Speaking — Jeffrey I. Cole

Jeffrey I. Cole on stage at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting

Speaking

Illuminating the Future.

Jeffrey anticipates the future and shows you how to be ready for disruption.

Speaker reel

Two minutes on stage

Speaker kit (PDF)

In his own words

“It is impossible to make strategic decisions without first rate insight into what is happening within the world, your industry and your company. That vision comes from rigorous data and context looking at the present and the future. Without quality information and analysis, disruption becomes far more likely and lethal.

Our objective extends beyond merely disseminating information; we actively collaborate with corporate and government leaders to anticipate disruptions and proactively prepare for them.”

On stage

Five keynotes

01 — 05

Keynote 01 · Signature talk for 2026

Disrupters at the Gate

Recognizing the outsiders who will rewrite your business, while there is still time to respond.

Every industry that has been upended saw it coming from the wrong direction. Incumbents watch each other; the threat comes from visionaries, trailblazers and two people in a garage nobody had heard of. Drawing on the case studies in his September 2026 book, from BlackBerry's collapse to the digital music revolution to Ozempic's shake-up of pharmaceuticals, Cole traces what the incumbents saw, when they saw it, and why they still acted too late.

“Essential reading for anyone steering into the future. He shows how disruption topples industries, rewrites culture, and ignites the next waves of invention.” — Tom Bernard, Co-CEO, Sony Pictures Classics

By Jeffrey I. Cole and Harlan J. Lebo. Ideapress, distributed by Simon & Schuster, September 2026. Bulk and signed copies available for events.

Audiences will learn to

01Stop the process of denial and accept the threat when disruption arrives

02Recognize the shape of a disruptive threat before it has revenue

03Tell the difference between a competitor and a disrupter, and why confusing them is fatal

04Identify which of their own assets will stop being assets

05Build a disruption action plan rather than a monitoring exercise

Jeffrey I. Cole delivering the Disrupters at the Gate keynote at IAB ALM 2026 — IAB Annual Leadership Meeting 2026: the signature Disrupters at the Gate keynote.

Keynote 02 · Annually since the 1990s, updated yearly

Trends, Fads and Transformation

Which of this is real, and which will look ridiculous in three years?

Updated every year, this talk has served as a benchmark for the technology, music, film, television and sports industries. Boards are being asked to commit serious capital to AI on the strength of very little evidence, and the useful question is not whether the technology matters, but which parts are durable. Because he has been asking the same questions for a quarter of a century, the record is checkable.

A version of this presentation has been delivered at:

The USC Gould School of Law Institute on Entertainment Law and Business, annually
Consumer Electronics Show
Mobile World Congress
IAB annual meetings and public events
Cannes Lions
e-G8, sharing the stage with President Sarkozy, Mark Zuckerberg, Rupert Murdoch and about thirty other government and world leaders

Audiences will learn to

01Apply a repeatable test for distinguishing durable change from noise

02Understand which technology predictions of the last decade held, and why the rest did not

03Prioritize investment against change that will still matter in ten years

04Ask better questions of the vendors in their inbox

Jeffrey I. Cole speaking at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting — IAB Annual Leadership Meeting: 15 years of ongoing keynote addresses for CEOs, best-selling authors, government officials, and other senior-level participants.

Keynote 03 · Built on the World Internet Project

What the Data Says About How We Actually Changed

Nearly thirty years of tracking the same people in 35 countries, and what it says about where we go next.

The World Internet Project has followed the same populations across more than 35 countries for nearly thirty years, asking the same questions year after year. The result is a record of what actually happened to retail, music, media, work, privacy and human relationships, as opposed to what everyone confidently predicted would happen. Some of those predictions are still waiting.

Audiences will learn to

01See which behavioral shifts proved permanent and which reverted

02Understand how trust in online information has moved, and what that means for institutions

03Recognize the pattern by which resistance to a technology collapses

04Apply findings from one industry's disruption to their own

Jeffrey I. Cole presenting Transformation and Disruption at Thomson Reuters — Thomson Reuters: presenting the World Internet Project's findings on transformation and disruption.

Keynote 04 · Industry session

The Future of Entertainment and Sports

Inside the forces reshaping studios, streamers, and the last great live audience.

Cole's Center works with all five major motion picture studios, the broadcast networks, the streamers, and sports networks and leagues. This session covers what that vantage point shows: where theatrical still wins, why the streaming model is under strain, how sports rights became the most contested asset in media, and what happens to attention when there is no longer a shared schedule.

Who this is built for: Studios, networks, streamers, sports leagues and rights holders, agencies, and the advertisers who buy against them.

Audiences will learn to

01Understand how the sports business is being rebuilt

02See the real economics behind the streaming consolidation

03Judge why live sports commands the premiums it does, and how long that lasts

04Anticipate where audience attention fragments next

Jeffrey I. Cole delivering an opening keynote — Beverly Hills Bar – USC Law School Entertainment Law Symposium: opening keynote for 16 (and counting) editions, attended by leading entertainment executives and attorneys from across the industry.

Keynote 05 · One subject, three formats

Where Your Industry Gets Disrupted Next

Curating the right story and content for your organization and event.

A briefing built from the Center's own sector research and shaped around the room you are putting Jeffrey I. Cole in front of.
He can tell a bank what is coming to disrupt its business by showing their executives what already happened to the music industry, which lands harder than any industry-internal benchmark.

Built from

The sectors the Center researches directly and the three delivery formats, below.

Jeffrey I. Cole speaking at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting 2023 — IAB Annual Leadership Meeting 2023: a briefing shaped to the room.

Sectors the Center researches directly

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Formats

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More than 1,000 conferences worldwide.

Corporate

Microsoft · Sony · Disney · Time Warner · AT&T · Coca-Cola · Unilever · Hewlett-Packard · Verizon · GroupM · Ericsson · Telstra · Wesfarmers · AARP

Broadcast and public media

ABC · CBS · NBC · Fox · PBS · CPB

Government and institutions

The White House · FCC · U.S. Congress · Department of Defense · HHS · National Science Foundation · Governments of Australia, India, China, Colombia, Singapore, New Zealand, Canada and Taiwan

Opening keynote speaker at the first Google Zeitgeist event in Mountain View, which also featured Malcolm Gladwell, Chris Anderson, Reed Hastings, Ray Kurzweil, Sergey Brin, Larry Page and more.

Praise

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Booking

Bring Jeffrey to your stage

A few details about your event are all it takes to start the conversation. Prefer email? speaking@jeffrey-cole.com Assembling an internal pitch? Download the speaker kit (PDF).

Thank you.

Your inquiry is on its way. Jeffrey’s team will be in touch within two business days.