Eric Garland, Keynote Speaker
Strategic foresight · Geopolitical risk · Cognitive bias · Disruptive technology
Eric Garland has spent 25 years telling leaders what is coming next, and showing them how to think about it for themselves. A strategic intelligence analyst and author of Future, Inc., he has keynoted on four continents for Fortune-scale companies, national governments, and the Wall Street Journal CEO Summit. His talks are built on the working methods of intelligence and foresight, not on hype, and every one is adapted to the audience in the room.
Keynotes
Each keynote runs 45 to 60 minutes with Q&A and is rebuilt for the audience: its industry, its geography, and the decisions in front of it. All are available in English or French, in person or virtual.
Building a Foresight Culture
Threats, opportunities, and new horizons for leadership thinking. Foresight was born of the nuclear age, and its purpose was never prediction: it was choosing the preferred future and building it. This keynote gives a leadership audience the six-step method of Future, Inc., the discipline of scenario thinking beyond “the plan plus the plan where it goes badly,” the cognitive biases and cultural differences that defeat it, and how AI now lets every step run continuously. The room leaves with five questions to ask itself and a practice it can start the same week.
The Chaos Advantage
How great leaders win in uncertain times. Disruption is not a storm to wait out; it is the condition under which the best organizations pull ahead. Drawing on three decades of intelligence casework, this keynote shows how leaders read a chaotic environment, find the opportunities that uncertainty creates, and make decisions that hold up when the ground keeps moving.
The Future of Geopolitics
What business and government will actually look like in the decade ahead. Power now moves through paper and code: designations, licences, court orders, and export controls written in one capital and enforced in many others. This keynote maps the new doctrine of national security, the balance between nationalism and the neoliberal order, and what a global organization must do to preserve value while the rules change at Tuesday speed.
The Future of Risk Analysis
AI, sensors, and the next generation of analysts. Ubiquitous sensors feeding ever-better algorithms will change what risk analysis can see; they will not change what it is for. This keynote separates the technologies that will matter from the ones that are merely famous, and explains what the human analyst still has to do that software cannot.
Strategic Mind Traps
Cognitive bias in strategy and intelligence, and how to remediate it. Built on Richards Heuer’s catalog of analytic biases and 40-plus failures drawn from real cases, this keynote takes an audience through the errors every organization makes about its own future (survivorship, authority, probability, memory) and gives it a working bias audit to take home.
Custom Strategic Intelligence Briefing
Built to your industry and your situation. A keynote prepared from original research on the audience’s own competitive, technological, and geopolitical landscape, delivered as an intelligence briefing: what is happening, what it means, and the decisions it forces.
Executive education
For leadership teams that want the method and not only the message, Garland teaches an advanced strategic analysis course under the Competitive Futures brand: a half-day or full-day working session on trend analysis, scenario development, the Analysis of Competing Hypotheses, and cognitive bias, run on the organization’s own questions. Examples are on the Our Work page. It has been delivered to corporate strategy groups and to national governments, including the National Council of Monaco and the Government of H.S.H. Prince Albert II of Monaco.
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Why audiences book Eric Garland
- A practitioner, not a pundit. Founder of Competitive Futures (2002); strategic intelligence and foresight practiced since 1997; trained under Joseph F. Coates, the futurist who advised the Pentagon and the U.S. Congress.
- A public record. His December 2016 open-source analysis of Russian intelligence operations against the American electorate preceded the U.S. Intelligence Community’s unclassified assessment by nearly a month. In May 2022 the Russian Federation sanctioned him by name.
- Author. Future, Inc.: How Businesses Can Anticipate and Profit from What’s Next (AMACOM, 2007); How to Predict the Future…and WIN! (2011); “Peak Intel” in The Atlantic (2012).
- Recognized by the field. Fellow of the Council of Competitive Intelligence.
- Stages. The Wall Street Journal CEO Summit, the National Council of Monaco, international competitive-intelligence and market-intelligence conferences, corporate leadership summits and executive retreats on four continents.
- Clients have included IBM, General Motors, Siemens, 3M, DuPont, Johnson & Johnson, Cummins, Toshiba, and the governments of France and Monaco.
- Media. Quoted or profiled by the BBC, Politico, the Chicago Sun-Times, The Atlantic, Harvard Business Review, and The New York Times; a guest on Al Jazeera’s The Stream. Host of Game Theory Today on YouTube and TikTok.
Formats and logistics
- Keynote: 45–60 minutes, including Q&A; opening or closing slots; panel moderation on request.
- Executive education: half-day and full-day working sessions for leadership teams and analyst groups.
- Languages: English and French, natively; conversational Italian and Spanish.
- Travel: based in Stowe, Vermont; travels worldwide. Virtual delivery available.
- Materials: bio, headshot, and introduction supplied on booking; a tailored pre-event call with the organizers is standard.
Book Eric Garland
Tell us about the event and we will reply within one business day with availability, fees, and a proposed angle for your audience. Speakers bureaus are welcome to inquire on a client’s behalf.
Prefer email? Reach the office through the contact page. More on Eric’s background: About Eric Garland.