Talwar Rohit

Rohit delivers keynote speeches, executive education, consultancy, research, and futurefocused leadership mentoring to clients internationally. He works with major corporations, governments, professional services, investors, associations, business schools, and NGOs to help them anticipate, prepare for and create the future. He has delivered over 1500 keynote speeches and executive workshops in 70+ countries on six continents. Rohit leads Fast Future Publishing – delivering a series of multi-contributor books exploring the emerging future. He is the co-author of Designing Your Future, lead editor and a contributing author for The Future of Business, and editor of Technology vs. Humanity. He is also a co-editor and contributor for the recently published Beyond Genuine Stupidity – Ensuring AI Serves Humanity, and The Future Reinvented – Reimagining Life, Society, and Business. He is also working on two forthcoming books – Unleashing Human Potential – The Future of AI in Business, and 50:50 – Scenarios for the Next 50 Years.

The Big Picture
Global Forces and Scenarios

An overview of the major political, security, economic, sociodemographic environmental, scientific, technological, and commercial forces, trends, ideas and developments shaping the next 5-20 years and the scenarios that could emerge.

The Future Reinvented – Reimagining Life, Society, and Business

Drawing on this recent book, Rohit explores how our notions of the future are themselves being reinvented. He challenges us to reimagine how life, society, key industries, and the conduct of business could be transformed by a combination of radical technological, scientific, social, and economic developments shaping the decade ahead. The Future Reinvented offers unique snapshots of different aspects of a future in which the very tenets of reality are undergoing deep and vital transformations. Rohit’s talks on The Future Reinvented cover transformations in life and society, industries, and business, and present holistic future scenarios that encourage strategic thinking about what lies beyond the hype. Using a futurist perspective, The Future Reinvented offers glimpses of the future across a range of business sectors such as legal, automotive, and sales as well as in different areas of everyday life including retirement, education, and health. The audience are presented with vivid imagery which brings to life a number of different possible futures. These include workplace scenarios of people performing side by side with artificial intelligence or robotic colleagues; humans obtaining physical enhancements to become smarter, stronger, or more psychologically resilient; and strategies for how we might live in a “post-jobs world.” The presentation provides a powerful foundation for futures thinking and scenario planning in both a personal and organizational context. Rohit also identifies early warning signals and signposts of critical emerging changes and developments on the horizon that could shape the next future.

City, Country, and Region-Specific Futures

Exploring future forces and scenarios in the context of particular regions e.g. Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe, Australasia, and the Middle East. Examining plausible futures for specific cities and countries e.g. London 2025, scenarios for the US under President Trump, China, India, Russia, and a post-Brexit UK.

The Future of Local Economies – Stronger, Sustainable, and People Centric Strategies

This talk explores how to drive high impact local economic development strategies that take account of the forces of changing and emerging future scenarios. It examines how to attract and retain the industries of the future, compete in domestic and global markets, enhance the local skill base, and ensure a vibrant, inclusive and sustainable community in the near, medium and longer-term.

The Future of Business
Ensuring A Very Human Future for Business

In the face of accelerating change, the digitization of business and the rise of AI, how can businesses stand aside from the crowd and create successful people centred strategies that will enable them to retain their differentiation and market edge?

Global Megatrends and The Future of Business, Work, and The Workplace.

What are the forces, technologies and ideas driving the future of business? What scenarios, strategies, business models, organisational approaches, and ways of working are emerging in response? How can we navigate our business in turbulent times and build the capacity for rapid adaptation, experimentation and learning?

This talk is designed to help leaders from global corporations through to start-ups think about the future of business and the changes in mindset and behaviour that will be required to navigate a fast-changing world. The next five years will see a revolution taking place in the way business is conducted. Powerful megatrends and exponentially advancing technologies are combining with disruptive new ideas to drive radically new commercial strategies, business models, organisation designs, and workplaces. The distinctions and boundaries will start to blur between large global firms and highly adaptive start-ups.

New business ecosystems will emerge, new relationships will develop between employers and employees, and technologies such as AI will transform our productivity and streamline our processes. Old jobs and roles will be automated, new ones will emerge, and the best firms will harness technology to perform routine tasks and free up their staff to focus on more creative and customer focused activities that generate new opportunities. Indeed, over that timeframe, traditional notions of work and jobs might start to be challenged as people find a different balance between employment and leisure time. Concepts such as guaranteed basic incomes and services, robot taxes, and ethical technology charters will all be part of the business agenda.

