Richard Watson

Keynote Speaker

Richard Watson's Biography

Richard is Futurist-in-Residence at the Centre for Languages, Culture and Communication at Imperial College London. Prior to this he worked with the Technology Foresight Practice at Imperial and sat on the Aviation Futures panel for the Civil Aviation Authority.
He is a regular lecturer at both Imperial College Business School and London Business School and is co-founder of Thinking Allowed, a 24-hour retreat from the non-stop nature of working life and the devices that deliver and amplify this assault.

Richard has worked with, amongst others, Cambridge University, The Royal College of Art, McKinsey, RAND, Lego, Ikea, Shell, BP, the NHS, the King’s Fund, the Department of Education, the Cabinet Office, Vodafone, IBM, the Foreign Office and Barclays.

He has written five books. His first, Future Files (2007), was translated into sixteen languages. His most recent, Digital Vs. Human (2016), explores the areas of artificial intelligence, robotics and the internet from a human perspective. He is currently writing two new books, one looking at how to improve the quality of thinking in large organisations the another questioning whether or not we are as busy as we think.