Innovation Leader, Partner & Co-founder of Diplomatic Rebels, former Venture Partner at LEGO Ventures, Co-founder of LXGO, experienced Keynote Speaker

David is the co-founder of Diplomatic Rebels — empowering companies to create radical innovation by combining the will of the rebel with the skills of the diplomat. David has worked with radical innovation and lean start-up methods in small businesses and large global corporations for the last 17 years with hands-on experience from running multiple radical/digital innovation projects from early research and incubation to launch and scaling. Having spent 9 years at LEGO as Senior Innovation Director in LEGO’s famous Future Lab and as Venture Partner at LEGO Ventures, David has been instrumental in building up the innovation capability and infrastructure at LEGO. David and the team were featured in the FastCompany article “How LEGO Became the Apple of Toys." Through his experience, David has obtained several unique insights and developed approaches to how businesses can stay afloat in an ever-faster changing world and transform the organization into a change-leading innovator. He believes that anybody can become an innovator in their own organization or, as he calls it, a “Diplomatic Rebel”.

Diplomatic Rebels is born out of the work of LEGOs radical innovation department Future Lab. A legendary unit made with the cause of developing the future of LEGO. Instead of thinking about which bricks should be on the shelves next season the unit had to think beyond bricks, in making sure LEGO would also be relevant for kids five years from now. Over time Diplomatic Rebels turned into an approach and a methodology. A way to navigate the bureaucratic world of a company, where you want to change the organisation for the sake of the organisation. Doing so you need to accept other people will hate your project, that you need to be very aware which rules you break, to build your tribe, write a ton of love letters and make other people shine.