The Actionable Futurist® Podcast

The topics of Extended Reality (XR) and The Metaverse are becoming more and more popular. Once the sole domain of gamers, we are now seeing a range of corporate examples for XR, which are building interest in what's next for the space. To find out more, and understand what types of scenarios are right for these new platforms, I spoke with Thomas Bedenk from Endava. Thomas has over 25 years of experience in digital productions, focusing on Strategy, XR, and UX to support digital...

Generative Artificial Intelligence or Generative AI - is a relatively new term that is being mentioned a lot when it comes to AI chat engines such as ChatGPT and AI-generated art from platforms such as Midjourney. One of the industries that is most intrigued by this technology is the education sector. Plagiarism has been a problem for years, but now a tool like ChatGPT can write a whole assignment in seconds, what does this mean for the sector? To find out more, I invited back Dr Lynn...

New Year, New Season! Welcome to Season 5 of the Actionable Futurist Podcast. To kick off the new season, I interviewed Sophia Matveeva CEO & founder of Tech For Non-Techies. Sophia argues that you don’t have to be a tech expert to found, run or work in a technology company at senior levels. Tech For Non-Techies is an education company and consultancy. Sophia has contributed to the Financial Times, The Guardian, and Forbes on entrepreneurship and technology, and hosts the top-rated Tech...

Environmental sustainability is often seen as just minimising the impact on a company’s business model. Environmental expert Trevor Hutchings from Gemserv argues that companies need to strive to become net-positive, giving back more than they take out. Trevor is Director of Strategy and Communications at Gemserv and spent much of his early career in the UK civil service, working in a number of government departments and with the European Commission in Brussels, including positions at the...

My guest is cybersecurity expert Samantha Humphries. She has over 21 years of experience in cyber security, and during this time has held a plethora of titles, one of her favourites being Global Threat Response Manager. Sam has defined strategies for multiple security products and technologies, helped hundreds of organisations of all shapes, sizes, and geographies recover and learn from cyberattacks, and trained anyone who’ll listen to security concepts and solutions. In her current role,...

As an international lawyer, author and speaker, Susie has worked on some of the most challenging legal and political issues of our time including human rights and security, combating corruption in the developing world, protecting human rights at borders, the human rights impact of climate change on small island states, privacy, cybersecurity, disinformation, data protection and neurotech. Her experience includes both judicial, and oversight roles in the UK and internationally. She has...

As a Futurist I get to explore new inventions and track the progress of all kinds of technologies. But how did we get so smart to be able to dream all of these things up? Until I interviewed Byron about his new book Stories, Dice, and Rocks That Think: How Humans Learned to See the Future — and Shape it I hadn’t given this any thought. It is a fascinating read and looks at what makes the human mind so unique and also explores the three leaps in our history that made us who we are—and will...

Quantum physics has already changed our lives, thanks to the invention of the laser and the transistor, both products of quantum theory. Almost every electronic device we use today is an example of quantum physics in action. I believe we may now be on the brink of a second quantum revolution as we attempt to harness even more of the power of the quantum world. Quantum computing will impact many sectors, including healthcare, energy, finance, security, and entertainment. However,...

In keeping with the renewable energy theme, and on the back of my 2 part series on the Genpact Envision Racing partnership, this podcast features Shell Recharge solutions. We will hear from Euan Moir about how they are expanding their electric vehicle recharge network across the country into homes and offices, but also look into the future, when national electricity grids will be able to deliver as well as receive energy from electric vehicle batteries. I first came across the Shell...

We know that technology is rapidly changing and it seems heard to keep up sometimes. We’re told that we need to become lifelong learners and this is hard for most of us that lead busy lives, but how does the CEO of a 100,000 person company valued at over $4Bn keep constantly learning? This is a question I posed to Tiger Tyagarajan, CEO of leading professional services company Genpact on the latest episode of the Actionable Futurist® Podcast. He is one of the industry leaders who pioneered...

