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The Industrial Age is over—and that's a good thing.: Business as Usual is obsolete, and clinging to it is the greatest threat facing enterprise leaders today. Drawing on two decades transformation leadership in Adobe, Google, Novartis, and Schneider Electric, Jennifer reframes the convergence of AI, geopolitical shifts, and workforce disruption not as a crisis to survive, but as an unprecedented opportunity to break free. She introduces her proven P.E.A.C.E. approach used by F100’s to move from fear to confident results achievement with Purpose, Exploration, Action, Collaboration, Empowerment. This session sets the tone for the day with a new lens for everything that follows: open, energized, and equipped to absorb the conference sessions as architects of the future that has emerged.

10:00 AM - 10:20 AM CET

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

95% of enterprise AI projects never reach production, and the technology is rarely the reason. What kills them is a recurring set of human behaviours that show up in almost every organisation, regardless of size or sector. In this Leadership perspective, Julien Theys and David Fraiture walk through seven "deadly sins" that consistently derail AI initiatives: celebrating tool adoption instead of outcomes, copying competitors instead of solving your own problems, spending on platforms while starving change management, skipping the unglamorous groundwork that makes AI usable in the first place, with real-life field examples and concrete antidotes. The session also brings forward a dimension senior leaders often overlook: transforming the organisation is not enough. Executives who ask their teams to adopt AI without changing how they themselves work open a credibility gap that undermines every initiative below them. We close on what personal transformation looks like for leaders, and why it is becoming a prerequisite for AI to actually take root in the enterprise.

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. Honing the best Mindset for our Business, and Societal Success

Leadership mindsets on AI differ sharply across regions — but a key scaling bottleneck is the same everywhere: the tension between moving fast and governing responsibly. Drawing on comparative research across US, Chinese, and European leaders alongside real tension-mapping data from U.S. AI Executives, this panel identifies where that tension runs hottest inside today's enterprises, and what it takes to resolve it without slowing down. This panel goes way beyond coding and capital but dissect the everyday habits, decision-making biases, and internal narratives that either accelerate or stall corporate growth. It will review 1) Real-world global research data comparing how founders, investors, and policymakers in the US, China, and Europe handle risk, commercialization, and ecosystem collaboration, and 2) An interactive tension-mapping exercise — “Where is the heat?” — done recently at the U.S. AI Executives Council assessing of nine competing tensions run hottest in their organizations: e.g., Move Fast vs. Govern Responsibly; Deploy the Technology vs. Change How People Work; Deliver Immediate Wins vs. Build Sustainable Foundations; Democratize AI vs. Protect the Enterprise; and Explore Possibilities vs. Prove Financial Impact, among others. Spoiler alert: the most heat concentrated on the change-how-people-work axis and the prove-the-financial-impact axis.

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

Session 1. Track I. The Seven Doors of AI

This session explores how leaders can move AI beyond isolated pilots and turn it into real enterprise value. Drawing on global insights from TCB Councils, practical business transformation experience, and cutting-edge perspectives on AI implementation, the keynotes will examine the leadership choices, organizational signals, and operational capabilities needed to drive adoption. The audience will learn how executive silence can shape policy, why end-to-end visibility and real-time control matter, and what leaders must do to create the conditions for AI to deliver value in everyday work.

11:10 AM - 11:35 AM CET

Session 1. Track II. How to Manage the AI-Augmented Lead User: Exploring the Future of Knowledge Work

Innovation often begins with lead users: people who encounter emerging needs before others and develop solutions. Open-ended AI agents can dramatically expand this behavior in knowledge work. They allow individuals to explore unclear problems, create purpose-built tools, test multiple approaches, and learn through rapid cycles of creation, inspection, and revision – creating whole new possibilities. Based on practical experience, this presentation explores how AI-augmented lead users may reveal future ways of working before they can be standardized at enterprise scale. It also examines the constraints that emerge as individual capability grows variable consumption costs, uneven quality, increasing verification demands, pressure to scale personal solutions to teams, and the risk of human overload. The central lesson is that organizations should not attempt to scale every experiment. Instead, they need to enable safe exploration, recognize promising patterns, professionalize and scale solutions selectively, while protecting the human capacity on which responsible innovation depends.

