as a working mother, Patricia is an advocate for having more women in management positions, recognizing the gender gap in the tech industry.  She was one of the architects behind Globant’s Be Kind initiative, encompassing development areas in gender equality, technology ethics and renewable energy, among others.

Patricia came to Globant with a background in education and communications, having taught at four universities. For four years, she was a general manager at Educ.ar, an initiative of the Argentine Ministry of Education to enable digital education access throughout the country, regardless of any student’s geographical or socio-economic disadvantages. Despite moving into the private sector, she continues her passion for women in business and inclusive education by participating in the Women Corporate Directors organization, as well as the advising council of Generación Única, UNICEF’s digital education project in Argentina.

With her husband, Pedro, Patricia enjoys spending time with their daughter Filippa. In her free time, she enjoys painting, water skiing, alpine skiing. She enjoys making cocktails for her guests at home, and also spends time learning from Buenos Aires’ most renowned mixologists.

Speaker

Dan Pontefract
Leadership Strategist; Founder and CEO, The Pontefract Group; Adjunct Professor, Gustavson School of Business, University of Victoria

Profile upcoming soon.

Moderator

Deepa Prahalad
Design strategist and Social Innovator

Deepa Prahalad is an author, business strategist and consultant specializing in opportunities at the intersection of consumer experience, technology and strategy. Passionate about emerging markets and innovation, she began her career searching how to improve efficiency in UN procurement and later moved to Singapore to become a commodities trader with Cargill. Deepa has worked as a management consultant with firms from start-ups to large multinationals. In 2008, she researched and co-authored the book, “Predictable Magic: Unleash The Power of Design Strategy To Transform Your Business” (Wharton School Publishing). Deepa speaks at business schools such as USC and Harvard on design strategy using the EMPOWER framework she developed and conducts workshops for executives. A frequent blogger on the Huffington Post and Harvard Business Review, she has also written about the business case for design in Bloomberg Businessweek and other magazines.

She currently serves on the Advisory Boards of Lappeeranta University of Technology (Finland) and the Challenge: Future global youth think tank and student competition. Deepa also works with several initiatives that support the work of her late father, CK Prahalad, such as the Prahalad Center for Emerging India in Chennai and the Prahalad Initiative at the University of Michigan. Deepa is a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from the University of Michigan and an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, and is on twitter at @deepaprahalad.

Speaker

Sunil Prashara
President & CEO at Project Management Institute

As President & Chief Executive Officer of the Project Management Institute (PMI), Sunil Prashara is the lead advocate for PMI's global organization, serving more than three million professionals working in nearly every country worldwide.

Since joining PMI as CEO in March of 2019, Sunil has reinvigorated the association's strategic vision and accelerated the implementation of a forward-leaning transformation program. He has established the 50-year-old association as a truly global and innovative enterprise serving a more comprehensive range of project professionals and change-makers worldwide.

Sunil's key priorities have included expanding the PMI footprint globally, digitizing the organization's offering to benefit its members through the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and advocating the value of project management to C-suite leaders and decision-makers from some of the world's leading organizations.

During his tenure, critical accomplishments for the organization have included launching a bold and energetic new brand identity, driving two ground-breaking acquisitions to assume greater leadership in the Agile space, implementing a powerful new regional model, and crossing the threshold of one million active Project Management Professional® certification holders around the globe.

The CEO Publication has recognized Sunil as one of the Top 20 Dynamic CEOs of 2020 in the United Kingdom. Under his leadership, PMI has also received a range of industry awards. These honors include being named as one of the Top 100 Associations that Will Save the World by the American Society of Association Executives, and winning a Silver Stevie® award for corporate social responsibility in recognition of PMI's partnership with the United Nations that saw the PMI community pledge over 150,000 hours of service aligned with the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

An engaging and dynamic speaker, Sunil has presented on a variety of topics related to The Project Economy and the future of work at high-level forums around the globe, including events hosted by TED and the United Nations. He is widely recognized as a thought leader on emerging trends in the workplace, including gymnastic organizations, citizen development, and cultivating "Power Skills" to succeed in the age of automation.

Before joining PMI, he served as CEO of i1too Ltd in the U.K., a sales accelerator for digital start-ups, which he founded in 2016 and grew internationally. He previously served as CEO of Expereo International and held numerous executive leadership positions throughout the information and communications technology and telecommunications industries. His extensive multi-functional, cultural, geography experience includes managing sales, operations, and digital transformation for companies such as Vodafone, Nokia, Accenture, and Perot Systems (NTT). As a business executive, he has developed an appreciation for project management expertise and understands from an "outside-in" perspective on how PMI can expand its reach globally.