Our guest is world-famous and while you may not heard of her, you may have heard her voice! Aussie-born and now back in Australia, Karen Jacobsen’s speaking voice is in over 1 Billion GPS units and smartphones worldwide giving directions. From a single voice-over booking, she created her empowerment brand “The GPS Girl”, teaching the five directions for “recalculating" in business and life. An award-winning Singer and Songwriter, Karen's musical career highlights include sharing the bill...

High-growth, high-performance companies need to do extraordinary things to remain competitive. I recently had the opportunity to see how leading professional services firm Genpact is leveraging their sponsorship of the Envision Formula E Racing team in ways beyond what they imagined when they teamed up in 2018. I was invited to Silverstone, the home of British Racing to view first-hand the Envision Racing cars, as well as speak to one of the team drivers, Robin Frijns as well as Team...

What does playing soccer in your youth have to do with being the CEO of a high-growth tech company? If you’re Christina Kosmowski from LogicMonitor then it has everything to do with how to coach a team for success. Christiana was an early employee at Salesforce where she helped to develop their customer success program, and later did the same at Slack. Her Twitter bio describes her as a customer-obsessed CEO changing the very role of IT with customers at the centre. She is a Wife, Mother,...

I've always been fascinated by how technology can improve healthcare, and over the years at my keynote talks, audiences have asked me for my view of what's next. Finally, I managed to grab two leading figures on this subject: Dr Simon Wallace, Chief Clinical Information Officer at Nuance Communications, and Umang Patel, Chief Clinical Information Officer at Microsoft to help explain this important topic. Simon is a GP & public health doctor providing consultancy services to healthcare...

In a world full of misinformation, which media sources can you trust? Enter The Conversation, an independent source of news analysis and informed comment written by academic experts, working with professional journalists who help share their knowledge with the world and deliver truthful stories that anyone can read and understand. To learn more about this unique resource, I spoke with Chris Waiting, Chief Executive Officer of The Conversation UK. Chris previously held senior management...

Public relations is no longer just about sending press releases - increasingly PR has become integrated with sales and marketing functions and relies upon practitioners having a solid grasp of data. To find out more about the future of PR and communications, I spoke with Heather Kernahan, the Global CEO of Communications company Hotwire. Heather has spent her career immersed in technology and moved over to Hotwire from Eastwick Communications after its acquisition in 2016. Prior to this,...

If you had the chance to speak with the former CMO of Salesforce about the future of Marketing what would you ask them? I had the chance to do just that on this episode of the Actionable Futurist Podcast, speaking with Stephanie Bushcemi who is currently the CMO of Confluent. She was previously EVP and CMO of Salesforce and held the same role at IHS Markit, and also spent a number of years at SAP heading their Marketing functions. We recorded the episode live at the Kafka Summit in London...

For many the interim model of working is not new, where senior, experienced staff are brought into a firm before a permanent role is filled. With work moving towards a more distributed model, and access to talent being widened beyond the city centres, will a hybrid workforce model, utilising freelance and permanent staff emerge? To answer this question and more, I spoke with Charlotte Gregson, PhD the Managing Director for the UK & US for COMATCH, a marketplace for independent management...

May 25th 2022, marks four years since the General Data Protection Regulation, more commonly known as GDPR came into effect in the UK and the EU. The GDPR's primary aim is to enhance individuals' control and rights over their personal data and simplify international businesses' regulatory environment. Four years on, though, are consumers adequately protected? I spoke with James Walker, CEO of Consumer Privacy champion, Rightly, to better answer this question. James is a consumer rights...

TikTok now has a billion users, so what makes it stand out from Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter? To answer this I spoke with Aaron Goldman, Chief Marketing Officer of MediaOcean, a mission-critical platform for omnichannel advertising that connects brands, agencies, media, technology, and data. Aaron has been in the Marketing industry for over 20 years, including CMO roles at 4C, and Kenshoo, a leading enterprise marketing software company. Aaron was awarded the LinkedIn B2B...