Innovating into the Future

This highly tailored session explores the latest thinking and case examples on the innovation process and how organisations are using innovation to respond to emerging trends and to help shape the future. Key topics include:

• Current trends in innovation
• Using foresight to shape the front end of innovation
• Case examples of innovation from relevant sectors around the world
• Exponential innovation – driving step-change improvements through radical ideas and smart solutions
• Critical technologies enabling future innovation
• Developing key innovation skills across the workforce
• Embedding an innovation culture.

Tapping the Opportunities in the Industries of the Future

The global economy could grow from around USTn to US0Tn over the next 7-10 years. More than half of that growth will come from sectors and businesses that are only just emerging or that have not yet been created. This represents an incredible opportunity for entrepreneurial start-ups and global corporations alike. Those who are willing to get close to these new sectors as they emerge could realise incredible growth opportunities and secure their futures. From autonomous vehicles, drones, and intelligent assistants, through to synthetic materials, nanotechnology, and human enhancement – the growth potential is immense.

This talk will highlight a range of sectors that could grow to be worth US1Tn or more over the next decade and highlight practical strategies for identifying and developing opportunities in these emerging industries.How can we change the mindset in the organisation to develop innovative new offerings that support the changing needs of current businesses and consumers? How can we adapt to succeed in fledgling sectors? How can we harness new and emerging technologies to help in the pursuit of exponential innovation and growth?

Key Drivers and Scenarios for Specific Industry Sectors

A Customised talk exploring the future of a particular sector such as financial services, legal, professional services, IT, manufacturing, infrastructure, aviation, travel, tourism and transport.

The Future of Learning and Development

In this fast-paced talk, Rohit highlights how learning and talent development will become central to the future of business survival and growth in a fast-changing world. His talk explores the key forces that are shaping the operating environment for business and the implications for learning and development (L&D). Key topics covered include:

• The forces of change shaping the future of business
• The central role of L&D in helping organisations navigate and grow in rapidly changing and uncertain business environment
• How L&D strategies and approaches are evolving to support the needs of the learner
• The growing integration of L&D and talent management
• New theories of learning and approaches to L&D delivery from nursery to adult education
• The power of social learning
• Key technologies such as AI that will become a growing part of learning ecosystems
• Ensuring that technology is there to serve the learner
• Raising digital literacy / technological awareness and developing a ‘new world’ mind set across the business
• Supporting self-directed learning and the embedding of learning components in business applications and workflow tools
• Evolving the culture of learning to meet future needs.

A Very Human Future for Hospitality

In a world increasingly obsessed with technology, how do we leverage it to enable people to excel and a help our brand stand out. In this fast paced tour of the next decade, global hospitality futurist Rohit Talwar will explore the following key aspects of the emerging future for hospitality businesses:

• The forces and factors that could shape the hospitality landscape over the next decade (economic, political, socio-demographic, environmental)
• The impact of changing societal needs and expectations on hospitality
• The potential transformative role of exponential technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, sensors, Internet of Things, blockchain, cryptocurrency, immersive media, hyperconnectivity, and cloud technology
• The evolution of hotel design
• Sustainable business models in a decade of change
• How can we ensure a very human future that differentiates our proposition in an increasingly competitive marketplace?

Banking and Financial Services

Rohit leads a continuous programme of research on the future of financial services. He delivers keynote speeches around the world on current disruptions, emerging developments, and future scenarios for banking, investment, and financial services. These encompass everything from global change drivers, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Blockchain through to FinTech, InvesTech, RegTech, InsureTech, PropTech, cryptocurrencies, asset class innovation, and investment trends. Example topics include:

The Future of Financial Services – Disruptive Trends Enabling Exponential Growth and Improvement

Rohit Talwar believes that whilst there’s a lot of excitement about the current wave of digital innovation and Fintech ventures, they are unlikely to drive truly exponential growth. He will explain how the underlying disruptive technologies such as AI, Blockchain, and social media can offer the potential to facilitate genuinely exponential thinking to enable improvements in efficiency, customer acquisition rates, new products, and revenue growth. Key topics to be addressed include:

• Driving forces for change
• Understanding the current wave of FinTech ventures
• How technologies such as AI and blockchain could evolve in the next five years and the potential applications in banking in and financial services
• The evolution of asset classes, mediums of value and exchange, stock markets, and trading platforms
• Now and next in the evolution of cryptocurrencies, ICOs, Stablecoins, and the new distributed financial services
• How disruptive technologies are enabling the transformation and creation of new industry sectors
• How can financial services tap into the resulting exponential growth opportunity?

