It was amazing to meet you all to present my thoughts on how we can shift our mindsets to embrace new thinking, hope and wisdom as incredible energies for change as we face accelerating geopolitical challenges. Nikolas looks forward to connecting with you.

Email Nikolas to get a copy of the post-keynote report >>> click here

Reach out to arrange a meeting with Nikolas >>> click here.

Please watch and read on to learn more. Feel free to share this resource with your peers and colleagues.

Remember that hopeful futures work starts by questioning everything – and there’s zero risk in doing so. It’s a deeply creative and cognitive exercise for board members, executives and the teams shaping your organization’s future.

Foundational reading

Here is some reading that every progressive leader in 2026 and beyond needs to be aware of:

Corporate foresight and its impact on firm performance: A longitudinal analysis (Rohrbeck and Kim)

2026, The Hope Revolution (Nikolas Badminton)

Integrating AI in seed science: Toward an intelligent design paradigm (Zhang et al)

SeedLLM·Rice: A large language model integrated with rice biological knowledge graph (Yang et al)

How New Belgium’s Intentionally Bad New Beer Aims to Help Combat Global Warming (insidehood)

It is recommended that you consider buying Nikolas Badminton’s award-winning book Facing Our Futures: How foresight, futures design and strategy creates prosperity and growth. It primes the modern executives ability to supercharge strategic thinking.

Build a futurist mindset with ‘5 Minutes to Future‘

Now is the time to step up and lean into futures thinking with 5 Minutes to Future.

Step 1: Pick a signal that you think could change the world (this needs an open mind)

Step 2: Write down 3 positives and 3 negatives about its emergence

Step 3: Consider what if… it affects

• the world – people and communities

• our industry – the impact we are trying to have

• the work we do – the tasks we need to do

When you do that regularly then you are building the ability to imagine new worlds, anticipate change and build empathy for the people in our world.

If you want to go one step further after doing this then identify one thing we need to start doing and one thing we need to stop doing because of that.

Learn more about Nikolas here, and reach out to discuss working together >>> click here.

Read ‘The CEO’s Guide to AI…’

Read some of Nikolas’ most read ‘CEO’s guide to AI…’ articles:

The CEO’s guide to AI: What Canada’s New Agentic AI Guidance Means for the C-Suite

The CEO’s guide to AI: The Pope Has an AI Strategy Memo for Your Boardroom

The CEO’s guide to AI: State Media Control Influences Large Language Models

The CEO’s guide to AI: Social engineering is turbocharged by AI

The CEO’s guide to AI: Black-hat LLMs and Cyber-threats

The CEO’s guide to AI: We’re nowhere near AGI

The CEO’s guide to AI: Young workers as the canaries in the coalmine

The CEO’s guide to AI: The risk of vibe coding complacency

The CEO’s guide to AI: The Case for Superhuman Adaptable Intelligence (SAI)

Go deeper into signals, trends and scenarios

We can learn to master signals, trends and scenarios by undertaking 3 simple actions – and we’re going to share some simple ways to get going:

1. Scan for signals and trends
2. WHAT IF… scenarios
3. Anticipate horizons

1. Scan for signals and trends

Signal scanning can be simple and a fun way to level up your thinking on a daily basis. We scan academic journals, attend conferences, host podcast interviews, social media posts and discussions, read a lot of media articles and so much more. It’s our lifeblood.

Some simple steps can really level up what you are tracking and there are a number of ways to do so.

a. Set up Google Alerts for key areas of interest for your business – you just need a Google Gmail account to do this and you can enter whatever. Just go to https://www.google.com/alerts and type in the area of exploration as you would do a Google Search:

Set your options – we recommend for you to get emails ‘At most once a day’ and ‘Only the best results’. Over time you can refine using boolean logic in your phrases.

You can find out more at Google Help – link.

b. Spend 15 to 30 minutes each morning for coffee and scanning – just search on Google for areas of interest and read articles under the ‘News’ tab. This is ;ess refined than Google Alerts but allows for free-form discovery. We love jumping down into the rabbit hole.

c. Reddit – The ‘Front Page of the Internet’ has an incredible futures community and they share and discuss amazing developments in the world. It’s a free social media platform and you can find incredible references there and bookmark them for reading and sharing later. The core community for Future(s) Studies is https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/. You can enter search phrases in at the top of the page to focus in on specific areas and then click through to the articles and deeper discussions.

d. Podcasts – it’s so great to work and listen to incredible thinkers discuss our futures. Here are some of our favorites (we are sharing Apple Podcast links and they can be found on most platforms):

• Exponential Minds Podcast with Chief Futurist Nikolas Badminton – link

• Team Human with Douglas Rushkoff – link

• WSJ’s The Future of Everything by The Wall Street Journal – link

• The World Ahead from The Economist – link

• Switched On with Bloomberg Finance Talk – link

Of course there are many more out there and please feel free to share podcasts you love with us here.

2. WHAT IF… Scenarios

We can also take things to the next level by building scenarios of what may happen in our futures using the signals and trends and then really taking a deeper dive into the positive and negative implications of speculative future products.

We can start simply by asking what if is an invitation to be curious and consider all possibilities:

• What if AI supercharges (or burdens) our business function, our competitors, and consumers – cost, time, access, efficiencies?

• What if we invest in new technologies and take bigger risks to advance the thought leadership industry?

• What if we explore 10 or 20+ year future horizons to create bolder visions of our impact in the world, see unknown risks and create more robust organizational thought leadership?

• What if our hopeful futures work informs our innovation programs / R&D, organizational messaging, and excites our customers, investors and shareholders?

Just living with simple statements and exploring your futures more really starts to open up your thinking.

These what if…statements are just some example and we can use a simple scenarios framework to create short scenarios:

What if in the [future horizon] solutions [a, b, and c are implemented], which creates these [opportunities and risks], and impacts [dimensions of change].

The ‘dimensions of change’ are where we start to explore deeper dynamics and effects of change – financial, organizational, regulatory, cultural, experimental, political, technological, and social.

This is a little more nuanced.

You can read about the method in detail in Nikolas’ new book – ‘Facing Our Futures: How Foresight, Futures Design and Strategy Creates Prosperity and Growth’ – here’s a link to order – grab a copy today.

3. Anticipate horizons

You can also take things to the next level by collating multiple areas of exploration, signals and trends, WHAT IF.. scenarios and considering the larger contact reflected again the current state of your business. This is deep futures work, a creative task, and needs some funding and definite focus.

Sitting here reading this you may not feel that anticipating horizons may be a simple or quick task as we may need to produce more artifacts to help us understand those futures. The truth is, it can be as involved, or as simple, as you want. We always start by posing 5 simple questions that help us speculate:

• Who are we (the organization and society) at that future horizon – what do we think and believe, where do we live, how do we live, what do our families look like?

• What does that future feel like? How does it look and smell? How easy does it feel?

• What cultural artifacts from today exist in that future – art, media, social media, transportation methods, architecture, historical artifacts and reminders of our past?

• What signals from today – that you’ve been tracking, or seen in a futurist keynote – have accelerated and how have they disrupted your work and industry? Have they been good or bad for business?

• What new organizations, services and products will be needed in that future?

Overall, we hope that you have found this article to be useful as a primer to kickstart your futures thinking. You’re already a futurist by the virtue that you turned up to the discussion and participate in life. You are already an active participant in our futures – either through positive exploration and action towards it, or through inaction – both are contributory.

Learn more about Nikolas here, and reach out to discuss working together >>> click here.

About Nikolas Badminton

Nikolas Badminton is the Chief Futurist & Hope Engineer at futurist.com. He’s a world-renowned futurist speaker, consultant, author, media producer, and executive advisor that has spoken to, and worked with, over 500 of the world’s most impactful organizations and governments.

Nikolas Badminton will publish ‘The Hope Engineer’s Playbook: How Leaders Build Vision, Pathways and Energy for Better Futures’ on Page Two in September 2026.

