Roger Spitz Takes Disruption Playbook to Investors and Boards

Futurist Roger Spitz is bringing his 2024 book’s core argument back to institutional investors, board directors and risk leaders with fall 2026 keynotes in Washington, Santiago and Columbus. The talks center on how to make decisions when historical models no longer explain what comes next.

Why it matters: - Roger Spitz is pitching a simple warning to capital allocators and boardrooms: historical trend lines are breaking down, and decision-makers need new tools for uncertainty. - The argument matters because investors, directors and risk officers still rely heavily on past data to price risk, govern businesses and allocate capital. - Spitz is framing the issue as a practical one, not a theoretical one: what to do when the future cannot be read from the past.

What happened: - Two years after Kogan Page published Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World in September 2024, Spitz is taking the book’s message to three fall 2026 stages. - On October 7, Spitz will deliver “The Next Allocation: Investing at the Edge of the Known” at the Pension Real Estate Association Fall Conference in Washington, D.C. - On November 12, Spitz will give the closing keynote at the fifth Board Directors’ Summit of the Instituto de Directores de Chile in Santiago: “Frontera Ciega: Gobernar el negocio que aún no existe.” - On November 19–20, Spitz will headline the Risk and Insurance Management Society ERM Conference in Columbus, Ohio, with “Black Swans and Golden Geese: Risks & Returns in the Era of Unpredictability.”

The details: - Spitz says the book argues that linear trend extrapolation no longer works because disruptions now cascade, intersect and compound across sectors, geographies and time horizons at once. - Spitz coined “Metaruptions” in 2019 to describe multidimensional systemic disruptions with self-perpetuating effects that spread far beyond their original domains. - The book’s framework is the AAA model: Antifragile, Anticipatory and Agility. - Spitz’s keynotes focus on separating structural change from noise and weighing risk and opportunity when the historical record is an unreliable guide. - In a Duke Corporate Education Dialogue piece published in August 2026, Spitz wrote: “All data is historical; the purpose of every decision lies in the future. Yet there is no data on the future.” - Spitz said investors, directors and risk officers are asking the same core question in different forms: what belongs in the next allocation, how to govern a business that does not yet exist, and what can still be priced. - Before moving into futures work, Spitz spent two decades in investment banking, including time as Global Head of Technology M&A at BNP Paribas. - At BNP Paribas, Spitz advised on more than 50 transactions worth over $25 billion and launched the bank’s U.S. M&A practice in San Francisco. - Spitz and Olivier Desbiey, head of foresight at AXA, co-authored a Journal of Operational Risk paper on the future of risk and insurability that separates measurable risk from deep uncertainty. - Spitz’s current work on the Law of Inaction argues that inaction is never neutral and that every silence is a decision with compounding costs and forgone opportunities. - The book won First Place in Business & Enterprise at the 2024 Chanticleer International Book Awards and Bronze at the 2024 Foreword INDIES and 2025 Readers’ Favorite awards. - A Forbes contributor column on December 31, 2025 named “metaruption” as a word for 2026 and credited Spitz with coining it; Forbes Japan later carried the term. - The International Training Centre of the ILO, the UK National Preparedness Commission, the CFA Institute, IDOS in Germany and the Association of Professional Futurists have also referenced the term. - In Military Strategy Magazine, U.S. Army War College authors cited Spitz’s 2020 Journal of Futures Studies paper in an analysis of AI and wargaming. - Global Gurus ranks Spitz #15 in its World’s Top 30 Futurist Professionals for 2026 and #6 in its Americas edition. - Thinkers360 ranks Spitz #6 globally in both Management and National Security. - Speakers Associates says Spitz “brings the credibility of an operator who has also done the strategic-foresight academic work.”

Between the lines: - Spitz’s pushback against historical models is timed for a moment when investors and boards are being asked to make faster decisions with less reliable reference points. - The book’s vocabulary has moved beyond publishing and into policy, academia and professional risk circles, which suggests the framework has found an audience outside typical futurist channels. - The repeated focus on capital allocation, governance and insurability shows Spitz is positioning foresight as an operating discipline rather than a branding exercise.

What’s next: - Spitz’s fall keynote run is set to continue through October and November 2026, with investor, board and risk audiences at the center. - He plans a series of new 2027 publications, including an eight-principle version of the Law of Inaction. - Spitz said unpredictability is now appearing directly in session titles, which suggests the market for foresight content is moving from niche to mainstream. - Speaking inquiries are directed to Roger Spitz’s speaker reel and media inquiries to media@disruptivefutures.org.

The bottom line: - Spitz’s message is that decision-makers can no longer assume the past is a reliable map for the future, and his fall 2026 talks are built to show them what to do instead.