Between Worlds

The Life Insurance industry is a fascinating case study in the challenges, and the potential rewards of digital transformation. Traditional insurance carriers have been largely slow to transform themselves, with many policies hosted on a multitude of legacy platforms. But change is coming, in the form of new types of insurance companies, like Haven Life, a spin-off from MassMutual, which uses AI a...

Mark van Rijmenam is one of the world’s foremost experts on the Blockchain, and its potential impact on the future of the firm. Named as one of the top 10 global big data influencers by Onalytica, he is the author of the book Think Bigger – Developing a Successful Big Data Strategy for Your Business. His latest book is titled Blockchain: How a Revolutionary Technology will Improve Business and Soc...

Rusty Young has spent his life living, and writing about things that most of us would feel uncomfortable thinking about, let alone actually experiencing. Strangely enough, he and I first met at law school many years ago. But while after graduation, I left to join the digital industry, he travelled to South America where he met Thomas McFadden, a convicted English drug trafficker who ran tours insi...

Vince Frost is a world renown designer, author, creative impresario, and one of the most brilliant thinkers on human centered design that I know. He is the founder and Executive Creative Director of Frost*collective, Sydney. We met almost a decade ago, when I approached him to design my first book, ‘Futuretainment’ which was published by Phaidon. His inspired work on that book led to a design awar...

Artificial intelligence and automation are disrupting the business of law, leading to faster, more accurate decision making and improved access to justice. But what exactly will this mean for the future of lawyers, and law firms? To find out I spoke with Paul Greenwood, CIO at Clifford Chance - one of the top ten law firms in the world, and a member of the "Magic Circle" of leading British law fir...

I first met the writer Molly Flatt in Bogota, Colombia a number of years ago, but to continue our discussion on the future of books and publishing, we arranged to meet in an equally interesting, although somewhat less exotic, bar in Fitzrovia, London. A prolific journalist and researcher into digital trends, Molly is the Associate Editor for FutureBook, Digital Editor for PHOENIX magazine and Asso...

Peter Sheahan is one of the smartest people I know, and the perfect choice for our first podcast guest of 2018. An expert on business transformation, he runs Karrikins Group with staff in more than 23 cities across seven countries. He is the author of seven bestselling books, including the recently released ‘Matter: Move Beyond the Competition, Create More Value, and Become the Obvious Choice’. Wh...

The new luxury consumer has never been more different. They're younger. They're more connected. They're more global, and more demanding of brands than at any time in history. To understand the significance of digital for the future of luxury, I caught up with Mohamed Marfouk, Global Operations Director of LVMH at their headquarters in Paris.

In an age of multiplying devices, platforms and social media channels - it can be tempting to forget the classic lessons of marketing and branding. On a recent trip to Miami, I caught up with Bruce Turkel, an author and marketing guru who has helped some of the world’s leading brands including Hasbro, Nike, American Express and Citicorp. We chatted about the challenges of marketing in this new flu...

Sometimes the hardest thing for any leader to do, is to actually do nothing and just listen. For Michael Bungay Stanier, a bestselling author and a world-leading expert on coaching - the best way to engage someone in a meaningful conversation is to know the right questions to ask. Speaking with me over a coffee in Toronto, Michael (who left Australia 25 years ago to be a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford U...

I was in LA over Halloween, and so took the opportunity to look up one of my favorite genre-bending, sci-fi authors - Peter Clines. Peter has a number of brilliant books including ’14’, ‘The Fold’, and his latest, ‘Paradox Bound’, which he originally pitched to his agent as a cross between Neil Gaiman’s ‘Neverwhere’ and ‘Cannonball Run’. Growing up in Stephen King's hometown of Maine, his first ep...

The war for the living room used to be simple: influence whoever was in charge of the family TV’s remote control. With the rise of the Internet of Things, smart speakers, and AI-enabled home automation systems - the home itself has become the next computing platform. To get a handle on what the future of smart homes might look like, I caught up with Alex Capecelatro in LA. Alex started his career...

