David Rowan – Keynote Speaker

David Rowan explains compellingly how emerging technologies will impact business — and how leaders should prepare now. As founding Editor-in-Chief of WIRED magazine’s UK edition, David came to know the founders of WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Google, Didi, Spotify, Xiaomi, Nest, Twitter and countless other ambitious startups from Tel Aviv to Shenzhen. He has since invested in more than 150 early-stage tech companies, including two that became billion-dollar “unicorns”, and is an adviser to venture-capital funds, the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, and numerous tech businesses.

David’s Amazon #1 business bestseller Non-Bullshit Innovation: 17 Proven Ways to Transform How You Work (Penguin) has been published in Japan, Korea, Russia, Ukraine and beyond. The book, a 20-country quest for bold corporate innovation in the face of technology-led disruption, sets out 17 proven strategies for future-proofing a successful business — helping leaders build resilience in an uncertain world.

David Rowan has been a technology columnist for The Times, GQ, Condé Nast Traveller and The Sunday Times. He has been asked to give more than 600 keynotes in recent years, and has received repeat requests to present for clients such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Google, KPMG, McKinsey, Chanel and Unilever. David has moderated events for the World Economic Forum, WIRED and the UK and French governments, and is increasingly in demand to host virtual conferences.

David Rowan deconstructs tech trends in real time, unpacking how major innovations like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, autonomous vehicles, and more, are changing businesses and consumers. David Rowan focuses on how technology-led innovation can build prosperity even in economic downturns and amid market crises. He delivers fascinating and knowledgeable presentations full of insight into the future of technology together with lively examples and engaging video clips which reveal that, in some cases, the future is already here. He’s typically asked to speak about how innovation and technology are likely to impact a particular sector (from manufacturing to motoring), and what incumbent companies can do to protect themselves. He customises every talk, and in recent months has addressed audiences in finance, fashion, utilities, television, insurance, shipping, travel, real estate and business software. He also speaks a lot about changing business models, and how companies can develop a culture of innovation. And he is still searching for the future.

David is also running a climate-tech investment fund and a health-tech fund, and travelling regularly to keep up with startup innovation and research that’s jumping out of university labs. And he is at his happiest when translating these lessons to the grown-up world of business.

David Rowan also delights in moderating events and holding together an inspiring conversation, whether running an entire four-day Marrakech conference for a payments company, or moderating sessions in Munich for a Chinese telco. Moderating brings out the excitement of live journalism for me, taking me back to the thrills of hosting a dozen WIRED one- and two-day events, as well as my days presenting on UK national television.

In general he is translating what’s happening at tech’s cutting edge — learning from the disrupters — in order to help business leaders prepare for tomorrow. Running WIRED in the UK let him build close connections with the key people shaping tech; and running climate-tech and health-tech communities and investment funds now lets David keep up with the ever-accelerating pace of AI, quantum computing, metaverses, decentralised networks, materials science, and so much more.