Sunil speaks Punjabi and Hindi. He is a graduate of the University of London and resides in the U.K. with his wife Kavita and two sons Kamran and Raghav. He enjoys golf, boxing, martial arts, and traveling.

Speaker

Stéphane Richard
CEO & Chairman, Orange Group

Stéphane Richard, born in 1961, has been Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Orange since March 1, 2011.

He joined the Orange Group in September 2009 and has successively occupied the positions of Deputy CEO in charge of French Operations, CEO Delegate, and CEO. Between 1992 and 2003, Stéphane Richard was successively deputy to the CFO of Compagnie Générale des Eaux, Chief Executive Officer of Compagnie Immobilière Phénix, and Chairman of CGIS (Compagnie Générale d’Immobilier et de Services), now Nexity. From 2003 to 2007, he was Deputy CEO of Veolia Environnement and CEO of Veolia Transport, as well as being a director of Orange.

From 2007 to 2009, Stéphane Richard was Chief of Staff to the French Minister for the Economy, Industry, and Employment.

He is a graduate of École des Hautes Études Commerciales (HEC) and École Nationale d’Administration. He is a French national.

Speaker

Andreas Rosenfelder
Head of feature section, Die Welt/Welt am Sonntag

Profile upcoming soon.

Speaker

Paul J.H. Schoemaker
Author, educator, researcher and entrepreneur in strategic management, decision making, innovation and leadership

Dr Schoemaker is an author, educator, researcher and entrepreneur in strategic management, decision making, innovation and leadership. He was among the first to combine the practical ideas of decision theory, behavioral economics, scenario planning and risk analysis into a set strategic tools and methods for managers.  Paul was the founder and executive chairman of Decision Strategies International, a decades old strategy consulting and training firm, as well as the Chairman of two other companies in Europe and the USA. Paul served for many years as the research director of the Mack Institute for Innovation Management at the Wharton School, where he was also a professor teaching strategy and decision making. He is internationally known for his 115+ articles and twelve books on decision making, leadership, innovation and strategy, including the landmark book Winning Decisions.  Paul also writes a periodic column for Inc.com which has attracted up to 2 million page views. Earlier, Paul was a professor at the University of Chicago for 12 years, where he conducted academic studies in its Center for Decision Research and became a highly cited scholar (top 1% globally). Paul recently started a new company (Q2 Tech) to develop behavioral digital tools for managers steering teams in intelligent enterprises. He also published a new book with George Day, See Sooner - Act Faster (MIT Press, 2019) examining how leaders and organizations can thrive in an age of digital turbulence (MIT Press).

Paul’s hobbies include tennis, golf, and piano. He lives with his wife on the east coast of the US, while retaining roots in the Netherlands, where he was born and raised. 

Speaker

Rosanna Sibora
Director IT Innovation, Universal Music Entertainment GmbH

Profile upcoming soon.

Speaker

Philippe Silberzahn
Associate Professor, EMLYON

Philippe Silberzahn is associate professor at EMLYON Business School in France and a recognized expert in innovation and entrepreneurship. As a consultant, keynote speaker and management educator, he works with large organizations engaged in transformation efforts when confronted to uncertainty and disruptions in their markets. His latest book in English, “A Manager’s Guide to Disruptive Innovation” was published in January, 2018.

Speaker

Michael Skapinker
Associate Editor, Financial Times & columnist

Profile upcoming soon.

Speaker

Richard Straub
Founder and President, Global Peter Drucker Forum

Richard Straub has drawn his ample experience of leadership and management from a 32-year career at IBM during which, among other things, he was instrumental in developing IBM’s PC business in Austria and Europe. As IBM Chief Learning Officer he oversaw the initial drive toward e-learning to enhance traditional education programs. Over the past decade, he and his wife Ilse have built up the Global Peter Drucker Forum. Its aim is the continuous improvement of the practice of management in business and in society. Today, the Drucker Forum is recognized globally as a leading management conference, as reflected in strategic partnerships with the likes of the Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times and the City of Vienna.

In 2012 Richard Straub was awarded the Heinz von Foerster Prize for Organizational Cybernetics and in 2019 he received the Grand Decoration of Honor for the Republic of Austria in recognition of the impact and reputation of the Drucker Forum.

