Gerd Leonhard

CEO of the Futures Agency

Gerd Leonhard is a well-known Futurist and Author, a highly influential Keynote Speaker, Think-Tank Leader & Advisor, and the CEO of TheFuturesAgency. Gerd’s background is in music and the music business; he spent 12 years working as a professional guitar player, composer and producer. He then caught the Internet bug and became a digital media entrepreneur, serving as CEO with several Internet start-ups, based in San Francisco.

Gerd Leonhard

CEO of the Futures Agency

Gerd Leonhard is a well-known Futurist and Author, a highly influential Keynote Speaker, Think-Tank Leader & Advisor, and the CEO of TheFuturesAgency. Gerd’s background is in music and the music business; he spent 12 years working as a professional guitar player, composer and producer. He then caught the Internet bug and became a digital media entrepreneur, serving as CEO with several Internet start-ups, based in San Francisco.

Biography

In 2002, Gerd returned to Europe and started his career as Futurist, Keynote Speaker and Strategic Advisor. Gerd is considered a leading expert on topics such as digital business models, the networked society, a sustainable business ecology, social media and social communications. Gerd is a fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts (London) and a member of the World Future Society.

Topics

  • Discovering the Future
  • The Digital Transformation of Business and Society
  • The Future of the Internet: Big Data, Big Brother, Big Tech, Big Telco and Big Gov…?
  • Innovation
  • Disruptive Technological Change and the Future of the Professions

Publications

  • Technology vs Humanity (2016)
  • The Future of Content (2011)
  • Friction is Fiction (2010)
  • Music 2.0 (2008)
  • The End of Control (2007)
  • The Future of Music (2005)

Awards

  • Listed by Wired Magazine as one of the top 100 most influential people in Europe (2015)
  • In 2006, The Wall Street Journal called Gerd ‘one of the leading Media Futurists in the World’
  • Berklee College’s ‘Quincy Jones Award’ (1985)

Testimonials

“Working with Gerd was an excellent experience, and he definitely pushed our executives’ thinking forward. Not only did he outline major technological and societal trends affecting our business, he did so in a way that was engaging and personal.”

“Gerd was this year’s opening speaker at InnoTown – Next Technologies. From the first contact Gerd was a pleasure to work with, and his talk was an absolute thrill, with his high energy presentation style and great visuals. He received top-notch ratings from the InnoTown-crowd.”

“Gerd provided amazing collaboration and partnership during our recent futurist-focused client event in Southern, California….our client was thrilled and the attendees took away a great wealth of information that will surely help them increase revenues and surpass their competitors using the technology-focused information provided during his presentation.”

“Gerd was an absolute pleasure to work with and managed to captivate our audience with his thoughts on digital transformation. As the opening keynote, this was the perfect way to kick things off and get attendees to really engage with the theme of the conference. He was extremely flexible in his approach and worked with us closely to ensure key topics and messaging were included within the content of his presentation. Our whole team looks forward to having the opportunity to work with Gerd again and hearing more about his thoughts on the future.”

“We’ve hired Gerd a number of times over the years to keynote our events. Gerd is super professional, collaborative, efficient, absolute pleasure to work with. Perhaps more importantly he is also an inspirational speaker who not only gets tech/marketing but also the bigger picture around society, behaviour and business. And he used to be a professional guitarist – what more could you want?”

“CommunicAsia, Asia’s largest ICT trade exhibition and conference is truly honored to have Gerd Leonhard as one of our keynote speakers for this year. Gerd’s addition to the Summit has been breathtaking and inspirational. His visionary address on The Next 5 years in Global Digital Transformation truly captivated the audience. Thank you for being with us!”

“Gerd was the opening keynote speaker at our social media and content marketing event and made a huge impact to all 400 listeners. People discussed and quoted him through-out the day and in many blog posts afterwords. We organizers were all very happy about this.”

“Gerd came in remotely and lit up our Huawei Cloud Conference, everyone was talking about his thought provoking insights throughout the rest of the day!”

“Gerd made a great contribution and was a pleasure to work with on our FODM event. His session was a fantastic addition to the programme and a great success.”

“Gerd Leonhard distinguishes from other futurists trough his emphaisis on the human factor in the story between man and machine. While some focus on predicting what technology will bring soon, he actively searches a positive story for humanity and he clearly sets limits on technology.”

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