Futurist Jim Carroll

2025 Speakers Bureau

Information page

“I help CEOs, senior executives, and association leaders
achieve their strategic objectives by aligning them with a
disruptive, accelerating future. It’s actionable, powerful
leadership insight based on detailed, specific industry
trends – delivered within a fast-paced keynote
with a compelling motivational style!”

Futurist, Trends & Innovation Expert

About Jim Carroll

"I am on a mission to help organizations understand how to align to tomorrow, today, by fully exploiting the internal creativity that exists within their teams"

Jim has a career that has spanned 33 years – during that time, he has spoken to over 2 million people on 5 continents, with over 2,000 keynote presentations
He is known for his deep customization based on highly original research with actionable strategies and ideas
His sophisticated trends tracking and research system regularly scans dozens of rapidly emerging technologies including artificial intelligence, digital twin technology, advanced genomics, material science, and more than 100+ other topics
He uses this trends tracking insight by assessing the impact of these trends across healthcare, consumer goods, manufacturing, insurance, agriculture, and dozens of other industries and sub-industries
He shares this insight through sophisticated trends research reports that cover near-term (1 to 6 months), medium (6-24 months), and long-term trends (> 2 years) and weaves the insight into his stage presentations, combined with the up-to-the-minute deep research undertaken for every customized keynote
He is a master of delivery, with a well-honed stage presence and style

Bio (long)

Bio (short)

Jim Carroll

Futurist, Trends
& Innovation Expert

Author
Columnist
Media authority

Jim is the author of 39 books related to innovation, trends, the future, disruption, e-commerce, entrepreneurship, and the impact of disruptive technologies on healthcare, financial services, and other industries. His next book, Being Unique, will be released in the spring of 2025.
He has been a columnist with a vast number of publications including the Globe & Mail, National Post, PROFIT Magazine, and many more. He has also hosted 4 local and national radio shows.
He is a much sought-after ‘thought-leader’, and has provided his insight in dozens of books, in over 600 articles, and in over 3,000 interviews on radio, television, and in print, with media credits and columns for ABC News, BusinessWeek, INC, Fast Company, CNBC, the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), American Way, PBS, The Age (Sydney, Australia), CAPITAL Magazine (Dubai/United Arab Emirates) CEO Magazine Hungary, Association LEADERSHIP, The Advertiser, Credit Suisse Bulletin, Dubai’s Capital Magazine and many more

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booking jim carroll

2025 Fee Structure

These are the current fees for Jim for 2025 and beyond.

US & Canada: $30,000 GROSS, plus $2,500-4,000 flat air travel fee.
UK $35,000-40,000 GROSS. Flat fee airfare $10,000
Europe $35-45,000 GROSS plus airfare quoted on inquiry
Mexico / Central America: $35,000 GROSS plus airfare quoted on inquiry
South America $40-45,000 GROSS plus airfare quoted on inquiry
Middle East & Africa $45-75,000 GROSS plus airfare quoted on inquiry
Asia $50-75,000 GROSS plus airfare quoted on inquiry
Australia/New Zealand $50-75,000 GROSS plus airfare quoted on inquiry

Contact

Key insight

Booking Trends

Jim’s speaks to both the association market and corporate leadership events and offsite meetings
His growth market has been corporate leadership meetings
most of these are for CEO or senior-VP of global Fortune 1000 companies
These are highly focused on particular niche topics, i.e. the future of manufacturing, the acceleration of artificial intelligence, or the impact of specific disruptive business models
Many bookings are now <1-3 months out, reflecting the speed and intensity of the change that these global Fortune 1000 organizations are experiencing
Most of these clients are looking for someone with deep topic knowledge on their unique issue, and an exploratory call with Jim usually helps to convince them they have found the right person

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30+ Years of Leadership Insight

Sample Clients

BOOKING IDEAS

2025 KEYNOTE TOPICS

CREATIVITY
INNOVATION
TRENDS
LEADERSHIP

Jim is known for the highly customized, industry-specific keynotes that he delivers, each of which is based on original research.His clients include NASA, Disney, the World Bank, Mercedes Benz, the PGA, Blackrock, the Wall Street Journal, Oracle, Volvo, Pfizer, Dupont, Deloitte, SAP, VISA, Microsoft, Cisco, and over 2,000 more.Here's a list of potential topic ideas for 2025 and beyond.

