David Rowan

David Rowan is today’s leading speaker on how emerging technologies will impact business — and how leaders should prepare now. He’s given 900 keynotes around the world, and has moderated events for the World Economic Forum, WIRED, the top global companies, and governments.

As founding Editor-in-Chief of WIRED magazine in the UK, Rowan came to know the founders of WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Google, Didi, Spotify, Twitter and countless other ambitious startups from Tel Aviv to Shenzhen. His bestselling book, “Non-Bullshit Innovation: 17 Proven Ways To Transform How You Work," is a 20-country quest to identify genuine innovation in the face of tech-led disruption. It sets out 17 proven strategies for future-proofing a business, from “Turn products into services” to “Build an ecosystem”.

Rowan spends his time at tech’s cutting edge: visiting university research labs and startup clusters to meet the people building the future. He’s invested in 180 early-stage tech companies, including 12 that became billion-dollar “unicorns", and runs venture funds that invest in health-tech and climate-tech. He’s working on a book on how business leaders use culture to attract and motivate exceptional talent at a time when AI risks commodifying entire sectors.

Rowan has been a technology columnist for The Times, GQ, Condé Nast Traveller and The Sunday Times, and at WIRED he built a conference and a consulting business. And he is still searching for the future.

Rowan will customize a talk for your meeting, or will moderate your event in his accessible journalistic style. He deconstructs tech trends in real time, unpacking how innovations like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, robotics and more are changing businesses and consumers. He delivers lively and inspiring presentations, using concrete examples from the frontiers of tech and engaging 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 now. In recent months he has addressed audiences in finance, luxury fashion, utilities, television, insurance, shipping, travel, real estate and business software. Rowan also speaks a lot about changing business models, and how companies can develop a culture of innovation.