Vaughn Tan is a consultant, author, toolmaker, and professor of strategy at University College London. He’s spent over a decade helping businesses, not-for-profits, and government agencies design themselves to adapt to and profit from uncertainty. He holds a PhD from Harvard University and Harvard Business School.

Vaughn Tan advises businesses and not-for-profits as a consultant and board member, working at the intersection of innovation management, product strategy, and organizational design. His expertise is in designing (or redesigning) organizations to be more innovative and resilient to uncertainty in the operating environment.

Vaughn Tan lecture topics

• How to innovate in an uncertain and volatile world
• Risk vs Uncertainty: What’s the difference and why it matters
• How to organise innovation in your organisation
• Business model innovation in times of uncertainty

His first book, The Uncertainty Mindset (2020), is about how uncertainty can be used to drive innovation and adaptability. The book is based on nearly a decade working with some of the best R&D teams in cutting-edge cuisine, and it’s available worldwide from Columbia University Press. He’s currently working on his second book, about strategies for dealing with different types of not-knowing.

In a previous life, Vaughn Tan worked at Google in California on special projects (including spaceflight and big structured data) and consumer products (including Earth, Maps, and Streetview).