LEADERSHIP KEYNOTE

The Innovators Playbook

How to Drive Growth in Any Economic Climate

Volatility isn’t a threat; it’s the single greatest opportunity for innovation.This keynote delivers a compelling strategic guide for leaders who want to build a world-class engine for creativity and transformation. It draws on powerful lessons from companies that thrived during past downturns, providing a clear path to accelerate your organization into its faster future.This session challenges leaders to reject pessimism and double down on transformation to capture market share. It’s focused on the practical application of creativity to achieve tangible growth, providing your team with a new mindset that sees opportunity in uncertainty. Your audience will leave with the tools to unlock your team’s creative potential and drive relentless innovation.This playbook is built on the same principles of creativity and strategic foresight that Jim has shared with iconic innovators like The Walt Disney Company. He understands that true innovation isn’t generic; it comes from unlocking the unique creative potential buried within your team.The keynote is directly related to his new book on the topic, released in June 2025. Dancing in the Rain: How Bold Leaders Grow Stronger in Stormy Times provides concise insight into the pathways to innovate through uncertainty.Through his deep customization process, Jim aligns this keynote to your specific challenges, ensuring your team leaves with a practical framework to turn disruptive offense into real, tangible growth opportunities.

LEADERSHIP KEYNOTE

SOLVING THE ACCELERATION PARADOX

A New Playbook for the Future of Work

The future is arriving faster than ever, creating what Futurist Jim Carroll calls the "Acceleration Paradox": a world of unprecedented opportunity that also fuels significant risk and instability. For leaders, this has created a critical blind spot—the Acceleration Paradox.A recent survey uncovered that 85% of employers are prioritizing upskilling for a complex new future - and yet, their own managers are sounding the alarm, with 64% believing their employees cannot keep pace with future skill needs. This has created a workforce where a staggering 76% of workers feel unprepared for the future of their roles—a crisis compounded by the fact that 39% of core skills are expected to be disrupted by 2030.The key to the future of work? Solving this paradox by developing a workforce that is ready for tomorrow!For over 30 years, Jim Carroll has guided the world’s most iconic organizations—including NASA, Pfizer, and The Walt Disney Company—through eras of intense change by providing a unique, trends-oriented view into the future of work. This is not another talk about HR theory; it is a CEO and senior leadership team briefing that provides an actionable playbook to solve the Acceleration Paradox by building a team that understands and aligns with the future skills required for tomorrow.In this powerful, zero-fluff keynote, Jim provides the essential operating manual for aligning your organization to the speed of modern innovation. You will walk away with a clear framework to:Go Beyond HR Theory with an Industry-Specific Roadmap: The future of work is not one-size-fits-all. This keynote is built on deep, customized research into your sector—the same level of insight Jim has provided to clients across manufacturing, agriculture, healthcare, and more. Discover the specific operational and technological trends redefining your reality, and learn how to build a skills strategy that addresses the unique work of your industry.Build an AI-Augmented Talent Architecture: The old model of "reskilling" is broken, and the "lack of time" is the biggest barrier to growth. The future belongs to organizations that deploy "just-in-time knowledge". Jim reveals a new talent architecture for the AI era, showing you how to leverage AI as a "tireless technical partner" to integrate learning into the flow of work, creating an augmented workforce that adapts at the pace of change.Close the Advanced Skills Gap Before It's Too Late: The future of work isn't just about AI; the "Factory 4.0 Revolution" demands a new breed of professional with tangible, world-changing skills. You must architect a workforce that can manage collaborative robots on the factory floor, operate autonomous tractors on the connected farm, build 4D digital twins for intelligent infrastructure, and turn breakthroughs in accelerated materials science into market-ready products. Jim provides a concrete plan to future-proof your team’s capabilities for the fast-moving physical world of tomorrow.Ignite Your Innovation Spark to Win the War for Talent: Your best people aren't just employees; they are your primary engine for innovation. Learn how to build a culture filled with "innovation oxygen" that attracts and retains the highly-skilled "nomadic workers" who define tomorrow. Discover the leadership strategies to ignite their creative spark and ensure your organization becomes an employer of choice, building the future from within.Actionable Takeaways for Your Leadership Team:A research-backed framework to diagnose and close the "Readiness Paradox" within your own organization.An industry-specific roadmap to the key trends and future skills that will define your success.Actionable strategies to cultivate a culture of "just-in-time knowledge" and build an AI-augmented workforce.A concrete plan to close the advanced skills gap in areas like robotics, digital twins, and accelerating science.Stop strategizing for the future of HR and start building the future of your industry. It’s time to solve the Acceleration Paradox and build a workforce that doesn’t just survive the future—but drives it.

