Alexander Manu

Alexander Manu is a strategic innovation practitioner, international lecturer and author. He is a Senior Partner at Equilibrant, a boutique consultancy that provides strategic counsel and future-based advisory to executive teams in Fortune 500 companies in industries diverse as consumer packaged goods, media, logistics, advertising, communications and manufacturing. He is a professor at OCADU University in Toronto, and since 2007, he has been on the Schulich Executive Education Centre (SEEC) faculty at the Schulich School of Business. In 2018, Alexander became the Global Innovation Steward at Holofy, a video-powered sales engagement tool.

Between 2007 and 2019, Alexander was an Adjunct Professor at Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, where he introduced Innovation, Foresight, and Business Design into the MBA curricula. Since 2021, Alexander Manu has taught Innovation, Value Creation, and Foresight Methods in the MBA in Entrepreneurship Program at the York Entrepreneurship Development Institute (YEDI) at York University in Toronto.

In his client and research work, Alexander transforms organizations by integrating disruption in everyday business, defining new competitive spaces, developing new strategic business competencies, and creating imaginative innovation methods. He believes exploring possibilities requires imagination as a prerequisite for strategic change and innovation. For over 30 years, he has enabled global companies such as Motorola, LEGO, Whirlpool, Nokia, Navteq and Unilever to develop policies and strategies that address emerging issues through strategic foresight and pre-competitive business models.

Alexander Manu was the Founder (2005) and Director of the Beal Centre for Strategic Creativity, a non-profit research think tank in Toronto. There, he developed new methodologies in strategic foresight, focusing on the intersection of behaviour, technology, and business capability.

Author of "The Philosophy of Disruption, "2022, "Dynamic Future-Proofing: Integrating Disruption in Everyday Business," 2021, Transforming Organizations for the Subscription Economy: Starting from Scratch", 2017 "Value Creation and the Internet of Things" 2015, "Behaviour Space: Play, Pleasure and Discovery as a Model for Business Value" 2012, "Disruptive Business," 2010, "Everything 2.0: Redesign your Business Through Foresight and Brand Innovation", 2008, "The Imagination Challenge: Strategic Foresight and Innovation for the Global Economy," 2006" ToolToys: Tools with an Element of Play," 1995, and "The Big Idea of Design", 1998, as well as of numerous articles published in national and international periodicals. His most recent book, "Transcending Imagination: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Creativity," was released by CRC Press/Taylor & Francis on April 19, 2024.

Alexander Manu has had exceptional and sustained activity as an international lecturer, invited to give over 600 keynote lectures in 27 countries. A past president of the Association of Chartered Industrial Designers of Ontario, he was elected twice to the board of the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID). A past member of various advisory boards active at government levels in Canada and the Far East, he has consulted on foresight strategies for the Department of Canadian Heritage, the China External Trade Development Council, the Taiwan Design Centre, and the Korea Institute of Design Promotion. He is a founding member of Design for the World (Barcelona), an international NGO that provides and promotes humanitarian design solutions.

Alexander has been a guest lecturer at over 45 distinguished post-secondary institutions worldwide. In 1994, he was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA) in recognition of his contribution to developing design and visual arts in Canada.