Celebrating 25 Years of Thinkers50
2 November 2026, London
The Thinkers50 London Summit returns to the city’s iconic Guildhall in November 2026 for a special 25th anniversary celebration featuring an exciting new addition: the inaugural Leaders50 Awards Gala.
For one extraordinary day, the Summit brings together the world’s foremost management thinkers and doers to challenge assumptions, spark fresh ideas, and shape the future of leadership.
In a time of fragmentation and flux, we’ll explore the questions that matter most:
How can leaders stay grounded in purpose when everything around them is shifting?
How can we harness the power of technology while keeping humanity at the centre?
Where will the next generation of talent come from and how can we nurture it?
Through three streams – purpose, technology, talent – we’ll interrogate the orthodoxies of today and reimagine the possibilities of tomorrow. From the role of business in society to ethical AI and the future of work, we’ll explore what it truly means to lead with vision and impact.
At the heart of the Summit lies a simple equation: Thinkers + Doers = Impact.
And for the first time, we will celebrate not only the world’s most influential management thinkers, but also the leaders putting big ideas into bold action at the Leaders50 Awards Gala.
Join us as we Fast Forward to the future where purpose, technology, and talent redefine leadership.
Speakers
Thinkers50 #7 Ranked Thinker; co-author of Move Fast & Fix Things with Frances Frei; founder of The Leadership Consortium.
Thinkers50 #7 Ranked Thinker, Anne Morriss is founder of The Leadership Consortium, a first-of-its-kind leadership accelerator that works to build inclusive executive teams and prepare emerging leaders for leadership.
Together with her co-author, Frances Frei, Anne is author of Move Fast & Fix Things: The Trusted Leader’s Guide to Solving Hard Problems (HBR Press, 2023) – a Thinkers50 Best New
Management Book for 2024; Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader’s Guide to Empowering Everyone and You (HBR Press, 2020); and Uncommon Service (HBR Press, 2012). Anne and Frances are hosts of the Fixable podcast.
Thinkers50 Ranked Thinker and 2019 Leadership Award; author of Impact Players and Multipliers; lectures at Stanford University.
A Thinkers50 Ranked Thinker since 2013 and recipient of the 2019 Leadership Award, Liz Wiseman is CEO of the Wiseman Group, a leadership research and talent development firm, and lectures at Stanford University. headquartered in Silicon Valley.
Liz is a prolific researcher into leadership. Her bestselling books include Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact (Harper Business 2021), and Multipliers; How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter (Harper Business, 2017). A former executive at Oracle, where she served as VP of Oracle University, Liz teaches leadership to top organisations including tech giants, entertainment platforms, and global airlines.
Thinkers50 #1 Ranked Thinker; co-author of Net Positive with Andrew Winston; former CEO, Unilever.
Thinkers50 #1 Ranked Thinker and former CEO of Unilever, Paul Polman is a business leader, climate and equalities campaigner.
Paul is co-author (with Andrew Winston) of Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take (HBR Press, 2021) – a Financial Times Business Book of the Year. As CEO of Unilever (2009-2019), Paul demonstrated that business can profit through purpose, delivering shareholder returns of 290% while the company consistently ranked 1st in the world for sustainability. Today he works across a range of organisations to deliver the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which he helped develop.
Thinkers50 Ranked Thinker; New York Times Best Selling author of Hustle & Float; executive director of the Red Thread Institute of Digital Culture.
Thinkers50 Ranked Thinker and executive director of the Red Thread Institute of Digital Culture, Rahaf Harfoush is a member of France’s National Digital Council. She formerly served on President Macron’s commission on the impact of AI and Democracy and was the associate director of the Technology Pioneer Program at the World Economic Forum.
Strategist and digital anthropologist, Rahaf is the author of Hustle & Float: Reclaim Your Creativity and Thrive in a World Obsessed with Work (Diversion Books, 2019) and Yes We Did: An Inside Look at How Social Media Built the Obama Brand (New Riders Pub, 2009). She is also co-author of Gold Axiom Winner The Decoded Company: Know Your Talent Better Than You Know Your Customers (Portfolio, 2014). Rahaf was recently named to the UN High Level Advisory for AI.
Senior advisor to the IKEA Foundation; former CEO/President of Ingka Group, IKEA.
Senior advisor to the IKEA Foundation, chair of The Earthshot Prize and The B Team, and vice chair of the UN Global Compact, Jesper Brodin is former CEO/President of Ingka Group, IKEA.
As CEO of Ingka Group, Jesper led two major transformations, driving its digital evolution and embedding sustainability at its core. A powerful voice for responsible business, he is passionate about contributing to people and planet-positive development and values-based leadership. Having joined IKEA in the mid-1990s, Jesper was appointed CEO in 2017, re-shaping the company into an omnichannel retailer with a conscience.