The Future of Banking and Financial Services – Smart Strategies for an Open World

As the banking world dives deep deep deep into the Open Banking ocean to deliver the technology requirements and meet regulatory commitments, it is critical that we stand back and ensure that we maintain clear sight of the big picture of how we want our organisations to evolve in a rapidly changing world – where there will be literally no fixed points around which to anchor our strategies. So how can we win in a game where the rules of play, the participants, and the game itself are changing constantly?
In this fast paced, entertaining, and highly thought provoking keynote speech, global futurist Rohit Talwar will help us to explore how the world beyond banking and financial services might continue to change and evolve in the next five years and what this could mean for our strategies, business models, service offerings, organisational structures, human capabilities, and technology solutions. Key topics that could be explored would include:

Government and Regulation- How might financial services be impacted by developments such as global power shifts, new trading models, declining trust, privacy, ethics, security, country mergers, and algorithmic politics and government?

Socio-Economics- How might national economic and financial policies and governance be impacted by demographic shifts, changing social attitudes, evolving thinking on capitalism and debt, economic abundance, new economic paradigms, cartel capitalism, and the cryptocurrency movement?

The Distributed Future of Financial Services – The potential evolution of open banking, cryptocurrencies, ICOs, Stablecoins, and the new distributed financial services models. The evolution of asset classes, mediums of value and exchange, stock markets, and trading platforms.

Science and Technology- What are the potential implications for business, society, and financial services of exponential developments in the fields of Fintech, workflow automation, AI, chatbots, intelligent assistants, digital twins, robotics, digital currencies, blockchain, democratisation of capital markets, IoT, big data, cloud computing, human augmentation, 3D / 4D printing, 5G, synthetic biology, next generation computing, vertical farming, laboratory grown food, autonomous vehicles, DIY healthcare, educational transformation, process automation, automated construction, new materials, cybersecurity, and immersive media?

Tomorrow’s Customers – How might the next waves of exponential technological advances drive the emergence of new business sectors, change customer requirements, and shape the nature of financial services products, marketing, and service delivery?

The Exponential Opportunity – How can the journey to Open Banking help facilitate exponential innovation and growth?

Disruption to the Model – How far could the core banking model be disrupted by new thinking powered by exponential technologies, how quickly might new jobs emerge to fill the gaps created by technological unemployment, what policy options might arise e.g. guaranteed basic incomes and services, robot taxes, corporate employment quotas, etc.?

Ensuring A Very Human Future – How can we ensure that we use technology to unleash human potential and develop strategies that will truly differentiate us in the marketplace?

Winning in Turbulence – A transformation roadmap and five critical actions to ensure a sustainable and vibrant future for the organisation.

Leading the Next Future in Financial Services

• Key drivers of change and emerging scenarios for society and business in the next 5-10 years
• What are the next wave social, economic, and technological disruptions that could impact the financial services sector?
• Where next for FinTech, RegTech, InsureTech, FundsTech, and InvesTech?
• Now and next in the evolution of cryptocurrencies, ICOs, Stablecoins, and the new distributed financial services
• The great convergence – how might the convergence of exponential technologies such as AI, blockchain, big data, quantum, cloud, hyperconnectivity, and mobile change the shape of financial services
• The evolution of asset classes, mediums of value and exchange, stock markets, and trading platforms
• How do we ensure that our organizations stay flexible, responsive, innovative, opportunity focused, and growth-centric as global turbulence increases, and the pace of automation accelerates?
• How do we find the right mix of people and technology to enable efficiency and innovation?
• What are the implications of all these forces of change for leading tomorrow’s business?

A Smarter Future for Financial Services? Tapping AI’s Potential to Drive Exponential Growth and Improvement

Global futurist Rohit Talwar believes that whilst there’s a lot of excitement about the current wave of digital innovation and Fintech ventures, most are unlikely to drive truly exponential growth. He will explain the current challenges and then go on to discuss how the underlying disruptive technologies such as AI and Blockchain could offer the potential to facilitate genuinely exponential thinking to enable improvements in marketing effectiveness, customer acquisition rates, new products, and revenue growth. Key topics to be addressed include:

• Driving forces for change
• Understanding the current wave of AI FinTech ventures and applications
• How technologies such as AI and blockchain could evolve in the next five years and the potential applications in banking in and financial services
• Now and next in the evolution of cryptocurrencies, ICOs, Stablecoins, and the new distributed financial services
• The evolution of asset classes, mediums of value and exchange, stock markets, and trading platforms
• How these advances can be harnessed to drive marketing effectiveness
• How can financial services tap into the resulting exponential growth opportunity?

