Adrian Simpson

Co-Founder and Chief Connector, Wavelength

Wavelength Co-founder Adrian shares insights and stories gathered from over 25 years of visiting the boardrooms and shop floors of some of the world’s most innovative, successful and admired companies, including; Alibaba, Netflix, Apple, Tesla, Airbnb, LEGO, Google, and The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company.

Speaker Themes

Innovation and Disruption

Culture

Customer Centricity

Adrian Simpson biography

At heart Adrian is a connector and gatherer of stories who is constantly scouring the world for examples of companies at the frontiers of innovation, technological disruption, employee engagement, service excellence and social impact.

For over 20 years Adrian has taken top leaders into the boardrooms and shop floors of some of the world’s most successful, innovative and admired companies and in the last 12 months alone has taken top leaders inside leading companies in China, Europe, Silicon Valley and India.

In the last few years he has visited: Alibaba, Apple, Tesla, LEGO, Amazon, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, Pret a Manger, The Aravind Eye Care System, Southwest Airlines, Zappos and spent extensive time with some of China & Silicon Valley’s top thought leaders on topics such as AI, Machine Learning, Blockchain and the Future of Work. In May 2019 Adrian took the entire Tesco Exco to Silicon Valley.

Adrian regularly speakers to top leaders distilling the characteristics of the world’s most admired, innovative organisations/highest performing leaders. He has recently delivered speeches in Europe, Dubai and India from organisations such as Emirates NBD, Allianz, RBS, Virgin Atlantic Airlines, NBC Universal, and the London Stock Exchange Group.

He is an Innovation Adviser to The Prince’s Trust, a charity that helps disadvantaged young people to succeed in education and employment and in his spare time Adrian loves to cycle, play tennis, swim and is the owner of an extensive collection of model aeroplanes and drones!

Listen here to the first in a series of podcasts coming from Wavelength, featuring Adrian, watch his show-reel and a video bringing to life the Wavelength USA programme.

BOOK SPEAKER

"Adrian really engaged and inspired our leaders. Along with the support he
has provided through Connect and Wavelength USA this has moved on our
thinking about leadership and purpose massively. He did a tremendous job
at bringing together lessons from a really broad range of highly successful
leaders. The blend of examples and stories helps people to absorb the ideas
and think about application. And the session was also really entertaining!"
Francis Lake, Head of Executive & Leadership Development and Talent, Clydesdale Yorkshire Building Society

"Adrian managed to engage the entire team spellbound for about 90 minutes with fascinating case studies from Silicon Valley, Asia, Europe and other markets. His stories are awesome, his insights fascinating and his presentation very energetic. He helped us to connect the dots between banking to biotech to robotics to space, and took us on a roller-coaster ride through different industries and countries. I would highly recommend Adrian as a motivational speaker at corporate meetings, customer presentations and strategy offsites – he is guaranteed to send pulses racing and get ideas bubbling!”
Suvo Sarkar, Senior Executive Vice President and Group Head of Retail Banking and Wealth Management Emirates NBD

"Adrian will inspire your colleagues, ignite your organisation and instil a sense of urgency and transformation. He has his finger on the pulse of the world’s best organisations and he will get you very close to their beating hearts!"
Nick Stace, CEO, Princes Trust

"Adrian’s presentation to my top team was truly excellent. He speaks with such authority, gravitas and insight about the key issues in leadership and business - service, innovation, disruption and resilience. The leadership team at Metro Bank are very busy people - so if we give up our time to listen to an outside speaker it better be good. And Adrian was very good indeed”
Craig Donaldson, CEO, Metro Bank

"Adrian in his energetic way opened our minds to the emerging technology that will have a tremendous impact on how businesses will evolve. His ability to compress the big picture and make it real as well as relevant definitely woke up the leadership. Adrian’s convincing and engaging manner certainly got us thinking! Thank you Adrian for coming all the way to share your wisdom and get us thinking."
Thulsi Ravilla, Executive Director, Aravind Eye Care Systems

"You got us off to a great start and your input was very much appreciated by the participants. The clarity of your points superbly illustrated by a range of examples went down very well and you got it just right for the audience.
Your input was an invaluable part of what was a very good two days for the participants. I hope that we may be able to ask you to do something similar with our second cohort at a similar time next year."
Malcolm Trobe, Deputy General Secretary, Association of School and College Leaders

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