Future: Enterprise & AI 2026

08:15 AM - 09:00 AM CET

Registration and Networking Breakfast

09:00 AM - 09:20 AM CET

Opening & Welcome

Our Managing Director Sara Murray will open the session by welcoming Council Members and senior executives and sharing The Conference Board’s perspective on what lies ahead for European business. Conference Chair John Metselaar will provide an overview of the event and theme highlights.

09:20 AM - 09:40 AM CET

Audience Pulse. Your Experiences, Your Challenges

Warm-up round table conversations. Sharing key themes w Slido into plenary. Setting the stage for hot topics during the conference.

09:40 AM - 10:00 AM CET

Keynote. Future is Here; the Industrial Age is over. Break Free to Emerge with P.E.A.C.E. - Purpose, Exploration, Action, Collaboration, Empowerment

The Industrial Age is over and that’s good news. Drawing on two decades of transformation leadership at Adobe, Google, Novartis, and Schneider Electric, Jennifer shows why today’s AI, geopolitical, and workforce shifts are an opportunity to move beyond outdated ways of working. She introduces the proven P.E.A.C.E. approach: Purpose, Exploration, Action, Collaboration, and Empowerment to help leaders turn uncertainty into confident action and shape the future.

10:00 AM - 10:20 AM CET

Keynote. The 7 Deadly Sins That Will Make Your AI Projects Fail – and How to Avoid Them

In the high-stakes world of AI, common pitfalls from poor data practices to ethical blind spots can derail even the most promising initiatives. This session explores the "7 Deadly Sins" of AI implementation and offers practical strategies to avoid them, helping organizations move from experimentation to scalable, high-impact success by aligning AI initiatives with business goals.

10:20 AM - 10:40 AM CET

Panel. Speed vs. Accountability: What Silicon Valley, Shenzhen, and Europe Get Right and Wrong, About Scaling AI Leadership

AI leadership mindsets vary across regions, but the core scaling challenge is universal: moving fast while governing responsibly. Drawing on research from the US, China, and Europe, plus data from the U.S. AI Executives Council, this panel explores the tensions, biases, and behaviors that accelerate or hinder growth. It covers regional differences in risk, commercialization, and collaboration, followed by an interactive “Where is the heat?” exercise examining tensions such as speed vs. governance, access vs. protection, and exploration vs. proven impact.

10:40 AM - 10:50 AM CET

Wrap-up and Key Insights

10:50 AM - 11:10 AM CET

Networking Break

11:10 AM - 11:35 AM CET

Track I. Thought Starter. The Seven Doors of AI Adoption

Organizations often have valid concerns about AI, but many are excuses disguised as caution. Drawing on more than 100 conversations across The Conference Board’s Councils and private organizations, this keynote challenges six common barriers to adoption and shows how leading companies are already redesigning work at scale. The final barrier is the most important: AI adoption can only go as far as the fluency of senior leaders allows. The session closes with practical steps to raise that ceiling.

11:10 AM - 11:35 AM CET

Track II. Thought Starter. How to Manage the AI-Augmented Lead User: Exploring the Future of Knowledge Work

Innovation often begins with lead users who face emerging needs early and create their own solutions. Open-ended AI agents amplify this by enabling rapid experimentation, custom tool creation, and new ways of working. This presentation explores how AI-augmented lead users can reveal the future of knowledge work while exposing challenges such as variable costs, inconsistent quality, verification demands, scaling personal solutions, and human overload. It argues that organizations should enable safe experimentation, identify what works, selectively scale successful solutions, and protect the human capacity that drives innovation.

11:35 AM - 12:00 PM CET

Track I. Thought Starter. Winning with AI: Why the Future Belongs to Organizations That Know How to Execute

AI is transforming every industry, but turning its potential into lasting value remains a challenge for many organizations. In this talk, Aditya Raj explores the opportunities, trends, and leadership priorities shaping successful AI adoption. Drawing on real-world business experience across industries, he shares practical perspectives on navigating the next phase of the AI journey and building sustainable competitive advantage.

