Introducing The Innovators 2026 honorees
Innovation has its household names. NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang helped position accelerated computing at the center of the AI revolution. Canva’s Melanie Perkins reimagined who could design. And Reshma Kewalramani is leading a biotech company pushing the boundaries of what medicine can treat.
But the next era of innovation won’t be shaped by a handful of famous names alone. Around the world, leaders are rethinking how we work, build, manufacture, heal, connect and compete – often by questioning assumptions their industries have operated on for decades.
Perhaps that is what makes this moment most interesting. AI is advancing at extraordinary speed, but technology alone is becoming less of a differentiator. The harder questions now concern what leaders do with it: what they automate, where they place their bets and which fundamentally human qualities they choose to protect.
Such leaders are at the heart of The Innovators 2026, The CEO Magazine’s global spotlight, recognizing the business innovators, technology executives and transformation leaders turning bold ideas into scalable results and helping to redefine the future of business.
We asked this year’s honorees one question: What is the single most important shift leaders must make today to stay competitive over the next five years?
From unlearning the old rules to rebuilding organizations around AI, without losing the human touch, their answers reveal where business is heading next.
The Innovators 2026
Tom Mueller, Founder and CEO, Impulse Space
"If you want to work on world-changing technologies, look at where the new, exciting frontiers are and go toward that. You don’t necessarily have to be at a startup, but if it’s a more established or mature company, make sure they’re still willing to take risks and explore what’s new."
David Blair, Founder and CEO, LucyRx
"Leaders must shift from optimizing for efficiency to optimizing for adaptability, building structures and talent that can reconfigure as quickly as technology advances. Annual planning cycles are too slow. The winners will be those organizations built to thrive in rapidly changing environments."
Mukti, Founder, Mukti Organics
"Consumers and regulators now expect transparency backed by science, not storytelling. Leaders who prioritize evidence, accountability and genuine innovation over hype will build the trust, resilience and competitive advantage needed for the next five years."
Jesse Laeuchli, Founder, Quantum Lock
"Increase focus on the humans leading technology, instead of the other way around. New tech is coming at breakneck speeds. Leaders that succeed will ensure that humans are firmly in the loop, guiding the technology toward outcomes that benefit everyone."
Matt Ingersole, Chief Information Officer, Leadership Circle
"Stop buying innovation. Start building on foundations you control. Over the next five years the gap will not be between companies that adopted AI and companies that did not. Everyone will have adopted something. The gap will be between leaders who rebuilt their foundations and their assumptions, and leaders who bought AI features and changed nothing."
Kirsten Shanks, Founder, Orchard St Apothecary
"It’s about putting people and nature back at the center. As our world becomes increasingly automated and digital, leaders need to value what can’t be automated: connection, community and our relationship with the natural world. Perhaps as attention becomes increasingly fragmented, belonging will become one of the most valuable things a business can create."
Tara Croft, CEO, Oli
"Don’t focus on being right – focus on being ready. The pace of change is now faster than any five-year strategy can predict. In deep tech and women’s health, we’re solving decades-old problems with technologies changing almost weekly. The competitive advantage won’t come from predicting the future, but from being ready to respond to it."
Andrada Muntean, CEO, NovoViz
"Start with a simple, testable hypothesis about impact, then run short, low-cost pilots to validate it. Prioritize depth over speed. Understand customer needs deeply, but translate that learning into concrete decisions, measurable milestones and a transparent road map. Invest in people and partnerships who bring diverse perspectives, and cultivate a feedback loop that turns failures into quick improvements."
Dennis Sullivan, Founder and CEO, CEO 40 Group
"Leaders need to find ways to get the knowledge they need to make better decisions. Often that information can only come from other leaders in similar positions who have tried similar approaches and can reveal what worked and what did not. That kind of information is invaluable for leaders who are dealing with unprecedented challenges in our market and economy today."
Steven Elsham, CEO, Ultimo
"Most leaders today are asking the wrong question. They ask: Where can we apply AI? The right question is: What does our organization look like when AI is the default, and human-only processes are the exception? Those are not the same question, and the gap between them is where competitive advantage will be built or lost over the next five years."
