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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.

23
Disruption
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Stephanie Mehta

CEO of Mansueto Ventures | Former Editor-in-Chief of Fast Company

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.
Nina Tandon

CEO and Co-Founder of EpiBone | TED Senior Fellow

Nina Tandon is changing medical science as we know it. As the CEO and Co-Founder of Epibone, she is successfully leading her business through exciting new entrepreneurial territory by growing artificial tissues, like hearts and bones, that can be safely put into the body. Named one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business, Tandon speaks to the innovative, symbiotic future of health care, business and technology—while creating it herself.  
Laura Huang

Harvard Business School Professor | Author of Edge

In her groundbreaking research on edge—the elusive quality that gives us an upper-hand—Laura Huang reveals that a large part of success relies on how well we can shape others’ perceptions of us. As one of the top business professors in America, Huang masterfully shows us how we can leverage both our strengths and our flaws to our advantage—creating an edge that will keep attention, beat competition, and win.
Ellen Bennett

Founder and CEO of Hedley & Bennett | Author of Dream First, Details Later

 At 25 years old, Ellen Bennett was a cook at a 2-Michelin-Star restaurant in LA; yet she was still tying on the same $5 apron found in every diner and pub along Hollywood Boulevard. So she took her modest $300 savings and turned it into the largest gourmet apron manufacturer in the world. The same go-getter attitude that helped her launch Hedley & Bennett—a multi-million-dollar brand beloved by the likes of Martha Stewart and Momofuku’s David Chang—is also what allowed her to rapidly pivot (within 24 hours!) in the wake of the pandemic. In her inspiring, actionable talks, as well as her new book, Bennett reveals what you need to get out of your head and launch into action, even during a crisis.
Nicholas Thompson

CEO of The Atlantic | Former Editor-in-Chief of WIRED

Nicholas Thompson is CEO of The Atlantic and former editor-in-chief of WIRED. His bold, brilliant takes on the complex relationship between ethics, tech, business, politics, and society continuously shape the nation’s understanding of the world around them. In new talks, he blueprints what life will look like after COVID—how privacy, labor, business, and human connection will be irrevocably altered, and how individuals and organizations can poise themselves to thrive.
 
Joe Jackman

Founder and CEO of Jackman | Author of The Reinventionist Mindset

Change is everywhere, and it’s coming for us fast. What if we could reprogram ourselves to see its disruptive force as not only inevitable, but good? Wouldn’t we all be better off? According to Joe Jackman, Founder and CEO of Jackman Reinvents—Yes, we would. A Reinventionist—a pioneer of dynamic business growth who reshapes businesses back to relevance with his unique approach—Jackman is a student of change, and his bold beliefs are why iconic brands and leadership teams turn to Jackman as their secret weapon in spearheading remarkable change—transforming the way we look at strategy, design, culture, and customer experiences that truly engage.
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. 
Douglas Rushkoff

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

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.
Alex Kantrowitz

Reporter and Founder of Big Technology | Author of Always Day One

How do the tech titans—Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft—stay on top? Alex Kantrowitz, one of the world’s most prolific tech reporters, has made it his mission to find out. In his debut book Always Day One, he explores the precedent-setting culture and leadership practices these companies have built to spark invention and move beyond the status quo. In his talks, Kantrowitz reveals how you, too, can use the tech titan playbook to invent and reinvent in a rapidly-changing economy.

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Radhika Dirks

Forbes' 30 Women in AI to Watch | Quantum Computing Expert | CEO & Co-Founder of XLabs & Ribo AI

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. 
Martin Ford

New York Times bestselling author of Rise of the Robots and Rule 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

Author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism | Harvard Business School Professor Emeritus | Activist and Scholar

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 Create the Future

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.
 
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

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.