Photo by James Duncan Davidson

I am regularly invited to give keynotes, speeches and presentations on Open Strategies, Negotiating, Collaboration, Conflict Management, Technology, Open Government and Open Data. To date I’ve given talks across Europe, and North America, as well as in Brazil, China, and South Africa.

I’ve three core talks I currently am focused on delivering.

All my talks are run through our sister organization – Curiosity Labs.

1. Lessons of Digital Transformation from Governments Around the World

Digital transformation is no longer optional for governments—it’s essential for meeting citizen expectations and delivering public value. Yet governments worldwide struggle with legacy systems, procurement nightmares, and organizational inertia that prevent them from realizing the promise of digital-first approaches.

Drawing on a decade of work advising governments across five continents and teaching at Harvard Kennedy School and UCL’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, this talk synthesizes hard-won lessons from digital transformation efforts worldwide. From the UK’s Government Digital Service to Estonia’s pioneering infrastructure, from California’s disruption of traditional procurement to India’s development-driven approach, this presentation reveals what separates successful transformations from expensive failures.

The core insight: digital transformation isn’t primarily about technology—it’s about developing new state capacities. It requires moving beyond paper-based systems and office silos toward platforms that enable innovation across the entire public sector. Successful governments shift from seeing IT as a support service to recognizing it as foundational infrastructure.

Through vivid case studies spanning successes and spectacular failures, audiences gain frameworks for diagnosing their organization’s maturity, anticipating common barriers to change, and building coalitions to drive transformation forward. The technical solutions are actually the easy part; the governance, culture, and capacity challenges determine success or failure.

Whether you’re a senior public servant wrestling with modernization mandates, a policymaker seeking to understand what’s possible, or an advocate pushing for better digital services, this talk provides the conceptual grounding and practical insights needed to move from digital aspiration to digital reality.

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2. Digital Public Infrastructure: Reshaping How Governments Serve Citizens in the 21st Century

Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) has emerged as one of the most consequential policy frameworks of the 2020s, with over 50 national governments committing to build these foundational systems. Yet confusion persists about what DPI actually is, why it matters, and how to build it responsibly.

As creator of the DPI Map—the first comprehensive global dataset tracking digital identity, payments, and data exchange across 210 countries—I offer audiences an authoritative view of this rapidly evolving landscape.

DPI comprises society-wide digital capabilities essential for participation in modern markets and civic life. Think of India’s Aadhaar digital identity serving 1.3 billion people, Brazil’s Pix instant payment system, or Estonia’s X-Road data exchange layer. These aren’t just government IT projects—they’re foundational infrastructures enabling innovation across entire economies.

The talk reveals surprising insights from global research: there’s far more DPI deployed than previously believed, with significant parallel evolution across countries; the Global South often leads the Global North in DPI maturity; and governments pursue DPI for three distinct motivations—economic development, regulatory control, or sovereignty protection—each leading to different design choices.

But DPI raises profound questions: What makes digital infrastructure “public” rather than private? How do we ensure these systems create public value? Drawing on work with Mariana Mazzucato and the IIPP team, I present a “common good” framework emphasizing proactive state roles, transparent governance, and designing for inclusion.

As governments worldwide lay down digital infrastructure that will underpin how they operate for decades, understanding DPI is essential for anyone shaping the future of public services.

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3. Negotiation and Leadership in the Public Sector: Getting to Yes When You’re Not in Charge

Public sector leaders face a unique challenge: driving change and delivering results while navigating complex stakeholder environments where they often lack direct authority. Success requires mastering negotiation as a fundamental leadership capability for building coalitions, resolving conflicts, and creating value across organizational boundaries.

This presentation draws on two decades applying principled negotiation frameworks to government challenges, from my early work with Vantage Partners (a spin-off of Harvard’s Negotiation Project and co-authors of “Getting to Yes”) to advising governments and environmental organizations. The most significant application: serving as negotiation adviser during two years of negotiations that produced the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement—protecting 72 million hectares while maintaining forestry operations.

The framework builds on Harvard’s principled approach: separate people from problems, focus on interests rather than positions, generate options for mutual gain, and insist on objective criteria. But the public sector demands additional sophistication—negotiating across multiple stakeholders with competing interests, managing negotiations in public view, balancing short-term pressures with long-term relationships, and operating within political and legal constraints.

The talk addresses practical challenges: How do you build coalitions when agencies have competing mandates? How do you negotiate with skeptical stakeholders during digital transformation? How do you create value when resources are constrained? How do you maintain relationships with parties you’ll negotiate with repeatedly?

Through case studies from government negotiations—particularly digital transformation initiatives requiring alignment across technical, procurement, legal, and business stakeholders—participants learn frameworks for systematic preparation and strategies for converting adversarial dynamics into collaborative problem-solving.