About me
Biography
About me
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 more than 700 keynotes around the world, and has moderated events for the World Economic Forum, WIRED, the biggest global companies, and governments. As founding Editor-in-Chief of WIRED magazine in the UK, David came to know the founders of WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Google, Didi, Spotify, Twitter and countless other ambitious startups from Tel Aviv to Shenzhen. His best-selling book, “Non-Bullshit Innovation: 17 Proven Ways To Transform How You Work” (Penguin), is a 20-country quest to identify genuine innovation in the face of technology-led disruption. The book sets out 17 proven strategies for future-proofing a successful business — from “Turn products into services” to “Build an ecosystem”.
David 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 more than 180 early-stage tech companies, including 8 that became billion-dollar "unicorns", and runs venture funds that invest in health-tech and climate-tech. Currently he's working on a book on how business leaders are using culture to attract and motivate exceptional talent, at a time when AI risks commodifying entire sectors.
David 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.
David will customise a talk for your meeting, or will moderate your event in his accessible journalistic style. He deconstructs tech trends in real time, unpacking how major innovations like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and more, are changing businesses and consumers. He delivers fascinating and knowledgeable presentations full of insight into the future of technology together with lively examples 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 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.
His recent themes include:
• How to think about human talent in the AI era
• How to understand the impact of generative AI
• What exponential technologies mean for the next five years in retail/real estate/finance/media/healthcare, etc
• What a 20-country quest taught me about building an authentic culture of innovation
• What AI agents tell us about the future of the workplace
• Why culture is the ultimate business differentiator in a world of exponential technologies
• What talent wants in the new world of work
Email David at: web@davidrowan.com
David 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 more than 180 early-stage tech companies, including 8 that became billion-dollar "unicorns", and runs venture funds that invest in health-tech and climate-tech. Currently he's working on a book on how business leaders are using culture to attract and motivate exceptional talent, at a time when AI risks commodifying entire sectors.
David 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.
David will customise a talk for your meeting, or will moderate your event in his accessible journalistic style. He deconstructs tech trends in real time, unpacking how major innovations like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and more, are changing businesses and consumers. He delivers fascinating and knowledgeable presentations full of insight into the future of technology together with lively examples 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 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.
His recent themes include:
• How to think about human talent in the AI era
• How to understand the impact of generative AI
• What exponential technologies mean for the next five years in retail/real estate/finance/media/healthcare, etc
• What a 20-country quest taught me about building an authentic culture of innovation
• What AI agents tell us about the future of the workplace
• Why culture is the ultimate business differentiator in a world of exponential technologies
• What talent wants in the new world of work
Email David at: web@davidrowan.com
Testimonials
Feedback from David Rowan's keynotes:
•“The team was blown away and they are a hard group to impress.” Google
•“Truly inspirational.” Warner Bros
•“Fascinating.” Goldman Sachs
•“David Rowan was awesome.” Salesforce
•“Truly magnificent.” Sky
•“Just perfect.” Temasek
•“You set the tone for the day perfectly, engaging the audience and steering the presenters through a very full agenda. The feedback from the day has been overwhelmingly positive, which is largely due to your dynamism, good humour and professionalism.” David Cameron, G8 Innovation Conference
•“A stellar moderator – insightful and challenging to the speakers, witty and engaging for the audience, and very positive to work with.” World Economic Forum
•“Your contribution at the event was terrific. The content was highly relevant & extremely interesting. Your talk received the highest audience review on the feedback application. The level of your professionalism is unrivalled.” Mercer
•“It went brilliantly: an excellent presentation. A great success!” Sky Betting
•“Insightful, thought-provoking and energizing.” Marubeni Corporation
•“We had brilliant feedback.” Small Luxury Hotels
•“Your opening talk was just fabulous. The feedback on your talk has been extremely positive.” PopTech
•“A HUUUUGE thank you as always for being the one we trust to make any conversation bright, enlightening, energetic, thoughtful and insightful — always so, so grateful.” Founders Forum NY
•“David was fantastic. The content was perfect. The talk was fast paced, interesting, relevant and accessible. It set up the innovation session of our agenda really well and I was delighted with the result.” Sky
•"David has a way of making people stop, to sit up and take notice. This means comments he delivers have had a high level of impact and really got the audience talking and thinking deeply." Huawei
•"No secret: Everybody referred to the morning session as the first rate inspiration and the highlight." Stefan von Holtzbrinck
•"You brought amazing material and evoked thought and reflection." Sogrape
•"David's talk was totally awesome. He blew us away." Iress
•"The team absolutely loved David's talk - they wished it had been longer! They loved the future focused nature of the talk and the vision for the future. They also loved the insight to what's happening with innovation and how tech/AI is helping to solve problems at a global scale. David's industry knowledge blew them away, and they felt it was so inspiring." Google EMEA
•"David was a fantastic keynote speaker and certainly met the brief to 'excite and inspire' our audience. We ran a poll to see out of the 4 sessions held, which was the favourite and David was our top rated." NatWest Group
•"It was an absolute honour, delight and a pleasure to have you moderate sessions. The audience feedback has been exceptional for the sessions you moderated and we look forward to have you participate for future." Dubai World Trade Centre for Gitex
•"You energized, enlightened and inspired the team." PWC Strategy& for the Dubai government
•"We've had such good feedback on the talk. We would be thrilled to have you speak at a future event." Braze
•"Your presentation was brilliant and so well received. I’ve already lost count of the number of people who’ve asked me where I found you!" Mitie
•"You were a truly exceptional speaker and I have received wonderful feedback about your talk." Intercorp Peru
•"Your session was excellent – really elevated the whole agenda." ISTARI
Email David at: web@davidrowan.com