The Future of Crypto and Online Investment

Over the last few years, there has been considerable excitement in the online investment space with the rise of crowdfunding, cryptocurrencies, and Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) in particular. However, the sector is advancing rapidly, and the products and investment strategies are likely to evolve in unexpected and dramatic ways in the next few years. Governments and regulators have been caught off guard and their responses could have as dramatic an impact as technology advances and disruptive thinking from within and outside the investment sector. This fast-paced talk is designed to help investors, investees, and advisors take a broad look at the factors that could shape the near future of online investing over the next five years. Key topics to be explored include:

• Key political, economic, regulatory, social, and market consideration shaping the online investment space
• A likely timeline of developments in AI, blockchain, security, and hyperconnectivity that could drive online investment
• Future evolutions of open and distributed finance, crowd funding, ICOs, TAOs, DAICOs, Stabelcoins, and other online investment options
• The evolution of asset classes, mediums of value and exchange, stock markets, and trading platforms
• New concepts we could see materialize in the online investment space
• Scenarios for online investment 2020-2022

Exponential Technologies

Artificial Intelligence(AI) and Other Emerging Technologies

What are they and how fast are they developing? What are the potential benefits, impacts and implications for society, business and government? What are other people doing with them? How should we start our journey with AI and other potentially disruptive emerging technologies? How can we address the broader strategic, organisational and human impacts and implications?

Beyond Genuine Stupidity – Ensuring AI Serves Humanity

This presentation draws on Fast Future’s recent book that explores critical emerging issues arising from the rapid pace of development in artificial intelligence (AI). Rohit argues for a forward looking and conscious approach to the development and deployment of AI to ensure that it genuinely serves humanity’s best interest. In his fast-paced and inspiring talks, Rohit presents a compelling case to get beyond the genuine stupidity of narrow, short term, and alarmist thinking and look at AI from a long-term holistic perspective. The reality is that AI will impact current sectors and jobs—and hopefully enable new ones.
Rohit explains that a smart approach requires us to think about and experiment with strategies for adopting and absorbing the impacts of AI—encompassing education systems, reskilling the workforce, unemployment and guaranteed basic incomes, robot taxes, job creation, encouraging new ventures, research and development to enable tomorrow’s industries, and dealing with the mental health impacts. In his talks, Rohit presents a range of AI case examples and explores the potential impacts on sectors ranging from healthcare and automotive, to legal and education. The implications for business itself are also examined from leadership and HR, to sales and business ethics.

Harnessing the Rise of the Machines – The AI Revolution and the Path to Superintelligence

This presentation draws on a new book by Rohit and his colleagues at Fast Future that explores critical emerging issues arising from the rapid pace of development in artificial intelligence (AI). Rohit argues for a forward looking and conscious approach to the development and deployment of AI to ensure that it genuinely serves humanity’s best interest. In this fast-paced and inspiring talk, Rohit will present a compelling case to get beyond the genuine stupidity of narrow, short term, and alarmist thinking and look at AI from a long-term holistic perspective. The reality is that AI will impact current sectors and jobs—and hopefully enable new ones. Key topics to be covered will include:

• Seven Steps to Enlightenment – Key stages in the evolution of AI from Expert Systems to Superintelligence and The Singularity
• A Rapidly Changing Reality – Likely future developments in the application of AI over the next 20 years
• From Tedious to Transformative – How AI is currently being deployed
• Addressing the Human impacts of AI— Cultural and ethical challenges, rethinking education systems, reskilling the workforce, unemployment and guaranteed basic incomes, and dealing with the mental health impacts
• Preparing for the AI Economy – International competition, robot taxes, nationalisation of AI, job creation, research and development for tomorrow’s sectors, encouraging new ventures and the post-AI economy.