Mya Thandar Oo, Founder and Chairperson, MyJobs Myanmar Group
"The most important shift leaders must make is moving from managing organizations to building ecosystems. In my experience with MyJobs Myanmar, the organizations that thrive are those that treat workforce development as a continuous ecosystem – where hiring, skills, employer branding and employee growth are interconnected rather than separate functions."
Olivier Vojetta, Director and Co-Founder, The Argonauts Series
"Keep moving while forgetting what you learned. The leaders who are genuinely winning aren't the ones with the most sophisticated tools; they're the ones who have identified, with precision, exactly where AI stops being useful and human judgment becomes the entire game – then ruthlessly redeployed their best people there."
Antionett Beck-Doss, Founder, Mobile Genetix DNA
"The most important shift leaders must make is moving from reactive decision-making to predictive, data-driven leadership. Organizations can no longer afford to wait for problems to emerge before taking action. The future belongs to leaders who leverage technology, AI, data analytics and innovation to anticipate challenges, identify opportunities and create personalized solutions at scale."
Chris Simmance, CEO, The OMG Center
"Bolting AI onto a legacy org chart is like putting a jet engine on a horse cart. The firms that win the next five years aren't the ones with the best tools, they're the ones willing to redesign the structure underneath, including the head count, which is the conversation nobody wants to have out loud. The honest version of competitive advantage right now is being willing to have that conversation before the market forces it on you."
Barbara Salopek, CEO, Vinco Innovation
"Future competitiveness will depend less on having all the answers and more on creating organizations that can continuously discover better answers. The leaders who succeed will be those who build future-fit organizations: organizations that are adaptable, resilient, innovative and capable of creating value in an environment where change is no longer an exception but the norm."
Abdelmoula El Hadi, Group Head of Innovation EMEA/APAC, Knauf Insulation
"The most important shift leaders must make over the next five years is moving from trying to control innovation to creating the conditions where it can thrive. In the years ahead, competitive advantage and resilience will belong to organizations that can remain reliable enough to earn trust and adaptable enough to continuously reinvent themselves."
Danita Harris, Managing Partner and Director of Philanthropy, GUICE Wealth Management
"Move from transactional positioning to ecosystem thinking. The leaders who will define the next five years are not those who offer the best product, the best service or even the best price. They are the ones who build environments where value compounds – where every relationship, every offering and every touchpoint reinforces every other one."
Kent Boswell, Co-Founder, AiCandy
"AI and emerging technologies are not just new tools. They are forcing every industry to rethink speed, cost, access, talent, sustainability and customer expectations. Leaders who only defend existing models will become slower and less relevant. Leaders who are willing to question those models will create the next generation of businesses."
Malik Asad Ali, Founder and Principal Consultant, Infinikey Consulting
"Too many businesses are held together by a few senior people doing extraordinary work to compensate for a model that no longer carries the load. That is invisible until it breaks, and it does not scale. The leaders who stay competitive will be the ones who treat their operating model as something they engineer deliberately, measure honestly and improve continuously, rather than something they inherit and hope holds."
Misti Burmeister, CEO, Inspirion
"The leaders who thrive will be those who recognize fear before it becomes disengagement, uncertainty before it becomes resistance and silence before it becomes turnover. Organizations won't create sustainable competitive advantage through technology alone; they'll create it by building cultures where people feel safe enough to contribute their best thinking, adapt quickly and choose leadership themselves."
Marc Mathys, CEO, CNS Therapy
"Be bold in combining disciplines. Chronic conditions like pain often resist solutions that come from a single domain, like just drugs or just talk therapy. The most transformative breakthroughs happen at the intersection – for instance, between neuroscience, behavioral science and data science."
Edima Frank, Founder and CEO, Fish Headquarters
"The future belongs to leaders who can integrate purpose with performance, transforming communities while creating sustainable commercial value. In an increasingly interconnected world, the leaders who build ecosystems, not just enterprises, will define the next generation of economic growth and innovation."