11:35 AM - 12:00 PM CET

Session 2. Track I. Winning with AI: Why the Future Belongs to Organizations That Know How to Execute

AI is transforming every industry, but turning potential into lasting value remains a challenge for many organizations. In this talk, Aditya Raj explores the opportunities, trends, and leadership considerations shaping successful AI adoption and really making it work for you. He will top these principles up with “in-the-trenches” perspectives from real-life business experiences across industries on how organizations can navigate the next phase of the AI journey and create sustainable competitive advantage.

11:35 AM - 12:00 PM CET

Session 2. Track II. Developing Future-Proof AI Governance: “Where to? Where from? And How?”: Practical Steps to Success

Through deepening understanding of business AI strategy, assessing current reality and implementing co-operative governance, business can maximise the benefits of investments in AI and manage risks. “Where to?” is the imperative for businesses to improve their clarity of what they want from the technology (everything from innovation, to process optimisation, to commodity AI-enablement/empowerment). “Where from?” defines the practical steps that organizations need to take to get a handle on their current reality and the associated risks to manage to get from today to the to be. “How together?” Is a key discussion on how governance is to be organized and led, in an environment of ever-expanding scope of overlapping regulation - from AI itself to related Data privacy, Cybersecurity and Sustainability.

12:00 PM - 12:30 PM CET

Session 3. Track I. Does your AI efforts remain stuck in local pilots? Introducing the Four critical Leadership Choices toward Creating true Enterprise Valu

This panel explores both sides of the enterprise AI, from the boardroom decision to the delivery: It dissects the distance between the AI story executives are told and what actually gets built and used, and the challenges underway. It includes insights from why, at Enterprise Hackathons, teams move from a real business problem to a working prototype in a matter of days by bringing together a cross-functional team, clear ownership, access to expertise, a fixed deadline and a defined decision point, but are not able turning them into productive day-to-day operations. And it looks at the psychology of AI users for guidance into designing the Future of Work.

12:00 PM - 12:30 PM CET

Session 3. Track II. Cyber Security at a higher level: What Business can learn from NATO toward AI Sovereignty.

AI is reshaping the cybersecurity landscape — but who controls the AI you rely on? In this keynote, we break down the five layers of AI sovereignty, from training data to end-user application, and map the strategic dependencies hidden in each. A sharp, strategic perspective on what it truly means to own — or not own — the intelligence powering 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 part of the day allows for Council Member Sharing in an intimate session while meeting new colleagues, taking the insights from this morning into the conversations and indicated actions definition. Council Directors may bring selected speakers into the sessions for deepened conversations – to be considered, discussed, and aligned. 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. For generations, progress has been measured in inventions, machines, and data. But as artificial intelligence begins to surpass our cognitive abilities, we’re being challenged to explore a deeper kind of intelligence, one that can’t be programmed or replaced. In “Beyond AI – The Human Spark”, futurist Christian Kromme argues that the real revolution ahead isn’t artificial but profoundly human. Technology is no longer just changing what we do; it’s reshaping who we are. As algorithms master logic and efficiency, we’re being invited to strengthen the qualities that make us distinctly human: intuition, empathy, creativity, and purpose. Drawing on insights from nature, neuroscience, and real-world innovation, Christian charts our evolution from Human 3.0, driven by industry and intellect, to Human 4.0, guided by awareness, adaptability, and connection. Because the future won’t be built by smarter machines, it will be shaped by wiser humans.

04:45 PM - 05:00 PM CET

Closing Remarks

05:00 PM - 05:45 PM CET

Networking Cocktail & Close