Futurist, Best-Selling Author, and CEO of Tomorrow
Mike is the CEO of Tomorrow, a global consultancy on designing companies for the 21st century. He advises leaders on how to thrive in the current era of disruptive technological change. Mike’s bestselling books include Futuretainment and The Dictionary of Dangerous Ideas. His latest is The Algorithmic Leader: How to Be Smart When Machines Are Smarter Than You, where Mike reveals the 10 principles every leader needs to survive and thrive in the algorithmic age. Each week he interviews provocative thinkers, innovators and troublemakers on his weekly podcast, ‘Between Worlds’. A true nomad, Mike travels over 300 days a year worldwide, researching trends, collecting innovation case studies and presenting on the future of business.
Thought Leader
Rather than focusing on the distant future, Mike takes an anthropological approach – scanning the near horizon for emerging technologies and disruptive shifts in human behavior, and then translating these into pragmatic plans for business transformation. A prolific writer and commentator, Mike’s views have appeared in a wide range of international publications including BusinessWeek, Forbes and The Wall Street Journal.
Global Nomad
Constantly traveling the world for the best ideas, Mike spends more than 300 days a year on the road interviewing innovators, entrepreneurs and corporate revolutionaries to provide his clients and audiences with a fresh and compelling vision of tomorrow’s opportunities.
Corporate Experience
Mike has been a pioneer in the digital space since the 1990s, running both successful start-up ventures as well as holding senior leadership positions in established media organizations. With a background in corporate law and management consulting, he began his career at XT3, a spin out from McKinsey and one of the first digital consulting firms created to help major companies embrace the embryonic Web. During the first dotcom boom, Mike launched the technology publishing group internet.com in Australia, which went on to become the leading local technology news and events platform in the country.
Entrepreneur
He also founded and ran Jupiter Research in the Asia Pacific, one of the first research agencies to track the early adoption of e-commerce and digital business models by online consumers. During this period, he was recognized as one of Australia’s “Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30.”
Digital Strategist
After his experiences in the Web space, Mike spent five years in senior strategy roles at News Corporation where he helped shape the digital strategy for both their Australian newspaper and Asian TV divisions. Directly engaged by the CEO of Star TV to provide the company with a digital roadmap for their operations, he began his in-depth research into the fast growth markets of Asia.
Tomorrow
While in Hong Kong and inspired by the dramatic changes taking place in China and India, Mike founded his latest venture, Tomorrow – an innovation research lab focused on emerging technology and disruptive consumer behavior. Always in demand for his fresh insights and practical future-focused strategies, Mike has advised the CEOs and senior management teams at multinational companies including: the BBC, Fujifilm, Richemont, MSN, Star TV, Televisa, Philips, and HSBC.
Book
In addition to his corporate profile, Mike is a published photographer and supporter of the Arts. His photographic images from his travels around the world helped his book, FUTURETAINMENT, win an Art Director’s Club award in NYC. He has also served on the Director’s Circle at the Australian Museum of Contemporary Art.
As a global nomad and consumer trend scout, Mike does live research, in the trenches, with big corporations and entrepreneurs all over the world bringing a truly global perspective to every event.
The Future-Proof Organization (Virtual Presentation)
COVID-19 is not only changing our way of life, it will hasten the arrival of a radical new future of work. While for many of us working from home has been a new and unexpected challenge - that is just the start of a much bigger transformation set to reshape the nature of business itself. In order to survive, every organization will have to virtualize. Whether it be serving customers through digital channels or leveraging AI, algorithms and automation to ensure business continuity - we are likely to experience in the next twelve months, a decade's worth of change. Not every business will make it, but those that do will never be the same again. And for leaders, now more than ever, is a time to upgrade their capabilities, embrace new technologies, and reimagine what they do. Mike Walsh's inspiring new keynote presentation will offer audiences an insight into the organizations and leaders that are successfully navigating this period of change, and how to create a playbook for their own transformation. Becoming future-proof is more than just about getting through the current crisis - it is about being ready for the new world that awaits us on the other side.
