KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Professor of Practice, University of Oxford; Director, Oxford-Hyundai Motor Group Foresight Centre
Fee information first. Availability is normally checked once there is a concrete intention to proceed.
WHY RAFAEL
Rafael Ramírez brings a rigorous scenario-planning perspective to situations in which the strategic question itself may need to change. He helps leaders explore how different future contexts alter their understanding of the present and reveal options they had not considered. His work connects research, executive education and practical engagements across organisations and institutions. For boards and strategy teams, this creates a disciplined way to examine assumptions, relationships and the boundaries of a problem. In the room, Ramírez's distinctive contribution is to make reframing useful: what changes in the decision when the group sees its context differently?
KEYNOTE TOPICS
What if the way a team describes its problem is limiting the choices it can see? Ramírez explores how contrasting future contexts can help a group reconsider its understanding of the present. This theme suits boards and executive teams facing a strategic impasse or major uncertainty. The conversation examines the assumptions within the current frame and asks which new options become visible when the context is understood differently.
How can scenario planning become a disciplined process of learning about a strategic situation? Ramírez introduces the perspective developed through the Oxford Scenario Planning Approach, connecting alternative contexts with reframing and the exploration of options. For strategy leaders and executive audiences, the theme offers a basis for discussing what a scenario exercise needs to address. It asks how the process can remain relevant to the question the organisation must consider.
An established plan can become harder to interpret when the conditions surrounding it change. Ramírez examines how leaders can use scenario thinking to explore uncertainty, question expectations and consider their options. This theme is relevant to teams confronting an unfamiliar strategic environment. The emphasis is on learning about the context and the choices it creates, including the possibility that a different understanding of the situation calls for a different question.
An organisation's opportunities often depend on customers, partners, institutions and other actors whose behaviour it cannot control. Ramírez connects his research on value-creation systems and networked strategy with the wider contexts leaders need to consider. This theme suits executive teams examining their business model or strategic relationships. It opens a discussion about how value is created together and what changes in those relationships could mean for the options available to the organisation.
Rafael Ramírez is Professor of Practice at the University of Oxford and Director of the Oxford-Hyundai Motor Group Foresight Centre at Saïd Business School. His research and advisory work explore scenario planning, foresight and strategy. He also studies value-creation systems and the relationships through which organisations shape and exchange value.
Before joining Oxford, Ramírez worked in Shell's scenarios team and was Professor of Management at HEC Paris. He holds a doctorate from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and master's degrees from York University in Toronto and Oxford. His professional work has involved businesses, governments, international organisations, nonprofits and think tanks across different regions.
At Oxford, Ramírez co-created the Oxford Scenarios Programme and helped develop the Oxford Scenario Planning Approach. His work treats scenarios as a way for people to learn about an uncertain context and reconsider how they understand a strategic situation. The emphasis on reframing makes the approach relevant when extending a familiar forecast leaves important assumptions unexamined.
With Angela Wilkinson, he co-authored Strategic Reframing: The Oxford Scenario Planning Approach. The book examines learning through alternative future contexts and the identification of new strategic options. His wider research on interactive value and networked strategy also asks how an organisation's opportunities depend on relationships beyond its own boundaries. At the Oxford-Hyundai Motor Group Foresight Centre, this inquiry connects with research on how foresight informs strategy and public policy.
For leadership audiences, Ramírez brings methodological depth and experience in making scenario conversations relevant to a real question. His perspective is useful when a board or executive team faces turbulence, uncertainty or a shift in the conditions surrounding its business. The conversation can examine what the group currently assumes, how different contexts might change those assumptions and which options become visible as a result. His contribution centres on improving the way a team understands the situation in which it must act.
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