Nikolas Badminton’s previous book ‘Facing Our Futures: How Foresight, Futures Design and Strategy Creates Prosperity and Growth’ was selected for J.P. Morgan Summer Reading List as the “Next Gen Pick” to inform the next generation of thinkers that lead us into our futures.

Learn more about Nikolas here, and reach out to discuss working together >>> click here.

The post Igniting Hopeful Futures Thinking for International Seed Testing Association appeared first on Futurist Keynote Speaker | Hope Engineer - Nikolas Badminton.

Email Nikolas to get a copy of the post-keynote report>>> click here

See articles in the ‘CEO’s Guide to AI’ series >>> click here

Learn more about Nikolas here, and reach out to discuss working together >>> click here.

Post-keynote Reading

Here are some selection articles and research that will help you continue your journey in exploring futures thinking and strategically thinking about foresight, and AI.

• Corporate foresight and its impact on firm performance: A longitudinal analysis (Rohrbeck and Kim, 2018)

• Firm Data on AI (Hoover Institute)

• Why AI Will Not Provide Sustainable Competitive Advantage (MIT Sloan School of Management)

5 Minutes to Future

Now is the time to step up and lean into futures thinking with 5 Minutes to Future.

Step 1: Pick a signal that you think could change the world (this needs an open mind)

Step 2: Write down 3 positives and 3 negatives about its emergence

Step 3: Consider what if… it affects

• the world – people and communities

• our industry – the impact we are trying to have

• the work we do – the tasks we need to do

When you do that regularly then you are building the ability to imagine new worlds, anticipate change and build empathy for the people in our world.

If you want to go one step further after doing this then identify one thing we need to start doing and one thing we need to stop doing because of that.

Learn more about Nikolas here, and reach out to discuss working together >>> click here.

Podcasts

It’s so great to work and listen to incredible thinkers discuss our futures. Here are some of our favorites (we are sharing Apple Podcast links and they can be found on most platforms):

• Exponential Minds Podcast with Chief Futurist Nikolas Badminton – link

• Team Human with Douglas Rushkoff – link

• WSJ’s The Future of Everything by The Wall Street Journal – link

• The World Ahead from The Economist – link

• Switched On with Bloomberg Finance Talk – link
  

Signals, Trends and Scenarios

We can learn to master signals, trends and scenarios by undertaking 3 simple actions – and we’re going to share some simple ways to get going:

1. Scan for signals and trends
2. WHAT IF… scenarios
3. Anticipate horizons

1. Scan for signals and trends

Signal scanning can be simple and a fun way to level up your thinking on a daily basis. We scan academic journals, attend conferences, host podcast interviews, social media posts and discussions, read a lot of media articles and so much more. It’s our lifeblood.

Some simple steps can really level up what you are tracking and there are a number of ways to do so.

a. Set up Google Alerts for key areas of interest for your business – you just need a Google Gmail account to do this and you can enter whatever. Just go to https://www.google.com/alerts and type in the area of exploration as you would do a Google Search:

Set your options – we recommend for you to get emails ‘At most once a day’ and ‘Only the best results’. Over time you can refine using boolean logic in your phrases.

You can find out more at Google Help – link.

b. Spend 15 to 30 minutes each morning for coffee and scanning – just search on Google for areas of interest and read articles under the ‘News’ tab. This is ;ess refined than Google Alerts but allows for free-form discovery. We love jumping down into the rabbit hole.

c. Reddit – The ‘Front Page of the Internet’ has an incredible futures community and they share and discuss amazing developments in the world. It’s a free social media platform and you can find incredible references there and bookmark them for reading and sharing later. The core community for Future(s) Studies is https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/. You can enter search phrases in at the top of the page to focus in on specific areas and then click through to the articles and deeper discussions.

2. WHAT IF… Scenarios

We can also take things to the next level by building scenarios of what may happen in our futures using the signals and trends and then really taking a deeper dive into the positive and negative implications of speculative future products.

We can start simply by asking what if is an invitation to be curious and consider all possibilities:

• What if AI supercharges (or burdens) our business function, our competitors, and consumers – cost, time, access, efficiencies?

• What if we invest in new technologies and take bigger risks to advance the thought leadership industry?

• What if we explore 10 or 20+ year future horizons to create bolder visions of our impact in the world, see unknown risks and create more robust organizational thought leadership?

• What if our hopeful futures work informs our innovation programs / R&D, organizational messaging, and excites our customers, investors and shareholders?

Just living with simple statements and exploring your futures more really starts to open up your thinking.

These what if…statements are just some example and we can use a simple scenarios framework to create short scenarios:

What if in the [future horizon] solutions [a, b, and c are implemented], which creates these [opportunities and risks], and impacts [dimensions of change].

The ‘dimensions of change’ are where we start to explore deeper dynamics and effects of change – financial, organizational, regulatory, cultural, experimental, political, technological, and social.

This is a little more nuanced.

You can read about the method in detail in Nikolas’ new book – ‘Facing Our Futures: How Foresight, Futures Design and Strategy Creates Prosperity and Growth’ – here’s a link to order – grab a copy today.

3. Anticipate horizons

You can also take things to the next level by collating multiple areas of exploration, signals and trends, WHAT IF.. scenarios and considering the larger contact reflected again the current state of your business. This is deep futures work, a creative task, and needs some funding and definite focus.

Sitting here reading this you may not feel that anticipating horizons may be a simple or quick task as we may need to produce more artifacts to help us understand those futures. The truth is, it can be as involved, or as simple, as you want. We always start by posing 5 simple questions that help us speculate:

• Who are we (the organization and society) at that future horizon – what do we think and believe, where do we live, how do we live, what do our families look like?

• What does that future feel like? How does it look and smell? How easy does it feel?

• What cultural artifacts from today exist in that future – art, media, social media, transportation methods, architecture, historical artifacts and reminders of our past?

• What signals from today – that you’ve been tracking, or seen in a futurist keynote – have accelerated and how have they disrupted your work and industry? Have they been good or bad for business?

• What new organizations, services and products will be needed in that future?

Overall, we hope that you have found this article to be useful as a primer to kickstart your futures thinking. You’re already a futurist by the virtue that you turned up to the discussion and participate in life. You are already an active participant in our futures – either through positive exploration and action towards it, or through inaction – both are contributory.

Learn more about Nikolas here, and reach out to discuss working together >>> click here.

About Nikolas Badminton

Nikolas Badminton is the Chief Futurist & Hope Engineer at futurist.com. He’s a world-renowned futurist speaker, consultant, author, media producer, and executive advisor that has spoken to, and worked with, over 500 of the world’s most impactful organizations and governments.

Nikolas Badminton will publish ‘The Hope Engineer’s Playbook: How Leaders Build Vision, Pathways and Energy for Better Futures’ on Page Two in September 2026.

Nikolas Badminton’s previous book ‘Facing Our Futures: How Foresight, Futures Design and Strategy Creates Prosperity and Growth’ was selected for J.P. Morgan Summer Reading List as the “Next Gen Pick” to inform the next generation of thinkers that lead us into our futures.

Learn more about Nikolas here, and reach out to discuss working together >>> click here.

The post Igniting Hopeful Futures Thinking for Vale appeared first on Futurist Keynote Speaker | Hope Engineer - Nikolas Badminton.

There Is No Sound Of The 2020s. Yet

In the 80s we had house and techno. In the 90s the sounds of rave, drum and bass, and trip pop. The new millennium marked the arrival of minimal and dubstep. Then the 2010s brought us hyper pop, retro mania, and the EDM boom.

