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David Rowan

Best known for:

David Rowan was the founding editor-in-chief of WIRED magazine UK’s edition and is the author of amazon’s number 1 business bestseller ‘Non-Bullshit Innovation: Radical Ideas from the World’s Smartest Minds’.

Summary:

David Rowan was the founding editor of WIRED UK until 2017 and has spent time with the founders of WhatsApp, LinkedIn, BuzzFeed and Spotify to name just a few. He has since invested in more than 60 early-stage tech companies, including two that become billion-dollar ‘unicorns’, and is an adviser to Lakestar, one of Europe’s largest venture-capital funds.

Biography:

David’s knowledge and understanding of trends in the world of consumer behaviours, the digital era, social commerce and media has allowed him to become one of the most sought after corporate speakers on the circuit.

David’s Amazon number 1 business bestselles ‘Non-bullshit Innovation: Radical Ideas from the World’s Smartest Minds (Penguin, 2019) has been published in many countries all around the world. The book, a 20-country quest for bold corporate innovation in the face of technology-led disruption, sets out sixteen proven strategies for future-proofing a successful business, helping leaders build resilience in a post-COVID-19 world.

David previously wrote the monthly Digital Life column in GQ magazine; the Tech Traveller column in Conde Nast Traveller, and tech and trend-watching to modernize The Jewish Chronicle. He now hosts a new podcast series about tech founders called Walks With Founders. He has been asked to give more than 600 keynotes in recent years and has received repeat requests to present for clients such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Google, KPMG, McKinsey, Chanel and Unilever. David has moderated events for the World Economic Forum and the UK and French governments, and is increasingly in demand to host webinars and virtual conferences.

David deconstructs tech trends in real time, unpacking how major innovations like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, autonomous vehicles, and more, are changing businesses and consumers. He focuses on how technology-led innovation can build prosperity even in economic downturns and amid the COVID-19 crisis.

He is typically asked to speak about how innovation and technology are likely to impact a particular sector (from manufacturing to motoring), and what incumbent companies can do to protect themselves. He customizes every talk, and in recent months has addressed audiences in finance, fashion, utilities, television, and insurance, shipping, travel, real estate and business software. He also speaks a lot about changing business models, and how companies can develop a culture of innovation.

Topic Areas

FINDING OPPORTUNITY AMID THE CRISIS: Technology offers hope for optimism as we emerge from the coronavirus crisis.
Why business innovation has never mattered more
Ten lessons from the non-bullshit innovators
What technology means for the future of your industry
The future of the workplace
Why it’s time to challenge the tech monopolies
The ten new rules of business
How to optimize customer engagement
Why purpose plus profit is the new mantra

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Testimonials:

You were a superstar! So many people told me how much they enjoyed your lively & interesting presentation, humour and deep & personalised Q&A with the panelists.

Beco Capital, Dubai

I wanted to thank you for your time to moderate the G8 Innovation Conference. You set the tone for the day perfectly, engaging the audience and steering the presenters through a very full agenda. The feedback from the day has been overwhelmingly positive, which is largely due to your dynamism, good humour and professionalism.

David Cameron, Former Prime Minister, G8 Innovation Conference

We just wanted to say an enormous thank you for providing such an interesting and inspirational session on future technical trends for our Digital Power Week. We’ve had terrific feedback from staff across the business who said they learnt so much, found you fascinating to listen to and came away really excited by the future possibilities with digital.

BBC Worldwide

Thank you so much for your brilliant presentation at our Futures Forum event today. I have a quite a few attendees come up to me already to say how brilliant they thought you were and how you have altered their perception of Big Data. You captured the exact tone we were hoping for from this event.

CapGemini

Thank you for being such an amazing moderator during the recent Bizspark European Summit. It was an amazing event – best ever summit in my view – and your contribution was a tremendous factor in this.

Microsoft Bizspark