Arie de Geus (UK): former director of Shells Planning Unit for 38 years, author of “The living Company” and very wanted speaker. Arie de Geus is an international storyteller providing his audience with great insights. This will be the first and probably the only time Arie de Geus is visiting Copenhagen. Do not miss this opportunity to meet him and learn about his ideas and knowledge.

Read teaser article: Goodbye to Capitalism

Adam Morgan (UK): founder of eatbigfish, an international brand consultancy specialising in challenger behaviour and strategy. Author of ‘Eating the Big Fish: How Challengers Can Compete Against Brand Leaders’ and, most recently, ‘The Pirate Inside: Building a Challenger Brand Culture within Yourself and Your Organization.’ Adam has created an innovative and strategic framework to enable challengers to think differently in their chosen marketplace and achieve aggressive growth against the market leader in their category. His third book on challengers, about how they see opportunity, is due to be published in 2007.

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Read teaser article: Brand Segmentation

Read teaser article: Being A Pirate

John Grant (UK): Brand strategy consultant and co-founder of St Luke’s. John has published two highly acclaimed books on the revolution that is taking place in marketing, and his third book “The Brand Innovation Manifesto” is out April 2006. His client list has included The Government of Sweden, Amazon, Napster, IKEA, IBM, Diageo, The BBC, Sony-Ericson, The Co-operative Bank and many others. John is a non-executive director of the Ministry of Sound and has worked with the leaders of global corporations on translating business strategy into a compelling human story; notably Coca-Cola, Heidrick & Struggles, BT, Freshfields, and IKEA.

Geoff Mulgan (UK): director of The Young Foundation, former Head of Policy in the Prime Minister’s Office, and Tony Blairs personal adviser, plus founder of the think tank DEMOS. The Young Foundation is an organisation that undertakes research to identify and understand social needs and then develops practical initiatives and institutions to address them. It was formed in 2005 from the merger of the Institute of Community Studies and the Mutual Aid Centre, the vehicles through which Michael Young helped create some 60 organisations (ranging from the Consumers’ Association to the Open University). Their work is above all about social innovation – developing more effective ways to meet unmet needs.

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Klaus Æ. Mogensen (DK): futurist at Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies/CIFS and editor of the sequel to “Dream Society,” “Creative Man” (Gyldendal 2004), which is now being adapted to English. Klaus Æ. Mogensen has for the last two years held more than 100 presentations about Creative Man in Scandinavia.

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Carsten Beck (DK): Head of Research at Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies/CIFS and one of our best speakers. Carsten Beck has been at CIFS for 15 years and has been working with futures processes for a long range of international companies: Novozymes, KPMG, IKEA, GN Resound, Private Label Manufacturers Association (PLMA). Latest he has been in charge of educating all IKEA’s controllers to be more future businessminded.

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Adam Hill co-founded Brand X to bring creative thinking and a coherent voice to the all-too tired world of financial marketing.

The increasing need for modern customers to inject their own creativity into the products and services they purchase is already becoming a marketing commonplace. However, simultaneous to this is another phenomenon where individual consumers are being drawn to brands whose underlying values support and help define the picture people have of themselves.

The commercial challenge here is further complicated as these pictures that consumers have of themselves is no longer fixed, or long-term – it is fluid and unpredictable, defined by the situation in which the consumer finds herself.

Building brands and marketing programmes that possess the agility to recognise, define and increase the value of all corporate relationships is what will determine durable commercial success over the next decade.

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