Luke Williams Speaking Fee: $20,000 to $30,000

For more than two decades, Luke Williams has occupied a rare position in the world of management thinking: the space between rigorous academic research and hard-hitting industry practice. As creator of Idea Skills™, international bestselling author, and a professor at NYU Stern School of Business for over 20 years, he has become one of the world’s most sought-after authorities on disruptive innovation — and one of the few thought leaders whose ideas are pressure-tested not just in classrooms, but in boardrooms, design studios, and on the stage of the United Nations General Assembly. His central argument — that the most critical advantage in an AI-accelerated economy is not technical skill but conceptual thinking — has placed him at the forefront of the most urgent conversation in business today. He calls this capability Idea Skills™: the human half of the AI equation. It is the subject of his keynotes, his ongoing research, and his forthcoming book. Luke’s credentials span the full arc from theory to practice. At NYU Stern, he served as Executive Director of the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship, building the curriculum, resources, and coaching that launched high-growth ventures across all 18 schools in the NYU network — among them, Pinterest. He also served as Executive Director of NYU Stern’s Center for Learning Science, work that directly informs how he designs keynote experiences built to change behavior, not just mindsets. Before NYU, he spent a decade as Creative Director and Global Expert Lead at frog design — the legendary firm behind the look of the original Apple Macintosh — leading innovation strategy for Disney, Sony, GE, and Microsoft. He holds more than 50 U.S. patents and has designed over 100 products across finance, healthcare, transportation, and consumer electronics. Luke has delivered more than 500 keynotes across 23 countries and 30+ industries — from Fortune 500 leadership summits to the United Nations General Assembly and the World Business Forum. Named a Top 20 Innovation Speaker by Speaking.com, his insights have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Bloomberg Businessweek, Fortune, Forbes, and Fast Company. He is the author of the international bestseller Disrupt: Think the Unthinkable to Spark Transformation in Your Business, now in its second edition. When Luke takes the stage, audiences don’t just receive information — they leave with a fundamentally different way of thinking about the problems in front of them. It is the difference between a keynote that inspires for an afternoon and one that changes how an organization thinks for years.