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Disruption Speakers

 

Disruptive innovation is how we companies evolve, and it’s a more necessary skill than ever. These disruption speakers (and bona fide disruptors) explain that there’s no supreme model to follow — but they do have some tricks they’re willing to share.

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Stephanie Mehta

Editor-in-Chief of Fast Company | Former Deputy Editor at Vanity Fair

What makes the world’s most creative people—and companies—tick? The most qualified person to answer the question is Stephanie Mehta. As Editor-in-Chief of Fast Company—the influential magazine championing creativity, disruption, and thriving workplace cultures for a new generation of business— Mehta is the rare editor who talks to pure creatives and corporate leaders in equal measure. She draws on her decades in business journalism to show us how to inject imaginative thinking, entrepreneurial zeal, and unbridled innovation into everything we do.
Trend Hunter Team

The World’s #1 Trend Firm and Innovation Engine

With the Trend Hunter Team, you get a diversely talented group of speakers who will show you—individually or together—what the trends in tech, business, retail and more can do for you before they explode. These speakers are immersed in trends on a daily basis, advising the world’s most innovative people at Disney, Coca-Cola, even NASA, on their areas of opportunity, and crafting Trend Hunter’s world-class culture. 
 
Douglas Rushkoff

Author of Team Human, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, and Present Shock

Instead of trying to optimize human beings for the automated future, we should be optimizing technology for human beings, says Douglas Rushkoff. A world-renowned philosopher and futurist, Rushkoff’s funny, agile talks show how we can put human creativity at the heart of businesses, even as we embrace automation and all the change it ushers in.
Nicholas Thompson

Editor-in-Chief of Wired | Former Editor of NewYorker.com

As the editor-in-chief of Wired, Nicholas Thompson is the first person to know—and investigate—both the technological and ethical developments as they unfold in Silicon Valley. He speaks at the cutting edge of digital innovation—championing tech’s role in making the world a better place.
 
Mark Johnson

Co-Founder of Innosight | Author of Lead from the Future and Reinvent Your Business Model

How can you reinvent your business in the face of disruption—and come out stronger, more resilient, and more profitable than before? Just ask Mark Johnson, award-winning business author and co-founder of the innovation consultancy Innosight. There, he helps leaders and organizations develop the visionary ideas that lead to breakthrough change, and execute them with startling efficiency. As practical as it is creative, Johnson’s work not only stimulates new growth, but manages company-wide cultures of transformation. 
Safi Bahcall

Award-Winning Biotech Entrepreneur | Author of Loonshots

Author of Loonshots, Safi Bahcall shows how we can stoke innovation, create better leaders, and support “loonshots”: the imperfect but ingenious ideas that have the potential to change the world.
Radhika Dirks

CEO & Co-Founder of XLabs | Physicist & Entrepreneur

A quantum physicist-turned-entrepreneur, Radhika Dirks is CEO and co-founder at XLabs: the only company in the world making AI moonshots a reality. With firsthand examples of AI she has built, Dirks argues for a future that fits our biggest ambitions—making the world a better place while we’re at it. 
Laura Huang

Harvard Business School Professor | Author of EDGE (2020)

In the elusive pursuit of success, you need an edge, says Harvard professor Laura Huang, one of the top business school professors in America. Huang’s talks show how you can make your hard work “work harder for you” by comprehending the factors that have little to do with your talent and effort—and everything to do with making the most of them.  
 
Martin Ford

Author of Architects of Intelligence and The New York Times bestseller Rise of the Robots

How did AI advance from the realm of science fiction to today’s reality? And how should we prepare for the future? Martin Ford—a McKinsey award-winning author, software entrepreneur, and TED mainstage speaker—explains why our current plans to manage the robotics revolution fall short. Brilliant, fastidious, and uncannily prescient, Ford orients investors and managers in the shifting technological landscape, helping to both safeguard potential threats, and distinguish the hype from the real opportunities.
 
Ajay Agrawal

Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning Expert | Founder of the Creative Destruction Lab | Co-Author of Prediction Machines

Co-author of the definitive AI book Prediction Machines, Ajay Agrawal’s talks illuminate the incoming realities of AI: how machine prediction presents us with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to optimize the way we do business, run governments, and provide healthcare. 
 
