Innovation Speakers

Ros Atkins

Ros joined the BBC as a producer on Five Live and is now the BBC News Analysis Editor and presenter of The Media Show on Radio 4. He produces viral explainer videos on topical news stories that led to him being labelled been labelled 'Explainer-in-Chief', and founded the BBC's 50:50 Project which aimed to increase the representation of women in journalism. He is also the author of The Art of Explanation: How to Communicate with Clarity and Confidence.

Dame Inga Beale

After working in senior global leadership roles in some of the world’s largest insurance companies, Inga took over the helm of the 330-year-old City financial institution. Taking on many of the traditions that had held the organisation back, Inga expanded their global markets, and introduced strategies including the Lloyd’s Innovation Lab, and the Dive In Festival, an industry-wide, international diversity and inclusion event. She considers the balance struck between history and modernisation when implementing change, the vital importance of inclusion in the workplace, and co...

Cally Beaton

After joining the board of ITV, setting up her own company and serving as SVP in charge of International Sales at media giant Viacom, Cally has also started a parallel career in comedy. She brings humour and energy to workplace insights ranging from how to foster a creative, positive environment to how to inspire and lead through change.

Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

Tomas uses science and tech to help organisations predict human performance. He creates tools that help organisations predict human performance and improve the ability for people to understand themselves better.

Bernie Collins

With over a decade’s experience at the forefront of Formula 1 Bernie was Head of Race Strategy for the Aston Martin Formula 1 team and is an accomplished strategy engineer. She has held senior strategy and performance engineering roles and played a central role in the teams she has worked for.

Alex Depledge

Leaving her job at Accenture for the uncertainty of a startup, Alex and her friend Jules started helping.com (formerly hassle.com). The pair got through the challenges, the mistakes, and the lack of investment to build a company that sold for over £20million. They’ve repeated the process with Resi, a disruptive architecture and planning business that is now a market-leader. Alex looks at the lessons she's learned, from startup mindsets to the future of the workplace, the pressures on leaders to balancing culture and growth (including a dramatic increase in Resi's...

Matthew Drinkwater

Working at the cutting-edge of fashion, technology and retail, Matthew demonstrates how the fashion industry is being changed in every facet of its operation from manufacture and supply chain to retail and design. From what clothes can do (monitoring your activities, charging your phone) to how VR could replace high street shop to how robots could replace craftspeople, he finds important lessons for any industry in collaboration, disruption and future strategy.

Hannah Fry

Having studied fluid dynamics and working briefly in F1, Hannah returned to academia and now lectures in the mathematics of cities. She’s also a science broadcaster, bringing numbers and data to life on TV and radio in programmes including The Joy of Data, City in the Sky, and The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry. She examines how maths underpins almost everything and the world of data: how it’s gathered, what it can (and can’t) tell us, and when to look more closely at its predictions. Hannah also encouraged the public to download the BBC Pandemic app for her look a...

Bob Geldof

Bob has inspired hundreds of projects across Africa and ensures it remains on the political agenda and in the public consciousness. In a rousing speech on social responsibility, Bob reminds us that we are all defined by what we do, not what we say. This isn’t confined to philanthropy. He might also confess to some pride at the thought of becoming the first Irishman (and the first genuine rock star) in space.

Baroness (Susan) Greenfield

One of the world’s leading authorities in neuroscience, Susan Greenfield is a scientist, academic, writer and broadcaster who considers how the brain works and how it’s changing. As well as leading research into Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, she writes and speaks about the potentially damaging effects to the brain of technology and living our lives online.

Chris Hadfield

Chris learned Russian and emergency medicine on top of his test pilot and aeronautical training before spending six months in orbit. He is now best-known for performing Bowie’s Space Oddity in space – as well as publishing An Astronaut’s Guide To Life On Earth and appraising the candidates in BBC2’s Astronauts - Do You Have What It Takes? Chris shares insights on leadership, collaboration, human ingenuity and how to avoid being paralysed by fear in the four seconds between system failure and death. He also reveals what spacewalking tells us about life on Earth.