Gilbert Hobeika, CEO, Modern Bakeries
"To remain competitive over the next five years, leaders must move from managing change to leading it. That means empowering people, embracing technology as a strategic enabler, staying adaptable and making faster, informed decisions in response to an increasingly dynamic market. Organizations that can evolve quickly will be the ones that lead the future."
Mande Robert, Founder, Forest Establishment
"The single most important shift leaders must make is from selling products to selling trust through radical transparency. In the next five years, clients will choose companies that protect their assets, prove results in real time and remove risk. Leaders who build systems that are verifiable, hands-free and accountable will stay competitive."
Dikla Czaczkes Akselbrad, CEO, PolyPid
"The most effective leaders will combine speed with rigor, maintaining a clear long-term vision while remaining flexible about how that vision is achieved. They will create cultures where teams are empowered to make decisions, challenge assumptions and respond quickly to changing conditions without losing sight of strategic objectives. This balance between autonomy and alignment is what enables sustained performance under pressure."
Marc Potter, CEO, Actian
"The single biggest shift leaders must make is treating data governance as a source of competitive advantage, not an IT compliance task. Only five percent of AI pilots create measurable value while 95 percent return nothing. The failure point is rarely the AI model. It is the ungoverned data underneath it. The leaders who build governance by design now will set the pace. Everyone else will spend five years catching up."
Tiffany English, Founder and CEO, Access Offshoring
"Leaders must stop operating their businesses and begin to architect them. The most valuable thing a leader can build over the next five years is a company that no longer needs them, because exceptional leadership is the deliberate discipline of systemizing your own redundancy."
Con Raso, Founder and CEO, Tuned Global
"Success will belong to leaders who are willing to challenge assumptions, rethink business models and continually evolve ahead of the market. Leadership is no longer about creating a fixed five-year plan, it’s about building a business capable of pivoting quickly to capitalize on market opportunities and adapting continuously while remaining grounded in a clear long-term vision."
Cynthia Payne, Founder and Managing Director, Anchor Excellence
"Stop being the hero. Start building capability that outlasts you. The leaders who get this right will use technology and AI to amplify that capability – sharpening decisions, predicting risk, freeing people for the human work that actually defines care. The strongest leaders of the next five years won't be the ones with all the answers. They'll be the ones who build organizations that can find the answers without them."
James Lancaster, CEO, Renew IT
"The leaders who will define the next decade are those who embrace continuous innovation, make decisions based on data rather than tradition and view disruption as an opportunity to create entirely new markets rather than simply improve existing ones. Those who wait for certainty before acting risk being overtaken by competitors who are already building the future."
Claire Morris, CEO, Orchard St
"The leaders who thrive will create a clear sense of purpose, share their why and bring their teams along the journey. When people feel connected to something bigger than themselves and know their contribution matters, they don’t just follow change – they help create it."
Raj Kosaraju, CIO, Maxil Technology Solutions
"The single most important shift leaders must make today is moving from efficiency-driven leadership to adaptability-driven leadership. The next five years will reward leaders who can evolve their organizations as living systems – adaptive, ethical and collaborative – rather than static machines of efficiency."
David Antonacci, CEO, Teeny Tiny Homes
"Modern consumers and workers are deeply cynical toward shady operators who hide behind fine print and bait-and-switch tactics. To remain resilient, business owners and leading executives must transition to a leadership model centered on absolute clarity, shared accountability and a firm commitment to value creation."
George Spink, Executive General Manager, Decoda
"Data observed from a distance is always an approximation. Data captured at the point of impact is reality. But the scarce resource in modern organizations is not data – it's the capacity to act on it."
Judy Sahay, Founder and CEO, ID/Ai
"Stop competing on intelligence and start competing on trust. Tomorrow's CEOs won't simply be responsible for driving growth, they will be responsible for safeguarding authenticity. Every decision – from how AI is deployed to how customer data is protected, how digital identities are secured and how content is verified – will directly influence an organization's reputation and competitive position."
