Book Eric Garland as a Keynote Speaker

Eric Garland, Executive Director of Competitive Futures, is a sought-after keynote speaker, talking head, and executive educator, having given speeches on four continents. Here are examples of speeches and workshops for your next digital or live event.

This keynote combines historical examples and current trends to show how the greatest leaders have actually used chaotic trend to thrive in the past–and how today’s leaders can find the same opportunities in the near future. Prohibition, world wars, and the end of communism actually led to some of the greatest triumphs in the history of leadership, and today’s future trends are no less full of potential for your organization’s success. From Anheuser-Busch during Prohibition, to Royal Dutch Shell during the 1970s oil crisis, to Nokia and the fall of the Soviet Union, history gives us vivid lessons in how great organizations find their ultimate success not when all is calm, but when all is chaotic.

The late 20th Century, Post-Cold War global order is coming to an end. The world where offshore finance, rampant consumerism, and foreign manufacturing dominate, and where transnational organized crime flourishes, is coming to a rapid end. What will replace it? Who will succeed and who will fail? This keynote shows the way forward from a world transformed by new American tariffs, a re-armed, anti-Russia NATO, less interdependence with China, a modern Mexico, and the impending end of transnational organized crime. The old model of globalization is falling apart, and a new global economy is being re-engineered before our very eyes. Armed with foresight, your organization can position itself today for success.

This is a presentation for government and business professionals to improve their analytical skills. The most successful organizations are led through a sophisticated understanding of the future and which factors will create it. This takes time to build, and there are many pitfalls. Available as a keynote, breakout session, or day-long executive education session which covers the history of forecasting, the tragicomedy of bad forecasts throughout history, how to understand cognitive bias, and how any organization can improve its capacity to anticipate the future and win.

This keynote or breakout session will be built to order for each client, combining strategic trends and expert forecasts from Eric Garland’s personal database of intelligence based on thirty years of working for corporate and government clients. Briefs will include analysis of trends in national security, information technology, energy, culture, economics, geopolitics, society, ecology, and more.