Bestselling author of The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption and Disrupt With Impact, Roger Spitz is a world authority on systemic disruption.
Whether advising investment managers in London, decoding technological shifts in Silicon Valley and Bangalore, or shaping energy policy from Washington D.C. to the Rainforest, Roger’s thought leadership transcends boundaries and delivers actionable strategies for disruptive times.
Fully bilingual in English and French, Roger Spitz is available for media talks in either language. Media and interview requests for articles, publications, webinars, TV, and podcasts can be addressed to us directly at media@disruptivefutures.org
From Wall Street to the Atlantic Rainforest:
Roger Spitz Delivers a Futurist Perspective Like No Other
A sought-after speaker, Spitz has inspired thousands of organizations through keynotes, interviews, and executive programs.
His flagship series, The Visionary Trilogy, equips changemakers, investors, and policymakers with a framework to rethink mindsets, reclaim intelligence, and reinvent leadership in a volatile world.
With growing global demand, Spitz continues to bring his insights to stages and media platforms worldwide - helping leaders navigate disruption and unlock opportunity.
Learn more about our talks by visiting Roger’s dedicated speaking hub, or by reaching out at speaking@disruptivefutures.org
Praise for The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption
“With his team, Roger created an operating manual, a system of content to build fluency in the language of uncertainty, disruption, and unpredictability… This Guidebook offers a rich and practical set of resources for anyone - organizations, entrepreneurs, policymakers, educators, and learners - to capitalize on disruption… What’s unique about this Guidebook is how it connects fields and areas which are often treated separately. Roger’s collaboration with fellow futurist, journalist, and science fiction writer Dr. Lidia Zuin is critical for illuminating a diverse set of topics in a way I’ve never seen before… Where other books fall short because they are designed to help readers answer a specific question, The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption shines. By connecting the dots between what appear as unrelated themes and topics, this guidebook is certain to shift your mindset and change your narrative around uncertainty.”
- Cathy Hackl, Chief Metaverse Officer & Founder of Journey
“Change makes people uncomfortable, yet it is inevitable. Disruption is a powerful force that pushes us to evaluate our decisions through the construct of new paradigms. So how do we cope with and confront change we may not be ready for? Roger Spitz and Lidia Zuin take us on a ride to find out, deconstructing disruption to make the process not only easy but exciting and hopeful. In the Guidebook, Roger and Lidia expertly explore my industry, the space industry (among others), as an example of how disruption functions, its rate of rapid acceleration, and how people should prepare. Life-changing innovation is on the horizon if individuals can just open themselves up to discomfort and possibility. That’s what the Guidebook trains us to do; it gives leaders the tools they need to help their teams mentally adapt to changes made possible by technology and capital investment. It teaches readers how to embrace disruption in order to own their destiny and sparks pathways to innovation. This book should be required reading for anyone who hopes to make an impact on the world. It is truly one for the ages.”
- Shelli Brunswick, COO of Space Foundation & Forbes Technology Council
“Throughout the Guidebook, you’ll learn how to be inquisitive and how to adapt to rapid change with a diverse set of tools and models - which will quickly become your own… The Disruptive Futures Institute’s renowned AAA Framework (build Antifragile foundations, develop the capabilities to be Anticipatory, and use Agility) will help you bridge short-term realities with a value proposition for macro-view thinking… In a world increasingly characterized by complexity, one must be able to see the interconnectivity of events, embrace ambiguity as an opportunity, and translate futures literacy into anticipatory thinking. Here, the Disruptive Futures Institute’s interdisciplinary approach is artfully executed, making connections between seemingly unrelated domains. The book’s framework ultimately demonstrates that transformational change comes by first changing our own mindset… The Guidebook also deploys the concept of agency to show that acknowledging the limits of our own vision does not mean we must accept those same limits.”
- Lieutenant Colonel Jake Sotiriadis, Ph.D., Director, The Center for Futures Intelligence, National Intelligence University
“How might we thrive in an era of cascading risks and disruptions? How do we make sense of uncertainty in transdisciplinary, multistakeholder, and multisectoral contexts? How might we study and leverage the play of randomness in the grand scheme of things and connect and utilize futures intelligence, systems and complexity thinking, worldviews, science fiction, and strategic foresight to influence policy and decision-making, leadership, planning and governance for organizational, institutional, and societal transformations? How might we expand and deepen our understanding of disruption and use it to innovate, change, and transform today? The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption is an insight to action-oriented guide to anticipating and sensing an increasingly scrambled, complex, and unpredictable world. This four-volume book provides us a blueprint to study, understand, and tackle disruption at different levels of reality - from knowing to doing to meaning and being. The book can help individuals, people, organizations, governments, and communities adapt and be relevant to systemic and societal transformations ahead. This is a must-have book for innovation, organizational change and transformation activists, strategic planners, risk managers, futurists, forecasters, and strategic foresight practitioners and scholars.”