Scott Wilcox, Founder and Senior Advisor, Sicuro Group
"Over the next five years, the organizations that outperform their competitors will be those that equip decision-makers with live, evidence-based intelligence rather than interpreted advisory reports, and give them the confidence to act on it in minutes, not days. Quarterly risk reports and static travel policies are not sufficient in a world where geopolitical events, natural disasters and security threats escalate without warning."
Jim Dunn, President and CEO, LD Human Capital Consulting
"Sometimes the best thing we can do is unlearn what is no longer serving us and to acknowledge what may have worked five years ago, one year ago, and was fantastic, may not be anymore. And this is in large part due to the changing psychological contract employers now expect from their employers. They no longer want jobs, they are looking for journeys."
Dane Meah, Co-Founder and CEO, MyCISO
"The organizations that will outperform over the next five years will not be those that simply adopt AI. They will be those that redesign how work is performed around AI-enabled decision-making. The future belongs to businesses that orchestrate people, technology and data into intelligent operating models where routine analysis is automated and human expertise is focused on strategic judgment."
Anna Harrison, Founder and CEO, RAMMP
"Your brand will be read, summarized and ranked by systems that do not see your hero video, do not feel your typography and do not care about your funnel. They read structure, signal and trust. The leaders who win the next decade will build dual legibility: Brands that earn human trust and are machine comprehensible."
Scott O’Neill, Founder and CEO, Rethink Group
"The most important shift is recognizing that technology should enhance professional expertise rather than attempt to replace it. Leaders need to identify the repetitive and time-consuming parts of their operations that can be improved through automation, while remaining clear about the decisions that still require experience, judgment and accountability."
Jamie Turner, Founder and President, Acclaim Autism
"Leaders must stop viewing AI as a tool for cost reduction and start viewing it as a force multiplier for human expertise. The organizations that win over the next five years will be those that remove complexity from their employees' work, allowing talented people to spend more time doing what only humans can do."
Annie Ta, Founder and CEO, Infiniti Property
"Innovation is no longer about doing everything yourself – it is about connecting the right people, sharing information effectively and delivering a seamless experience that customers cannot achieve on their own."
Sachil Dagur, CEO, Habib Bank Zurich (Hong Kong)
"The shift leaders must make today is to move from reactive management to continuous transformation. They must build organizations that are constantly improving, adapting and upgrading, not through isolated initiatives, but through a sustained discipline of multiple, concurrent and consistent incremental changes. The next five years will reward leaders who can combine innovation with risk control and speed with trust."
Adam Witty, Founder and CEO, Advantage
"The future belongs to leaders who allow machines to perform repetitive work so people can do what only humans can do: build relationships, tell meaningful stories, inspire confidence, solve complex problems with original ideas and lead with authenticity."
Patima Tantiprasut, Managing Director and CEO, PetRescue
"The single most important shift is recognizing that competitiveness will increasingly be won or lost before anyone reaches your brand at all. We've moved into an answers economy, where AI and search increasingly mediate first impressions. The leaders who win will be the ones whose impact is legible before they've said a word."
Victoria Reade, COO, Vita Imaging
"The medtech landscape is moving rapidly away from standalone hardware devices to multimodal technologies. To remain competitive over the next five years, leaders must pivot toward connected, intelligent health tech ecosystems that deliver continuous data insights, clinical efficiency and personalized patient outcomes."
Marcus Tesoriero, Co-Founder and Head of Creative, AiCandy
"The leaders who stay competitive won't necessarily be the ones who adopt the most AI. They'll be the ones who are willing to rethink long-held assumptions about how their business should operate, then build a model that can keep evolving. The biggest leadership risk over the next five years is not moving too quickly. It's defending a business model designed for yesterday while somebody else is busy building the one designed for tomorrow."
Greg Caleo, Co-Founder and CEO, Cybermate
"The organizations that stay competitive will be the ones that help their people make better decisions, adapt quickly and feel confident using whatever technology comes next. The real advantage won't come from having the newest AI model or the most polished digital stack. It will come from leaders who create environments where people can experiment, learn and respond to change without fear of getting it wrong."
