Innovation and innovating creatively have long been buzz words in all spheres. But actually achieving and actualising innovation is often a concept that can be illusive for many organisations both public and private.

Therefore with World Creativity and Innovation Day approaching on the 21 April, we thought it apt to share with you some of our favourite innovation keynote speakers and advisors.

Grasping the concept of innovation and then innovating in practice is something that the following keynote speakers and advisors have practice and expertise in. Each of them are able to grapple with the elusive innovation that so many of us seek by using their own experience in across education, business, technology, psychology and politics.

Chris Barton

Chris Barton wanted a way to identify songs he was hearing everywhere around him. There wasn’t one – so he invented an app called Shazam. Chris’s creation is nothing short of pure magic.

Chris seeks to delight people by using technology to make seemingly impossible ideas come to life. Shazam, which now has over two billion downloads, is just one of them.

In addition to creating Shazam, which Apple acquired for $400 million, Chris holds 12 patents and played key roles in the early days of Google and Dropbox.

Christian Busch

Dr Christian Busch’s research focuses on business model innovation, social impact, and social networks, and he teaches several MSc and executive education courses at LSE.

He is part of the Innovation and Co-Creation Lab at the London School of Economics and has served as inaugural Deputy Director. He is also co-founder of Sandbox Network, a community of innovators active in over 20 countries.

Raffaela Rein

Raffaela Rein is the CEO and Co-Founder of CareerFoundry (The UX School) which is Europe’s leading online school for tech careers, specifically for User Experience (UX) Design.

She launched CareerFoundry after she noticed a huge need for professional training in the digital age after having launched three e-commerce companies for Rocket Internet in APAC as well as for Axel Springer.

Beau Lotto

Dr Beau Lotto is a globally renowned neuro-scientist as well as Founder and CEO of Lab of Misfits Studio, the world’s first neuro-design studio. The lab creates unique real-world ‘experiential-experiments’ that places the public at the centre of the process of discovery.

At the core of what Lotto does is public engagement, he seeks to work outside of the lab with people who are interested in a different way of seeing in order to innovate.

In 2017, Lotto published his first major book, Deviate: The Science of Seeing Differently in which he draws on over two decades of pioneering research to explain that our brain hasn’t evolved to see the world accurately. Lotto believes that once we understand how and why we perceive things the way we do, we can work better at achieving innovation.

Charles Leadbeater

Charles Leadbeater is a globally renowned innovation and education guru.

His primary focus is on how to be human in an increasingly digital, technological world. His new book, The Analogue Innovator, explores our current draw to older forms of craft work, culture and technology as a counterbalance given the way that digital innovation is accelerating exponentially.

Leadbeater is a social innovator in his own right as one of the founders of the influential innovation and design agency Participle and as founder chair of the Google award winning charity Apps for Good.

Joanna Shields

Baroness Joanna Shields is the recent UK Minister for Internet and Former Senior Facebook and Google Executive.

An early pioneer in digital technology, before joining the government Shields spent over 25 years building some of the world’s best known technology companies including Google, Bebo and Facebook.

In each of her roles at these organisations she fostered innovation and achieved growth at the helm of large teams within some of the world’s most influential and successful organisations.

Graham Brown-Martin

Currently, Graham Brown-Martin works with organisations from large corporations to start-ups to help them identify their innovation immune system and unleash their own creativity.

Brown-Martin’s draws on his experiences of creating startups and organisations that challenged the status quo across the digital, creative and education sectors; he founded Learning Without Frontiers (LWF), a global movement that brought together renowned educators, technologists and creatives to share provocative and challenging ideas about the future of learning.

Raul Krauthausen

Raul Krauthausen is an activist, honoured communication manager and designer of innovative social projects.

An example of just one of the projects Krauthausen has been involved in is the development of the internet platform innovation Wheelmap.org, an open and free online map for wheelchair users and people with disabilities. The map empowers users to share and access information on the wheelchair-accessibility of public places around the world.

