Biography

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Jim Carroll is one of the world’s leading futurists, trends, and innovation experts. Over the last 30 years, Jim Carroll has shared his insight with more than 2 million people attending his events. He is recognized within the global speaking industry for his highly customized, heavily researched, industry-specific keynotes, leadership presentations, and small, intimate senior leadership meetings.

Jim Carroll’s global client list is extensive and covers virtually every industry sector, including the World Bank, Volvo, NASA, the PGA of America, the Walt Disney Organization, the World Government Summit in Dubai, the Swiss Innovation Forum, the Wall Street Journal, National Australia Bank, WorldSkills, Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, DuPont, The GAP, the US Air Force Research Laboratory, Godiva, SAP, Pfizer, Mercedes Benz, and hundreds more.

With a front-row seat to the high-velocity change that is occurring as disruption comes to take hold of every industry and every organization, he helps to transform growth-oriented organizations into high-velocity innovation heroes! Countless global organizations have engaged Jim Carroll for his unique insight and proven track record in providing a customized leadership program that will let you see disruptive trends, focus on opportunity, align to disruption, unlock creativity, achieve agility and enhance your speed, collaborate more, and deliver on growth opportunities!

Jim Carroll is also a visionary guide who helps organizations harness the transformative power of AI and other disruptive technologies. With decades of experience guiding some of the most influential organizations on the planet, Jim is celebrated for his ability to provide strategic clarity in an era of rapid technological change. Rather than focusing solely on the technologies themselves, Jim emphasizes the strategic mindset leaders need to adapt, innovate, and lead in the face of disruptive transformation. He guides organizations in rethinking their internal dynamics, identifying barriers to progress, and uncovering opportunities for growth and creativity in a fast-moving AI landscape. His actionable advice ensures companies and associations are prepared to lead—not just react—in an era defined by AI-driven change.

Jim Carroll provides high-energy keynotes for audiences of 50 to 5,000, as well as intimate, customized strategic planning sessions for CEO/CxO, board, and senior management meetings. He has researched key innovation success factors for dozens of organizations and industries including life sciences, health care, insurance, automotive, manufacturing, agriculture, technology, education, government, consumer products, retail, banking and countless others.

Jim Carroll is known for his ability to take on unique, highly customized topics for senior leadership teams that align to a particular strategic goal or topic area, including the future of the space industry for NASA – twice; and the future of pharma and healthcare for Pfizer in Paris – 6 months before Covid, accelerating innovation in the golf industry for the PGA of America, the future of manufacturing in 3rd world countries for the World Bank, and innovation and creativity in a world of upside down trends for the Walt Disney Corporation. He has developed a well-honed reputation within the global speaking industry for being the go-to guy for virtually any specialized, unique trends or innovation topic.

Jim Carroll’s insight has been covered in countless global publications, including the UK Telegraph, Dubai’s Capital Magazine, South Africa’s The Star, the BBC, Reuters, and AP News, among others. BusinessWeek named Jim Carroll as one of four leading sources for insight on innovation and creativity, and he was also a featured expert on the prime-time CNBC series, The Business of Innovation. In addition, he is the author of numerous books, including: Now What: Reinvention and the Role of Optimism in Finding Your New Future; Think Big, Start Small, Scale Fast; Surviving the Information Age; The Future Belongs to Those Who Are Fast; Ready, Set, Done; and What I Learned From Frogs in Texas: Saving Your Skin with Forward Thinking Innovation. 

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AI MEGATRENDS: Beyond ChatGPT: How AI is Redefining Your Industry, Profession, Company, and Career – And What You Need To Do About It!

The acceleration of AI is not just about the technology; it’s not just about ChatGPT; it’s about the AI Megatrends! The
transformative and disruptive concepts involving such things as predictive diagnostics, autonomous technologies, and
machine vision, the hyper-connectivity of intelligent devices, the integration of AI into robotics and virtualized digital twin
technologies, workforce and process augmentation technologies, virtual knowledge assistants, real-time risk monitoring, product reinvention, and transformation through embedded AI, and so much more!

These are the types of AI Megatrends that you need to understand to comprehend how your industry, profession,
association, and job and career will change. AI is already causing a massive change in every industry such as: changing the
way we diagnose and treat medical conditions; how we assess and underwrite insurance risk using sophisticated AI risk
management tools; how we manage our march to precision farming using AI-driven autonomous technologies; how we are using AI throughout retail and manufacturing for deep supply chain analysis and inventory management.

It’s vast, sweeping, transformative megatrends that will continue at a faster pace as we enter the ‘era of acceleration.’

Futurist Jim Carroll puts these realities into perspective for your organization in a fast-paced keynote or leadership meeting presentation. A highly customized, industry-specific AI Megatrent overview based on customized research specific
to your industry and organization and aligned to your unique perspective. It’s insight that matters, that is relevant and
actionable!

RIGHT NOW, you need highly relevant AI Megatrends guidance from a realistic, strategic business perspective.