New Rules For A New World (Virtual Presentation)
COVID-19 is not only changing our way of life, it will hasten the arrival of a radical new future of work. While for many of us working from home has been a new and unexpected challenge - that is just the start of a much bigger transformation set to reshape the nature of business itself. In order to survive, every organization will have to virtualize. Whether it be serving customers through digital channels or leveraging AI, algorithms and automation to ensure business continuity - we are likely to experience in the next twelve months, a decade's worth of change. Not every business will make it, but those that do will never be the same again. And for leaders, now more than ever, is a time to upgrade their capabilities, embrace new technologies, and reimagine what they do. Mike Walsh's inspiring new keynote presentation will offer audiences an insight into the organizations and leaders that are successfully navigating this period of change, and how to create a playbook for their own transformation. Becoming future-proof is more than just about getting through the current crisis - it is about being ready for the new world that awaits us on the other side.
The Algorithmic Leader
We live in an age of wonder – cars that drive themselves, platforms that anticipate our needs, and robots capable of everything from advanced manufacturing to complex surgery. Automation, algorithms and AI are transforming not only business, but every facet of daily life. While many fear that robots will take their jobs, the rise of machine intelligence begs a more important question: what is the true potential of human intelligence in the 21st century? In this inspiring keynote, Mike Walsh, futurist and author of ‘The Dictionary Of Dangerous Ideas’ will present a vivid portrait of a brave new world orchestrated by machines that think, and how tomorrow’s leaders can upgrade their capabilities to survive and thrive in an age of accelerating technology. Audiences will walk away with an insight into the companies, technologies and global forces shaping the age of machine intelligence, as well as a set of tailored next actions on how to redesign their organizations, reimagine their roles and reinvent the way they make decisions.
Designing Your Business for the 21st Century
‘Most companies are simply not designed to survive. They become successful on the basis of one big idea or breakthrough product,’ says CEO MikeWalsh of Tomorrow, a global consultancy that helps design 21st century businesses. ‘The companies that will thrive in the near future are the ones not only embracing change but breaking the rules.’ Companies built to survive the future are no accident. They are a result of deliberate business design decisions smart leaders are making today. In his ongoing research on the world’s most innovative companies, Mike has organized these decisions into seven strategic priorities – that he will explore with audiences as a roadmap for their own reinvention. In this keynote, Walsh will outline the mega-trends shaping the future of business and consumer behaviour, and the lessons learned from successful Fortune 500 companies on leveraging disruptive innovation, adopting a data-driven mindset and leading change through digital transformation.
The Rise of Generation AI
The next generation of consumers will not only be radically different to anything we have known, they will reshape the future in their own image. Forget Millennials. It is their kids we should be worrying about. Generation AI, born between 2010 and 2025, are the first generation natural born to the Algorithmic Age, a world in which all of their experiences have been personalized and designed for them with data and artificial intelligence. As young consumers today they are behind the meteoric rise of Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite, TikTok and YouTube Kids. As young adults in the 2030s, their expectations and behavioral patterns will transform everything from healthcare to retail, education to financial services. This is their story. In this keynote, attendees will learn: - What makes Generation AI so different, and their unique approach to play, entertainment and learning. - Life in the 2030s, and what a decade of accelerated innovation means for the future of interfaces, experiences and interactions. - The new skills and capabilities we will need, not only to parent this generation, but to engage them as our customers.
All Mike Walsh Books
The Algorithmic Leader: How to Be Smart When Machines Are Smarter Than You
Purchase Book"Mike is highly inquisitive and original, not only in his thinking but also in his presentation, taking complex issues and turning them into simple and digestible themes. Mike is very valuable at helping challenge whatever your conventional wisdom is and in setting out a clear set of views on how things might shape in months and years to come. I recommend him highly."
- | NINEMSN
"Mike was a pleasure to work with. His presentation was perfectly pitched reflecting his research prior to the event to tailor his presentation to our audience and he also took the time to meet with some of them prior to the presentation. We would highly recommend Mike to anyone interested and would love to work with him again."
- | ROCHE PRODUCTS PTY LIMITED
"Mike Walsh can observe today’s consumers as if they are already living in tomorrow’s world. He understands the changing dynamics of media – fundamental changes in content creation, distribution and consumption and in the economic realities that underpin both traditional and new media businesses. He understands the structural shift that is occurring."
- | FAIRFAX MEDIA