CREATIVITY KEYNOTE

Beyond Digital

Your Strategic Transition to an AI-Powered Business

Artificial intelligence isn’t just another technology trend—it’s the most profound business transformation of our time.While many are paralyzed by the hype and complexity, this keynote delivers a clear, jargon-free, and actionable roadmap for leaders. It moves beyond the theoretical and the hype to reveal the practical applications of generative AI, machine intelligence, and automation for your specific industry.
This session is designed specifically for leadership teams who need to understand how to leverage AI to accelerate efficiency, innovate new products and services, and build a lasting competitive advantage.
Your team will leave with a strategic framework for harnessing AI as a powerful engine for growth, ensuring your organization is positioned not just to compete, but to win in the new era of intelligent systems.
For over 30 years, Jim has guided global innovators through massive technological shifts. His insight into AI is grounded in decades of experience advising organizations like Microsoft and Volvo on digital transformation.
He has a unique ability to make complex technological topics relevant to CEOs, senior executives, and association leaders, translating abstract concepts into a practical playbook for action and transforming organizations into high-velocity innovation heroes.

AI KEYNOTE TOPIC

AI For LEADERSHIP TEAMS

Strategic Clarity on the Disruptive, Transformative Challenges and Opportunities That Really Matter

Leadership teams require a good foundational understanding of the promise and perils of AI and insight into the opportunities and challenges. They don't need hype.That’s why strategic clarity on the impact of AI is necessary. Jim Carroll has provided dozens of global leadership teams with highly customized, industry-specific keynotes that give deep insight into the impact of AI on the company and the industry.More background can be found at https://jimcarroll.ai

DISRUPTIVE LEADERSHIP

LEADERSHIP IN THE ERA
OF ACCELERATION

Think Big, Start Small, Scale Fast

In today’s market, speed is the ultimate competitive advantage, yet many organizations are slowed by uncertainty and a fear of disruption.
This keynote is a practical, battle-tested playbook for leaders who need to build agile, resilient, and high-performing teams.It provides concrete strategies to foster a culture that empowers bold thinking, executes with precision, and thrives on complexity. Rather than abstract theory, this session delivers a clear framework for making faster decisions, leading through ambiguity, and aligning your team for high-velocity results.
Your leaders will leave equipped with the tools and mindset necessary to move beyond simply managing change and start architecting the future.
This leadership framework has been shared with over 2 million people in audiences worldwide and is trusted by the world’s most influential organizations, from The World Bank to the PGA of America.
Jim’s approach is to deliver actionable strategies that empower leaders to navigate volatility and inspire their teams to get moving.
The goal is to provide the insight needed to move forward with big ideas and bold action, creating a culture that is aligned with the disruptive, accelerating realities of tomorrow.

FUTURE TRENDS KEYNOTE

The Opportunity Horizon

The future demands that you think BIG, be bold, and relentlessly pursue opportunity.

In a world of relentless change, the greatest risk isn’t disruption itself, but the failure to see it coming.This high-impact keynote cuts through the noise to reveal the specific, critical megatrends—from economic volatility and supply chain reinvention to genomics and the future of work—that will define the next decade of your industry. It’s designed for organizations that need to move beyond reactive strategies and build a concrete, actionable plan to turn future trends into a sustainable competitive advantage.
Your team will leave with a clear framework to identify transformative opportunities, mitigate emerging risks, and align your strategic thinking to the definitive realities of tomorrow.
While the core message is universal, the content is always deeply customized to focus on the unique challenges and opportunities within your specific sector, including Manufacturing, Retail, Agriculture, Healthcare, and Education.
This is the same level of deep, customized foresight that Jim has provided to some of the world’s most demanding organizations.
From briefing NASA on the future of space exploration to guiding Mercedes-Benz on the next decade of automotive change, Jim is renowned for his meticulous research process. He invests significant time to understand your unique industry landscape, ensuring the trends he decodes are not just insightful, but immediately relevant and actionable for your team.

2025 Topic

CEO / CxO
Leadership Events

Many CEO/CxO’s find it necessary to bring their teams together for a corporate offsite event to discuss, strategize, and align to a faster, transformative future.A fast future demands that organizations pick up the pace when it comes to their strategies, actions, and innovation efforts.Jim is known for his presentations at these events which involve highly customized insight, extensive pre-event consultations, a global track record, and detailed industry experience!

2025 Keynote Topic

Customer & Client
Event Keynotes

Mindshare matters. In a complex and fast competitive landscape, positioning a product or service offerings to a customer or client has become more of a challenge than ever before.That’s why organizations continue to invest in large-scale or intimate customer-client events.
It’s an opportunity to tell their story, position their products, outline their value proposition, and build relationships.Futurist Jim Carroll helps organizations deliver their key strategic message at these customer or client user group meetings with a highly customized keynote based on detailed industry and issue research.