Shoshana Zuboff

Sociologist | Author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

As we attempt to grasp the consequences of our digital era, Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism “shines a searing light on how this latest revolution is transforming our economy, politics, society—and lives” (Financial Times). Zuboff outlines the consequences of putting a price on private data, and urges business leaders to pay attention, resist habituation, and come up with novel responses to this new era. 
Doug Stephens

Retail and Consumer Futurist | Internationally Acclaimed Author and Founder of Retail Prophet

Doug Stephens is one of the most influential retail futurists on the planet. His talks are required listening for any company that orbits the retail world. In fully customized and thoroughly researched keynotes, Stephens shows you how to stay ahead of the changing mega-trends in demographics, economics, and technology that are resetting your industry—and, what it takes to be truly innovative.
 
John Ibbitson

Award-winning Journalist and #1 Bestselling Author of Empty Planet

A smaller population has the potential to disrupt our world—for the better—says veteran journalist John Ibbitson. Upending decades of conventional wisdom on the future of population growth, Ibbitson’s talks offer a realistic and in-depth study of demographic shifts—with a hopeful plan for how we can change its shape if we choose to.
 
Jeremy Gutsche

CEO of Trend Hunter | New York Times Bestselling Author of Better and Faster

Jeremy Gutsche is “an intellectual can of Red Bull” (Association Week), a New York Times bestseller and a management consultant to brands, billionaires, and CEOs With contagious enthusiasm, he shows us how to use methodical innovation to generate ideas and kickstart creativity in times of rapid change. 
 
Tom Wujec

World Renowned Expert on Innovation | Former Chief Disruptor at Autodesk | Author of The Future of Making

New disruptive technologies are permanently changing the way we conceive, design, manufacture, and sell products. To veteran innovator Tom Wujec, this revolution isn’t intimidating, but an exciting opportunity. As each industry is forced to adapt and learn new skills, they’ll need a guide—and Wujec is our most valuable. 
Randall Lane

Chief Content Officer of Forbes Magazine

Randall Lane is the chief content officer of Forbes Magazine, where he has helped it reach its highest-ever U.S. readership (6.7 million) with new emphases on young innovators and disruptors. 
 
Michael Casey

Chief Content Officer at CoinDesk | MIT Media Advisor | Author of The Truth Machine

Our 21st century digital society suffers from a trust deficit, and our outdated 20th century institutions are unable to fix it, says MIT Media Lab advisor Michael Casey. Casey’s solution is shaped by the decentralizing ideas of the blockchain movement: an incentives-driven mechanism for verifying information that, if designed in humanity’s interests, will help us reclaim agency over our data and creative output.
 
Amber Mac

Relentless Adaptation & Digital Innovation Speaker | Co-Host of The AI Effect

Amber Mac is a writer, podcaster, entrepreneur and digital maverick whose understanding of disruptive technologies helps companies anticipate lightning-quick changes as they come—from Artificial Intelligence, to social media, to Amazon-era retail. No matter how confident and established the company, everyone needs a blueprint—and Mac’s talks provide you with just that. 
 
David Robertson

Senior Lecturer at MIT Sloan | Author of The Power of Little Ideas and of Brick by Brick

We tend to imagine innovation as slow, incremental change or else industry-shifting disruption. Yet for most companies, neither works. MIT Sloan professor David Robertson outlines a third way of innovation.
 
Yancey Strickler

Co-founder & Former CEO of Kickstarter | Author of This Could Be Our Future (Oct. 29)

Our current society is trapped by three assumptions, says writer and Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler: that the point of life is to maximize self-interest and wealth; that we’re individuals trapped in an adversarial world; and that this is natural. In his talks, Strickler urges us to discard these three alienating assumptions that limit our ability to imagine and innovate a new future. 
 
Michael Katchen

Founder and CEO of Wealthsimple

Michael Katchen is the founder and CEO of Wealthsimple, whose easy-to-use service has redefined investing for a young generation, and whose massive success has disrupted the financial services industry. In keynotes, he talks about how an embrace of innovation as an organic, practical process allows companies to solve big problems, to reinvent themselves and their industries.
 
David Rose

Resident Futurist at EPAM Continuum | MIT Senior Lecturer | Former VP of Vision Technology at Warby Parker

Artificial Intelligence isn’t strictly the domain of companies like Netflix and Amazon anymore. AI is disrupting just about every industry says MIT researcher David Rose—from healthcare, to brick-and-mortar retail, to neighborhood security. Whatever your field, Rose argues that everyone can and should prototype a multiplicity of futures using AI—before someone else does it for us.