Richard Neville

Social Commentator and Futurist

Richard Neville is an innovative, thought-provoking and humorous speaker. He is an acclaimed futurist, whose talent lies in his ability to spot trends that will influence consumer behaviour, buying patterns and business in the years ahead.

Richard will deliver an entertaining and controversial keynote presentation - a fire-side chat for boards of directors, a brainstorming session for brand managers, a salon-style dinner party for change agents or an edgy briefing for "Kaos Pilots". It can be a half-day seminar on "info age leadership skills", or "how to incubate creativity". It can be a rigorous multi-week journey into scenario planning, a public meeting in an ailing town, or a two week road show for a photocopier firm.  Regardless, as well as dealing with the perils and promise of what lies ahead, he offers his audience a range of take-away tools for decoding the future.

About Richard Neville:

Described in Who's Who as a social commentator, author and stirrer, Richard has been involved with challenging and changing the ways we think, since his student days in the sixties when he published and edited the magazine, Oz - his first act of futurism.  It landed him in gaol and gave Australia its nickname.

As co-founder of the Australian Futures Foundation, Richard Neville works with business, industry, government, communities and education, urging them to engage the future and to cultivate the knack of "living in three times zones" - past, present and future.

For over a decade he has been helping audiences get a sense of what's coming down the line, bringing into focus key issues long before they hit the mainstream: Peak Oil, Peak Water, Resource Wars, Renewable Energy, Rising Sea Levels, Post Carbon Lifestyles, etc. Richard encourages people to leapfrog "future shock" by tilting their beams of foresight - to be pro-active and avoid becoming the victim of someone else's agenda.  He believes it's easier to create the future than predict the future.

Richard has written for an array of publications including The New York Times, Punch, and Nation Review.  He also wrote a regular column on ethics for Australian Business Monthly during the 90's and most recently a series of major essays on Colonising the Future and the Joys and Sorrows of Globalisation.

His best-selling books include Playpower, an insider's view of the youth culture, which accurately predicted the pre-eminence of computers in the workplace, The Life & Crimes of Charles Sobhraj which won a confession from the killer and unraveled the fate of his victims, Amerika Psycho which appeared shortly before September 11, 2001 and Footprints of the Future, a handbook for the third millennium.

On television, Richard was a commentator on cultural and consumer affairs for The Midday Show, where he pioneered environmental issues and took film crews to Europe, Asia and the US in search of the significant and futuristic. He also created and hosted the Channel 10 programme Extra Dimensions, a series which focused on human potential, trends, environmentalism and the emerging issue of social responsibility in business.

Richard Neville talks about:

The Unfolding Future Show - supported by striking visuals, Richard takes the audience on a fast paced journey from Socrates to the Sixties, to the outer reaches of the 21st Century, to reveal how innovation and bright ideas spark paradigm shifts and new economies. Despite today's threats, opportunities abound. Each presentation is tailored to inform, inspire and connect with the concerns of its audience.

Richard's other hot topics include: wars without end, wealth gap, bio mimicry, Wild Law, steady state economics, eco-art, 'what you own, owns you', leaderless terror, peak everything, mass media as a false refection of the future, cities on the edge, tomorrow's tech, delusional leadership, chasing utopia, lethal ideas, High School revolution, helping each other succeed and planetary ethics.