Kate O'Neill | KO Insights

Kate O’Neill is the leading experience strategy expert and thinker top organizations turn to for solving human problems at scale along with her signature “optimism about the role of technology in the world along with a firm reality check” (according to one Google executive). Kate is CEO of KO Insights, a strategic advisory firm committed to improving human experience at scale.

The organizations we have helped have included the likes of IBM, the United Nations, Yale University, and the city of Amsterdam. They’re organizations with storied histories, big futures, and complex challenges — perhaps not unlike yours. Each of them is responsible for a whole lot of humans and a whole lot of human experiences, and they all rely on big human insights to pull their strategies together.

Helping companies and organizations facing digital transformation — or any transformation

Kate introduced the term “human-centric digital transformation” in Tech Humanist and her Human-Centric Digital Transformation model and canvas helps leadership teams think through and work through how their own transformation can be more human-centric and more successful overall.

Whether our team is leading executive strategy workshops in Barcelona, Hong Kong, or Washington D.C., the KO Insights priority is to help leadership teams align on their priorities, so they can become better stewards of the human experiences they create and accelerate through digital transformation.

Need a keynote speaker, strategic advisor, or strategic workshop facilitator on Digital Transformation? Inquire with us.

Helping cities and regions looking ahead to a complex future

Kate has helped cities from Amsterdam to Austin, from Nanaimo (on Vancouver Island) to Nashville think about their forward-looking strategies through the lens of meaningful human experiences, addressing vast and integrative topics like AI and the future of work, equitable housing strategies, climate mitigation, digital services, public spaces and placemaking, and so on.

In the face of complexity, focusing on human experience gets you surprisingly far.

Need a keynote speaker for your city’s event, or strategic guidance on the Future of Cities? Contact us.

How can we help you help the humans who rely on you succeed?

Kate is helping humanity prepare for a future driven by emerging technology and other changes at scale. Along the way, she helps companies, organizations, and cities adopt integrative strategies with meaningful human experience at their core — leading to successful use of data and emerging technology while creating more meaningful and profitable connections with the humans who do business with you and rely on you.

Need a Futurist perspective? How about a hopeful view of the future?
Kate has been called “the optimistic futurist” and her newly-released book, A Future So Bright, introduces the concept of “Strategic Optimism,” a hopeful yet disciplined approach to help us fulfill the best possible outcomes for humanity. She applies this model to the role of tech in the future of meaningful human experience, climate change and sustainable business strategy, the future of work and jobs, the future of cities, the future of trust and truth, the future of privacy, and even beyond.

Need a human-centric perspective on emerging technologies?
Long known as the “Tech Humanist,” Kate is known industry-wide as the voice of humanity in tech.

Doing a virtual event and need a speaker you can count on?
Kate literally wrote the book on how the physical and digital worlds connect. It’s more than the Internet of Things; it’s about how both online and offline experiences can be as rich and meaningful as possible. More than that, Kate’s a Certified Virtual Presenter who has given rich, interactive keynotes over just about every platform. Learn more about our virtual programs.

A wide range of experiences distilled into insightful experience strategy

Author of several books including her newly-released A Future So Bright: How Strategic Optimism and Meaningful Innovation Can Restore Our Humanity and Save the World, as well as earlier books Tech Humanist: How You Can Make Technology Better for Business and Better for Humans and Pixels and Place: Connecting Human Experience Across Physical and Digital Spaces, Kate brings depth, breadth, humor, and humanity to data, technology, and business topics, and bridges the gap between business interests and human needs. An award-winning entrepreneur, author, technologist, and strategist, Kate has a diverse and accomplished background — in analytics, strategy, technology, marketing, and linguistics. That wide-ranging personal and professional experience allows her to connect with and be trusted by an array of audiences — from senior executives to students, from engineers to artists.

Read more about Kate

Need consulting? Workshops? Guidance for your team? Reach out to inquire.

Engaging, insightful, expert content to help a wide variety of audiences rethink their approach to technology and humanity for better business results and better human experiences. More topics and details listed here.

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Trusted to speak to leaders and customers by brands you know and love:

Kate has spoken for tech giants like Google and IBM, conglomerates like Comcast, food brands like McDonald’s and Coca Cola, health leaders like Cleveland Clinic, universities like Cambridge and Yale, cities like Amsterdam and Austin, several groups within the United Nations, and hundreds of technical and marketing industry conferences, association conferences and annual meetings, corporate events, and more.

“I definitely recommend Kate as a keynote speaker at any type of professional event. Her experience creates an arsenal of expert subjects she can share to inspire a variety of audiences.”

— event organizer

KO Insights is a strategic advisory and thought leadership firm committed to improving human experience at scale, even — and especially — in data-driven, algorithmically optimized, and AI-led interactions.

