Future Workforce
Summit 2026

Organizations today are navigating unprecedented tension: accelerating technology, shifting workforce expectations, increasing complexity, and leadership models that no longer fully match reality. In this opening session, facilitators set the stage for two days of bold conversations around leadership, organizational transformation, workforce evolution, and the growing gap between strategy and reality. Blending perspectives from leadership development, neuroscience, human performance, and organizational change, this session invites participants to move beyond familiar frameworks and engage with the contradictions shaping the future of work.

Twelve months ago, many organizations were still experimenting. Today, leaders are facing increasing pressure to translate uncertainty into action. In this opening reflection, Anke Paulick and Cristina Mühl revisit predictions, assumptions, and signals from last year's summit and examine what changed faster than expected, what organizations underestimated, and which tensions became impossible to ignore. Because in the future of work, one year is a very long time.

In this conversation we will go back to the early years of AI, the intellectual daring it took to think beyond convention, and what it meant to work alongside John McCarthy, the man who gave artificial intelligence its name. We’ll reflect on the breakthroughs that shaped the field, the hopes and assumptions over the years, and the present situation, full of promises and also concerns. Prof. Carlucci-Aiello will give hints to HR leaders, business leaders and coaches to reflect and understand as they navigate an AI-driven future. A perspective from inside the origins of a technology that is reshaping work, organisations, and human potential.

In this talk, Cornel shares the three defining lessons that shaped his journey of building one of the world’s leading companies in accessibility: - Failure is opportunity in disguise - Ordinary people, in the right context, achieve extraordinary things - Make meaning, not money These lessons are not theories—they are lived experiences. From growing up alongside parents with disabilities to building a company that empowers millions, Cornel’s story is a testament to the power of purpose-driven innovation.

What happens when visionary ideas collide with organizational reality? Following the keynote conversations with Prof. Luigia Carlucci Aiello and Cornel Amariei, the live organizational simulation of Future Success AG continues as insights from both sessions are translated into strategic choices, workforce decisions, leadership approaches, and innovation priorities. Together with Christian Lykke, facilitators, speakers, and participants will explore how purpose-driven innovation, AI, organizational values, and human-centered leadership begin to reshape the company and where tensions, contradictions, and unintended consequences emerge. As the simulation evolves, Future Success AG will raise clarifying questions around technology, leadership, workforce expectations, organizational priorities, and the future role of humans inside increasingly AI-driven systems. These questions will not only be explored with the speakers on stage, but also opened to the audience, transforming the summit into a collective reflection on how organizations navigate complexity when there is no longer a clear playbook.

AI can now write, analyze, recruit, coach, train, and make decisions. As these capabilities accelerate, HR leaders face a defining question: If technology can do more and more of the work once reserved for humans, what becomes the role of HR?

In this thought-provoking session, ICF-PCC Executive Coach, NYU-trained Organizational Consultant, and AI Strategist Helanah Warren explores why the future of HR is not about competing with AI—it is about becoming even more human.

Together, we'll examine what needs to shift as organizations move from human-only systems to human-AI collaboration, and why capabilities such as judgment, trust, adaptability, critical thinking, and meaningful connection may become an organization's greatest competitive advantage.

Attendees will leave with a new lens for understanding HR's evolving role and a practical framework for helping their organizations remain relevant, resilient, and deeply human in an AI-powered future.

Strategy defines direction, but execution depends on people. This session explores how organizations can move beyond static competency models and treat frameworks as engines for strategic alignment. Introducing the concept of human architecture, the talk examines how leaders can use capability frameworks to define future trajectories, translate business priorities into skills and competencies, and design future-ready profiles for roles, teams, and talent development in AI-shaped environments.

We live in times of massive transformations. The way we talk about change has an enormous influence on how we prepare for it and deal with it.

At present, our headlines are dominated by metaphors from the worlds of money, machinery and the military. They evoke feelings of scarcity, helplessness and fear. This is exactly the opposite of what humanity needs right now to be able to act and collaborate: feelings of abundance, agency and hope.

With the intention of moving 'beyond the playbook', we are all invited to choose a language that expresses the shift towards our desired future. With words that are seeds for the new, a language full of life and narratives that nourish. Choices of words that kindle our imagination and guide our actions. This talk provides a wide and inspiring spectrum of words that create worlds.

“All transformation is linguistic,” says Werner Erhard. Let's co-author the world and the work we believe to be possible, day by day and word by word.

Innovation rarely arrives fully formed. It emerges through experimentation, bold ideas, unexpected collaborations, and organizations willing to challenge conventional thinking. This session brings emerging ideas into direct conversation with organizational reality. But the conversation will not stop at inspiration alone. As part of the live organizational simulation of Future Success AG, selected ideas, technologies, and approaches emerging from the session will be integrated directly into the evolving organization, influencing strategic choices, workforce decisions, leadership dynamics, and operational realities throughout the summit. A fast-paced exploration of innovation not only as vision, but as organizational consequence.

When organizations scale, leadership gets harder not easier.

In this session, Jessica Krauter, Founder & CEO of buah, shares her journey from near insolvency to building a 40-person company, profitable with 25 Mio. Revenue and what it really takes to lead in the tension between performance and humanity.

This is not a story about idealized “people-first” leadership.

It’s about real trade-offs:

• driving results without losing trust
• building structure without killing autonomy
• leading under pressure without losing yourself

Together, we explore what works, what doesn’t and what leaders can actually take away for their own organizations.

This session asks a deliberately relevant question: what happens when AI does not only change work, but also changes how we think, learn and make decisions? Armin explores AI as a cognitive Trojan horse, from automation and agentic AI to skill skipping, real-world work benchmarks like GDPval, the redistribution of work and the risk of losing organizational judgment. The session is not a warning against AI. It is a call for more humanization: using AI boldly where it scales, while keeping responsibility, critical thinking, relationships and meaning firmly human.

The audience will leave with three takeaways: AI replaces activities, not whole people, but work will be redistributed. Skills and judgment must be actively developed, not assumed. And when technology becomes widely available, people development becomes the real competitive advantage.

The future of work is being reshaped by powerful forces. While organizations invest heavily in technology and transformation programs, sustainable change ultimately depends on people. This keynote explores why coaching has become a critical strategic enabler for successful workforce transformation. Drawing on current international research and practical experience from large-scale workforce development initiatives, Dirk Wittenborg will show how coaching helps individuals and organizations build adaptability, resilience, learning agility, and a strong sense of direction during times of disruption. Key Takeaways: - Understand the major workforce trends shaping organizations over the next decade - Learn why technology-driven transformation succeeds only when human transformation is supported - Discover how coaching can unlock potential, strengthen resilience, and accelerate sustainable change

Every organisation has a playbook. But rules are finite. This interactive session explores the space where compliance ends and personal ethics begins — and what happens when professionals face decisions that are technically permitted, yet remain ethically challenging.

Drawing on 20+ years of senior Ethics, Risk & Compliance leadership across global pharma, Chris Mühl challenges participants to examine not just their own ethical limits, but those of the people they work with every day.

3 Key Takeaways: 1 - Compliance defines the floor — not the ceiling. Knowing where your personal ethical limit sits is a leadership skill, not a personal luxury. 2 - You likely don't know where your colleagues' personal limits are. That gap can become a risk. 3 - Ethical levelling starts with conversation — and that conversation needs to happen before the moment of decision.