If, at first, you are unconvinced of Dr Fox’s biographical assertion that he is a ‘modern day wizard-rogue’, you will certainly, when presented in the flesh, be assured by his impressive beard. Bestselling author of ‘The Game Changer’ and ‘How to Lead a Quest: a handbook for pioneering executives’, Jason is a thoroughly unconventional thinker on leadership, creativity and designing 21st century wo...

Healthcare is on the brink of a profound transformation, enabled by data, analytics and algorithms. As the health ecosystem moves from providing ‘sick care’, to an integrated, human-centric approach to helping people manage wellness - providers, payers and pharmaceutical manufactures will need to change. I spoke with healthcare analytics experts, D. Sahay and Rohan Fernando, from the global adviso...

Natalie Panek is an inspiring young innovator, with dreams of playing a dynamic role in the future of space exploration. A rocket scientist, she was recently named one of Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women by the Women’s Executive Network, a Forbes 30 under 30 2015, and “a vocal advocate for women in technology” by The Financial Post. In her spare time she has designed and driven a solar-powered...

I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about logistics. Supply chains might not strike you as a particularly interesting topic, but if you think about it, one of the first industries to be disrupted by our obsession with ordering everything and anything online, is the complex business of moving things around. To get a better handle on just what that kind of complexity entails, I met up with Rob...

From humble beginnings as street performance in a small Quebec town in 1984, Cirque du Soleil has grown to become the world’s most diverse, and dynamic brand of creative performances. On a recent visit to Las Vegas, which is home to seven permanent Cirque productions, I caught up with Jay Guilford, who is the creative content strategist for their team building program, SPARK. SPARK helps big compa...

Montreal, it turns out, is ground zero for some of the best and brightest in the emergent AI community. Look closely at the newly hired AI ranks at Google, Uber or Facebook and you will lots of expat Canadians. Now, a new company called Element AI, is working to help other companies apply the very same cutting edge deep-learning research to commercial problems from manufacturing to logistics. One...

Andy Harries runs Left Bank Pictures - which, if you happen to love shows like the Crown, Outlander, Strike Back, Cold Feet or Prime Suspect - is probably responsible for much of your time spent staring blankly a screen. Andy and I met when I was running a strategy workshop for Sony Pictures Television in London. Catching up over a cup of tea, we chatted about how the rise of ‘OTT’ entertainment b...

Starting work in the nineties, I quickly discovered that professional mastery had a lot to do with your ability to manipulate complex Excel spreadsheets. Analysts crunched numbers, programmers cracked code. These days, 21st century companies are trying to do the exact opposite - putting the power to create software and automate activities, in the hands of people closest to the work. Rick Willett,...

I caught up with Jamie Metzl for a coffee in Bryant Park, New York. A fellow futurist, geopolitical expert and sci-fi novelist - suffice to say, we had lots to chat about. Jamie is a Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council, serves on the Advisory Council to Walmart’s Future of Retail Policy Lab, and even ran (unsuccessfully) for the U.S. House of Representatives. It seemed strangely appropriate that...

With more than 200 inches of snow each year, and a good eight hour drive from a major city, Michigan Tech didn’t see many recruiters from outside of the Midwest. That didn’t seem right to Garrett Lord. Why should talent be located just in geographies closest to tech companies? After driving to college campuses across the country, he realized that student access to opportunities was universally une...

Magnus is a cool guy. As a fellow futurist, speaker and writer, we had met another times professionally over the years, in a variety of cities - but most recently in Kuala Lumpur, we got to properly hang out, and talk about a wide range of seemingly unconnected, but hopefully interesting things. Magnus is Director for Trendspotting and Future Thinking at Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship, and a...

Arthur Hayes has a big idea. He wants to build the Goldman Sachs of Bitcoin. Starting life as an equity derivatives trader, on his first day of trading, Lehman Brothers collapsed. A few years ago, he formed BitMEX, the Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange. BitMEX is trading platform that gives retail investors access to the global financial markets using Bitcoin, the Blockchain, and financial derivatives....

I met William almost ten years ago when he was a technology analyst in Hong Kong, and I was consulting for Star TV. The Chinese Internet was already rapidly evolving then, and now, a decade later, the combination of a sophisticated technology, a mobile-first culture and relative isolation behind a national firewall, has led to a vastly different digital ecosystem. Based in Shanghai, William is now...