Keynote Speakers

Professor Jonathan Winterton

Leeds University Bussiness School 

Topic: The juncture of HRD, labour economics and knowledge management

After an apprenticeship as a technician instrument maker, I studied Industrial Technology at the University of Bradford, followed by a Masters in Industrial Relations at the London School of Economics and a doctorate from the University of Leeds. I taught in the Engineering Faculty at Bradford, then moved to Bradford Management Centre before being appointed to my first Chair at Napier University, Edinburgh, to establish and lead the Employment Research Institute in 1997. In 2000 I moved to Toulouse Business School as the first Director of Research and after 10 years assumed responsibility for International Development. In 2015 I moved to Borneo as Dean of the Faculty of Business at Curtin University in Sarawak, moving after two years to Peninsular Malaysia as Executive Dean of the Faculty of Business and Law at Taylor’s University. I returned to the UK in 2019 as Head of the Department of Management at Huddersfield Business School and took up my post as Head of the Work and Employment Relations Division at Leeds University Business School in August 2020.

Dr Mitt Nowshade Kabir 

EMLV – École de Management Léonard de Vinci, Paris 

CEO of Trouvus

Topic: Artificial General Intelligence and the Future of Humanity 

Dr. Mitt Nowshade Kabir is an internationally recognized authority on artificial intelligence, digital transformation, and knowledge-based innovation, with over three decades of experience operating at the intersection of advanced technology, business strategy, and entrepreneurship.

He is the Co-founder and CEO of Trouvus, an AI-driven digital transformation firm that advises organizations on the design and deployment of applied AI, data-centric strategy, and intelligent operating models. His work spans Fortune 500 companies, high-growth startups, and public-sector institutions, where he has helped translate emerging AI capabilities into measurable business and societal impact.

Dr. Kabir also served as an Adjunct Professor of Digital Transformation at École de Management Léonard De Vinci (Paris), where he taught AI-driven business transformation, innovation strategy, and digital ecosystems. His academic contributions include more than 30 peer-reviewed publications with over 800 citations, and the widely referenced book Knowledge-Based Social Entrepreneurship (Palgrave Macmillan), which explores innovation and value creation in knowledge economies.

As an entrepreneur, Dr. Kabir has founded and scaled multiple technology ventures. He was the Chairman of Rusbiz a global B2B marketplace that grew to over 300,000 users worldwide, and the founder of Flerika, an AI-enabled social commerce platform. Across these ventures, he pioneered early applications of AI-based recommendation engines, semantic search, and data-driven personalization—driving significant gains in engagement and conversion.

Beyond academia and entrepreneurship, Dr. Kabir is a sought-after keynote speaker and advisor on AI strategy, agentic systems, AGI trajectories, and the future of digital organizations. He has chaired international conferences in AI and robotics, advised governments on digital innovation and e-government policy, and mentored and invested in AI-driven startups across emerging technology sectors.

At the core of his work is a central thesis: AI is no longer merely a tool for optimization—it is becoming cognitive infrastructure. Dr. Kabir’s keynotes challenge leaders to rethink strategy, governance, and human-machine collaboration in an era where intelligence is increasingly distributed, autonomous, and generative.

Speaking Topics Include

• AI Strategy Beyond Automation
• Agentic AI and the Future of Organizations
• Digital Transformation as Cognitive Re-Architecture
• Knowledge, Power, and Value in the Age of Generative Systems
• Human–AI Co-Creation and the Future of Work

Dr Nik Gowing 

Topic: Thinking the Unthinkable in regarding Intangibles

See: www.thinkunthink.org.

