Trond Arne Undheim: Expert Futurist

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  • Travels from: Wellesley, MA
  • **Fee range: On Request

Keynote Topics

The counterintuitive next wave of industrial tech is all about scaling humans innovation

Executives need a management framework that prioritizes humans over machines. When you empower your frontline workers, you are investing in their growth, productivity, and loyalty.

Increased efficiency of your machines is just a side effect.

Hear Trond present highlights from his latest book, Augmented Lean: A Human-Centric Framework for Managing Frontline Operations (Wiley 2022), co-authored with serial entrepreneur, and MIT Media Lab alum, Natan Linder.

The book was pre-launched both at the World Economic Forum and at IMTS – The International Manufacturing Technology Show, the largest and longest-running industry trade show in the Western Hemisphere and has been featured in Fast Company, Forbes, IndustryWeek, and the World Economic Forum’s Agenda Blog.

Futurism isn’t about predicting exactly, but about projecting long term potential outcomes and deciding what kind of future we want to optimize for.

Trond’s current research at Stanford University (see his Stanford profile) is about Cascading Risk Scenarios for 2075 stemming from artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, climate change, nuclear technology, geopolitics, social movements, and a whole host of risks that are rising and combining in unforeseen ways, often under the radar.

The Future of Technology (AI, Blockchain, Synthetic Biology, 3D printing, Nanotech, Quantum tech, Robotics)

His recent book, Future Tech: How to Capture Value from Disruptive Industry Trends was published by the highly regarded, independent publisher Kogan Page.

For a sample of his views, see The five technologies that matter: how the C-suite can deploy each for post-pandemic positioning (CEO Magazine).

Academia to Innovation AND How corporations should work with startups AND How to learn from–and even thrive on–failure

Trond was the inaugural director of MIT Startup Exchange, the world’s leading matchmaking program between startups and corporations, working with some of the leading startups of our time (including unicorns Formlabs, Desktop Metal, and Ginkgo Bioworks) and over 200 Fortune 1000 companies.

 Trond wrote the first book on the COVID-19 pandemic, a futurist’s 450 page account of what might happen in the next decade which was published in early May 2020.

As the pandemic enters different stages, seemingly catching governments, medical professionals, businesses and citizens by surprise, his five scenarios seem more and more relevant every month that passes. See his tome Pandemic Aftermath.

Trond’s upcoming book, Health Tech: Rebooting Society’s Software, Hardware and Mindset, will be published by Routledge in September 2021, and is available for pre-order.

The book introduces anybody who wishes to understand how global healthcare will change in the next decade to key technologies, social dynamics, and systemic shifts that are shaping the future. 

  1. Reskilling one billion workers in industry 4.0 technologies and mindsets,
  2. Leadership challenges in a changing world,
  3. Remote work, hybrid work, and the face-to-face advantage, and d) The Role of Knowledge and Insight

Why reskilling, not developing the technologies themselves, is about to become the 21st century’s greatest leadership challenge.

Trond leads MFG.works, the reskilling platform launched in association with the World Economic Forum and aiming to provide learning journeys to future proof the world’s workers

How the world needs to co-regulate technology in a way where governments work alongside private sector and nonprofits to watch algorithms, safeguard interoperability, and build no code services of public interest in health, privacy, and culture.

Trond is committed to a more inclusive form of capitalism, where Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) no longer needs to be a focus because each is valued in its own right.

TOPIC 4: Commercializing Innovation: Academia to Innovation AND How corporations should work with startups AND How to learn from–and even thrive on–failure

Trond was the inaugural director of MIT Startup Exchange, the world’s leading matchmaking program between startups and corporations, working with some of the leading startups of our time (including unicorns Formlabs, Desktop Metal, and Ginkgo Bioworks) and over 200 Fortune 1000 companies.

TOPIC 5: Pandemic Aftermath and our Health Tech Future

Trond wrote the first book on the COVID-19 pandemic, a futurist’s 450 page account of what might happen in the next decade which was published in early May 2020. As the pandemic enters different stages, seemingly catching governments, medical professionals, businesses and citizens by surprise, his five scenarios seem more and more relevant every month that passes. See his tome Pandemic Aftermath.

