Keynote SpeakersJames Woudhuysen is a Professor of Forecasting and Innovation at London South Bank University.
He writes for Spiked and broadcasts on GBNews. With a particular emphasis on Asia, he covers the economics, technology and sociology of construction, energy, IT, leisure, manufacturing, transport and the office.
He was the editor of Design magazine, a director at designers Fitch, led consulting in IT and urban development at the Henley Centre for Forecasting, and was head of worldwide market intelligence at Philips consumer electronics in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
A St Paul’s School scholar and physics graduate, he has a knack for registering trends before others and offering counter-intuitive proposals on how to address them.
James does not forecast the weather, the stock market, the horses, or your personal destiny.
James Woudhuysen:
- Helped install and test Britain’s first computer-controlled car park, 1968
- Wrote about chemical Weapons of Mass Destruction, The Economist, 1978
- Identified the user interface as the key issue in the design of IT, 1981
- Wrote an instruction manual for word processing on a portable Commodore 64, 83
- Anticipated by two years the Piper Alpha North Sea oil disaster, The Economist, 86
- Led an international multi-client study of consumer e-commerce, 1988
- Advised a top US telecommunications operator to deliver the Web over TV, 1993
- Reorganised worldwide market intelligence at Philips Consumer Electronics,95-7
- Issued a devastating critique of America’s dot.com boom, 1999
- Forecast today’s obsession with work-life balance, 2000
- Upheld 3G mobile communications in the face of massive doubts, The Guardian, 2002
- Highlighted the worldwide boom in gambling games, Cultural Trends, 2003
- Influenced UK government policy in favour of the mass production of housing, 2004.
Watch James Woudhuysen speaking at Sage World
James helps clients master new trends in society and innovation and implement major shifts in corporate strategy, marketing, branding, and design.
He frequently broadcasts about the future of the workplace on Radio 4’s You and Yours and writes a regular column for IT Week (London) and Novo (Frankfurt).
He is also on the editorial boards of New Design and the Journal of Consumer Behaviour.
James has also written extensively about a wide range of energy technologies, from the handling of nuclear waste, the liquefaction of coal, gas turbine generators and drilling for oil through to the management of power in consumer electronics.
His book Energise – The Future of Energy Innovation (co-authored with Joe Kaplinsky) is a widely researched analysis of the future of energy, finally enabling readers to distinguish fact from fiction.
James also co-authored ‘Why is Construction so Backward?’ Published in 2004, the book looks at the latest technologies that have emerged inside and outside the sector. Why is construction so backward? forms a detailed, practical alternative to the conventional wisdom in building design and urban planning. It is a powerful call for reform and a sharp polemic against architecture as social engineering and environmentalist dogma.
James Woudhuysen has been published in German, Danish, Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese. He has also consulted or given keynote speeches about the future for 50 of the world’s top corporations.
As a keynote speaker, his topics include:
- Technology
- Economics
- Politics
- Sociology of Innovation in Energy
- IT
- Retailing
- Cities
- Manufacturing
- Engineering
- Housing/Construction
- Transport