Nik is a Distinguished Fellow at the Royal United Service Institute, London. He was a RUSI Trustee 2016-21. Previously he was a member of the RUSI council for ten years.
Since 2014 Nik has been founder and director of the Thinking the Unthinkable (TTU) project. Using interviews with, and access to, the highest levels of business, public service and governments the ongoing and dynamic project reveals candidly why so many leaders at every level face new difficulties adapting to the scale of unthinkables and unpalatables..
Against the analytical consensus, the TTU project predicted inter alia in 2016 a vote for Brexit and the nomination then election of Donald Trump as US president. The fast growing challenges to leaders in the dramatic disruption to ‘normal’ was further confirmed by the pressures facing leaders
when COVID-19 hit so brutally and speedily in early 2020. The Climate emergency is fast adding further intense pressures from new realities that most think are unthinkable. The Russian invasion of Ukraine was an inevitable unthinkable which the TTU project foresaw.
Until 2014 Nik was a main news presenter for the BBC’s international 24-hour news channel BBC World News 1996-2014. He presented The Hub with Nik Gowing, BBC World Debates, Dateline London, plus location coverage of many major global stories. He is best remembered for his many hours of live coverage of Princess Diana’s car crash in Paris in August 1997, making the
announcement of her death, then the unfolding horrors of the 9/11 terror attacks in the US.
For 18 years he worked at ITN where he was bureau chief in Rome and Warsaw, and Diplomatic Editor for Channel Four News (1988-1996). He collected a BAFTA award for breaching media controls
to cover martial law and the crushing of Solidarity in Poland in 1981. He reported for TV much of the drama in Eastern Europe and the rapid crumbling of Soviet power up to the sudden end of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the coup in Moscow in 1991.
Nik has been a member of the councils of Chatham House (1998–2004), the Royal United Services Institute (2005–2021), and the Overseas Development Institute (2007-2014). The Foreign Office appointed him to the board of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy where he became vice
chair (1996-2005) plus the advisory council at Wilton Park (1998-2012).
In 1994 he was a fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Barone Center in the J. F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.  He was a board member for the Hay Literary Festival 2004-2018 and is now a trustee for the festival’s new charitable status.
Nik had extensive reporting experience over three decades in diplomacy, defence and international security. He has a much sought-after analytical expertise on the failures to manage information in the new digitally transparent environments of conflicts, crises, emergencies and times of tension. His peer-reviewed study for the Reuter Institute at Oxford University Skyful of Lies and Black Swan (2009) predicted and identified the new vulnerability, fragility and brittleness of institutional power
in what would soon become the new all-pervasive public information space. The work built on his earlier research in the Kennedy School at Harvard. Current developments have confirmed all that his cutting edge work warned about.
Since 2014 Nik has been a Visiting Professor at Kings College, London in the School of Social Science and Public Policy. From 2016 to 2018 he was a Visiting Professor at Nanyang University (NTU) in Singapore where he worked on deepening and widening the Thinking the Unthinkable research
project.He was a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Geo-Economics (2014- 16). In September 2017 he was appointed an adviser on leadership challenges to the President of the UN General Assembly He was awarded Honorary Doctorates by Exeter University in 2012 and Bristol University in 2015 for both his ongoing cutting edge analyses and distinguished career in international journalism.
Nik has written two acclaimed novels, The Wire and The Loop which reflected his many years reporting behind the Iron Curtain and in Russia.

Professor Olivier Bonnaud

Professor Emeritus at the University of Rennes 

Topic:  “Three months of negotiations with  senior government officials over an 8-cent rounding error” 

Olivier Bonnaud, a graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay, with a doctorate in microelectronics, became a full professor at the University of Rennes 1 and at Supelec (Grande Ecole) in 1984, where he created a research laboratory (Microelectronics Laboratory that he directed until 2013, when he became professor emeritus. Founder in 1985 of a joint regional microelectronics center, he directed it until 2010, when he was appointed by the French minister as director of the National Coordination for Microelectronics and Nanotechnology Education, a network of 12 French training centers that he still directs today. He has supervised 43 PhD students and has published or presented 380 international papers. He has been more than 40 times invited speaker and keynote speaker in international conferences. He has negotiated and conducted 70 research contracts and agreements, participated in more than 100 scientific committees of international conferences, organized or co-organized 13 international congresses and 18 national conferences, participated in 300 thesis and research supervision juries (100 as President). and was international and national expert in many research and educational programs.