Trond’s upcoming book, Health Tech: Rebooting Society’s Software, Hardware and Mindset, will be published by Routledge in September 2021, and is available for pre-order. The book introduces anybody who wishes to understand how global healthcare will change in the next decade to key technologies, social dynamics, and systemic shifts that are shaping the future.

TOPIC 6: The Future of Work:

a) Reskilling one billion workers in industry 4.0 technologies and mindsets, b) Leadership challenges in a changing world, c) Remote work, hybrid work, and the face-to-face advantage, and d) The Role of Knowledge and Insight

Why reskilling, not developing the technologies themselves, is about to become the 21st century’s greatest leadership challenge. Trond leads MFG.works, the reskilling platform launched in association with the World Economic Forum and aiming to provide learning journeys to future proof the world’s workers

TOPIC 7: The case for global e-Governance

How the world needs to co-regulate technology in a way where governments work alongside private sector and nonprofits to watch algorithms, safeguard interoperability, and build no code services of public interest in health, privacy, and culture.

TOPIC 8: Inclusive Capitalism and Financial Services of the Future

Trond is committed to a more inclusive form of capitalism, where Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) no longer needs to be a focus because each is valued in its own right.

 

Trond Arne Undheim is a Futurist, innovator and systemic risk expert who has explored each of the most disruptive forces shaping our world today, including geopolitics, emerging technologies, climate change, entrepreneurship, venture investments, and industrial manufacturing.

Trond Arne Undheim is a Research scholar in Global Systemic Risk, Innovation, and Policy at Stanford University, Venture Partner at Antler, the global early-stage venture capital firm that invests in the defining technology companies of tomorrow.

He is the CEO and co-founder of Yegii, an insight network with experts and knowledge assets on disruption. He is a nonresident Fellow at the Atlantic Council with a portfolio in artificial intelligence, future of work, data ethics, emerging technologies, and entrepreneurship.

Trained as a social scientist with a career in technology and innovation, he is a former director of MIT Startup Exchange, and has helped launch over 50 startups. In a previous life, he was a MIT Sloan School of Management Senior Lecturer, WPP and Oracle Executive and EU National Expert.

Trond Arne Undheim is a Forbes contributor (see Trond’s column on manufacturing). His work has featured in in The Boston Globe, NPR’s Cognoscenti, Fast Company, Forbes, Fortune, IndustryWeek, and MIT News, as well as on television. Trond hosts two podcasts, Futurized, a podcast exploring the next 50 years of humanity and Augmented, a podcast on industrial tech.

Futurist Trond Arne Undheim, PhD, has one goal: wherever he operates, his life is dedicated to making orders of magnitude of difference for business, society and planet. Trond is a 7x author and is a major global thought leader on the role of technology in society in the next decade and beyond. He is often brought in when clients or media want to hear from a ‘Renaissance man’ with broad insights derived from a plethora of fields.

A Research scholar in Global Systemic Risk, Innovation, and Policy at Stanford University, a Venture Partner at Antler, the global early-stage venture capital firm that invests in the defining technology companies of tomorrow, Trond Arne Undheim is the CEO and co-founder of Yegii, an insight network with experts and knowledge assets on disruption. A podcaster (Futurized), and former Director of MIT Startup Exchange, based between Wellesley, MA, and Palo Alto, CA, he holds a PhD on the future of work and artificial intelligence.

Trond is a regular podcast guest, keynote speaker, panel moderator and conference chair across the world. Whilst he often has strong and controversial opinions based on fact-based insight, and can entertain an audience too boot, his main objective in these events is to listen and bring out the best in other people’s thinking.

Trond’s key messages could be summarized under nine broad topics: 1) Augmented Lean, 2) The Futurist’s view, 3) The Future of Technology, 4) Commercializing Innovation, 5) Our Health Tech Future, 6) The Future of Work, Leadership and Reskilling, 7) Global e-Governance, 8) Inclusive Capitalism and the Future of Finance, and 9) Mastering our Physical World.

Outcomes of Trond’s speeches and interviews include increased awareness of the forces of disruption surrounding your business, clarity about where society is headed, and a real push to develop 21st century skills that matter in the workplace whether you are a C-level executive or just starting out.

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Trond Arne Undheim | Futurist

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