Alec Ross

Mastered topics

Cyber Security as business enabler

New economic and social business model in post Covid-19 era

How AI and Automation will impact the future

Social Responsabilty and Renewable Energy

ANSWERS FROM THE FUTURE

Digital and in-presence talks powered by Bologna Business School to inform, inspire and provide effective tools to the corporate world.

Experts from different industries and fields disseminate ad-hoc contents in the form of on-demand speech: from internal business conferences, congress with clients to Talks for top management. Alec Ross, Former Senior Advisor for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and BBS Distinguished Visiting Professor is the first speaker but many others will soon inspire your corporate audience.

Alec Ross is a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Bologna Business School and the author of the New York Times best-seller, The Industries of the Future which has been translated into 24 languages and been a best-seller on 4 continents.

He is currently at work on a book about the collision that has taken place at the intersection of government, business and citizens which will publish in 2021.
He is a Board Partner at Amplo, a global venture capital firm and sits on the board of directors or advisors for companies in the fields of technology, finance, education, human capital and cybersecurity.

He has served as a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Johns Hopkins University and as a Senior Fellow at the Columbia University School of International & Public Affairs.
His writing has appeared in publications including The Wall Street Journal and Foreign Policy. His academic writing has appeared as the journal cover articles in publications including the SAIS Review of International Affairs and the NATO Review.

During the Obama Administration, he served as Senior Advisor for Innovation to the Secretary of State, a role created for him to help modernize the practice of diplomacy and bring innovative solutions to advance America’s foreign policy interests.

Alec served as the Convener for the Technology & Media Policy Committee on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and served on the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition Team.

He co-founded and helped lead a technology-focused social enterprise and grew it from modest origins in a basement into a global organization serving millions of low-income
people, with programs on four continents.

AMONG RECENT RECOGNITIONS:

U.S. Department of State Distinguished Honor Award Oxford University Internet & Society Award
Top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy Magazine TriBeCa Film Festival Book of the Year Award

SPEECHES

Industries Of The Future – TEDx Baltimore
Alec Ross on the Industries of the Future – The RSA Global Rebellion – PopTech

BOOKS

The Industries of the Future

Recent speech topics

The Decade Ahead 2020-2030

The next ten years are going to be even more disruptive than the last ten. What are the industries and businesses that are going to shake the marketplace? From artificial intelligence, 5G and super computing to the life sciences and robotics, Alec Ross describes the changes which are going to impact our future, and examines the cultural, political and demographic contexts out of which this change is emerging, for good and ill.

The Impact of Geopolitics on Markets and the Economy

The impact of geopolitics on business is greater today than any time since 1945. Doing business across borders is growing more complicated, perilous and prone to near-instant change. Today’s business leaders need new strategies to understand and manage geopolitical risk. Alec Ross has served as an advisor to Presidents, Prime Ministers and CEOs and provides guidance for leaders trying to make sense out of our increasingly chaotic world.

Innovation, Automation, and Education in Tomorrow’s Economy

How will increased automation impact labor market in developing and developed economies around the world? What should companies and entire industries be doing to benefit from the growing power of artificial intelligence, robotics and machine learning while safeguarding the interests of workers? How should we think about educating our children and retraining our employees to ensure that they can compete and succeed in tomorrow’s economy? Alec Ross confronted these questions during his tenure in government and in his global best-seller, The Industries of the Future. Ross frames the issues that will be at the forefront of national and global conversation over the next several years, and offers practical ideas and inspiration focused on ensuring that growth fueled by innovation will benefit our companies and workers.

The road forward for the USA and Europe

The transatlantic relationship is marked by more uncertainty that has been the case since the 1940s. The NSA revelations undermined trust and brought into prominence conflict over issues ranging from privacy to big data to state sovereignty. The election of Donald Trump resulted in a fundamental break with the decades-long alliances and assumptions. Alec Ross will share his analysis of what the road forward holds for the United States and Europe, and its impact on markets, firms and investors.

The car crash between Business, Government & Everyday People

Today’s global companies are now more like countries than companies. On issues ranging from privacy to sustainability to diversity to equity and workers’ rights, we are more governed by companies than we are by governments. This trend has already disrupted geopolitics, and it is set to continue. Whether the future looks more like Star Trek or more like Mad Max comes down to a very human question that we cannot outsource to algorithms: will we come together to re-write our social contract and re-set the equilibrium defining the rights and responsibilities between companies, the governing and the governed? Alec Ross explains the current car crash at the intersection of business, government and everyday people and provides information and inspiration for how to navigate the road forward.

10 innovations that will change all of our lives in the next 10 years

We have the Internet and smart phones, what’s next? In an informative and entertaining tour de horizon, Alec Ross identifies and explains 10 innovations that will come to market in the next 10 years which will impact all of our lives and work and home.

Futureproofing Our Children: Parenting and Leading in a Changing World

In the research for his global best-seller The Industries of the Future, more than 100 leaders were asked the question “What are the skills and attributes that today’s young people need to compete and succeed in tomorrow’s world?” Ross combines the wisdom from that research with an examination of future labor markets and the future or work to provide a powerful, often shocking set of recommendations and guidance for parents and leaders helping to steward the next generation. Based on his extensive travels and his observations of how other countries thrive (or sputter), Alec offers his analysis of the forces changing the world and the best opportunities for progress, specifically for people in business and for those committed to improving the quality of life throughout the world. From the refugee camps of the Congo to the battlefields of the Middle East to the board rooms of Asia, Alec Ross shares experiences that give his audience a constructive way of appreciating how global factors will affect the way we live, now and tomorrow.

Managing large-scale innovation

After co-founding a technology start-up in a basement and growing it into a global organization, Alec Ross managed a large-scale process for making the U.S. government more innovative. He led a remarkable turnaround at the U.S. State Department which a study by Deloitte and the Partnership for Public Service scored as the State Department the most innovation-friendly culture of any cabinet-level agency and a Brookings Institution study described “State’s remarkable emergence as the leading innovator in its field.” Today, Alec is one of the world’s most sought-after innovation advisors and shares his secrets for how to drive innovation with entrepreneurs still in the basement to executives leading the world’s largest and most global enterprises.

Cyber Crime & Cyber War – your industry on the battlefield

Hundreds of billions of dollars are being stolen every year in cyber theft. Critical systems and infrastructure are at risk. Whether you know it or not, your industry is already on this battlefield, and the conflict is only going to grow worse. Alec Ross has been a major player and had a privileged view into this dark world, and is able to share experiences and learnings for executives trying to understand how best to manage their enterprise’s well-being.

Today’s University Students, Imagining and Inventing the Future

Alec Ross has had an improbable and inspirational journey to the peaks of geopolitical power. During college, he worked on a beer truck in the hills of coal mining country and as a midnight janitor. He joined Teach for America and started a nonprofit organization that grew from 3 people in a basement into a global organization, helping millions of poor people in 15 countries. As a globe-traveling business leader and diplomat, Alec has gotten a close-up view of the way that young people all over the world are imagining and inventing the future. In his remarks, Alec will give practical and inspirational advice to today’s college students for how to navigate their way in an increasingly complicated world to the career of their imagining.