But, the 2020s there have been shifts, but no real movement, no sound that’s reached the kind of mass saturation of these previous eras. We’ve got three years left for this decade to produce a sound of its own. So, what’s going on? First, let’s make it clear, there’s not a lack of quality. The problem is quantity. Different people would tell you there are many different sounds of the 2020s and they’d be right, but this heavy saturation could be creating a bottleneck, nightclubs, youth spaces, an internet that actually worked. These crucial structures that once pushed a sound into the mass consciousness are today all crumbling. Instead, we’ve got an ecosystem that can’t grow a genre. Real discovery has been replaced by algorithmic feeds that demand consensus, streaming services built for passive continuity, and an endless barrage of 15 second clips.

There are a few reasons why this might be happening, and it can’t be reduced to simple influencer culture, corporate rave experiences, or TikTok techno. Monoculture is dead. The internet was once shared ground, now it’s a city of separate rooms, and most of us have no idea who’s next door. It represents a clean break with the past, and as the dance floor now lives increasingly online, this is becoming a problem for progress. Try to describe what new sounds are animating the underground. It’s a challenge, right? It may be keeping the revival of sounds like Prague, Tech House, and Dubtechno afloat.

When a sound is easier to grasp and categorize. It’s easier to travel at a time when emergent sounds of the 2020s lack definition or even a name. The high knowledge and access required to enjoy them to the maximum can lock out casual enthusiasts, and it goes beyond genre. Where’s the next untrue coming from?

The next discovery, homogenic black secret technology, oil of every pearl’s uninsides remain in light or double cup, not a cult classic, but a standard setter that has the power to reshape culture and receives the attention and support to guide it there. Electronic music needs new movements, new classics. No one laments that we’ve come to understand acid or hardcore, or any of the once niche sounds too well. When these moments arrive, they extend the life of the music and open up more entry points for more listeners. For now, the electronic music of the 2020s feels as if it’s pushed towards a strange double condition, fragmented yet also repetitive. Then there’s the economy. Since 2020 inflation has made risk taking harder, and risk is what any creative scene runs on. Think back only 10 or 15 years ago, when a club ticket cost seven pounds. It was affordable to flop

for talking about young people kind of engaging with, with art generally, not even dance music culture, is is is kind of ticket pricing, and we can talk about this in a vacuum of club music, but I think just the general economic conditions of like the UK and kind of everywhere it feels like a really fucked when promoters gamble less, producers play it safe, and young ravers default to what they know. We know why the result is a silent stagnancy, where we’re exposed to more of the same, instead of a world of experiments, failures, and the odd lightning in a bottle success.

The 2020s in electronic music needs the latter.

We need experimentation and an economy that can support it. Otherwise, what’s the point? This is all compounded by an industry that is failing to connect with the next generation. Look at the lineups of most big festivals, and you’ll see the same sounds dominating the 2020s groovy house, bass line, hard techno. They please the audience in front of them, but it’s rarely where innovation comes from. Raw, noisy music is still out there. Lost Tutanaku, the rise of South Africa’s electronic underground, boundary pushing Brazilian music and the emerging sleaze pop universe. The path to the 2030s could run through chaos, and that’s just what we know. The global spread of electronic music should give rise to a world where anything can spring from anywhere, but that’s not happening. Hyper. Scenes stay overlooked, while historic hubs keep the center of gravity, and the old infrastructure labels PR music media is built to hold it in place, built to miss whatever’s cutting through somewhere else. We seem to be shackled to the past. Yes, the spaces we rely on are creaking, but are we shaking up our tastes and habits as quickly as we could be.

If not, what can we do about it?

The good news is that we can fix some of this, but it requires direct action. Here are a few ideas. First, we need to capture the present before it disappears. So much of the most radical music you hear is transient, captured in snippets and shorts. Who is taking strides to document it? We don’t want to find out what happens if all that evaporates. We also need to protect the past and make it findable. Lineage and culture matter, but the next generation can’t celebrate what it can’t access media is where that work begins. The challenge is building intergenerational bridges that feel fresh and useful. Without them, the knowledge we’ve amassed won’t make it through intact. Second, the underground needs a realistic framework for new production modes, resistance to hybrid genres and social native music is one thing, AI is another. We’re not talking about replacing human music with slop, but production tools haven’t meaningfully advanced in years, and generative models could be it. It feels like a threat to independent music, but if electronic producers could embrace ethical generative models to twist sounds in weird new ways, they could restore some edge and break the formulaic nature of the sounds we hear. Third, and most importantly, electronic music could benefit from a completely new set of inputs and perspectives. Bookings on the DJ circuit of 2026 don’t look all too different from 2016 or even 2006 That’s rare.

In a scene based on futurism, churn used to be a sign of progress.

The established industry has to start integrating Gen Z’s taste faster, trusting their intuition and letting go of the idea that the old way to experience electronic music and club culture is the right one. If bookers, agents, and industry professionals can seize the future with the same spirit that they’ve lavished on digging through the past, we might break the deadlock. It comes down to openness and curiosity, but what happens if we do nothing? If disco house and EDM keep dominating the mainstream, well, everything alive in the underground stays underground.

This was the old days. Yeah. Now, well, the thing about the old days, they, the old days,

if electronic music can’t adapt to a new generation, can’t make room for new stars, can’t absorb the fresh energy that keeps any music form moving, mainstream dance music could continue to dominate, while innovation briefly electrifies the margins, then fades out. There might be no sound of the 2020s at all, and that should scare us. We’re optimists, though. Ebbs and flows are natural. Nobody predicted dubstep would crawl out of smoky basements and change everything. Nobody knew what Hyperpop would do once it polarized the web.

It’ll be 2030 before we know it come to find the sound of the decade and lift it up, no matter who is making it, and whatever it is, there is no nobility in going down chain to the ship of the past. We must shift with the waves.

Read the special double report: ‘There Is No Sound Of The 2020s. Yet‘: https://ra.co/features/4505

And, take a look at ‘No Music on a Dead Internet’: https://ra.co/features/4504

About Nikolas Badminton

Nikolas Badminton is the Chief Futurist & Hope Engineer at futurist.com. He’s a world-renowned futurist keynote speaker, consultant, author, media producer, and executive advisor that has spoken to, and worked with, over 500 of the world’s most impactful organizations and governments.

Nikolas is an artificial intelligence expert and his 2026 keynote ‘The AI Leader: Create Incredible Productivity, Profit & Growth’ is the level up for the modern CEO and executive leader.

Please contact futurist speaker and consultant Nikolas Badminton to discuss your engagement.

The post Gen Z is lost – There Is No Sound Of The 2020s appeared first on Futurist Keynote Speaker | Hope Engineer - Nikolas Badminton.

The right Artificial Intelligence keynote speaker reframes how your leadership team thinks about job redesign, workforce transformation, and human potential in an era of extraordinary technological change — and sends them home ready to act.

The Top-30 Best AI Keynote Speakers

1. Nikolas Badminton (US, Canada, UK, Europe and Global)

Nikolas Badminton is a world-renowned AI futurist keynote speaker and Chief Futurist at Futurist.com, where he mentors top executives and the highest levels of government to explore desirable futures, anticipate unforeseen risks, and supercharge strategic planning. He studied artificial intelligence in the 1990s and has spent more than 30 years working with leadership at over 600 of the world’s most impactful organizations — including NASA, Disney, the United Nations, Google, Microsoft, Intel, IBM, JP Morgan Chase, and VISA.

His signature keynotes teach audiences to think like a futurist: scanning for signals, building trends, exploring scenarios, and telling vivid stories of what comes next. Badminton’s “Hope Engineer” approach is deliberately optimistic and rigorous at once, helping leaders move from what is to what if and lead technology toward genuinely useful applications rather than hype.

He is the author of the #1 bestseller Facing Our Futures, selected for J.P. Morgan’s Summer Reading List as a “Next Gen Pick,” advised Robert Downey Jr.’s team on the Age of AI documentary series, and appears regularly across BBC, VICE, The Atlantic, Fast Company, Forbes, and more.