Amireh Amirmazaheri, Founder and CEO, PMO SOLUTIONS
"The shift isn't learning to use AI – it’s learning where to stop directing tasks and start architecting decisions: knowing precisely which parts of the work belong to AI (data collection, pattern recognition, speed) and which must stay irreducibly human: judgment, risk, accountability, trust."
Rashid Khan, Founder and CEO, Evacovation
"Whether responding to emergencies, cyber incidents, infrastructure failures or organizational crises, leaders need immediate situational awareness supported by accurate, real-time data to make informed decisions under pressure. Technology alone is not the answer. The real competitive advantage comes from combining technology with leadership that empowers people, encourages collaboration and enables faster, evidence-based decisions."
Amandipp Singh, Founder and CEO, Enabled Talent
"As AI reshapes work and labor shortages continue to grow, organizations that design products, services and workplaces for the widest range of talent will have a lasting competitive advantage. The future belongs to leaders who build systems that expand participation, remove barriers and unlock the full potential of every individual."
Sharon Melamed, Managing Director, Matchboard
"While a shift to embracing AI is table stakes for the next five years, there is a real risk that leaders will lose focus on human innovation and value creation in the name of cost-cutting and short-term profits. Human innovation will become more important than ever for business growth, and this should not be forgotten in the race to embed AI."
Tim Mason, CEO, Eagle Eye Solutions
"Treat every customer as you would want to be treated yourself – not as one of thousands in a demographic segment, but as an individual whose needs, preferences and context change from moment to moment. The future belongs to businesses that replace campaign thinking with continuous decisioning – using AI to determine, in milliseconds, the best action for every customer interaction."
Kim Liddell, Director Investment and Innovation, Dantia
"The next five years will reward the people who understand exactly where value is created in their organization and their region and challenge the ones managing from a dashboard alone. The advantage goes to leaders who know their operators, customers and communities well enough to act on what the data can't see. Build from the ground up, walk the floor, know the people and back your judgment."
David Yapp, Managing Director, MN Digital Services
"Leaders must stop thinking about technology as the competitive advantage and start thinking about adaptability as the competitive advantage. The organizations that succeed will not necessarily be those with the newest technology, but those that remain closest to their customers, adapt fastest to change and use technology to solve real business problems."
Abhishek Agarwal, Founder and CEO, LRA Unified Group
"Competitive advantage will no longer come solely from products or services but from the ability to integrate technology, human psychology, education, creativity and purpose into meaningful experiences. Leaders must become lifelong learners, embrace AI without losing human empathy and focus on creating value that transforms lives rather than simply maximizing short-term profits."
Melissa Williams, CEO, Learning Dimensions Network
"Staying competitive over the next five years demands a paradigm reversal. The single most important shift executives must make is prioritizing the diagnostic science of how their people learn before they ever attempt to train them. True leadership requires understanding the human architecture of education."
Melita Torres, Architect, Stormflow Plumbing Supplies
"Focus on building psychological safety, continuous reskilling and acting as learning architects for teams navigating the new products and solutions through AI and hands-on workshops."
Michael Marty, President and CEO, Leap Event Technology
"For years, event organizers collected data almost as an afterthought without really architecting how it all connects or fully leveraging it. That's no longer good enough. The leaders who win over the next five years will be the ones who leverage their data intentionally at every stage of the attendee journey."
Stephen Ho, Group CEO, SkyLab
"Leaders must shift from adopting technology to redesigning how their organizations sense, decide and act. The organizations that remain competitive will not necessarily be those with the most AI tools. They will be those capable of converting technology into repeatable organizational capability and turning faster information into better decisions."
Richard Mawer, Founder and CEO, Leadnamic Systems
"The leadership shift is moving with technology without losing sight of the core principles of running and scaling a business. We are fully integrating AI and AI agents into every facet of our business but doubling down on the human element. So learning to embrace technology to free up our human skills to focus on judgment, relationships and emotional connection is still critical."
