We are honoured to have the Deputy Mayor of Cambridge, Cllr. Richard Swift joining us to welcome you all to Cambridge Forum.

This session draws on Marty Neumeier’s influential brand tools and frameworks, including the “onlyness” model for differentiation, the “tribal” approach to customer loyalty, and narrative structures that clarify purpose. Participants will examine how to bridge strategy and design, blending logic with creativity to build brands that resonate and endure. Emphasizing the shift from company-driven messaging to customer co-creation, the session offers practical insights for leaders and entrepreneurs seeking to stand out in competitive markets and cultivate lasting communities around their brands.

Renowned author and brand expert Marty Neumeier will help you make the leap from a company-driven past to the consumer-driven future. You’ll learn how to flip your brand from offering products to offering meaning, from market segments to brand tribes, and from customer satisfaction to customer empowerment.
Over the course of 2 hours, you’ll build four key elements of the Brand Commitment Matrix, a high-level strategy document that describes how and your customers will co-create your brand.

This intensive, hands-on workshop delivers a thorough foundation in prompt engineering—the critical skill that transforms AI from experimental tool to strategic business asset. Led by an expert practitioner, participants will learn established frameworks and systematic methodologies that turn AI interactions into measurable business outcomes across customer service, decision-making, and operational efficiency.

Through practical exercises and real-world applications, attendees will learn the art and science of crafting powerful prompts that drive consistent, high-quality results. From automating customer communications to generating strategic insights and optimizing complex workflows, this session provides the technical expertise and strategic framework needed to implement AI solutions that deliver immediate ROI while building long-term competitive advantage.

Participants will leave with a comprehensive toolkit including prompt templates, measurement frameworks, and implementation roadmaps—plus the confidence to lead AI transformation initiatives within their organizations.

This talk examines why regulating AI currently appears unfeasible at both the domestic level and—given the current lack of consensus—at the international level. After further exploring the limitations of (tort) liability and other private law mechanisms for accountability, it looks at the (again limited) extent to which harmful uses could be excluded through technology – i.e. built into AI applications and AI services. In light of the limits of these different means to prevent or mitigate harm, the talk appeals to AI developers and AI users to take their responsibility for the tech they develop, deploy and apply seriously.

In a world where AI’s influence is expanding at unprecedented speed, Cambridge Forum convenes a landmark panel bringing together leading experts to address its impact across five vital domains: employment, education, environment, law, and human flourishing. Unlike traditional panels that merely debate, this session has a singular, urgent mission—to answer the question few are asking: What should we do about AI? With perspectives ranging from cautious concern to bold optimism, panellists will move beyond rhetoric to deliver four actionable recommendations in their field of expertise. These insights will be compiled into Cambridge Forum Vision 20/20: Creating Public Clarity on AI Policies, a document designed to guide public understanding and policy direction. Poised to be the highlight of Day One, this is where informed discussion meets decisive action.

Renowned author and brand expert Marty Neumeier will help you make the leap from a company-driven past to the consumer-driven future. You’ll learn how to flip your brand from offering products to offering meaning, from market segments to brand tribes, and from customer satisfaction to customer empowerment. Over the course of 2 hours, you’ll build four key elements of the Brand Commitment Matrix, a high-level strategy document that describes how and your customers will co-create your brand.

This practical training session takes insurance professionals well beyond the AI buzz, delivering hands-on practice of prompt engineering techniques that transform underwriting, claims processing, and customer engagement workflows. Led by a seasoned AI practitioner, participants will craft powerful, industry-specific prompts while navigating the critical legal, ethical, and compliance landscape that governs responsible AI deployment in regulated financial services.

Through established methodologies and real-world case studies, attendees will learn to harness AI as a transformative tool for operational efficiency—balancing innovation with integrity. From risk assessment automation to fraud detection and customer communication enhancement, this session equips participants with actionable strategies to implement AI solutions that drive measurable business impact while maintaining regulatory compliance and customer trust.

Drawing on the remarkable rise of Digital Public Infrastructure—like India’s Aadhaar digital ID platform and UPI payment network—this talk will explore how “frugal innovation” unlocks scalable and affordable solutions by leveraging shared, open, and interoperable digital rails. It will spotlight stories of startups, governments, and communities co-creating low-cost solutions, including with AI, that address the needs of the many: from expanding healthcare and education access, to empowering micro-entrepreneurs and streamlining public services.

The World Health Organization estimates 4 billion people lack the health literacy to understand and act on basic medical information. This widening gap beyond clinics and surgeries remains one of healthcare’s most overlooked crises.

Onion.AI was created to close that gap. Built by doctors and powered by generative AI, it delivers hyper-personalised, science-based health education in plain language—accessible anytime, free of jargon. Rather than diagnosing, it equips patients with knowledge to make informed health choices—on their own or with a clinician—reshaping the patient-doctor relationship into a more balanced dialogue. In this talk, the founders of Onion.AI will share their mission, values, and commitment to science over fiction, and how they use cutting-edge technology to guide and empower the public—not mislead or marginalise. It’s an emblematic case of tech for good in health care.

Whereas the first few decades of research into artificial intelligence did not achieve the progress initially anticipated by the US and Japanese governments and business leaders, its remarkable achievements this century have left policy makers and social scientists scrambling to keep up with the speed of change, and the potential of AI to alter radically how we conceive of society and of ourselves. As with any period of rapid change, speculation is rife as to what the future may hold, with interestingly most of the theorising so coming from within the industry itself. In this talk, we adopt a social theoretical and philosophical perspective on AI, reflecting on what it may involve for some of the core notions that we associate with humanity: agency (people’s ability to act autonomously and take responsibility for their actions), creativity (their ability to surpass the past and innovate) and selfhood (their sense of identity and authenticity).