For organizations that want a keynote co-created from the ground up — researched against your strategy and your industry, and delivered as anything from a main-stage talk to an executive forum, expo-floor experience, or interactive digital session — Badminton is among the most in-demand voices in the field.

Best for: all audiences, especially – C-suite leadership events, Board retreats, Enterprise leadership teams, product and innovation conferences, governance-aware AI adoption frameworks, risk and strategy conferences, and organizations facing high-stakes uncertainty who want to move from prediction to transformation. 

Read more about Artificial Intelligence Keynote Speaker Nikolas Badminton here, and Reach out to him to discuss co-creating a high-value artificial intelligence keynote for the attendees at your event >>> click here.

2. Ramy Nassar (Canada & USA)

Ramy Nassar is a futurist, author, and former Head of Innovation at Mattel who has become one of the most practical AI keynote speakers on the circuit. With nearly 25 years in technology and innovation, he built Mattel’s first Innovation Lab and led more than 15 AI-driven retail experiences for brands like Barbie and Hot Wheels. He is the founder of the boutique consultancy 1000 Days Out, author of the AI Product Design Handbook, and teaches AI and design thinking at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and Toronto Metropolitan University.

Nassar’s strength is cutting through the hype. He equips leadership teams to move beyond curiosity and stalled pilot projects toward responsible, measurable AI adoption — sharing scalable frameworks, live demonstrations, and post-session toolkits with sample prompts, adoption playbooks, and governance checklists. Drawing on his forthcoming book The World After AI, he explores how emerging technologies mature and intersect: often slower than expected, then suddenly all at once.

Best for: Enterprise leadership teams, product and innovation conferences, and audiences wanting hands-on, governance-aware AI adoption frameworks.

3. Jonathan Brill (USA & Global)

Jonathan Brill is a business Artificial Intelligence futurist keynote speaker who helps leaders turn radical change into advantage. As former Global Futurist at HP, Futurist in Residence at Amazon, and Executive Chairman of the Center for Radical Change, he has guided Fortune 50 companies and U.S. government agencies through disruption for decades.

Brill’s bestselling book Rogue Waves — endorsed by The Economist and Adam Grant, and a #2 economics bestseller in China — argues that radical, systemic change is no longer rare but the baseline, and offers a practical framework for thriving in it. His newer work, AI and the Octopus Organization, examines how companies actually win with AI rather than simply bolting tools onto old structures. He focuses audiences on the collision of technological, geopolitical, economic, and societal forces, and how to architect the future rather than merely predict it.

Best for: C-suite audiences, risk and strategy conferences, and organizations facing high-stakes uncertainty who want to move from prediction to transformation. 

4. Dan Chuparkoff (USA)

Dan Chuparkoff is one of the busiest AI and the future of work keynote speakers working today — known as “the understandable technology speaker.” With more than 30 years driving innovation at Google, McKinsey, and Atlassian, he led teams that served billions of users and navigated six collaboration-altering technology shifts (he says he’s working on the seventh now). Today he is CEO of Reinvention Labs, where he researches the impact of AI on work across every industry.

His superpower is making complex things simple and useful. Chuparkoff’s flagship keynote, “AI & the Future of Everything,” is a deliberately non-hype guide to what AI is good at and what it isn’t, how it’s evolving, and how to pair its strengths with human expertise for better decisions, creativity, and execution. He’s equally effective with technical and non-technical audiences and customizes every talk with industry-specific use cases, which makes him a strong choice for teams that are divided — some over-excited, some anxious — about what AI means for them.

Best for: Mixed-technical-maturity audiences, team and operations leadership events, and organizations wanting practical, jargon-free AI guidance. 

5. Heather E. McGowan (USA)

Heather E. McGowan is arguably the most recognized future-of-work strategist globally. LinkedIn ranked her its number-one global voice for education, and Forbes named her one of the Top 50 Female Futurists. NYT columnist Thomas Friedman calls her “the oasis” for insight on the future of work. She co-authored The Adaptation Advantage and The Empathy Advantage.

Her keynotes center on workforce adaptability, lifelong learning, and human capability in the AI era. What sets her apart is that she consistently brings the conversation back to people, using research-rich graphic frameworks and powerful metaphors to make complex transformation accessible. She doesn’t just explain what AI is doing to work — she equips leaders and teams to adapt.

Best for: HR conferences, corporate strategy summits, and organizations wanting research-backed frameworks for workforce adaptation.

6. Ajay Agrawal (Canada)

Ajay Agrawal founded the world’s largest AI startup incubator and has advised the U.S. and Japanese governments on AI strategy. Co-author of Prediction Machines and Power and Prediction, he helps organizations understand the economics of AI and why a fast-follower strategy fails in this space.
His keynotes focus on competitive strategy, business-model implications, and the urgency of getting ahead. Agrawal is one of the few speakers who can make the economic case for AI investment in language that resonates with boards and C-suites, framing which roles will change, grow, or shrink as the value of prediction, judgment, and data shifts.

Best for: Corporate strategy events, innovation conferences, and executive audiences who need AI’s economic implications.

7. Nicholas Thompson (USA)

As CEO of The Atlantic and author of The Running Ground, Nicholas Thompson brings a rare blend of media leadership and AI fluency to the stage. He regularly shares stages with figures like Sam Altman and Geoffrey Hinton, drawing on those conversations to explore how AI is reshaping how organizations work.
His talks blend theory with practical business application, making them especially effective for C-suite and senior leadership audiences who want strategic clarity over technical depth.

Best for: Executive audiences, board retreats, and leadership summits wanting a high-profile speaker who connects AI trends to strategy. 

8. Daniel Susskind (UK)

Daniel Susskind is the author of A World Without Work and co-author of The Future of the Professions. A fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, he brings academic rigor to the question of what happens to jobs and professions as AI expands.

His keynotes challenge audiences to look past the optimistic narrative and grapple seriously with structural displacement. He offers evidence rather than easy reassurance, making him one of the most credible voices for organizations that want honesty about the road ahead.

Best for: Policy conferences, professional-association events, and audiences wanting a serious, research-backed examination of AI’s labor-market impact. 

9. Dr. Sean Gallagher (Australia)

Sean Gallagher is one of the strongest voices on reframing AI from a technology play to a talent strategy. As founder of Humanova and former head of Swinburne University’s Centre for the New Workforce, he teaches leaders how to build AI intuition in their workforce and manage the transition to human-AI hybrid work.
His evidence-based approach resonates with HR leadership audiences because he understands that the real challenge of AI adoption isn’t buying software — it’s developing the capability to use it well.

Best for: HR leadership conferences, workforce-planning events, and organizations navigating practical role redesign. 

10. Zack Kass (USA)

As former Head of Go-to-Market at OpenAI, Zack Kass brings an insider’s perspective on how generative AI is reshaping business models and workplace dynamics. His keynotes champion a future of abundance, demystify AI for non-technical audiences, and guide organizations through the practical implications of widespread adoption.

He’s one of the most visible voices bridging Silicon Valley AI development and corporate implementation.

Best for: Corporate events, innovation summits, and audiences wanting an insider view of how AI companies think about the future of work. 

11. Cassie Kozyrkov (USA)

As Google’s first Chief Decision Scientist and the founder of Decision Intelligence, Cassie Kozyrkov brings unique credibility to how organizations should think about AI-assisted decisions. Her keynotes help leaders know when to trust AI outputs, build decision frameworks that incorporate AI, and recognize that the biggest barrier to adoption is often human judgment, not technology.

Best for: Data-driven organizations, analytics conferences, and leadership teams wanting AI decision-making frameworks. 

12. Brian Evergreen (USA)

Brian Evergreen is a global AI strategy advisor and author of Autonomous Transformation. As Microsoft’s former Head of Autonomous AI Co-Innovation, he has helped Fortune 500 companies deploy AI agents to streamline workflows and decisions.

