Amer Iqbal is an innovation consultant and keynote speaker who has guided dozens of Fortune 500 companies to build the business of tomorrow. He is the author of the upcoming book The 5 Ways to Innovate and hosts the Riding the Wave of Innovation podcast. He helps organizations think, act and behave more like a startup in order to reimagine their future in a digital economy.

Amer has spent the last 20 years leading innovation at some of the world’s top companies including Meta (Facebook) as the Former Head of Digital Transformation, APAC where he enabled digital agencies and consulting firms to drive enterprise-wide digital transformation for their clients through the use of Facebook's platforms and products. He also served Deloitte Digital as the Former Head of Strategy of Strategy & Innovation SEA where he helped to scale Deloitte Digital from the ground up to the leading digital creative consultancy in the region, helping numerous clients on their digital transformation journey.. 

He has been interviewed as an expert on CNBC, he has been featured on the Nasdaq billboard in Times Square and he was a finalist for Financial Review’s 2011 Young Executive of the Year and Tigerhall’s Thinkfluencer of the Year in 2022 as well as a winner of Deloitte’s CEO’s Award in 2017.

Amer has presented to over 20,000 people on some of the world’s largest conference stages. His writing has been published in Fast Company, The Economic Times and WARC. 

Topics:

  • The problem with innovation and how corporates are dealing with it.

    Throw a rock and you’re likely to hit an innovation lab. Chances are your company has a team of people walking around in jeans and sneakers, a room filled with VR headsets and IoT tech, or a mysterious incubator for disruptive ideas somewhere in the business.

    Every organization is investing in innovation, but the ugly truth is that very few know where they should be placing their bets. From our experience with hundreds of companies across many geographies, we have observed five typical ways that corporates approach innovation – the problem is choosing which one is right for you.

    The 5 Ways to Innovate is a simple framework that helps organizations learn from the world’s best innovators in order to build for the business of tomorrow.

  • An immersive deep dive into the world of AI and back again.
    With all of the hype surrounding Generative AI, we’ve seen countless organizations dropping their strategic objectives to jump on the AI bandwagon.

    But remember just last year it was Metaverse. And before that it was NFT, Crypto and Cloud.

    There is always a shiny new thing to chase, but few leaders figure out how to get on top of the trend before it’s too late - and then spend the next decade playing catch up.

    Adopting AI is an immersive session designed to take leaders on a journey into the depths of what it looks like to operate at the cutting edge of AI technology, and then bring them back again to the practicalities of putting AI to use. The result is a learning experience that equips leaders with the mindset and practical tools they need to get the most out of AI and get on top of the trend today. 

  • Steve Jobs was the ultimate purist – but whether it was members of Jony Ive’s design team or members of the board, would Apple have been as successful without the pragmatists who balanced him? On the other hand, pragmatism and consensus alone rarely changes the game; as the saying goes, if you search every park in every city in the world, you’ll find no statues of committees.

    So when it comes to designing organizations, what is the right balance of purism vs. pragmatism?

    Like an elastic band, only when we have two equally opposing forces do we stretch the possibilities. Only when we create tension in the right balance do we generate energy that can be harnessed into corporate innovation. Digital disruptors have created disproportionate impact across numerous industries by finding this balance. What can large corporates learn from the startup world and how can leaders organize their teams for success in a digital economy?

  • Unlocking new capabilities from your internal teams.

    What do Balinese coffee and Japanese martial arts have in common?

    The pace of change has become exponential. According to Satya Nadella, we saw 2 years of digital transformation in 2 months. Something strange is brewing. Unprecedented times certainly call for unprecedented measures, but is there some common wisdom available to help the business world wake up and smell the coffee?

    The innovator’s dilemma showed us that success can make us resistant to change, even when we know it’s in our best interests. This session will reveal some of the secrets used by the most innovative companies in the world in order to reinvent themselves.

    Participants will walk away with a simple framework that will help them become black belts in embracing change, co-creating the future and building the business of tomorrow.