Thought Leaders

The University of Florida is one of the nation’s very best public universities. Our home of Gainesville is a beautiful, thriving university city. Yet what truly sets us apart is our shared promise for the future.We have the opportunity over the next decade to become a center for innovation, a...

Bob Kain Co-Founder And CEO – LunaPBC I’ve been fortunate enough to live a life distinguished by constant progression, from understanding to impacting, particularly in my career. Trained as a physicist, I was fueled by a deep drive to understand some of the most complex “whys” of our world. Quickly...

In 1906, riots broke out in Verviers, Liège, caused by lamplighters protesting the electrification of city lighting. Today, Antwerp is experimenting with smart street lighting using software and smart sensors. This is just one example of how a twenty-first century city is in full digital transition. As alderman for the...

In 2018, I founded one of Australia’s first space-related incubator programs, (Venture Catalyst Space) with the state’s huge focus on the growing space sector. With the Australian Space Agency HQ in Adelaide, a growing number of new space companies, and the proposed new Space Park, Adelaide is fast becoming Australia’s...

Much like the adoption of electricity, however, the integration of AI into the core of the world’s companies will occur in phases. Initially, vertical (or “applied”) AI point solutions will arise and plug into existing workflows and frameworks. “Copilots” are one great example here; natural language programming and custom LLMs...

Our vision statement ensures we will never lose sight of our innovation goal: “New Jersey will reclaim its stature as the Innovation State.” To be sure, New Jersey has a rich history of innovation dating back to our glory days of the 19th and 20th centuries when discoveries made in...

Governments worldwide are stepping up and playing a crucial role in enabling innovation in their parts of the world. Our leaders can and should do as much as possible to help small businesses, start ups and innovators succeed. These entrepreneurs are the life blood of our future economy. South Africa...

Paddy brings over 25-years of experience working with high-performing teams in business and sport, across multiple industries and on five continents. Imagine you’re a team leader and you overhear one of your team speaking to their friends at a party. They’re saying something like, ‘‘I love the place I work....

At the University of Antwerp, we are committed to being a dynamic, entrepreneurial and forward-thinking institution that actively helps shape the future. We conduct excellent, fundamental research, and are internationally recognised in several key domains. But I believe our responsibility goes beyond academic excellence. It is crucial that the knowledge...

NFTS AND GAMING: THE PERFECT MATCH?Hello, I’m Claire Cawthorn, Chief Marketing Officer of HeliconNFT, a play-to-earn NFT ecosystem that gives gamers the power to monetize their in-game assets by tokenizing them into NFTs and allowing them to play with these NFTs in amazing blockchain games on our platform. Throughout my...

The built environment is responsible for nearly 40% of global carbon emissions, yet it often goes unnoticed in discussions about energy consumption. While people tend to focus on transportation or industrial sectors (with 20% and 25% global carbon emissions, respectively), buildings quietly consume vast amounts of energy, day and night,...

Jump Into New Jersey’s Innovation EcosystemAcross the globe, countries are seeking to harness the power of the invention to innovation pipeline to drive economic growth and address a wide range of societal issues including national security, health, inequity, education, and environmental challenges. It is estimated that 85% of a country’s...

Hon. Professor Allan Pease, acclaimed as ‘Mr. Body Language,’ is an international best-selling author and body language expert. His expertise, spanning advising executives to authoring bestsellers, provides valuable insights into human interactions. He is a distinguished speaker, coach, entrepreneur, and one of the world’s leading authors with 18 Top 10...

Innovation in technology often conjures images of sprawling metropolises like Silicon Valley—a beacon of transformation where ideas scale into industry-defining movements. But technology thrives where it’s least expected, and I am proud to say Newfoundland and Labrador has earned its place in that conversation. With a population of just 545,000,...

The Future Starts Here An entrepreneurial endeavor of consequence is provocatively described as the pursuit of an opportunity beyond the resources you currently control combined with challenges you have yet to imagine. Ten years ago when the Notman Project was conceived, it had many such hallmarks from the discouraging skeptics...

As the inaugural director of the Sia Furler Institute and the Chair of Creative Technologies at the University of Adelaide, I have been privileged to be a co-founder of the Art Intelligence Agency — a first-of its-kind convergence of creativity and machine learning. Creativity: The Core CompetencyIn recent years, there...

It was in 1991 that I joined École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS) as a professor. Over the course of my teaching career, through the development of my research career and now, as CEO of ÉTS since 2019, I have been able to truly appreciate the extent to which this institution...

I started focusing on the technology sector in the mid -90s when I joined a large national law firm in Vancouver. Over the span of 25+ years, I have been a lawyer, co-founder of a software company, President of the BC Premier’s Technology Council, CEO of a fintech company, Senior...

Le mot innovation est utilisé à plusieurs sauces. Il est toutefois clairement défini par le Larousse comme l’« ensemble du processus qui se déroule depuis la naissance d’une idée jusqu’à sa matérialisation ». Au-delà de l’idée, une solution nouvelle doit être utilisée, commercialisée, achetée ou déployée pour être innovante. Dans...

Mieke Verstraeten is a Managing Director at induver, the sixth-largest independent broker on the Belgian insurance market. She, along with her husband Sjarel De Bondt, is also a second-generation shareholder in the company. induver’s vision for insurance is straightforward: individuals or companies should only take insurance for risks they are...

TRANSFORMING INDUSTRIES. CHANGING THE WORLD.Australia’s vast natural resources have made it a global economic powerhouse. But with worldwide demand for minerals soaring, and finding new sources is becoming ever more complex and costly, our nation’s biggest industry urgently needs a radical new approach. One potential solution is seismic imaging. The...

Franco Varriano Technologist & Entrepreneur, Head Of Product Discovery & Innovation At Workshopx & Executive Director – Fresh Founders It’s a powerful, attractive and evocative concept. We all have ideas and conceptions on what innovation is all about; usually centering around new products, novel technologies, or advanced patents. But innovation...

Yet only a small fraction of these ideas, inventions, and potentially game-changing solutions ever make it off campus. Institutions likethe University of Washington have a responsibility to help more of them make it out into the world. Human health, the environment, theeconomy, and society depend on it. In this spirit,...

Innovation – turning a great idea into a new, accessible product or service – never occurs in isolation. It needs collaboration which is sparked by connection. In health and medical innovation, we talk about the globally connected ecosystem because ours is a global endeavour that requires collegial bright minds, significant...