Sipho Wiseman Khuzwayo, Founder and Managing Director, Lwandile Engineering Projects
"Leaders must embrace integrated innovation – where food, energy and mobility are not separate silos but interconnected pillars of resilience. This shift requires courage to prioritize regenerative design over extractive models, invest in scalable minimal viable products that prove resilience before expansion and to align with communities and cooperatives rather than relying solely on centralized grids."
Rebecca Petroff, Director, Sunstate Conveyancing
"Leaders must become comfortable making decisions without perfect information. Regulatory environments, market conditions and customer expectations will continue to evolve rapidly. Waiting for certainty is no longer a competitive strategy. The ability to adapt quickly, learn continuously and confidently lead through uncertainty will define the next generation of successful organizations."
Sladen Moses, CEO, Lexin Solutions
"Over the next five years, the single most critical shift software executives must make is abandoning the legacy model of seat-based feature-pushing. Leaders must transition to a prescriptive, problem-first methodology that values human-centric workflow over raw software sales metrics. True competitive survival requires building technology around the unsexy plumbing of day-to-day operations."
Catherine Brooks, Founder and CEO, Equitable Philanthropy
"Leaders who only ever see one side of a negotiation, whether that is the charity seeking funding or the funder seeking impact, will increasingly lose ground to those who understand both sides of the transaction and can broker outcomes that work for everyone. In the next five years, the organizations that win will be the ones willing to sit in the middle of their market, even when that is structurally less comfortable than picking a side."
Saman Kankanamge, Former Credit Analyst, NDB BANK
"Leaders must focus on being strategic to adapt to the changes."
Sundararaman Ramamurthy, CEO and Managing Director, BSE India
"The most important leadership shift is moving from legacy-driven management to agile, customer-centric and innovation-led execution. Leaders must stay close to customers and stakeholders. The next five years will reward leaders who combine customer insight, data-backed decision-making, innovation, technology readiness and strong execution discipline."
Anson Zhang, Co-Founder and CEO, OSW Group
"The most important shift leaders must make is moving from building products to building ecosystems. And ecosystems comprise more than just individual products or business units. Without nurturing relationships to support them, an ecosystem does not have the strength to stand on its own. Enabling ecosystems to strengthen relationships will thus be what brings businesses from strength to strength in the next five years."
Armando Massimiliano Sirolla, Senior Executive, Cognito SRL
"Leaders must stop seeing AI as an IT project and start treating it as a strategic business capability. The winners over the next five years will not be those with the most AI, but those who can govern it, earn trust and turn it into better decisions, faster execution and sustainable competitive advantage."
Ripon Chandra Das, Senior Consultant, RCD Strategic Solutions
"The single most important shift leaders must make is moving from managing stability to leading continuous innovation and adaptability. Over the next five years, successful leaders will embrace data-driven decision-making, leverage AI responsibly, foster collaboration across diverse teams and build learning organizations that can rapidly respond to technological change and evolving customer expectations."
Paulo Figueiredo, Director of Operations, SKYnovator
"Leaders must adapt to use IT and the web – AI included – to refresh the market approach, the elaboration of new products and new ideas. Get the teams involved with AI."
Michélle Booysen, CEO, Pétanque NXT
"The leader's role is increasingly to bring together the right combination of employees, partners, technology, data, AI tools and intelligent agents around a clearly defined outcome. AI should be viewed as an additional organizational resource. It should not be treated as a separate IT initiative or as a substitute for leadership judgment and accountability."
Anthony Simonetta, Managing Director, XtraClubs
"Leaders must remain close to customers and frontline operations while using data and technology to improve the speed and quality of their decisions. This does not mean personally controlling every task. It means building systems that create accountability, expose problems early and allow teams to act confidently."
Helen Zhou, CEO, Spark Interact
"Most of the conversation I hear from other business leaders is still framed around cost: How many roles can be reduced, how many hours can be saved. That framing is not wrong, but it is incomplete, and I think it will increasingly be the wrong starting question. The leaders who will out-compete over the next five years are the ones asking a different question: Who can I now serve that I could not properly serve before?"