Jim will help you understand:
• The AI Megatrends that are already underway, and those that are yet to come
• The disruptive and transformative context of these trends in your industry, profession, or association, based on up-
to-the-minute detailed research specific to your requirements
• Why the ‘era of acceleration’ with AI will now challenge all your assumptions about your future
• The strategic opportunities that exist with AI within your industry and organization, on a near, medium, and long-
term basis
• The significant challenges and risks that exist for the same time frame
• What leading innovators and competitors are doing to align with these fast-moving trends
• What actionable steps you can pursue so you can prepare a concise strategic plan for your organization and team
Futurist Jim Carroll will help you cut through the noise and the hype to understand what is really happening and the critical
nature of the important trends that you must pay attention to!

AI FOR LEADERSHIP TEAMS: Strategic Clarity for Forward-Oriented Management Groups

Your leadership team requires a good foundational understanding of the promise and perils of AI and insight into the opportunities and challenges.

That’s why strategic clarity on the impact of AI is necessary. Jim Carroll will provide your leadership team with a highly customized keynote presentation that will provide you with deep insight into the impact of AI on your company and your industry. For more than 30 years, leadership teams at NASA, Pfizer, the PGA, Volvo, and the World Bank have trusted Jim to provide clarity on leadership trends and strategies that matter.

You don’t need hype or hysteria – you don’t need utopian visions. You also can’t let your internal engine of skepticism defer your action. When it comes to AI, you need to have a compelling sense of urgency, but you might have an astonishing mindset of complacency. Futurist Jim Carroll will provide you with the strategic clarity on AI that you require.

What you will learn:

the two key AI trends unfolding today – generative AI (ChatGPT & LLM’s) and the ‘AI megatrends’
an overview of generative technology trends and their promise and peril, opportunity and challenge
an overview of the even more significant AI Megatrends already occurring – based on up-to-the-minute detailed research specific to your requirements
the strategic opportunities that exist with AI within your industry and organization, on a near, medium, and long-term basis
the significant challenges and risks that exist for the same time frame
what leading innovators and competitors are doing to align with these fast-moving trends
From Boards to Team Events: Jim shares his insight with small intimate groups of 15-20 (Boards, senior leadership teams) to large-scale corporate leadership meetings of several hundred people. He adapts his style to the audience – from highly interactive small group discussions to keynote presentations.

INNOVATION: Accelerating Creativity: Discovering Opportunity With an Innovation Reboot!

We will see more change in every industry in the next 10 years than we have seen in the last 100 as transformation and disruption sweeps the world.

Every company is faced with the rapid emergence of new competitors, significant new business models, more challenging consumers, the acceleration of science, and a transition to the speed of innovation that will define their future.

How do you manage this complex new world and get ahead? By turning on your innovation engine, firing your creativity thrusters, and strapping in for a rocket ride into your faster future. You need to accelerate your ability to generate radical new ideas and transformative concepts. You need innovation creativity!

In this keynote, futurist and innovation expert Jim Carroll shares the innovation and creativity insight that he has gained through three decades of a relentless focus on what turns organizations into high-velocity innovation and creativity heroes. None other than NASA has invited Jim in – twice – to share his insight on innovation strategies. Disney – a creativity superhero – invited him in for a keynote on the opportunities that come from rethinking creativity. The World Bank engaged him for a talk that linked fast-moving future trends to the need for accelerated innovation and fast thinking.

Jim’s keynote will share with you the key elements of his imaginary but powerful “Masters in Business Imagination” curriculum – a structure of 10 key leadership strategies, actions and structures that will help you envision opportunity, think differently, and act quickly.

Launch yourself into the faster future with this unique, high energy creativity focused keynote from global futurist, trends & innovation expert Jim Carroll!

WORLD CLASS INNOVATION: What Do World Class Innovators Do That Others Don't Do?

Business model disruption. The rapid emergence of new competitors. The challenging impact of social media. Rapid prototyping and the global idea machine. The digitization of everything and the impact of hyper-connectivity. Rapid technological change. All of these trends — and more — require that organizations pick up the pace when it comes to their innovation efforts.

They can do so by learning what the world’s leaders are doing with their innovation efforts. For over 30 years, Jim Carroll has had the opportunity to study what makes some organizations excel at the concept of innovation while others do not. He has carefully cataloged their approaches, attitudes, leadership styles, and strategies into a concise overview that is the secret sauce of innovative thinking.

World-class innovators possess a relentless focus on growth, continually transitioning their revenue source, and solving customer problems before the customer knows it’s a problem. They focus on upside-down innovation by sourcing innovation ideas through their customers. They concentrate on ingesting fast ideas; checking their speed focusing on corporate agility; and focusing on long-term wins through constant incremental improvements. They know that skills partnerships are a key success factor. Most importantly, world-class innovators aren’t afraid to back away from big ideas. They know that right now is a great time to make bold decisions and to take decisive advantage to forge aggressive new paths against their competitors.