Speaker

Robert I. Sutton
Professor of Management Science, Stanford University of Engineering

Robert Sutton is an organizational psychologist and Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. He co-founded the Center for Work, Technology and Organization, Stanford Technology Ventures Program and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (“the d school”). Sutton studies organizational change, leadership, innovation, and workplace dynamics. He has written over 200 academic and applied articles and chapters, and written seven books, including national bestsellers “The No Asshole Rule, Good Boss, Bad Boss, and Scaling Up Excellence” (with Huggy Rao).

Sutton’s current focus is in on the causes, drawbacks, and virtues of organizational friction.

His web site is www.bobsutton.net and he tweets @work_matters

Speaker

Behnam N. Tabrizi
Consulting professor, Stanford University, Department of Mgmt Science

Behnam Tabrizi is a world-renowned expert in Organizational and Leadership Transformation, best-selling author, and an award-winning teacher, scholar and global advisor.  He has served as a faculty member of Stanford University for the past 25 years; over which time he’s written six books on leading innovation and change. His latest book, The Inside-Out Effect: A Practical Guide to Transformational Leadership, is an international bestseller and was featured by the Washington Post as its best book on the subject of leadership. Another book by Dr. Tabrizi, Rapid Transformation, was chosen by Business Insider, and getAbstract, which covers over 20,000 business books, as their No. 1 book on leadership.

Dr. Tabrizi has advised thousands of global CEOs and leaders in a wide range of industries—including high-tech (Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, IBM and HP), banking and finance, retail, healthcare, and government—on how to plan, mobilize, and implement transformational initiatives that have lifted leaders’ aspirations and created over $23.5B in revenue and over $2.4B in savings for the world‘s most well-known companies. He’s also had the privilege of advising the President of the United States, his cabinet, and the top leadership team at the European Union.

Dr. Tabrizi’s doctoral thesis, a global study of more than 100 companies conducted with McKinsey & Co., was the recipient of the prestigious ASQ award in organization studies. The study demonstrated that faster, more dedicated prototyping—versus more planning—results in a more agile culture capable of rapid product development. His research, touted as “pioneering work” in The Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and the San Jose Mercury News, helped lay the foundation behind both design thinking and agile development.

His work has also been featured in the Harvard Business Review, The Financial Times, The Economist, Strategy+Business, Fast Company, BusinessWeek, and Fortune. Dr. Tabrizi has also been interviewed regarding his work on transformation by the BBC, CNN, and C-SPAN.

Dr. Tabrizi has served on the boards of Clever Sense (sold to Google), WebMBO (merged with Realm Corp.), Catapult Ventures, and has held positions at the Harvard Business School and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He received a B.S. in computer science, summa cum laude, and then earned a master’s degree in computer science at the University of Illinois-Urbana. He earned an M.S. degree in engineering management as well as a doctorate in strategy, organizations and digital transformation from Stanford University.

Speaker

Yoshikuni Takashige
Chief Strategist, Global Marketing, Fujitsu Limited

Yoshikuni Takashige joined Fujitsu in 1984. He was engaged in international business, taking strong leadership in developing Fujitsu’s important strategic partnerships and joint ventures with global companies. Throughout his career, he has been exposed to many different people, businesses and cultures around the world, which has helped him shape his thought about transformation of business and society. Since 2012, Yoshikuni has been leading the creation of the Fujitsu Technology and Service Vision, which sets out Fujitsu’s human-centric vision and its thinking on how organizations can innovate by leveraging digital technology. It was first launched in 2013, and has been updated annually. He speaks about innovation and digital transformation internationally.

He received an MBA degree from the Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University, and a Bachelor of Law degree from the University of Tokyo.

Speaker

Don Tapscott
CEO, The Tapscott Group Inc.; Co-founder & Executive Chairman, Blockchain Research Institute; Adjunct Professor, INSEAD; Chancellor, Trent University, and author

Don Tapscott, Executive Chairman of the Blockchain Research Institute, is one of the world’s leading authorities on the impact of technology on business and society. He has authored 16 books, including Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, which has been translated into over 25 languages.

In 2016, with his son Alex, he co-authored the global best seller Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrencies is Changing the World, now translated into 20 languages. According to the late, great Clay Christensen of Harvard Business School it is “the book, literally, on how to survive and thrive in this next wave of technology-driven disruption.” The paperback version of the book, updated with new material covering recent developments about digital assets, sovereign identity and Central Bank Digital Currencies was published in June 2018.

In 2017, Don and Alex co-founded the Blockchain Research Institute, whose 100+ projects are the definitive investigation into blockchain strategy, use-cases, implementation challenges and organizational transformations. Since then Don produced a new book entitled Supply Chain Revolution: How Blockchain Technology Is Transforming the Digital Flow of Assets. The book debuted in June 2020 as the “#1 New Release” in the commerce category on Amazon.com.