As generative AI scales, so does its environmental footprint, posing urgent challenges for equity, accessibility, and sustainability. In this talk, UNESCO shares insights from its latest report on energy-efficient AI, revealing how small design choices can reduce resource use by up to 90 percent. Discover why “smarter, smaller, stronger” AI matters, and how we’re turning research into action through green AI playbooks, open-source pilots, and national innovation labs built for low-resource contexts.

Join us back at The Guildhall for a seated 3-course dinner. This will be a chance to unwind, reflect on the day’s insights, and network with fellow changemakers whilst enjoying great food, drinks, and company.

We are also pleased to announce a display of Michael Benson’s, Nanocosmos.

A breathtaking tour of the natural world is offered in Nanocosmos, an examination of majestic vistas revealed by powerful scanning electron microscope (SEM) technologies. The beauty and immensity of our surrounding universe of planets, stars, and galaxies has inspired humanity for hundreds of years. But what about the vistas at the other end of the size scale? The tiny worlds here, invisible to our unassisted eyes, are if anything more intricate, complex, and extraordinary than anything so far seen in deep space. Artist and author Michael Benson’s Nanocosmos, to be published on October 28th by Abrams Books in New York, corrects this oversight in sensational fashion.

Constructed from SEM scans that he made over the course of six years at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Quebec, the images presented in Nanocosmos reveal an eerie, awe-inspiring beauty in subjects taken from the natural world. These include radiolarians, dinoflagellates, and diatoms, as well as many varieties of insects, microscopic flowers, and even lunar samples from the Apollo program. The composite mosaic micrographs visible in Nanocosmos fuse art and science in revelatory ways, exposing an astonishing sublimity hidden to the naked eye. In his keynote talk, Benson provides an eye-opening preview of the new book.

It will unpack secular modernity’s proliferation of threats to human physical, philosophical and spiritual survival, and show how a thoughtful Muslim response can offer practical and theoretical therapies in an age of anxiety. These are rooted in the Islamic policy of grounding human life in primordial norms which modern life often confiscates from us.

At the intersection of faith, finance, and innovation, Cambridge Forum presents a thought-provoking panel exploring the central question: What is Takaful, and how does it compare to mutualised and cooperative insurance? Bringing together leading experts and scholars at the forefront of advancing Islamic finance solutions in the UK, the session will unpack how Takaful addresses moral hazards and why many Muslims view traditional insurance as undesirable. Beyond clarifying its principles, the panel will consider Takaful’s potential to strengthen Britain’s role—as both an economic powerhouse and the insurance capital of the world—by positioning London as a beacon for new and inclusive financial models. Insightful and forward-looking, this discussion will illuminate how Islamic finance can broaden the future of global insurance.

Moving world development onto a sustainable path will depend not only on scaling of existing appropriate technologies, but also radical innovations and changes in mindsets and behaviours. Technology alone is not sufficient for ensuring a sustainable pathway, thus innovation (including social innovation) is vital to induce these changes and make behaviour change attractive. During this seminar Dr Sindi will share her experience of science, technology and innovation especially social innovation – and how it provides a key driver for sustainable and global change

Technology is driving new solutions to some of the world’s most pressing sustainability challenges, but it also has the potential to further exacerbate them. This panel will bring together leading voices from business, academia and innovation, to explore the potential gains and risk that the rapid rise in AI and technology innovation presents. The panel will share examples of how technology can, and is, being used to fast-track solutions to issues such as climate change, biodiversity breakdown and social issues, and will explore what measures need to be taken to ensure that the boom in tech and AI does not undermine the sustainability agenda.

With 4 billion people worldwide still uninsured and countless communities underserved, the urgency to rethink insurance has never been greater. This Cambridge Forum panel convenes leading experts in insurance, insurtech, and telecommunications to examine how innovation can dismantle entrenched barriers—from regulatory hurdles and cost constraints to challenges in product design and adoption. Extending the mission further, the discussion will explore the transformative role of telcos and embedded insurance in reaching previously inaccessible markets. Far from a theoretical debate, the session will challenge industry leaders to think boldly and reimagine their ultimate purpose: delivering meaningful coverage to those who need it most. Expect a stimulating exchange of ideas that could redefine the future of inclusion in insurance.

The main question guiding the debate on sustainable investing is whether companies that prioritize ethical practices also deliver better financial results. This question has elicited diverse viewpoints, and a consensus has yet to be reached. One approach of sustainable investing is Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing, which assesses companies based on their efforts in three key areas: environmental, social, and governance. I will provide a global data-driven analysis to examine the differences in performance and risk between ESG leaders and laggers. Additionally, I will explore the same question for Shariah-compliant companies, which are defined by quantitative screens such as debt-to-equity ratio, exclusion of interest-based transactions, and other Islamic prohibitions.

For too long, crucial conservation decisions have been hampered by poor evidence use, harming nature and people. The Conservation Evidence Project has worked for 20 years to change this, but gathering vast amounts of information is slow. Now, AI is transforming everything, especially the world of academic literature (see Dr Reynolds’ piece in Nature). This talk reveals how we are using Large and Small Language Models to dramatically accelerate evidence collection and summarisation. This groundbreaking work will fundamentally reshape how we use evidence to make smarter, faster, and more effective decisions in conservation, and beyond.

This talk reveals how we can design AI systems that genuinely benefit society by putting people at the heart of decision-making. We’ll explore how to create ethical guidelines, engage communities, ensure accessibility, protect privacy, and integrate sustainability. By focusing on these principles, we can develop AI that empowers everyone and addresses real-world challenges responsibly.