SVP, CTO, and President, Honeywell Connected Enterprise.
As CTO of Honeywell, Suresh Venkatarayalu leads the core engines driving the company’s innovation agenda, overseeing its global technology strategy, connected solutions, and software business. As the president of Honeywell Connected Enterprise, he oversees the full software lifecycle. Suresh also leads Honeywell’s Software Transformation Initiative and spearheads ecosystem partnerships across AI platforms, cloud hyperscalers, and edge computing.
More speakers coming soon!
Speakers
Member of the inaugural Leaders50; President/CEO, ONE Campaign; founder of LEAP Africa and African Food Changemakers.
Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli is President/CEO of the ONE Campaign. A leader in social innovation, agriculture, and entrepreneurship, she is the founder of LEAP Africa and African Food Changemakers, and co-founder of Sahel Consulting Agriculture & Nutrition Ltd. and AACE Foods Processing & Distribution Ltd.
Formerly a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, Ndidi returned to Nigeria in 2000 as pioneer executive director of the FATE Foundation. She has over 25 years of international development experience and has been deeply involved in fostering impactful solutions in the global social innovation landscape, with a focus on Africa.
Thinkers50 Ranked Thinker and 2019 Leadership Award; author of Impact Players and Multipliers; lectures at Stanford University.
A Thinkers50 Ranked Thinker since 2013 and recipient of the 2019 Leadership Award, Liz Wiseman is CEO of the Wiseman Group, a leadership research and talent development firm, and lectures at Stanford University.
Liz is a prolific researcher into leadership. Her bestselling books include Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact (Harper Business 2021), and Multipliers; How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter (Harper Business, 2017). A former executive at Oracle, where she served as VP of Oracle University, Liz teaches leadership to top organisations including tech giants, entertainment platforms, and global airlines.
Thinkers50 #1 Ranked Thinker; co-author of Net Positive with Andrew Winston; former CEO, Unilever.
Thinkers50 #1 Ranked Thinker and former CEO of Unilever, Paul Polman is a business leader, climate and equalities campaigner.
Paul is co-author (with Andrew Winston) of Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take (HBR Press, 2021) – a Financial Times Business Book of the Year. As CEO of Unilever (2009-2019), Paul demonstrated that business can profit through purpose, delivering shareholder returns of 290% while the company consistently ranked 1st in the world for sustainability. Today he works across a range of organisations to deliver the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which he helped develop.
Thinkers50 Ranked Thinker; New York Times Best Selling author of Hustle & Float; executive director of the Red Thread Institute of Digital Culture.
Thinkers50 Ranked Thinker and executive director of the Red Thread Institute of Digital Culture, Rahaf Harfoush is a member of France’s National Digital Council. She formerly served on President Macron’s commission on the impact of AI and Democracy and was the associate director of the Technology Pioneer Program at the World Economic Forum.
Strategist and digital anthropologist, Rahaf is the author of Hustle & Float: Reclaim Your Creativity and Thrive in a World Obsessed with Work (Diversion Books, 2019) and Yes We Did: An Inside Look at How Social Media Built the Obama Brand (New Riders Pub, 2009). She is also co-author of Gold Axiom Winner The Decoded Company: Know Your Talent Better Than You Know Your Customers (Portfolio, 2014). Rahaf was recently named to the UN High Level Advisory for AI.
Senior advisor to the IKEA Foundation; former CEO/President of Ingka Group, IKEA.
Senior advisor to the IKEA Foundation, chair of The Earthshot Prize and The B Team, and vice chair of the UN Global Compact, Jesper Brodin is former CEO/President of Ingka Group, IKEA.
As CEO of Ingka Group, Jesper led two major transformations, driving its digital evolution and embedding sustainability at its core. A powerful voice for responsible business, he is passionate about contributing to people and planet-positive development and values-based leadership. Having joined IKEA in the mid-1990s, Jesper was appointed CEO in 2017, re-shaping the company into an omnichannel retailer with a conscience.
Thinkers50 Ranked Thinker; author of The Culture Map and No Rules Rules (with Reed Hastings); INSEAD professor.
A Thinkers50 Ranked Thinker and recipient of the 2021 Talent Award (with Reed Hastings) and the 2015 Radar Award, Erin Meyer is a professor of management practice at INSEAD.
Erin is the author of The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business (Public Affairs, 2014) and co-author with Reed Hastings of No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention (Penguin Press, 2020). She helps leaders navigate cultural differences, build more adaptable, innovative organisations, and collaborate effectively across borders.