His keynotes focus on redesigning roles and processes for the era of automation, with empathy, ethics, and human creativity at the core. He’s particularly strong on the shift from AI as chatbot to AI as autonomous agent — one of the hottest topics in the 2026 market.

Best for: Technology conferences, enterprise leadership events, and organizations implementing agentic AI at scale. 

13. Ross Dawson (Australia)

Ross Dawson is a bestselling author and futurist, and one of Australia’s most established voices on humans and AI. His keynotes cover humans-plus-AI, organizational redesign, and leveraging AI without losing what makes an organization distinctly human.

He brings decades of advisory experience and a practical tone that avoids both fear-mongering and uncritical optimism — especially trusted across Australia and Asia Pacific.

Best for: Strategy events, board sessions, and organizations wanting balanced, practical guidance on AI workforce integration.

14. Sol Rashidi (USA)

Sol Rashidi has served as Chief Analytics Officer and Chief Data Officer at multiple Fortune 500 companies. Her book Your AI Survival Guide gives enterprise leaders practical frameworks for adopting AI without destroying culture.

Her keynotes focus on non-technical executive AI strategy, making her ideal for leaders tired of being told what AI can do and ready to know what they should do.

Best for: Executive leadership events, CHRO conferences, and organizations wanting practical AI adoption strategy. 

15. Professor Carl Benedikt Frey (UK)

Author of The Technology Trap, Carl Benedikt Frey brings deep expertise in labor economics and the history of technological disruption. His keynotes provide historical context for the AI revolution, helping audiences understand why some transitions create broad prosperity while others concentrate the gains.

Best for: Economic forums, policy conferences, and university-led events.

16. Kai-Fu Lee (Asia)

Kai-Fu Lee is CEO of Sinovation Ventures and former President of Google China. His book AI Superpowers offers a global perspective most Western speakers can’t. His keynotes cover China’s AI advances, the global AI race, and what the future of work looks like when you account for the full global picture.

Best for: Global audiences, international business conferences, and multinational organizations. 

17. Sinead Bovell (Canada)

Sinead Bovell founded WAYE, a tech-education company preparing businesses and the next generation of leaders for an emerging-technology future. An eleven-time UN speaker and MIT-certified in AI ethics, she bridges youth perspectives, the future of work, and AI.
She tackles one of the most underserved questions in AI keynotes: if AI handles all the entry-level work, how do junior employees ever develop into senior experts?

Best for: Future-of-work conferences, association events, and organizations grappling with generational workforce shifts. 

18. Pascal Bornet (Europe)

Pascal Bornet is a bestselling author and one of the most recognized automation experts globally. His keynotes cover AI and automation, intelligent augmentation, and practical business adoption, with frameworks for moving from experimentation to enterprise-scale deployment.

Best for: Digital-transformation events, operations leadership conferences, and European audiences. 

19. Jacob Morgan (USA)

Jacob Morgan is a trained futurist and bestselling author who builds future-ready organizations, leaders, and employees. His keynotes on AI-powered transformation focus on redesigning jobs, workflows, and business models to work with AI rather than against it, emphasizing the rising value of human traits machines can’t replicate.

Best for: HR conferences, employee-experience events, and organizations redesigning their operating models around AI. 

20. Amanda Johnstone (Australia)

Amanda Johnstone is CEO of Transhuman, a TIME Next Generation Leader, and a LinkedIn Top Voice of AI. Her keynotes focus on people-first AI, bridging technology and HR leadership. She’s particularly effective with mixed audiences of enthusiasts and skeptics, making AI accessible without oversimplifying the implications.

Best for: Corporate events across Australia and Asia Pacific, HR conferences, and leadership development. 

21. Radhika Dirks (USA)

Radhika Dirks is a global AI advisor and one of Forbes’s 30 Women in AI to Watch. She founded the first AI moonshot factory and delivers dynamic keynotes on the vast potential AI unlocks — not just how to implement it, but how to use it to pursue goals that were previously impossible.

Best for: Innovation conferences, startup events, and organizations wanting an optimistic, ambitious AI perspective.

22. Dr. Mark van Rijmenam (Europe)

Mark van Rijmenam is a strategic futurist and author of six books on technology and digital strategy. He specializes in trustworthy AI, the future of work, and leadership under exponential change, helping organizations move from experimenting with AI to embedding it across operations.

Best for: Technology conferences, governance-focused events, and European audiences. 

23. Theo Priestley (UK)

Theo Priestley is the author of Would You Follow a Robot Leader? and The Future Starts Now. His distinctive angle is leadership in the age of machines — what happens to authority, trust, and human connection when AI becomes embedded in management. His keynotes challenge leaders to rethink their evolving role, not just their tools.

Best for: Leadership summits, board retreats, and audiences exploring the philosophical and practical dimensions of AI leadership. 

24. Fiona Passantino (USA)

Fiona Passantino is the author of AI-Powered Professional and specializes in AI-human collaboration and leadership roadmaps for non-technical teams. Her keynotes are practical and accessible, designed for middle managers and operational leaders responsible for implementing AI-driven change — an audience few speakers address directly.

Best for: Middle-management events, operational leadership conferences, and organizations wanting practical, non-technical AI guidance. 

25. Mike Walsh (Australia)

Mike Walsh talks about disruptive technology and executive leadership. His keynotes on AI-powered transformation, business leadership, and organizational reinvention help executives understand not just what is changing, but how to lead differently in response.

Best for: Executive strategy events, C-suite retreats, and global corporate audiences. 

26. Allie K. Miller (USA)

Allie K. Miller is a former Amazon machine-learning leader and one of the most-followed AI business voices on LinkedIn. Named a TIME100 Most Influential Person in AI, she makes AI accessible to business audiences while being honest about how roles are changing. Her AI-First Academy and keynotes help organizations build AI literacy at every level.

Best for: Enterprise AI adoption events, women-in-tech conferences, and organization-wide AI literacy programs.

27. Tracey Follows (UK)

Tracey Follows is a futurist and founder of Futuremade, focused on the intersection of technology, culture, and identity. Recently named one of the world’s top 50 female futurists, she helps organizations consider what happens to human identity, purpose, and meaning when AI transforms how people work — questions most AI speakers avoid.

Best for: Culture-focused events, HR leadership conferences, and organizations navigating the emotional and identity dimensions of AI transformation. 

28. Ethan Mollick (USA)

Ethan Mollick is a Wharton professor whose work offers practical, real-world examples of generative AI as a co-pilot in daily knowledge work. His research on AI’s impact on professional tasks is among the most cited in the field, and his keynotes translate academic findings into actionable insight.

Best for: Education conferences, professional-development events, and research-oriented audiences wanting academic rigor.

29. Anders Sorman-Nilsson (Australia)

Anders Sorman-Nilsson is a futurist and author of Seamless who specializes in the human side of technological evolution. His keynotes help audiences move from analog to digital to AI-augmented work without losing the human connections that drive success.

Best for: Cross-generational audiences, Australian corporate events, and organizations managing digital transformation across diverse teams. 

30. Ian Beacraft (USA)

Ian Beacraft is an AI strategy advisor specializing in workforce transformation, synthetic media, enterprise adoption, and organizational resilience. His keynotes show how AI is creating entirely new categories of work while making others obsolete, and the practical steps organizations need to build resilience through disruption.

Best for: Enterprise technology events, workforce-transformation conferences, and organizations building AI resilience strategies. 

How to Choose the Right AI Keynote Speaker on the Future of Work

The right choice starts with clarity about the kind of transformation your organization is navigating. A speaker who excels at explaining generative AI may be wrong for an audience that needs help managing the fear around AI-driven change. An economist who brilliantly analyzes labor-market data may miss the mark at a leadership retreat where executives need frameworks for redesigning their teams.

Start by defining your specific challenge: is it technology adoption, workforce reskilling, job redesign, organizational restructuring, culture change — or a combination? Match the speaker’s expertise to that challenge.