- Shermon Cruz, Chair, Association of Professional Futurists and Chief Futurist, The Center for Engaged Foresight
“The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption is essential reading for any CEO, leadership team, board member, or investor. As a venture capital fund, change is a key ingredient from which we create value. The accelerating disruption drivers which Roger and Lidia expertly review tie in with our own investment thesis, where change is a constant. Paradigm shifts, emerging technologies, AI, cybersecurity, and the energy transition will generate fundamental transfers in value for the future of mobility and next-generation sustainable transport, which is our focus sector at Vektor. Throughout their Guidebook, the authors and global team of contributors present hundreds of insightful examples and case studies to really understand systemic transformation. Readers will get practical toolkits and frameworks to leverage disruption, capture opportunities, and create sustainable value, while being guided on how to anticipate the next-order implications of these changes and connect what may seem like distinct phenomena.”
- Sebastian Bihari, Venture Capitalist, General Partner & Investor at Vektor Partners
“On the back of explosive growth, we decided to organize two days in Silicon Valley for our board and leadership team to envision Dynafit’s future. We were recommended the Disruptive Futures Institute to design a tailored executive program. Roger’s program unlocked broad experiential learning outcomes far beyond our expectations, offering pathways for mindset change with actionable frameworks to build a capacity for new thinking. The DFI team helped us rewire our perspectives and the assumptions we make about the world and its possibilities. We are now well-equipped to move to the next level, from extreme ski and mountaineering to extreme RELEVANCE for any futures ahead - the ones we craft and those which emerge.”
- Benedikt Böhm, Executive Board Oberalp, CEO Dynafit & Extreme Ski Mountaineer
“It has been a pleasure for me to discover the amazing Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption and find many parallels with my current Disruption 3.0 company, iLima Digital Foundary. Our iLima community-centered, circular, and regenerative Self-Sustainable Smart Village AI Platform models, measures, manages, and finances complete lifecycles of new and existing Self-sustainable Smart Villages in Africa and beyond. The company is a prime example of the Guidebook’s chapters on Ecosystem Innovation, Platform Evolution 2.0, and Business Models-as-a-System (BMaaS), at the same time moving from traditional ‘community wealth extraction’ to ‘community wealth creation.’ These books are a ‘must read’ for entrepreneurs in today’s modern society where everything is interrelated and interconnected. The content and the use-cases are very relevant, easy to read, and provide pragmatic tools and frameworks for everyone to ‘Thrive in the Disruption 3.0 world’!”
- Karsten Popp, CEO iLima Digital Foundary
“Finally, Spitz and Zuin have developed a body of knowledge to help us excel in times of uncertainty. This comprehensive guide is a great testament that, by thinking broader and deeper, it is possible to devise ways to face and embrace the most daunting challenges of our times. The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption is absolutely required reading for everyone, from students to policy makers, from executives to entrepreneurs, who want to thrive on both current and future challenges. Spitz and Zuin have shown themselves to be brilliant thinkers. They are unafraid to ask tough questions and provide sharp answers. Their insights are practical and actionable, generating real value to readers. They have a compelling ability to make sense of the confusion and to show useful routes into the future.”
- Dr. Terence Tse, Professor at Hult International Business School, Co-founder Nexus FrontierTech & Author
“‘What was will always be’ no longer stands true. Disruption changes what will be and the ever-increasing pace of change throws methodological thinking and organized response and planning into chaos. While other textbooks are visionary and/or conceptual but not field-ready, this accessible Guidebook is also a blueprint for how to think about complexity, decision-making and how to organize your thoughts more generally. The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption will help readers become ‘Response-able’… getting out of the victim mindset and giving leadership more agency over how they prepare for and respond to disruption. The Guidebook invites real-world dilemmas into case studies and practical applications, so that individuals and organizations can apply actionable solutions to existing challenges.”
- David Solomon, Head of Operations (retired), Leadership in Israeli Army & Prime Minister’s Office
“In 2021, StartSe formally partnered with the Disruptive Futures Institute in San Francisco to deliver unique leadership programs for complex, uncertain, and unpredictable times. Using the Disruptive Futures Institute’s resources and frameworks, our participants can immediately develop antifragile strategies to imagine aspirational futures and create sustainable value for them and their organizations while building resilience. Our partnership with the Disruptive Futures Institute is a great honor and source of pride for StartSe. Given the praise we receive from our students and participants in relation to the Institute’s unique insights and practical tools, we hope that you will find their Guidebook to be equally impactful for you.”
- Junior Borneli, CEO & Founder of StartSe
“The Guidebook “Thriving on Disruption” offers a fascinating, visionary, and deeply meaningful journey through some of the most profound questions of our times. Its fundamental premise is that the old ways of navigating the world do not work anymore. We must learn new ways to guide ourselves and our enterprises in a meaningful and successful way. We need to create our own navigation system, and by doing so, we will regain the power to shape the future and create our own reality, even in a highly complex, volatile, and unpredictable world. This Guidebook gives us the tools and the materials to help us in this endeavour. For those - like me - who have been practicing strategic planning for a living, the systemic, non-linear, interconnected approach proposed by this Guidebook is nothing less than the golden key to a new paradigm that will surely revolutionize the definition and practice of Strategy in the decades to come.”