While everyone else wallows in aggressive indecision and organizational sclerosis, world-class innovators know that it is a great time to do great things!

In this keynote, Jim Carroll will provide you with unique insight into what these world-class organizations and high-caliber leaders are doing, to position themselves for a future in which the velocity of change is the new normal, acceleration is the reality, agility is the core, and adaptation is the necessity!

LEADERSHIP: Think Big, Start Small, Scale Fast: Aligning Yourself for the Era of Acceleration

“Companies that do not yet exist will build products not yet conceived using methodologies not yet in existence with materials not yet invented based on ideas not yet imagined by people who do not yet know they are inventing tomorrow, today.” That’s the context for tomorrow – a future that will be here sooner than you think. What are you going to do to turn the trends of tomorrow into the opportunities of today?

We live in a time of massive challenge, and yet one of massive opportunity. We’re faced with deep and complex issues involving the environment, health care, water and food. At the same time, every industry is faced with upheaval, disruption and change. There are massive changes underway all around us – it’s pretty clear that we are moving to a world of 24-hour farming based on autonomous technology and virtual agriculture; a time of healthcare that is more focused on fixing you before you are sick rather than after; one in which we underwrite insurance based on real-time analytics rather than looking back in time. A time in which most cars and trucks are electric, rather than being based on gas and diesel; one in which most of the world’s population lives in cities, not urban areas; a time when we do more construction offsite instead of onsite; in which more of our energy is coming from small, local community energy microgrids instead of big centralized energy utilities, with the majority of that energy coming from renewables instead of gas, coal and nuclear; a world in which more and more of our food is grown in vertical farms instead of traditional farms.

In this context, it’s clear that we will see more change in the next 10 years than we have seen in the last 100 – every industry is being redefined at blinding speed by technology, globalization, the rapid emergence of new competitors, new forms of collaborative global R&D, and countless other trends! The art is discovering the opportunity in the trends, the growth in the ideas, and the future in the reality!

Once you do that, you need to align yourself to the big opportunities of today through bold, transformative thinking; take the small-scale steps today to align yourself to this future, and focus on a culture of speed and agility that can help you to get there at the right time! You need to think about transformation, not just innovation!

In this keynote, Jim outlines his simple but transformative structure with deep insight into what it takes to master the new, complex volatile world, by embracing the chaos, thinking transformation not innovation, mastering the timing of trends, and accelerating forward-oriented growth opportunities. The new model for going forward in the era of accelerating change: Think big, start small, and scale fast!

Testimonials

An outstanding presentation for an industry and association that falls on its traditions so often. We learned that our tradition should not be something that holds us back, but rather the launching pad for innovation for the future. Thanks Jim for your thought provoking presentation!
– 94th PGA of America Annual General Meeting
We were extremely pleased with Jim's presentation... the content was bang-on and would hopefully prompt people to think about the rapidity of change going on in our world!. Jim's storytelling approach really helps to get his points across! He did a great job!
– Walt Disney Company
We thought Jim was amazing - just the positive message we wanted to leave folks with.
– T. Rowe Price
Jim Carroll recently presented at Lockheed Martin's Executive HR Leadership conference. His content was very provocative, fascinating, and relevant. I've embedded a couple of his nuggets into my operating model
– Lockheed Martin
Many thanks for your presentation, "7 Things You Need to Do Right Now: Aligning the Fast Future to Your Current Strategy" It couldn't have been more energy filled and dynamic to start the conference out on the right foot. It was exactly what the audience wanted and needed to hear. The feedback from all attendees was excellent.
– VIBE Conference, Las Vegas
Bringing Jim into our MLC Sales Conference in Sydney through a fibre optic line was truly incredible. The key note session Jim delivered was on the money, he exceeded my expectations.
– MLC National Australia Bank
Jim is one of the best speakers we had. He had excellent information that our attendees could take home and incorporate it into their plans immediately. He also incorporated our messages into his presentation that helped localize the information for our group. Highly recommended!
– Illinois Bureau of Tourism
After seeing Jim speak at another conference, I was so motivated by his presentation, I invited Jim to speak at a conference for my organization. Another home run! Powerful, articulate, thought provoking and energetic! Jim's delivery on the importance of staying abreast of rapidly changing trends truly can assist in changing the way we do business!
– US Navy - Air Force / Marine Child Youth Program Conference
... your talk hit just the right note.....I did have several people ask me if they could get a copy of your presentation as well as many who noted that the programming was fantastic and gave them a lot to think about.
– Consumer Electronics Association - 2010 / CEO Summit
Thank you for an outstanding opening keynote for the 10th Anniversary Opportunities Conference: you received a 100% approval rating which has only been achieved 2 other times in our 10 year history!
– Opportunities 2009 Conference Organizer

Booksby Jim Carroll

Now What? Reinvention and the Role of Optimism in Finding Your New Future

READY, SET, DONE

THINK BIG, START SMALL, SCALE FAST

What I Learned From Frogs in Texas

THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO ARE FAST

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