Eddie Obeng

About Prof Eddie Obeng

Prof Eddie Obeng MBA PhD is Learning Director and CEO of Pentacle Business School, an organisation he set up in 1994 to act as a living experiment for his tools and techniques and to prove the practicality of the ‘virtual working’ he espouses. He is a professor at Henley Business School and was formerly with Hult (Ashridge) Business School, Shell, and in consulting. Eddie has a broad range of experience on which he draws. He has worked as a project manager, a ‘borrow-your-watch’ type consultant, as a tutor and a line manager. Eddie’s first board appointment was as the youngest-ever Executive Director of any business school in Europe. He has been on the board of the UK Design Council. Currently he serves as a non-executive for an investment firm.

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP:

Most of Eddie’s current work revolves around what he describes as our ‘New World After Midnight’. He has taken to heart the structural changes in the global economy and begun, from scratch, with creativity, insight and a clean sheet to research issues and invent solutions to the range of pressures and challenges that the New World poses to organisations and especially businesses.

He works on understanding how best to create, manage and deliver successful strategies in our high paced, non-linear, digital, highly competitive world where almost all industry barriers are blurred.

His tools and models show you how to lead a diverse group of distributed people to work collaboratively to their fullest potential & happiness through teams, virtual and real, and through appropriate modern organisational structures.

In recent years, based on his idea that “technology should enhance & enable humans not ensnare them’, he has developed #superreality for teaching, changing culture and collaborative working in a digital workplace. His improvements in productivity have been featured on the BBC.

Eddie’s approach works across industries and is effective on the most thorny & challenging issues executives and managers face.

CLIENT VIEW & PUBLIC TALKS:

‘’Human Redbull’ Redbull

‘Leading revolutionary/Agent provocateur’ Financial Times

‘The Rockstar of Business Education‘ Duke Corporate Education

‘Energetic and impassioned’ Google.

Eddie is well known for his ground breaking insights and tools summarised in his extremely popular TED Talks – ranked in Top 10 best by The Telegraph.

He’s behind many high profile transformations & public policies including:

▪ Inspiring #change and #leadership- HSBC, Suez #SocialInclusion on QUBE for NHS
▪ #Strategic #turnaround/ #Digital TransformationSpeedy Services, Rolls Royce & Vink
▪ #Innovation bursts- Heineken, Danone
▪ Organisational #transformation at IDEO, CSEM,
▪ Increased #Leadership engagement (virtual)- NHS, Health Education England
▪ #Productivity increase-Wolters Kluwer
▪ Successful #project delivery at Telefonica, JPMorgan, GSK & Electronic Arts;
▪ #Innovation & 90% #Cost-reduction of Innovation using QUBE JDE Coffee, Novartis

His framework on innovation powers all UK Government’s strategic investment decisions in innovation.

PUBLICATIONS AND PRODUCTS

Eddie has written 10 books on innovation, change and leadership including the Financial Times best seller All Change! The latest edition of which will be released on 23rd March 2023. He also has columns in several publications including Project Magazine.

Eddie has been involved in application of digital technology for learning and transformation since 2009 with the development of QUBE.

‘QUBE created for teaching global executives is a campus filled with meeting rooms, common areas and with giant video screens and whiteboards’ Wall Street Journal

‘Future digital place to work’ The Economist (World Special Report)

‘QUBE is an innovative virtual world’ Financial Times

QUBE enables easy & fast culture transformation, high-retention, fast learning and application and future-of-work hybrid working.

Eddie holds a lifetime achievement award for his contribution to knowledge on how to make change happen, using his now famous, innovative PETs – Performance Enhancement Tools & People Engagement Tools

Eddie is an experienced helicopter pilot

Eddie originally trained as a chemical/biochemical engineer and spent 5 years in scientific research.