CONFIRMED SPEAKERS
Professor Annabelle Gawer is the Director of the Centre of Digital Economy and a Professor of Digital economy at the Surrey Business School at the University of Surrey.
Annabelle is a leading expert on the business strategy of digital platforms and ecosystems, with expertise in digital strategy, business models, and connected ecosystem strategy. She was the UK’s most-cited female academic in business and economics in 2022, 2023, and 2025, and a multi-year recipient of the Clarivate Highly-Cited Researcher Award.
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A Fellow of the British Academy, she is a Chaired Professor of Digital Economy and Director of the Centre for Digital Economy at the University of Surrey. She is also a Visiting Professor at IMD, Lausanne, where she teaches in the Building Digital Ecosystems program and contributes to research projects. She has held faculty positions at INSEAD and Imperial College London and visiting positions at Harvard Business School, University of St Gallen, London Business School, and Oxford University.
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She has advised multinational companies, policymakers, and regulatory bodies, including the UK Competition and Markets Authority’s Digital Markets Unit, the European Commission, the UK House of Lords, the UK Government, and the OECD. Her research has influenced both business and public policy on digital platforms.
Annabelle is the author of four books and over 50 academic articles. She is a frequent keynote speaker at international conferences and a recipient of the 2024 Theory-to-Practice Strategy Award at the Vienna Strategy Summit.
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She studied math and engineering in France, then moved to the US to study industrial engineering and engineering management at Stanford University, worked for a few years in telecoms in France, and then pursued a doctorate at MIT before embarking on an academic career as a business school professor and management scholar. She holds French and British citizenships.
Annabelle Gawer
Professor of Digital Economy​
Surrey business school
Tim Minshall
Professor of Innovation
Head of the Institute for Manufacturing (IfM)
Tim Minshall is the inaugural Dr John C Taylor Professor of Innovation at the University of Cambridge, Head of the Institute for Manufacturing (IfM), Head of the IfM’s Centre for Technology Management (CTM), and a Fellow of Churchill College. His research, teaching, and industry and policy engagement activities are focused on the links between manufacturing, innovation, and skills.
Tim is a member of the board of directors for IfM Engage Ltd and the Møller Institute Ltd, and Chair of Trustees of the Foundation for Young People’s Mental Health (YPMH). He is a recipient of a University of Cambridge Pilkington Prize for Teaching Excellence and a Royal Academy of Engineering Excellence in Teaching Award.
In 2025, his first ‘popular science’ book entitled Your Life is Manufactured was published by Faber&Faber, and was shortlisted for the 2025 Royal Society/Trivedi Science Book Award, and one of the Financial Times and Daily Telegraph books of the year.
Eva Niesten is a Full Professor of Strategy and Sustainability at SKEMA Business School and the Director of the SKEMA Centre for Sustainability Studies. She is a deputy editor at Organization & Environment, associate editor at Cleaner and Responsible Consumption, and Vice-President of GRONEN.
In 2019 and 2020, Eva was the Director for Social Responsibility and member of the Senior Leadership Team at Alliance Manchester Business School (AMBS), The University of Manchester. From 2015 until 2020, Eva was a Senior Lecturer in Innovation, Strategy and Entrepreneurship at AMBS.
Prior to joining AMBS, Eva was an assistant professor at Utrecht University. She held postdoc positions at the Florence School of Regulation of the European University Institute and at the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB). Eva received her PhD in 2009 at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University.
Her research interests include climate change adaptation, and sustainable business ecosystems, business models, and collaboration with a focus on clean energy technologies. She has published her research in among others Industrial and Corporate Change, Journal of Business Ethics, Long Range Planning, International Journal of Management Reviews, and Business Strategy and the Environment.
Eva Niesten
Professor of Strategy and Sustainability
​SKEMA
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