Don is a member of the Order of Canada and in 2019, then ranked as the 2nd most influential Management Thinker by Thinkers50, joined Professor Christensen, Michael Porter, Peter Drucker and others in the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame. He is an Adjunct Professor at INSEAD and Chancellor Emeritus of Trent University in Ontario where he served as Chancellor 2013-2019.

It is hard to imagine anyone who has been more prolific, profound, and influential in explaining today’s technological revolutions and their impact on the world.

Speaker

Takahito Tokita
CEO and CDXO Fujitsu Limited

Mr. Tokita is currently the CEO and Chief DX Officer for Fujitsu Limited.  

He joined Fujitsu in 1988, with over 30 years of experience as a systems engineer mainly in the financial services sector covering banks, life insurance and other financial institutions.  He has held various leadership positions in systems integration group leading its application development and delivery of large-scale, mission critical systems.

Prior to his current role as a CEO, Mr. Tokita was based in London for two years, responsible for the Global Delivery Group which provides service desk and offshore development capabilities across 8 countries with over 14,000 staffs.  

Mr. Tokita earned a Bachelor of Metallurgical Engineering degree from the Tokyo Institute of Technology. 

Speaker

Zeynep Ton
Professor of practice, MIT Sloan School of Management; President Good Jobs Institute

Zeynep Ton is a Professor of the Practice at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Zeynep's research focuses on how organizations can design and manage their operations in a way that satisfies employees, customers, and investors simultaneously. Her work has been published in a variety of journals, including Organization Science, Production and Operations Management, and the Harvard Business Review.

In 2014, Zeynep published her findings in a book, The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits. The book draws on 15 years of research to show that the key to offering good jobs to employees, great service to customers, and superior returns to investors is combining investment in employees with specific operational choices that increase employees’ productivity, contribution, and motivation.

After her book was released, company exeutives started reaching out to Zeynep to understand how to implement the Good Jobs Strategy in their organizations, or to describe how they were already adopting the strategy. Zeynep cofounded the nonprofit Good Jobs Institute to help them transform through assessments, workshops, and longer term partnerships.

Prior to MIT Sloan, Zeynep spent seven years at Harvard Business School. She has received several awards for teaching excellence both at HBS and MIT Sloan.

Zeynep lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and four children. A native of Turkey, she first came to the US on a volleyball scholarship from the Pennsylvania State University. She received her BS in industrial and manufacturing engineering there and her DBA from the Harvard Business School.

Speaker

Amy Webb
Founder, Future Today Institute

Amy Webb advises CEOs of the world’s most-admired companies, three-star admirals and generals, and the senior leadership of central banks and intergovernmental organizations. Founder of the Future Today Institute, a leading foresight and strategy firm that helps leaders and their organizations prepare for complex futures, Amy pioneered a data-driven, technology-led foresight methodology that is now used within hundreds of organizations.

She is a professor of strategic foresight at the NYU Stern School of Business, where she developed and teaches the MBA course on strategic foresight. She is a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University’s Säid School of Business, a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center, a Fellow in the United States-Japan Leadership Program and a Foresight Fellow in the U.S. Government Accountability Office Center for Strategic Foresight. She was elected a life member to the Council on Foreign Relations and is a member of the Bretton Woods Committee. She is a member of the World Economic Forum where she serves on the Global Future Council on Media, Entertainment and Culture and the Stewardship Board of the Forum's Platform for Shaping the Future of Media, Entertainment and Culture. She was a Visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, where her research received a national Sigma Delta Chi award. She was also a Delegate on the former U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission, where she worked on the future of technology, media and international diplomacy.

Webb has advised CEOs of some of the world’s largest companies, three-star generals and admirals and executive government leadership on strategy and technology. She is the author of several popular books, including The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity, which was longlisted for the Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year award, shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Digital Thinking Award, and won the 2020 Gold Axiom Medal for the best book about business and technology, and The Signals Are Talking: Why Today’s Fringe Is Tomorrow’s Mainstream, which won the Thinkers50 Radar Award, was selected as one of Fast Company’s Best Books of 2016, Amazon’s best books 2016, and was the recipient of the 2017 Gold Axiom Medal for the best book about business and technology.

Webb was named by Forbes as one of the five women changing the world, listed as the BBC’s 100 Women of 2020, and the Thinkers50 Radar list of the 30 management thinkers most likely to shape the future of how organizations are managed and led.