- Antoine Gelain, Co-Founder & MD Paragon European Partners & Author of The Business of Aerospace
“Roger and Lidia have compiled a first-of-its-kind comprehensive guidebook for how to navigate a disruptive world and empower individuals and organizations to take agency over their future destinations. Never before has the world needed such tools, frameworks, and practical applications to inform not only how to survive, but thrive. If we can extend such a guide to all facets of our society, no doubt we will be happier, healthier, and more prepared to navigate and achieve our preferred futures.”
- Kara Cunzeman, Lead Futurist, Strategic Foresight, Center for Space Policy & Strategy, The Aerospace Corporation
“Roger and Lidia put together a comprehensive guide exploring the timeous topic of disruption from multiple angles. The guide is well-organised into 4 volumes - foundations, frameworks, insights for individual life, and insights for organisations. I appreciate their use of plain language, the good balance between analysis of the topic and examples from practice, and the innovative new words (like info-ruption) and acronyms (like UN-VICE) they are adding to our vocabulary.”
- Doris Viljoen, Director Institute for Futures Research at Stellenbosch Business School
“The Design Fiction methodology by the Disruptive Futures Institute has been instrumental for XP Health to think creatively about the future of our industry (and beyond) and provide insights that have informed our strategic and product roadmaps.”
- Antonio Moraes, Co-Founder & CEO of XP Health
“The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption is a multidisciplinary playbook that offers frameworks to best prepare for the accelerating nature of the world we live in. This book provides tools to effectively contribute to solving the most critical issues on humankind’s agenda. It’s been an innovation rollercoaster in tech during the last decade and I almost feel dizzy from all the great recent progress. We’ve become so used to the magic of technology that was unthinkable just a decade ago. And while it’s nice to watch technological advancement that no previous generation experienced before - we need not forget that this breathtaking rate of innovation comes at a price. As the rate of change in our lives is exponentially increasing, we now face novel societal issues and even existential threats. All these and many more we owe to the accelerating technological progress. Roger and Lidia put together this book that addresses the disruptive nature of our world and offers a toolkit to deal with and thrive with it. This book is not like other writings on innovation. This work is practical, actionable, and mixed with references and examples from history, as well as recent months. And although the subject of innovation is usually left to strategy consultants, executives, and business owners, this book makes a case for an essential manual for anybody who wants to equip themselves to be relevant for the uncertainties of tomorrow.”
- Andrey Shtylenko, Director of Engineering, Advanced Technology Group, Honeywell International
“Roger Spitz and the team at the Disruptive Futures Institute have done us all a favour and given us a guidebook for managing these challenging times. Roger is always an exciting and disruptive thinker but now he has collaborated with an amazing group of theorists and practitioners to produce The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption. The Volumes (there are 4 in total) are practical for those who want immediate actions to take. They operate like a base camp for anyone who wants to do further exploration as they contain an extensive list of references. I recommend the books heartily.”
- Dr. Peter Hayward, Founder of Futurepod.org
“The guide describes how you can reduce the uncertainty of the unpredictable future. It treats the first idea of uncertainty as an onion and offers you tools that will help you peel off the certain layers. You’ll end up with a precise idea of the uncertain core of your situation, so that you know what to do. There are tools that peel off the constants and the slower, more certain changes. Another one spaces uncertainties out over time, to get time on your side. Different views, from Zen to Science Fiction, will help you to get uncertainty in a helpful perspective. And many more tools and resources to integrate your foresight into your life, work, and strategies.”
- Dr. Barbara van Veen, Futurist, Educator & Forbes Council
“As a young person coming of age in the complicated and turbulent 21st century, having a hopeful vision for a better future inspires me to take action. The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption and its AAA framework are powerful tools to help individuals and organizations alike thrive today and shape their desired tomorrow.
I resonated most with the themes and chapters around “Aligning Values & Ethics”. Our world is too diverse and interconnected to ignore the opinions of others, especially those that disagree with us. Roger and Lidia explain how striving for aligned values is crucial to innovation, ethical outcomes, and being able to thrive in a constantly disrupted world. The emphasis on these topics, among others, is what makes The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption unique.
I recommend adding The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption to your reading list; everyone has something to gain.”
- Julian Dreiman, Senior Research Analyst for Accenture Technology Labs
“AI and climate change are overwhelming topics in isolation. When examined together against other trends, it becomes clear that we need a better approach to understanding our plausible futures through scanning, monitoring, and qualifying all signals (weak and strong); identifying and evaluating patterns; using different mental models; exploring tipping points; and creating early warning systems. The book warns that this is not easy work. However, the authors implore readers to beware of anyone offering up crystal-ball predictions of the future and half-baked, short-sighted solutions that will ultimately result in bigger losses down the line… The overarching message is this: rather than be surprised by disruption, you can prepare for it.”
- Zainub Dungarwalla, Association of Professional Futurists (APF), Compass Magazine
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