Next, consider your audience. C-suite executives need different content than middle managers, frontline leaders, or HR professionals. The best AI and the future of work keynote speakers tailor their message to the room. Ask for case studies from organizations similar to yours in size, industry, and complexity.
Then ask whether the speaker offers more than a keynote. Pairing a keynote with a workshop, facilitation session, or executive roundtable significantly improves retention and adoption of new thinking.

Many of the strongest AI futurist keynote speakers — Nikolas Badminton and Ramy Nassar among them — build interactive, custom experiences rather than off-the-shelf talks.

Finally, check responsiveness and professionalism before you book. A speaker who takes three weeks to answer an inquiry will likely create logistics headaches later. The best speakers treat the booking process as a preview of the experience you’ll get on the day.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is the best AI keynote speaker on the future of work?

It depends on your needs. For a hopeful, research-driven futurist vision and strategic foresight, Nikolas Badminton is among the most in-demand AI futurist keynote speakers globally. For practical, governance-aware enterprise adoption, Ramy Nassar and Dan Chuparkoff are excellent. For navigating radical change at the C-suite level, Jonathan Brill — Forbes’s #1-ranked futurist — is hard to beat. For workforce strategy and adaptability, Heather E. McGowan is the most recognized voice.

How much does it cost to hire an AI keynote speaker?

Fees range from around $5,000 for emerging specialists to $100,000+ for high-profile global names. Most established speakers in this directory charge between $15,000 and $50,000. Combining a keynote with a workshop often delivers better value per dollar than a standalone talk.

What topics should an AI and future-of-work keynote cover?

The most effective 2026 keynotes address AI productivity in everyday work, AI leadership and culture change, reskilling and workforce capability, job redesign and operating-model change, human-AI collaboration, AI governance and trust, and the emotional dimensions of AI-driven transformation. The OECD reports that in highly AI-exposed occupations, management, business, emotional, cognitive, and digital skills have all risen in importance.

How far in advance should I book an AI keynote speaker?

Ideally three to six months ahead, especially for in-demand speakers and peak conference seasons. For major events, begin even earlier.

What is agentic AI and why does it matter for keynote content?

Agentic AI refers to systems capable of executing multi-step workflows autonomously — not just answering questions but taking action. This shift from AI-as-chatbot to AI-as-digital-colleague is one of the hottest 2026 keynote topics because it has direct implications for job redesign, management structures, and organizational trust.

How do I address employee fear about AI job losses?

Choose a speaker who can honestly acknowledge displacement while offering practical frameworks for navigating it. Speakers who present only the optimistic view risk losing credibility with audiences genuinely worried about their roles. The strongest Artificial Intelligence keynote speakers balance honesty about disruption with concrete guidance for adaptation.

What should I look for in post-event support?

The best speakers offer more than a keynote — post-event materials, frameworks, playbooks, or follow-up sessions. Many of the futurists on this list, including Nikolas Badminton, build custom interactive experiences and ongoing executive engagement rather than a single talk.

Final Thoughts

The AI keynote speaking market has matured dramatically since 2023. Audiences no longer want a demo of what a chatbot can do. They want practical guidance on how to reorganize work, redesign roles, manage fear, build trust, upskill their workforce, and lead through continuous disruption.

The 30 speakers in this directory represent the strongest voices globally across the full spectrum of the AI and future-of-work conversation — from technical insiders and workforce strategists to economists, governance specialists, and humanistic futurists. Whatever your brief, there’s a speaker here who fits.

What the list also reveals is a growing recognition that AI transformation is ultimately a people transformation. The technology is advancing faster than most organizations can absorb, and the AI futurist keynote speakers who help leaders close that human gap — pairing foresight with hope and practical action — are becoming as valuable as the technologists who explain the AI itself.

To explore a custom AI and the future of work keynote for your next event, executive forum, or strategic offsite, connect with Nikolas Badminton at futurist.com and nikolasbadminton.com.

Nikolas Badminton’s AI Keynote – The AI Leader: Create Incredible Productivity, Profit & Growth

The AI Leader: Create Incredible Productivity, Profit & Growth – is meticulously researched and co-created with clients – always focused and always custom. He interviews the executives, reviews their strategic plans and analyzes their industry in detail. Nikolas then taps into his knowledge base with thousands of signals and trends, the Futurist.com Think Tank experts, and do specific research to excite and ignite thinking at the client event. 

With The AI Leader: Create Incredible Productivity, Profit & Growth Nikolas and the client executives get under the skin of the value that is created and what they need to evolve and move forward by decoding uncertainty, igniting imagination and building anticipation. This and the way Nikolas engages with the audience and ignites thinking is why he is in such high demand. 

Clients often choose to go further with this inquiry and have Nikolas work with them to develop panels, fireside chats, executive forums and podcast interviews. Here is an clip of such an experience that Nikolas co-created with Procore to talk about Artificial Intelligence for their foundational event Groundbreak.

Reach out to Artificial Intelligence Keynote Speaker Nikolas Badminton to discuss your engagement >>> click here.

What if we can look beyond the hype with wisdom and hope to supercharge our organization with deeply integrated AI?

World-renowned futurist speaker and Artificial Intelligence expert Nikolas Badminton presents the definitive keynote for strategic executives that want to plan for long term resiliency and transformation. Understanding how we can harness AI’s capabilities drives hope to positively affect the world and create incredible futures that solve some of the greatest challenges of our times.

Nikolas will show you AI’s role in shaping our futures, the upgraded organization and how our world and industries are being revolutionized. He will also show what practical abilities and skill sets are needed and how organizations can integrate A.I. capabilities for real results.

Client takeaways:

• Learn the Hope Engineer™ mindset – Ignite imagination, build anticipation, and develop a deep sense of empathy for how A.I. will transform companies and industries

• Explore Artificial Intelligence signals, trends & scenarios – See how AI is evolving how industries work. See how your workforce will supercharge their capabilities using AI, spatial computing and other technologies.

• See high-hope leadership in action – Learn the  stories of how world-leading companies are applying A.I. and futures thinking to supercharging our strategic thinking.

Reach out to Artificial Intelligence Keynote Speaker Nikolas Badminton to discuss your engagement >>> click here.

Nikolas’ Promise to his clients

Nikolas is renowned for his level of engagement, focus and customization of keynotes for each and every client and is now providing more value with each engagement:

• 100+ hours of focused research for each keynote that provides new thinking on the signals, trends and scenarios to supercharge strategic thinking.

• Focused collaboration  and co-creation with each event organizer and client to produce the most impactful content for their audiences.

• In-depth Q&A and audience engagement sessions that help the audience go deeper into the signals and futures design that Nikolas presents.

Nikolas will work with you, the client and their team to speak with their executives stakeholders and key clients to gain a deep understanding of where they are, where they see the world shifting and evolving, and what their ideas of the futures ahead of their industry are.

Nikolas then taps into his knowledge base – and the global Futurist.com Think Tank – to do specific research to excite and ignite thinking at the event. Following confirmation of the engagement he produces the talk title and blurb and outline the areas for exploration – then Nikolas and the client discuss and focus in on what is needed to shift perspectives and supercharge strategic thinking.

Reach out to Artificial Intelligence Keynote Speaker Nikolas Badminton to discuss your engagement >>> click here.

Nikolas’ “The CEOs Guide to AI…” Series

Nikolas Badminton has been researching AI for the past three decades and now he brings his insight and analysis to leaders in the world trying to make sense of the hype to create focus on what matters.

The CEO’s guide to AI: The Pope Has an AI Strategy Memo for Your Boardroom

The CEO’s guide to AI: State Media Control Influences Large Language Models

The CEO’s guide to AI: Social engineering is turbocharged by AI

The CEO’s guide to AI: Black-hat LLMs and Cyber-threats

The CEO’s guide to AI: We’re nowhere near AGI

The CEO’s guide to AI: Young workers as the canaries in the coalmine

The CEO’s guide to AI: The risk of vibe coding complacency

The CEO’s guide to AI: The Case for Superhuman Adaptable Intelligence (SAI)

Please contact Nikolas Badminton to discuss your AI story.