Speaker

Falco Weidemeyer
Partner, Head of EYParthenon EMEIA

Profile

• Partner, Head of EYParthenon EMEIA
• Previously at Roland Berger GmbH as a Member of the European Board and Head of Corporate Performance & Transformation
• Special situations ranging from performance improvement to restructuring and turnaround
• CRO experience
• stakeholder communication and negotiation, esp. in the case of large scale hr measures
• Relevant experience in Consumer Goods, Retail, Automotive, Advanced Manufacturing
• Covering medium sized, family owned businesses as well as listed companies
• Leading EY Parthenon in EMEIA (> 220 Partners, 2.500 professionals)

Relevant experience

• Performance programs for large scale family owned businesses
• Refinancing programs
• Distressed M&A transactions
• Efficiency and transformation programs for various listed companies
• CRO assignments
• Management buy ins

Education and memberships

• European Business School (EBS)
• Universidad Argentina de la Empresa (UADE)
• San Diego State University (SDSU)
• Guest Lecturer at the Frankfurt School of Finance

Speaker

David Weinberger
Senior Researcher, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University

In books, articles, posts, classes, and talks, David Weinberger, Ph.D. explores the effect of technology on ideas. He is a senior researcher  at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society and is currently serving as writer-in-residence at Google PAIR (People + AI Research). His latest book, Everyday Chaos (HBR Press) was named Best Business Commentary of 2020 by Axiom, among other international awards. He also edits the open access Strong Ideas book series for MIT Press.

In his varied career, he has been a marketing communications VP and consultant to hi-tech companies, co-director of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab,  a journalism fellow at Harvard's Shorenstein Center, an adviser to presidential campaigns, a Franklin Fellow at the U.S. State Department, and a philosophy professor.

Beginning with the best-seller Cluetrain Manifesto, in five books he has explored the effect of technology on knowledge, on how we organize our ideas, on business, and on the core concepts by which we understand our world.

Dr. Weinberger has a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Toronto and lives in the Boston area.

Speaker

Judith Wiese
CHRO, Member of the Managing Board, Siemens AG and Labor Director

Born on January 30, 1971 in Lüdenscheid, Germany
LinkedIn: Judith Wiese

Special responsibilities
– Human Resources
– Global Business Services
– Sustainability

Education
– Master of Business Administration Int’l School of Economics (NL) / University of Duisburg (D)
– Mars Leadership – Exec. education at Harvard Business School

Professional history
2013
– Mars Inc., Brussels/Mount Olive, Belgium/USA
− Vice President OD Chocolate

2014
– Mars Inc., Brussels/McLean, Belgium/USA
− Vice President Talent

2015
– Mars Inc., McLean, USA
− Vice President Corporate

October 2017
– DSM N.V., Heerten, Netherlands
− Chief Human Resources Officer

October 2020
– CHRO, Member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG and Labor Director

Memberships of other boards or committees
– Gartner Global CHRO Advisory Board

Speaker

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox
Founder and CEO, 20-first

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox is CEO of 20-first, a leading international gender-balance consultancy. 20-first works with top management at some of the world’s best-known companies to identify the business opportunities of gender balance and how to achieve them. She has written a number of best-sellers in the field, including One Key to Gender Balance, Four Phases to Women’s Careers, Seven Steps to Leading Gender-Balanced Businesses, How Women Mean Business, and Why Women Mean Business: Understanding the Emergence of Our Next Economic Revolution, which won the Manpower Business Book of the Year award. Her most recent book is a more personal take on the consequences of gender balance at home: Late Love: Mating in Maturity.

Avivah speaks on leadership, marketing and talent management, and dual career issues across the globe, writes for FORBES and Harvard Business Review and lectures at HEC Business School. She is Founder and Honorary President of GlobalPWN.net, an international professional women’s network. Canadian, French and Swiss, she has been recognized by ELLE Magazine as one of the TOP 40 Women Leading Change. She lives in London with her sculptor husband and is occasionally visited by her two, globe-trotting, gender-balanced children, a son and daughter.

Speaker

Michele Zanini
Co-founder, Management Lab

Michele Zanini is the co-founder of the Management Lab. Together with Gary Hamel, Zanini helps forward-thinking organizations become more resilient, innovative and engaging places to work. Zanini was previously an Associate Partner at McKinsey and Company and a leader in the firm’s organization, strategy and financial services practices. Zanini also spent five years as a policy analyst at the RAND Corporation, where he conducted pioneering research on how terrorist and other insurgent groups were harnessing information-age technologies to operate as nimble networks. Zanini’s work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times, and the Wall Street Journal. Zanini holds degrees from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Pardee RAND Graduate School. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.