Futurist, tech expert, strategic foresight advisor, former WIRED managing editor & serial entrepreneur
Thursday, April 18, 2024
7 p.m.
Loeb Playhouse in Stewart Center
As WIRED magazine’s managing editor and the author of two highly influential big idea books about the future — The Long Boom and What’s Next — Peter Leyden helped introduce the world to every stage of the digital revolution. His work inspired the generation of startup founders who rewrote the rules of business, ushering in the era of constant innovation.
Today, Leyden remains at the forefront of technological change, uniquely positioned to help audiences understand the historic developments in artificial intelligence, as well as comparable breakthroughs in bioengineering and clean energy. Leyden hosts The Great Progression, a series of exclusive events at ground zero in San Francisco, convening many of the leading experts in the tech and innovation economy to explore key questions surrounding Generative AI — like what are the real implications, the positive possibilities, and the actual risks.
Leyden is a serial entrepreneur who founded and ran two of his own startups, so he understands the challenges of businesses in the real world. He’s the founder of the strategic foresight firm Reinvent Futures that tracks trends from science to economics, demographics to geopolitics. He advises senior leaders of top organizations on what’s probably coming in the decade ahead, what’s possible to achieve in the long-term, and what they should do now.
Leyden also is a master storyteller who takes what he is constantly learning in rapidly-moving fields and clearly squeezes down what everyone needs to know. He informs, entertains and inspires audiences with his largely positive take on the future, using dazzling images and powerful infographics filled with the latest data to help illustrate his big-picture ideas.
In his captivating and can-do keynote talks, Leyden helps businesses and individuals understand how AI and other new technologies and major trends could impact their organizations, drive economic growth, reshape societies, improve lives, and lead to a better world.