About Nikolas Badminton

Nikolas Badminton is the Chief Futurist & Hope Engineer at futurist.com. He’s a world-renowned futurist keynote speaker, consultant, author, media producer, and executive advisor that has spoken to, and worked with, over 500 of the world’s most impactful organizations and governments.

Nikolas is an artificial intelligence expert and his 2026 keynote ‘The AI Leader: Create Incredible Productivity, Profit & Growth’ is the level up for the modern CEO and executive leader.

Reach out to Artificial Intelligence Keynote Speaker Nikolas Badminton to discuss your engagement >>> click here.

The post 30 Best AI Keynote Speakers on Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work (2026) appeared first on Futurist Keynote Speaker | Hope Engineer - Nikolas Badminton.

He has spent over three decades working with leadership at over 600 leading organizations at the frontline of Artificial Intelligence implementation, policy and organizational transformation – including The White House, NASA, Novo Nordisk, Disney, Dyson, Vale, Rolls Royce, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, WM, JP Morgan, Verizon, VISA, TD Bank, American Express, Procter & Gamble, US Department of State, UK Home Office, United Nations, and many more (see the full list here).

Nikolas’ number one best selling book – Facing Our Futures: How foresight, futures design and strategy creates prosperity and growth – has been named Top-50 Business Books by The Next Big Idea Club, and JP Morgan Private bank’s “Next Gen Pick” for their Summer Reading List to guide young executives to embrace futures thinking.

Nikolas’ essential research has been featured by the BBC, VICE, The Atlantic, Fast Company, Business Insider, Forbes, Sunday Telegraph and many others. He appears on SIRIUSXM and CTV regularly, and was an advisor to the ‘Age of AI’ series with Robert Downey Jr.

Three Decades at the front lines of Artificial Intelligence

Inspired by our ever-evolving technological world, Nikolas Badminton started researching Artificial Intelligence, linguistics, emerging Internet culture and digital transformation in the 1990s while studying for his BSc in Applied Psychology and Computing. From there her built a career focused on the development, application and governance around data, advanced analytics and artificial intelligence for organizations over three decades.

Today, Nikolas has advised over 600 clients, provided deeply considered keynotes and groundbreaking research on Artificial Intelligence over the past 15 yrs. This is a passion and an essential contribution to the overall field of progressive thinking in Artificial Intelligence.

He continues that work and co-creates keynotes and workshops for clients to master this new world of Artificial Intelligence, the augmented organization and employees with next level capabilities.

Reach out to Artificial Intelligence Keynote Speaker Nikolas Badminton to discuss your engagement >>> click here.

2026 Futurist Keynote – The AI Leader: Create Incredible Productivity, Profit & Growth

The AI Leader: Create Incredible Productivity, Profit & Growth – is meticulously researched and co-created with clients – always focused and always custom. He interviews the executives, reviews their strategic plans and analyzes their industry in detail. Nikolas then taps into his knowledge base with thousands of signals and trends, the Futurist.com Think Tank experts, and do specific research to excite and ignite thinking at the client event. 

With The AI Leader: Create Incredible Productivity, Profit & Growth Nikolas and the client executives get under the skin of the value that is created and what they need to evolve and move forward by decoding uncertainty, igniting imagination and building anticipation. This and the way Nikolas engages with the audience and ignites thinking is why he is in such high demand. 

Clients often choose to go further with this inquiry and have Nikolas work with them to develop panels, fireside chats, executive forums and podcast interviews. Here is an clip of such an experience that Nikolas co-created with Procore to talk about Artificial Intelligence for their foundational event Groundbreak.

Reach out to Artificial Intelligence Keynote Speaker Nikolas Badminton to discuss your engagement >>> click here.

2026 Futurist Keynote – The AI Leader: Create Incredible Productivity, Profit & Growth

What if we can look beyond the hype with wisdom and hope to supercharge our organization with deeply integrated AI?

World-renowned futurist speaker and Artificial Intelligence expert Nikolas Badminton presents the definitive keynote for strategic executives that want to plan for long term resiliency and transformation. Understanding how we can harness AI’s capabilities drives hope to positively affect the world and create incredible futures that solve some of the greatest challenges of our times.

Nikolas will show you AI’s role in shaping our futures, the upgraded organization and how our world and industries are being revolutionized. He will also show what practical abilities and skill sets are needed and how organizations can integrate A.I. capabilities for real results.

Client takeaways:

• Learn the Hope Engineer™ mindset – Ignite imagination, build anticipation, and develop a deep sense of empathy for how A.I. will transform companies and industries

• Explore Artificial Intelligence signals, trends & scenarios – See how AI is evolving how industries work. See how your workforce will supercharge their capabilities using AI, spatial computing and other technologies.

• See high-hope leadership in action – Learn the  stories of how world-leading companies are applying A.I. and futures thinking to supercharging our strategic thinking.

Reach out to Artificial Intelligence Keynote Speaker Nikolas Badminton to discuss your engagement >>> click here.

Nikolas’ Promise to his clients

Nikolas is renowned for his level of engagement, focus and customization of keynotes for each and every client and is now providing more value with each engagement:

• 100+ hours of focused research for each keynote that provides new thinking on the signals, trends and scenarios to supercharge strategic thinking.

• Focused collaboration  and co-creation with each event organizer and client to produce the most impactful content for their audiences.

• In-depth Q&A and audience engagement sessions that help the audience go deeper into the signals and futures design that Nikolas presents.

Nikolas will work with you, the client and their team to speak with their executives stakeholders and key clients to gain a deep understanding of where they are, where they see the world shifting and evolving, and what their ideas of the futures ahead of their industry are.

Nikolas then taps into his knowledge base – and the global Futurist.com Think Tank – to do specific research to excite and ignite thinking at the event. Following confirmation of the engagement he produces the talk title and blurb and outline the areas for exploration – then Nikolas and the client discuss and focus in on what is needed to shift perspectives and supercharge strategic thinking.

Reach out to Artificial Intelligence Keynote Speaker Nikolas Badminton to discuss your engagement >>> click here.

The CEOs Guide to AI…

Nikolas Badminton has been researching AI for the past three decades and now he brings his insight and analysis to leaders in the world trying to make sense of the hype to create focus on what matters.

The CEO’s guide to AI: The Pope Has an AI Strategy Memo for Your Boardroom

The CEO’s guide to AI: State Media Control Influences Large Language Models

The CEO’s guide to AI: Social engineering is turbocharged by AI

The CEO’s guide to AI: Black-hat LLMs and Cyber-threats

The CEO’s guide to AI: We’re nowhere near AGI

The CEO’s guide to AI: Young workers as the canaries in the coalmine

The CEO’s guide to AI: The risk of vibe coding complacency

The CEO’s guide to AI: The Case for Superhuman Adaptable Intelligence (SAI)

New 2026 book – The Hope Engineer’s Playbook: How Leaders Build Vision, Pathways and Energy for Better Futures

Master the ability to explore the incredible futures ahead of us and use hope as an energy for change and transformation.

A better future is possible, and as a leader, you can amplify your vision and create energy for change by starting with hope. In The Hope Engineer’s Playbook, Nikolas Badminton brings more than three decades of experience working with leaders at over six hundred world-defining organizations and governments to show how hope transforms organizations and provides a renewable energy for change. He examines how practical hope has developed through history and influences how we operate today—by setting audacious goals and traveling together down agency-driven pathways guided by wisdom that turns aspiration into transformation.