Sugata Mitra

TED Prize winner Sugata Mitra is at the forefront of a new approach to education which challenges how we teach today’s children in a technological age.

In 1999 Mitra made a hole in a wall bordering an urban slum in Delhi, installed an internet-connected PC, and left to see what happened. Almost immediately, children from the slum began playing with the computer and in the process taught each other how to use it and get online.

This led Mitra to develop the School in the Cloud. This innovation aims to build a community, place and experience to discover and explore children’s learning as a self-organising system.

Nayla Al Khaja

Nayla Al Khaja is the first female film Director/Producer in the United Arab Emirates. Al Khaja wrote and directed several films, all presented and awarded in international film festivals. She is currently developing her first feature film, Animal.

A groundbreaking innovator in her region, in 2007 she founded The Scene Club, Dubai’s first film club, which now counts over 22,000 registered members.

Jon Duschinsky

Jon Duschinsky is a social innovator and founder of Be the Change.

What underpins all of Dushinsky’s work is the understanding that being purpose-driven is now the best way to be sustainably profitable as well as to achieve the most impact.

Dushinsky sparks change, helping organisations, start-ups, governments and non-profits connect what they do with the change they could be making in people’s lives through innovation.

Gopalakrishnan Ramabadran

Gopalakrishnan Ramabadran is a renowned, innovative Indian business leader and former Executive Director, Tata.

Gopal advises companies, mentors leaders, writes thought pieces and is actively engaged in inspiring innovation in business.

He is currently a non-executive director of Tata Group Parent, Tata Sons, and several Tata companies.

Read more on Gopalakrishnan Ramabadran here.

Mick Cornett

Mick Cornett is the mayor of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, having served in that position since 2004. He is the first mayor in Oklahoma City history to be elected to four terms and is currently the longest-serving mayor among the 50 largest cities in America.

Cornett’s leadership is marked by numerous innovations, transforming Oklahoma City into a place where its serious obesity issue could no longer thrive. Cornett set about rebuilding the city around the pedestrian rather than the car. Examining the city’s culture and infrastructure, he reshaped roads and neighbourhoods and put the entire city on a diet by creating a website encouraging citizens to register and track their weight loss.

Costas Markides

Costas Markides is Professor of Strategic Innovation and International Management at London Business School.

Markides is recognised as one of the world’s foremost experts on strategy and innovation. An internationally acclaimed teacher, Markides has researched the topics of strategic innovation, business model innovation, diversification and international acquisitions.

His work explores how established companies could pursue radical or disruptive innovation and how they can compete with two business models in the same industry.

Naif Al-Mutawa

Naif Al-Mutawa is an award winning Arab entrepreneur and the acclaimed creator of THE 99, the world’s first superheroes born of an Islamic archetype. Barack Obama praised Al-Mutawa and THE 99 as perhaps the most innovative of the thousands of new entrepreneurs viewed by his Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship.

Al-Mutawa is also a clinical and professor at Kuwait University’s Faculty of Medicine, where he teaches clinical psychology, communication skills, cognitive behavioural therapy, and creative writing.

Idris Jala

Idris Jala is CEO of PEMANDU (Performance Management and Delivery Unit) and rated one of Top 10 Most Influential Policy Makers In the World by Bloomberg.

Jala has a global reputation for rescuing ailing ventures or confronting difficult scenarios to turn around using innovation. Under his leadership, PEMANDU was also named by NESTA in the UK as one of the top 20 most innovative Government agencies in the world.

Jonas Kjellberg

Jonas Kjellberg is one of the co-creators of Skype. He draws on lessons from the Skype story, addressing all aspects of contemporary business both in the tech sector and elsewhere: from the specifics of sales, product, innovation, culture, and growth, to broader examinations of the business climate and entrepreneurship.

As a venture investor, Kjellberg is currently part of BCG Digital Ventures, a corporate investment and incubation firm. The company is dedicated to inventing, building, investing in and launching category-changing businesses at start-up speed for the world’s most influential companies.

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Top Innovation keynote speakers