Speaking

I help leaders understand where technology is headed, and what that means for their organizations.

Underdog marketing

We live in an attention economy. Any product, candidate, or idea—no matter how good—first needs to break through the noise, turning attention into action. In a noisy market, nobody cares about you unless you make them. If you’re a startup or challenger brand, you can’t defeat incumbents head-on. You need to get the system they created to behave in ways they didn’t anticipate.

You need to subvert the norms.

For the last decade, my co-author Emily Ross and I have studied hundreds of brands, startups, underdogs and activists who found their unfair advantage and conquered a market. The result of this work is Just Evil Enough, a fresh look at go-to-market strategy for an attention economy.

In this talk, you'll not only hear dozens of fascinating, often hilarious, examples to inspire your inner supervillain, but also learn new frameworks like the Recon Canvas, the Long Funnel, and Value Chain Disruption and eleven subversive tactics such as Reframing, Bait-and-Switch, Bug Into Feature, and Misappropriation.

The outcome economy

Humanity is going through one of the most radical transformations in history at breakneck speed. The consequences of this change are widespread, and seldom obvious: How will humans coexist with machines? What does human intelligence tell us about the future of AI? What does abundant labor do to the concept of a job, or venture investing, or the software industry? Why do taste and liability matter more, how should companies design for interruption?

This talk explores many of the consequences of widespread AI through the lenses of scarcity and abundance, thinking models, emergent behaviours, risk and reward, and changes in enterprise IT. It builds on my role as chair of the world’s largest Data Science conference, as well as conversations with dozens of AI pioneers and early adopters.

AI will touch every industry in the coming years, and this talk offers a solid foundation for the coming change.

Lean Analytics

In 2013, my co-author Ben Yoskovitz and I published Lean Analytics, building on Eric Ries’ groundbreaking The Lean Startup and our work running the Year One Labs accelerator. Since then, the book has shown tens of thousands of startups how to use data to build a better business faster. It’s become required reading for founders and data scientists, has been translated into nine languages, and has sold over 100,000 copies in China alone.

Thinking well about analytics and data is hard. In 2017, I helped to create a curriculum for MBAs on data science and critical thinking as a visiting executive at Harvard Business School.

This talk blends the two, teaching you the fundamentals of analytics, data, and a critical mindset. Your audience will learn what makes a good metric—and why you have to pick just one at a time. We'll look at perils of making a metric a target, how analytics changes with business model and stage of growth, and how to avoid the most common (and damaging) errors and biases when working with information.

It’s a practical, proven, and surprisingly entertaining look at data—and how the best companies use data to build a better business faster.

Government doesn’t have to suck

We built governments to do things together. Technology can make them better, faster, cheaper, and more trustworthy—or undermine trust and destroy legitimacy. The next decade will separate the nations that can build digital public infrastructure from those that languish in an analog past.

Estonia rebuilt their government from the ground up, and saved 2% of GDP. Ukraine deployed a universal government app that saved citizens days of work a year and improved national security—during a war. Around the world, governments are embracing technology that helps them deliver better services, more affordably, through digital tools.

Each year, I open the FWD50 digital government conference with a keynote on some aspect of digital transformation:  cultural change, accountability and recourse, transparency, the rise of AI, building government products, and more. Through the conference, I’ve spoken with over 1,500 government leaders and heads of state from more than 60 countries. What’s clear is that technology can streamline government services—if it can just clear the many structural, cultural, and regulatory hurdles in its way.

In this talk, I show what the best countries do to connect with citizens, streamline services, restore trust, and encourage digital adoption in a digital-first world.

Innovating from the inside

A generation ago, the average Fortune 500 company stayed on the list of big firms for over 50 years. Now, the average is down to less than 15 years. What changed? Dramatic reduction in coefficients of friction around starting, experimenting, and growing ideas make it harder than ever for incumbents to stay on top.

But the best companies survive by balancing a portfolio of innovation approaches. More than a of decade interviewing business executives who’ve pushed through change reveals a clear model for managing and measuring new initiatives, treating innovation as a portfolio to manage.

In this wide-ranging talk that borrows from science, philosophy, and technology, I offer an unexpected—and often hilarious—look at how innovation actually happens. You'll learn more about horse manure, lab-grown meat, tea clippers, the economics of coal, YouTube unboxing videos, child seats, and baggage carousels than you ever thought you wanted to.

Along the way, you’ll learn a structured approach to different kinds of change, from keep-the-lights on incremental improvements to the unknowable discontinuities of complete transformation. You'll leave with concrete concepts you can put to work immediately as Alistair shows you how to adjust your thinking so you can thrive amid rapid change.

Workshops

Want to apply subversive thinking to your go-to-market plans? I run private workshops on many of Just Evil Enough’s tactics for growth-stage startups and global brands who want to update their marketing strategy.

These multi-day engagements are more than just teaching. They include lessons, workbooks, frameworks, and concrete tools you’ll use to build your own zero-day marketing exploits, discovering unexpected exploits and novel tactics that will give you the upper hand and put competitors on the defensive.

You won’t just learn these tools. You’ll apply them to your own organization, so that when you complete the workshop you’ll have a go-to-market strategy you can deploy immediately. It’s a mix of training and coaching that yields real results and gets you thinking differently about how your business competes.

For executive teams

This five-week program is tailored to leadership teams at startups and challenger brands. Each week, either in person or online, you’ll learn a new part of the subversive marketing framework: the subversive mindset; the Recon Canvas; Value Chain Disruption; the eleven tactics; and the Long Funnel.

You’ll apply that framework to your own product or service, building towards a final go-to-market plan. And you’ll learn about dozens of examples from companies in industries like yours. The workshop format is a hybrid of training and consulting: I show you the model, then you work as a team during the week to apply it.

Note that executive workshops require the participation of all team members for every session. This is a real commitment that requires serious time and attention. The end result is a solid launch strategy your leaders helped create and truly understand—but it’s not for everyone.

For cohorts

Do you have to deliver a go-to-market strategy for a product launch, brand refresh, or market expansion? Instead of working on it alone, using the same, tired boilerplate and endless back-and-forth with chatbots, join a small group of your peers to learn the subversive tactics from Just Evil Enough—and then apply them directly to your own plans.

From time to time, I run small online and in-person workshops in which participants learn the book’s frameworks while they work through their own go-to-market strategies. It’s an intimate three-day training program for startup marketers and brand owners that blends training with practical work. To find out when the next cohort is scheduled, sign up below.

Consulting and advisory roles

I help organizations in many other ways—from board roles to consulting and advisory positions—drawing on experience in business, technology, event organization, and product management. If you’re ready for new ideas and unexpected insights, get in touch.