In seven detailed, well-researched chapters, punctuated by feature sections showing successful large-scale hope initiatives around the globe, Badminton gives you the playbook to translate your explorations and visions of better futures into impactful transformation. You’ll learn the Hopeful Futures Framework which provides a cyclical method for adopting a hopeful futures mindset and translating it into action and energy in your organization and executive practice. In addition, you will learn tools you can use immediately: hope resolutions, workshop exercises, futures storytelling structures, and practical approaches for working with generative AI and large language models to sharpen inquiry and accelerate hopeful futures exploration.

The Hope Engineer’s Playbook is built for leaders who want to create bigger visions of what is possible and energies of change that supercharge strategic planning and execution by the frontline team. It offers a next-level layer of futures thinking—and the day-by-day practices that help teams sustain momentum, expand agency, and deliver real change.

Please contact Nikolas Badminton to discuss this book.

About Nikolas Badminton

Nikolas Badminton is the Chief Futurist & Hope Engineer at futurist.com. He’s a world-renowned futurist keynote speaker, consultant, author, media producer, and executive advisor that has spoken to, and worked with, over 500 of the world’s most impactful organizations and governments.

Nikolas is an artificial intelligence expert and his 2026 keynote ‘The AI Leader: Create Incredible Productivity, Profit & Growth’ is the level up for the modern CEO and executive leader.

Reach out to Artificial Intelligence Keynote Speaker Nikolas Badminton to discuss your engagement >>> click here.

The post Artificial Intelligence Keynote Speaker and Futurist – Nikolas Badminton appeared first on Futurist Keynote Speaker | Hope Engineer - Nikolas Badminton.

Summary of Key Findings and Discussion Points

The paper’s central claim is a distinction worth understanding. In traditional software, the code carries the decision logic—every rule must be written by an engineer before the system ever runs. In an agentic system, a large language model is the reasoning engine, and it generates code at runtime as a disposable tool, then discards it. The author’s framing: the agent isn’t using software, the agent is the software. Code stops being the product and becomes scratch paper.

This is positioned as the third major shift in how software is delivered. The first generation (licensed, on-premise software like Oracle) put the burden of installation and maintenance on the customer. The second (SaaS like Salesforce) moved that complexity to the vendor’s cloud and shifted billing to subscriptions. The third—what the author calls Agent-as-a-Service (AaaS)—moves something more profound to the provider: not just operational complexity, but decision-making complexity itself. The customer no longer specifies how a result should be produced. They specify what outcome they want, and pricing moves toward paying per result delivered.

The discussion section is refreshingly honest about limits. The paper cites encouraging benchmarks—open models resolving roughly 30% of real GitHub issues, and one enterprise pilot cutting root-cause debugging time by 93% through coordinating multiple agents rather than using one better agent. But it gives equal weight to a sobering counterpoint: the EvoClaw benchmark, where agent performance collapses from over 80% on isolated, well-scoped tasks to at most 38% when asked to sustain development over time—maintaining a system across many changes where errors accumulate. The author names four reasons: agents lose track of the big picture as codebases exceed their memory (“context drift”); small early mistakes cascade; agents don’t weigh the long-term cost of shortcuts (“technical debt”); and automated testing can pass while subtle bugs slip through.

The honest takeaway is that agentic AI is genuinely transformative today as an augmentation tool, but fully autonomous software development remains a multi-year research problem. 

The paper sketches a four-stage roadmap—from today’s coding assistants, to agents owning single tasks end-to-end, to coordinated multi-agent “teams” mirroring an engineering org, to self-improving ecosystems—with the later stages explicitly aspirational.

Why It Matters

Three implications stand out for anyone running a business.

The economics of building software products flip. If outcomes can be purchased rather than systems built and maintained, the long tail of custom software—internal tools, integrations, workflow glue—becomes dramatically cheaper to obtain and faster to change. The competitive moat of “we built proprietary software for this” weakens when a competitor can have an agent produce a working equivalent on demand. Conversely, if your business sells software, outcome-based pricing pressures the subscription model that may underpin your revenue.

The bottleneck moves from time to build to time for verification and security. In the “AI helps engineers code faster” model, the human stays on the critical path for design, integration, and verification—so the gains are capped. The agentic model aims to remove the human from execution entirely, leaving them to set intent and audit results. Where that works, the constraint on output shifts from headcount to the quality of your goals, your evaluation criteria, and your oversight. Organizations that figure out how to direct agents well, not just deploy them, capture the upside.

The risk profile changes shape, and it’s unpredictable (mostly). The EvoClaw findings are the most important part of the paper for executives. The failure mode of agentic systems is not “it doesn’t work”—it’s “it works impressively in a demo and degrades quietly over time.” Errors compound, tests give false comfort, and no one is accountable in the traditional sense. That is a governance and liability problem, not just an engineering one.

What This Means for CEOs

This is a moment for ambitious but calibrated action—not a wholesale bet, and not waiting on the sidelines. Practical priorities:

• Start where the criteria are clear. The best early candidates for agent automation are tasks with well-defined success conditions, contained scope, and existing tests—debugging, routine feature work, data tasks. Avoid pointing agents at sprawling, mission-critical systems where errors silently accumulate.
  
• Invest in evaluation, not just adoption. The quality of agent output is only as good as your ability to judge it. Building rigorous test suites and outcome metrics is now a strategic capability, because it’s what lets you safely give agents more autonomy over time. This is where much of the durable advantage will sit.
  
• Treat oversight as a real role. Adopt a posture the paper frames well: agents own execution, humans own intent, judgment, and ethical guardrails. That means new accountability for who specifies goals, who audits outputs, and who is answerable when an agent’s work fails downstream.
  
• Rethink team shape deliberately. If individual productivity multiplies through agent leverage, smaller teams of skilled “orchestrators” may do what larger teams did before. That has implications for hiring, the skills you value, and how you develop people—the premium shifts from writing code to articulating intent clearly and designing how agents coordinate.
  
• Watch your own business model. If you sell software or services, ask how outcome-based, agent-delivered competition would price against you, and where your defensibility actually lies—data, distribution, trust, regulatory position—once building the software gets cheap.

The most useful framing for a CEO is not “is software ending?” It isn’t. It’s that the unit of value is migrating from the system you build to the outcome you specify and verify. Companies that build the muscles to direct and audit autonomous work—while staying clear-eyed about where these systems still break—will be positioned to lead the transition rather than absorb it.

This is an executive brief based on “Agentic Software: How AI Agents Are Restructuring the Software Paradigm” (Cao, June 2026) – read here

A word of caution on sourcing: this is a single-author argument from a private firm, not independent research, and it leans on its own framing. The benchmark data points are real and checkable; the roadmap timelines and the grander “software redefined” thesis are interpretations. Read it as a well-reasoned hypothesis, not a verdict.

Read other articles in the series:

The CEO’s guide to AI: The Pope Has an AI Strategy Memo for Your Boardroom

The CEO’s guide to AI: State Media Control Influences Large Language Models

The CEO’s guide to AI: Social engineering is turbocharged by AI

The CEO’s guide to AI: Black-hat LLMs and Cyber-threats

The CEO’s guide to AI: We’re nowhere near AGI

The CEO’s guide to AI: Young workers as the canaries in the coalmine

The CEO’s guide to AI: The risk of vibe coding complacency

The CEO’s guide to AI: The Case for Superhuman Adaptable Intelligence (SAI)

About Nikolas Badminton

Nikolas Badminton is the Chief Futurist & Hope Engineer at futurist.com. He’s a world-renowned futurist keynote speaker, consultant, author, media producer, and executive advisor that has spoken to, and worked with, over 500 of the world’s most impactful organizations and governments.

Nikolas is an artificial intelligence expert and his 2026 keynote ‘The AI Leader: Create Incredible Productivity, Profit & Growth’ is the level up for the modern CEO and executive leader.

Please contact futurist speaker and consultant Nikolas Badminton to discuss your engagement.

The post The CEO’s guide to AI: What to do when the software is the worker appeared first on Futurist Keynote Speaker | Hope Engineer - Nikolas Badminton.