11:35 AM - 12:00 PM CET

Track II. Thought Starter. Developing Future-Proof AI Governance: “Where to? Where from? And How?”: Practical Steps to Success

This presentation explores how organizations can maximize AI value while managing risk through clear strategy, understanding their current capabilities, and effective governance. It focuses on three questions: "Where to?" - defining AI ambitions; "Where from?" - assessing the current state and closing capability gaps; and "How together?" - building governance that aligns AI with evolving data privacy, cybersecurity, sustainability, and regulatory requirements.

12:00 PM - 12:30 PM CET

Track I. Panel Conversation. Does your AI efforts remain stuck in local pilots? Introducing the Four critical Leadership Choices toward Creating true Enterprise Value

This panel examines the gap between enterprise AI strategy and real-world adoption. Drawing on enterprise hackathons, it explores why promising prototypes often fail to become part of daily operations. The discussion covers barriers such as ownership, operating-model redesign, operational readiness, management systems, and user psychology, offering practical guidance for the future of work.

12:00 PM - 12:30 PM CET

Track II. Thought Starter. Cyber Security at a higher level: What Business can learn from NATO toward AI Sovereignty

AI is transforming cybersecurity, but who controls the AI you depend on? This keynote explores the five layers of AI sovereignty, from training data to applications, revealing the strategic dependencies at each level and what it truly means to own or rely on the intelligence behind your systems.

12:30 PM - 12:45 PM CET

Wrap Up. Overall takeaways, getting ready for afternoon break-outs

12:45 PM - 01:45 PM CET

Networking Lunch

01:45 PM - 03:15 PM CET

Council Pairs Break Outs

This session gives Council Members the opportunity to share insights, connect with new colleagues, and turn the morning’s discussions into concrete actions. Council Directors may invite selected speakers to deepen key conversations and build alignment. Council Pairs and Moderator(s): - Global Business Services and Human Resources Executives. Moderators: Kai-Eberhard Lueg and Sanja Haas Overall Theme: Connecting Humans to Execution - Legal and Corporate Resilience & Crisis Leadership councils. Moderators: Paul Van Hooghten and Tim Mathews Overall Theme: Combining Urgency with Governance - Global Women in Leadership and Innovation Leadership councils. Moderators: John Metselaar and Anne Stevens Overall Theme: Leading Innovation through Inclusion - Privacy and Data Governance, Compliance & Ethics, and Chief Audit Executives councils. Moderators: Florian Harms, Lars Oehlenschlaeger, and Ellen Hexter Theme: How Ethics and Security Connect toward best Compliance and Trust

03:15 PM - 03:45 PM CET

Break and Back to Plenary

03:45 PM - 04:15 PM CET

Keynote. Trust as Infrastructure: The Human Conditions for Industrial and Physical AI

Why Trust is the limiting factor, not the Technology, and how to Build it. Industrial and Physical AI systems in safety-critical environments succeed or fail based on whether the people operating alongside them (engineers, technicians, operators, leaders) genuinely trust them. That trust is not automatic. It is built, or it is not built, through deliberate leadership choices made long before deployment. Key questions explored: · What does trust in AI actually mean in an industrial and safety-critical context? · How do you build it, and how do you destroy it? · How do you lead a workforce that is uncertain, skeptical, or afraid? · What role does transparency play when systems cannot be fully explained?

04:15 PM - 04:45 PM CET

Keynote. The Human Spark: Beyond AI

The next frontier isn’t technological, it’s human. As AI surpasses many cognitive tasks, the greatest opportunity is to strengthen the qualities that make us uniquely human: intuition, empathy, creativity, and purpose. In Beyond AI: The Human Spark, futurist Christian Kromme explores how technology is reshaping not only what we do, but who we are. Drawing on nature, neuroscience, and innovation, he argues that the future will be shaped not by smarter machines, but by wiser humans.

04:45 PM - 05:00 PM CET

Closing Remarks

05:00 PM - 05:45 PM CET

Networking Cocktail & Close