Tim Harford

The BBC presenter, Oxford Fellow, data detective and million-selling author is a compelling storyteller on economics, psychology and the unexpected bits in between. Tim explores innovation and how ideas spread, what disasters teach us about ourselves, the power of price, and the use of uncertainty as a competitive weapon. He also reveals truths and myths in data – whether public information, misinformation or deliberate disinformation.

Lindsay Herbert

With a focus on the real-world of customers and workforces, Lindsay examines the five critical stages of digital transformation. Dealing with and embracing innovation and disruption are as much a matter of strategy and culture as they are about understanding what technology can achieve. Lindsay delivers examples and cautionary lessons in how the digital can add customer value and free up people to collaborate, innovate and focus on the human aspects of their job, but only when allowed to by internal structures.

Christian Horner

After a successful career on the track Christian started his own racing team only to be approached shortly afterwards to run the new Red Bull set-up. As new entrants to one of the most technical and competitive sports in the world, within five years they’d won both drivers’ and constructors’ championships, and repeated the feat for each of the following three seasons. Christian reveals what it’s taken to build and maintain success in the face of rivals with more money, resources, and political power in the sport. He considers what makes the culture of Red Bull spe...

Dr Daniel Hulme

Working in academia, the public and private sectors, Daniel is a leading expert in artificial intelligence and emerging technologies as well as its applications and the social, commercial, economic and ethical implications. In a world where many believe access to more and more data will lead to ever better decision-making, he looks at what AI really is, what it can achieve, and the potential pitfalls. He also asks how organisations need to change their structure and why people feel addicted to technology.

Alex Hunter

Alex was part of the team that launched the award-winning US airline Virgin America before leading Virgin’s entire digital strategy, including Sir Richard Branson's personal strategy. In speeches and workshops, Alex demonstrates how to create a meaningful bond with customers by showing the human side of brands, building relationships online and in the real world, exploring the psychology of brand loyalty, and revealing some of the best tactics for keeping customers happy and loyal.

Dex Hunter-Torricke

In a career that encompasses the UN, Google, Facebook and SpaceX, as well as political speechwriting, Dex offers a rare insight in to the intersection of politics, technology, leadership and society. Referring to some of the world’s biggest and most influential companies and individuals, he examines important questions of trust, automation, innovation and values. Looking at the positive and negative effects of an increasingly connected world he sees ethical dilemmas, new types of job, competing priorities and a focus on purpose.

Leo Johnson

Combining consulting, research, and presenting BBC programmes including Future Proofing and Hacking Capitalism, Leo explores change and how we respond to it. He argues that disruptive events from pandemics to new technologies give us the opportunity (even the duty) to consider, with a new perspective, environmental, social and capital imbalances. In doing so, leaders will often understand the imperative to change strategy, but will also experience the intense difficulty of realising transformation. Leo delivers a practical understanding of why change is hard and what to do about it.

Jonas Kjellberg

The founders of Skype had a simple idea that went on to revolutionise the entire telecoms sector. Since the company was sold Jonas has taught at Stanford, launched an early stage fund to back scaleable new business models, and co-authored books on growth strategy and ways to test the enterprise’s durability. He speaks about spearheading an idea, standing out from the crowd, creating a winning sales culture and bringing the whole organisation together.

Priya Lakhani

Priya is the founder and CEO of CENTURY Tech, the award-winning education company that aids the implementation of AI and machine learning in classrooms. She is part of the AIDecoded team on the flagship BBC programme The Context, sharing her insights into tech and business. 

Elizabeth Linder

Working at the intersection of business, politics, society and technology with both Facebook and YouTube, Elizabeth has helped leaders around the world understand how social media has changed the balance of power. In an era where the public’s need for authenticity has led to Donald Trump’s Twitter presidency, she asks how leaders in all areas can be accountable and transparent. She also looks at wider issues from the tech sector from the implications of ever-expanding global internet access to the millennial workforce to the industry’s moral responsibilities.