The Future of Artificial Intelligence – Development, Impacts, Ethics, and Regulations

Artificial intelligence (AI) is progressing at an exponential pace that runs the risk of leaving us all playing catch-up. Individuals, society, civil society groups, businesses, governments, and regulators are all trying to make sense of the technology, where it might, be heading and what it could all mean for the way we use it and regulate its applications across diverse domains. This talk is aimed at those trying to prepare for impact of AI from a societal, ethical, and regulatory perspective. Key topics to be covered would include:

• What is AI, how is it being deployed today, and how might it evolve in the next five to ten years?
• What are the adoption trends in the telecommunications and media sectors?
• What are the key potential impacts, implications, risks, and privacy concerns for individuals, society, business, and government?
• How is competition playing out over AI between firms and nations?
• What efforts are being made to introduce codes of ethics and regulatory frameworks around AI and robotics?
• How might AI be deployed in the regulatory context?
• How can we approach the issues of privacy, ethics, and regulation in a forward thinking manner that takes account of how AI technology might evolve and be adopted in the emerging future?

Disruptive Exponential Technologies – The Next Five Years

Our lives, our societies, our businesses, and our countries are being transformed through the application of truly transformational technologies that are forcing us to rethink every aspect of life on the planet. However, the changes we’ve experienced so far are nothing compared to what could happen in the next five years as exponentially advancing fields of science and technology start to combine and drive successive waves of disruption. This talk will highlight the expected advances, applications, and implications over the next five years in critical fields such as AI, robotics, intelligent assistants, autonomous vehicles, Internet of Thins, cloud computing, 5G, blockchain, cryptocurrency, cybersecurity, immersive media such augmented and virtual reality, next generation computing, hyperconnectivity, 3D / 4D printing, synthetic biology, human augmentation, vertical farming, DIY healthcare, automated construction, and new materials.

Wild Frontiers – the Future of the Internet

Global Futurist Rohit Talwar will explore how the internet could evolve over the next decade. He will highlight the key social, economic, commercial and technological forces and developments that will shape the operating environment and then go on to examine how the capabilities, functionality and access modes for the internet could evolve. He will highlight possible scenarios for how the management and governance of the web could evolve and highlighting the implications, challenges and choices for business, government, and the internet services sector.

An Immersion in the Augmented Future

The future is being shaped by powerful forces of change and this fast paced presentation will explore how they are shaping the future of business and society and the role immersive technologies such as Augmented and Virtual Reality can play in helping us understand and respond to change. Key topics to be addressed will include:

• Forces shaping the future of business and society
• The impacts and potential of exponential technologies such as AI, immersive tools, blockchain, and the Internet of Things
• How we can harness the power of immersive technologies to help us understand and prepare for a world in constant transformation
• Creating a Very Human Future – harnessing the technologies in service of people.

Additional Topics include:

• Aliens, Barbarians and Magicians: New business behaviours in a disruptive world
• Emerging global landscapes: Future global economic, political, social, environmental and business scenarios
• Mayhem, Magic and Muscle – A practical business framework for responding strategically to a rapidly changing world
• Emerging Technologies: How advances in science and technology could transform society, business and the human brain and body.
• Four Faces of Future Disruption – Business and societal implications of rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Currency, Peer to Peer Networks, and the Internet of Things
• Empires of Tomorrow – Emerging industries and their implications for individuals, society, business, government and the future of work, employment, and professions
• The Future of Professional Services – How service firms can transform themselves to survive and thrive in the tomorrow’s business environment
• New Horizons: The future of aviation, travel, tourism, hotels, and live events
• Disrupted – A case study on how Fast Future Publishing is challenging every aspect of thinking and practice across the sector

NEW BOOK AND KEYNOTES

A Very Human Future – Enriching Humanity in a Digitized World.

The book and keynote set out to provide positive ideas on how to address the issues we’ve been hearing about from politicians, businesses leaders, and individuals around the world. They share common concerns about humanity’s future in the face of artificial intelligence (AI) and digitization.
Key themes In the book and keynotes:

• Exponential Technologies
  How might exponential technologies such as AI evolve over the next two decade and impact society, business, industry sectors, and government?
• Future of Work
  What are the implications for the way work will be organised and executed and the outlook for jobs in the future?
• People First
  With powerful technological shifts reshaping our world and straining the old social fabric, how can we keep humanity at the centre of the story?
• Policy Priorities
  What societal, political, and economic priorities are required, so that we avoid dehumanizing ourselves and future generations
• Enriching Humanity
  How can we harness intense technological bursts of possibility to bring about a better world for all its inhabitants?