SVP, CTO, and President, Honeywell Connected Enterprise.
As CTO of Honeywell, Suresh Venkatarayalu leads the core engines driving the company’s innovation agenda, overseeing its global technology strategy, connected solutions, and software business. As the president of Honeywell Connected Enterprise, he oversees the full software lifecycle. Suresh also leads Honeywell’s Software Transformation Initiative and spearheads ecosystem partnerships across AI platforms, cloud hyperscalers, and edge computing.
Thinkers50 #7 Ranked Thinker; co-author of Move Fast & Fix Things with Frances Frei; founder of The Leadership Consortium.
Thinkers50 #7 Ranked Thinker, Anne Morriss is founder of The Leadership Consortium, a first-of-its-kind leadership accelerator that works to build inclusive executive teams and prepare emerging leaders for leadership.
Together with her co-author, Frances Frei, Anne is author of Move Fast & Fix Things: The Trusted Leader’s Guide to Solving Hard Problems (HBR Press, 2023) – a Thinkers50 Best New
Management Book for 2024; Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader’s Guide to Empowering Everyone and You (HBR Press, 2020); and Uncommon Service (HBR Press, 2012). Anne and Frances are hosts of the Fixable podcast.
More speakers coming soon!
Celebrating the Thinkers50 Best New Management Books for 2026
New to the Thinkers50 London Summit this year is an exciting new addition: the Thinkers50 Studio.
Featuring interviews and discussions with select authors, the Studio will come to life during breaks from the main program in the Great Hall and will provide a more informal setting for debate, discussion, and learning.
There will also be opportunities to collect signed copies!
Epic Disruptions: 11 Innovations That Shaped Our Modern World
Member of the Thinkers50 Ranking since 2011, Scott Anthony is the holder of the Thinkers50 Innovation Award 2017. He is a professor at Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College, and a senior advisor at Innosight.
A leading voice on disruptive innovation, Scott’s books include Epic Disruptions: 11 Innovations That Shaped Our Modern World (HBR Press, 2025) – a Thinkers50 Best New Management Book for 2026; Eat, Sleep, Innovate (HBR Press, 2020); Dual Transformation (HBR Press, 2017); The First Mile (HBR Press, 2014); Building a Growth Factory (HBR Press, 2012); The Little Black Book of Innovation (HBR Press, 2011); The Silver Lining (HBR Press, 2009); The Innovator’s Guide to Growth (HBR Press, 2008) and Seeing What’s Next (with Clayton Christensen, HBR Press, 2004).
Our Best Work: Break Free from the 24 Invisible Norms That Limit Us
Member of the Thinkers50 Ranking since 2015, Nilofer Merchant is the holder of the Thinkers50 Future Thinker Award 2013. She has spent over 25 years leading technology companies including Apple, Autodesk, and GoLive/Adobe and is co-founder of Intangible Labs.
Nilofer’s books include Our Best Work: Break Free from the 24 Invisible Norms That Limit Us
(Harper Collins, 2026) – a Thinkers50 Best New Management Book for 2026; The Power of Onlyness: Make Your Wild Ideas Mighty Enough to Dent the World (Viking, 2017) – a Financial Times Business Book of the Month; 11 Rules for Creating Value in the #Social Era (HBR Press, 2012); and The New How: Creating Business Solutions Through Collaborative Strategy (O’Reilly Media, 2010).
How to Be Bold: The Surprising Science of Everyday Courage
The Paul R. Lawrence MBA Class of 1942 Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, Ranjay Gulati is #9 in the Thinkers50 Ranking. In 2025, he received the Thinkers50 Leadership Award.
An award-winning organisational sociologist listed by The Economist and Financial Times as a top business school scholar for management practice, Ranjay’s books include How to Be Bold: The Surprising Science of Everyday Courage (Harper Business, 2025) – a Thinkers50 Best New Management Book for 2026 and Deep Purpose: The Heart and Soul of High-performance Companies (Harper Business, 2022) – a Thinkers50 Best New Management Book for 2022.
Genius at Scale: How Great Leaders Drive Innovation
Renowned expert on leadership and innovation, Harvard Business School professor Linda Hill has featured in the Thinkers50 Ranking since 2011. In 2015, she received the Thinkers50 Innovation Award.
Linda is co-author of Genius at Scale: How Great Leaders Drive Innovation (HBR Press, 2026) – a Thinkers50 Best New Management Book for 2026 and Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation (HBR Press, 2014) – a Thinkers50 Management Classic. Linda is also faculty chair of the Leadership Initiative at Harvard, co-founder of advisory firm Paradox Strategies, co-creator of the Innovation Quotient, and co-founder of InnovationForce.