We help clients find the human solutions in strategic challenges and future-looking projects through an understanding of the implications of digital transformation and emerging technology on humanity, artificial intelligence ethics, and other topics that matter. True to our name, we are driven by insights and foresights, and we deliver results through big picture keynotes, strategic advising, and executive team workshops. Based in New York City with a distributed team and global reach, KO Insights is led by Kate O’Neill, a strategist and futurist who has been featured on BBC World News among other international media.

Who are our clients?

We don’t mean to brag, but we have truly worked with the best. Our past clients and projects are among the World’s Most Admired, the Fortune 500, the world changers, and the most influential. They’ve included Google, the City of Amsterdam, the United Nations COP25 Climate Change Summit, and many, many more organizations across a wide array of sectors. Without any additional name-dropping, our clients and projects have included Fortune 100 corporations, major retailers, cities and civic organizations, hospitals and other healthcare entities, top universities, fast-growing startups, and non-profit organizations. For example, we have:

• helped a top-grossing global fast food company in partnership with a top-grossing soft drink brand think through the integration of their combined online and in-store marketing
• helped a fast-growing Chinese geo-tech startup with data-savvy and experientially integrative go-to-market and expansion strategy for the U.S.
• guided ‘smart city’ integration strategy for an IoT platform
• recommended experience strategy, strategic positioning, and in-culture plan for a major multi-national pharmaceutical company launching a new device with an unconventional delivery pathway
• recommended an integrated message and experience strategy for a key intergovernmental organization
• helped a top-ranking university overcome institutional obstacles to develop a segmented, experiential approach to building out a new academic program
• helped various NGO boards think through integrated online/offline strategic direction and dimensionalizing the experience of their constituents
• helped many companies with online subscription-model products improve their messaging and conversion through a focus on relevance, data-centric processes, and experience alignment
• regularly presented keynotes on tech humanist strategy, human-centric digital transformation, and the future of meaningful human experience to hundreds of executive leaders of top global corporations
• and many more successful projects and initiatives.

“It was a complicated, six-month overhaul and change management project. Kate was a deft politician and advocate whom I reached out to many times for advice and counsel. She threaded the needle very effectively when different leaders advocated for different paths to the same objective.”
— former client

Are you our next client?

You’re the right kind of organization for us if you’re looking to develop future-ready strategies that align purpose, brand, and culture with the right data and emerging technology to be more effective and efficient while creating more meaningful experiences. Sure, that may be a mouthful, but the results of that kind of integrative thinking are more than worth it: our holistic approach pays off in lower customer acquisition costs, higher customer and employee retention, stronger word of mouth, and all kinds of other qualitative and quantitative improvements.

KO Insights also provides guidance on the trends shaping business, technology innovation, and human experience, helping organizations develop their approach to data-rich experience design so that it is successful for the organization and more meaningful for the people who use their products and services.

Led by Kate O’Neill, Backed by Limitless Team and Expertise

KO Insights is led by Kate O’Neill and while many projects are conducted solely by Kate, sometimes the moment calls for a range of insights or a specific perspective — so we tap our network of partners and peers to enhance the results with some of the savviest and sharpest minds around.

Our current and past projects have combined the expertise and experiences of brilliant professionals who’ve worked in leadership and development roles across music, film, e-commerce, healthcare, technology, fashion, and consumer packaged goods across brands like Amazon, Google, Coke, Pepsi, Sony, Adobe, Nike, Volkswagen, and many more.

We count among our collaborators both niche experts and incredible researchers who can become near-experts in no time. For every aspect of our experience strategy projects, we assemble — like slightly nerdy superheroes — as an ad hoc team of remarkable talent and insights from around the world.

Have no fear: we’ll pull together the right team for you.

“Kate and her team quickly assessed my project, worked efficiently to identify solutions and implementing those solutions made a direct, positive impact on my business.”
— former client

How can KO Insights best help you?

Think about where your data+experience+strategy most needs help, especially if it involves thinking about online and offline integration, meaningful use of automation, etc.

Typically, companies who struggle with high customer acquisition costs, low retention rate, poor satisfaction and/or referral rates could benefit from a clearer strategy and better definition of the experience they want people outside and inside of the company to have.

“I can’t say enough about how nice it was to work with someone who knew the subject inside and out.”
— former client

Through the KO Insights experience strategy consulting methodology, Kate O’Neill helps companies think about the people inside and outside their organization and align what they see, think, and do for best results. The approach is iterative, experience-rich, data-informed, insightful, and human-centric.

“Kate is a fantastic business consultant and advisor. Her early input on my startup was, and still is, priceless.”
— former client

Let us know how KO Insights can help your organization create its human-centric strategy for a change-filled future: