Futurist Jim Carroll
Powerful Keynotes for a Faster World
“I help CEOs, senior executives, and association leaders achieve their strategic objectives by aligning them to a disruptive, accelerating future.“It’s powerful leadership insight based on detailed, specific industry trends – delivered within a fast-paced keynote with a compelling motivational style!”“– Futurist Jim Carroll
Eget semper
Growth
The High-Velocity Future of Work:
An Industry-by-Industry Playbook for the Era of Acceleration
The future isn’t a distant destination; it’s a high-speed operating system. Yet, the global conversation about the “Future of Work” is broken—stuck in HR theory while ignoring the tectonic shifts happening on our factory floors, across our supply chains, and within our core business models. In a world of constant disruption, a rewrite of your operational strategy isn’t just an option; it’s an urgent necessity.For over 30 years, Futurist Jim Carroll has guided the world’s most iconic organizations—including NASA, Pfizer, and The Walt Disney Company—on how to transform for eras of intense change. His keynotes move beyond abstract ideas to deliver a concrete, industry-by-industry playbook for building the workforce of tomorrow, today. This is not another talk about the future of HR; it is a CEO-level briefing on the future of your entire industry.
In this powerful, zero-fluff keynote that is highly customized & industry specific Jim provides the essential operating manual for aligning your organization to the speed of modern innovation. You will walk away with a clear framework to:Go Beyond HR Theory with a Sector-by-Sector Roadmap: The future of work is not one-size-fits-all. Discover the specific operational, technological, and skills trends redefining manufacturing, agriculture, healthcare, and your industry, and learn how to build a strategy that addresses the work itself.Build an AI-Augmented Talent Architecture: The old model of “reskilling” is broken. The future belongs to organizations that deploy “just-in-time knowledge“. Jim reveals a new talent architecture for the AI era, showing you how to leverage AI as a “tireless technical partner” to create an augmented workforce that learns and adapts at the pace of change.Close the Advanced Skills Gap Before It’s Too Late: The future of work isn’t just about AI; the “Factory 4.0 Revolution” demands a new breed of professional with tangible, world-changing skills. You must architect a workforce that can manage collaborative robots on the factory floor, operate autonomous tractors on the connected farm, build 4D digital twins for intelligent infrastructure, and turn breakthroughs in accelerated materials science into market-ready products. Jim provides a concrete plan to future-proof your team’s capabilities, ensuring you have the advanced skills to build, manage, and innovate in the fast-moving physical world of tomorrow.Ignite Your Innovation Spark to Win the War for Talent: Your best people aren’t just employees; they are your primary engine for innovation. Learn how to build a culture filled with “innovation oxygen” that attracts and retains the highly-skilled “nomadic workers” who define tomorrow. Discover the leadership strategies to ignite their creative spark and ensure your organization becomes an employer of choice, building the future from within.Stop strategizing for the future of HR and start building the future of your industry. It’s time to reboot your operational mindset, upgrade your strategic infrastructure, and build a workforce that doesn’t just survive the future—but drives it.
Trends & The Future
The Opportunity Horizon:
Decoding Critical Trends to Future-Proof Your Business
In a world of relentless change, the greatest risk isn’t disruption itself, but the failure to see it coming.This high-impact keynote cuts through the noise to reveal the specific, critical megatrends—from economic volatility and supply chain reinvention to genomics and the future of work—that will define the next decade of your industry. It’s designed for organizations that need to move beyond reactive strategies and build a concrete, actionable plan to turn future trends into a sustainable competitive advantage.Your team will leave with a clear framework to identify transformative opportunities, mitigate emerging risks, and align your strategic thinking to the definitive realities of tomorrow.While the core message is universal, the content is always deeply customized to focus on the unique challenges and opportunities within your specific sector, including Manufacturing, Retail, Agriculture, Healthcare, and Education.This is the same level of deep, customized foresight that Jim has provided to some of the world’s most demanding organizations. From briefing NASA on the future of space exploration to guiding Mercedes-Benz on the next decade of automotive change, Jim is renowned for his meticulous research process. He invests significant time to understand your unique industry landscape, ensuring the trends he decodes are not just insightful, but immediately relevant and actionable for your team.
Leadership
Leadership in the Era of Acceleration:
Think Big, Start Small, Scale Fast
In today’s market, speed is the ultimate competitive advantage, yet many organizations are slowed by uncertainty and a fear of disruption.This keynote is a practical, battle-tested playbook for leaders who need to build agile, resilient, and high-performing teams.It provides concrete strategies to foster a culture that empowers bold thinking, executes with precision, and thrives on complexity. Rather than abstract theory, this session delivers a clear framework for making faster decisions, leading through ambiguity, and aligning your team for high-velocity results.Your leaders will leave equipped with the tools and mindset necessary to move beyond simply managing change and start architecting the future.This leadership framework has been shared with over 2 million people in audiences worldwide and is trusted by the world’s most influential organizations, from The World Bank to the PGA of America. Jim’s approach is to deliver actionable strategies that empower leaders to navigate volatility and inspire their teams to get moving.The goal is to provide the insight needed to move forward with big ideas and bold action, creating a culture that is aligned with the disruptive, accelerating realities of tomorrow.
The Future
The AI Advantage:
Harnessing Artificial Intelligence for Unprecedented Growth
Artificial intelligence isn’t just another technology trend—it’s the most profound business transformation of our time.While many are paralyzed by the hype and complexity, this keynote delivers a clear, jargon-free, and actionable roadmap for leaders. It moves beyond the theoretical to reveal the practical applications of generative AI, machine intelligence, and automation for your specific industry.This session is designed specifically for leadership teams who need to understand how to leverage AI to accelerate efficiency, innovate new products and services, and build a lasting competitive advantage.Your team will leave with a strategic framework for harnessing AI as a powerful engine for growth, ensuring your organization is positioned not just to compete, but to win in the new era of intelligent systems.For over 30 years, Jim has guided global innovators through massive technological shifts. His insight into AI is grounded in decades of experience advising organizations like Microsoft and Volvo on digital transformation.He has a unique ability to make complex technological topics relevant to CEOs, senior executives, and association leaders, translating abstract concepts into a practical playbook for action and transforming organizations into high-velocity innovation heroes.Visit Jim’s specific AI keynote site at jimcarroll.ai for more.
Fast Future
The Innovator’s Playbook:
How to Drive Growth in Any Economic Climate
Volatility isn’t a threat; it’s the single greatest opportunity for innovation.This keynote delivers a compelling strategic guide for leaders who want to build a world-class engine for creativity and transformation. It draws on powerful lessons from companies that thrived during past downturns, providing a clear path to accelerate your organization into its faster future.This session challenges leaders to reject pessimism and double down on transformation to capture market share. It’s focused on the practical application of creativity to achieve tangible growth, providing your team with a new mindset that sees opportunity in uncertainty. Your audience will leave with the tools to unlock your team’s creative potential and drive relentless innovation.This playbook is built on the same principles of creativity and strategic foresight that Jim has shared with iconic innovators like The Walt Disney Company. He understands that true innovation isn’t generic; it comes from unlocking the unique creative potential buried within your team.The keynote is directly related to his new book on the topic, released in June 2025. Dancing in the Rain: How Bold Leaders Grow Stronger in Stormy Times provides concise insight into the pathways to innovate through uncertainty.Through his deep customization process, Jim aligns this keynote to your specific challenges, ensuring your team leaves with a practical framework to turn disruptive offense into real, tangible growth opportunities.
Your Trusted Partner
About Futurist Jim Carroll
Jim is the world’s leading global futurist, keynote speaker, business trends, and transformation expert, recognized worldwide for his compelling motivational style.In his 30-year career as a speaker, Jim has shared his insight with over 2 million people worldwide, providing guidance to many of the world’s largest organizations, with over 1,500 keynotes and leadership presentations and sessions.Jim’s clients include NASA, Disney, the World Bank, Mercedes Benz, the PGA, Blackrock, the Wall Street Journal, Pfizer, Microsoft, Cisco, and over 1,500 more.He shares his highly customized, industry-specific insight with CEOs, senior executives, government leaders, and leadership teams on the real trends that matter, and the innovation pathways to align with new disruptive realities
Actionable Insight
Accelerate Innovation
Drive Growth
Enhance Creativity
Imagine if you could accelerate your way into the future, by clearly aligning future trends, your strategic thinking, and your internal engine of creativity. Countless global organizations have engaged Jim Carroll for his unique insight and proven track record in providing a customized leadership program that will let you:
SEE DISRUPTIVE TRENDS: you’ll better understand the trends that will impact you in the near and longer-term
FOCUS ON OPPORTUNITY: you will achieve clarity on the trends that really matter
ALIGN TO DISRUPTION: you will shift your thinking to the actions that really matter
UNLOCK CREATIVITY: you will discover that it’s buried in your teams – and how you can let it out
ACHIEVE AGILITY: you will learn more about the role of fast-teams
ENHANCE YOUR SPEED: you will discover how to better align to our faster future
ACCELERATE INNOVATION: you will find ways to rethink your strategic pipeline
COLLABORATE MORE: you will maximize the benefit of your internal idea factory
DELIVER ON GROWTH OPPORTUNITIES: you shift from reactive defense to disruptive offense
You will join the company of global leaders at Disney, Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson, BASF, Nikon, and hundreds more who have found that Jim’s crystal clear trends and innovation insight take them into a world in which the future belongs to those who are fast!
You will join the company of global leaders at Disney, Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson, NASA, the World Bank, Nikon, Toshiba, Microsoft, BASF, Nikon, and hundreds more who have found that Jim’s crystal clear trends and innovation insight take them into a world in which the future belongs to those who are fast!
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Contact Jim
Jim Carroll is very approachable, and is available for quick phone or e-mail consultations with respect to your upcoming meeting or event. Yes, you can call him to inquire about fees.He can quickly outline how he will provide you with a highly customized, relevant presentation, and how he can help you solve some of the critical business issues you face.Or you can just contact him about other stuff. He’s like that. Just a very nice guy, really.