Martin Gutmann Profile Picture

Keynote SpeakerMartin Gutmann

Bestselling Author, Professor of Management, Business Historian, and Leadership Expert

Martin Gutmann is an author, speaker, and scholar interested in how the past can illuminate today’s most pressing challenges. He is a professor at the Lucerne School of Business, a lecturer at ETH Zurich, and the best-selling author of The Unseen Leader: How History Can Help Us Rethink Leadership. Born... Read more

Biography

Martin Gutmann is an author, speaker, and scholar interested in how the past can illuminate today’s most pressing challenges. He is a professor at the Lucerne School of Business, a lecturer at ETH Zurich, and the best-selling author of The Unseen Leader: How History Can Help Us Rethink Leadership.

Born in Sweden, Martin has also lived and worked in Japan, the US, Canada, Mauritius, Germany, and Switzerland. From 2016 to 2020, he was the founding Managing Director of the Swiss School of Public Governance, where he launched a programme for future global public sector leaders.

His writing and thought leadership has reached over 60 million people through pieces in top business magazines, such as Forbes, Big Think, Fast Company, and Minute Hack, and appearances on well-known management podcasts, such as Phronesis, The Leadership Podcast, and We Are Human Leaders.

Martin delivers story-driven talks centred on vibrant cases, anchored in evidence from modern organisational psychology and management science with actionable takeaways. His recent TED Talk, “Are We Celebrating the Wrong Leaders?”, has had over 1 million views.

As a writer, he is best known for his book The Unseen Leader: How History Can Help Us Rethink Leadership, which challenges the “Action Fallacy”, our mistaken belief that great leadership requires a propensity for action. Adam Grant, organisational psychologist and thought leader, calls it: “A provocative look at what history really teaches us about effective leadership. This book will challenge you to rethink some of your core assumptions about what it takes to align people around common goals.”

Martin holds a Ph.D. in history from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, an Executive MBA from IE Business School in Spain, and higher education teacher’s training from Harvard University and ETH Zurich.

“Martin brings a unique historian’s perspective that keeps us grounded in human- centred values, learnings and future endeavours. In times of AI and fast technological advancement, Martin invites us to think creatively and exercise critical reasoning.” Google
"Martin is a masterful and engaging speaker who blends captivating stories with clear, actionable takeaways. Our audience loved every minute of his talk!” Zurich Insurance Group
"Martin captivated our 500+ person audience of risk, resilience and response practitioners with his engaging and poignant talk on crisis leadership and what it means to lead in a crisis-dense world. We followed Charles Lindbergh’s journey across the Atlantic to glean lessons that crisis leaders can use today. Martin has a great appeal when he speaks to an international audience, he is humble and authoritative at the same time. His credentials speak as clearly as he does- Martin is a great candidate for a corporate talk, capturing the attention of the most senior audience. Bravo!" Dow Inc.
“Martin was a very open and engaging speaker, he generously shared a lot of valuable research from his work, but also openly shared his own experiences in life and leadership in a very relatable way.” UBS

Popular Talks by Martin Gutmann

  • Leading Happy And Productive Teams

    Building on examples of exceptional sports teams and businesses, as well as state-of-the- art research, Martin weaves a compelling case for how curating happy and healthy teams is the only path to sustained productivity. And he tells you exactly how to do it.

  • Leadership In A Time Of Crisis And Uncertainty
    Martin explores the 1927 race to fly across the Atlantic and Charles Lindbergh’s successful flight. He parallels this historic event and today’s leadership challenges, defined by VUCA, BANI, and Poly-crisis. He introduces three enduring leadership principles: subtract rather than add, use a compass, not a map, and balance confidence and...
  • Organizations And Leadership In The Age Of Artificial Intelligence

    In this talk, Martin Gutmann compares key technological disruptions in history to the emergence of AI and reveals three surprising predictions about what implications AI will have for business and society (and what leaders can and should do to prepare accordingly).