KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Co-founder & Partner, Diplomatic Rebels | Former LEGO Innovation Leader
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WHY DAVID
Gram brings practical experience of developing new ventures inside established organisations. He helps leaders examine the conditions that allow experimentation to progress from a promising idea to a supported business initiative, including user involvement, internal relationships and the balance between entrepreneurial freedom and organisational responsibility.
KEYNOTE TOPICS
Gram explores how people inside established organisations can pursue opportunities that challenge existing assumptions. Drawing on corporate innovation experience, he connects entrepreneurial initiative with testing, evidence and internal support. The session examines what intrapreneurs need from leaders and how an organisation can make experimentation a credible part of its work.
Innovation depends on conditions that precede the idea itself. Gram examines leadership behaviour, team culture and ways of working that help organisations learn from users and test uncertainty. The emphasis is on building a practical foundation for exploration, including the relationships and permissions needed to move beyond isolated initiatives.
Established organisations can expand their capacity to innovate by changing how they work with external knowledge, partners and users. Gram explores the move towards more connected forms of experimentation. His perspective links the development of new business opportunities with the organisational choices required to learn beyond a company's existing boundaries.
Challenging an institution from within requires more than a persuasive idea. Gram examines the habits of people who combine a willingness to question convention with the ability to build trust and support. The session connects constructive dissent, stakeholder relationships and practical experimentation as complementary elements of effective corporate change.
David Gram is co-founder and partner at Diplomatic Rebels, where he works on innovation, intrapreneurship and organisational change. His perspective centres on a recurring corporate challenge: how to develop unfamiliar opportunities inside institutions whose processes and incentives were designed to protect an existing business. He brings experience from innovation leadership at LEGO and Scandinavian Airlines to that question.
At LEGO, Gram worked in the Future Lab and later in LEGO Ventures, contributing to the exploration of new business opportunities beyond established products and routines. Earlier, he led innovation at Scandinavian Airlines. He subsequently co-founded Diplomatic Rebels with Anders Møller, applying lessons from corporate experimentation to the development of new products, services and business models in other organisations.
The idea behind diplomatic rebellion is deliberately practical. Innovators need the willingness to question established assumptions, but also the ability to build relationships, understand institutional constraints and secure support. Gram connects that organisational work with design thinking, early testing and collaboration with users. His frameworks for intrapreneurs and innovation culture address both the development of an idea and the environment that determines whether it can survive.
For leadership teams, the relevance extends beyond running an innovation workshop. The harder questions concern resources, evidence, ownership and the relationship between exploratory work and the core business. Gram helps make those questions discussable. His work is particularly useful when an organisation wants to encourage entrepreneurial initiative while retaining the coordination and discipline required to turn learning into a viable direction for growth.
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