Professor James Woudhuysen

James Woudhuysen is Professor of Forecasting and Innovation at De Montfort University, Leicester. A St Paul's School scholar and physics graduate, James began his career as technology editor, then editor of Design magazine. In the late 1980s he was head of research at the international designers Fitch.

In the early and mid-1990s, James led consulting in IT at the Henley Centre, part of the WPP Group. There he also advised major UK cities – London, Birmingham, Glasgow and Manchester – on international competitiveness. He then went on to manage world-wide market intelligence for Philips consumer electronics in the Netherlands, and to work as a director of the product designers Seymour Powell.

James Woudhuysen has a knack of registering trends before other people and offering counterintuitive proposals on what to do about those trends. The only things James does not forecast are the weather, lottery, stock market, the horses and your own personal destiny.

James Woudhuysen...
- helped install and test Britain's first computer-controlled car park (1968)
- wrote about chemical Weapons of Mass Destruction, The Economist (1978)
- identified the user interface as the key issue in the design of IT (1981)
- wrote an instruction manual for word processing on a portable Commodore 64 (1983)
- anticipated by two years the Piper Alpha North Sea oil disaster, The Economist (1986)
- led an international multi-client study of consumer e-commerce (1988)
- advised a top US telecommunications operator to deliver the Web over TV (1993)
- reorganised worldwide market intelligence at Philips Consumer Electronics (1995-7)
- issued a devastating critique of America's dot.com boom (1999)
- forecast today's obsession with work-life balance (2000)
- upheld 3G mobile communications in the face of massive doubts, The Guardian (2002)
- highlighted the worldwide boom in gambling games, Cultural Trends (2003)
- influenced UK government policy in favour of the mass production of housing (2004)

Professor James Woudhuysen helps clients to master new trends in society and innovation, so as to implement major shifts in corporate strategy, marketing, branding and design. He broadcasts on Radio 4's You And Yours, and is also on the editorial boards of New Design and the Journal of Consumer Behaviour.

Professor James Woudhuysen's speeches can be anything from 20 minutes to one hour. They are:
- broad but deep
- funny but serious
- very visual but very numerate
- highly topical but with forecasts and historical depth.

They cover the technology, economics, politics and sociology of IT. They are polemical, controversial, and - above all - they make people think. They are never 'death by Powerpoint'. Also, they show courtesy and good sense by relating his remarks to what other speakers have said on the day (a dying art).

Topics include:
The Future Of... IT; Energy; Brands; Transport; China; Leisure and Play; Cities, Construction and Housing; Retailing; Food; Forecasting; Research and Innovation. Professional, management and commercial practice for designers; The History Of... American Design; British Design

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Clients often ask about purchasing books for giveaways and delegate packs. Below you’ll find a selection of products by Professor James Woudhuysen. Click the images to view on Amazon's website. For bulk orders, please speak with your Booking Agent.