Genius at Scale: How Great Leaders Drive Innovation
Adviser and author on growth, innovation, strategy and leadership, Jason Wild is co-founder and CEO of Wild Innovation & Strategy Excellence. He was shortlisted with his co-authors for the Thinkers50 Innovation Award 2025.
Jason is co-author of Genius at Scale: How Great Leaders Drive Innovation (HBR Press, 2026) – a Thinkers50 Best New Management Book for 2026. Through his work he helps leaders and organisations unlock their genius at scale. He has held executive roles at Microsoft, IBM, and Salesforce and led projects in 40 countries from Disney and AT&T to NATO and the City of Paris.
Genius at Scale: How Great Leaders Drive Innovation
A graduate researcher in organisational behaviour at Harvard Business School, Emily Tedards is a doctoral fellow with the Reimagining the Economy Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School and a senior consultant with Paradox Strategies. She was shortlisted with her co-authors for the Thinkers50 Innovation Award 2025.
Emily is co-author of Genius at Scale: How Great Leaders Drive Innovation (HBR Press, 2026) – a Thinkers50 Best New Management Book for 2026. In her work she studies cross-sector collaboration, organisation design, and innovation. She examines how business, government, and civil society solve complex problems including climate change and local economic development.
At a time of accelerating technological change and increasing fragmentation, leaders face a fundamental question: how do we make sense of a rapidly reshaping world — and act with clarity within it?
The Thinkers50 London Summit brings together leading thinkers and practitioners to explore three forces shaping the future of organisations: purpose, technology, and talent. Across a day of ideas, dialogue, and connection, the Summit creates space for leaders to challenge assumptions, exchange perspectives, and build new relationships.
In a fragmented world, purpose provides direction and meaning, informing culture, shaping decisions, and fostering trust with employees, customers, and society. But only if the values it embodies go beyond simplistic platitudes. In our opening session, Jesper Brodin and Paul Polman discuss how companies like IKEA and Unilever use purpose to guide them through uncertainty and change; best-selling author Erin Meyer explores how real dilemmas challenge values to bring corporate culture to life; and CEO, Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli, explains how the ONE Campaign is operationalising purpose in Africa.
AI, platforms, and digital ecosystems are transforming how organisations operate. But how can leaders deploy new technologies at pace, whilst mitigating the risks, and rethinking the organisational architecture? In this session, we hear first-hand from Chief Technology Officer Suresh Venkatarayalu how AI has transformed Honeywell; and from digital anthropologist and best-selling author Rahaf Harfoush on the unexpected ways technology changes the human experience, with profound impacts on organisational life and working relationships.
Purpose and technology matter. But it is talented people who fix problems and turn strategy into reality. In our final session, we look at the challenges facing the next generation of leaders as they strive to simultaneously optimise and operationalise human and machine learning. Joining Anne Morriss, best-selling author of Move Fast & Fix Things, leading CEOs discuss openly how they are rethinking their talent strategies to find new ways to unlock human potential in an era of intelligent machines; and New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Liz Wiseman explains how organisations are unleashing the power of ‘multipliers’ and ‘impact players’ as never before.
for Awards Gala ticket holders
The evening celebrates Leaders50, Thinkers50’s biennial recognition of outstanding leadership in practice.
Selected by the world’s leading management thinkers, the Leaders50 highlights 50 exceptional leaders whose ideas, decisions, and actions are shaping organisations and society.
At the London Gala, the new Leaders50 list will be revealed, alongside the presentation of the Leaders50 Awards, recognising individuals whose leadership stands out for its impact, innovation, and influence.
An opportunity to continue the celebration, connect with fellow guests, and close the evening in conversation.
To guarantee the intimacy and exclusivity Thinkers50 London Summit & Leaders50 Awards Gala attendees have come to expect in one of the most iconic venues in London, tickets are available only by application. Curating the audience in this way will help to shape the nature of the conversation and provide the best networking opportunities for participants.
£1,200.00 + VAT per person
Daytime London Summit access only. Excludes the evening Leaders50 Awards Gala.
£1,500.00 + VAT per person
Daytime London Summit access plus the evening Leaders50 Awards Gala.
Tickets may be cancelled within 30 days of application, up until 30 September 2026. All cancellations must be in writing to . Tickets may be transferred upon request, providing the new name and contact details are emailed to Thinkers50 no later than 30 September. However, the person or organisation liable for payment of the ticket may not be changed. All tickets are strictly non-refundable and non-transferable within 30 days of the event.
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Thinkers50 Limited
The Studio
Highfield Lane
Wargrave RG10 8PZ
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Thinkers50 Limited
The Studio
Highfield Lane
Wargrave RG10 8PZ
United Kingdom
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