Thought Leaders

My late father will always be my original mentor and the embodiment of everything I have wanted to be…a successful doctor and business professional with a limitless heart for caring for others, an unending passion for giving to those less fortunate, and an unbounded love of being a parent. Losing...

The National Academy of Engineering considers electrification among the greatest engineering achievements of the 20th century, and I have to agree– thanks to our electric grid, we effortlessly flip a light switch, and power goes on in less than a second. This speed is faster than any delivery service could...

This headline accompanied Washington Post nationally-syndicated columnist Neal Peirce’s column on St. Louis, following the completion of our BioBelt Strategy in 2000. Then in 2019, economists from the  Brookings Institution noted that “To succeed in the global economy, cities must invest in what makes them unique.” My now 40+ year...

For the last 20 years, WYgroup has been one of the top leading players in digital marketing, technology, and creativity services in Portugal. We are currently the largest independent group for Marketing and Customer Experience Services in Portugal, with a collaborative framework of 7 companies that – together – can...

Logistics is facing important sustainability and capacity problems. The changing buying behaviour of the consumer, predominantly accelerated by the steep growth of e-commerce, is leading to increasingly smaller, but more frequent and ever faster deliveries. This fragmentation of deliveries is heavily boosting the need for transport capacity, while the shorter...

Every business that I’ve poured my heart into was founded on the idea of adding value and convenience to everyday life. I saw a problem, found one million ways to fix it, and stayed laser focused on the solution even when it didn’t make sense to other people. To do...

Most of my career has been spent working within the visitor economy in some form or other; events, hotels, and venues but for the last 21 years, this has been within Destination Management Organisations (DMOs). There are forms of DMOs across the UK and the world, with all of us...

TRANSIT ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT Downtown Miami is experiencing one of the most dynamic urban reinventions in the world. Less than 10 years ago, Downtown was a 9-to-5 business district, but today businesses are launching and thriving, city streets are populated around-the-clock, parks and cultural venues now occupy land that sat vacant...

Data are everywhere: they are drivers of innovation and at the heart of the transformation taking hold all around us. Integral to many enabling technologies now maturing, from cloud computing to the Internet of things, 5G, 3D, augmented reality, robotics and more, these data and their valorization by analysis are...

Innovation in education takes the form of rich, powerful, explosive choice. Alberto Carvalho, Superintendent, Miami-Dade County Public Schools class=”img-responsive”> In education, innovation is about ensuring that today’s students emerge from the educational process with a critical skill set that empowers them to work in diverse teams, enables them to reason...

IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE“It’s cancer.” That’s not a sentence you want to hear your doctor say when you’re only 23 years old. Seven days earlier having graduated with my degree in opera, and now I was sitting in a hospital. They say thyroid cancer is the “best” kind...

Railways has been my constant obsession in the last 30 years, after I assumed the role of developing the Railway business in Portugal. As a fresh Engineer from IST, I started my career at Alcatel as telecoms engineer. Soon my commercial attitude and aptitude drove me to new challenges with...

I moved to Adelaide in my twenties to study, at a time when South Australia was seeing the decline of our manufacturing and automotive industries, and the Global Financial Crisis was about to bite. It was, and continues to be, a wonderful place to study and get involved in our...

If the latest slew of cryptocurrency commercials at the Superbowl is any indicator, crypto is officially mainstream. Advertisements featuring stars like LeBron James and comedians like Larry David show that everyone is getting in on crypto. But most of this excitement isn’t focused on bitcoin. Last year, over $33 billion...

Loubna Imenchal’s insights are compelling and profound. As VP of Africa, the Middle East, Turkey, and Central Asia at Logitech, her journey is one of resilience, innovation, and a relentless pursuit of dreams. It extends far beyond her corporate success; it is a narrative of ambition and determination with a...

For more than one and a half decade, Sweden has consecutively been ranked in the top three most innovative economies in the world (according to the United Nations’ Global Innovation Index). There is a longstanding tradition in Sweden to work collaboratively across different societal sectors — and in an interdisciplinary...

Challenging the status quo requires a brave voice, one that resounds with a clarity and vision that slices through the din to shape the contours of tomorrow. My conversation with Dr. Abir Haddad, a luminary in the realm of legal transformation, unfurls a narrative rich with rebelliousness, innovation, and a...

I’ve spent my entrepreneurial career pushing against a simple but powerful reality I witnessed: talent is universal, but awareness of opportunity is not. In a country where innovation fuels our future, we cannot continue leaving untapped potential sitting on the sidelines that happens to be our majority population. The next...

Any founder can recall times when they’ve been faced with seemingly insurmountable challenges, and know the experience of truly questioning themselves and their idea. In these moments, I’ve found two things in my personal startup journey that keeps me pushing forward. The first is an unwavering belief in my business....

Area President, Keiretsu Forum Mid-Atlantic How many times do you need to repeat an exercise before you truly become an expert?  According to Malcolm Gladwell in “Outliers: The Story of Success” it takes 10,000 hours and he points to many successful examples of how “The 10,000 Hour Rule” has paid...

When you’re part of a family business with over 100 years of history, the questions often asked are: How do you stay relevant? What is the formula to successfully operate a business for that long? For us, the answer has always been about three things: resiliency, people, and leadership. Be...

There’s something profoundly beautiful about entrepreneurship. To throw yourself into the unknown. To build something from nothing. To see an idea, the one you’ve nurtured in your mind, become real in the world. But let me be honest: it’s not for the faint of heart. Entrepreneurship is a rollercoaster. One...

What has made Miami such a great environment for growing a startup culture is its strong entrepreneurial ethos and the lack of restrictions. It’s the kind of place where if you have an idea, no one is going to tell you it can’t be done. Over the last 20 years,...

DISABILITY DRIVES INNOVATIONI want to see this world thriving with innovation, creativity for good. I say Be the change you want to see in the world. When the brain doesn’t work the way it used to, the effects are profound and long lasting. You see, it’s not just about the...